The small chamber that Vorwulf and Magiia found themselves after being sucked through a shadowy archway began to fill rapidly with their companions so they stumbled around from tiny room to tiny room for a little while before Olf used his ESP to try to find the shortest route of escape and it was through his power he realized that the group was trapped in a 4th dimensional room also known as a Tesseract. The only way to get out would be to use a dimensional ability of some type or make their way to the farthest chamber to the “east” where there was a water bucket which was enchanted and would let whoever was touching it to walk out of the archways putting them outside of the anomaly and back within the tower proper.
The first to walk into the aforesaid “bucket room” was Vorwulf and narrowly avoided a Black Pudding that had leapt at him, Magiia was not so lucky emerging with her armor a little acid-pitted. The battle was fairly quick though the four oozes, the Black Puddings, became five when Magiia chopped one in half with her battle-axe as soon as she got into the room. The slayers won the day easily by beating them into sizzling tar with their torches. After that it didn’t take long for the slayers to figure out to link hands and walk through the archway in a daisy-chain, the healer carrying the magic bucket. The war-party wound up in a damp, slimy chamber down a flight of steps next to a barely used fungus choked well. There was no other way out other than moving back through the shadow-hung archway through which they had already presumably passed.
Grom: “I’m not going down that well!”
Vor: “Sh*t.”
They moved back into the Tesseract and Grom cast Clairvoyance for guidance to the path that would lead them to the lich. The shaman suddenly realized that if Vorwulf used his Scimitar of Dimensional Step in the chamber which they had initially entered in a certain archway the ranger could get access to another room “above” that chamber (translating into the third-dimension a fourth-dimensional description) where there was a staircase to the upper levels of the tower. It took a little while for them to figure out how the entire party could step through the dimensional rift created by the sorcerous sword-slice. Hint: it involved the magic bucket.
The party stumbled into a chamber not unlike the rest of the Tesseract though it lacked the black-filled archways on all four walls, it had an archway in the western wall which had a stone step going up and what appeared to be an iron-boned skeleton with six-arms wielding a serrated-blade falchion in each of its six hands. The chamber crammed with the entire party the 3 slayers were front and center noses to nasal cavity, their breaths clouding the polished metal of the gleaming iron-skelly.
Magiia charged the monster pressing it back with her shield pushing it all the way up the winding staircase to the chamber above out of sight of the rest of the slayers. They followed a short time after with Olf the Arborean healer hanging back with the rest of the party. The battle commenced and it took only a short time for the experienced dragon-slayers to chop the strange undead creature down, it falling to pieces. Maggi and Vorwulf were savagely wounded in the fight. Grom had used his last healing touch for the day during the battle so Vorwulf drank down another of his dwindling supply of healing potions. Olf healed some of the Amazon’s wounds stopping, at least, the bleeding. They were in another small chamber dimly fire-lit by a gold brazier with a danse-macabre masterfully beaten into its sides. In the east wall was a locked heavy-oak door near the steps down and an open way into another chamber in west wall diagonal from the oak door. Grom picked up and bagged the iron skull then walked over to investigate the other chamber which was dark.
He could see pale light shining from above past a wood railing forming a balcony of the north wall allowing a view into high ceilinged domed entrance chamber. There was stair going up presumably to the next floor through the archway in the south wall behind him. When the shaman turned from wood rail he was dazzled by a flash of blue light blasting him with a Frost Bite spell. Maggi immediately leapt into the room and shattered the sapphire-eyed black skeleton that had been lurking in the statue niche in the west wall with a single powerful axe-blow. Olf was able to restore the frost and temporary DEX damage that Grom had suffered. The shaman then cast a heal other spell on Magiia. The slayers weighed their options while the rest of the party followed the Blue-Hand up the stairs and waited in thrall for them make a final decision. They decided to go through the nearest door, the heavy oak door and elected the Amazon to kick it down.
The door flew off of its hinges and clattered down a pit just behind the door. They had found the towers oubliette. They decided to take the stairs up. Vor lead the group and was the first to enter the second floor chamber. It was a small nearly non-descript 10 ft.-square room, a cob-web draped iron chandelier hung from the low ceiling, and there were small niches in the west and south walls. There also was an archway which opened into a short L-shaped hallway, he couldn’t see the end of it but assumed a door at the termination, to the north. At the center of the room on the floor sat a bleach-white skull. The severed zombie-head stuffed into the western niche sneered, its maggoty eyes shot open exposing the bile-yellow eyeballs and it began to scream.
The slayers began to suffer damage from the sonic waves of the zombie scream and Vorwulf chopped the severed head in two halves with his astral-drift metal axe. The skull at the center of the floor leapt its jaws snapping at him. The pair of skulls in the southern niche took turns blasting the group with their sonic screams. Magiia was taken aback when her axe bounced from an identical field surrounding the second of the pair. Grom used his sling and shot a bullet striking one of the niche skulls in the forehead, the pebble bounced off of a magic shield that had surrounded the skull dispelling it.
Cris [Vorwulf’s Player]: “Shield spells they should be dispelled now.”
Gil [Grom’s Player]: “My sling isn’t going to do anything?”
Cris: “Naw, the shields are gone now, that’s the thing with shield spells it completely absorbs all the damage then goes away. If its minimal damage it still disappears!”
Vorwulf smashed the chattering skull almost lodging his axe in the floor. Magiia cleaved through the remaining pair reducing them to bone-dust with hers.
Jenn [Magiia’s Player]: “Aw man, I’m at halfway [Magiia’s hit point total]!”
To Be Continued…
