The no-longer-frightened ape comes barreling back down from the north end of the room, suffused with primal rage. With a growl, the ape rearranges the relative locations of the internal organs within Glenn's abdomen. They still work all right but it's kind of disconcerting. And painful. Glenn needs to get some distance between himself and these gorillas, but how will he engineer his Ape Escape?

Silverback bloodied by Cal

:savepoint: Garrmondo 19, Puyet 14, Glenn 11, Gheth 8, Silverback 5, Cal 28, Great Apes 23

Puyet seemed to shake off the jet lag from his recent flight. In appreciation, he decided to deliver a personal message concerning his thanks. And what better way to show that appreciation than a bludgeon to the face?

Move to L13
Basic Attack.
Hit. 17 dmg.

Glenn takes the ape's charge rather unhappily. His armor seemed to have survived the blow perfectly intact, but his slightly more squishy innards hadn't enjoyed the event. Glenn tries to put a decent sized gash into the ape's abdomen before moving behind the fighter.

Clever strike vs. yellow ape hits
23 damage
shift to O15

Gheth, being a practical man, saw no reason to let a good spear go to waste.

Healing Strike on Silverback (14 Damage) w/ surge to Glenn (Surge +4)

Bleeding profusely, the silverback takes a last desperate swing at the cleric. Gheth was too busy trying to pry his spear out of the ape's ribs to deflect the blow. That gorilla had really made a monkey out of him.

Slam: 15 damage to Gheth

:savepoint: Cal 28, Great Apes 23, Garrmondo 19, Puyet 14, Glenn 11, Gheth 8, Silverback 5

It is past time to bring this monkey business to a close.

TWIN STRIKE! Thwip thwip
Geez. What are the odds, rolling out the ones for Pang?

...

As soon as I stop shooting like an amateur.

I take a step back to gather my thoughts and hopefully distract my allies from seeing that pathetic display of archery.

I wonder if this is how the human fighter feels like. Not that it's all him though. He can't help it if enemies increase in strength faster than him...

Move to O13. Hang head in shame.

Puyet couldn't help but notice the shapeshifter shoot two arrows practically at his feet.

"My great great orcmother could shoot better than that. Maybe you could shapeshift yourself a fucking EYEBALL to AIM with."

The last surviving ape subordinate does its best to pummel Garrmondo with its greasy meat paws, but to no avail. In an apparent act of attempted suicide, the gorilla then slowly advances on Cal — but Cal's readied spitting-cobra arrow also flies wide. The ape can't even kill itself competently.

:savepoint: Garrmondo 19, Puyet 14, Glenn 11, Gheth 8, Silverback 5, Cal 28, Great Apes 23

Puyet could feel his training coming back to him, and now that he had a feel for this ragtag group, he felt he could more effectively control the battlefield, although this was a far cry from a battlefield of any kind.
Puyet ordered the Dragonborn to encircle the ape so that they might strike him better.

Shift to K13
Wolf Pack Tactics, Gheth shifts to K11 for combat advantage.
5+12+2=hit!
8+7=15 dmg!

Glenn watches the rest of the group, with the exception of the changeling, beat the apes into submission. Except for the submission part. There wasn't a lot of that. Mostly there was just beating and death. Glenn congratulates the fighter on conquering his new armor as he steps forward to finish off the beast.

move to N14
clever strike 5+13+2 = 19 hit!
7+6+11 = 24 damage

Gheth is in the middle of business time, and puts all his concentration into totally rockin' the prayer implement.
Alas, he sees something shiny, and it is for naught.

Lance of Faith on Grape Ape (miss)

And so it was that G-Unit mercilessly slew the last apes in all of Faerun, which had been driven beneath the earth by merciless urban expansion and also by drunken idiots who shoot arrows at everything they don't understand.

In fairness, those apes were being of acting like a bunch of dicks. Plus, they don't even have any treasure because they're apes. What a rip.

VICTORY! 725 XP (145 each)
Extinction Bonus: 3650 XP (730 each)
Level Up! ^5

Ah, the sweet scent of victory (and blood and ichor)! And although the apes don't carry anything valuable outwardly, an experienced ranger such as myself know the inherent value locked within its body.

Eagerly taking up my improvised twin daggers, I slice the silverback's abdomen open in a search for ritual components and some trophies. Its skin and a paw should suffice. This is the first natural animal I've fought since joining Garrmondo's group, and my excitement surges.

Expend 1 healing surge.

"You lost my Goblin so that you could shoot arrows down a stairwell? I should pummel you. We've been together not one day and you're already testing my nerves," Puyet roared. He kicks the face of the ape, breaking it's neck, while Cal tries to harvest his precious implements.
"The rest of us had better lead ourselves somewhere before you manage to get ahead and dive us into more trouble."

Puyet attempts to return to traveling through the west door.

Lost a goblin? Gary's standing right where he's supposed to be, in the room where Skunkwhistle has set up shop. His goblin? Gary's a convert to the preacher's cause. One gorilla slam too many has apparently addled the half-orc's brains. That is, if he had any worth addling in the first place. In any case, the half-orc seemed impatient to leave, so I decide to ask for a bit of extra help.

"Gary, can you help me with this? Bush meat, it's good eatin'! I got some torches and oil - we can have a barbecue. Oh, and why don't you invite the other goblins in? I'm sure they're hungry for a hot meal."

Gary responds to the idea of gorilla barbecue with a great deal of skepticism.

"Eat this? Basically looks like a big hairy human. I had some human meat once. No good. Stringy. I'm not interested in putting a big chunk of hairy man-meat in my mouth. If you want to, go ahead. Not that I'm saying you do want to. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some of my best friends like to chew on a big slab of man from time to time."

Cal shrugs, tucking the ape pelt into his pack and setting to work cutting off the silverback's left hand. Surely, nothing ill will come of this monkey's paw.

Whatever the reason, Gheth seems a little more restless than usual. He makes no outward demands, but he attends to what is usually a perfunctory post-battle spear cleaning with great intensity. Maybe his goddess had come to him with a specific request. Better not to inquire into such matters. Let the man polish his spear in peace.

Puyet grumbles as the changeling gets elbow-deep in ape guts, and impatiently punts open the west door. It's evidently some kind of torture chamber — there's a rack to the north, and what looks like an iron maiden on the opposite wall. Yet another of the small, hapless goblins is trapped within a rusty iron cage on the west side of the room, and judging by the dried blood on the floor he's probably quite familiar with the room's various apparatuses.

A wide pit is carved out of the floor of the chamber; a rope ladder descends into parts unknown. A glass orb dangles from a chain on the ceiling, illuminating the room with bright light. Large double doors lead to the north, and a smaller door leads west. Smoke is trickling in underneath the west door.

A gnomish woman in chainmail is poking the goblin prisoner with a sharp stick when Puyet kicks in the door. She turns and smiles at him.

"Oh, hi there! Don't worry about the greenskin here, we're just discussing a minor supply issue. Mind the drop!"

"Oye, woman! I'd assume you heard none of the commotion outside your doors. How spectacular. If only I could be so fortunate to be so easy-minded. Since we've never met, I'm sure you're smart enough to know it is not our luck to have arrived in this place. I'd like to ask, just once, if you could tell me the layout of this place. A map would be extra pleasing. If nothing else, some clue as to how to arrive at the surface would be handy."

(Business Time continues with vigorous spear cleaning as Gheth follows some of the party into the other room, and listens in on Puyet's conversation)

(Gheth's lot is not an especially tiring one, but he aims to do it well)

Glenn looks back at the staff sitting in the middle of the room. That's not the sort of thing he wanted to leave behind if he could help it. He makes a mental note to come back if they seem to be on their way out, and keeps up with the rest of the party, staying out of the way of the more affluent types until the party needs someone snuck up on or something stolen.

"Silly man, of course I heard. I just didn't care. I mean, what's it to me? Gorillas can't use doors. I was perfectly safe.

Now, as for the surface. How are things up there, anyway? I think I can help you out. What you need to do is — well, wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Can you fly? No, huh. Well then, Plan B.

You'll need to go down into the Colossal Caves — you can take the ladder right here if you like. Now, the caves are fairly expansive, so you'll be walking for a while but eventually — if the carnivorous plants and the ghosts of the vengeful dead don't getcha — you'll find yourself in the Doomed Kingdom Of The Cannibal Drow.

They're at the very bottom of an old volcano, so... you're sure you can't fly? Oh, dang. Well, if you can awaken the ancient fire spirit that has slumbered there for aeons untold, you can probably coax the volcano into an eruption. Then you just ride the lava up to the surface, and you'll be right smack dab in the middle of the Parched Desert of Endless Thirst. Problem solved!

Ooh, you're not fireproof, are you. That is a pickle. Well then, Plan C: Find a friendly wizard. Or an unfriendly wizard which you then torture into cooperation. Probably not a lot of those in the Caves, though. Rumor has it that there's a wizard in the Portal Maze, though! You just take those stairs to the east where the gorillas showed up for no good reason. That gives you an idea of what the Maze is like. One of my cousins says he saw the Tarrasque in there but that seems unlikely.

Your call, really. Wish I could help you with your map idea, but any map you might make would be worthless by the time you finished it what with the curse and all. Still, the stairs definitely go to the Maze and the pit here definitely goes to the Caves. At least today. I checked.

Oh, one other thing. I recommend you stay out of that room to the north. It asks you annoying questions and then shoots you. Lost a kidney that way."

The gnome bends the captive goblin's arm backward until it snaps, as if by way of punctuation.

Gary must not see what she's doing, or be seen by her. i quietly motion for him to crawl inside the human fighter's pack to hide before venturing into the next room.

Upon gazing on her, I immediately compliment her on her beauty and efficiency. Certainly no shrinking violet, this one.

Reasoning that torturing someone must be hard work, I pop open a bottle of raisinjack, and offer her a swig. After taking a sip to prove it wasn't tainted with poison, of course. Perhaps alcohol will serve to loosen her tongue.

I couldn't help wonder out loud about the curse she mentioned, why she's doing what she's doing, who she's doing it for, whether she knows what the room to the west is for, and what the staff at the room we came from is all about. Our eladrin friend seems frantic to pry it from the dais, and perhaps she might be able to illuminate us whether such a move is wise or not.

I examine her face closely for any nervous tics and microexpressions which might indicate a less-than-forthright response.

"Why thank you, stranger. I don't usually accept drinks from men covered up to their shoulders in gore, but today is Opposite Day."

Taking a long pull from the raisinjack bottle, she waves in the direction of a handmade calendar on the south wall. Alongside Opposite Day are such important gnomish occasions as Flapjack Week and the High Festival of Adorable Puppies (this last is scratched out, with the notation "Inadequate puppies, maybe next year."

"Now, the curse, that's an interesting story. Four hundred years ago — year of the Lazy Scribe, as it happens — legend has it that the tieflings had a massive city here under the ground. They were a great civilization at one time, the horned folk, but by 1079 things had begun to go against them rather badly in their war with the dragonkin and so underground they went.

History has lost the name of whoever was in charge of the place, or else his name was just unpronounceable — you run into that with tieflings quite a bit. Lot of apostrophes for no good reason. Anyway, he kept this minotaur as a slave. Minotaurs. as you may know, have a natural talent for mazes; as it happens, the primary defense of the city was an elaborate labyrinth leading from the surface to the city gates. Only way in or out. Dozens of scouts and spies were sent in, and nearly all of them starved to death before they could even so much as report on how the streets were paved.

One morning His Grand Generalship P.Q. Apostrophe wakes up and finds his bipedal cow missing. As it turns out, Mister Moo Moo had gone turncoat, and on his way out he memorized the route. Your average dragonborn has more important things to think about — things like 'how do I drink from a glass without getting my tunic wet' — so they just took his directions and made a map rather than committing them to memory.

Anyway long story short Apostrophe's whole battalion died messily and with his last breath he cursed the entirety of what was then the city, willing that no one could ever map this place again."

She belts down another gulp of raisinjack.

"A lot of places in the world defy mapping, of course. You just look away for a second and your parchment's gone blank. Wizards do love their secrets. But here? Things are a little more dramatic. You can keep your map — it's just that the very rocks that form the walls and floors will move around until your map is dead wrong. I'd demonstrate, but anybody standing in the doorway would probably find it unpleasant."

As for the rest of Cal's questions, the gnome seems somewhat less inclined to ramble. She begins to get more than a little surly, and Cal notices that his raisinjack bottle is nearly empty.

"What does it look like I'm doing."

"I'm doin' it for me. 'cuz it's funny."

"I wouldn't mess with that if I were you. Less'n you wanted to get your face rearranged by the ceiling. And by 'your face' I mean 'a massive stone cube will flatten you into a creamy meat paste.'

"Dunno. Can't open that door, somebody's jammed something in the way on the other side. The smoke only started coming through a little while ago, dunno who did that either. Fuckin' goblins probably. Nothin' but trouble."

And with that, she wrenches the prisoner's head around on his neck with a crunch and the goblin slumps to the floor.

Garrmondo sticks his head in the door, more-or-less repeating Cal's last question.

"I JUST SAID your guess is as good as mine, you overgrown — WHOA WHOA WHOA HOLY CRAP!"

The gnome flings the empty bottle at Garrmondo's face and practically leaps into the pit.

"The Overlord is on the move! Batten the hatches! Man the torpedoes! Seal the bulkheads! PANIC!"

Garrmondo brushes glass shards off his shoulders, his bulky helmet having protected him from laceration.

A faint boooooing sounds from the bottom of the hole, and the gnome's voice is audible just once more:

"RETRACT THE SAFETY TRAMPOLINE! GET ME SOME COFFEE!"

Relieved of any further opportunities for inquiry, Cal reflects on the answers he'd received. Her explanation of the curse seemed honest enough, though it was obvious she was just repeating an old story that had probably been mangled over many years of telling.

Her treatment of the poor goblin hadn't been justified at all, and she seemed to resent even being asked — her affable attitude turning to borderline hostility almost in an instant. She'd obviously been hiding something, but Cal wasn't sure whether it was important enough to risk the torpedoes — whatever 'torpedoes' were.

As for the staff, she'd only confirmed what was already suspected, and she seemed as honestly ignorant about the west door as she claimed to be.