Elemental Walls and Lever Puzzles, Part One

 Okay, last DnD posting for today: 

At this point the party is very much disabled. Everybody except Chuck is blind and deaf; Chuck is merely deaf. Durest is okay, because he was off in the globe of invulnerability, but he's stuck there while we rest.

Chuck loots the body of artworks and gems, since nobody else can see him do it.

Everybody rests; and when he's recuperated, Durest uses Dimension Door to get back the main platform and cures everyone of their blindness and deafness.

We drop a bunch of fiery error-effects on the next platform, wiping out the floating glowy-balls before Hatch uses Mage Hand to retrieve the third orb.

Chuck looks over the orb while we wait some more, and determines that they're power sources keyed to the trap door.

We decide to take out the next platform as well, and Hatch and Chuck drop Fireballs there as well. The Archons on this platform have spell resistance, but Hatch gets past then and Chuck manages to burn one as well. Durest drops Shield of Faith on Jenny, and Hatch uses his last empoweree fireball on the platform, doing more damage. Chuck  tries again but spell resistance is a hell of a thing; Durest tries Inflict Mass Moderate and also fails to get through it.

They teleport over to Hatch, who steps aside and tags them with a Cone of Cold. Jenny follows up with her evil-ified spiked chain, and Hatch follows up with Enervate. Durest drops Mass Inflict Moderate Wounds and takes one of them down; Bob the Forst Giant Skeleton attacks but misses.

The remaining Archon smites Hatch several times, taking him down but not *quite* killing him. Ramekin dumps a potion of healing down Hatch's throat; Hatch, prone, attempts to tag the Archon with Shocking Grasp. Jenny slashes into him, doing horrible amounts of damage and taking it down.

We stop and rest again, then claim the final orb and put it into place. The central portal opens, revealing a layer of water. The ruins seems to be dedicated to the clockwork god Kwalish, but these Archons seem to be servants of Good, placed here to prevent us from retrieving the artifact.

Chuck steps into the water, and a current grabs him and just yanks him down. After about thirty seconds he emerges at the bottom. At the bottom is a column of water; when he hops back in he get carried back up. "Um... Yeah. It's basically like a water elemental. But that's not the big deal. The big deal is the giant mechanical centaurs at the bottom. So we're probably going to want to be invisible."

Hatch: "I have a wand of Invisibility..."

We pause to loot two sets of +3 Full plate - 10,000 GP worth of armor.

Then Hatch makes us all invisible except for Bob, and we drop down the water elevator. Ahead of us are a pair of mechanical centaurs, with wings, and with spiked chains in place of their arms.

The centaurs move past Jenny to get to Bob, but she waits a beat before attacking. She misses, and is no longer invisible.

Hatch drops his empowered Fireball again, and they're definitely injured -- scraps of metal are falling off of them, gears are grinding... Hatch (visible) and Ramekin (invisible) retreat out of their range. Chuck follows his fine example, but only gets through the spell resistance for one of them -- but it destroys the thing. Durest follows up with Flame Strike and immolates the second one.

So... these mechanisms seem to be self-repairing, and they seem to be resistant to damage from non-chaotic sources. Over on one side of the room is an empty doorframe, which does us no good at all. To the north is a bridge over a very deep pit, blocked by a wall of fire. It sounds as if the bottom of the pit is a pool of the tiny little repair-bots. We can see vague shapes through the flames, but not very well. Jenny moves closer to the wall and finds that it radiates a massive amount of heat.

On the far side of the firewall is a humanoid mechanical on the bridge, and another force platfor off to one side above the pit. Hatch and Ramekin fly over the pit, and Hatch uses Mage Hand to retrieve the orb through the wall of fire.

We try rubbing the orb on the empty doorframe, but nothing  happens.

We go back towards the fire wall and Durest Dimension Doors past it. He's in a new area with another pair of the flying mechanical centaurs. He casts Fly while they're surprised, then zips past them, taking a bit of damaged from an electrified chain-whip arm. The centaurs give chase, and one of them tries to attack but misses; it attacks again as he grabs the orb, damaging him again, and he teleports back to the others.

We spend a bit of time resting and plotting and changing out spells. Then we dump an unbelievable load of elemental protections on Hatch, and let him dimension door his way across. His first jump puts him on top of a mecha-centaur, but he's also invisible and protected against Good so he just flies off to the side and snatches the orb with his ranged legerdemain.

He uses dimension door again, and this time winds up at what looks like a midpoint, with two empty doorframes and a lever, with a wall of force blocking the way and a rainbow wall over the bridge.

Hatch calls back through Ramekin: "Doors! There's this wall of force, and there's these six platforms with enemies! It looks hard! But their platforms have levers! It's a lever-puzzle. He should pull the lever, right?"

Jenny: "Tell him to pull the lever."

Durest teleports everybody except Bob to where Hatch has moved to stand over the bridge again.

Hatch: "Don't try to walk through the prismatic wall."

Durest, in a fit of "What the Hell," pulls the lever, which switches which portal is active. Durest steps through, and arrives at one of the further-ahead rooms. Jenny moves through the teleporter and Durest adds Chaos to her weapon. Jenny moves closer to the mecha-centaur on the platform. Chuck and Hatch and Ramekin all follow.

Durest strolls over and tries to smack the thing with his mace, but misses; Jenny hits with her spiked chain. Chuck hits it with a scorching ray, and Jenny takes it down.

She immediately charges through the active portal, and the rest of us follow... and find outselves back at the start of this level.

"Well, shite," says Hatch.