The Shadow Maze

While exploring Yugureda Shosaito’s island villa, the party had discovered a long tunnel beneath the house that ended with a trapdoor in the ceiling. Unfortunately, it opened into a village occupied by Yugureda’s undead pearl divers, and they took exception to the presence of uninvited visitors. The Lacedons were clawing and snapping at the party as they tried to emerge from the tiny hut over the trapdoor, as well as the large Earth Elemental that Zhustin had summoned outside to distract them. Luckily, Marie’s Freedom’s Call aura was preventing the ghouls’ bites from paralyzing anyone – for now.

Marie climbed up the ladder and stood ready for any emergency healing, but the rest of the group was quickly getting things under control. Bella maneuvered behind the ghoul that was attacking Sandoval and stabbed it in the back. Nicki then blasted it with a Scorching Ray of acid that sent it to the ground, and quickly switched targets to take out the one threatening Shinjiro with the other rays from the same spell. Zhustin added an Acid Dart of his own to one of the ghouls still standing, while his elemental pounded on a pair that it was keeping occupied outside.

Sandoval stepped forward and whirled his echoblade. The singing blade went snicker-snack in time with the music, and one of the ghouls found itself missing an arm. Sawyer joined in the deadly dance, and Suishen carved great chunks out of another. The lacedons ignored their wounds, and Bella found herself savaged by one, but it was too little, too late. Marie Channeled the power of Desna, hammering the undead with her god’s wrath while Bella slashed the head off her attacker, stabbed another through the heart, then slashed the last ghoul standing. Nicki fired off another acidic Scorching Ray, and the last lacedon crumpled to the ground.

Marie turned off her aura, and Shinjiro promptly froze up again for a few moments, until the ghoul’s paralyzing touch finally wore off. They searched the village (Zhustin’s earth elemental’s idea of “searching” a hut was to rip the roof off and knock down the walls) but found nothing but warped, decaying furniture and rotting bedclothes; the inhabitants of this village obviously hadn’t cared about human comforts for a long, long time. With no better option, they retraced their steps down the mile-long tunnel.

They emerged back into Yugureda’s sake cellar. There was another passage leading north into darkness, and Bella cautiously approached it. The walls of this dark corridor were engraved with dense patterns of arcane graffiti. A fine dust covered the stone floor, diffusing into the air when stirred by footsteps. Bella squinted: everything looked a little blurry, as if a shadowy duplicate of the corridor had been superimposed onto the passage. She shook her head, and then waved Sandoval forward to have a look. His Detect Magic revealed strong Conjuration magic on the corridor ahead, but he had no idea what it might do.

Gritting her teeth, Bella moved forward. She had her wayfinder hanging around her neck on a leather thong for a light source, and she had barely moved five feet down the passage when it was as if someone had thrown a piece of cloth over the light. It still cast a faint illumination, but it was so dim she could barely see ten, maybe fifteen feet ahead. And in the shadowy dusk, it was as if all color had been drained from the world. Bella wore one of Koya’s brightly colored scarves around her waist as a remembrance of the fallen cleric, but here, she had to hold it close to her face with her light practically touching it, to see that its hues were anything but shades of gray.

The others followed Bella into the darkness. Zhustin was bringing up the rear, and as he passed the invisible point where the light seemed to be sucked out of the universe, he caught his breath. This was somehow familiar to him, and he racked his brain for where he knew this from. Then he remembered a dusty tome that he’d read in his master’s library, one he wasn’t supposed to have touched. “I think I know where we are,” he whispered. “We’ve entered the Shadow Plane!”

Bella continued leading, checking carefully for traps, while the others followed some distance behind. The passage jogged right and left, then she came to a passage branching off to the west. Looking down it, she could barely make out a circular structure built into the corridor, like some sort of gate. The corridor she was in continued on to the north, and she could dimly see yet another branching corridor ahead. She didn’t like the look of the stone circle to the left. “Right-hand rule?” she whispered back, and the others nodded so she advanced, staying to the right any time there was a choice of paths.

Zhustin was still bringing up the rear, and he stopped when he saw the stone circle in the passage Bella had bypassed. Overcome by curiosity, he slipped down the passage to check it out. A semi-circular opening had been built into the walls of the hallway, carved with runes and writing he didn’t recognize. He could see the passage continuing on the other side, and could easily have stepped through the opening, but he held back. He had his own magical Light and he brought it close to the stone gate. Squinting, he could just make out that the stone of the gate was orange, possibly made of agate. Suddenly Zhustin became aware of the oppressive silence all around him. He could hear nothing from the rest of the party; for all he knew, they might have been whisked off somewhere, and he was now all alone in the darkness. Biting back panic, he rushed back the way they had gone, praying that they had continued following their right-hand rule through the maze.

He found them stopped at another intersection not far ahead. Ahead of them Sandoval was examining another of the stone circles. To their right, their direction of choice, a cloth curtain hung across the passage, blocking their way. Sandoval returned with his report. “It’s covered with runes,” he whispered, “but you could step through it easy enough. I did a Detect Magic, and it’s showing a faint aura of Abjuration. I brought my light up close, and it’s a violet color – I think it might be made of jasper.”

Bella still wasn’t keen on passing through one of the stone circles, and they’d already decided to stay to the right, so she moved up to the curtain. It looked to be plain white cloth, and when she reached out to brush her hand against it, it moved easily. “It’s made of silk,” she reported, and then suddenly froze. Silk. Where had she heard something about silk? “O-Sayumi’s inro!” she said suddenly, surprising everyone. “Wasn’t there something in it about silk?”

Shinjiro brought out the inro, and everyone examined it again. First there was the geisha’s poem:

I must discover

what lies within myself

to enter your place

through dark and shadowed gates, but

the reflection is not me.

“‘Dark and shadowed'!" Bella exclaimed. “If that isn’t this place, I don’t know what is!” The inro had three compartments, and they reexamined the contents of each. The first held an empty silkworm cocoon. “See – silk!” Bella said, proud that she’d made the connection. “This must be the right way!” The second compartment held two interlocking rings. It was difficult to see their colors in the shadows, but one was blue lapis lazuli and the other was yellow calcite. The final compartment held a short string of wooden beads, made from fragrant camphor wood.

Confident that they were on the right track, Bella pushed through the curtain. Beyond, the passage turned to the left, then bifurcated again. Staying right, it turned again and Bella found herself facing yet another of the stone gates. Looking closely, this one also looked to be made from orange agate, like the first they’d seen. Bella stared at the stone circle for a long time – right-hand rule would say to go forward, but it didn’t match any of the clues from the inro, and Bella had developed a deep distrust of the stone gates. “I say we go back,” she said finally, and no one disputed her decision.

They continued down the passage to the west. It continued for some ways with a couple of jogs, then they encountered another series of intersections. Staying right, they found themselves facing another stone gate; like the second one they’d seen, it was made of violet jasper, so they stopped short and retraced. After another set of turns, they found still another stone gate blocking their path. Bella examined it closely, and determined that it was green, made from jade. “It’s still not blue or yellow,” she said with disappointment. “Let’s keep trying.”

They retraced their steps again, following paths they’d bypassed before. Bella turned yet another corner, and found herself face-to-face with … herself. The passage ended with a full-length mirror on the wall. Bella stared at her shadowy reflection for a second before the reflection suddenly waved its arms in arcane gestures. Bella barely dived back around the corner before a Lightning Bolt crackled out of the mirror and exploded into the wall where she had been standing. “The reflection is not me,” she whispered, remembering O-Sayumi’s poem.

The party continued winding their way through the maze, Bella scratching an ‘X’ on the floor of each hall they’d traversed. Once again, their right-hand rule would have led them through one of the violet gates, and once again they turned away from it. Passing through an unexplored area, they found another curtain blocking their path. But this one was not made of cloth: it was a curtain of beads knotted onto lengths of strings. They’d seen similar curtains in any number of taverns (or brothels) over the years. Bella examined the beads closely; from the color and grain of the wood, she guessed that they might be made from mulberry.

“Nope, it’s not this way,” Bella declared, turning back, but Marie stopped her. “We’ve already been everywhere else,” the cleric declared, consulting her mental map of the maze. There aren’t any more passages that don’t end with one of those round stone gates. Unless you want to go through one of them, we need to keep going this way.”

“But it doesn’t match the clues in the inro!” Bella protested, but Marie shrugged. “Nothing we’ve found matches what’s in the inro,” she countered. “I say we go this way.”

Bella took a deep breath, ready to argue, but realized she didn’t have a better idea. Nothing had happened when they’d gone through the other curtain, the one made of silk – maybe the curtains were all OK. Giving in, she pushed through the beaded curtain, the soft rattling of wooden beads sounding loud among the shadows.

Around the corner from the bead curtain was a room, the first they’d encountered thus far in the maze. It was perhaps 30’ square, and empty, and Bella could barely make out another passage leading out of the opposite corner. Looking carefully for any sign of traps, she made her way across the room towards the new hallway.

As she reached the center of the room, a creature suddenly wriggled up out of the floor beneath her feet. It was a pallid worm, clattering on dozens of small legs. It’s pale flesh was semi-transparent, and she could see its internal organs seething with shadowy energies inside. In places, these shadowy innards squeezed out between the thing’s armored plates, forming long bristles of shadow-stuff. Its body ended in a gaping maw, and it struck at Bella with dripping mandibles.

Bella let out a cry of alarm as she dodged the creature’s attack, then slashed at it with her rapier. Sawyer charged into the room and the first sound of battle, and stabbed it with Suishen. The creature writhed its body in response to each blow, and both of them found themselves having to dodge the thing’s bristles as they hit. Sandoval whipped out his net and began his Dazzling Display hoping to intimidate the thing, as Nicki moved into the doorway and blasted it with a volley of Magic Missiles. Shinjiro also came into the room, but seeing the way that Bella and Sawyer were having to dodge its bristles, he was reluctant to engage with his bare hands. Instead, he flung a trio of shurikens at the beast. The last of the shurikens went into the worm’s open mouth and ripped through its guts, and it writhed in its death throes.

But before they could congratulate themselves on their quick victory, more of the Tenebrous Worms came wriggling out of the walls. Sandoval, Nicki, and Bella were unable to avoid their strikes. Shadowstuff dripped from their mandibles, and as the worms bit, their victims’ flesh instantly melted into shadows, which the worms greedily devoured, leaving behind jagged, gaping wounds. Marie heard their agonized screams from her position around the corner, and she spread her wings and flew forward, casting a Channel Divinity as soon as she was within range, hoping that she wasn’t healing the worms as well.

Sandoval and Nicki were in bad shape. Sawyer ignored the worm attacking him, and slipped away to hack at Sandoval’s assailant, hoping to give him a break to escape. Sandoval used his Jaunt Boots, but instead of fleeing, he hopped into the center of the room and began to sing, hoping that his singing would inspire his friends to kill the things before they consumed him. Nicki took a step back away from the worm that had eaten half his body (or so it felt), and unleashed a gout of Hellfire on the two coming after Bella. Bella was badly injured, too, but she stood her ground, her blades a blur around her.

Shinjiro forgot any concerns about attacking the worms as he saw his friends’ plight. He unleashed a Flurry of Blows that crushed the worm that had bitten Sandoval. But the one that had attacked Nicki now turned on him, and the monk felt his own flesh devoured by the shadowy monstrosity. Sawyer continued to hack away at the worms, his armor protecting him (for now) from their bites.

Marie looked in horror at Nicki’s grievous wounds, and cast a Cure Critical on the sorcerer. Then she moved forward, blocking one of the worms from pursuing him. She saw Bella battling a pair of worms in the center of the room, but knew the rogue loved hitting things from behind. “Over here!” she screamed, and Bella instantly saw the opportunity. As the worm drew back to strike at Marie, Bella was on it, slicing it in half with her blades.

Sandoval stepped into the gap Bella had left, blocking the worms from pursuing her and hammering them with his echoblade. Then a blinding flash filled the room. “Take that, you bastards!” Nicki screamed as the smoke from is Fireball cleared, leaving two more worms nothing but smoking husks. Shinjiro’s flying kicks sent one into the wall, and Zhustin’s Magic Missiles finished off the last.

There was surprisingly little blood for the amount of damage that had been done; the worms’ shadow acid had transformed it into shadow, too, along with flesh and bone. Marie did what healing she could, but she used the last of her Channeling abilities, and everyone began a careful inventory of their healing potions.

Once everyone was at least ambulatory, Bella continued down the corridor leading out of the room. After a few more twists, she encountered another cloth curtain. She rubbed the fabric between her fingers. “Cotton,” she declared. “This isn’t the right way.”

“Let’s go this way anyway,” Marie argued. “Like I said, we’ve been everywhere else except through those gates. And nothing happened to us the last time we went through a curtain. Well, a fabric curtain anyway.”

Bella was shaking her head. “No, O-Sayumi’s trying to tell us how to get through this with the clues in her inro. We’re just not listening.”

Zhustin took up the argument. “But we haven’t found a blue or a yellow stone gate. If her inro was leading us, that’s what we’d have found.” He thought for a moment. “Hmm… do you think violet counts as blue?”

But Bella had suddenly perked up. “Wait a minute! Blue and yellow together make green, right? That would mean we should go through the green gate!”

“Nah … I’m not buying it,” Zhustin said, and Nicki shook his head in agreement. “That seems way too convoluted. I’m with Marie – I say we keep going forward.”

The disagreement heated up. Bella kept arguing that the green gate was the safe way forward (despite her former aversion to gates of any color), but she couldn’t convince anyone else. Finally Bella sat down on the floor in disgust. “Fine!” she snorted. “If you’re so convinced that’s the right way, then somebody else can go first. I’m not getting myself killed.”

Zhustin started forward towards the curtain, but Sawyer’s meaty arm held him back. He’d been listening to the argument with growing frustration; he had no idea which way was the ‘right’ way, but he didn’t want to spend all day talking about it. With a grunt, he ripped the cotton curtain aside and stepped through.

The PCs earned 9,600 XP for the night, putting them at 297,262 XP with 315,000 required for level 13. We’ll be back at Leo’s again next week and should be back to full strength (in terms of number of players, anyway).