Scene 4: The Tower

As the party steps through the dungeon door, it is clear they are finally entering the bottom of the tower as evidenced by the stone staircase curling upwards. Candlelight illuminates a pair of doors on the next floor and reflects off scattered treasures in the basement and on the stairs. Through the broken pieces of floor, the adventurers see scattered sunlight streaming in from higher floors. Brightly colored plants grow thickly throughout the basement. A skeleton tucked in the corner is almost engulfed in plants. A spider that must have sneaked through is skittering along narrow empty paths through the plants, but a leg touches a beautiful large petal and it freezes and shrivels up.

The silver piece flips in the air, bounces off the skeleton's head, and lands on one of the bright plant's petals. It smokes a little and the edges turn black, but it remains on the petal. Alax holds the silvered frying pan close upon watching the coin turn color.

Firina does see another oversized spider in the shadows, also avoiding the plants. Hindle, Merton, and Alax stay near the entrance for now, evaluating their next moves. Leana steps towards the flowers and tries to use her knowledge of plants and the reaction of the spider to determine its identity.

Upon closer inspection, Leana determines these are actually flowering shrubs called Ginger Lady oleander, known as one of many poisonous plants imported to the area. The sap the petals release can cause enough damage to instantly kill a weak creature like a spider and would cause substantial damage to the party if multiple plants are touched.

Brickowsky peers around Leana's inspection and lets out a little cry of delight. The Ginger Lady oleanders are dangerous, but the vitriol, the poisonous sap, could be collected to make elixirs of necrotic resistance. He tried to remember how they were often harvested. Fire was definitely a no go as it would aerosolize the sap, poisoning their lungs instead. If fire wouldn't work, shouldn't its opposing element, ice, work well?

Clever use. I always forget about how handy that spell can be. :)

Leana takes water out of her canteen and flicks it over to the plant the spider touched, using her magic to direct the water onto a leaf and then freezing it. The leaf is perfectly encased in ice and falls off the plant. A thick black sap slowly oozes out from the severed plant limb as the frozen leaf cracks apart on the exposed stone floor. Even from here, the group can smell a sweet, almost sickly scent from the sap. Brickowsky looks on excitedly and exclaims, "That's the vitriol needed to make an elixir of necrotic resistance!"

Meanwhile, Hindle is trying to track a path through the plants, looking for both safe access to the stairs and avoiding dangerous plants or traps. A tingle in the back of his mind and a sharp smell of salt water invades his senses as he realizes the plants with pink petals zigzag through the foliage and make a path to the stairs! They are smaller than their brethren and the party could have a higher chance of making it through without touching a caustic petal. He looks up as well. Maybe they could build something to take them above the plants?

Brickowsky only has to crouch down a little to gather the vitriol that flows from the injured plant. As he does so, Firina and Leana discuss how to get across safely, considering Hindle's suggestions to follow the pink plants with aid of a walkway. Hindle takes the door off its hinges and disassembles it to make narrow planks for the walkway. Merton nods at Hindle's plan and says "I'll grab some more from the dungeon." Merton and Alax go to fetch barrels and the bench to add to Hindle's wood planks for the walkway.

Firina is a little surprised as Hindle starts talking to what seems like thin air. Miet, meanwhile, gives a little rebellious huff, but carefully hovers well above the plants and along the stairs to the next floor to look for treasure.

Around the skeleton, she sees loose coins scattered about its bones. In its death grip, it holds a leather book and a shiny piece of parchment pokes out of the top.

As she flies around the spiraling staircase, an alcove just out of the party's view holds a shiny lantern, a green light glows out of glass that almost looks like an eye.

She flies back down and does a finishing sweep of the basement. On the far end of the room, a shelf full of bottles and paraphernalia like they saw in the dungeon. Of note, a red and yellow potion sit on the highest level.

Hindle stops halfway up the stairs to look into the alcove with the strange lantern. The lantern itself shimmers and shines more than its metal should and a green light glows out of glass that almost looks like an eye. Merton sidles up and looks around Hindle. "Shiny. A little creepy. Are we taking it?"

Alax shrugs, not sure what fascinates Hindle so, and continues up to the next floor with the pair of doors illuminated by candlelight from sconces on each side. Firina follows, cradling the book and spell she adroitly collected on the way up. With Brickowsky finished up with gathering the vitriol, Leana and Brickowsky join Alax and Firina to wait on the second floor for now.

Miet scouts ahead of the party, not noticing anything more of interest on the way to the second floor. She sneaks a peek on the stairs up to the third floor and finds an identical pair of doors with sconces illuminating it. Another spider skitters about on the third floor and then disappears out of sight around the spiraling staircase. Miet decides to wait and returns to Hindle's side.

Brickowsky huffs and puffs up the stairs, but finally reaches the top and waits in front of the door to the next floor. Merton shakes his head and joins the others as Hindle inspects and finally telekinetically lifts the lantern to his hand. The lantern is barely in his hand when the stairs he is on give way and make a ramp straight back down to the plants! The rest of the group watch in horror as Hindle begins to slide down!

@Dhakhan Hindle, please roll an Acrobatics check, DC 15.

Hindle cries out as he slips back down the stairs turned ramp. He cradles the lamp so it does not break and holds onto it tightly, but in doing so is unable to find purchase to prevent further slipping and ends up on his back. Leana instinctively uses her thorn whip to grab Hindle!

Hindle slides faster than expected, but Leana's whip reaches out to its full extent and wraps around Hindle's ankle before he meets the same end as the skeleton from before! Leana prevents the whip from causing full harm to Hindle, but it still gives him 5 piercing damage!

@Adrasthea Please go ahead and roll Strength, DC 15, to pull Hindle back up to the second floor. With advantage if the others want to help!

Hindle dangles on the stairs turned ramp, his eyes irresistibly wandering back to the skeleton they met before and the evil foliage it is surrounded by. Leana and the group pull on the thorn whip she has produced to bring Hindle back up, but their grip begins to slip. Brickowsky uses his mind to push Hindle up a few feet at least, hoping it gives them the edge to prevent the warlock from slipping free.

Hindle feels the push, but also feels the thorn whip reaching its limits and about to break. The group's efforts have afforded a little extra time to prevent disaster. What will Hindle and the group do next?

In a moment of clarity or maybe his patron's nudging, Hindle disappears in a puff of grey smoke and appears next to the group on the floor above. Brickowsky exclaims in relief as Leana releases her thorn whip and they turn to focus on their surroundings and the lantern Hindle has acquired.

Looking over the floor they are now on, the group sees most of the floor on this level is broken and the poisonous plants can be seen below. More broken tiles on the next floor above allow sunlight to filter down, helping the plants to grow. The winding stairs they took are still stairs to the next floor up, but the set down have now become a ramp. In front of them is a set of double doors flocked by wall sconces holding candles. Merton looks it over and no traps this time at least. Not even a lock on the doors!

After a good look around, Hindle and Brickowsky focus on the strange lantern. Hindle holds it up high, giving further illumination to the gloomy corners. Scattered gold coins can be seen in some of them.

With Hindle's aid, Brickowsky is able to determine after some minutes that this is a Lantern of Revealing. The hooded lantern can burn for 6 hours on just 1 pint of oil and appears to be full right now. When unhooded, the lantern can illuminate a 30-foot radius and dimly light up an additional 30 feet out. Invisible creatures and objects are visible as long as they are within 30 feet of an unhooded lantern. The hood can be lowered to dim the light to a 5-foot radius if needed.

Leana leads the way, fearlessly opening one side of the double doors. The candlelight sconces weakly light the entrance as a large dark room opens before the group. Sunlight shines down on a single stone column exactly Merton's height with a golden apple shining on top of it. A small golden plaque is attached to the front of the column. Behind the column with the apple, stone statues of different creatures reach towards the apple, bathed in their own ray of sunlight.

To the left is a statue of a tall regal human man, a crown upon his head and an outstretched palm almost like he is offering a hand. Directly behind the column is a statue of a large beholder with nine eye stalks dancing around its head, the final tenth empty stalk reaching towards the column. To the right is a statue of a 3-foot tall fairy with wings almost as big as her; she is laughing and cups both hands up and out to the column.

Brickowsky leans around the tall druid Leana and looks about the room, now noting the sunlit statues and column with the apple. He is drawn in by the golden plaque and reads it aloud for all to hear.

"To The Most Beautiful"

He looks back at the statues and amuses himself with his own thoughts. As he lets his thoughts wander, his wizardly intuition, combined with his darkvision, kicks in as he continues to peer around the room. Faded frescoes lie behind each statue. Behind the human statue is a faded owl. Behind the beholder statue is a faded dove. Behind the fairy statue is a faded peacock.

With almost otherworldly knowledge, he also notices a tuft of blue-black fur near the beholder statue.

Firina moves forward to comfort Alax as the others putter about the statues. The dragonborn only sobs harder.

As Hindle steps back from the golden apple, having second thoughts about grabbing it like he did the lantern, he mumbles to himself and ponders the situation. At least nothing invisible is showing up with his lantern currently.

Leana looks about trying to find tracks in the dust of the floor. With her strong tracking skills, she does find feline paw prints that circle about and seemingly under the beholder statue, but then vanish into thin air, much like when she was following the tracks at Inn Plain Sight. There are no paw prints leading to or from the statue. There also appear to be a set of footprints in the same area that does not belong to any of them, but similarly disappear like the paw prints into thin air.

Brickowsky takes this time to ponder their situation and what could have happened to Pouncy. It would certainly be no problem to leave this strange room and continue up the tower as the steps up were unchanged after Hindle removed the lantern. There is definitely another floor up as indicated by the sunlight that came through the broken floor tiles. The only way out appears to be the way they came in and the door is still wide open for them to leave. It does appear though that Pouncy's last location was in this room as evidenced from the fur and Leana's investigation.

The dwarf's head hurts a bit from the disjointed situation and cannot see much of a connection at this point. However, his arcane knowledge does remind him of stories he has heard of these birds being associated with goddesses of myth. The goddesses each commanded the poor human to give them a golden apple he held, but the wizard cannot quite remember who he gave it to. The owl usually is associated with wisdom, the peacock with royalty, and the dove with love.

Fortune favors the bold! The wizard decides to use his mage hand to remove the apple from the column. Nothing appears to happen. He then moves the golden apple over to the beholder statue! He carefully touches the apple to the statue and removes it, but nothing happens. He hovers the apple in front of its eye and considers dropping the apple on top of its large head as nothing continues to happen. Finally, he decides to throw caution to the wind and carefully places the golden apple in the empty stalk of the beholder.

Almost instantaneously, the stone skin of the beholder cracks and falls to the ground. The other statues also crumble to dust.

A living purple beholder now emerges from its stone shell, still cradling the golden apple in its final stalk. Its large eye roves around looking at the room's inhabitants and a hungry look almost gleams in its eye. As Firina moves to prepare herself for what has happened, the beholder's eye stops upon the revealed dragonborn. Faster than anyone can react, the beholder zooms past everyone and pounces at Alax! Alax puts claws up in surprise, but cannot react in time! A big pink tongue comes out and licks their face! The beholder then bounces a little from side to side, staring at Alax who only stares back in shock, almost dropping the precious silvered frying pan.

After keeping Brickowsky from walking onto a trap, Leana takes a closer look at the unusual lines on the floor. She first considers this might be the results of a monster messing with the flooring, but it is not spider webs or claw marks. It is instead straight lines perpendicular to the stone and grout. With a gentle push, she finds the lines are the outlines of a trap door that has not been secured. Looking underneath, the trap door would have the person fall through a hole in the ground below and then to the deadly plants on the bottom level of the tower!

The wolf spider's move forward is more than enough for Brickowsky's mage hand to nip the potion and bring it back to the dwarf with the spider none the wiser. As the potion bottle settles in his hand, he disturbingly sees an eyeball floating in the yellow liquid. Its brown iris swirls about and settles itself to look directly at the wizard. Leana and Hindle silently watch the potion bottle be whisked away, but stay focused on the wolf spider to prevent suspicion.

Brickowsky waddles around the wolf spider up the stairs and see they end at the top of the room and tower. All he sees is the underside of the main tower roof with its many beams and supports. Lots of webs and dust coat the beams. He looks down between them at Leana, Hindle, and the wolf spider below. He then looks at Alax, Pouncy, Merton, and Firina standing to the side, watching the scene.

Hindle looks about at the key, the glowing orb, and all that is interesting to him in the room, but he finally focuses on keeping the lantern on the wolf spider to keep it visible and bids his adieus as he follows behind Brickowsky. The wolf spider gives what could be considered a small bow and it scuttles back into its hidey-hole. It does not even seem to be bothered that the potion bottle is gone and just focuses on grooming its fangs.

Leana also bids adieu and follows after the boys in moving away from the wolf spider, half bowing back in return. She moves to the locked double doors. They are a large set of wooden double doors flocked by candle sconces, dominating the wall opposite the window. The large metal lock glints in the sunlight from the setting sun through the window.

With practiced ease, Leana flexes her fingers and takes out the water bottle to freeze a lock blocking her way once more. Hindle, seeing nothing more of interest, heads back down the stairs and carefully makes his way to the double doors, beckoning the others forward carefully. As the lock bursts and its pieces fall to the ground, Hindle uses his telekinesis to grab the strangely placed key and prepares for what comes next.