When we left the mask hall, aka the hall of mirrors, we ran into Neil, who was… interesting. He had been god knows where and while there seemed to have come across some good hallucinogens. Dungeon mushrooms? I think he was making a strong effort to not respond to his hallucinations, but I can’t say it was entirely successful.

Neil: “Are the walls made of meat? {licks wall} They taste like hamburger.”

We came into a room that had two collapsed statues, and we set them upright, but nothing happened, so we moved on. I might have missed something; I was trying to screen out a lot of screaming about proper flaying technique. But hey at least I’m writing things down.

Anyway, we then came into a much larger room that was much harder to forget. A giant chamber filled with two pools of blood. The pools spanned the entire width of the chamber from our left to our right, with one pool near us and one far away. Separating the two was a narrow stone walkway . In each pool was a raised stone platform upon which sat a huge minotaur statue. The pool directly in front of us also had two little stone piers – one of which we had just stepped out onto, and the other of which was a ways to our left. Far out in the far pool, besides the second platform with the second minotaur statue on it, were two other smaller platforms. We could just make out that one of these smaller ones had a blade of some kind sitting on it, and the other what looked like a hilt. Strong guess – this is the aforementioned hall of the “blade”.

Neil almost immediately tied a rope around his waist, handed the rope to Splug and started calmly walking down the stone stairs until he was waist deep. In blood. From what he was saying he seemed to not notice the blood part and think it was simply a huge bathtub. In hindsight this fails to explain why rope harness and goblin spotter are considered normal accessories for bathing. Sadly Neil’s bathing routine was interrupted by him doubling over in pain from the blood which turned out to be quite poisoned, and also by a creaking, stone-splintering sound as the nearer of the two minotaur statues came briefly to life and attacked us with a great big chain whip thing.
And we’re back.

Distress: “This is why we can’t have nice things!”

Carnibald responded by boldly leaping across to the platform to try and disable the chain whips. This didn’t work but it was a great idea. Splug leapt into the blood and started swimming across. This was a less good idea, as evidenced by him beginning to die from the poison, and because of the demons lying submerged in the blood. Neil seemed to lose his mind because he started taunting the statue, but amazingly it worked; the statue took quite a lot of damage throughout the encounter, from wisecracks and taunts to bad puns. Whatever works I guess.

Neil: “you may have a chain but it’s just a chain of fools!”

I swear at one point there was at one point a little minotaur tear. For my part, I tried every teleportation trick in my book to get across the room, the climax being the last teleport to the hilt platform itself, when I leaped out as far as I could, and at the last second before hitting the blood, I teleported right to the hilt platform. I’m not much of a leaper though so while this worked, the actual “leap” part was sort of cringeworthy, or so my more athletic companions seem to want to keep telling me. Oh and the other problem is that I’m not good at thinking ahead. Having reached the hilt platform I had hardly any teleportation tricks left so I had to swim a lot of the way back and I almost died but these are the breaks..

Meanwhile over on the blade side of the adventure, Splug got attacked by a demon in mid-swim, and then used his sequestering strike to teleport himself to the blade platform, and at the same time leave the demon down in the bloody murk.

Splug: “These demons are awesome! Why aren’t we awesome?”
Neil: “She is (Distress)- she’s a half-demon”
Klajdu – “Half-demon, half-awesome”

Neil really kept hitting that nerve he’d hit with the statue, although with the demons and the teleporting and the blood I didn’t catch all of it. Plus I was far away. Not all were.

Distress: “Worst stand up comic ever. Painful. Literally.”

Also, Neil produced the severed arm from the bronze-warder! He had turned it into a horn! A playable horn! He played some kind of multitonal blast on it at one point and this caused Splug to narrowly avoid taking damage. I know. I can’t explain it but I saw what I saw. Probably needs more drugs to make sense.

Meanwhile, over on the other side, where basically the entire party was Splug’s support group to bring back the blade, there was a rope, and much pulling and hauling of Splug, and a good coordinated party effort. I at this point was poisoned, being attacked by a demon, mostly dead and between you and me, feeling the beginnings of a hangover. Neil noticed this and came to my rescue.

{as Neil thinks of how to cross to heal Shazia}
Splug: “Splug can carry Neil.”
Neil: “Really?”
Splug: “No.”

But after Splug was safely hauled back, there was a bit of rallying to my side, and I was healed, and demon attacking me was charged, with even a little bit of robot-arm-fanfare somewhere in there. So I can’t complain.
it was good to be back on that central walkway with the rest of the party.

Shazia: “Is that poop on your hands? No, don’t answer that.”

We fit the blade into the hilt and all it did was make some big clunking sound somewhere and the blood all started to move. drain? no, move really. It was unsettling but we remembered the first rule of GTFO club and departed. On the way out Splug emptied the pitcher of water, and filled it with blood.

Splug: “You’ll be thanking me when we’re making a stew out of this”
Shazia: “We’ll be *thanking* you when we wanted the water that was in there.”
Splug: “Says the person who brings only wine.”
Shazia: “Fair point.”

We’re taking a brief rest here on the other of the two stone platforms with the doors (ie not the one we came in on), after which we intend to press on through this door.
We’re not the prettiest at the best of times, but covered in dried poison-blood we’re pretty grim. Look out.