Elado and Baku send magical rays at the zombie, both of which somehow pass over its head. Balin swings at it, but misses. Pig lifts his heavy axe, and splits the zombie in half down to its navel.
You move through the secret door into a passage, and then through a door at the other end which is clearly meant to be secret from the other side. A few wisps of decayed gum hang from the walls of this room, but there’s none on the stone ceiling and no sign of gumballs in the room. The ceiling is blank save for four 1-footwide, round steel medallions, one set into each corner. The floor is equally bare except for a pedestal in the center of the floor made of a single five-foot-square block of stone, about two feet high. On the pedestal sits a metal-framed wooden chest, and to the side of the pedestal rests a shallow hole in the floor housing what looks like a brass door handle set into the stone. A stone tile lying loose nearby is clearly designed to fit over the hole, concealing the handle.
Raga and Yroh notice that there are secret doors out of this room.
Baku and Raga notice that the entire raised platform is a trap! If someone touched the chest without first pulling on the handle to disarm the trap, the ceiling would lower and squish them!
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Raga moves up and inspects the handle to make sure that is all that is required to disarm the trap, then pulls it in the appropriate direction when the rest of the party is ready.
Still going on this must have been the kobold level or something with the number of traps that were here. Haven't seen any stairs down yet, though, so...
Raga carefully examines the trap to make sure that pulling the handle will disarm the trap (disable device), and is confident that it will work, so she pulls on the handle. A faint click can be heard, and Raga believes the trap is disabled.
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Spotting a single door out, Baku ponders 'Would it be possible for their to be more hidden exits here?'
Watching as Raga proves his innate skills again, a chuckle slipping out as Pig leaps atop the stage. "You'd likely be much worse for wear Pig if it weren't for our friend here. So, anything of interest in that thing?"
The chest merely contains a bleached cat skull and an aged, handwritten note reading, "Curiosity Kills: another ingenious demise, courtesy
of Addington’s Fine Traps and Defenses."
You continue through the secret door, and then through the back of the secret passage.
Shabby, mold-covered tapestries hang from ceiling hooks, cloaking one wall of this chamber in faded forest hunting scenes. While probably of decent quality when new, they look sad now.
A plain wooden chair of massive construction stands centered before the tapestries, facing into the room. A large stone table stands against the eastern wall. Weapons and other items are neatly laid out on the table, as if displayed for sale in a shop.
Sitting in the chair is a bony form. He turns to you in surprise.
"Why do you bother me? Go away, or die! Klarkosh has given this area to me!"
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"I apologize for disturbing you sir, but unfortunately neither of those options work for me. You see, I've died before and...well...it didn't take. Lost the girly bits though. It's both a curse and a blessing depending on the day." replies Baku, safely tucked behind his friendly half-orc wall of meat. "It's a might chilly in here. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to light a fire real quick for myself."
Without waiting for a response, he closes his eyes for a moment, concentrating on the surrounding terrain. "Yes, I feel it." mumbles the man, as he reaches a hand out to seemingly nothing. A vibrant energy surrounds him. "Essence of the flame, grant me your light and warmth."
With a soft 'pop' a glowing ember lights up in his free hand. "There, that's much better. So, what is it you do down here? Could you explain this arrangement you speak of?"
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"Who might you be? Grulk upstairs had concerns about his neighbors downstairs, and if we could resolve those concerns to the satisfaction of all involved, it'd be great, right?" Raga offers hopefully, while mentally girding herself for the probability that isn't going to happen.
The bony creature's face changes from one of anger to one of calculating. "I am here because that **** Klarkosh several floors down ordered me to. I am tired of doing his bidding. Leave here, and we will forget about this intrusion. Deal with Klarkosh, and we will talk again."
He thinks for another moment, and throws an odd green stone to you. "Here. This is called a Spire Transport Token. If you use it and know the mystic symbol for a floor, it can take you to any floor of the Emerald Spire. Now leave my room."
You move on into the next room. Multicolored candy strands fill this chamber. You also see what look like huge candy cocoons suspended in the strandss, and countless hundreds of little tiny gumballs, about the size of Nerds candy, drift around on the strands.
As soon as you enter, the little tiny gumballs start to gather, looking ready to swarm over you.
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"We'll be sure to." Raga notes, then sees the next room and blanches a bit at the idea of all of that in her fur.
[color=Blue]Round one: to identify gumballs for any hinky stuff.[/color]
[color=Green]Round one, pull out Akali flask, hand to someone who doesn't have an AoE weapon.[/color]
[color=Orange]Round two, pull out Alchemist Fire, ready to throw when the swarms form up. Pray they aren't immune[/color]
Raga knows that these mini gumballs will grow up to be aspartame gumballs, so they can leave poison if they swarm you. Also, they can be very distracting. They are immune to weapon damage, but will take normal damage from acid, alkali, or fire.
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Watching the gumballs gather together, Baku sighs. "You know, they're lucky we don't have any big mouths in the group. We wouldn't need to fight any of these things, just have someone chew them."
Nodding to Raga, he extinguishes the flame in his hand and tugs a flask of an orange liquid from his pack. "When they come, I'll be ready."
"I've got my own flask if the survive that long." he advises the group. Seeing Pig chuck his into the midsts, he rears back and launches his flaming orb at the group, another ball of fire immediately appearing in his hand.
Baku, I wish I could tell you that it would work. In a home game, I would let it work. In a PFS game, it's a single target, so no, unless someone else can come up with a good argument that lets it work. :(
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Balin's blade passes through the tiny gumballs, who seem entirely unaffected by it.
Yroh makes his companions better able to fight the swarm of malicious gumballs.
Elado and Pig throw splash weapons. Elado's misses, but the impact with the ground still throws some of the contents onto the swarm, reducing the number of vicious little balls of candy rolling around. Pig's is a direct hit, and seriously seems to injure the little menaces. Raga and Baku throw their bottles of ouch at the gumballs also.
Under your chemical assault, the nasty little bits of gum disintegrate into a stinky grey ash.
You move on into the hallway, and then into the next room. This large room has a wide hole in the center of its floor. A heavy, welded steel ladder descends straight down from the lip of this shaft. The extent and depth of the space below are concealed behind the many crisscrossing, candy-colored webs filling the pit. Two large nasty gumballs occupy the room.
Elado and Yroh, you act before the gumballs. Yroh's bless is still in effect.
Elado's blast almost splatters the yellow gumball all over the room. It is barely holding together and moving.
Yroh finds himself peppered with bits of hardened (from being frozen) gumball. He takes no harm from them, other than perhaps being a little surprised.
The remaining gumball opens a crack in its side that looks a lot like a mouth and tries to bite Raga.
Raga finds the ragged hard candy shell edges clamping down hard on her leg. She also feels a burning feeling where the gumball made contact.
The entire party is up.
Splort! Raga gets pelted with gumball bits. Luckily for her, the gumball is frozen too solidly to get stuck in her fur.
After you clear away the gummy strands in the way, you realize that this pit is the way down to the next level of the Spire. You return to Fort Inevitable to rest, report, and buy some new gear.
You sit down with your honorary venture captain to talk about what you saw and did. She looks at you expectantly, waiting to hear what you saw and did. Raga catches a wink from across the room.
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Closing his eyes, Baku reaches out into the cracks between the planes and sucks in some of its raw essence. Taking his time, he conjures up a long, pointed stick of energy and turns towards the sticky opponents.
Raising his arm to thrust his conjuration deep within....he dodges a few bits of the remaining beast. "Oh...that it? Guess I took too much time summoning my spear." he replies, with a sheepish smile.
Allowing the energies to dissolve as they head back for rest, he cheerfully discusses the future with his companions. "Think I'll head down to that next level. Everyone keeps talking about this big bad wizard...just need to meet him. Oh, I sure do hope Herra comes back soon."
"Well, we had to smash some gummy beasts. Seems someone had been experimenting on them. Ran into a strange fellow and of course mapped out the place." he offers.
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"This floor had a *significant* number of traps on it, could hardly move through a room without finding one. We ran into an apparent undead of some sort who was sentient and reasonable -- much like Grulk above -- and they both have issues with some sort of mage named Klarkosh. Both have requested we deal with this 'Klarkosh', so I imagine it's on the docket the next time we get down to it."
Raga will indicate the Spire Transport Token.
"That seems to be a device of some sort to allow access to any level provided one knows the proper term for the level or somesuch. May make extended explorations a lot easier, if we don't have to keep going through previously cleared areas."
"We also found the following items in our explorations and are noting them for accounting and whatnot. If you'd pardon me... there's a young woman I promised I'd talk to on our return...?"