11 June 2022
[[Brigadesh]] goes off to find the third and final major teleportation circle, to break it.
The party goes off to find the hell hounds they heard, then to find [[Coyra]], then to find Phil and destroy the arrow.
Tal has Teekl follow the smell of [[Coyra]]. Catch up to her, being attacked by a hell hound. Kill the hell hounds. Group up. Try to decide on a direction to try to find Phil. Tal makes the connection between Phil and the [[Cult of Juiblex]], that they might be trying to control or woship such a powerful slime. Party decides to take a long rest at the Emporium. Level 1 has been fully desecrated. Take a long rest in the shop. Finish removing the curses from [[Coyra]], but she refuses to part with the dagger. Party leaves the Emporium to go find Phil. [[Camden]] knows of a melted hole in the road on Level 2. Investigate the hole and find some acid left by Phil. Tal realizes it is the same kind of acid as was in the tunnel near the Emprium. Go back to that place, test the acid on the arrow, find that it does slowly break down the arrow. Decide to gather some food and go down the stairs into the tunnels below. Istar tells a nearby guard take a message to [[Dinus]] to tell him that we’re going into the underground to destroy the arrow. Go down the stairs and reach the bottom, where it turns into a tunnel. Take a short rest at the bottom, where we find some dead guards with plate mail that [[Jaezred]] and [[Ishtar]] take. [[Coyra]] sneaks ahead to see what’s going on further ahead. Group follows behind her. Encounter another body of a dead guard. A ghost of a duergar appears and attacks the party. Defeat it. [[Coyra]] finds a Bag of Holding on the nearby corpse.
Further exploration down the tunnel finds the remains of the underground village. Instead of the village is a series of massive roots being actively grown by the goddess Delia, who is invading Vecrum. If the roots reach the fungal jungle being grown by Merkeve, the two goddesses will go to war. Return to exploring another path. Find a giant carved face on the wall of a tunnel, tentacles coming off of it to hold various races. Tal and [[Jaezred]] slide down a perfectly smooth tunnel, landing in some water which is covered in the gross slime that has been found elsewhere. The slime causes Tal to feel like he can breathe water and he is overcome with the urge to swim down to the faint purple light beneath. The water is salty, so must somehow be connected to the sea. A school of small fishes give him happy kisses (bardic inspiration). He keeps swimming down toward a giant glowing seaweed forest. [[Gammy]] also becomes affected enough to breathe water, but she doesn’t swim down. [[Coyra]] swims down towards Tal, using her Necklace of Adaptation to breathe safely. Everyone else stays on the surface and tries to get out of the water. Tal finds a big pretty house underwater, made of coral and with a giant stained glass window. It’s the tip of a giant tower, and the window features a mermaid with a trident over a volcano. The tower appears to be over 1,000 years old and perfectly preserved. Tal continues to swim deeper, looking for an entrance and finds one. [[Gammy]] and [[Coyra]] have to fight some giant eletric eels. Inside the tower is a circular staircase (meaning that the builders of it probably walked, not swam, so maybe this wasn’t originally underwater, even though it has a mermaid on it. Also has candle sconces and a big mostly-preserved tapestry depicting a girl in a beatiful purple/blue dress holding a wand to the sky with lighting and rain coming down and a meteor and a tornado). Tal finds more tapestries of the girl in the dress, one of them shows her looking into a magic portal.