SPHINX  SAFARI

Fun Run on April 18, 2009;  John Webster DM

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Since the right hand path proved trappish (slippery, not monks), Tarva decides to go leftward this time.  The rope gets spliced / tied together where the gargoyle sliced through it.  Tarva jumps to the first disk, then to the next disk to the left, where she encounters no problem.  Then to the central platform, which immediately starts to tilt under her weight.  With balancing and moving towards the center, she manages to stay on.  Grabbing the sculpture surrounding the staff causes it to drift apart into many, many floating daggers, some of which strike her before they reform the lattice.  Telling everyone what she'd doing at each step, Tarva reaches through the lattice and grabs the staff.  Again, the lattice disolves into daggers, and several hit her; but also the platform tilts again and she almost falls off, barely managing to hold on with one hand.  Shouting a warning to Eevra of her intentions, she brings her feet up to the edge of the platform and launches herself back towards the landing.  Eevra pulls the rope's slack in as fast as he can, and thus when Tarva slams into the wall, she is actually above the "waterline" of the lava -- even if only by 2'.  Various people help pull on the rope while Tarva uses (one-handedly) finger and toe-holds to climb up to the landing, taking some additional heat damage along the way.  

Once up, there is healing, and Tarva asks that everyone give some thought to what the lyrics carved into the floor might mean: especially in terms of helping to keep us from being surprised at a future encounter.  Nobody has any aha! moments, but we do wonder about turning everyone invisible, and also about possibly having to each of us encounter the Sphinx Queen individually, rather than as a group.  Nobody has any way of producing pure daylight, either.

When we get back to the central chamber, some people notice, and point out, that the later murals have changed: the humanoids in those panels now resemble our party much more closely.

Going through the other doors, and down the corridor behind them, we hear another voice:

            Beyond ....   find  ....  labrynith of isolation
            ITI-ANUN
            twelve deadly foes
            regard bite, avoid laughter
            here flame can be friend
            beware thirteenth
(and lots of other words that got lost)

This means that the staff we already have (in Tarva's Quiver of Ehlonna) must be ITI-ATUN.
"avoid laughter" sounds like a sonic \ voice weapon, such as perhaps a banshee.  Various people get wax and mold it into ear plugs.  We also take a few moments to let the military experts in the group coordinate us on a few simple handsignals, against the chance that we won't be able to hear each other:
    run away
    help
    healing
    go there (point)
    look there (point)
    stop
    spread out

There are three doors at the end of the corridor: two in front of us and one to our left.  We go through the left one.  Shortly thereafter, we trip a trap, and some people are cut apart by blades filling the corridor.  Taizu cannot find the mechanism.  There's a sigil on the floor of a side corridor, but looking at it doesn't seem to trigger it, so we proceed along the corridor we'd been in.  Very slowly, with Taizu checking for traps at every step.  Some of us start hearing strange whispers carried on intermittent gusts of wind:

___ feels a faint gust of wind and hears, whispered in Common:  "The Queen's eyes conceal all her lies."
___ feels a faint gust of wind and hears, whispered in Common:  "Beware the Queen's curse; the fate of death, not worse."
___ feels a faint gust of wind and hears, whispered in Common:  "Release the beast to halt its feast."
___ feels a faint gust of wind and hears, whispered in Common:  "The hour of the Sphinx has passed, but the minute of man will not last."

Taizu finds and helps us avoid some traps.  We reach another side passage, also with a (different) sigil on the floor.   Darred offers to cast Read Magic and see what he can learn about the sigils, going back to check out the previous one first.  Glendon goes partway with him, to cover him.  However, after Darred turns the corner into the side passage, the light from his lightstone disappears, and he doesn't respond to calls.  Keeping the rest of the group together, we all go back to check this out.  Taizu finds that there is a trap between the main corridor, and the spot in the side corridor where the sigil is.  He can't tell what the trap does, or how to disarm it.  Tarva postulates a pit trap, and has a rope tied to her: she plans to trigger the trap, then get Darred out while she hold it open.  Unfortuately it is a teleport trap, and she (and another piece of sheared-off rope) are sent somewhere else.  Which turns out to not be where Darred was sent.  

While Darred slowly explores the corridor he is now in, and Tarva runs to get out of the acid-fumes-filled corridor she's now in, the rest of the group wait around for a while, then decide that further exploring would be more useful.  They deliberately go into an acid-fumes-filled section of corridor, stumble their way blindly along until there's a side passage, and exit through that.  

Unseen because of the acid fumes, there is another sigil, and crossing over it begins a Keystone Kops farce.  All of the sigils are of Fear, and anyone who crosses over them must save or be affected.  Anyone thusly affected flees in fear for many rounds - but is unaffected by any other Fear sigils they cross.   Ordinary dungeon traps do still inflict damage upon them, however.  In attempting to run after and save the fear-induced members of the party, the unaffected must cross over yet other Fear sigils, and some of them are then struck with Fear also.  This could have gone on forever (or until people collapsed from too much trap damage); but somehow it all came to a stop, people recovered, and we all got back together again.

At this point, someone had the bright idea to wonder just what it was that our new staff _does_; and by extension to wonder if the golden triangles might do more than merely run the elevator.   Pulling the staff out of Tarva's quiver, and the triangles out of Eilyssandra's pack, we found that:

 the three 'false' triangles aren't magical at all;
ITI-ATUN has strong Conjuration and Healing;
Anshek: strong Transmutation, moderate Abjuration and Evocation;
Kheteru:  moderate Evocation and Conjuration;
Neteria:  moderate Divination and Abjuration;
Hrukesh:  moderate Transformation and Abjuration.

Touching the central eye cause each of the triangles to tranform into an entirely different object:
Anshek: 3' diameter very bright shield (+3, animated, blinding)
Kheteru:  sword that's on fire (+2, flaming burst, ghost touch)
Neteria:  helmet: (?true seeing?)
Hrukesh:  unfolds into saddle with wings and stirrups, floating in air (40' per round flying)


The final twists of the maze lead into a central chamber.   Tarva takes a small hand mirror, crawls forward to look around the final corner, sees the chamber with a multi-headed beast chained to a ring in the floor.  She backs up, tells everyone else.  



Tarva suggests that she try Fascinating the monster, while everyone else gets in place, in case we have to fight it (but preferably someone will find the staff and we can flee without any fighting at all).  Someone suggests that these triangle artifacts might be useful here -- especially the sword, especially given the corridor comment about "flame can be friend".  They're handed out thusly:
Anshek (shield):  Tarva
Kheteru (sword): Rowan
Neteria (helmet): Taizu
Hrukesh (saddle): Eevra

Taizu casts Improved Invisibility on Rowan, and Blur on Eevra.  Tarva casts Aid on each group member, plus Blur on herself, then starts to sing and steps out in full view.  The Hydra has moved to the extent of its chain, and is waiting for her, but becomes Fascinated by her singing.  Other people move into the room, sometimes only barely not alarming the Hydra out of its Fascination.  No sign of the staff.  Eilyssandra goes with the maze-whispered advice to "release the beast", and raises a stalagmite up through the floor, ring, and chain, breaking them.  

The Hydra attacks with all twelve heads, concentrating a lot on Tarva in front of it, but also on the two closest off to the side: Rowan and Eevra.  Several breaths -- mostly of Cold, but each head can breathe Stone once a day --  and bites (on its part) and arrows, blows, flaming strikes, and spell (on ours) later, it is dead.  But in the meantime Eevra and Taizu have been turned to stone.

Darred spots the staff up inside the hollow tube in the middle of the ceiling, uses his bat cloak to fly up there.  Getting the staff sets off a trap, and he is severely sliced getting it out and down, but does accomplish that.

A Detect Magic on ITI-ANUN shows it to have moderate Evocation.

Healing on everyone who isn't a stone statue.