Tzarnal fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Aug 5, 2013

This room seriously creeps me out.



This time Imoen chooses the statue to our left. Another door opens behind us.



Imoen scouts it out for us and finds a nicely-appointed reading room of sorts.



After she gives the all-clear we pile into the room. Imoen checks the coffee table and finds a book and a wardstone. The book has only three words on it.



The wardstone is called the Islanne Wardstone.



Oh. We passed the face of the woman on the way here. Were these her rooms? Dare we find out what happened to Durlag's wife?

The grinding stone all around us seems to suggest so.



And the visions appearing from nowhere confirm it.



Oh, no. Not this. Anything but this. I don't want to see what happens to Xan Islanne.



No, not the torches. Not the light.

The apparition appears next to the bed, finally. I know what that means.



This time we all lash out in fury and pain. Lightning and holy fire fall from the heavens, while the whole room is awash in beams of holy light descending. They pierce the evil doppleganger's heart.



I may not be a woman right exactly now but I still cannot abide what I just saw. The implications...

Branwen and Will were struck with fear, and flee in blind terror around the room.



We spend some minutes calming them down.

Imoen finds another wardstone.



This one opens some other doors.



There is also the Kiel wardstone here.



Finally, in the wardrobe, we find the Robe of the Good Archmagi and some spell scrolls. Nothing we don't already know. But... Islenne was a mage? And she died like that?

I will never sleep with someone else in the same bed ever again.

In the now-open hallway, Finch finds another book.



It only confirms what we already know.



Imoen can't open the other door in the room, so we can only go back to the hall of evil statues. What can we do more?

I'm actually at a loss, and Imoen is too. Neither one of us knows how to open the next door, and why these damned runestones aren't good for anything.

Imoen is the one that finally figures it out. She paces back and forth, thinking, and ends up in the sparring chamber again. She notices that the sparring dummies each have a unique color.



They match up rather well with the colors of the runestones we just collected. She rushes back and grabs the runestones out of my hands.



She puts the orange one in the orange practice dummy, the red in the red, and the blue with the blue.

She steps back, proud of herself and expectantly looking around, waiting for something to happen. But nothing does.



In frustration, she starts hitting the center dummy, fiercely whispering "Why won't you WORK!?"

Doors shift and move, stone grinds on stone.



Not quite the door we were hoping for though... Imoen lets out a scream of frustration and hits the other dummy.



Jet'laya shouts out that a new way is open. Oh! It must have been the blue one that Imoen smacked with her staff. Okay then!

You know, I'll confess. I used to do some pretty weird stuff back in Candlekeep. The place was a gigantic library and you couldn't leave, so we turned to extremely... esoteric entertainment. One of the things I used to do was read the dictionary. Yes. Seriously. And one word that always stuck in my mind from those days I've never had a chance to use in real life. Until now.

Trepidation.

The word was trepidation, and now I've said it true.

It is with great trepidation that I watch Imoen enter the fourth wing of this crazy doom reenactment dungeon: Kiel's wing.



The blonde-bearded boisterous leader dwarf. I will know how he died, though I do not want to.

We enter into the room, and the decorations are quite grand. But we of course are hesitant to advance further. Imoen sees some secret doors off to the left and right, and decides to investigate. She takes a while to come back.



I quickly wonder if she's okay so I follow her in.



What the bloody hell is this place?! Cages, tables? Devices?!

There is a book and a goblet lying near the entrance. I go back and pick them up. The book, of course, is creepy.



I take a closer look at the goblet.



So this goblet turns you into Khalid? Hrm. I'll give it to Jaheira.

Imoen finds out the hard way that the room isn't safe.



And while Imoen is over there doing her thing, we find that we are in a spot of trouble.



There is a naked doppleganger, yes, but there is also a more familiar shape...



Branwen reaches the dopplegangers first, but seems to suddenly change her mind.



I know what that means.

Jet'laya takes a moment to call for the favor of her goddess.



While Imoen finishes a little project I had going there for a moment.



The Holy Book of Rhialto takes care of the doppleganger's mirror images, and of Branwen's change of mind.



And then it is just blunt object work.



That is, until the image of Durlag Trollkiller teleports in and reappears before us yet again. How many times are we going to have to kil this guy's face?



This Durlag seems to be more dangerous than previous Durlags.

I order a formation adjustment as we stare down this new threat. We all run to our designated points. But then I feel a little click and a small shift underneath my own foot. What was that?



poo poo!

When the flame and the smoke clear, we find that there are two new bodies on the floor. Durlag's doppleganger and Will.



Aww, and he was doing so well (the weak always perish)! I thought he was learning a lot (he deserved it).

Imoen says she thought she had already searched for traps, but perhaps there are a few she missed? She looks again.



She gasps and screams out for nobody to move for any reason.

Maybe I shouldn't have been sipping on this bottle of wine that I still have from the previous level?



Makes it hard to see.

I pick up Will's things. We have to press on. It's too hard to go back through all of this again. We'll just have to make do.

Imoen is already making do in the next room.



She finds another book on the floor.



Is that not what we just did? What we've been doing?

OH WAIT. I can resurrect Will. I tell Imoen to hold the demons for a moment.



I seek to test your knowledge of the arcane.

Hey, at least the guy is a cheap rez.



Strangely enough he doesn't seem horrified at the idea of dying so quickly, but enlightened.







And one tiny touch from Branwen is enough to make him look good as new.



Ok. With that all settled, I tell Imoen that she can bring on the demons.



She looks into the vase and sees a wardstone. She picks it up and immediately rune lines start glowing underneath our feet.



I shout out a warning, "TELEPORT RUNES, PREPARE FOR COMBAT!"

Goddamn dwarf rune magic, I can never remember what it can and can't do.

But nothing happens right away. I ask Imoen to toss me the runestone.



Ahh, it is El Ith Thul, not Eld Ith Thul. That means we have to activate the rune lines, they do not automatically activate. That's courteous.

I explain the situation to everyone, and we prepare.



Then I step on one of the lines.



We are just teleported to the other side of a wall.



But there is a passage ahead, which leads to a room. Imoen is more thorough in her search of this one.



There is another book in the center of the room. Imoen reaches down to read it.



There are some tiny sconces hanging above us. Imoen finds one trapped and disarms it. In it there is just a healing potion. She goes to loot the second sconce and unleashes a lightning bolt trap!



What?! Again?

Ok, maybe it's better if we just leave him dead for now.

Imoen waits until she is sure that she knows how the other sconces are trapped.



Each one contains a single Potion of Healing. Now we have 4, and one dead bard.

We know what the book says, but Imoen does it anyway. She seeks an exit.



She finds a room with a book, two skeletons, a trapped statue, and some braziers with loot in them.



The book is, of course, comforting.



There are some minor treasures in the braziers, but there is another wardstone in the statue.



Score!

Imoen tosses some spell scrolls to me. For my apprentice, she is remarkably dismissive of magic. I check the scrolls over. One is Polymorph Self, a spell I do not yet know!



Ok that sounds really fun. I'm going to have to try that out too.

There is another book in the hallway as we exit that room.



It doesn't let up on the relentless cheer.



There is a strange glow ahead, and Imoen insists on scouting it out first. I think she may be feeling some guilt there...



Ghouls and ghasts come out of the side passages, but the clerics make short work of them.



After that we continue down the passage. We almost walk over another trap, but Imoen finds it in time.



The same thing happens again.



Each time Imoen disarms one of these traps, more undead come after us. But they are simply not a threat.



At the end of the passageway we see a stairway going down. We also see a dwarven form in the opposite doorway.



He doesn't look friendly, but he doesn't look aggressive either.



There is, of course, another cheery book at the top of the stairway.



I think I'm going to collect these, make a Thought of the Day calendar. June 29 - Seek No Exit. June 30 - Dance With the Dead. There has got to be a market for that in some big city.

I wisely turn away from this area for now. I feel that I have sidestepped some horrible fate. We still need to see what lies behind us.

Vorgen fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Aug 13, 2013