[Mazes & Minotaurs Actual Play] Colonists & Chimeras! Session #14

Previous installments: Session #1, Session #2, Session #3, Session #4, Session #5, Session #6, Session #7, Session #8, Session #9, Session #10, Session #11, Session #12, Session #13

Porphyra the Lyrist

Buff the Warrior

Meteora the Amazon

Romulus the semi-domesticated (at best) wolf of Porphyra

Henchmen: 2 Greek and 4 Phoenician warriors

& Donkey the donkey

Meteora finally caught up with the party. By now, the Amazon is unrecognizable as her previous self: her uncanny regenerative abilities and carousing with a Dionysian thiasus turned her into a monstrous thing with peacock feathers, scales and now even donkey ears...

But at least she was around, reinforcing the party with some much-needed fighting power.

(I'm very busy with work & life, so this report will be presented in bullet points)

• The adventurers explored a small ruined building next to the mine's entrance. They found a staircase that led to a terrace cut into the rocky mountain-slope above the building. The edge of the terrace was lined with cyclops skulls... From the terrace, they also noticed some irregularities in the pavement of the room beneath them, and found a basement: six silver bars were their reward!
• Next they moved into the mine. They put Buff and a Greek warrior in the first row, to form a shield wall, then Meteora and Porphyra, then Romulus, the donkey, and the rest of the warriors. And the squad carefully moved deeper. They arrived into a big chamber first, with lots of side passages.
• The side passages were mostly dead-ends. Some bones were in one of them, and Buff theorized that this place might be used as a burial ground for the cyclops people.
• A couple of the passages had some more branching tunnels, but eventually the party settled on exploring a tunnel that had a slight upward slant. Porphyra used her last oracular question, and this ensured them that taking that tunnel would eventually take them inside the volcano's caldera.
• The journey was long. The tunnel felt almost infinite, going deeper and deeper into the mountain. The walls sparkled with silver veins. The adventurers lost track of time. They could only rely on their oil lamps to measure time. They were also very exhausted from tracking through the badlands the night before.
• In one place in the passage, they were in for a nasty surprise. The veins of silver on the ceiling started moving, and then coagulated into drops, and silver rain came falling down on the party. Some were hit by the seering liquid silver.
• After the "rain", they decided to rest, saying that as the drops had already fallen, this place was now relatively more "safe". They extinguished all their lights, and set watches.
• During one of the watches, they heard something moving in their direction from ahead. They lit a lamp, and Buff and one Greek warrior formed a shield wall and charged ahead --- only to be met by the countercharge of a huge minotaur, made up entirely of the liquid silver!
• A tough fight ensued in the narrow confines of the tunnel. Buff and the Warrior held their ground, and eventually Meteora managed to jump over their heads, and land behind the minotaur (she gained superhuman jumping and hopping powers back in the village of the frog people). The minotaur had regenerative powers, but was eventually defeated, and the remaining pools of liquid silver dispersed.
• Then the party finally reached the end of this tunnel, and entered a gigantic cavern, which had a great silver lake in the middle.
• A silver pillar rose from the middle of the lake, and everybody started hearing telepathic speech in their heads: "RISE, SLAVES! RISE AGAINST YOUR MASTERS! JOIN ME, IMPURE ONES, BECOME ONE WITH ME, AND I WILL PURIFY YOU!"
• Attempts to circle around the lake were blocked by silver pseudo-pods. The telepathic manifesto countinued.
• The adventurers first threw the silver bars into the lake, which seemed to please the entitty, but it continued to agitate some kind of "slaves" to rise against their masters.
• At one point, Porphyra thought about gold, and this outraged the entity.
• The adventurers caught on, that the entity is not really speaking to them, but to their metallic weapons and objects! They weren't keen on throwing those into the lake, so they took another way, and dumped a golden ear-ring into the pool.
• When touched with gold, the entity got into an uncontrolled rage, and its pseudo-pods retreated, giving the party a chance to quickly run around the cavern and make it to the other side.
• There the tunnel continued, and eventually led the party out into the lush jungle inside the caldera of the volcano!

....to be continued......