S10E12 - The Polymorph Gambit

The heroes enter the pentagon room. Large tables overflow with food, and red tapestries drape the walls. Fionghan explains that to unlock this room’s lever, they have to reach through one of the tapestries. Krariak tries first to find the lever but finds nothing. Avilos tries next, finds the lever, and pulls it, causing another skeleton key lock to show up on the large green door.

Next comes the trial of the hexagon. The heroes find six candles and a cracked six-sided mirror. Fionghan instructs them to chant “PIGGY, PIGGY, PIGGY” and another lever reveals itself. Finally, the octagon room. Krariak, who has the charm from one of the dolls that lets him comprehend every language, reads, backwards, a rhyme in infernal language from a tome that is lying on a pedestal inside the room, causing a section of stone wall to grind open and revealing the last lever.

Once outside, the heroes take a short rest. They cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut overlapping with the door they want to open, and all go inside except Silas, who searches for the eye gem the coven supposedly has lying around. He finds nothing. While Silas is on his way back, Avilos, inside the hut, inserts a fourth skeleton key into the door. The three night hags materialize in front of Silas, who is standing alone outside the hut. They strike at him. Lightning bolt. Bestow curse. Eyebite. The heroes dart out of the tiny hut, attack, and duck back in. Out and back. Out and back. Then, tired of this back and forth, Chos casts Banishment, sending two of the hags to another dimension.

The third hag, already prone and terrified thanks to Krariak’s mace of terror, scrambles to her feet and flees. Thorn lands one last bite.

The heroes then take a long rest, insert the remaining two keys, and unlock the final room, which contains a massive triangular cavern, a pit of lava, a cylindrical translucent device that appears to be the Soulmonger and, floating above it all, an elephant-sized abomination of a baby connected to the Soulmonger via an umbilical cord, surrounded by four huge tentacles.

The final battle starts and everybody starts throwing all their heavy artillery at the abomination, the Soulmonger, and the adamantine struts supporting it. Avilos summons the giant snake part of the staff he now commands. Ellie Wild Shapes into a raven and goes to inspect the misty archway at the back of the room while Krariak focuses his attention on the adamantine struts.

The battle turns brutal. The abomination hammers them. The tentacles, immune to physical damage, lash out relentlessly. Krariak tries to destroy the struts but is unable to make a dent, attacking them with physical damage. Sophi explores the adjoining balconies but finds nothing other than a lot of little containers spread everywhere. Meanwhile, the rest of the party bombards the abomination and Soulmonger with fireballs, moonbeams, and lightning arrows.

After discovering that the abomination is self-healing, Ellie changes tactics and casts Polymorph. The monstrous thing shrinks, twists, and becomes a harmless robin. The tide turns instantly. Chos’s celestial avenger and Avilos’s spells hammer the now-undefended Soulmonger and the terrible artifact soon shatters.