While the party engaged with the hobgoblins outside of Whitebridge, Levani was gripped by a strange magical force and ripped from the material plane. She found herself standing in a summoning circle, in the centre of an underground chamber constructed out of huge stones of baked redish/brown clay. In the chamber with her was an olive-skinned, rakish human bard named Tak, who claimed to have been hired by a wizard to help him retrieve a dangerous artifact. The wizard lied dead at his feet, a charred corpse Tak said was the result of setting off a trap. He had used his last precious possession, a scroll of summoning purchased from a Tebaxi merchant in the city of Dis, to attempt to call a bone devil to his aid. Instead, he got Levani. “You’re much more beautiful than a bone devil, so it’s a shame we’re both about to die,” he said.

It was then that a swarm of iridescent horned beetles began pouring into the room around a set of barred metal doors, so Tak and Levani made their way deeper into the citadel, searching for a way out. Occasionally they were cornered and had to fight their way out as they made their way from room to room.

One chamber was little more than a pit of viscous green acid; a tiny platform floated in midair at the centre. Using clever combinations of Mage Hand, her ring of reducing and briefly convincing Tak to wear the Hat of True Frog, Levani was able to get across the chamber, with the swarms of beetles in pursuit.

Their route led them to a seeming dead end; a desparate last stand against a scarab golem composed of thousands of beetles saw Levani and Tak nearly killed. At the last moment, Tak stepped forward to engage the golem and allow Levani to escape. Faced with a choice of fleeing or attempting to rescue Tak, Levani made a grab for her new ally and dragged him to safety just as the way shut behind them, at least temporarily.

In the final chamber they discovered a huge green gemstone suspended in a beam of light over a raised dias with intricate designs carved into the floor. Levani searched the room for another way out, discovering an illusonary wall at one end, but Tak took this opening and plunged a poison-tipped dagger into her, and dragged her ruined body to the top of the dias, were her blood pooled in the floor carvings thereby releasing the gem from its magical prison.

Tak disappeared with the gem, leaving Levani unconscious and bleeding out on the floor of the citadel.

Beetles Roasted: hundreds

Gems Recovered: 1

Piccolo Mandolins Destroyed: Jolina

Player Character Deaths: ???