Chapter 18: Do that with your own body

General Summary

Hemlock and I ran from the dungeon, quite sure we were going to die, but after a few hours, we figured out we weren't being pursued and turned around to find out what happened to our friends. And you know what happened while we were running for our lives? Apparently, while we were gone, DaVinci and Ash were able to get the robot we needed, but while doing that somehow Alfred was now in DaVinci's body and DaVinci was in Alfred's body. I really don't understand that.
This left me trying to figure out do I call them by the name of the soul or the name of the body? For my sanity, I'm calling them by the soul in the body, rather than the body the soul is in.
Yes, it feels weird to write that out.

Alfred's story from when his soul was wandering around

When your soul is out and loose in the world, you do not necessarily keep things completely straight.
He found out someone is diverting the river of souls to him and we need to stop this guy and some warrior guy said we need to wake his brothers to stop the guy diverting the souls. But before we wake his brothers we need to clear the diverting guys or his brothers will be distracted by them.
Also, we are being way too slow figuring out what is wrong with the dungeon and how it's affecting the area.
Now that that was clear as mud, we're ready to go forward.

Town seems off

As we headed into town, we noticed everyone seemed incredibly tired. As DaVinci and Ash headed to the church with the robot for the priest (Chapter 15: Small Misunderstanding ), I spent the night talking to everyone at the inn.
Everyone has been having bad nightmares and they just don't feel rested. It's all the same, they feel like they are near running water, maybe a river, and something is being taken, but they don't know what is being taken.
No one particularly seemed talkative. As I looked out the window to the town square I realized even the flowers and the plants seem to be drooping.
After spending the night at the inn again, we don't feel particularly rested too.

Back to the dungeon

We headed down into the dungeon, and down to the third level, and decide to go through the small hallway at the back of the room, and back to where we found Thor's hammer. We passed the barricades and went through a murder hallway with crossbow bolts shooting us to the stables.
Only, these stables are clearly not housing what was originally there with the owlbears now occupying the stables. DaVinci was hit, and I being the stupid foolish rabbit that I am thought, "Oh no, my friend is in trouble, I need to go help him."
And that was a very stupid decision. I threw a laughing gas bomb causing the one owlbear in front of me causing it to fall to the ground laughing, or whatever owlbears do to laugh.
That is when the other six owlbears run forward to hit me. You know, as owlbears do. I went from completely healthy to almost dead in six seconds.
Longest six seconds of my life.
DaVinci ran forward and threw a gas cloud on the owlbears, remember he is currently in Alfred's current body, so he's a bugbear sorcerer or some such, not the cat rogue.
My life is very confusing.
But, his fog allowed me the break I needed and I ran away thinking everyone else was going to run away. However as I ran as fast as I could away from the owlbears, DaVinci ran into the stable somewhere. Ash stepped up and hit the owlbears as Hemlock threw a fire at them. Alfred threw the returning hammer at them and missed.
"Guys," DaVinci said, "It sounds like the owlbears are digging into something on the side."
I guess we are not running away, so I ran back and used a spell on the owlbear as everyone threw spells at the owlbear in the front of the room, and we slammed the door shut.

Now down the murder hall

We decided it was not a good plan to go through the stables with the flock or herd or owlbears. Instead, we'll go down this murder hallway. Ash started walking down the hall, and spears jutted up out of the floor impaling him. Alfred tried to break down the spears so we could continue down the hallway.
Meanwhile, DaVinci ran off somewhere, I have no clue where, and I yelled after him to come back and not leave the group, that was how we ended up being ambushed by a bunch of owlbears.
Alfred yelled back at him, "Do that with your own body, I want mine back."
He did come back.
I climbed past the spears and Ash stepped past them carefully checking for more traps. At this point, I dropped a healing bomb figuring we were both not in the best of shape, and needed a bit of healing.
"Hey," Ash yelled from further down the hall, "This hallway connects to the area we were exploring earlier. I'm gonna verify that."
Right after he left, the owlbear burst through the door and we can hear them continue digging through the wall next to us.
I dropped a flashbang on the owlbear and backed away. Alfred ran in and attacked it, while DaVinci ran somewhere. Ash must have booked it because he reappeared as we fought the owlbear in the doorway.
I tried to throw a bomb at it, but missed, and the owlbear hit Ash that had run in to help the squishy magic users who had run into this nonsense. Hemlock transform into a giant snake pushing Ash to the side and attacking the owlbear.
Alfred somehow ran past us all and hit the owlbear attacking DaVinci inside the stable.
At first the owlbears seemed to be winning this fight, but after a few desperate moments we gained the upper hand and the owlbears started dying and the final two ran away from us.

More undead

Now we had the opportunity to explore the stables beyond the quick glimpses we had of it from before. In the corner was a giant hole in the floor, looking down into it we could see faint flutters of movement and occasionally saw bats fly out with glowing red eyes and unusually large fangs. Above us in the ceiling was a well.
"it's the well room from the very beginning of the dungeon." DaVinci said. "I wonder if my greatsword is down there."
"Let's not go down and find out," I answered. "Remember how undead kept climbing out to attack us? We don't need to set off more."
We took a moment to rest for a short time to recoup and get our bearings back before setting off through the hallway leading out of the stables that we had not gone down before.

A new entry to the dungeon and a long tunnel

Halfway down the tunnel we found another entrance to the dungeon, but this one is from a completely different area, and is far away from the keep we first entered through. As the tunnel slowly sloped down we noticed at some point the hallway changed from a manmade wall to mostly natural walls that had been smoothed down to remove the worst of the protruding stones.
After a good half mile of hiking we found a chamber on the left with a door broken down. Inside a lone sarcophagus stood with the lid askew. The canopic jars had a waxed paper covering and we opened one to discover various grave offerings for the next life, but nothing overly unusual.
We continued down the hall to a locked door at the end of the hall. Alfred tried to pick the lock, but was unsuccessful, he triggered some form of a lightning trap. Eventually he got the door open and there were two sarcophagi in the room.
Alfred looked into the first on the right and found an unmoving automaton, as he looked into the sarcophagus on the left it started moving and I heard from down the hallway, "Die Clockwork!"
We all ran into the room, and set about slowly taking apart the gollum as it did its best to take us apart.
From the various chests and jars in the room we discovered roughly 1280 gold worth of stuff in there.

Report Date

27 Jan 2024