Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Finding the real, real tomb of Melair in the hidden room in the hidden room in the hidden room

Online session due to COVID. At least we made good progress!

Our first discovery was a dwarf lady statue craddling a portal. I spat her in between her eyes, to no effect.

We ran into Halaster on the next corridor, but we surrounded him, zombies grabbed him, I Counterspel'd his Fireball. His threats proved empty, and he proved to be a shape shifting lizard.

Next up, a mummification room. Nothing useful, but I did write out on the altar "Zyn and the Legends were"[1] using organ tissue.

And with that, there were no more rooms to go through... so I tried my luck with the wand of secrets, and we did discover a hidden door, leading into a small room with a black marble sarcophagus. All around were reliefs of dwarven warriors. We opened the sarcophagus to find the intact skeleton of a dwarf, at which point the battleaxes held by the reliefs animated and attacked us. I summoned my trusty Barlgura who smashed 3 axes before getting out of control, so we killed it along with the rest of the axes. Hero zombie held it back for a turn and a half.

At this point I was paranoid and used my other two charges with the wand of secrets to uncover another door in this room, behind the sarcophagus. It opened unto a dead-end corridor. Paranoia keeps us alive, so I sent a zombie forwards. It fell into a pit trap, obviously. I rescued it with the flying broom and investigated the wall, revealing yet another secret door. This one opened by pushing a loose stone inside the pit trap, so that's where the zombie spent his next couple of minutes.

In the next room, we saw 4 statues of the dwarven gods. Selene yelled "Xunderbrook!" at which he heard instructions to damage the statue of the god of exploration. We did[2], and a huge Glabrezu demon climbed out of the rubble. Turns out, he was captured by the dwarves and imprisoned for a long time. In gratitude, it dispelled the illusion on a wall[3], revealing yet another empty secret room. The demon then opened a secret door in the secret room, finally leading us to a white sarcophagus inscribed simply with "Melair".

We opened this one as well[4] to find a mummified corpse wielding a sentinel shield and an adamantine war pick. We quickly took the corpse to open the large doors, revealing... nothing. Well, nothing useful. Just another tapestry detailing the dwarven kingdom[5] and a mirror with the inscription, "The gate cannot hide from those it cannot see." Selene realized that I need to turn invisible, which I did, and a portal opened to the 10th level of the dungeon.

Solid tried to push Selene through, but against all odds he lost the opposing strength check. Selene twisted his arm. Nice. So I went through myself, gaining the ability to cast Augury 3 times.

Next up: level 7?

[1] Not enough organs for "here".

[2] After several failed strength checks.

[3] That was specifically appearing as not magical.

[4] More failed checks, this time the skeleton did it.

[5] Which I promptly took down.