Ed DMing. Me, Scott, and Steven playing. Ed's neighbor, Matt G., may join. Anthony _might_ join later. Last session, we found a trap room with three treasure chests. We _think_ the floor pivots if the treasure chests aren't there to balance it out. The pivot point appears to be the middle of the room. The ceiling appears to be tall enough that there's space not to get squished if someone flies over the top. Zoozeki casts _fly_ on Kristabell. Kristabell fries into the room to the treasure chests. She drives some pitons into the back wall to maybe stop the floor pivoting. She grabs the chest and teleports (some character power) back to the hallway. The floor pivots open. In the room below, there's a statue of a hobbit with bagpipes that we believe is a petrified adventurer. The hobbit appears to have been reaching for a vial. Zoozeki casts _light_ on a coin an throws it down. We can then read that the vial is labelled "remove curse". Zoozeki (arcana check) suspects the "remove curse" potion might de-petrify the statue if poured into the mount. But Martin casts _greater restoration_ on the statue. The statue become a living halfing — Roscoe Goodone, Matt's bard character. There's a birth-of-Christ-style date benchmark on this work: the enslavement of the crab men. It's year 483 slug reckoning. There's a hole nawed in the wall. Faint music comes from the hole. Roscoe recognizes it as an old Vaudeville tune. Oh, and Valhawk, the suspect paladin, is still with us. Zoozeki sends his blue-footed booby in the hole. A small, rubble-strewn passage slopes down to an irregularly, shaped 30x40-ish foot room. In the center of the room, a sort of man sits. He looks like a burly guy with the head of a hippopotomous. He has a fire burning in a brassier and a little pile of coins. He has molds and little hammers. He seems to be making jewelry. Zoozeki believes he may be a created magical chimera. Zoozeki tries to make a friendly introduction by casting _message_ at the hippo-headed guy. The hippo-headed guy doesn't react well and kills Zoozeki's familiar by throwing a knife. Roscoe doesn't remember the hippo-headed guy, but before being petrified he was in pursuit of a bunch of beast men lead by chaos wizards. We decide to leave the island, and return to the surface. Where do we go next? Roscoe remembers there was a magic flask on La Petite Chou rumored to contain one or more eldrich creatures. Maybe including a greater devil, groaning spirit, major demon, night hag, nika demon. That's what Roscoe heard. We go to La Petite Chou. Zoozeki summons a new blue-footed booby familiar. Our ship names: Grampus, Idolon, Polemicist's Grief. Grampus: Valhawk and Martin, along with a mix of Clitos's apes and scruffy apes. Idolon: Zoozeki and Roscoe, along with the shaggiest, scruffiest of the apemen rejects; ape captain X? Polemicist's Grief: Smudge and Kristabell, along with a crew full of apes recommended by Clitos We land on La Petite Chou. Steve members hearing during the funeral that there's a dormant volcano. A couple of Achices guys went up the mountain and found a cave guarded by stirges then turned back. The dudes thought it was unusual that stirges seemed to be actively guarding the cave. We cross paths with a triceratops. It charges. Kristabell and Smudge badly wound the triceratops and it flees. We find the path leading to the cave. We find human tracks coming and going multiple times. There are a couple of ape tracks. We decide to hid on the path and wait to see who comes out of the cave. Smudge sees a figure in robes and tackles it. But, Smudge is under a spell and he's grappling nothing. Zoozeki notices a big ape with bat wings approaching, almost invisible. Zoozeki casts _web_. It saves and is not restrained, but the strands of web make it more visible. (A balrog??!) Kristabell attacks it. It's a devil. Martin _banishes_ it. Stirges attack us. Matt _dispels_ whatever magic was causing Smudge to believe he was grappling someone. A wizard steps out of the cave and _lightning bolts_ me and Kristabell. Zoozeki grapples the wizard with _Bigby's hand_ then _geases_ him: > Without taking any action to harm us or avoid the effects of this spell, bring us the magic flash immediately. The wizard brings us the flask and Kirstabel slices him in half.