unaccredited exposure therapy

The heroes delve deeper into the quarry. The darkness engulfs them. They reach a hole, where there’s a 600 foot ladder. Malory tries to cartoon slide down, but realizes he would probably die, so he just dimension doors right above the freezing lake below. Nahk and the zombies power their way down the ladder while everyone else flies down.

Rho plants moss around the lake to bring some life into this inorganic abyss.

At the end of the lake, the heroes find a big empty cavern stretching a full mile from the entrance to the back wall. Malory tries to contact The Unspeakable One and gets some mixed results. Rho rolls to augur and gets a mixed success.

After sending Livius’s familiar bat for a ride on Sora’s broom, the heroes decide to head on down to the next checkpoint.

They discover another set of holes (and another phobia). When Malory drops down into the magical darkness, he hears screaming and nothing else, and is unable to hear his friends or be heard by them. He tugs on the rope to get pulled back up.

Inexplicably, the gang all decides to go down into the darkness. They lose each other for an hour and regroup in another chamber. They wander in the darkness for 11 hours. Livius makes strange excuses about his spells and spell slots, Hobbes keeps finding certain things on him, Casimir keeps leading the team the wrong way, Sora keeps acting suspicious (c’est typique), and Nahk keeps negging Malory.

When Rho discovers that there are no ways for small creatures to get into the caverns, the group starts getting suspicious and worried. They decide to take a long rest in a niche.

Four hours into their long rest, 2 hours from the point of exhaustion, Hobbes awakens to pain. Rho, the sentry cradling Malory in her arms, finds a familiar hand reaching for Malory’s spellbook. Hobbes witnesses Casimir devouring everyone’s rations (Malory, Hobbes, and Rho should now have 1 ration each). Livius is awake, ominously, behind Hobbes. And Nahk just starts talking, like he’s been awake this whole time.

Malory starts freaking out and detects illusion magic on Cas, Sora, Nahk, and Livius. He snatches Livius’s spellbook to find it completely blank. Malory abruptly casts a forcewall around them, but accidentally traps Hobbes as well, to his dismay. As three worms burrow out of Hobbes’s chest, he turns and sees Livius’s hand on his shoulder, and myriad worms burst their way out of the eyes and mouths of Casimir, Livius, and Sora; their disguise sloughs away to reveal their true nature.

Meanwhile Nahk stares at his old friend sadly and begins sobbing, a sound familiar to Rho, that led her to the room with her friends. The bugbear’s face splits open to reveal a hollow-eyed pale face. Its arms and legs long and spear-like peel back the flesh and the creature emerges like Luke spilling out of a tauntaun.

“Please don’t leave, friend,” the creature that was once Nahk pleads. It sobs and sobs as it points its spear at Hobbes, trapped within the forcefield.

Sora, Livius, Casimir, and Nahk find themselves in a dark chamber, 15 hours earlier, having wandered for an hour through the tunnels. A low growling comes from a passage on the right and a weak cry for help from a passage on the left.

Under Embara

The chewed through tunnels below the quarry

Zone 1: 4/4 islands, 0/1 engine key

Zone 2: 3/4 islands, 0/1 engine key

Zone 3: 0/5 islands, 0/1 engine key

Day 17 since the Battle on Aurochs Island

14 days to the arrival of Zulon\

Previous Episode: more like sinkhole de cuatro

Next Episode: the seer could swap itself with a hulk as a reaction so thanks a lot