The party takes a long rest before exploring the blackening black gate.
Slick reunites with the party after guarding the liberated civilians. They have given her a cold.
Creep counts out 111 organs and 3 heads in his inventory. Hopefully it’s enough to sustain his health through the phylactery vault, not to mention Slick’s contagions. Creep dons the hat of disguise and looks just like Bizzle. He mimics Bizzle’s talking, except more zombie-like. For a terrifying moment, Bizzle suspects someone administered Plan B to him in his sleep. Creep laughs. Bazinga.
Tatters inspects the black gate. A glyph key is no longer needed, but a certain level of cleverness is. Tricksy attempts to enter but does not exhibit the requisite level of intelligence and is thrown back. Slick jams her arm in the gate and the swirling black mist becomes for gelatinous. Tatters puts his face in and takes face damage. Creep goes all in and finds himself standing in the solidifying gate. Slick tries to follow but is thrown out. Bizzle emulates Creep’s success and shuffles in zombie-like. Reality warps.
Creep and Bizzle are transported to the interior of a four sided, white marble pyramid where nonlinear gravity allows the walls to be floors. The rest of the party follows. On each of the four sides they behold three smaller white marble pyramid-shaped sepulchers with lifeless four-armed gargoyle doors. There are several white marble pedestals and a dark pool of churning darkness in the center of each side. An interactive image of Syranna appears to them and explains that they have successfully disrupted the productivity of the Doomvault. All that remains is for them to defeat the guardians and destroy the phylacteries.
Creep retrieves a pouch from his gore-splattered coat, takes a pinch of dust of dryness, and throws it into the dark pool. The dark pool dries up into a marble which Creep puts in his pocket for later. Creep gives a double thumbs up and an enthusiastic grin.
Bizzle finds the sepulcher’s gargoyle doors locked. Tricksy picks the lock. When Creep opens the doors, the four-armed gargoyles unsurprisingly animate.
Creep reaches into the sepulcher and grabs a dagger, one of several phylactery objects containing the soul of a lich. Creep stabs the dagger at a gargoyle but accidentally plunges it into Tatters instead. Some of Tatters’s life force is siphoned into Creep. Slick sneaks a couple of magical axe attacks on a gargoyle and Bizzle helps out with scimitar strikes. Down it goes. Tricksy and Tatters take out the other gargoyle.
The phylactery objects are surrounded by magic. Creep envisions a bonfire to destroy them all at once. The party gathers the objects to the center of the room and moves to the second sepulcher. Tricksy unlocks the door but this time moves out of the way before Creep opens the gargoyles. The gargoyles are defeated and the phylactery objects are gathered to the center. The third sepulcher is likewise defeated and gathered.
Creep discovers that if he hangs out near one of the white pedestals he gets blasted by radiant damage, so he doesn’t do that any more.
Bizzle and Tricksy rest while the others experiment with destruction of the pile of phylactery objects. Creep tries eldritch blast on a phylactery leather pouch but it is undamaged. Slick looks for runes to destroy since that worked on the shrines. She finds none. Creep investigates the tops of the sepulchers but finds no clues there. Tatters suspects that mental channeling may be the way to go, but the objects must be returned to their assigned sepulchers first.
Tatters collects all the party’s glyph keys for a mental boost and uses his acuity to destroy one sepulcher and its phylactery objects. That was easy enough, but he has attracted the attention of a gleaming black skull with ruby eyes and diamond teeth emerging from a vortex.
The bling bling demilich is Kazit Gul, and he’s all out of bubblegum. Tricksy’s arrows, Slick’s bolts, Tatters’s firebolts, and Creep’s witchbolts all converge on Kazit. Kazit lets out a howl that instantly drops Tricksy and Slick unconscious and frightens Tatters and Bizzle. Only Creep escapes the effects, and that’s the way he wants to keep it. He jams his pinky fingers into his ears and breaks them off, protecting him from the destructive sound. He charges at Kazit. Tatters unloads his best volley of magic missiles. Bizzle, cowering out of Kazit’s sight inside a sepulcher, regains his courage and charges Kazit. Bizzle surges extra extra extra extra scimitar attacks and slays Krazit. The skull fractures into dust and its bling falls to the floor.
Tricksy notices a peculiar glowing in the fallen diamonds, like the way a demilich’s soul glows if held in a gemstone. Creep fetches a large rock and begins smashing the gems. A soul escapes, looks around unsuccessfully for a new body, and flees.
Creep sits down to feast on some organs while Slick and Tatters brain at the remaining sepulchers. Upon destruction of the third, the vortex spews much black dust and a shower of diamonds. The other sepulchers on the other sides of the pyramid disintegrate saving all kinds of time and peril. Kazit Gul is no more.
Tricksy is ready to leave and steps into the black gate. She discovers the glyph key requirement has been reinstated and bounces unexpectedly off the black gate. Tatters, with all the keys, opens the black gate. They depart the ruined phylactery vault.
Creep is first to emerge back in the gatehouse and his appearance initially alarms waiting Syranna. Syranna certifies successful completion of the mission contract and renders the final payment of the blood emerald shard. Bizzle quickly puts the shard into his bag of holding before Craig the Insidious can show up and prolong the adventure.