The Necropolis, part II
After an extended retroactive shopping trip at Kek's Used Magic Items Emporium with hours of exciting dramatic heroic haggling over prices, the party returns to the matter at hand.
The first danger in crossing the caldera floor is that it is merely a skin of cooled rock over molten lava. At one point the ground cracks under their feet, like too-thin ice on a lake of fiery death; most of the party nimbly leaps to safety but the Cleric and Wizard would have been flambéed if not for the Ranger and Druid risking themselves to lend a little aid (they took a -2 to their roll to assist their companions with a +2). The encounter is not over, though, as half a dozen mephits bubble up from the lava and instantly get vaporized by a Cone of Cold. Now it's over.
Then fearsome Hellhounds, led by Nessian monsters, charge out of the smoke and ash, only to die horribly on the Druid's Stone Spikes and a few arrows from the Ranger.
It is beginning to look too easy, until they reach the center of the caldera and the black pit that leads below. Here they face a real threat: more and bigger fire elementals. This time, at least, the entire party has had the foresight to shield themselves against energy attacks; but this relative safety seems to have addled their thinking, as they engage in a brutal melee match without so much as a semblance of a battle-line. The elementals rage back and forth through the party, smashing the Wizard to a single hit-point, surrounding the Barbarian and pummeling him to 2 hps, and forcing the Ranger to stage a desperate retreat that sees him evade not one but two fatal blows. The Bard runs out of images and is suddenly smashed into paste, saved only by the heroic and instant action of the Cleric. All of this from mere blunt damage; had they been unprotected from fire, there would be nothing left of the party but ash.
Nonetheless, they prevail, by the skin of the Druid-Bear's claws; and soon descend from the caustic caldera floor to the central shaft at the center, to peer down at a pool of lava a hundred feet below and a tiny ledge only fifty feet down. A few spells and magic items to make the climb safe, and they perch on the ledge. Here, at the entrance to the next layer, between a mysterious tunnel and a pit of boiling lava, they finally feel safe to retreat to the Wizard's Rope Trick pocket dimension.
Now rested, recuperated, and respelled, they enter the tunnel, where the air is cool, completely dark, and, oddly, silenced. The darkness is no issue, as the party still has their goggles from the vampire city; but the enforced silence means every time they want to cast a spell, some else has to cast Dispel Magic to give them one round of verbal components.
How do they overcome such a handicap? Super easy, barely an inconvenience. The party proceeds to simply negate the next encounters through absurd powers.
The pit trap with a Black Ooze at the bottom? The Druid plugs the pit with a stone cover, and everyone simply walks across. A gauntlet of mephits casting area-attack spells while protected by stone mantlets? The Ranger strolls through, immune to their damage due to improved evasion and a ridiculous Reflex save, and casually murders them all with arrows. A huge weapon-destroying ooze drops from the ceiling? The Druid-Bear tears it into confetti with barely a scratch.
Will this lull the party into another false sense of security? Or will the feared Earth layer of the Necropolis Defense System prove to be merely a walk in the dirt?
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