Session 165

General Summary

• The bartender reveals herself to be "a hive mind of approximately 563 worms", and asks for one of the worms to accompany them further in. Marvin allows this.
• Past the mimic door is a large chamber with a huge eye in the center and at least one land mine set to go off if someone steps on it.
• The eye seems to be held open by six metal chains that disappear through orange portals on the sides of the room.
• The eye shoots beams at whomever it sees, following them around the room as they hide behind cover.
• They exit first at a tunnel off to the side, with a part of one of those chains blocking the way. Dwardazik breaks it.
• The tunnel leads to a chamber with a mystical lake inhabited by sharks, and strange fibrous bridges crossing it.
• There are two more chains in here, which Dazki and Marvin break, but not before the party withstood several opportunistic attacks from the sharks.
• Returning to the chamber with the eyeball, they also find a teleportation circle, which they all proceed through.
• It seems to resemble a library of sorts, though it's just crammed with strange (and, occasionally, smutty) books.
• An odd stack of loose papers glued together seemed to metamorphose into a moth creature when Dwardazik poked it with his war pick.

Full Recap

Get It All On Tapeworm

Tequila, the bartender, calls the party back to her bar, offering a "quest": she reveals that she is actually "a hive mind of approximately 563 worms", and so if just one of the worms can accompany them on some of their experiences outside of her bar, then coming back to reunite that worm with the rest of the hive mind at a later time could allow Tequila to have more useful information.   Dazki is about to immediately decline this on behalf of the party, but Marvin is curious to see what would happen, so he takes the worm on his shoulder. Dwardazik also objects, worried about taking on even more risk, but Tequila reassures them that they can even just leave her on the other side of the door if they want: she'd have done it herself, if not for the mimic door blocking her path.   Dazki leads the party towards the mimic door, key in hand. The "door" reacts upon seeing the key, sticking its tongue out and panting excitedly like a dog. Dazki feeds it the key, and it waddles away to chew on the key.

Eye Rolling

The images of "Jahdzan" and "Argon" appear once again:

Argon, I recognize this place from the maps! The grand, secret discovery! A fantastical finding! An unimaginable unearthing! If I were an archaeologist, I'm sure I would be absolutely elated, but no, I only have eyes for her! O, while others gaze at the soul of the earth, I only have eyes for you! (He writes that last phrase in his journal, as he travels out of range.)

The chamber itself is built around one prominent central feature: a glowing eyeball, with six chains connected to it at one end, the other ends disappearing through orange portals. It blasts Dwardazik with a bolt of lightning, and briefly seems to lose its focus afterward, allowing the party to quickly try to find cover. It gets another free hit on Dwardazik — causing a Turmoil event: Synaptic Static centered on Dwardazik — before everyone can make it behind cover to plan their next moves. As a part of the effect, he starts to hear messages in his mind: "We've awoken the world itself!", "We dug too far!", "She is awake, and she is angry!", "We've awoken the god, and stared it directly in the eye!".   Dazki notices some sort of a hidden explosive device with an unconventional triggering mechanism just outside of cover. He points out that one and, expecting more behind it, he warns the party to watch their step. He also comes up with a plan to use the Driftglobe's extremely bright light to try to temporarily blind the eye if needed. Dwardazik snaps out of the Synaptic Static effect and suggests that they try crawling: the eye is situated lower, so the shorter profile might make them invisible to it. They agree, and start moving along: it seems to work, as the eye does not blast at them.   Dazki sees a tunnel leading out from the central chamber, and Theran sees a table closer to the eye, with some suspicious-looking items on it. There is also a walled-off section where prisoners were likely kept. Dwardazik tries the tunnel, seeing that it leads to another room... with a chain passing right through it, from one orange portal to another. The eye tries to blast at Dazki, but he evades the blinding shot.   Dwardazik attacks at the chain, but before he does, he sees the dwarven word for "STRENGTH" inscribed on the chain. He proceeds to attack it, damaging it. Theran tries to distract / blind the eye with a "Stardust Pew-Pew" spell, striking true on it. Dazki rushes towards the table with the dagger. The eye tries to zap Theran again, but it cannot remotely hit him because of the "Stardust Pew-Pew" spell.   Dwardazik finishes breaking the chain; as he does, one of the chains holding the eye open in the other room goes limp and falls to the ground. He goes further into the pipe, sees the next room, and informs Dazki of what he sees as Marvin joins. Dazki moves closer to the table, and Theran distracts the eye further by popping out the other side of his cover, taking a shot of the eye's lightning beam.   Dazki finally reaches the table, examining the dagger more closely: the hilt is uninteresting, but the blade is partially clear like a silvered glass... "almost fractalesque". He knocks over the table and takes cover from the eye.   Theran pulls the one land mine that he knows about out of the ground. Its pressure sensor activates as he does so, meaning that it will explode if the switch is released. Meanwhile, Dazki decides to make a break for it, throwing caution to the wind. The eye tries to zap him, but the beam (Dexterity Save 30) bounces off of the cloak that he got from Baxton, reflecting back at the eye and blinding it for long enough that he and Theran can escape.   Before Theran goes back, he uses an "Imaginary Fil'Amon" spell to have the land mine float towards the eye — triggering switch still depressed — until he gets far enough away, going into the tunnel that Dwardazik and Marvin found, at which point the mine explodes on its own.

Shark Weakness

The chamber at the other end of the pipe has a second chain at the other end connected with fibrous bridges over a lake of some sort of liquid. Sharks swim around in the lake. ...and another crystal that reveals more of the "Jahdzan" / "Argon" soap opera (as Theran calls it). "Jahdzan" looks around, seemingly lost.

Oh gods, I think we're lost! I can't find the way downward... what if I can't reach her?! Oh, OH, if only I could see her one last time! Her piercing amber eyes, like the jewels from the most noble of kings' crowns: gleaming and shining bright. A sunset... a pool, in which I would gleefully swim forever. A... lantern, piercing through the darkest and most dismal pits. Dark and dismal... den! Dark and dismal den! (He writes down that last phrase in his journal.)

The ceiling is low: even when Dazki flies over to the chain staying as close to the ceiling as possible, a shark is able to jump out of the water and bite at him, causing some damage and distracting his thoughts for a time. Theran and Dwardazik follow on Theran's broom, as Dazki examines the chain. It looks intricate — and sure enough, when Dwardazik can get close enough to read it, it says "INTELLIGENCE" in Dwarven. Marvin gives moral support from across the way, as the worm talks to him to clarify that it's actually perfectly fine with the idea of getting eaten.   Dazki examines the chain, looking for a small number of the weakest links to disentangle. (Tinker's Tools 20) He finds a series of moves that he can make to amplify the stress on one or two critical links, causing them to snap and unravel the whole thing. The chain is down. Dazki flies over to another opening, which reveals another room that has another chain in it. He calls the others over, and Theran and Marvin start heading that way, Marvin getting attacked by a shark on their way over. Marvin uses a Comprehend Languages spell to read the inscription: "CHARISMA". Dazki checks out a tangled web of fishing nets on the other side, finding three strange-looking arrowheads in them. Marvin whips out his instrument to try to do something about the chain, playing a loud bagpipe song that causes the links of the chain to vibrate in resonance with his tune, fracturing and eventually shattering.   They fly back to the other side, though Theran carelessly takes a route that leads right over a shark and takes a hit from it before they can exit back into the pipe. They quickly down some healing potions to recover from the damage from the sharks, Dazki clarifies his views on Gemineye for Dwardazik (he doesn't want to kill Gemineye, he is just concerned about the level of control that it seems to have over him), and they move on.  

Booking It Across the Room

The worm talks to Marvin, impressed that the party would still try to "help out" the giant eyeball even after it was "super mean" to them. "I remember, when I infested my first host, that it was a really good idea to act like you were being helpful. That way, it would let you in deeper. Then you can get to the really juicy organs! It's easy to get into the intestines, and nose, and stuff, but that blood-brain barrier thing is a real issue if the body thinks you're trying to do bad things to it." / "That's the thing, you don't even have to compromise the immune system if the immune system thinks you're on its side! See, that's the trick. If you try to compromise it, it'll throw like a fever or something, and then you have to deal with all that, and it's really uncomfortable!"   They crawl across to where Dazki saw a portal-looking thing before, and they're mostly fine... though as soon as Theran rounds a corner, he gets blasted by a held action that the eye had from before, waves of color washing over him — pretty, until they touch his skin.   On a table next to the portal is another attempt at a map, this time of the specific chamber that they are in. Notably absent is any apparent attempt to denote the giant eyeball; rather, there is a drawing of a glittering lake, its bottom covered in a gorgeous red-and-yellow crystal. Dazki checks out the portal-looking thing: it's definitely a teleportation circle, with a pile of dirt in the middle. Dazki and Dwardazik touch it and teleport away; Marvin and Theran are more hesitant, but their earrings of message confirm that the other two are not too far away, so they touch it too. Dwardazik and Theran check out some of the books, and Dazki inspects the door. Dwardazik holds one, finding that it's a lot of gibberish. He starts thinking aloud; as he does so, everything he says automatically appears in the book. The other books are fairly dusty; occasionally, a worm crawls out from between their pages... the writing itself is in a beautiful Elven script, but it looks like whoever wrote it down doesn't actually speak Elven. (Editor's note: one of the players made an apt comparison. This writing is to Elven as "Lorem ipsum" is to Latin.)   Dazki finds the door to be unlocked, so he opens it. The strange, over-crammed library continues past this room. Dwardazik rapid-fire goes through books for about 30 seconds or so: no titles, nothing interesting on the covers. Some of them, however, have illustrations of classical paintings, but with the eyes removed ("holes in the pages where all the eyes would go"). (Investigation 20) Marvin, still augmented by his "Comprehend Languages" spell, understands a subtext of what's being communicated here: whoever would want to read this book definitely has some sort of eye fetish.   The door to the next room is also unlocked, so they enter. This time, the room holds a large vault door that takes up a majority of one of the walls. Oddly, the vault door has a metal knocker on it. Marvin, with his special eyes, spies a book with a torn-out page depicting a "leg of what could possibly be a very sexy lady". Marvin opens the book to that page, seeing a drawing of a sexy elf lady, and the rest of the book definitely seems to be full of beautiful women. He stashes the book in his pack. Theran sees a stack of papers, which he walks away from because something seems odd about it. Dwardazik sees this and pokes the stack with his war pick: the papers seem glued together. The surface begins to crack, and goo starts to spill out from it. The dwarf warns the party about this and takes a step back.   Crawling out of the stack of papers is a "strange bug-man", "wet from goo-fluid". "Arms and legs like a person would have, but clearly furry like a moth". Dwardazik shouts that they should try to do something about the light in the room.