Bizzle demands the passphrase from the deathlock wight. Phelth the deathlock wight insists this room has no passphrase. Furthermore, why aren’t Bizzle, Tricksy, and Slick wearing correct Thayan garb? Only an infiltrating interloper could be so confused.
Slick excuses herself back to the cage room.
Phelth’s assistant observes a dwarf appear on the black gate in the corner. The dwarf listens to the palaver for a moment before revealing his true form: Thayan armor, glowing red eyes, feet not quite touching the offal pool covering the floor. This visiting lich lord chastises Phelth in a booming basso for arguing with his personal slaves. Phelth and his assistant must now stand in the corner. The otyugh whimpers. The twelve skeletons mill around, disengaged from the power struggle.
Tricksy suggests to her new lich overlord that he test Phelth’s knowledge on the phylactery vault. Who’s on guard at the phylactery vault? Phelth doesn’t know, that’s not his job as room boss, but he suggests the filth prison via the black gate as a starting place to find the phylactery vault entrance. The visiting lich lord and his slaves use Phelth’s glyph key to take the black gate to filth prison.
Skeletons carrying buckets of offal from the black gate to a room beyond are entirely unfazed when the party arrives. Their ambivalence allows the opportunity for introductions. The dwarven warlock impersonating a lich lord is R&S operative Creep. He was dispatched as backup for ill-fated PTATA Two’s entire crew. He’s that good.
The exit from the skeleton bucket room unfortunately leads to an open room of overpowering filth. Four otyugh standing on mounds of filth demand food. Tricksy and Bizzle hand up buckets of offal and that seems to satisfy them. Tricksy wonders why they are so picky, eating from buckets but not the floor. The group exits as quickly as possibly.
The room to the east is covered by a layer of glowing, viscous, green slime [1d8 poison] which Tricksy collects into a sample bottle. Three Thayan warriors and a couple of wights lie dead in the room. Bizzle digs out his rumpled stiltskins to stay above the slime poison. He carries Tricksy and tows levitating Creep to the bodies. They take a glyph key off one of the wights. Creep speaks with the dead by putting his fingers into the wight’s ears, gently lifting his head.
Who are you? Are you not brave? How do you get to the phylactery vault? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
One of the wights suggests trying the masters’ domain to access the phylactery vault. Best he can do having never been there himself. Then Creep thinks to ask, How did you die? Beholder sniper. Creep drops the dead’s head back with a crack. Creeps queries the others: How did you die? Each one: Beholder sniper. Creep peers ahead through the green glow at the ceiling and warns his team they might have a problem.
Creep begins desecrating the Thayan bodies to impress the beholder. He tosses severed body parts into the slime while loudly disparaging the vile Thayans’ unfair imprisonment of such wonderful aberrations like beholders. Beholder Thaxalia agrees from the ceiling. Creep casts tongues and explains they are vanquishing all Thayans and freeing all prisoners. Creep offers a salvage bar, but Thaxalia’s injuries are beyond repair. Thaxalia eye-rays holes in the map to indicate her secret sinkholes which would otherwise immerse them in poison. Creep activates the white gate allowing Thaxalia to depart to the garbage room of otyugh. Fighting and cries of betrayal can be heard from that direction.
Thaxalia’s lair opens to a room of eight ambling zombies and a couple of ogre zombies. Invisible Creep scouts the room and finds both a white gate and a black gate. Tricksy assembles a goblin-in-the-box with a ten second fuse which Thaxalia sneaks to the far end of the room. The tune plays and out pops a goblin, drawing the attention of all zombies. Tricksy and Bizzle meet up with invisible Creep and they slip through the white gate unnoticed. The sounds of a mechanical goblin being smashed can be heard.
The next room features a large blue pool with globes of liquid hovering around the sides. The pool ripples from movement. Creep, deep speech spell still in effect, gets interrogated by the aboleth. Creep repeats his narrative that the group is enemies of the red wizards and here to liberate prisoners. That sounds good to the abeloth who accepts Bizzle’s blood pens glyph key, summons and boards a liquid globe, and hastily departs through a black gate in the room.
Skirting around the pool, the group sees shimmering lights from the next room. Two wights, two dread warriors, and six zombies stare at the ceiling, mesmerized. Bizzle ties a rope around his waist and passes it to Tricksy and Creep to do the same in case one of them needs to be dragged out. They look only at the floor and make their way around the other occupants to the exit. Tricksy uses locate object to score a glyph key for the forest of death from the belt of a wight.
Up next is a forest, presumably of death. The only obvious danger is a large monster, a behir, lazily sprawled in the center of the forest room. The group stealths around the edge, ducking behind trees and bushes. If the behir notices them it seems to not care.
Creep checks the map from Syranna and realizes they’ve gone off course to get to the master’s domain. They double back through the forest room, shimmering lights room, and aboleth pool to the white gate isolating the zombies and ogre zombies. Creep checks the room and an ogre zombie blocks the white gate into the room.
Tricksy assembles a vial of alchemist’s fire, gates into the zombie room, and critically hucks it at the ogre zombie. She doesn’t stay to watch the ogre zombie go berserk, igniting all the flammable zombies.
The party attempts a short rest while the zombies burn down on the other side of the white gate. They are soon interrupted by a noisy patrol of Thayan warriors approaching. The party slips unnoticed through the white gate just in time to see the last zombie succumb to flames. Tricksy leaves a basket of centipedes right where the patrol will step blindly through the white gate. As the party hurries toward the door to the master’s domain, anguished yelling of warriors attacked by centipedes can be heard.
The party makes the quick decision to turn and fight this centipede-weakened patrol for the possibility of getting some better direction to the phylactery vault. They find the patrol already dead and being consumed by gricks. Creep selects a red wizard, One Arm Andy, to speak with dead.
One Arm Andy hasn’t been dead very long and has a lot of sass left in him. Creep offers to induct Andy into the phylactery if One Arm Andy will tell him how to get there. Suspicious One Arm Andy wonders where Creep’s red robe is. Creep drops Andy’s head with a smack, gouges out his dead eyes, and re-establishes speak with dead. Andy wonders why it’s so dark in here.
If it’s information on the phylactery vault they want, One Arm Andy suggests finding Szass Tam. If anyone knows the phylactery vault, it’s Szass Tam.
Creep tries a couple of the warriors but they have nothing to add. The party loots a couple of healing potions and a potion of climbing.
Creep disguises himself as a red wizard. Bizzle dons his rumpled stiltskins and a looted uniform to look somewhat like a Thayan warrior. Creep levitates Tricksy, also draped in a Thayan warrior uniform. They are ready as they’ll ever be for the master’s domain.