Poking the Bear

After a good night’s sleep we go back to the hideout we were at yesterday. We find the red markings from the letter and follow them. At the end we find a hidden door made of stone, and I’m able to push it to the side, only to find another reinforced door behind it. Pyotr manages to open it while Eira stands guard. Behind it we find a staircase and Pyotr sends his pet mouse Rick to scout ahead. When he doesn’t come back, I get nervous and follow him down. The walls of that staircase are covered in carvings of eyes, all glowing blue. This staircase is creepy as hell, and I can’t shake the feeling I’m being watched. The staircase goes on seemingly forever, but finally we arrive at the bottom. We carefully open the door there and arrive at a hall with a weird eyestalk above a double-sided door to the left and what I think is probably another hidden door across the hall. To the right another door, but we don’t pay a lot of attention to it. That weird eye-stalk seems half asleep, so if we’re careful, we can probably pass unnoticed. Investigating that hidden door, we manage to open it and slip into a longer hall behind it. Lots of statues here of people seemingly frozen mid-action. I don’t like this.

Hearing some bells jingling not too far away we try to hide, but it’s no use. Eira quickly vanishes as a little gnomish looking jester approaches us. He seems slightly mad, or maybe bored? He doesn’t seem to see us as a threat though and so he wants to play a game. We try to entertain him, and learn his name is Flutterfoot Zipswiggle. In the end he wants us to solve a riddle: “I come with a smile, in slaughter I rest. I can be contagious, but my medicine is best.” Pyotr blurts out “laughter”, and it seems that’s right. Smart guy. I wonder what would have happened if that would have been wrong. Our prize is the shortest path to “the master’s” lair. The creepy jester keeps his word and leads us along a few hallways, passing a few dwarves looking as if in trance. What is going on in this place? Another room looks like they’re serving breakfast here. It’s still early, so no one is around, but we should hurry, I think folks are going to get up pretty soon or maybe shifts will change. We finally arrive at another secret passage, and Flutterfoot lets us in. There’s one extremely large bowl of water, and a smaller version of that bowl with a fish in it. In the large one there’s a chest, and Kallista gets all twitchy. She seems to sense one of the stone eyes in there. How do we get it out of there? There’s a dwarf sleeping right next to it, so that’s going to be even more difficult, and I don’t like the weird twinkly dust in this room. It looks magicky, and that can’t be good. I look around. I hope Eira is somewhere with us, maybe she can help somehow. She’s the only one the jester does not know about

Suddenly Pyotr walks into the room and starts to seize and giggle. What the fuck is wrong with him? He tumbles back and we get him into the hidden pathway so he doesn’t wake the dwarf. He recovers, and seems to have an idea. Good. The jester starts to get bored again and doesn’t stay quiet about it. I might have to end him, if he… “What the fuck!” I think as Pyotr teleports into the large fishbowl, grabs the stone and teleports back to us again. The jester seems happy with the performance, and now we really have to get out. We make our way back to the hall with the watchful eye stalk, which now seems to be fully awake. Not good. Everyone makes it across that hallway as an alarm goes off. I feel something tugging at the back of my head, as that fucking jester points their stick at me. It feels as if he tried to somehow keep me around. I guess he still wants to play. We’ll be back I convince him, and he makes me pinky promise it to him. Sure why not I think. As our fingers touch, I see a flash, and we teleport to the other side of the hallway where we have to make our escape up the seemingly never ending Staircase of Eyes. This is going to be a tough climb, I hope we can make it.