In which we're swept off our feet...
This update is fairly straightforward. When last we left our heroes, they had headed back into the temple, exploring the room where the last big battle took place before proceeding to the next level down.
They jumped into the old interrogation room through the hole in the floor and moved out from there. Almost immediately, they were set upon by a retriever (evil construct, not the dog) which we dispatched with relative ease. Explored further and came across a room full of urns filled with a variety of substances, from sand to blood to abyssal beetles (not to be confused with abyssal Beatles--which would be scary but awesome). Turns out it was a sort of pantry for the giant fiendish oysters in the cavern next door.
Let me repeat that: Giant. Fiendish. Oysters. We tried to pry one open to see if they had pearls inside already, but it *screamed*...which brought several oversized kopru to come attack us. Let me just say I LOVE my ring of freedom of movement. Sadly, Bliz doesn't have one, so she keeps getting grappled. Regardless, we managed to deal with those guys in turn. And yes, there were grapefruit-sized black pearls in each of the six massive oysters. And then we stabbed them in the squishy bits.
From this cavern a tunnel led down and down and down eventually becoming completely submerged and we decided to not go that way--stick to the temple for now. The other exit led to the room where the kopru had been hanging out. We found some shwag, but aren't sure yet what it is. There was also a tunnel leading underwater in the corner here...and Bliz heard a conversation in Aquan (but not what was said) when she followed it down. We decided not to go that way (not all of our party can breathe underwater anyway) and headed back.
As we were trying to decide between two passages, the one we were in suddenly got complicated. There were small tunnels to either side in the walls, and Bliz was looking into one when a yellow geyser of gross spewed out and grappled her (see?). Thankfully, Urol cast resist acid on all of us, thereby reducing the damage as it started slamming Bliz against the wall. Of course...every time we hit it, it split into another one. We were doing as much fire damage as we could, but this thing was a Bitch. Again, I had freedom of movement, but Bliz, Adamant, and Jakara were not so lucky. Eventually, Bliz got free enough to do what Adamant told her...namely, to use her wand of fireballs and drop one right on top of us. That finally did the trick. Lordy.
It should be noted that these tunnels are still full of 4 feet of nasty, brackish water. We follow this hall to the end and find a room with a door. From the other side, all I hear is some kind of bubbling noise. We bash through the waterlogged door and as it gives way, we realize there is no water on the other side. Then SPLOOSH--the door disintegrates and Jakara and Coriander fail to keep their feet and are swept down the hallway beyond...and down some stairs...and out of sight. Coriander blinks back up to us and almost falls into the source of the bubbling noise--a well at the bottom of which is boiling water. The rest of us try to make our way after them, then Adamant loses his footing and is carried along out of sight.
Blarg!!! I have a feeling this isn't going to be pretty based on the preview description we got of the room we're all going to end up in. The bad news is that Urol has blown through a lot of healing. The good news is that Adamant has been conserving spells--particularly the reserved one for teleport. So we can potentially get out if things go south too fast. I hate to do it, but it seems like we might have to even if the next fight ends well for us.
I, however, am annoyed that we didn't get to finish exploring one level before being swept off to the next. I am a VERY obsessive explorer in games. I have to go to every room and click on every clickable item before I am satisfied. I can't handle the notion that I might have missed something. Oh well. If we live, we could potentially come back and find out what we missed. Hopefully. :)