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Spores & Spelunking

The party woke up in the morning eager to begin delving into the dark depths of the Sekerren Ruins. They walked over the entrance and were immediately stymied by a locked door. The way to the ruins was barred by a massive cold iron door warded against magical interference. Gregory said that it looked like it was sealed by the Nullwardens, and confidently tried to open it with his Void Guard keys. However, they didn't work, much to his surprise. Whoever had sealed it had wanted to prevent Void Guard members like Gregory from opening it. The party tried thinking of clever solutions to deal with the door, but the cold iron defeated any attempt at subtlety, so they resolved to try to simply bash the door in. Fortunately, being cold iron prevented it from being magically reinforced like many other major fortifications are, so Gregory and Chort were able to make progress. The process took hours, and was very loud, so no one was terribly surprised when the party heard an ominous ooking from the distance.

Further investigation, and deeper ooking, revealed that a group of acid monkeys led by a flaming orangutan had been summoned by their clanging and battering. The party prepared for battle, and found that the flatter terrain and Gregory's assistance1 made their lives much easier than their first encounter, and they eliminated their elemental enemies with minimal injury. After the fight, the party extracted a broadsword that had become embedded in the orangutan's body and found to their surprise that it was magically imbued with fire. Chort took the sword and the party resumed their destructive revelries. Unfortunately, in the fight, Gregory's mysterious orb disappeared, and Charlie's doll refused to tell anyone where it was.

After more exhausting work, the party finally broke through the door and entered the dark tunnels. The ruins radiated a powerful magical aura that the party was able to detect and recognize as being primarily transformative in nature. Their impressive awareness served them well in the tunnels, and Chort noticed an ominous pressure plate before anyone stepped on it. Charlie's doll offered to help, and despite some uncertainty, the party let it go up to the trap. To their relief, it did not intentionally activate the trap while cackling maniacally, and instead disarmed the plate with surprising skill. As the party continued further, they came across a door with a note indicating that it was a Nullwarden storage room - or at least, that at some point it had been a Nullwarden storage room before being taken over by some unknown entity, judging by the scrawled "MUTATED - DO NOT ENTER" postscript appended to the note. Ayala used her scrying magic to peek inside the room and saw that strange fibrous strands webbed the room. The strands seemed to originate from a dark red, viscous-looking blob of something fleshy inside one of the broken open crates. After careful consideration, the party decided that they wanted no part of any of that nonsense and continued deeper into the tunnel.

Their progress was once again blocked by their impressive observation abilities, as Chort noticed some sort of clear ooze or fungus coated the ceiling of the passage ahead of them. Mikolash used his unnecessarily extensive knowledge of literally everything and recognized that the fungus was a fairly common type of cave fungus that could release dangerous spores when disturbed, but which was also very flammable. Camilla took her moment to shine and unleashed a blast of flame at the fungus. Unfortunately, Mikolash's information was incomplete. This particular fungus had been magically altered to to resist flame - or rather, to burn without combusting, so setting it on fire merely resulted in a fast-moving cloud of poisonous flaming spores. Mikolash quickly threw up a barrier and the party tried to retreat, but Camilla, Ayara, and Chort were still caught in the flaming spore cloud. Together, the party figured out how to push the spores away from them and managed to stabilize on the other side of a barrier with the aid of some timely healing from Mikolash, a couple of toxin-neutralizing vials from Gregory, and some spiritual aid from Gregory's "dungeon vodka". However, they were unsure how to actually get past the fungus. In the dead air within the tunnel, the spore cloud would take so long to dissipate on its own that the fungus would recharge its spores before the cloud settled, preventing the party from simply timing their passage. As they started concocting an elaborate scheme, Charlie's doll revealed that its name was Diplo and it was immune to poison, so it should be able to simply destroy the fungus itself. Mikolash lowered her barrier to let it through, and Diplo climbed up to the fungus and messily and frenetically hacked it all into tiny pieces, releasing a massive flood of spores that were indeed harmless to it. After waiting for the cloud to die down on the other side of a barrier, Ayala used her water to clear a path through the dead fungus, allowing them to progress deeper into the ruins.

Join us this week to uncover the hidden secrets in the heart of the ruins! Or maybe just keep walking down a straight corridor forever.

  1. And also maybe the fact that they had leveled up.

Stupid Awards

Ayala: Mikolash: Camilla: Chort: Chort:
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