Session Forty-Two
Downward Spiral

"The enemy of my enemy is my soup." - Old Goblin Parable

"Don't stop. Keep Looking forward." - 

Apart from the platform at the mouth of the Dive Chamber, the Manzessine Spiral reaches downward, like a dark well. Somewhere below the gravity plane will shift and the Spiral will begin start reaching upward. Of course. Illithids naturally levitate and care not at all for the comfort of their prisoners. You can see cell doors dotting the walls as the hall disappears into the darkness below. 

Riddle of the Tunnels: Attempting to climb up and down the distances would prove too time-consuming and perilous. The party devises a plan to have Fortuna share her floating disc with Hazel, while towing Shroktath and Khalid, who have found weight-shifting kettlebells in the diving chamber, that can be adjusted to act magically provide downward weight or upward lift

They set out...

What Goes Wrong? Fortuna's Floating Disc moves lithely through the tunnel. She is reminded of sledge-sliding over the rooftops of Riot's Gate and quickly gets caught up in the memory. Every now and then she becomes disconnected from the disc, to leap and flip. This becomes a problem when the disc hits an open cell door, and the forward momentum carries Shroktath and Khalid forward.

What Makes It Worse? Khlaid attempts to stabilize with the Immovable Rod, and the stability it creates affects the disc and it stops jarringly. Khalid starts to slip and Shroktath catches him

How Is it Resolved? Quick thinking on Khlaid's part. He activates the Immobile Rod, to create a base of stability. Hazel summons an Air Elemental to help.

Prison Cells:  cells vary in size and seem designed to ensure that the creature being held inside is unable to actually find any comfort, whether by lying down or not being forced to sit in their own filth. Each cell has a feeding tube attached to the external feeding system. It’s not clear how often the prisoners are fed.

Research/Torture Chambers (each level): An observation platform filled with pillows overlooks a chamber of horrors spiralling outwards from below. A massive contraption with multiple articulated chairs hangs from whatever happens to be the the ceiling at any given moment. All manner of screws and retractable needles and blades and injectors, hanging shackles, and other horror machines are attached to the device. Tubes and dials and levers and coils and chains and cables that you cannot identify nor want to seem to power it.  There is a crucible forge and multiple work stations against the walls. Caged shelves and racks contain all manner of brands and pokers, straps and braces, blades and surgical equipment. One shelf is over-stuffed with vials of acids. liquids and powders. Another with sample jars containing floating pieces of anatomy.

The Mad Lizardman: The party encounters a mad lizardman in one of the Torture Observatories, mutilating the corpse of an illithid guardian. He is unsure that he is even speaking to creatures that exist outside his own mind. If asked, he hints at a hidden way directly to the bottom of the spiral, accessible only by the guardians. 

A Neogi, barely familiar, pushes itself over using its one remaining leg to perceive you better. Even covered with bruises and sores, you would recognize this creature anywhere. Skitterix. 

“Please,” it begs. “Please helps me… please the torments… the regrets… the sadness. Skitterix is sorry. Skitterix won’t ever steal from anyones again… Mercy oh mighty ones… o, please… o mercy…"

"Skitterix knows things, yes. Skitterix knows about Illithids and the truths about Psulrons… yes? Please peace. Please!”

Hazel again catches a fleeting sense of the thoughts of the Basile-in-Captivity in this prison... "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… even for a sliver of a moment… and that has changed everything. I know it as surely as we are conversing now."

He then warns that the Warden has escaped the mind trap the party created for him, and that he is coming. "He is coming!"

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Especially, it turns out, when rendered into the form of a delicious soup. 

We found Skitterex. He was a pathetic shell of himself, really - mutilated by the Illithids, begging for his life. But as he pleaded I thought of all the creatures he had killed, or sold into slavery for profit (including us), and I couldn’t find any sympathy within me. Only the cold clarity that I knew this evil creature deserved an ending.

It was Fortuna that killed him - clean and quick. And then she carved him up, and using her magic turned the best parts of him into a meal. I know she got tremendous satisfaction out of it - she’d been dreaming about this moment for years - and so I had to partake. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the only “good” use that Skitterex’ body had ever been put to in its entire history: for once helping, sustaining others.

This was just a short detour of our navigation of the actual prison, which was one helluva challenge. The illithid can use their brain powers to float, and it really showed in the design of the lower prison. Spiraling levels of the prison dropping straight down and then spiraling nearly straight up, but we managed - with difficulty - to magic and problem solve our way through the tunnels.

We ran into scenes of carnage from the prison break, horrible scenes of illithid pleasure lounges/torture chambers, a lizard creature that had been driven mad by the same, and a very challenging fight.

Near the low point of the fourth level, we came upon a scene of torture. A demilich and its undead minions had managed to break out of their cell and were torturing a flesh golem servant and its master, an illithid sentinel. The first seemed to be for the pleasure and feeding of the strange, smoky undead lackey. The second, we learned, was so that the demilich could try to find out where the illithid had hidden its phylactery.

They paused and attacked us on sight, and it turned into a nasty and chaotic brawl. The undead were a brutal foe - their mere touch seemed to suck the will to live out of you. Somehow, and against all odds, Fortuna managed to keep the demilich occupied while we took down the undead, and Khalid put the mad illithid sentinel that was sending out painful pulses of psychic energy out of its misery with a well placed shot. Avoiding the blows of the golem as it tried to turn me into paste, I closed ranks with my comrades, and granted them the power of the architects - to smite this horrifically evil undead wizard. 

Which they certainly did. Khalid blasted away with his gun, Fortuna stabbed with her dagger, and then I closed and delivered the final (not so final, as it turns out) blow with my Azlantl spear. I hit it so hard that my spear bent, but thankfully did not break, on the steelstone wall behind it. At that very moment, Fortuna was feverishly trying to magically capture the lich’s spirit, but something must have gone badly wrong. The next thing I knew was that I felt a terrible, searing pain in my belly, and as I looked down I saw that it was Fortuna that had stuck her dagger into my guts. Only it wasn’t Fortuna. As I looked down, I looked into the face of my friend, but the glowing, red eyes of the demilich.