Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!

- Windmills of Your Mind 

I am a man of constant sorrow.

- Basile Anthrax

Having accessed a complete map of the prison facility inside the machine room, the Command Team realized that some of their most difficult tasks lie ahead and that they needed somehow to find a chance to rest and recuperate before they carried on. Hazel prayed to Azal and received an unprecedented assurance in response. A Shadow Haven he opened would provide the rescued ratfolk and his companions a refuge out of time. Inside the pocket dimension, the traumatized ratfolk still were not sure they could believe what was happening, but Hazel convinced them to embrace their faith in the safety of the Darkness and the unknown to assuage their doubts. Fully recovered, the companions leave the Shadow Haven to indeed find that no time had passed outside of it - Hazel is shocked because the spell is not supposed to work this way. Trying to understand, he seeks contact with Basile and is surprised to receive a response... seemingly from inside the prison. One of the subjects in the Temporal Anomaly sector of the prison spiral beyond the Hydra Lair appears to be a Basile taken from the time displacement field. The team works together to understand the gas machine that controls the ability to flood certain parts of the prison facility with poisonous gas. They then use their knowledge to seal off and flood the living quarters. They then turn their attention to the lair of the eleven-headed cryo-hydra guarding the dive chamber that will allow them to access the prison cells...

• PSIONIC AMPLIFIERS: Each of the Illithids inside the prison has had one of these. The effect is to increase the WILL SAVE on PSYCHIC ATTACKS

• ANTI-PSIONIC HOODS: (4x) Block the mental powers of the person wearing them (one in torture chamber, one in implants, two in equipment locker)

Azal responds to your prayer in your own voice, or a voice very much like your own. The tone is conversational. Even friendly. As though you were passing the time of day together with an old friend.

You experience an overwhelming sense of safety and comfort

“Brother, all of our children, as well as your companions, will find safety in darkness out of time. Rest and prepare for what lies ahead. Soon, I look forward to walking with you and looking upon you with mortal eyes.”

Nothing like this has ever happened to you before in any of your prayers. You've experienced emotions, but never anything like this.

Hazel decided to reach out to Basile for guidance, to try to see things through his eyes... Basile reached back

When he sought to see through Basile's eyes, he was Subject XB751, suspended inside some sort of liquid. Beyond, he could see a laboratory. Tendrils twisted before his eyes, pushing up against the glass cylinder in which he was trapped. Hazel also found his nose and mouth were blocked with tubes that let him breath...

In his mind he heard...

• "Closer and closer you all draw"

• "I look forward to seeing you again, my friends"

• "I have seen such things""

• We are all Basile Anthrax and yet we are also our own"

• "This, more than anything aroused the curiosity of the One"

• "I do not know how long Basile continued to exist as Basile beyond the Final Sphere – without Becoming One – or whether he still exists now. I know only that he did…" 

• "NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS... NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS... NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS..."

Beyond the sealed door at the bottom of the Hydra Lair, there is an ante chamber where barrels can be filled with the brown-yellow sludge that passes as “food” are here. The pipes reach up into the icy walls above. There is a pallet with ten barrels ready to be transferred.

Once you open the sealed door you see a dive room beyond a double suppressor field wall powered by two fail safe psionic crystals. There is a methane pool beyond. Something like a submersible jet with two handles hangs on the wall, with room for two more. You recognize it from your time assisting the Heroes of Ancorato, though this one is different – designed for another type of liquid. It looks like two barrels of food sludge can be placed on top of the thing at a time. There are 4 empty barrels in this chamber

There is also space for a much larger submersible to be lifted out of the liquid methane with chains.

We took down a dragon! 

(I mean, not really. It was a hydra. But a really nasty one that had a breath weapon and two mind flayer helpers and it was really tough!)

I’m still pumped. It’s the kind of thing you pretend you're doing a thousand times over when you’re playfighting with your friends as a kid.

That, and my brain is bursting at the seams.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First - we did get a chance for a breather. Hazel pulled off some very neat hocus pocus and managed to carve out a magical shelter for us and the ratfolk refugees to regroup. I’m not sure totally how he did it, but Azal was involved and it seemed to… change Hazel? In a good way? I hadn’t seen Hazel looking so content since before Basile sacrificed himself. 

Two more things about that - Hazel managed to speak with Basile! And through our minds being linked (thanks, Brahl) we all heard him. I was so happy to hear Basile’s voice, the tears just started flowing from my eye. What he was saying was really weird though. Basile was everywhere? In all of us? He had tentacles now? Nothing was as it seemed?

Also, the warren folk were practically worshipping Hazel. Can’t exactly blame them. 

When we emerged from Hazel’s god-powered resting place, we checked our surroundings and it was clear that no time had passed outside of Azal's magical shelter. The rest of the group then fell into studying the “machine room” with a plan to turn the illithid controls against them. All that big brain stuff isn’t exactly my wheelhouse, so I closed my eyes… and felt a presence, a calling. I followed my gut and almost wished I haden't, as I wound up back in the torture chamber. I knew in my bones there was some unfinished business there, I just didn’t know what. As I knelt to commune with the dead, I became aware of a strange and powerful presence. Somehow, Yurgon Gos had left the spirit of the Okalappa contained in this awful torturer when he’d passed through. It now needed a vessel, a home. 

I allowed it into me, but it nearly did me in. It was too much for almost any living mind, really. Not just a spirit, but a true soul of a people, a way of being in and thinking about the spheres that was way too big for just me. I felt like I was losing my mind, losing myself. I felt like throwing up. The room was spinning… and then everything went dark.

I came to with the guys standing around me, and the voice of Fortuna in my mind reminding me to take strength in my friends. And so I did. The burden of the Okalappa was too big for me, but not for us. It still felt like a weight on us though - I could feel the strain in my comrades as the chaos and intelligence and curiosity of the Okalappa babbled on and pushed at the bounds of our minds.

So, second - we kept clearing the prison. We managed to gas most of the remaining illithids, and made our way to the dock connecting the upper/entry of the prison to the lower prison cells.

It was named the Hydra Lair. And fittingly so. Shortly after our arrival, and out of the methane depths, the huge beast rose up. Its breath let loose in a horrific, freezing blast nearly killing Fortuna and badly wounding the rest of us. I knew that this creature needed killing, or we were in trouble. With a quick running leap - spear poised - I leapt across the chasm and onto the back of the monster. Calling forth the power of the architects, I rained down blows upon this servant of the false gardeners and it howled and rose up further to try and knock me off its back by scraping against the ceiling. Worse - it was clearly regenerating. But with the help of my comrades and my fearsome smites the light went out of its many eyes and the corpse plummeted to the floor of this portal. 

I tumbled - painfully - off the back of the hydra and took in the sweet sight of another victory for my comrades and me. To my mind, one of the most satisfying we’d ever had. A painful one, though, and I thanked the gods of the warrenfolk that we'd all made it through more or less intact, and for Hazel’s powerful healing magics.

The fury and excitement of the fight had quieted the voices of the Okalappa in my head, but now they came back with a vengeance. I closed my eye. I had a thought about where this was going, and I couldn't say I liked it.