"Don't forget. We're looking for something glittering for Greed, something loud for Fear, wine for Love, and a piece of literature for Pride. Keep your eyes peeled!" I told the party.
Near the golems, there was a MALLET HANDLE in one of the containers.
Branwen's eyes narrowed at the MALLET HANDLE. "How does a MALLET HANDLE handle fit with all the riddles?"
"Something loud, maybe?" I suggested. "Only one part of the needed components."
"Ah. It couldn't be something completed and thus simple," Branwen said, nodding.
I also spotted a very tiny cache with a huge number of goods (x=1485, y=1222); Wand of Monster Summoning (5 charges), Antidote (×6), Potion of Perception (×4), Potion of Insulation, Potion of Fire Resistance.
(Author to players: There are so many little caches of good on this floor alone, it'll take me a long time to chronicle them all. Just make sure you find this tiny little cache since it has so much nice stuff in it.)
---
First, we cast invisibility on Imoen, and she goes around dismantling all the traps on this floor, as usual. Unfortunately opening locks would break her invisibility so we would have to remove enemies in rooms with locked containers.
Since she was running around the whole floor invisible, Imoen could guide us on all the rooms featured on this level.
Anti-clockwise from the north, Imoen scouted out a forge, a group of ghouls, a trophy room with a gong, a room with books and a sword monument, a dressing room, a room with a pile of glittering treasure, a gymnasium, an engine room, a winepress, and a library.
---
Once Imoen returned to us, we moved anticlockwise, starting with the forge.
Examining the forge, we found the tools and tables necessary to fix the MALLET, at least once we find the head.
Imoen had scouted out a large group of ghouls just beyond the forge. A single skeleton warrior (skeleton bull in our case), immune to ghouls' paralyzng touch, easily tanked the ghouls while we took them out with volley fire and Branwen turned them away.
---
Still moving anticlockwise, we now moved to the trophy room where Imoen had pointed out a GONG. "Looks pretty loud to me," she said. "I wager this is where we use the MALLET, once we fix it."
"Still no MALLET HEAD though."
"We could try to strike the GONG without the MALLET HEAD, right?"
I shrugged. It was worth a try. We tried to strike the GONG with just the MALLET HANDLE, but funnily enough the GONG made no sound. However we were supposed to solve this magical puzzle, we had to do it in a complete manner.
---
Next we came to a room full of books on podiums, nearby the sword-shaped monument. The monument had a, "Durlag's pride".
"Looks like we found Pride. As well as the CHRONICLES? These books are attached to the podiums though. I don't think we can bring the books or the sword monument with us," Imoen mused, puzzled.
"Let's try reading the books first," Neera suggested.
The first book read: "Like a god of battle, Durlag waded into the drow horde, slaying thousands…"
The second book: "Vissilithysmee was no match for the mighty Durlag. The dragon's spells could not harm him, and her breath was a gentle breeze to Durlag."
The third: "It came to pass that the hero Durlag and his man-at-arms, Arlo Stoneblade, ventured into the bowels of the Great Rift. They fought the hideous tanar'ri Aec'letec and, with a single blow of his axe, Durlag slew the demon's body and entrapped its soul in an enchanted dagger."
The fourth: "And Durlag moved through the Troll Mountains killing all of the foul beasts…"
After reading through the fourth, we felt a hum of magical energy. The sword monument to Durlag's Pride nearby shone with soft, eerie light.
We waited a moment, but nothing further happened.
"...was that it? For the Pride golem, we just had to read these books detailing Durlag's accomplishments?" Neera asked, then rolled her eyes. "Ugh, men."
It was indeed. Though I'm not sure that last comment from her was justified.
"Hey. The third chronicle mentioned Durlag and Stoneblade defeating Aec'letec and trapping his soul in a dagger," Imoen pointed to the rest of us.
"Yeah, Stoneblade is the same surname as Hurgan Stonebalde back in Ulgoth's Tower. He did commission us to find a special dagger. I doubt that's a coincidence," I replied.
I knew the significance of course. It was nice for me not to have to be the one pointing out all the pertinent clues, for once.
"Didn't the succubus on the top floor say she will not be trapped like 'Aec'?" Khalid asked.
"Yes, that's the one. So Aec is trapped somewhere-" Neera said, then her mouth opened agape. "Oh, no. There's a demon named Aec'letec trapped in the dagger. I bet it's the very dagger Hurgan asked us for. If we retrieve the dagger, we'd be bringing back a demon to Ulgoth's Beard."
BINGO! Full points! That blasted dagger Hurgan was asking for is a Trojan Horse!
"We're going to have to be VERY careful with that dagger from now on. If Hurgan doesn't already know the danger it poses, he should be informed," I told the party.
The party nodded in agreement. Releasing big bad demon would be very, very bad!
---
The next room was the dressing room, one of the drawers had a bunch of GRAPES.
"Well, that's how we're going to get wine I suppose. Now we need a wine press," Jaheira said.
"…just how long have these GRAPES been here?" Neera asked.
"Obviously enchanted. I wouldn't try to eat them," I said. "Or drink any of the wine."
Speaking of enchanted, there's also a locked drawer here that had an unbreakable and odd looking lock that was obviously enchanted. Upon examination, Neera concluded that the lock would resist attempts to force it open, thieves tools or spells, without use of the proper key.
---
The next room, the pile of treasure, was accessible through some secret doors. The big pile of treasure was guarded by two skeletons and a skeleton warrior.
The party was keen on testing their mettle against these foes, but I directed them to skip this room until we had scouted around a bit more first.
---
Next up was Gymnasium with flesh golems and a skeleton warrior, but nothing to interesting in it.
Why bother? We just went around it.
---
The next room was an ENGINE in the engine room, but no LEVER to switch it on.
Then a room with a WINEPRESS, but it isn't powered. Maybe we needed to switch on the ENGINE in the previous room first.
Then a library with Greater Doppelgangers in it, guarding some cupboards. We definitely want what was in those cupboards.
---
So in summary, we had a guarded pile of treasure and a guarded library with cupboards which we had not yet looted for clues.
"Are we done scouting out all the opposition yet? After going once through with Imoen then your own eyes?" Branwen asked.
"Indeed we are. But first I should like to clarify. I consider this whole dungeon a huge test of our party's endurance. So I would like to get through it as effectively as possible, to save our strength for future challenges," I explained. "So Branwen, please cooperate with my plan."
Branwen blinked. "Cooperate with your plan?" she asked, uncertain, then closed here eyes, hard. "We're going to cheese through it all, aren't we?"
I grinned back at her. "Obviously."
---
Branwen borrowed the Boots of Speed from Khalid, then cast Sanctuary on herself.
We hadn't really used Sanctuary tricks so far. Sanctuary works almost like invisibility, except that you can interact with objects without dispelling the Sanctuary effect.
So while she was protected by Sanctuary, Branwen speed-walked right past the skeletons, picked out treasures right under their noses, and passed the treasures back to us.
Said treasures included Glittering Beljuril GEMSTONE and a BEJEWELED KEY of odd design. We used the BEJEWELED KEY to unlock the locked drawer in the dressing room, which gave us a LEVER. Meanwhile, still protected by Sanctuary, Branwen ran all the way to the library in the north, got a MALLET HEAD from the cupboards without the greater doppelgangers knowing any better, than returned to us before the Sanctuary spell wore off.
We now had all the components we needed.
-The LEVER was used to switch on the ENGINE, which got the WINEPRESS running. The WINEPRESS was used to press the GRAPES into WINE.
-The GONG MALLET and HANDLE was repaired in the forge room, then used to sound the GONG in the trophy room. Again, the gong didn't sound, but this time we felt a reverberation in the air. That did the trick.
With that, we had activated the monument to Durlag's Pride, found a bottle of wine for Love, a glittering gem for Avarice, and sounded the gong for Fear.
Funnily enough, the golem representing 'Love' asked us to complete the requests of the other golems first.
I whispered to Neera, "As soon as we turn in the wine and gem, the golems will transform and attack us."
She nodded, and cleared her throat. "I sense, uh, aggressive magic. Be ready for battle as soon as we give the final puzzle piece to the Love golem," she announced.
"Wot? I don't sense anything," Imoen said.
"Well, you should. Maybe it needs a specialist mage's touch," Neera said back to her, winking.
Imoen pouted, unconvinced.
---
All 4 Golems require at least +1 magical weapons to be hit. Being golems, they are immune to emotional effects, sleep and the like.
Pride is a fighter which casts Draw Upon Holy Might on itself, driving its Strength, Dexterity and Constitution to absurd levels. It is armed with a battle axe.
Avarice is a thief armed with a shortsword (which does piercing damage). Avarice has high APR and casts Cloudkill immediately where it is. The worst thing about it is that it and can turn invisible every round, allowing for a potent backstab.
Fear is a ghoul revenant, not a golem. It required +2 weapons to hit and it's strikes count as crushing.
Love is a mage (spell slinging golem? how?) which starts with a Minor Globe of Invulnerability. It throws out a charm ability against whoever last hit it that seems to penetrate charm immunity. Or at least the Greenstone Amulet wouldn't ward of the charm ability. Maybe the Potion of Clarity would work? It has 65hp.
---
So, fortunately I remembered where each golem was. I had Branwen move her skeleton bull which we had used with the ghasts earlier near to the Avarice golem.
Jaheira passed the Wine to the Love golem, then the golems raised arms against us.
Jaheira slashed Love in the back, who twisted towards her an started incanting its charm ability. I used that moment to strike it in the back with my quarterstaff, as did Imoen who had cast Strength on herself earlier. Love crumpled into a heap before it got its charm ability off.
Fear charged Jaheira with a huge fist, which bounced right of her shield. Jaheira had drunk a Potion of Absorption and was wearing the Girdle of Bluntness to ward off its blows.
Khalid let loose an arrow at Pride just before it reached him, which connected. Pride's Draw upon Holy Might affect was dispelled immediately, thanks to the Arrow of Dispelling Khalid had fired. This reduces Pride's Strength, Dexterity and Constitution from 22 to 19, which penalized its Thac0 from 4 to 5, Damage from +10 to +7, and Armor class from -3 to -2. Khalid quickly switched to Varscona +2 and blocked the oncoming battle axe. He had drunk an agility potion, pushing his AC to -9, and was wearing the Golden Girdle (so his effective AC vs slashing was -16).
Meanwhile, Avarice was contending with our Skeleton Bull in the middle of the Cloudkill it had summoned, its shortsword proving to be rather ineffective against the skeleton's bony frame. Disappearing and reappearing didn't do much to help the fact that the skeleton warrior largely resisted Avarice's piercing attacks.
With Jaheira, Khalid and our skeleton bull effectively tanking each remaining enemy, our victory was assured. There were some bruises, but in the end we were standing over the broken bodies of the golems. The way downstairs was open.
And that was just the 1st Basement level out of 4!