RECAP: 5th Avengers, 1-31-21

As we continue down the hallway, we notice the air getting stickier and warmer. Lauris, in the lead, both with his skill and the aid of the Lantern of Revealing, notices that something is not quite right ten feet ahead of him. He conjures a minor illusion of Spugnoir to saunter down the hall ahead of us, appearing beyond the lantern and triggering no effect. Lauris throws a dagger at the ground ten feet ahead, aiming at the Spugnoir illusion’s feet, also to no effect. Geth asks Spugnoir what’s going on in the hallway. Spugnoir does explain that we are in a dungeon and we are farther than he’s ever gotten, and traps are to be expected. Geth suggests in a stage whisper to Lauris that he should try to trigger the trap with Mage Hand. Lauris obliges, and the hand taps all around the area, finally triggering a spear trap from the wall, travelling through the image of Spugnoir, and continue firing. Geth asks Lauris if he can disarm the trap, and he succeeds at disarming the trap on his first attempt, then sending the illusory Spugnoir to hang out with the real one.

We proceed down the hall and Lauris encounters a door facing north. He jiggles the handle and finds it unlocked. Inside is a winch and pulley system that operates a device somewhere else. Lauris invites Geth to investigate the device, and he learns nothing new. Lauris asks Balyx to investigate and Balyx replies that someone with courage and proficiency should investigate. Lauris announces he will pull the lever. Caela and Jarry both hear a clicking sound from the hallway–it sounds like something is stuck in the mechanism. Jarry finds that the winch is related to arming and disarming the spears. Geth encourages the party to move on. Moving along to the passage to the left facing out of the room, Geth and Jarry notice that the path ahead lies more humid, but the path to the other side is hotter. Caela is not able to determine the natural origins of the humidity. Proceeding around a bend in the corridor, Lauris investigates and gets the sense that there is something else amiss ahead and attempts to check it out with Mage Hand, to no effect. Lauris advances through the corridor and is able to detect a mechanism in an irregularity in the wall. Opening the trap, he triggers some high power jets of water, somersaulting forward after the jets subside, getting the sensation of a nearby trap again. The room ahead is medium sized with an alcove on one side. This strangely shaped room has six very old beds, with clothes, armor pieces and weapons mixed with bones and fruit rinds and other litter, and it smells like wet fur. Lauris makes sure Balyx is following him and finds a trap similar to the one he disarmed right in front of him. He attempts to disarm it and neither triggers nor disarms it, and proceeds to investigate the opening at the end of one of the alcoves, which is a door. Confirming with the party, Lauris, no longer afraid of handles, opens the door, and a wet furry creature we would know to be a gnoll leaps out.

Balyx buries his longsword into the gnoll ahead of him. Caela moves to Spugnoir and shoots the gnoll with an arrow. Geth sees another door to the north and hears screaming in what sounds like Gnoll. Geth circles around to the other side of the room, finds a gnoll there, and misses with his scimitar attack. Lauris attacks the gnoll with his rapier, misses, and pats Balyx on the shoulder, explaining that he really is sorry. The one gnoll completely misses Geth with his spear, and the other sticks Lauris’s shoulder with his spear. Just as Balyx prepares to attack the gnoll, it drops dead from Jarry’s Acid Arrow. He throws the gnoll corpse onto the trap trigger, pummeling the lifeless creature’s body. Spugnoir leaps past Caela and disappears around the corner in the hallway we just came from. Caela gets a bad feeling about the hallway to her left and blindfires into it, hearing what sounds like an arrow hitting a stone wall. Geth slices the gnoll with his scimitar. Lauris goes on about something while attempting to score a blow on Geth’s gnoll with Booming Blade. Lauris eviscerates the gnoll. Jarry notices that Spugnoir is missing, and that a gnoll has come out of the hallway with a spear covered in blood and gore, and shoots it with a magic missile barrage. Balyx lays into the gnoll with his lingsword, missing both swings, and Caela shoots it with an arrow. Some water elementals come out of the hallway from the north. Balyx finishes off the gnoll. Geth can tell the elementals are not really there. He goes to touch them to dismiss the illusions but is caught in a water trap, narroly dodging a jet of water from the ceiling. Geth proceeds through the illusions and finds a fourth one, this time real, and a floating disc weapon next to it. Geth casts Thunderwave and the creature in front of him ripples but stays in place. Geth can’t tell if he hurt the elemental or not. The three illusions move to attack Lauris and absolutely pummel him, knocking him unconscious. Jarry casts Hypnotic Pattern into the room Geth just entered, charming the humanoid in the back as well as Geth, and the fountain Geth saw disappears. Jarry begins raving about how the elementals are only illusions. Balyx brings Lauris back to health with Lay on Hands and tells him that he got beat up by something that wasn’t there. He can tell that Lauris really got hurt by something but can’t find a wound for the life of him. Caela advances into the room and sees Geth and a man dressed an awful lot like a cleric staring into space. She shakes Geth out of it and calls to the rest of the party. Geth also calls to the rest of the party. When Jarry enters the room, he responds extremely positively to him and starts going on about his friend. Jarry tells him to tie himself up, and he does a pretty good job, thinking that it’s a game. He suggests that he might gag himself and tries to do so with his feet and fails. Jarry helps him finish up. In no time at all, he comes to and is visibly angry.