One minute we are compulsively scrubbing frescoes of Bahamut, doing Reg “Two Veg” Oakley quite proud, then I lose track of time and find that we’ve agreed to take our orders from a bunch of minotaurs and a Barl Gura demon. Wait what?
I’m struggling with the fact that the evil twisted screaming in my head sounds a little like Sir Grumbles-A-Lot Reginald Oakley right now. At least the “this is bollocks” speech sounded a lot like her Abyssal for a while.
But then again the “help” involves killing gnolls, so…. is that enough? Do I have a moral compass? I don’t think I know what they look like.
Then I realize that we were just complaining that our lives had come to revolve overmuch around the *killing* of demons. This business of literally *helping* a demon and his minotaur friends certainly qualifies as a change! OK good. Moving on!

So there we were. We were in the middle of laying waste to the gnolls, as per our contract. The gnolls for their part laid waste to a good part of Sir Oakley’s face, requiring emergency healing from Neil. Klajdu also nearly went down, and we had a bit of a scramble to take down the gnolls around him – I learned how to use my mirror image magic to basically fire around corners. Neil played a riff that confused a gnoll so greatly that he charged one of his allies attacking Klajdu. Oakley doughtily set off to defend Klajdu as well, but as he passed Ezmerelda she tried to pick his pocket. The astute reader will note that Oakley’s plate armor is relatively free of pockets. Sir Oakley detected her attempt, and grated out “I can handle you, little girl!” or something to that effect. The effect was diminished though because Klajdu meanwhile had been quietly dominated by some gnoll magic and damned if he didn’t take a huge swing with his flaming maul at Oakley’s recently-repaired face. And hit. Quite badly. Twice. And then….

Ezmerelda: We’re gonna gang rape him!
party: {silence}
Ezmerelda: Or maybe just me.
party: {silence}
Shazia: …. We should have a handbook.

Oakley once again takes all this with good grace (cmon already!) and soon after, I drop the last Gnoll archer by stunning him. While Oakley is healing up his face again and we’re trying to figure out what to do with the stunned gnoll, we take a short rest. It is strangely quiet – Neil has failed to strike up his customary end-of-encounter ditty. Apparently because he was busy having a vision. He relates this to us – He saw a knight in gleaming armor there in the room with us, kneeling before that statue of Bahamut in human form. (I forgot to mention there’s a statue in this room). This knight apparently took out a deck of cards, drew one and then recoiled in horror as he saw the card, right as chaos broke out in the room around him. After coming down (his words), Neil was able to use something he’d seen in the vision to figure out more about that magical Fool card he holds.

Also on the wall of the room, we notice carvings of Bahamut in the form of an armored minotaur, fighting demons, fighting demonic minotaurs, and even fighting Baphomet himself. Oakley grumbles. Splug, cheerfully oblivious to our moral slidings, is excited to find food scraps in the room’s garbage, and he loads up on body parts and grubs. He avers that they are non-human body parts. This comforts me not at all because it means he can tell the difference. In his excavations though we find more treasure – a mithril scepter, a silver medallion, and a fancy looking horn. I take the scepter, someone else the medallion, and Klajdu blows the horn.

This blast draws the attention of the minotaurs, who engage us in conversation from the door. Not wanting to have our stunned gnoll captive discovered so soon, we come out into the main central hall – the one with the staircase and the big black pool. (This is by the way the room Oakley said was called “Vaults” back in his day.) Ezmerelda points out to the minotaurs that we’ve honored our side of the deal and demands that they now come with us to confront Kashtari. The minotaurs begin to whine and snuffle about the damn horn. Apparently it is, or was, theirs. In the wanderings of our moral compass, a misappropriated horn ranks not very high so we ignore them and loot the place.

Klajdu picks up 2 healing potions, Ezmerelda a snazzy golden ring that looks to be worth about 250gp and Neil is now sporting an elaborately embroidered ceremonial robe with attached bands of lacquered wooden strips. it is snazzy. We put these things on and/or play with them with no reservation at all.

I end up with an adamantine rod to examine for signs of magic. Seeing the engravings which include a particular symbol of Asmodeus, I realize with a bit of a start that this is no ordinary rod. This is a relic from the “Infernal Bastion”, an ancient and immensely powerful stronghold sacred to Asmodeus. It’s disconcerting to hold it. I drink more until it seems normal again, after which I vow to try using the rod in combat.

There are some antics. Splug and Ezmerelda jump in the dark waters of the pool. Splug leaps out having taken necrotic damage but Ezmerelda just hangs out in there and takes a bath. I exercise my Abyssal and ask the Barl Gura “seriously, why are you allied with these minotaurs”, but the Barl Gura only shrugs. Reconnaissance-by-bat reports that up the stairs from Vaults is a large hall, strewn with rubble. The entrance from which to these same stairs is quite well hidden. There is something moving around up there apparently but Oakley grumbles that it’s not the temple but a different building and not worth the time. We debate uselessly with the minotaurs about whether they should let us explore their parts of the complex, but eventually we make camp for the night and sleep.

In the morning we set off to confront Kashtari, in the end declining the help of the minotaurs and the Barl Gura. We’ve got this. The slaughter of the gnolls was a freebie I guess. Fine by me. We find caltrops on the floor by the door to Kashtari’s rooms. Ezmerelda and myself each take a few for later. Splug reports that he can hear a quiet conversation happening beyond the door.

Ezmerelda volunteers herself as scout and changes into a wolf. Good to know. She sneaks in through the door and finds herself staring at the back of a huge gnoll. The gnoll is sitting at a table, also sitting at which is another massive gnoll, an equally massive minotaur, and then some fourth creature, also massive, that looks a bit gnoll-ey and also a bit minotaurish. On the table were plates, which she later told us were at that time smeared with blood and bloody things… She scoots under the huge table and listens for a while, to Kashtari talking to his minions about the dragon, and about tribute payments and schedules thereof. Splug unwisely sneaks in to join her, but he is noticed by Kashtari, who is strangely effusive and welcoming about the goblin interloper. Neil then also enters, and suavely offers his skills to resolve the dragon tribute issues, whatsoever they might be. Kashtari welcomes him as well and insists that he take up a plate from the table. Neil takes one and and finds it to have fruit and fresh food on it. Kashtari exhorts him to eat some, but Neil begs off.

It’s at this point that Kashtari looks down.
“Oh there’s a woman under the table! How charming! That was a little strange…. I have a gift for you!”

and then they try to kill us. Or at least they try to kill Neil and Splug and Ezmerelda.

Shazia’s journal dropped from beneath thy windful robes, and thus do I take up the prose.  Doubtless, this journal shall be the most magnificent poem composed in this Minotaur laden dungeon since “Snort Grunt Bellow Kill” by Angus One-Horn.

After the last harrowing battle, left with little more than half-empty cleaning supplies (care of Sir “lets get this temple tip-top” Oakley) and our wits, we decided to travel further into the reaches of the dungeon.  Why?  Because.  That’s why.  Down we went, into a large room with large footprints on the floor.  Bracing ourselves for orcs riding horses (in hindsight not the smartest conclusion), we opened a door onto Minotaur.

Deliberately not wetting myself and nor cowering in fear behind Kladju, we were surprised when the Minotaur spoke to us instead of (as previous encounters usually indicated was their first course of action) smashing our skulls.  It took a little “persuasion” on my part, and a rather sinister diminished fourth on the songbow, but they came around and began telling us of their troubles.  Oakley was a little keyed up, not wanting any bull in his temple (hah!), but since they drank from the same trough (double hah!) when it came to gods, he would let it slide.  Spoiler:  Later on we would find them with Demon-folk, so theres a good chance these guys are up to something no good.

I should also mention that they refused Splug’s offering of jerkey.  Perhaps they could tell we were all snickering.  Perhaps they know better than to trust a Goblin.  Maybe he was having doubts about the raven queen and thinking about Cyrrollalee – intermediate goddess of friendship whose sacred animal is a squirrel.  Splug did eat a raw squirrel on the way up here, so that makes sense.

Long story short.  There’s some Gnolls, who are bad.  A magic fellow named Kashtari, who is also bad.  And a Red Dragon Mecalath down somewhere, who we should run screaming from.  The Minotaur agreed that if we wiped out the Gnolls, they would help us kill Kashtari.  We thought that this was reasonable, because we kind of hate Gnolls.  “Kind of hate” being slang for “despise with a vengance”.

As one can suspect, the fighting began.  Some weird whirring noise was heard, unlike anything we heard before, but we didnt care, we were killing shit!  Kladju charged into battle swinging his mighty weapon and connecting mightly blows with absolutely nothing.  This caused Aranis to shift his pants.  Oakley took an axe to the face and it went right through his skull, but I patched him up and this time the patient can still use all of his limbs!  He’ll be really good at the “got your nose” trick from now on too!

Blood … limbs … chaos …. power chords … and after the battle …. uh ….

Wait ….we never finished the battle … I’m not actually writing anything …. we’re still in the middle of combat with the Gnolls.  Wow, that was one crazy flashback.

Ah spiders. Who doesn’t like spiders. Wait no that doesn’t sound right.

How about “Nobody doesn’t like 4934 dead spiders.”?
It goes double when a few of them are the size of an armchair. And double again when they’re all poisonous. But who’s counting!!

So yes, spiders. Spiders poured out of dark places. Spiders crawled up and out of the everywhere. Innumerable small ones, and a couple great big terrifying ones.
Neil was unfazed, He said he’d seen this before and that if we just ignored them, they would go away. His theory remains untested.

Esmerelda sent a screaming rainbow bolt against a swarm of them.
cue Reginald Oakley, danger-seeker: “I also enjoy rainbows, as well as long walks on the beach.”

But it wasn’t all rainbows and ill-advised walks on the beach.
In fact in just a few blinks of several thousand eyes we were getting our asses seriously kicked. Which is to say, our asses swarmed and repeatedly bitten.
Neil’s healing skills were tested and passed with flying colors. He even knew when not to heal us.

Neil, to Splug “Wait, you like being bloodied, don’t you?”
Esmerelda, darkly: “I also like him being bloodied,”
wtf?

Neil also did some strange business whereby he kept unpoisoning us. With music? It was all too much to remember clearly I’m afraid. And not helping was the fact that I was teleporting every few seconds. Have Bamf, will Gtfo. What can I say.

I do remember that Reginald and Klajdu were repeatedly swarmed. Or rather, Reginald and Klajdu kept transforming into fuzzy humanoid shapes made of wriggling spiders and showing a penchant for screaming.

Reginald: “Ahhh! Get them off! Wait that came out wrong!!!!”

All the stops were pulled out. Klajdu pulled off a Great Cleave, I used the black boiling death magic curse, I think we each used almost everything we had.
Esmerelda took the cake though, or I should say the Unexpected Dessert Item. She used what in hindsight must have been immensely dangerous magic. I say this because when it missed and hit the ground the entire section of ground turned into Fudge. Magical rainbow fudge, but quite recognizable and redolent fudge. It’s one thing to say make a wall of fire, or to conjure an army of farting pixies, but to simply turn a large area of unsuspecting ground into rainbow-colored fudge…. it gives one pause.

Somehow, the spiders did eventually die. Well I shouldn’t say somehow. It was mostly by axes, flaming mauls, rainbow bolts, teleportation magic, taunting, singing and axes again.
After, we all spent a while trying to stop freaking out. Neil no doubt sang a song. We were mentally unhinged. One of us got up and started to clean the frescoes on the wall. Clearly mad. Then another and another. I gave them a piece of my mind about the apparent mission creep, but hell why not. I also cleaned the frescoes. Do what makes you feel good.
Why not just give in to the crazy.

Esmerelda: “I’ll send my bat down to map out the area!”