Ed: DMing; Paul: Zoozeki (high elf wizard 9); Scott: Smudge (shadar-kai rogue 7 / barbarian 2) and Martin (dwarf cleric 9); Dane: Tudo (dwarf cleric 9).
The party sets sail and has the goblins lead us to the dragon’s lair on island thirteen, Nisi Akanonistos, home of an active volcano.
Tudo uses control water to make a bubble elevator. The four PCs, three traumatized goblins, and a dozen myrmidons descend to a door deep below the surface. The goblins put on a show of opening the door with some kind of goblin magic, but Martin notices one of them has a hidden key.
Past the door, long diagonal hallway ends in a smashed, once secret door. (Half way down the diagonal hallway, we notice non-smashed secret door, but pass it by for the moment.) Smudge leads the party into a room with four pillars (one pillar somehow different) and a pack of rats gnawing on the carcass of a brontosaurus.
The rats have exposed glowing brains poking out of their heads. Tudo and Smudge both hear in their minds: “We’re going to eat you, eat you, EAT YOU!”
Combat irrupts as the tide of brain rats washes toward Smudge and the rest of the party. Zoozeki burns up a few rodents with flaming sphere, our robot eagle toasts one with its laser eyes, Todo bases several rats with his cooking-pan-shaped spiritual weapon, and Smudge skewers a row of them on his rapier.
These losses are too much for the brain rats, who (rather than EAT US) turn tail and scamper away through a hole in the room’s north wall.
Stepping gingerly over the half-eaten corpse of brontosaurus (how’d it get down here, below the ocean?!), we examine the four columns in the room, one of which turns out to be a man-sized pneumatic tube.
While the rest of the party was examining the pneumatic tube, Smudge notices the goblins acting twitchy. We interrogate them using a variety of magic and mundane intimidation. Smudge pickpockets a magic key off the neck of one goblin, while the others buckle under pressure and tell us what they know about this dungeon under the waves.
The party decides to double back and investigate the secret door we passed by earlier. It leads to a long passage that terminates in a door with a big crank in its middle. The door is very hot to the touch.
Examining the door, Zoozeki thinks that the door can be opened from this side (outside) but that the crank is designed to break from inside.
Zoozeki casts clairvoyance to look on the other side of the door. A large room with a high vaulted ceiling, double doors to the north, four pillars, a burning fire pit in the middle, pillar carved with symbols, and treasure scattered all over the floor. Zoozeki also see two hooded figures and a blonde man. They stand around the fire.
Next time: marshmallow roast?