As we walked down the stairs to the third basement level, we could already hear some booming sound ahead of us. A door stood in the way.
"Is that... an explosion on the other side of the door?" Imoen asked.
Indeed it was. The connecting room had a fireball going of every few seconds, as well as doors that led in three other paths.
The fireball exploded just above treasure on the ground, left unharmed by the fireball. The remains of the charred adventurers was not so fortunate.
Between the booming fireballs, I counted out aloud, "One-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand, five-thousand, six-thousand, seven-thousand, eight thousand-"
Boom.
Again. "One-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand, five-thousand, six-thousand, seven-thousand, eight thousand-"
Boom.
Once more to be sure. "One-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand, five-thousand, six-thousand, seven-thousand, eight thousand-"
Boom.
"Eight seconds. As long as we go down one by one, so that we don't get in each other's way, it's safe to travel through," I concluded. "Relatively speaking."
However, we sent Imoen, Invisible, to first scout and undo traps. She wore the Boots of Speed just to be safe.
Eventually we hear the familiar, "Heya, it's me, Imoen."
Imoen had quite a bit to report back. There were indeed three ways to go past. Seems like we only need to do one.
-The western path had a skeleton of a huge dragon. In it is a skeleton dressed as a servant, a couple of statues and REALLY nasty looking wyverns.
-The middle path has a LOT of skeleton archers on suspended walkways, armed with bows with speciality arrows. Imoen has already dismantled the traps here.
-The eastern path is a maze with Greater Ghouls, the highest-ranking variation of ghouls, and whispers of something even more nasty. Imoen dismantled the traps here too.
---
"So which one are we going to clear?" Jaheira asked me.
"Naturally, we are going to clear all three," I said with a big shit-eating grin.
"Naturally," Jaheira grumbled under her breath.
I held up a hand, still grinning widely. "I promise none of us will come to harm."
---
One by one through the fireball room, we went for the room with the statues and wyverns first.
The skeleton in servant's clothes here didn't attack us, had no weapon in the first place. Upon seeing us, it bowed. "Greetings, adventurers. So many of you have come down to loot the ancient basements of Durlag, yet none ever return. Adventurers are not known for their wisdom. Otherwise they'd have chosen a safer profession. Take the five people that stand behind me, forever frozen in stone. Each one of these foolish men and women came to find Durlag's treasure. Now they stand vigil over Durlag's bestiary. Most of the other creatures have long disintegrated to dust, but he great wyrm known as Mechezarin still hangs in its original repose of death. Breathtaking, isn't he?"
Right, there is a huge skeleton of a giant wyrm all around this room. Mechezarin, eh? Haven't heard of the name before. Must be a game-only dragon.
"If you travel further into the room, you will find the only living creatures that remain within the bestiary. These winged beasts have lived for centuries, augmented by ancient and powerful magics. None so far have been able to defeat them. However, if you wish to defeat the terrible beasts, there is help available to you. Each of the statues behind me houses the cursed body of some poor hero. By depressing the button at the base of each statue, you will release the ancient hero. The hero is enspelled to serve you for a short time, but after that time has run out, he'll take his revenge on he who dared command him. There's nothing more for me to say. Goodbye now."
And the skeleton servant whisked away.
---
The ancient beasts augmented by ancient and powerful magics were three Greater Wyverns. Greater Wyverns had 94 hit points, AC-5, 35% magic resistance and great saves. They also had an amazing ThacO -1 and a strength of 25, which meant they do +14 damage per hit! No wonder nobody had been able to defeat such terrible beasts, these Greater Wyverns had been supped up to uber powerful levels!
---
"So the warriors that we free via the statues will turn on us eventually? That's troubling," Jaheira said, "I feel like there's some sort of puzzle here."
"Oh, I get it! We should only activate as many as we need to defeat the enhanced beasts!" Neera said. "That way we have fewer of the ancient heroes to fight after."
"Eh, no. We're going to activate them all," I said, then proceeded to activate each statue quickly, "Neera, I'll need each a Haste spell as soon as they're ready."
"What?" Neera sputtered, "But I thought…"
The five warriors started to stir. We were now on the clock.
"Now, Neera!" I barked even as each warrior came forward to announce themselves.
Neera enchanted all of us, our party and ancient warriors both, with Haste.
I pointed forward, "Everybody move! Stay behind the meat shields and strike the beasts from the back. We don't have time to discuss!"
With their high saving throws, AC and Thac0, the enhanced Greater Wyverns would have been an incredibly rough affair had we decided to tackle them ourselves. Having the five warriors backing us up however made it a piece of cake. Soon enough, all three enhanced greater wyverns lay at our feet and we were none the worse for wear. Our five helpers were pretty battered, but lived still.
"Now we're going to have to face all of these powerful warriors ourselves. So then, how now oh omnipresent authority figure?" Jaheira asked.
"They're still under our control right now. And conveniently enough, there's a room spamming fireballs next door," I smiled.
As one, the rest of the party face-palmed as our former helpers marched their way into the fireball room. I shut the door behind them to shut off the sounds of screaming.
---
We were now past the first of three major challenges, unscathed. We could skip the room with the skeleton archers and the room with the greater ghouls, but I wanted the loot from both.
I directed the party to focus on the room with the skeletons first.
"I've already deactivated the traps in both rooms," Imoen explained. "Now it's just a matter of clearing all these skeletons on the suspended walkways."
"Well done. With the traps out of the way, skeletons aren't so tough. 17 of them with enchanted arrows could be messy, but I'm sure we are up to the challenge," Jaheira said.
"You're not wrong. But I did promise that none of us would come to harm," I said, "Neera, cast invisibility on Branwen."
Once invisible, I couldn't see Branwen's scowling face. I could still hear her mutter and complain about how Tempus wouldn't approve of our methods as she marched out towards the room filled with skeletons.
It didn't matter what speciality arrows these skeletons carried. Regular skeletons are low-level enough for Branwen to outright destroy instead of turn at her level. It could take a few tries, but the Invisibility spell lasts for hours.
---
After the arduous task of looting 17 skeletons of their precious magical arrows, the party had one room left to consider.
I had gone into the room myself, pretending to scout it out. Then I came back to the party.
"There's more than just greater ghouls there. Signs of something invisible. I think we're dealing with Ashirukuru," I told them.
"Gesundheit," Neera said to me.
I glared at her. Who the hell in Forgotten Realms understands Gesundheit?
"Ashirukuru are unusual creatures I read about under back in Candlekeep. Not strong, but they can turn invisible every few seconds. They're also proficient at backstabbing people where it hurts most," I explained.
The whole party's face turned grim. Seeing how effective I was at catching opponent unaware with my staff, none of them wanted to be on the receiving end of a blade in the back!
"Okay, the Greater Ghouls are threatening but manageable with ranged fire if we attract them one by one," Jaheira said, "What about those Ashirukusu-"
"Ashirukuru."
"Ashirukuru, whatever. What will we do about them?"
"Wait until you hear this one," Sonny said with a big grin, "Neera…"
"Oh, WHAT now?" Neera shouted, startling everyone. Seeing everyone's reaction, Neera composed herself. "…sorry, just, every one of these cheesy tactics seemed to involve me somehow. I feel kind of, well, used."
"Oh. Sorry about that," I apologized while scratching the back of his head nervously, "Though to be honest, this next solution will definitely make you feel like you're being used. Sorry again."
Neera squatted low to the ground and groaned with her face buried in her hands.
Jaheira lifted up a finger as if she wanted to say something, but thought better of it and put her hand down again, grinning.
After a moment Neera stood back up and looked me straight in the eye. "Fine, let's just get this over with. What is it this time?"
---
"Oh, what the hell!" Neera screeched as an Ashurururu's short sword plunged into her seemingly out of nowhere.
Or she would have screamed, if she had a mouth. Or a throat. Or vocal chords. In the form of a mustard jelly, said form courtesy of the "Polymorph Self" spell, Neera currently lacked any discernible organs. Which meant no organs to stab and hence had complete immunity to piercing weapons. That included piercing weapons such as the Ashukunununu's shortsword. No amount of backstab multipliers was going to beat complete immunity to piercing damage.
Wraithform would have worked just fine too, but Neera had only memorise that spell once and it was already used for the Dwarven Doom Guards earlier. The level 3 slots had quite a lot of good spells compared to level 4. Besides, the Mustard Jelly form was also great for tanking all the Greater Ghouls in the area since it was immune to their damage and the magic immunity blocked their effects.
"Kill it, kill it!" Neera tried to say, in vain, as the Ashiririri's strike passed through her harmlessly. The damnable spectres blinked in and out of sight so quickly that Neera couldn't actually strike it back in her current form.
Thankfully, though she wasn't fast enough, someone else hiding in the shadows was. Ashurishiru only had 30hp, so I could one-tap the spectres with a backstab. I had drunk a potion of Hill Giant's Strength to make sure of that. I then motioned for the rest of the party to join them even as Neera resumed her natural half-elf form.
"And that's all three Ashirukus. Ashirukuku. Ashir... Point is, we're done. All three rooms cleared, nobody injured," I said, puffing my chest out in pride. "We only used a Haste spell, two Invisibility spells, and one Polymorph Self. I'd say that's pretty efficient use of resources... eep."
I shut up because Neera was giving me a death stare. If glares could kill, I'd be a puddle of steaming sludge now.
Jaheira scratched her chin. "Well, about that. Polymorph Self is a level 4 Wizard spell, correct?"
"That's correct," I confirmed on behalf of Neera who was still fuming, "Why are you bringing this up?"
"So if we were looking for counters to piercing damage, why didn't we use one of Branwen's Skeleton Warriors?" Jaheira mused, "Animate Dead is only a level 3 Cleric spell, and it lasts for 8 hours. Skeleton Warriors only takes half damage from piercing, which is plenty for surviving a hit from all three Ashi-whatevers. Immune to disease and hold too, so it could have helped with the Greater Ghouls. We had just used that tactic with the warders so I was wondering why we didn't use it here."
The more important implication being that they didn't need to subject Neera to being jump-scared by horrible stab-happy ghosts.
I gave a nervous side-glance to Neera, whose pink hair was turning a shade of blood red. "Oh. Uh… that's… a good point. Well," I gulped, "…I forgot."
Neera rolled up the sleeves of her robes and cracked her knuckles.
"Anyway, we're done with the three challenges! Onward ho!" I said quickly, pointing forwards.