Episode 13: Wild magic and puzzling traps

When last we left this motley crew we had returned to Waterdeep to lay to rest our fallen team mate and restock our supplies, and acquire a couple more team mates. This story consists of:

Luthis, the Kenku (humanoid raven who can not fly) Blood Hunter

Unit 2408, the Warforged (humanoid living construct) Barbarian

Dancing Wind, a Tabaxi (humanoid cat) Wizard

Elniss, a Human Cleric of Ilmater

Evangeline, the Tiefling Paladin of Tyr

After the blue sheep wiffed his attempt to get in the bucket at the well and fell to his certain death, we heard an ooooooowww, so Evangeline went down. She can heal or harm whatever issue is at the bottom of the well. There she finds a Tabaxi who introduces himself as Dancing Wind, a wizard with a curse on him.

So as Unit 2408 starts lowering the rest one at a time, Evangeline starts quizzing the Tabaxi. Through the questioning she starts lowering her shield and hammer as he does seem to be quite forthcoming, until he admits he was originally a student of HAM-U (Halaster's Academy of Magic & University), which is owned by Halaster the Mad Mage. This requires and instant return to defensive stance and some insight, but he does seem to be telling the truth. See, he was a student, not knowing what Halaster was, and there was a falling out, and Halaster cursed him so that if he uses more powerful magic sometimes things go awry.

Hence the blue sheep we first met.

About that time Elniss arrives and asks if he's injured, and Dancing Wind waves off any healing so we keep chatting as Luthis and Unit 2408 join us. At this point we ask Dancing Wind why he was wanting to get down here, and he replies he needs to deal with Halaster because of his curse. So we state we've been hired by Waterdeep to find out what Halaster did to cause the magic/disruption up in Waterdeep, we could work together.

But why was he in such a hurry to get down here? Apparently, he wanted to get on with business. Evangeline points out rushing about led to a team member death last time, by herself included, and maybe this time we can be a little more cautious and actually listen to our scout, Luthis. Providing he's still willing to scout, which he does seem to be.

So we set off back to the first four way intersection, the one that went north to the White dragon, the one that went south to the "certain death", and the one to the west we hadn't explored yet. So, we went west.

Our marching order is now Luthis slightly ahead of us using his scouting abilities, followed by Unit 2408 who has some survival skills and can provide muscle if Luthis is attacked. Then Dancing Wind the wizard, Elniss our cleric, and Evangeline takes rear guard to protect the party. Dancing Wind is carrying a torch and put up some dancing lights as Evangeline is the only one who has darkvision.

We find a long straight hall and as we progress along we start finding alcoves. The alcoves are about 3' deep with large oval mirrors and stones around them. Glancing at the mirrors, you do see your reflection, and as Luthis isn't spying any issues we keep going. Eventually we find a total of 12 of these alcoves, 6 on the left side of the hallway and 6 on the right.

About that time Luthis gets to the end of the hall, which is a dead end with 3 levers side by side. Curious but not alarming, so we start investigating a little. Evangeline stays towards the rear and in guard mode for the most part. Luthis starts checking out the levers. And Dancing Wind, the Tabaxi, decides to use one of the mirrors for a grooming session. Cats, right?

So Dancing Wind is just going to town fixing his fur when Elniss realizes that while the reflections are of us, the eyes are completely blank and void. About this time, Luthis pulls the lever on the left, and there's this grinding of stone as a very solid wall drops down behind Evangeline, blocking off our escape route. Evangeline taps it a few times with her hammer to confirm it's a real, solid, wall. She doesn't trust the mad mage at all.

So Dancing Wind starts testing out his reflection, which behaves like a reflection should. And then he does the cautious kitty paw tap on the mirror. The reflection in the mirror reaches out and latches on to Dancing Wind, pulling him in to the mirror with a disturbed cat yeowl.

This caused Elniss, Evangeline, and Unit 2408 to go to the alcove Dancing Wind was in to figure out what was going on. Or try to, but we're not being terribly successful. Inside the mirror, Dancing Wind is fighting his reflection. He casts chaos bolt at his reflection, the reflection responds back by slashing at him with his claws.

So Luthis pulls the right lever and all the mirrors start glowing blue, then water starts slowly filling the hall. Both levers return to the up position. Unit 2408 is not nearly as disturbed about this as the rest of us are since he doesn't require things like breathing or food.

Meanwhile in the mirror Dancing Wind throws frost bite at the reflection and starts running like mad for the mirror, but it's almost as if the mirror keeps moving away from him.

Unit 2408 moves over to the end of the hall with Luthis to figure out the levers while Elniss stays with Dancing Wind, or rather the mirror he's in. He stops running for the mirror and continues the fight with his reflection, throwing spells at the reflection, while the reflection slashes Dancing Wind. Evangeline moves to the mirror across from Dancing Wind's mirror to start her own investigation. Evangeline's reflection doesn't even keep up the pretense of being a reflection and just stares at her, insistently tapping on the mirror.

Luthis and Unit 2408 pull the left and middle levers at this point. The blue glow goes away, but an inky black glow starts happening. A inky pitch black vapor starts emanating from the mirrors, filing the hallway with complete, magical, darkness. No one can see anything, including Evangeline with her darkvision. This is disturbing. Again both levers return to the up position.

Evangeline's mirror is still tapping.

At this point though Dancing Wind successfully defeated his reflection and was summarily ejected from the mirror, landing beside Elniss in the water. Unit 2408 and Luthis pull all the levers from right to left. We hear a rumble of stone and as we ponder what that means Evangeline feels a hand slap down on her shoulder.

And that's where we left off!