Retooled, refueled and even rinsed off a bit in the stream, we make our way to the spot Splug saw in his vision. It’s past the hall of a lanterns, and then we made some unremarkable turns. Rights and lefts and such. Hopefully someone else was paying attention.
As we got closer, the key began to glow, and to tug Splug’s hand forward. Neil exclaimed, “off trail, but on key!”

The pull became stronger and stronger until the key yanked itself out of Splug’s hand as we approached an otherwise unremarkable wall. Fitz picked it up and it pulled his hand to a particular spot on the wall and slipped inside some invisible lock. A passageway opened before us – 50 feet worth of hallway stretching away into the darkness, ending in a square opening. We crept went down the hall to find a figure waiting for us at the end – a figure with only one arm and one eye. Oh good.

The figure spoke: “What can you offer the dreaded lord of secrets?”

Splug eagerly began to relate the recipe of minotaur jerky. To us it was no secret and in fact as Klajdu said some time past “It was better when not know secret”. Vecna’s emissary seemed to feel the same. I told him of the screaming creature in my head and the underground fortress wherein she is imprisoned. Not a lot of detail and I withheld her name, but he seemed to accept it.
Splug became impatient and threw a demon eyeball at the figure to intimidate it. The figure simply placed the eyeball into his empty eye socket and grinned, prompting a collective shudder from the party.
Neil told a story disguised as a song.
Distress told the story of our adventure to the Cairn of the Winter King.
Fitz offered his demonskin cloak.
Klajdu spoke of his backup loincloth with “aroma power”, and was understandably shocked when the figure showed an interest and asked for more details. (We must not let this particular power fall into Vecna’s, er, hand)

In the end, the emissary from Vecna allowed us to pass, but he withdrew from each of us some of our vitality, and one of our powers. A little discomfited but without any recourse to complain, we went through the teleportation circle.

On the other side, we were in a corridor with faces on each side. Half of them were gagged and staring at us, with the other half blindfolded and chanting at us in an unknown tongue. Neil and I fiddled with the faces a bit – he trying to remove their blindfolds and me trying to pour wine into their mouths. Neither served much purpose, except that as often happens with Neil, he made me feel a little less crazy.

The narrow twisting corridor opened onto a large open chamber filled with pillars. The pillars had eyes on them which I was sure was an excellent sign. They were looking at us so I waved. On one end, 2 little goblins stood near the opening to another corridor across the room. Rushing ahead as usual, Splug ran across and up to the goblins and did a little dance and began to preach at them of the glories of the Raven Queen Cult. It was a compelling pitch, I mean in that they seemed to listen attentively. In terms of content it was a little deranged and involved pledging oneself to a cult of death, but hey I’m not judging.

Neil made for one of the eye-pillars and wrapped a demonskin around it
(has everyone been flaying themselves a demon? Have I been missing out
here?).
And at the moment the eye became obscured I sensed a great anger from a magical presence nearby. It being a nice change to have some *other* angry magical presence in my head, I took my bedroll and immediately obscured a second eye. Anyway, more Norkers showed up, with all the fighting clustered around a second teleportation circle. Klajdu used the spot to unleash one of his Great Cleaves and moments later became the first to teleport through, and thus the first to fight the 9 foot tall Bronze Warder in the next room. Without, I might add, either of the control amulets which Neil and I were carrying.

Eventually though, the little goblin “norkers” were given over to the Raven Queen and most of us teleported across to join Klajdu in the next room. Splug and I were the last people across.

Shazia: Ah now I’m alone with all the pillars.
Splug (calling from the norker quarters) What about me? I’m still here”
Shazia: Oh yea, and the little guy
Splug: Don’t you feel safer?
Shazia: Only until the poo starts flying
Splug: and then you’ll feel *much* safer.

We eventually came across to join the Bronze Warder dance party, as I and Neil uttered various forms of “FFFflanda” (the amulet control word given us by Orantour), paired with various instructions. It mostly seemed to just slow the Warder down, but I can’t complain – it was a 9 foot tall remote control minotaur construct. I did land one good blow on an enemy later and it was pretty sweet. There were other enemies though. At first more Norkers, and later some ugly humanoid things in robes that were a litle tougher with a lot more magic going on

{watching two Norkers run down the hall together}
Distress: Wow, they move in tandem!
Fitz: They’re gonna die in tandem!

Splug picked up where he left off, preaching his sermon of the Raven Queen’s awesomeness, trying to convert the goblins. He was intermixing the sermonizing with the attacking to the point that we later named it the “Sermon of Opportunity”. It had such a compelling rhythm that all of us began to periodically testify with encouraging shouts to punctuate his points. I’m not sure how much time Klajdu has spent in such temples though, as some of his testifies were a bit random; one of them was definitely “Thirsty!”

And hallelujah! A goblin norker was thus converted! He was christened Norbert the Norker. Hopefully not with pee.

Not long after, we discovered that when the ugly humanoid guys in robes took a lot of damage, they exploded and their skin spontaneously flayed off of them. It was seriously gross.

Fitz: Oh hey take the skin!
entire party: {wtf}
Fitz: It just reminds me of my mission!
entire party: {WTF}

The next room was full of magical constructs and magical tomes and scrolls and plans. In a maddening touch, every single written word had been enchanted to vanish from the pages the second you looked at them, so after a few moments of frenzied searching Neil and I had successfully erased all magical knowledge that might have once been interesting. Fantastic. Like many of our experiences lately, it had all the better qualities of a good nightmare.

Oh and there was a huge tank full of liquid in which floated the head of one of the Bronze Warders. The tank wanted to be smashed clearly so we obliged. The next teleportation circle awaited.

The next room was a small room with a door in each wall. Splug opened the door to the east only to find an empty room. Carn, Klajdu, Fitz and Distress opened another that opened into a huge chamber full of enemies so off they went charging to battle. There was a huge mosaic of a hand clutching an eyeball on the floor, there was a huge altar on the far side with a huge eyeball, not to mention the demons. There was much battle. Carn orchestrated a brilliantly violent chorus of attacks where Klajdu, Fitz and Distress all simultaneously charged and made quick work of one enemy.

Our newly converted Norker Norbert, still back in the first room, opened another door and did a double take – for a moment he had seen Paldemar there but the mage promptly disappeared.
Neil not long after saw Paldemar again, hooded, frowning, irritated. He reasoned with him, that our party has gotten this far without really any problems (we have?) and that he should parley and we can negotiate terms. Paldemar’s response took a page out of the debating book of our old friend the enchanted boat, and he zapped us with lightning. Oh how I missed being zapped with lightning. Words do not describe. Distress did too.

Distress: I disagree! No!

Klajdu charged Paldemar, and hit although the mage disappeared from sight like he had with Neil. I hit the mage with the Dark Dream curse, Distress attacked him too and knocked him down, and again the mage disappeared from her sight.

Distress: Well at least he is on the ground, invisible.

Splug sprung another deranged sermon at Paldemar, that Vecna will torture him for failing to conceal his mysteries. I can not do it justice here so I won’t try. Plus I don’t have a pot on my head so the main effects are lost.

Distress: Oh Snap!

Enemy goblin, attacking Splug: “Shut up already!!”

Carn then found a weakness in Paldemar’s defenses that allowed us all to hit him a lot more easily and since he had already taken more damage than he was comfortable with, we put him down pretty quickly! Thus, if we only put our minds to it, great things can be made to fall down and die in a messy puddle of their own blood. And thus we proceeded to the looting portion of the day.

I am now the proud bearer of a magical staff. =) I don’t use it for much more than prodding things, but I am still excited to be *magically* prodding things. We found 1000 gold beneath Paldemar’s bed, more books that became blank as you looked at them( I took as many as I could carry anyway), and a card. A strange looking card. It had an image of a Fool on it. Definitely magical. Very very powerful.
We found a ritual scroll that had not been fully designed. It seemed to be a way to channel arcane power from one mage to another. Evil business to say the least. It bears more scrutiny, possibly while more sober.
We also found a magical Orb. Neil looked into it carefully and saw a shadowy figure clad in robes. The figure seemed to find Neil wanting cause he shook his head at Neil and the orb shattered, doing a fair bit of damage in the process.
We also found a map that showed a glowing pyramid off in the forests north of us.

We looted, scavenged, and made our way back to the 7 pillar hall, for the big payday and some proper revelry.