Last time, we killed two mind flayers and a guy with a sword through his face in the dungeon under the sea. The dragon flew up the chimney and got away. We're left in a room with a lot of treasure:
Sticking up from the middle of the treasure pile is a stone stele. Smudge licks the stele. Smudge can't read the writing.
Zoozeki examines the markings on the stele. Is it natural language or arcana? A mix, perhaps. Zoozekei studies it for a bit (Archana check = 18). The stele is an eldrtich tome. Zoozeki takes comprehensive rubbings.
After finishing the rubbings, Zoozeki detects magic over the treasure hoard. The stele radiates magic. Nothing else in the top layer treasure radiates magic.
Tudo gets a magic hammer of some kind, but he's not strong enough to wield it. ("Thor-Faced Warhammer")
Digging around, Smudge finds a tiny trap door (4×6″) in the floor. He sees a deck of card bound with a ribbon sitting on top of a parchment. Smudge pockets the cards and hands the parchment to Zoozeki.
Zoozeki can't quite read the parchment. It's a bit like elvish but non. It starts like "My ? Telemacus,"
The surveyor with a tendency to self harm, Bartus, reads it. It's from mother dragon to her son, warning him about the dangers of the magic deck.
Everybody gets curios about the bandaged, stinking, crown-wearing creature in the corridor north of the treasure room. Zoozeki casts Leomund's tiny hut near the door, so we can safely look at it from the hallway.
Tudo make a check (24) and notices the creature is wielding legendary demon clubs called Ear and Yrr. Legend says the clubs can turn into shoggoths on the wielder's command. Tudo thinks the creature is a "chaos pontiff" who was once a man Saint Eustacius. He made some terrible bargain during his life, but no one knows what.
Zoozeki asks Eustacius where he got his shoggoth clubs. "Outer space" he says as he continues to whale on the Tiny Hut dome. Zoozeki says he's been to space too. He recognizes Zoozeki's space suit. "Why do you come here?" Eustacius asks. Zoozeki: "To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations." He says space men messed him up. "Can you put down the clubs?" Zoozeki asks. He drops the clubs and looks sad.
Tudo asks if he wants us to remove his curse, and he does. Tudo casts greater restoration. Tudo holds up his hand outside the Hut, and Eustacius touches it. The chaos pontiff shrinks and turns back into a human man, then vanishes.
The clubs have an elaborate batwing-skull-tentacle design. The crown is also left. Zoozekei casts detect magic. The crown radiates alteration/transmutation magic. The clubs radiate conjuration magic.
One of the apemen myrmidons has something in his backpack radiating evocation magic. Its a set of drums.
We go to explore the door in the bone room. There's a series of corridors and three (undead?) minotaurs.