Down the spiral... stairs.

That was a Nine Inch Nails reference.


They head down the stairs into another spherical chamber below. There is a door on the wall. They opened the door (barely notable lock/puzzle combo) and opened the door to reveal a long tunnel. Following the length of the tunnel they soon found themselves inside of a large cave-like chamber that stretches farther than the lights of their torches can reach.

The light does illuminate a few things, however. First, there is a boat suspended by a chain from the ceiling. Second, that the chain leads to a locked wheel. Third, that the place is filled with water, stretching farther than what they can see.

They can hear something moving around on the other side.

They picked the lock like it was a breeze and lowered the boat the ground. They got in the boat, rowed across the little lake, and as they approached the shore they found out what was making that noise; two large lizards (she size of labradors) with fan-blades on their backs. One of them called out, the other made a noise and some sparks of light could be seen flickering from inside its nostrils.

"Where are the boy and the man?" one of them asked at this point.

"What?" I said. "Oh, they uh... they stayed back in the safety of the watch tower up near the fire."

"Oh."

So they land on the shore and their torches pick up the glimmer of some coins against a far wall beside yet another fucking door. The lizards rush them as soon as they get off the boat, and these things were tough. They hit with claws and bites and whipped with their tails. They had three attacks each turn and every other turn they could trade in two attacks for a fire-breathing attack (save vs dex to take 1/2 damage). The breath did 3d6+2 points of damage. They got very burned.

Eventually, however; the party emerged victorious and attacked the pile of silver and copper and the pair of gems inside. They refilled their purses not even considering why a pile of money was sitting on the ground by fire-lizard-things. Had the ranger rangered up the place they would have determined that this was someone's stash... Someone who will likely find out about what happened. Someone who will one day show up and be like "You killed my fire lizards and stole my moneys!!!"

But Aust didn't ranger the place up. Instead he waited, along with everyone else, for Tobin to unlock the door. The door lead to another tunnel that lead to another watchtower's spherical interior. Stairs lead up and down, up lead to nothing noteworthy; a caved in ground level chamber and another fire chamber that is already lit. This tower, however; had a set of stairs that descended into a water filled chamber center.

The alchemist made a stone glow like a light or some shit and dropped it into the depths. The stone was soon lost to the dark cloudiness below, but not before highlighting what appeared to be a room about ten feet down. "Let's go down, let's go down!"

Yorik follows Aust, Tobin, Kon, and Jynxie into the water. Jynxie, being decked out in head to toe armor, sunk like a rock; darting downward past the others leaving a flood of bubbles in her wake. As she navigated toward the steps and began walking back toward the surface, the others reach the chamber. Peaking inside, they find an air pocket.

They go inside (except for Jynxie, who is going up for air) and stand up; the water is waist high. At the center of the room there is a circular altar that comes up to about their chests, three equidistant blocks of stone stand at the edges of the alter. On each stone is a symbol; a tree, a sunburst, and a skull. Aust and Tobin remember that they have one ring each, a sunburst and a tree... They realize that they are missing the third ring.

Rather than make a whole side-adventure for them to find the third ring (which, in retrospect, I should have done); I just had Yorik be all like "you mean a ring like one of these?" and pull out a skull ring. He was there when they found theirs, so it wasn't illogical for him to have one.

They put the rings in, but nothing happened. They tried again. Nothing. They deduced that they would need to put the rings into their stones in a specific order to activate whatever the alter was. I wondered briefly why they thought activating an altar would be a good idea, but never voiced this opinion.

Eventually they got it right; Sun, Tree, Skull. A whirl of smoke started to rise from the alter, catching into a tornado-like vortex as the crackle of electricity ran along the stones wherein their rings were pressed. A large shadow-black hand rose from the alter and pulled up the form of a black-skinned four-armed demon with the body of a serpent. His eyes glowed red like embers and there was something hungry in his look.

The demon let out a loud scream that shook the walls and sent several stones to fall from the ceiling.

"I think we should be going," Yorik says with an awed whisper.

... And that is where we left off for the session. I hope, for their sake, that they just run away. This is not an enemy they are ready to face yet.