The Second Level of Carceri: The Shadowed Labrynith
The party slowly woke up in the next level of Carceri. Or at least, the backup versions of themselves in the amulets they had made did. Everyone, or at least everyone's backup, experienced a weird shift where there was a version of themselves manually piloting their? body. Cribbins-main had given his amulet to Joey Malone, so Cribbins-alt found himself running Joey instead of Cribbin-main's body. After a little bit of time to sort themselves out the group began to work their way through the puzzle-filled labrynith that composed the second level.
As they wound their way through the maze, they encountered multiple groups and kinds of undead- skeletons, demiliches, vampires, vampire spawn, etc. In the center of the labrynith they also found a massive circular chamber filled with endlessly spawning shadows with some kind of locked chamber in the middle.
In the bottom of the southeastt quadrant of the labrynith, the party discovered Visrigoth the Demilich Swarm. He revealed to them that in order to progress through the levels off Carceri they would need to steal some key piece of knowledge from each master of a quadrant to unlock the central chamber. The other masters were an insane, bloodthirsty angel, some kind of fey-dragon, and Ronald Whizzifer I . After the party attempted to talk Visrigoth into destroying himself in a fit of paranoia, the demilich swarm geared up to attack before the party beat him to the punch. After a drawn-out fight, Visrigoth was defeated.
The party decided to return to a wizard Argent had found trapped and bound in one of the chambers of the labrynith. Upon freeing him and helping him find his Agar elemental/backteria colony/memory expansion companion, the wizard revealed that he was Ronald Whizzifer I, former Grand Archmagus of Candlekeep. He had voluntarily travelled to Carceri to go exploring and gotten stuck on the second floor. He also explained that the secret of each quardrant could be seen by looking at the collection of chambers from above. The chambers of his quadrant formed the image of a sunflower, while Visigoth's formed a skull. He also agreed to travel with the party in the hopes of eventual escape from the bottom of Labrynthia.
Together with Whizz, the party went to the southwest quadrant and battled a bloodthirsty fallen angel. They also met Leep E. Colin an aggravating magical construct with the ability to cast only "nonharmful" spells. He did his best to hinder the party in the battle against the angel. While a combination of Eden's Path to the Grave channel Divinity and Cribbin's gun did an even fuck-ton of damage to the angel, the rest of the fight dragged out, causing the party to take a long rest at the end of the fight. There was a particularly persistent Ice Devil by the name of Kythrax the Soup Master who swore to turn Larkspur into a soup before being killed. In a fit of tired, spiteful pettiness, Larkspur activiely deleted the name of the devil from their memory. The party also found that this quadrant of the maze was shaped like a warrior.
Getting the hang of this now, the party quickly explored the final quadrant working their way through draconic puzzles and racing past a warped draconoid to reach the central chamber where they found a hag-dragon. The dragon's wings were a mass of tentacles that were connected to a coven of hag-husks that the dragon had drained the mental and life energy from. But the dragon's physical shape seemed older that the dragon's mind was and it seemed to be in constant pain as it asked like a child if the party was new friends. Larkspur, being a sucker for children in need of parents, decided to take a risk. They talked the hag-dragon into letting them try to help although it might temporarily cause more pain. The dragon agreed and allowed Larkspur to step through the ring of hags. Touching the hag-dragon revealed that contact cause the other person to age at a faster rate; the main body moreso than the tentacles.
But Larkspur summoned the time-knife and plunged it into the dragon in a fast smooth motion, trying to use the blade to stabilize the dragon's own warped time field. After three rounds of combat where the rest of the hags were killed Larkspur aged 100 years and Joey 15, Larkspur snapped the blade of the knife off in the dragon, causing a pulse of light to ripple through the dragon and all the tentacles to detach. Digging through the tentacles revealed the sleeping form of a child.
After a short rest the party continued on their way, using the images from the four quadrants to unlock the elevator down. Due to the aging process, Joey developed IBS and Larkspurs left leg was damaged, limiting their speed. As they descended they saw countless mazes spread out across the layer, to contain everyone who tried to usurp the gods. As they descended, data Larkspur sunk into meditation to visit Larkspur's subconcious. They followed wires from the control station back into a room of endlessly turning cogs. Wandering around in there is a battered duplicate of the original Larkspur who occassionaly wedges themself into the gears to adjust their turning, slowly sustaining more damage in the process. While there, data-Larkspur spotted a child running around and recognized the dragon they'd just freed. The dragon seemed just as confused about how they got their as data-Larkspur. Data-Larkspur began to guide them out and offered to give them a new name if they gave data-Larkspur a name. Thus Cedatatu was named for "hidden star" and Linnea was named for a twinned flower. On their way out, Linnea spotted two doors: one shaped like an eye looking away, and another wooden one hidden away behind cogs. They decided not to investigate with a child present and continued back towards the conciouss, where Ceda disappeared.
Cribbins-prime, in the meantime, was chilling in a subconsious that looked like a palace when Ceda wandered. He immediately yelled and tried to punt the child only to miss full Charlie Brown style. In the ensuing conversation Cribbins realized that 1) he had no idea who was politing his body and 2) this wasn't what his subconsious actually looked like. When Cribbins, with Ceda's help, managed to break into his concious mind, he found a spider-robot version of himself running the show with scary detachment.
The camera snapped back to the outside and the party watched with some alarm as Cribbins spouted off an alphanumeric code then said rebooting. Before the party could really dig into what was going on, an Inevitable phased into the elevator. Linnea promptly charged that one, attempting to jumpy from Larkspur's body into it while letter the warforged asorb the metal of the angel construct.
Thus Eden was the one to spot the second Inevitable phasing through the wall.
Linnea successfully made the jump with Cribbins providing support/mind control as they raided the internal memory banks of the Inevitable. Unbeknownst to them, they picked up a Trojan Horse attack along the way before they returned to Larkspur's body. In the interim, the rest of the party dealt with the other Inevitable; the two were successfully dealt with before the elevator stopped moving and the doors opened. Beyond the doors, the party spotted four Marut and a floating Observer Warden guarding the gate down to the next level. Linnea failed to sneak up on them and the Marut went on alert, summon hordes of mono-, duo-, tri-, quad- and pentadrones in. The party realized that the gate was sealed with a six-fingered handprint that matched Cribbins's- when he placed his hand in it, the gate opened. Moving fast, the party charged through the gate, teleporting and flying to manuever while taking massive hits from the Marut.
When the made it through the data backups faded away as the actual characters retook control before passing back out in a disturbingly perfect forest scene.
