The party stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long corridor stretched ahead, it turned east and then back north again before hitting some form of sliding door made of stone.
Mandras inspected it, finding a symbol and some form of mechanism. Pushing it gingerly, the door opened onto a section of corridor going north – this too ended in a sliding door, but with no less than half a dozen symbols. Could this be some form of lift that would take the party down to the desired floor?
While pondering the issue, Blakathl, bringing up the rear, noticed a number of snakes the size of dogs coming up. The party engaged and slew them contemptuously… well maybe not totally contemptuously as Mandras was poisoned by a snake and narrowly staved off the resulting agonising death.
Considering the potential lift, Mandras pushed a button and was surprised to find the corridor moving, not up and down but around, like a carousel. After some attempts he estimated that they were facing east west. Going W, the party entered a corridor decorated with painted stonework, which led up to another door.
While listening through the door to chanting voices, the party was surprised when the eastern door opened to reveal a group of 8 amazons dressed like the woman statue they had seen at the entrance to the dungeon. All wore masks, green robes, bronze breastplates and were armed with spears. Koko and Blakathl wisely engaged them verbally – it appeared that they were here to kill magi. Well, the party was here to find and kill an evil mage, so by transitivity, it might be the same one or ones. A hasty alliance of convenience was made.
Mandras with an amazon next to him tried to kick down the iron door to the west. It resisted the first attempt, thereby giving away everyone’s presence. A second kick and it flew open, revealing a dozen mages in baby faced masks chanting around some senior mage. Hmmm – they resembled the cherub faced statue from the dungeon entrance…
Without further ado, the party charged in as Koko cast silence on the magi – though some resisted it. Suddenly the door slammed behind the party, locking Koko out and another spell put most of the amazons to sleep. Mandras killed a mage and pressed towards their archmage but was delayed by a mage using a shield spell. By the time Mandras hacked through the spell (and the mage) the archmage and his acolytes had killed 5 of the sleeping amazons. Dimplepool and Blakathl tried to wake up the remaining amazons, while Mandras hacked another two mages down, but not before one slew Dimplepool. Koko screamed powerlessly from the other side of the door.
The archmage and his four surviving acolytes slipped through the south door casting some lock spell on it. Efforts to yank it open were unsuccessful. Time to catch their breath!