Ladrengielle – blogpost 4

After healing from my trauma and Borac getting his hearing back, we are a real team again. However, we feel we are one member short. At this second level, we sense the enemies are stronger than what we’ve encountered before. We come across a Flesh Golem and a flying Skull on a magnetic floor. It almost becomes a fatal fight – on the magnetic plate, we get a lot of lightning damage from the Golem and Skull. We cannot stand near our enemies, and I fall off the ledge of the floor. After defeating them, we finally conclude that the way down has to be on the other side of the dungeon. We move back and fight the Skull and Golem again! So weird, but apparently, the Skull respawned and revived the Golem. There isn’t a way around them, so we have to defeat them again. This was much easier than last time – because we know their weak spots.

After a while, we find a path that we did not know of before. We scout first and see a Beholder floating above the floor. It really smells and has a milky eye. The pupil is gone; what sort of Beholder is this…? I come up with a plan to blow the Beholder up with the smoke powder barrels I still have in my bag of holding. No one else is in the room, and I can stealthily put barrels of smoke powder below it. We also make an ignition device to take cover and blow it up. We stand around the corner and cause an explosion. The Beholder is insanely bloodied after we blow it up: it quickly dies after a couple of attacks. I see a couple of Xanathar members show themselves, and as an oiled machine, we talk our way out of a dangerous situation. Kharrum impersonates the Zombie Beholder: we tell them that this has happened before in the lair and that the gold-fish is still alive (Xanathar has a gold-fish that he treasures like nothing else) – they need to go and help there.

All is calm again. Only the remains of the Beholder lie in the middle of the room. However, I see something weird. It was not a normal Beholder: it was a zombie, and something is inside it. I cut it open, and a man shows himself. He wakes up and tells us his name is Francissy, a human warlock that has been trapped inside the Beholder by Halaster himself. He joins our party out of gratitude.

We walk further down the dungeon to find the way down to the next level. We still need to find Skullport and the underground forest. We find a large room with many silos that look like the remains of a brewery. Unfortunately, all barrels are empty. Except for one… Borac tries them all in search of ale but finds another Zombie Beholder. I tell everyone to get back and try the same explosion again. I endanger myself AGAIN and get the most damage. Heavily bloodied I stand up, seeing I damaged Borac as well, but most of the party is still safe. The Beholder is still alive as well. He did not get as much damage because he flew away from me. We succeed in killing this Beholder, but not as quickly as the previous one.

We descend and find ourselves in a small village filled with captured goblins and drow. We scout the village and find someone sitting on the loo in an outhouse. Borac and I intimidate him to tell us everything about the village and after the interrogation, Borac kills him. Luckily, Kharrum and Francissy don’t know this. We want to take a long rest, but don’t feel safe to rest inside the village, so we walk back towards the stairs to find a place to set up our tiny hut. We think we have found the right spot, but… it is already taken by a large beast…