Following a restorative short rest, the party retraces west and turns south to a door that was found but not yet explored. Janky finds more hallway beyond but notices one tile is suspiciously missing grout along one edge. When Morn prods at it with his ten-foot pole, all the other tiles in the hallway unexpectedly launch upward violently compressing Morn, Janky, and Reade into the ceiling before gently settling back into the normal elevation for a hallway floor.
Determined to explore, acquire, and/or disable the floor launching apparatus embedded beneath the hallway, the party uses Morn’s ten-foot pole to jack up the floor while Togy, Janky, and Reade extract the magical air source. The trap is disabled, and its primary pneumatic source is handed over to Morn in compensation for his possibly damaged ten-foot pole.
The next room features a pair of columns supporting an arch. The structure resembles a portal, but magical detection suggests it would operate in a weakened state if at all. A pair of martially-terminated orc skeletons around each pillar discourage further exploration beyond tossing an osseous orc digit back and forth through the arch with no interesting results.
The next room is silent, but only enough to be a little eerie. Reade locates the upper half of a skeletal tiefling hanging from wall manacles on the eastern wall. Friggedei finds its presumed lower half bones collected in a pile on the opposite side of the room. Morn reads the phrase “Talk To Me” scrawled in blood above the manacles in an unknown language. Cheeky Morn prepends the text to read, “Don’t Talk To Me”.
Reade leads the party on through a south exit to yet another hallway, apparently the preferred architecture of the Mad Mage. Wherever Reade walks down the hallway, the tiles turn dark and shadowy. He returns along the same path making those tile even darker and shadowy-er. Morn supposes the traversed tiles would eventually darken and degrade into some sort of pit of despair from repeated use, so the party takes a 10-minute rest to study the floor’s recovery while Togy ritualizes a fresh detection of magic. During that time the floor lightens back to its original condition. By dividing into a north and south file, the party safely traverses the darkening hall with no despairing consequences.
The next room has a busty statue of what Reade, after digging out the surrounding rubble, eventually determines to be a snake woman person of unknown identity.
The party follows a hewn tunnel behind the statue that wends around into a small room to the north containing exactly one recently deceased goblin. The cause of death is blunt force trauma to the dome, the manner of death is goblicide. Of note is the Xanathar tattoo found on the gobby’s hand.
The party follows a long hallway north back to the room of pillars just off the hall of demons where signage promised certain death back the way they came. Up to this point in time the warning seems more directed at the goblin population than adventurers.
A long, long rest in Urktal’s lair is punctuated by dreams of the Frostmaiden’s Rime.