We find a piece of paper on the table next to the dead roper - the script is dwarvish but it’s in a language that neither myself, Tittlin, nor Lute Pluck understand. We then hop through the purple portal in the same room to find out where it goes, landing in the room littered with red portals that Lute Pluck and I were in previously. Tittlin immediately gets grabbed by the roper and yanked into a nearby red portal, however somehow manages to almost instantaneously find his way back into the same room.
We all duck around the corner to get away from the roper and quickly deal with the two remaining choldrith in the room. Momen relays some disturbing information - a wall came down and thick black smoke has poured into his room, and the visage of a sickly old woman is saying that she’s his only chance of getting out of this hell hole. She has a pale form and reptilian eyes, and seems to be pressuring him into giving some magic items away - this pretty quickly indicates to us that it’s Qyldryt ― The Patient, and Tittlin and I relay some info to try and get Momen out of this predicament. While initially unconvinced, she casts some sort of spell which suddenly causes hundreds of insects and spiders to come out of crevices and cracks in the walls everywhere that I can see. We swat them off of us, and they all then disappear as quickly as they came. Apparently she used this to identify that we were indeed present - she still bargains with Momen for an offering of an item for his life, and after some debating he passes her the BUN-E suit which she seems perplexed by but still accepts before letting him out.
Momen quickly rolls Ealdwig into his portable hole before walking out of the room with the exit provided by Qyldryt. He then joins us in our room to finish off the leftover roper. Despite the added support, I get a bit too cocky and get dragged into a nearby red portal with the roper, sending me to what appears to be a decimated restroom. I angrily retaliate against it immediately, crushing it, and relay my location to the party so that they can rejoin me. Going in and out of a series of webbing and paralysis, my friends show up in the room one by one and we cut down the rest of the quaggoths and choldriths.
Consulting the map, we see that we’ve gone through every purple portal that we’ve found so far but have been unable to find one that leads to the third floor. We take a look at the water reservoir in the room beside us, and upon closer inspection Tittlin realizes that it leads under the wall. He dives in and swims a short distance before surfacing in another room with a purple portal… which turns out to be the entrance to the second floor, back where we started. We check another route via the water and end up in another familiar room. Running out of ideas, we then head towards the room with the drider in it. Lute Pluck manages to enter stealthily from behind the drider via a water route that none of us noticed. We take a few hits but deal with it relatively quickly, and then Lute Pluck heals us a bit. The final purple portal that the drider was apparently guarding appears to be the route to the third floor!
We take a short rest and I pull Shifty back out of my bag, making sure that he can comfortably morph into a few different forms before settling on the trusty ol’ lance. Healed up and ready to go, we proceed deeper in to the dungeon.
The entrance to the third floor is a large octagonal room with the etchings of many portals on the floor, a purple portal with chalk scrawled on the floor next o it saying “Drop”, and behind us are a couple pipes with teleportation goo flowing out of them into vases below. I initially try just swapping a vase out for the barrel, but I hear a “click” and the goo stops flowing. I put the vase back under and it restarts, so I then begin the process of filling up a barrel using the vase and pass the other barrel to Momen by the other tap to do the same. Taking the cautious route, we decide to leave with our 2.5 barrels of goo to secure what we came for. Success!
We rent some rooms for the night and all gather to chat with Ealdwig who has been extracted from Momen’s portable hole.