The Worst Party, having rampaged through Robes… & More! (the “More!” was apparently Medusas/Gorgons/snake-haired ladies and some kind of extradimensional demon, hence the exclamation point I guess), found itself in front of a closed door, on the other side of which were another Medusa (Alaphina, robe shop proprietress), a bull covered in metal scales, and enough treasure to make opening the door seem like a reasonable idea. They still discussed it for a long time, proposing increasingly complicated strategies, while being fully aware that in the end they would just run in and start swording.
First, though, Awnzo cast some kind of advanced rainbow razzle-dazzle to distract the enemies so the rest of the party could attack. Even with this advantage, the party whiffed most of their shots. Eventually Alaphina broke free from the rainbow-trance and fled through a door concealed behind the heap of silver coins, while the bull remained mesmerized.
Having learned either 1) a lot or 2) nothing from recently turning a huge angry acid-spitting dragon into a much smaller but equally angry and acid-spitting parrot, the party decided to put a bat hat onto the bull. It was instantly transformed into a (presumably angry) bat. Oika managed to wrap it up in a cloak like the wildlife expert she is and carried it around in a (presumably angry) bundle for a while.
After collecting some silver, the party continued down the corridor behind the secret door. Down a staircase they discovered a suspiciously lifelike statue of a gnome, and after some squinting and scratching their heads realized that it looked just like Dr. Frackenstein from back at the Gnomonics Institute. They also discovered the torn half of a contract revealing that Dr. Frackenstein owned the building and was leasing the robe store part to Alaphina the snake-haired lady.
The Worst Party quickly tired of reading/trying to read/pretending to read and proceeded down the tunnel. It ended in a hallway, which is what you get when you put a lot of joint compound on your tunnel walls. Assorted doors led to complicated science-looking rooms with large jars containing liquid and sacks, and wires running from the jars into the wall and the ground. Inside a cabinet were large brass sort of bracket-y things. The party quickly tired of trying to understand jar science and resumed their pursuit of Alaphina.
Down the secret door was a secret corridor, more doors, coils of different metal wire, and a door behind which Alaphina was waiting to petrify everyone. Awnzo and Beffa were turned to stone; everyone else either made their saving roll or were keeping their usual wise distance from the rest of the party. After taking her sweet time rejoining the party (who were again whiffing their shots), Nettie decided to show them how it was done, and took Alaphina out with a single fiery wallop from Flame Buddy.
Makalbly Jane looted the body with the traditional goatish respect for the dead and found some stuff—coins, brown oil, another thing I don't remember.
In the room behind Alaphina’s corpse were more big jars and wires, plus a metal table with a sort of humanoid metal statue lying on it. Before too much more investigation could take place, Beffa (de-cursed by Makalbly Jane) and Oika decided to just go ahead and smash the bull-bat with the stone Awnzo. Nettie intervened and stomped on it, which seemed kind of cruel until it exploded back into bull-form and began rampaging around the room. Makalbly Jane decided this was a fine time to use her emergency remove-curse scroll on Awnzo so the party could close the door on the bull and speedily remove themselves from the situation.
Back in the circular treasure room, the party collected more silver, found assorted magical items, and also all Nettie’s stuff, which had vanished at some point during the whole petrification-depetrification-feed you to a demon situation in the party’s prior adventure.
Nettie took some time to really commune with Flame Buddy and learned a little more about it, most importantly, that it can shoot FREAKING FIREBALLS. She managed to practice shooting balls of fire with a technique that she will undoubtedly be able to replicate perfectly next time the party faces an enemy.
The party considered napping among the wet robes upstairs (the violent storm that sent them to the robe store for shelter continued unabated), but then decided to tidy up the shop a bit and go contemplate jars. Eventually they even let Jeumes in out of the rain.
After some experimentation with wires and jars, Nettie managed to open the remaining door that was locked with a special lightning-based lock. Inside was a big pit containing a truly immense jar that dwarfed all the previous large jars. Eunice wanted to destroy all the wires, due to her innate distrust of contraptions. Awnzo (and maybe others?) wanted to put Jeumes in the jar and see if he could be sky-zapped back to himself. The Great Goat suggested that what made Jeumes Jeumes was too far gone to be recovered, but hey, maybe that means the party gets a free pass to use him as an experimental subject. Ethical dilemma: resolved!
