Traveling mountebank Bartoc the Orc and his wife Mary the Alchemist woke at their camp site to find Mary's mother, Salamandra "Sherry the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, missing. In her place were a set of webbed footprints leading into a fissure in the nearby rock face that definitely wasn't there last night. They thought about retrieving Mary's Lorikeet "Larry the Mage Hakkapeliitta and her sister Tansy Hakkapeliitta from the nearby town where they were staying. They decided to err on the side of speed and went into the cave after mom.
The cave was much warmer than the surface. Clouds of steam wafted around huge halite crystals growing out of every surface. The Guild followed a narrow path down to a heap of garbage and a couple openings where light shone from rooms deeper in the cave complex. Mary lit a torch and went looking through the trash pile for treasure. There were skulls mounted on poles and a warning glyph shaped like a flame. She found a rotted brigandine, an intagliated gemstone and a mysterious sealed hatch at the top of the pile. Bartoc went through one of the openings and found a sacrificial chamber lit by a brazier, with a big bronze demon statue and a sacrificial offering bowl large enough to lie down in. Steam billowed out of a hole behind the statue. Bartoc searched the room and took a felling ax and fishing pole. He peered down into the pit.
Mary came in and asked for Bartoc's crowbar to open the stuck hatch. He told her to quiet down, there were monsters. In the hole below, three pairs of glowing eyes moved around dimly lit platforms and bubbling geothermal pools. He handed her the crowbar and waited for her to leave before throwing a rock into the hole. The monsters froze as the stone clattered down the hole. They spoke in a dialect of newt he recognized from his burgeoning acting career. Something smelled real good and one of the newts was going to check it out. He stepped back before they spotted him and raised his sword. The newt climbed up the ladder and Bartoc clobbered him.
The fire newt made a distressed sound, detached its tail and fled back into the pit before Bartoc could hit it again. Mary dropped what she was doing and came running. Bartoc looked down into the hole and saw the three newts retreating through a drainage pipe into an adjacent chamber. He pushed open the door from the sacrifice room and almost lost a hand to an acid trap. The three newts ran past him and went deeper into the cave complex, gulping warnings in their croaking language. Mary tossed the severed newt tail into the sacrificial bowl in front of the demon statue. It obliterated the offered meat with a jet of superheated steam from its nostrils, then drooled a single gold coin from its mouth.
A grinding sound came from the trash pile. The wall hatch was stuck. Something was trying to open it from the other side but the crowbar Mary left wedged in the gap stopped it from opening. Bartoc recognized the sound of raptor claws on the other side. They did a quick investigation of the cleared rooms. The newt steam room had a bunch of glittering coins under maybe twenty feet of crystal clear boiling water, which Mary didn't try to retrieve. They still hadn't found mom. If she was still alive she was somewhere deeper in the cave. They went in after the newts.
The newts made their stand in a combination dining room and torture chamber. Pits of purple fungus pulsed around a central platform with a table set for dinner. Sherry was nowhere to be seen. The three newts were joined by a fourth, much larger beast. They croaked a warning to someone in the adjacent room, who shouted back. The mechanism was stuck, they couldn't open it. Mary tossed a bomb from her belt, made from the paralytic tentacles of a carrion crawler, and stunned the monsters long enough to give Bartoc an opening. The orc leaped in with the felling ax from the devil room and hacked away.
Bartoc went into the room that the fifth newt yelled from. A newt mage stood in front of a cage full of raptors. The orc hit him. The newt unlocked the door and fled the room, shedding the fins from his head to aid his escape. He went into a room full of lava, with basalt platforms as stepping stones. Mary came in with the severed arm discarded by the fleeing newt. The raptors surged out of the cage but she held them off with the offered food. She was a better alchemist than a beastmistress but she knew enough to be dangerous. She told the raptors to go after their former leader. They shot off into the magma room after him.
Mary and Bartoc went back through the door where they heard mom yell from. They found Sherry tied up naked in a cauldron of boiling water, heated by a channel of magma flowing in under a floodgate. She was unhurt, pretending to be boiled so the newts wouldn't get suspicious and try something else. Bartoc struck at the newt and drove him back while Mary hauled her mom out of the tub. The newt mage came in under the floodgate, slithering through the lava like it was water. He ignored the Guild and ran for a cage filled with rats. He took one out and brandished his sacrificial dagger. Mary shouted for the raptors. They hopped nimbly across the stones from the magma room and devoured him.
Sherry puked up a mouthful of enchanted beads, the spell component she used for Endure Elements. The Guild shoved the last newt out of the way and they ran for it. Past the acid trap and the statue and cave and back to the surface. They found Larry the Mage (dad) and Tansy (sister) waiting for them by the enchanted wagon. Larry was happy to see his wife and daughter again. Tansy showed off all the jewelry she stole in town while dad argued over payment. She flirted with her brother in law, to which her sister remained oblivious.
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