We cornered her and convinced her to drop her weapons. She introduced herself as Harria Valashtar and demanded to know why we had attacked her associates. She also told us she needed to avoid both the Xanathar and the Zhentarim. We let her go with minimal supplies and took a moment to rest. The next room was full of dead bodies and spiders. One body had been dead for at least ten days, and it had two fang marks on its legs. In a side corridor, we found a closet full of skulls, and in a hidden room at the end of the corridor was a copper helmet and a throne.
Toshi put on the helmet and sat on the throne. A small trap door opened in the ceiling, and a magical wand fell to the floor. The wand had a symbol for divination magic carved into it. We backtracked to the hall with the dead spiders and found a floating pool of acid above a statue holding a box with a keyhole. Duelo used the key he found earlier, and it clicked open. Inside were sheets of lead and a small pillow with a small, unmoving heart. I had Nix put it in our Bag of Holding.
Duelo tried to remove the box, but it was stuck. When he tried to break the statue’s arm, the statue came to life and attacked. After we killed it, we proceeded back to the main corridor and found a goblin named Pibble trying to wrench an axe free of a wooden door. We freed the axe for him, but he wouldn’t give us any coin. He told us there was a goblin bazaar on the floor below and two Xanathar outposts on this floor. He also refused to join us on our journey to Skullport.
Duelo found a room with a broken sharpening wheel, and we moved on to a set of large doors with a protection rune. Toshi opened the doors, and we were immediately attacked by three manticores. After a long fight, we defeated them. Duelo found several valuable items in their nests. We moved down a hallway and found and killed a troll. We found another room full of putrid meat that Toshi realized was magical. Duelo thought someone was conjuring the food to keep the troll and manticores fed. At the end of the hall, we found a dead dwarf woman and then returned to the main room. We went through a set of doors and found a dead basilisk. We noticed a magical orb in its claw and the sound of creatures from inside its body. Duelo quickly snatched the orb, and two huge centipedes emerged from the body, which we quickly dispatched.
We put the orb in our Bag of Holding and walked around the corner to find a number of petrified beings, which we assumed were the work of the basilisk. We found a crown on a female elf and handed it to Nix, who placed it on a nearby obsidian statue. The obsidian cracked and revealed an ooze creature, which we killed. Nix retrieved the crown, and we rested.
We then backtracked to the room with all the pillars and found several niches with mirrors. We also saw some writing on the wall in Thieves’ Cant that read, “Warg’s Eye Watch Post.” We went down a hallway and found several magical mirrors. Sekhmet, my new Sphinx of Wonder, went through the first one and found a non-magical mask behind it. We tried the mask on Nix, but nothing happened. Toshi stepped between two of the mirrors, and two figures resembling him emerged and attacked. We defeated them and shattered the mirrors to avoid any more attacks.
We moved down the hall and were attacked by a large number of goblins and bugbears associated with the Xanathar.