Alert: Contains spoilers for the adventure “Temple of Elemental Evil”

So we can invade the Fire Node next, Ezekiel gave us a short lecture about the enemies one of the clerics we rescued told us about.

A Bodac is apparently some kind of demon, and can kill you if you just look at it…so he says the plan is for us all to stand back while he tries to hit it with the mace (while protected from evil). There are supposedly efrete there, too, which he says are relatives of the geni…they won’t be necessarily Evil, but it’s safer to be careful around them.

Everybody should be protected from heat, either with a ring, Tressarian, or one of the clerics’ spells – so we head in tomorrow.

****

We made sure Lydia was ready, then gathered around Ezekiel while he touched the gem we assume is the key-stone of fire. Sure enough, we found ourselves in an eight-sided room – four corners and four points like a star. Even with our magic, the heat was sweltering.

Firelight peeked through chinks in the walls, and eight heavy stone doors with brass handles lined the corners of the room. Ezekiel always says to take the right turn, and since north is front on the map, the east is the right (and I drew the map, so I got to pick which way was north).

So Ezekiel chose a door (Mikael had a bad vibe about the opposite direction) and Elmo helped us unstick it.

Down the corridor, first door on the right, we saw several fire pits, dancing with flames. When Ezekiel checked one out, it didn’t have any special markings – or any obvious source of fuel. He dumped a skin of holy water onto the first one – and a flash or something darted across the room to another fire pit, and billows of steam flowed out…but not much else happened.

Meanwhile, Raven was having trouble – panting and flapping his tunic to fan himself. Ezekiel cast an Endure spell on him when we started out, but it had stopped working. Mikael cast another spell on him – but it didn’t seem to do Raven any good…and we finally realized something was dispelling the fire-magic.

Tressarian reminded me he can put out fires, so we went around to a few of the pits, putting out the flames (there are four in all). Bright flashes fled before us across the room, but we didn’t seem to accomplish much else…The pits seemed to re-ignite not long afterwards.

Elmo uncovered a loose stone that had treasure underneath, and Ezekiel called me and Tres over to see if any of the gems there were magical –

But before I could say for sure, something came up from behind and burned us.

There were five figures — they looked vaguely humanish, but wreathed in flames…and they shot tongues of flame from the ends of their hands to hurt us.

Tressarian got so excited he almost shook out of my hand. Really, he’s supposed to be super effective against Evil fire creatures, but Ezekiel and Elmo basically took them all out by themselves (with help from Mikael’s faery fire). We did kill the last one before it could run away with its companion, so I guess that works. (I asked Tres if he “extinguished” the flame-persons, but he just said, “You’d better believe it!” instead of actually explaining how a piece of metal kills something made of fire.)

Then we gave the treasure a more in-depth look – and sure enough, one of the gems was glowing with magical energy. (Ezekiel calls it a “smokey quartz”.) So now that’s three of four…and we’ve barely been here an hour or two.

As Heiron pointed out, we still have to clear the node to the best of our ability – just in case there are prisoners here to be released – but it still feels kinda lame.

**

Met an oozing creature that Mikael called a “dumb pudding.” It was fast and gross, and Heiron almost dissolved his special new sword before Ezekiel saved it with water.

It split apart and lost tension when I shot it with arrows, so we moved on, but those things are really, really gross…

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