The search is on for Szass Tam at the suggestion of recently deceased One Arm Andy. With any luck, Szass Tam will know the entrance to the phylactery vault and be completely unguarded, if not asleep.
Creep chains together cantrips to slip into his persona of a levitating, red glowing eyed, red wizard lich. Tricksy, his “newly enjoined demon” and means of propulsion, takes up residence hidden in Creep’s robes. Together they form Crycks.
Bizzle dons his rumpled stiltskins and a purloined Thayan warrior uniform. Listening at the door at the short hallway to the north, he hears voices talking loudly, but not in anger. He recognizes a couple of the voices and peeks in to see Slick and Tatters disguised as red wizard apprentices. Several off-duty denizens of the Doomvault chat in this sleeping quarters.
Slick and Tatters, reunited in the Doomvault and infiltrating the locals, learn two important facts. First, a method of restoring life with necromancy has been pioneered in this part of the Doomvault. Second, the temples of despair are used to torture the enemies of Szass Tam.
Tricksy propels Creep into the sleeping quarters, and the room’s occupants prostrate themselves in fear of the dreadful Crycks. Crycks orders everyone to pursue escaped beholder Thaxalia and they all leave except Tatters and Slick.
Tricksy fashions a trap of bells and boulders around the door, colloquially known as a Ding Dong Death. The room is searched and Tricksy pockets the only valuable item, a jar of eyeballs labeled Morgz Ybalz Jar.
Tatters warns that some stairs down into a rough cavern leads to a heavily guarded black gate, where he and Slick entered. Instead, Tatters opens the door north.
Three Thayan apprentices kneel at a central stepped monument of grey marble that thrums with blue power. Looming Crycks explains to the puny mortals that he has recently joined with a demon, and the apprentices must answer a few questions before Crycks eats their faces. They answer that they serve some red wizards in the surrounding rooms, that they don’t know where Szass Tam is, and that they’ve been meditating here for months and don’t get out much. Crycks threatens the apprentices with a good soul draining and head explosion if they mention his name. The nearest apprentice micturates involuntarily. The party exits the north door.
The next room, a mausoleum, has walls of black marble lined with ivory urns decorated in precious metals and gems. Across the room is a black gate. A red wizard works at marble tables drawing the soul from an unfortunately screaming, yet unconscious, half-elf. The corpse of another red wizard waits on another table for the soul to transform it into a wight, like the two lurking at the edge of the room.
The red wizard’s name is Phaia, and she can converse while she works. Who are you? We are Crycks! Crycks offers to take that yummy half-elf soul off her hands. Tatters arcane locks the door behind them with the password FROYO.
Phaia doesn’t buy this Crycks nonsense and is so unconcerned that she doesn’t even stop working when she orders Todd The Wight and Dougg The Wight to attack. At this imminent indication of violence, Tricksy double shortbows Todd The Wight from Crycks’s robe. Dougg The Wight hucks an urn at Bizzle which shatters harmlessly, and non-preciously, on the floor.
Creep counterspells Phaia’s transfer spell and the half-elf’s soul returns to him. Creep dimension doors behind Phaia and offers to augury her entrails. Phaia asserts her entrails will never spill their guts. Bizzle scimitars her entrails and Tatters blinds her eyes.
Tricksy smacks another two arrows into the forehead of her mark, Todd The Wight, and he crumples. Slick’s magic greataxe engages Dougg the Wight.
Vastly outclassed, Phaia bargains for her life. She offers to teach them how to return life with necromancy, but no one finds her lifestyle all that appealing. Tatters accepts her glyph key to the temples of extraction, one of only seven worthful keys of its kind. No one in the party is compelled to vouch for Phaia so she is executed quickly as possible, yet disturbingly not very quickly.
Bizzle feeds a potion of healing to the unconscious half-elf. He is Kelson Darktreader and he can’t remember how he got here. He does happen to know that disrupting the flow of soul energy into the phylactery vault will break Szass Tam’s phylactery. That’s probably because Szass is using the temples of extraction to pump up his phylactery with abundant chosen souls in order to reach god status. Interrupting power during a soul update is the surest way to brick one’s phylactery. The party allows Kelson Darktreader to depart with a Blood Pens glyph key.
Slick finds a +1 dagger, a scroll of darkvision, and a scroll of water breathing on Phaia. A search of the urns ends when Slick is temporarily paralyzed after touching one. She feels much better after a short rest.
Creep and Tricksy reassemble Crycks. Tatters opens the black gate to the temples of oppression zone in the temples of extraction area.
Golden light suspends a male drow on the other side of this hexagonal room of shuddering white marble walls. A couple of grey oozes and ochre jellies and a wight guard the presiding red wizard. The red wizard requires a business statement. Crycks eagerly supplies that they have an urgent dispatch for Szass Tam; is he around? Also, FEAR DEMON INFUSED CRYCKS!
The humble red wizard, Humble, must stay with this chosen of Ghaunadaur and has no time for the likes of Crycks. They briefly debate who is deafer and who is stupider before Slick fires a crossbow bolt into the wight. Tricksy and Tatters open up on Humble. Creep encourages the party to not clump up, but when Tricksy and Tatters move away, the walls attempt to tentacle-slap them.
Creep drops a Hunger of Hadar on Humble. He and Bizzle head for a door to the south, but the oozes and jellies engage them from the edge of the Hunger. As the jellies emerge, unblinded by the Hunger, Slick, Tricksy, and Tatters engage them at range. Creep sprays his jelly assailant with poison and creeps away. Bizzle finishes the first jelly.