Written by Jen, a player.
We first ran into the “dead level” long ago, fairly early on in
our explorations of Skull Mountain. It was incredibly scary and
intimidating, and we immediately turned back and intentionally
avoided that area for years. But we often talked and debated about
how we could get through it – and live to tell the tale. Quite
awhile ago, we asked a sage about the dead level, and we found out
that there was a constant level drain and entropy effect, so that
anyone who spends time there would have levels drained, and would
potentially age at an accelerated rate. In addition, it would eat
away at items and marks, so that it would be impossible to leave a
trail. We also found out that there were many traps further inside
it, and there was a ghost found at the end of the maze. Further
research indicated that a Globe of Invulnerability could protect
against the level drain, but we still hesitated to enter. We later
found out that it was the original location of The Device, until
prior explorers moved it with a misapplied Vanish spell – this is
actually what created the dead level. We knew we wanted to put The
Device back where it belonged, hoping it would normalize this area of
the Mountain. Plus we knew there was a massive loot haul from all
who died there. This all made us really motivated to deal with this
level of Skull Mountain, and we thought of it often through our years
of adventuring.
As we went through
the years of adventuring, we found tools and spells and henchmen that
we thought could help. Seeker had been agitating to go back for
quite awhile now, but the timing and opportunity were just never
perfect – and we knew it would need to be perfect. Recently, we
realized the best characters to cope with this all had downtime at
the same time. Seeker (a mage/thief played by Jack), Greystar (a
magic user played by Sam), Owen (a magic user played by Nick), and
Ingrid (a fighter played by Jen/me). We spent a week of real time on
planning and prep work.
Our plan became
thus: we would scry the way with spells, and use a potent scroll of
Globe of Invulnerability to protect ourselves as we traveled.
Greystar had a cube of force as back up protection, as well as
protection against the Ghost’s possession attack. Before we set
out, we conferred with a Bishop about the Ghost. Seeker researched
the idea of putting the device back with a wish. Owen used contact
other planes to gather more information, and it seemed that putting
the device back would indeed be a positive change overall.
Meanwhile, Ingrid – who has not had a lot of luck staying alive and
uninjured in the mountain – was terrified at what could happen.
Level drain and age acceleration seemed to be huge potential issues.
Ingrid sent a note to Brigid, asking for shelter if things went wrong
and she was able to make it out somehow – vowing to never set foot
in the mountain again if things went badly. Then, we finally set out
through the mountain…
We headed down
towards the fifth floor dead level, stopping just before at level
four. We staged here before going further.
Greystar cast
Divination to try to figure out the threats. This told us that the
level had – 1) a powerful undead creature, a Ghost who hates all
life and good, 2) a form of corrupted magical tech that spreads
corruption across all things, 3) a quasi elemental portal that we had
to be aware of, 4) a teleportation trap, and 5) tremendous loot, one
of which is a staff of the magi.
Owen conjured an air
elemental and asked it to map the level below us. It returned
visibly weakened, but it was able to draw a very confusing map that
did show the end of the level, and conveyed that some of the walls
move.
At the very last
moment, Seeker asked his summoner henchmen to cast “find the path”,
and then we figured out which of our PCs and henchmen would be best
to take with us so we would all fit inside the globe of
invulnerability. Then, the moment came, and we entered the dead
level.
We followed the path
while inside the globe and managed to avoid eight pit traps and
encountered three areas where the passages closed behind us. Once we
got to the stairs going down, we were outside the entropy field –
but where was the Ghost? With a limited duration on the cube of
force, we had to be super careful of when we turned it on, and made
the decision to turn it on just before we opened the door to the lost
control room – and there was the Ghost! We were able to kill him,
mostly thanks to Greystar’s new manservant, Filbert. Once we secured the
control room, we used a wish to return The Device to its original
location.
Doing this ended the
dead level’s powers, and it instantly became what looks like a
server farm, complete with roomba like cleaning robots, obviously
space elf tech, and what felt like air conditioning. We put a
feather token door between the main level and the control room which
now holds the device – at this point, only Greystar knows the
password for the feather token door. We know we need to further
secure this area as soon as we can!
We gathered the rest
of our party from the level entrance and then explored further,
looking for the storied loot haul. We headed back to an octagonal
room and come to a shiny black door. Inside is a massive, ragged
cavern full of gold and loot – we saw at least one goldbug. We
decide to explore the other areas first and come back for the
treasure later. We found two secret doors, the first one smelled of
ashes, and there is a small rift to the plane of ash – this leads
to the Ash Temple, untouched for all these years. We opened the
other door into a room with a shadowy form in a niche – then all of
a sudden, we were on the pink moon, in the western planes. Guess we
found the teleport trap! As we made our way back, we encountered
Rupert in the former dead level, protecting and maintaining The
Device, like he did before. We didn’t talk to him and quickly made
our way back to the octagonal room and into the room we left, where
we managed to disarm the teleport trap. We found another apartment
entrance behind a secret door, where we found a heat box and a
journal with a bookmark – a diary tab. We finally got back to the
treasure room and cast detect curse, setting aside the cursed items.
And we did indeed find *amazing* loot!
Now, all of us
that went on this adventure are rich, leveled up, and ready to set up
our domains!
