The party has made its way to the center of the Chult jungle to a structure in the grip of a slowly encroaching jungle. Trapmaster Tricksy points out the walls and floor of this structure are made of an unrecognized metal, constructed in hexagonal patterns, and the door separating them from the escaping tentacle-faced guy has no mechanical opener. Tatters, tying up critically injured Bill the mule, overhears Tricksy’s observations and comes dashing up, out of breath but with a great idea. Tatters reaches out to the door psychically through his helm of telepathy. The door’s representative answers and offers to open the door. Discouraged by his own success, Tatters reluctantly accepts and the door slides open.
Shroom, already empathetically hugging the door, falls into the chamber. Shroom’s captured zombie servants shuffle in to help him up, but dissipate when they get near. Slick follows without dissipation and sees a curved hallway with more doors. Tatters follows Slick but freezes, catatonic, immediately inside the doorway. Shroom tries to waken Tatters by sticking his fungal fingers into Tatters’s mouth, but this previously established method fails. Shroom grapples Tatters and demands answers. Bizzle steps through and becomes catatonic next to Tatters.
Tatters and Bizzle find themselves in a village and in a conversation with the disembodied voice of Apholatzin who offers any old thing they would want: riches, magic rings, bus fare, you name it. Bizzle peeks into the buildings and in fact there are piles of treasure. Apholatzin is not especially forthcoming with his plans and designs, but does show some interest in bartering for Bizzle’s sentient scimitars, Destra and Sinistra. Apholatzin screams in a weird language, then Destra and Sinistra scream and vibrate back at him. Unnerved Bizzle activates his blink belt, abandoning Tatters, and finds himself in shadow world but back in the structure with Tricksy. Slick and Shroom have popped over into the mind village.
Tricksy and Bizzle work out that it’s probably better to be in this reality than in the mind village. Tricksy forms a lasso and they yank Tatters’s body back through the doorway. Tatters returns spiritually. Shroom’s catatonic body falls to the ground so Tricksy lassos him next. Tatters and Bizzle yank Shroom through the doorway a little harder than necessary. Slick is retrieved last, lamenting the loss of bismuth.
The party agrees to explore less comatizing paths into the structure, moving counter-clockwise around the center. Their path is blocked by more doors so Tatters reaches out with the helm of telepathy again. Apholatzin answers. Although disappointed by their departure from the mind village, he opens all the doors for them. Shroom fearlessly runs right into a room of consoles. He seems normal, or at least not catatonic, as he sets about hammering the arrays of neatly arranged jewels embedded into the consoles. Tricksy observes Shroom while Bizzle and Tatters check out a raised throne overlooking the workstations.
The tentacle-faced guy drops from hiding on the ceiling, perfectly positioned to attach his tentacles to Slick’s brains, but Slick side steps defty. Shroom knows a mindflayer when he sees one attach itself to his face to stun and psychically damage him. Tatters summons a high level sleep spell that knocks out the mindflayer. It slowly oozes off Shroom. Shroom gently eases it to the floor.
The mindflayer won’t stay unconscious for long so the party hovers over it, preparing their best spells and weapons. They nominate Slick to go first with a critically mighty chop to the mindflayer’s neck [65 slashing damage]. The mindflayer’s head pops off and forcefully splatters onto the wall. Shroom’s spell is already erupting, spraying the head into a mist that covers him in a film of atomized mindflayer debris.
Tricksy, being tricksy, wonders if this round metallic structure itself is the ring artifact sought by their patron, Baron Flocculant Van Fostern. Gnomes Tatters and Bizzle confer on that possibility, drawing on their shared artificer’s lore. Although the structure does appear to be a great carriage of alien origin, there is no possibility that it could be restored to its original operation, whatever that looked like.
The party resolves to press on to the center of the structure, hoping that the mind-trapped hallway that gave them so much trouble earlier would now be inert with the thorough destruction of the mindflayer. They cross the hallway without difficulty this time to a closed door into the center of the structure.
Tatters again focuses his helm of telepathy on a door, but now Apholatzin is rather snippy at the destruction of Cidivox, the mindflayer. He won’t open this door. Tricksy jams the point of her dagger into the jamb and pries the door open enough to get the tip of her crowbar in. Shroom shoves on the crowbar too forcefully and the crowbar breaks. Bizzle retrieves a backup crowbar and Tricksy forces the door open enough for them to squeeze through.