We traveled down a corridor that narrowed like a snake coiling prey.

It soon spiraled us into a dead end where, at the center, several chests lay, each containing dust and scant coin.But to our luck, in a corner of one of these chests, we uncovered a peculiar little cube, which to all our surprise, and Lunchbox’s annoyance, could talk.

“Finally someone to free me“ It said. Like some genie (or jinn) stuck in a prison that could fit atop bookshelf.

This cube could speak, it had a soul inside.

I promptly asked it to identity itself.

“Names, I have so many names…”

As it talks it offers riddles and snarky words instead of answers to our inquiries.

Like so much in this maze, we have to untangle a mystery to understand this cube’s intent.

We continue to let it speak, but we’re cautious.

He reveals himself to be a mage of considerable quality, imprisoned by one more powerful. He demands release, and wine, and only offers resentment and side mouthed comments in exchange.

None of us are confident what we may release into the world if we set this soul free. Lunchbox suggests we smash it.

Leery of all manners of surprise this dungeon has given us, and deeply put off by the manners of a prisoner needing help, I decide to burrow it in cloth among my kit until we can deal with the riddles.

I wonder if Lunchbox’s idea of smashing it to pieces is best.

As we continue to exhaust our legs crawling about this maze, the canister that Broenur has been lugging around begins to illuminate.

On it, light, in breath-like glows, suddenly harmonize and panic.

Soon, rat noises chitter all around and the canister illuminates further, unleashing green lights from the deepest parts of its runes.

This chitters begin to yell..

Now, the case is almost like a celestial aurora as the danger closes in.

It’s imminent that we’ll battle.

Lunchbox pointing ahead, a gigantic rat reveals itself, baring incisors that could slice a tree trunk with one gnaw.

We huddle together to battle. Or so I think.

Lunchbox walks towards the rat with a light jog, and with unceremonial professionalism, lifts his axe, and brings it down, lopping the head off the enormous rodent, leaving nothing but a writhing corpse with squirming endtrails, head squeaking in vain attempt to call its body back to its neck.

Lunchbox lowers his axe, and looks back.

All of us stunned, we recognize Lunchbox’s talent – splitting any living thing into two, conjuring a rage that itself seems of magic.

But our awe is interrupted by another chitter that chimes from afar.

This rat scurries towards us at twice the speed of the last.

Feeling bravened by Lunchbox’s display, I step in to cast a spell – an arrow of magic to skewer the rodent to a wall.

Trying to find an angle, I step into the fray, but I’m met not by an enemy but the fumbles of my ally dwarf.

I step one way to make my shot, and he follows. I step the other, and Broneur is in sync, blocking my aim.

He might as well be a pile of stones laying on my feet, the damned idiot. I then managed to trip and injure myself.

Now, the rat is nearly at our throats.

The dwarf, overlooking how he hampered my magics, turns about to address the inbound rat.

Broneur then leaps into a flipping aerial using lunchbox as a springboard, and heaves the case and it’s glowing runes upwards in a hammer blow, ready to fall onto the rat’s head.

But before his blow falls, the case’s runes flame. The case shoots terrible magical energies of all colors forward, one which strikes the rat, disintegrating him to sparking dusts of every color known.

The case’s glow fades, and danger with it.

The chitters quiet.

A bellow haunts the halls: “The dwarf can wield magic, that’s very interesting”

It seems Broneur has received a terrible blessing from our captor.

We continue walking, but more than ever, we start to doubt our position in the maze.

Each hall looks the same, and every stone seeming to repeat, and we’re all gathering a suspicious madness within our minds. A madness which talks with a voice that’s unknown, and echoes within our thoughts.

This voice grows, seeding a confusion that’s making all of us stumble our walk.

As the madness grows, I sense magic energies around us waxing and waning like moons at supernatural speed.

Then, before us, materializes a man.

Maybe a god.

He’s wearing no cloth, and is waiting.

He looks to us, and studies.

Not knowing what to do, the madness growing inside, we clumsily ask “Who are you?”

The god Ignores our words.

He then tilts his head, and beams his voice.

“We found Ka-la-wactul’s the bright star in Najums sky”

He pans his gaze downward to Broneur, the godly man’s face dispassionate, but nonetheless amused.

Weapons at the ready, though I doubt our minds would let us use them, the arcane energies coming from this god begin to throb faster and faster.

We all fall to our knees as the throbs speed up, and soon, the god vanishes in a flash.

The only evidence of his visitation are the words burned into our memory, and a portal of his own creation.

Once our minds calm, the team debates, asking one another what this visit means.

Getting nowhere with our arguments, Fenoris suggests we should inquire with the cube we found.

So I unwrap the cube and begin to ask.

“Who was that?”

The cube talks of wine quietly instead of answering our question.

Poor timing. This shorts the temper of an already short tempered orc.

Lunchbox grabs the cube from my hands, with an eagerness to smash, and throws me to the side like a bone from his dinnerplate.

“WHO WAS THAT!” In a voice tinted enough to make a king cower.

Forgetting his demands of wine, the cube promptly releases what it knows.

The cube assures us that Ka-la-wactul was the being we encountered, and we also learn that we are part of a game which Ka-la-wactul has created. A game where in hundreds of years of contestants, only four have lived.

“Ka-la-wactul doesn’t want your dead bodies” The cube states. “But for you to entertain him.”

Hearing this, we all look to the portal the god walked through, and wonder if it’s part of the game, or perhaps even an exit to home.

But now what? What do we do in this game now?

Lunchbox holds the cube like a ball to be thrown.

“What now, is the portal SAFE??”

No clear answer comes from the panicked cube.

Quietly Fenoris takes the matter into his own hands, sending his familiar, a butterfly though the portal to see if it’s safe. We soon learn that this good idea was foolish.

Like a leaf in a campfire, the butterfly sears into oblivion.

And with this, Fenoris screams and cries as the parts of his psyche entangled with the butterfly cinges tpp.

The portal is one of danger.

Lunchbox continues to debate the cube, and I follow the portal’s magic with an incantation, finding its source – a higher plane of the gods.

This portal is a path to the ilesium plane. In spurts of magics, I feel in my teeth there’s a magical generator making the labyrinth that comes from this portal.

If we find this generator, perhaps we can use it to channel an escape route, or get some more answers.

Our group collects, lunchbox gives up the cube, Fenoris at his feet again, and Broneur breaks his intent study of the rocks nearby, and we hurry down the hallway to find this generator.

And so we do.

We come upon an adorned room surrounding an elaborate gilded chest in the center.

Wasting no time, we open it.

Inside,a golden rat. A divine symbol of our captor.

Broneur reaches in to grab it, and as soon as he touches it our party vanishes from sight. Our minds blank. Only now, filled with Ka-la-wactul’s voice.

“You all bore me”

Like a drunk awakening without memory, we come to being, and find ourselves standing in a tavern.

Boorish locals surround us with droning talk.

We continue to orient our minds, and walking around we gather from the local talk that the building is located in the South Wharf.

Which South Wharf, I’m uncertain. My ability to detect the magics placing us did not reveal much.

We survey further around, scanning for peril and danger, but surprisingly start to sense safety.

Weakened by battles, Lunchbox and his fatigue leads us to a table to rest.

We find on to fit all of us, and we sit, pulling our stool in.

As soon as our elbows are on the table, the orc collapses into a snoring pile of sleep, drooling, with spittle pouring out of his long teeth.

Shocked, and more aware, we look at one another in disbelief.

How did we end up here?

Soon, a halfling with a towel at his waist stops by the table.

His big belly makes us think he a halfy halfling, and announces is named Sammey.

At the moment Sammy names himself, the orc wakes, reaching for the halfling like a fish to be deboned.

Fenoris calms Lunchbox back into rest.

The waiter has no idea how close to death he just was.

Sammy sheepishly then tells us that we are at Najams tavern, and we’re asked what we’d like to eat.

Food? Now? After all we’ve been through? Can we trust this place?

We all are hungry, but tell Sammy that we haven’t a coin to our cloth, so cannot order.

But soon Fenoris produces a shining silver piece to Sammy, shrugging as he puts it into his chubby hand as pay for his meal.

The coin, marked with ancient letters. Where did Fenoris get this?

Stunned, and surprised, we all search our pockets and find ample coin, which none of us knew we had, and all order meals.

The familiar comfort of ordering food and drink untangles our sense of danger, and we begin to welcome this tenuous respite. We all order, and without delay, our food and drink arrives.

The dwarf enjoys his Dubrois brown ale, though it’s watered down, and not worth the coin it costs.

Nonetheless, Broneur doesn’t mind the quality of the beer – he doesn’t seem to have many strong opinions on anything besides rocks. Surprising because he’s keenly aware of everything. He’s always emitting a bright density from under that helmet.

Broneur proceeds to drink enough ale to create a drunk by any measure of man or elf, but keeps sobriety, the only evidence of his tally of beers the ever-present alcohol on the breath.

The fish I ordered is excellent, strangely.

I wonder about all these half specied tavern goers, and our uncanny ability to produce gold and silver with alchemy of air, and nothing more.

We’ve paid for all this, having nothing when we entered. We’re tattered, and don’t question much, and enjoy the godforsaken rest we’re given.

But restlessness sets in, and Fenoris, my only sensible companion, helps me inquire about our location amongst the locals. We shouldn’t linger.

While probing for information about our predicament, we are able to chat with Grool, a beast of an innkeeper (Ogre actually). He tells us, with a wisdom that is strange for an imbecile

“The most certain way to succeed is to try one more time.”

Tired of the ignorance these tavern folk try to hide behind riddles, I seek an intellect who can help.

I take the cube out of my sack and cloth and give it the wine it’s been squawking about since we found it.

The cube tells us that this tavern is an illusion, a piece of heaven created by Ka-la-wactul and our only way out of this maze is to become champions that Najam would anoint.

But then it says Najam is out of the picture, and Ka-la-wactul is the architect of this misery. I believe we are meant to follow the path, adventure, and not ask questions about our situation.

So it seems we must leave this place and continue Ka-la-wactul’s torment inside his game.

For here, it’s a miraged rest, just a timeout within our game.

Understanding we’re merely here to be recharged for more abuse, we continue to walk about the tavern, and up some stairs.

In the room we find a portal, opened and waiting. A portal to adventure.

Knowing we’re likely to die here in this mirage, we begin to enter slowly to see if its truly an escape.

One by one we enter the portal, and the party begins to split.

On the other side of the portal, I found myself with Fenoris and Broenur in another tavern full of mountain dwarves, but no lunchbox.

It’s now obvious to me we’re stuck in a loop of miraged magic, and though the scene is different, this is nearly the same predicament as before.

Alarmed, I continue to collect information from locals to solve this puzzle, and discover our escape.

Is Lunchbox dead?

Not sharing my urgency, and likely not understanding we’re in a never ending loop of respite, the dwarf and druid order beers at the bar, and start to drink themselves into a stupor.

This time the beer isn’t brown, but a strange blue. Not sure if it was the color, but the drunkenness they find proceed to make them wrestle the locals for more tankards of the stuff.

Broneur is very talented in a match, and wins rounds for all of us.
He brings tankards around, offering one to me. Looking into the blue roil of bubbles, I decline, politely stating that I’m hanging onto sobriety so I can find us out of these endless taverns.

The dwarf and druid imbibe, and after several chugs, they both turn pale.

They’ve been hexed via the beer.

After they finish the last swallows, the blue belching energies send both my party mates soaring through the air with sparking magics, the momentum of the blast bashing them listlessly against the tavern ceiling.
This is not good.

They bounce back and forth several times, knocking themselves unconscious, and I start to ground them with words and holding them to the ground.

It’s time to extract us to safety.

We all stumble towards the portal again, knowing if we don’t transport elsewhere we’ll all likely die of beers of unknown origin.

So we run, burning through the portal again, hoping to find Lunchbox on the other side.