Tales from the Yawning Portal: White Plume Mountain, Part 10

The previous post is here. The start of the adventure is here. The start of the campaign is here.

After the group recovered from the ghoul attack, they moved on to explore the western arm of the dungeon.

A short stair went up from the ghoul room and led to a short hall that ended at a door (location 21; I’m not sure a short stair and a door deserved their own keyed location on the map). Opening the door revealed a long room that was broken up by two five-foot wide gaps, one near the entrance and one near the exit on the far side (location 22). The walls, floor, and ceiling looked unnaturally smooth and had a silvery sheen to them. Peering into the nearest gap revealed that it was a ten-foot pit whose bottom was lined with rusty razors.

Another bizarre puzzle trap! It was soon confirmed that the floor was nearly frictionless, and that an object placed on it would slide without stopping, bouncing off the walls with no loss of momentum, until it fell into one of the pits. Naturally, Sadir the warlock’s fly spell did not work, nor did Jheronimus the gnome cleric’s dimension door. Some other means of crossing would have to be devised.

Fires the tabaxi fighter/rogue tried to bypass the nearest pit by climbing on the walls, but his claws could not find purchase on the smooth surface. His momentum propelled him past the first pit, then he slid to the floor – and kept sliding towards the far pit! He scrambled to get his rope out of his pack, and threw one end back towards the others, but it fell short. The others, meanwhile, were hurriedly getting out their own ropes. Jheronimus the gnome cleric handed one end of his to Sadir the warlock and then the brave gnome quickly leaped over the near pit, grabbed Fires’ rope, and pulled.

The tabaxi’s movement away was halted, but then he started sliding back towards the near pit and the entrance, even as Jheronimus was heading for the far pit! The gnome cast blink, which had a chance of shifting you to the ethereal plane each round and gave you some latitude as to where you reappear. Luckily he blinked out right away, and when he reappeared, he did so on the far end of the room, past both pits.

Sadir and Theodoric the fighter jumped over the first pit to and grabbed Fires to check his slide. Now they were all moving in the same direction, towards the second pit. When they were near, Wave the trident used its cube of force ability to create a bubble around them that was impervious to non-living objects – like the rusty spikes at the bottom of the hole before them. In this way they were able to safely clear the gap. Perhaps they could have also jumped, but we were concerned that it would be hard to do so while sliding on a perfectly slippery surface.

There was one final surprise awaiting the group, that they discovered as they impacted the far wall – there was no far wall! Or rather, the wall that they saw was an illusion, and the actual wall was ten feet past that. There was no trap past the illusion, so the purpose of this was lost to the adventurers.

Once everyone’s momentum had been checked, they carefully made their way to the room’s exit. Thankfully, the corridor beyond was made of normal stone.

Nope!

The 30-foot hall ended in a T-intersection, with doors at both ends. The party took the right path, which was shorter, and came to a large room with a stream flowing through it (location 23). Only the stream was like a tube of flowing water suspended in the air by no visible means! Also in the chamber were six canoes, neatly arranged in rows on either side of the door.

There were no other exits, so it seemed that the floating river was the only way forward for this branch of the dungeon. The players contemplated getting in the canoes and riding in a claustrophobic water slide to who knows what, and promptly left to try the path south.

If one were to chance a river ride, the water’s path goes in a circle that passes through another room, where a “Sir Bluto” and his band of evil knights wait to jump the group.

The PCs went down to the other side of the T-intersection and opened the door at the end. Past that portal laid a truly massive chamber that was so long only Sadir (with his 120′ darkvision) could see the other side of (location 26). The room was hard to describe, constructed in 10-foot wide tiers or rings, where each subsequent level was inside of and 10 feet below the previous one, with the entrance serving as the top level. Tiers 2-4 (counting from the PCs’ tier as #1) additionally had 10-foot tall clear glass-like barriers that kept their inhabitants penned in. For each tier was inhabited! Tier 1 was empty save for the PCs, tier 2 was filled with water and held giant crayfish, tier 3 was made to look like a sandy desert and had several giant scorpions, tier 4 also was an aquarium but for sea lions (the D&D monster that’s part lion-part fish, not real-world sealions), and stewing in tier 5 was a pair of manticores. There was also an exit on the bottom level. This was the “inverted ziggurat” of the weapon thief’s taunting poem, and it also functioned as a kind of monstrous zoo exhibit. Perhaps the animals would be friendly?

Next: perhaps not!