Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Trolling the Troglodytes (2)

Having quickly recovered from the short battle with the troll, the adventurers were distracted by the sounds of thunder and screaming. Heading backwards, they discovered one of the dark elves on patrol hiding in magical darkness, with his comrade and their mounts ripped apart. Looks like the monster struck again! Examining the tracks and leaving, Antrius concluded that it must be a behir - a giant, many legged, magical reptile. They decided on following the direction of the tracks, running into a large cavern infested with piercers. They dropped from the ceiling one after the other...

The situation quickly seemed to get out of hand, but once the adventurers realized that the creatures are helpless on the ground, they just ran through and whacked any they could, but did not stay to fight.

Going through some corridors, the party happened upon a fight between troglodytes and a 5-armed troll. They attacked the troll, at which the troglodytes disengaged and disappeared through a secret door.

With the troll shortly dead, the adventurers also went through... right into a band of surprised troglodytes. Antrius made soothing gestures, but could not convince the troglodytes of their good intentions. The chieftain then signed for the adventurers to go away and kill dark elves. They decided to go, for now.

And what do you know, they happened upon a band of dark elves sitting and talking through sign language. The adventurers went all-in, with an invisible Groin blowing them up, Antrius hypnotizing them, then Brienne riding in with her hammer. The elves died quickly, and in death, they became troglodyte corpses. Antrius thinks he puzzled it out. He he. The adventurers also found a small camp, but no occupant, so they walked on, evading the pool of acid.

The next large cavern contained an invisible monster munching on a giant spider in the middle of a field of corpses. Antrius hypnotized it, Tari shot it with a pouch of dust, and Brienne rode in...

...polymorphed into a giant ape. After sitting around a bit in total darkness, Antrius lit a torch and took it over with a mage hand, enabling the ape to pound the confused troll into the ground.

At this, a dark elf emerged from behind a stalactite, having murdered his comrade on patrol. Zaz surrendered, offered to join house Auvryndar and betray his house Freth. The adventurers extracted some info, then decided to do one more short encounter by killing a tentacled stalactite monster. The roper proved to be an illusion, but the giant ape had fun pounding the underlying stalactite into dust.