Episode 25 - The Guide, The Left-Hand Turn

# ✧ Episode 25 — The Guide, The Left-Hand Turn **Date:** Tuesday, 23rd June 2026 **Location:** [[Waterdeep]] — Undermountain (Mad Mage), Level 1 **Notes**: as written by [[Kozu Marphanis]] ## Session Summary --- Episode 25 continues from — [[Episode 24 - Into the Dark Water]] --- _We climbed out of Undermountain like rats fleeing a flooded drain — soaked, stinking, and alive only by spite. Back at the Manor, the party woke proper, gathered downstairs, and took stock. The brains were still unexplained. The goo was still unlabelled. And the itch to go back down hadn't faded yet._ _So I did what any sensible rogue does before descending into a death trap: I went shopping. Nets this time — proper ones, for catching things. Bugs, brains, whatever else crawls out of the dark. Plus healing potions. You can never have too many of those. The answer to "how many is too many" is always "one more."_ _When we returned to the Yawning Portal, Durnan the Wanderer was waiting. He'd found us a guide — introduced her as Lost Heart. And she was something. Halfling, dark hair pulled into dreads, nose piercing catching the torchlight, a crystal pendant set in hide cord around her neck. Bare feet. Anklet that flashed red like a warning beacon. Tanned red cloak with brown accents and neon ocean blue underneath. Sorcerer. You could feel the magic humming off her like heat from a forge. She told us the story of how she got the name. Long one. I'll spare you the details, something about a heart that wasn't where it was supposed to be. The point was: she knew these tunnels. She'd walked them before. And she was confident. We went back down the well. --- **Scene 1 — The Fork** Beyond the diamond-shaped room, the corridor split. Left or right. Tanya pulled out her compass — the one that looks exactly like the one Dolous used to have, which raised questions I filed under "deal with later" — and it pointed right. Lost Heart recommended left. The compass was pointing toward something. Lost Heart was pointing toward somewhere specific. We went with the guide. _I don't trust compasses. I don't trust magic that points. But I trust a woman who walks barefoot through Undermountain even less than I trust her, and she seemed sure. So left it was._ --- **Scene 2 — The Dead Goblin and the Cave-In** The corridor opened onto a dead goblin. Skull smashed in. Not old — fresh. Around him, the ceiling had partially collapsed. Pickaxes lay scattered in the rubble. Someone — or some*thing* — had been trying to dig through. And then gave up. Or got interrupted. _Lost Heart cast Invisibility on me. I moved ahead, quiet as quiet gets, and heard it: ritual chanting. Goblin. Multiple voices. The kind of chanting that means either a prayer circle or a sacrifice, and in Undermountain, the difference is academic._ _I pulled back. We gave up on mining the rubble — whatever was on the other side could stay there — and moved past the chanting corridors like ghosts. Tip-toe, held breath, the whole humiliating dance. Nobody spotted us. Small mercies._ --- **Scene 3 — The Pillared Chamber and the Trap** The corridor ended in an archway. Two pillars flanked the entrance. Skeletons stood between them — decorative or defensive, hard to tell at a glance. Lost Heart walked through the archway like she was entering a tavern._ _Something hit her. A force — invisible, violent — thrust her forward into the chamber. She stumbled, caught herself, and kept walking. Professional._ _Beyond the pillars: a large room. A door at the far end led to an eighty-foot corridor descending into darkness. Single door at the bottom. We pressed on. Through double doors into a choice: a well-lit, clean corridor, or an unlit one. We took the dark. Of course we did. The clean one was obviously a trap, or at least obviously boring, and boring in Undermountain usually means worse things than dark._ _The door opened into a room: twenty feet high, twenty deep, fifty wide. A door at one end. An archway turning right. Tanya went down the corridor first._ _Then she screamed._ _Blood. Pouring down her face from above. Something in the ceiling — something wet and hungry — had dropped on her. She came flying back through the archway, and I was ready. Both repeating crossbows up, bolts trained on the opening where she'd emerged._ Something was coming through that archway. --- ## NPCs & Locations Encountered | Name | Type | Description | |------|------|-------------| | [[Tanya von Argent]] | Party | Artificer; discovered the hidden room; fought the goo from above using magic boots | | [[Iz]] | Party | Spellcaster; engaged the goo in the hidden room | | [[Fredoku]] | Party | Monk; dove into sewerage to fight the goo; killed one bugbear; chased a fleeing brain | | [[Martyn Littlewood]] | Party | Healer; cast Cure Wounds on Kozu for 7 HP | | [[Lost Heart]] | NPC | Guide; sorcerer; knows Undermountain's tunnels; was thrust forward by a force at the pillared chamber | | [[Durnan the Wanderer]] | NPC | Contact at the Yawning Portal; hired Lost Heart for the party | | Undermountain — Hidden Room | Location | 10×10ft room off the main corridor; contained deep sewerage water and a hostile goo entity | | Undermountain — Pillared Chamber | Location | Large room with stone pillars; Lost Heart was thrust forward by an invisible force upon entering | | Undermountain — Diamond Room | Location | Diamond-shaped side chamber; Investigation 21 yielded nothing of interest | ## Loot & Discoveries - ## Active Quests - **Refurbishment of The Manor** — Coran Hammersmith (Hammer & Board) is overseeing repairs, estimated ~1 week to complete - **Explore Undermountain** — party has descended deeper; bugbears, goo entities, and autonomous brains encountered on Level 1 - **Investigate the Brains** — autonomous brains emerging from bugbear corpses; nature and purpose unknown; multiple encounters now confirm a pattern --- ## ⚡︎ Tags #dnd #sessionnote #storyline #waterdeep #kozu #martyn #fredoku #dolous #iz #tanya #lost-heart #durnan #lady-silvermain #undermountain #mad-mage #bugbears #brains #themightyhands --- *Written from the journals of **Kozu Marphanis** — Episode 25, The Mighty Hands Campaign*