We have the weighted votes in, at 3 for A, 3 for B, and 1 for C. I break the tie and decide to go back, rest, memorize some sleep spells, and hit tier 5. There must be wandering encounters, because this happens.
You are spotted by the Magi of Usamigaras! Without hesitation, they begin chanting spells to attack you! Looks like some survived after all.
There are seven of them and us without any sleep spells. Qastur goes first, and I decide not to be stingy on the magic, using stinking cloud to put half their spellcasting out of commission. Midge misses the closest unaffected Magi to her, but shakes off a charm person spell directed at her. That's twice she's made her save against the Magi now. Jaesun the Gay kills the closest unaffected Magi next to him, Myass sling stones to death the Magi Midge missed, and the battle swiftly goes the rest of our way.
After that speed bump, I return to the Brotherhood, rest up, memorize four sleep spells for the magic-users, return to the ladder, and go down into tier 5.
The ladder shaft lets out on a room with no furniture. A single door, before you, provides exit. I walk out the door.
This room contains a bed, a table, a chair, a lantern and a wooden holy symbol of two intertwined snakes. The furniture is made of wood. A hooded white robe is draped over the chair. Except for the furniture and the robe, the room appears to be empty. The wall slides shut behind you, meeting seamlessly as if only solid wall existed.
So we have a secret door north of us that leads back to the upper tiers. Remembering that, I explore the room. The room is empty, except for the robe. When Jaesun goes to touch it, this odd message appears, showing that all along Jaesun was psychic.
As your fingers touch the coarse fabric of the robe, you feel a moment of vertigo. As the world spins about you, you know... you know that this robe belonged to Demetrius, an elder cleric in the Order of Usamigaras. Demetrius sought to destroy the Cult of Zargon... would have destroyed the Cult of Zargon... but his brother, his evil, evil brother... murdered Demetrius before the holy work could begin... Darius... Demetrius' brother was Darius... and Darius is alive still... You feel him... Sense him... to the east and on this very tier of the pyramid... you feel his evil... he is worshipping Zargon... You must kill him... You pull back your hand and shake your head. What spell befell you? Your companions are watching you warily, and with good reason. You had been muttering, you realize. "Darius must die." Turning away from the good priest's cloak, you step away from the table. Cloak? I though it was a robe. Ok, whatever. The Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) is to the east of this room. Let's go kill him.
I step out into the next room through the only other exit, which is to the south. Still no eastern door yet.
This room appears to be an abandoned kitchen and dining room combination. The cupboards, a table and chairs are covered with a thin layer of dust. Near the table, two large snakes with brown and yellow scales are coiled around the body of a woman wearing a rabbit mask. We are too late to save her, but not to avenge her.
Qastur goes first again, and since these snakes are pretty deadly I use up one of our precious sleep spells. It only knocks out one.
But guess what? Having Jaesun, Magnus and Midge guard this time works perfectly. The second snake runs right into the center of their defensive wall, and the three hit and kill it before it returns the attack. Magnus himself did 18 points of damage. I'm pretty sure now that wielding two-handed weapons adds a multiplied bonus to damage. I'd guess x1.5 or some such. Also, most two-handed weapons do more damage to large and giant creatures. The dwarven fighter is a killing machine.
I still can't go east. I enter the next room to the south.
The room looks like a living room. It contains wall hangings and ornate divans. There are several pieces of sculpture in the room. Everything is covered by a thin layer of dust. Two iron statues flank the door, and no sooner does it swing shut than they animate and march forward to attack. 
One statue goes first and thankfully misses. These aren't iron golems, one of which would kill this party without breaking a sweat. These are living statues from original Dungeons and Dragons, converted into AD&D. Personally, I loved these monsters when I DMed the BECMI version of D&D and they never did get a proper conversion in later editions. The iron statues had a chance for people to get their weapons stuck in them if hit by an edged weapon. The rock statues were full of magma and squirted magma blood at you from their wounds when struck. This module doesn't seem to have those novelties, but it will still be a tough fight. This is going to be a straight out brawl. They have good defenses, good accuracy with their fists, and have decent hit points. My magic spells are useless against them, though magic missile may have been effective. The first two rounds are uneventful. One statue hits one of our front line fighters for only a hit point, and my front line continues to miss. Only the back row does some plinking damage with sling stones. Myass is being an odd underdog. He has the lowest stats out of everyone, yet seems to hit more often than anyone else of late.
On the third round we start taking severe points of damage from the statues, but Jaesun finally gets a couple of strong hits in to down one. We swarm the second one, with Magnus the Irascible finally overcoming his hitting slump and bringing the statue down to single digits. Myass plinks him with a sling stone, and Jaesun the Gay finishes the creature off. Jaesun is down to 26/27 hit points, Magnus to 29/36 hit points and Midge to 15/25 hit points. But hey, we won. And with that, we finally find a door that leads east. This door leads to a long corridor. I'm getting nervous, so I use a cure light wounds on Midge. Somewhere to the east is the BBEG we are hunting and I have no idea about his defenses. Midge goes up to 23/25 hit points from Myass' spell.
We walk through an eastern door at the end of the long corridor, and we find ourselves in a fairly large chamber with a door to the north.
The room is paneled with wood and a dusty red carpet covers the floor. A large, heavy desk sits in the center of the room. Several wooden chairs are grouped north of the desk. Behind the door is a large plush chair, while behind the chair on the south wall is a mounted lion's head. Four large painted urns stand in the corners of the room. Finally, on both sides of the north doorway are stone pedestals with stone statues of winged beasts with claws, fangs and horns. As soon as you step into the room, the creatures animate and swoop, screaming towards you.
We just got ambushed by gargoyles. It's hard to show in the below picture, but we have a gargoyle to the east and another to the north of the party. I move Midge north to protect the casters, and leave Magnus and Jaesun to guard the east. We run into a problem right away as Midge's attack hits, but does no damage. It seems that gargoyles can only be harmed by magic weapons, leaving Jaesun as the only hope against them. Lucky for us gargoyle's do little damage, but maybe we should have tried to find the magic weapon in the king's tomb after all.
At this point, poor Midge is just holding the line and getting cut up, while Jaesun slowly finishes off his opponent. This battle would have been a simple affair if everyone had magic weapons. It isn't too hard, even though we only have one magic weapon in the entire party. But still, the front line got pretty cut up. Midge picks the lock on the cabinet and finds some gold and what may be a magical mace. The mace goes to Midge, who could have used it when she was getting mauled earlier. I have Myass use two more cure light wounds spells on Midge, but she only goes up three hit points to 19/25.
Things could be better for us. We take the only door left, to the north. Which brings us to another corridor with a four way intersection ahead. I walk up to the center point.
Suddenly the floor collapses!
Just a random trap, though we stay on this tier and Myass takes a whopping 10 hit points of damage.
Muttering to myself, I turn the party east and continue with murder on my mind. The corridor ends in a T-intersection, and I go south and through a door.
This room seems oddly damp. A strange, moist odor fills the air. The room contains a low bed, some wooden shelves, and a small chest. The contents of the room seem to shimmer, as if seen through clear water or a thick pane of glass. Without warning, a transluscent pseudo-pod manifests before you. Heh... a gelatinous cube. These things are always fun. Gelatinous cubes are dangerous in low light, since parties tend to walk right into them and get dissolved. When seen ahead of time, they quickly are destroyed. With such low hit points and no special defenses, this thing doesn't survive the first round.
Jaesun the Gay and Magnus the Irascible go first, and between the two they both connect and slay the thing for our fastest completed fight yet. Unfortunately the room is a bust when it comes to treasure. We leave the room and go north. We find ourselves at the end of a corridor, and I am able to locate a secret door with another passage that leads north and east. Finally! I feel we
are getting close to our goal...
You freeze as your foot depresses a pressure plate in the floor. The walls of the passage before you suddenly slam together with an echoing crash, then slide back into place. At first it seems that the trap misfired, but then other possibilites come to mind. "We won't be sneaking up on anybody in this area," muters Midge.
Ok, this is some straight out bullshit. I've had Midge highlighted, and therefore in the lead, a few times now and these traps are never discovered by her. I'm glad no one was hurt, but this is getting frustrating. We press on to the eastern door.
Ten Cynidiceans wearing dark robes and masks of fearsome, imaginary monsters sit in a circle in this room. They are staring straight ahead, but don't seem to be looking at anything in particular. They do not respond to stimuli of any kind. On occasion, though, one flinches, or even cries out, for no apparent reason.
Ok... odd. I ignore them and search the room. Coming up empty, I take a southern door.
A dozen brightly robed men and women masked as various animals are playing games of chance. Card games are being played on one table, dice games at another. In the center of the room is a large wheel of fortune. Many silver and gold coins, gems, and pieces of jewelry are changing hands as people win and lose. Suddenly, you feel Demetrius fully awake in your mind. Without the power to stop him, the old cleric shouts his brother Darius' name and storms into the room, brandishing your weapon!
Holy crap! Run for your lives, everyone! Jaesun's possessed or he heard about DU's recent poll about moderators!
The Cynidiceans grab for their weapons. Suddenly, a hush falls over the room as a section of the southern wall slides open, revealing a room beyond.
Accompanied by tendrils of cool mist, a man steps into the room. He is flanked by hobgoblins, and he speaks through a demonic mask hammered from pure gold. "These are the blasphemers to the name of Great Zargon! They must be slain, or they will kill you and take your hard-won gains! The Cynidiceans are enraged by the threat you now pose to them! Drawing blades they rush forward in a mob, reinforced by the hobgoblins. The evil cleric laughs harshly and thrown in his lot with your enemies."
Holy shit! Here we go!
There are a whole lot of dangerous bad guys south of us. Two pull away immediately and miss Midge and Jaesun. Myass goes first, but I decide to hold up on firing off his hold person spell, since Darius is not yet in range, and Myass would have to walk through a bunch of hostiles in an attempt to do so. Instead, he fires a sling stone in the hopes of disrupting any spellcasting from Darius, but he misses.
Jaesun the Gay is up next. I have him move up a bit so he can both engage in melee and be a target to distract from the casters. In the process he takes out an unarmored Cynidicean stupid enough to charge us with a dagger.
Qastur goes next, and it's sleep spell time. He knocks out five of the enemy surrounding Darius (who is spellcasting), but Darius is too high a level for himself to be affected. Midge is up next, but I can't have her shoot her bow at Darius in an attempt to disrupt his magic since someone closed in melee with her, and she doesn't have the movement to try to get past his fighters and stab him to disrupt his magic. With nothing else to do, she tests her new mace on the skull of the nearest Cynidicean. The new mace works great.
Darius is able to get off his spell, as I feared. I'm hoping it is not a Hold Person spell against Jaesun, and I get my prayers answered. Darius casts a Silence 15' radius spell centered on Midge... the party's fighter/thief. o_O
Abigail goes next. Being way outside the range of any Silence spell, she lets loose with Sleep, taking out four more Cynidiceans and a hobgoblin. Things aren't looking good for Team Darius right now. Magnus the Irascible is up next. Knowing that we have the battlefield shaped in our favor, the dwarf now knows that the priority is taking out Darius. He slips past Jaesun to attack a hobgoblin that leaked through, but misses. Because he can't punch a hole for our magic-users, Qastur can't hit Darius with a stinking cloud. He elects to plink him with a sling stone instead to disrupt his spellcasting instead, but also misses.
Thankfully, Midge hits something, but all she can do is try to keep her side of the battlefield clear to protect the casters. We've made little progress against Darius.
Confident that Jaesun and Midge can continue to hold the line against the leftovers, Magnus risks a few blows from the enemy as he pushes past their ranks to get next to the cleric. He gets cut up by a hobgoblin blade to the back along the way, then proceeds to miss his own swing against Darius... The next round Darius holds him with a spell. Meanwhile, that fucking hobgoblin next to Jaesun continues to taunt us as our paladin misses him once again.
Abigail decides that enough is enough. She moves south and casts stinking cloud on two of the remaining enemy fighters. Another hobgoblin decides to show off how badass he is by not becoming incapacitated. After five rounds of dicking around with Mr. Hobgoblin, Jaesun the Gay finally gets around to killing him.
Darius gets hit for one hit point of damage by Qastur, disrupting his chance to cast spells this round. Darius takes it in stride, though, using the opportunity to bash in Magnus' brains. Myass bandages him in order to keep him from dying.
I can't afford to target Darius anymore, since those Cynidiceans are likely to start waking up soon. Qastur kills one choking in a stinking cloud with a sling. Myass does the same to one of those incredibly lucky hobgoblins. Midge continues to be my hero in this battle, killing off one of the hobgoblins in melee that was giving me trouble.
We aren't winning this fight yet, as our best fighter is down, but I can at least say we've cleared some space. Darius takes the opportunity to get close to Jaesun and Midge, which ends up being a mistake for him. Midge misses him, however. Jaesun and Midge are able to cut him for a few hit points of damage, while Darius continues to miss them. I suppose he's a lover, not a fighter.
Myass kills off the last Cynidicean who got through the front lines. Qastur and Abigail use the opportunity to kill some more hobgoblins, since they might actually pose a threat if they wake. And Jaesun, Midge and Darius all continue to play the missing game.
After another miss from Darius, and a few more sleeping Cynidiceans are slain by my rear row, Darius finally begins to realize that melee combat is a losing proposition for him. He begins casting again. He casts Blindness on Jaesun, but the paladin resists. Breathing a sigh of relief, we go back to the front row missing a lot, while the back row wipes out Darius' sleeping support. The back row runs out of sleeping folks to kill, and starts to target Darius.
Realizing how absolutely screwed he now is, the cleric surrenders. The party gets a huge amount of experience points, 6601 xp each, ensuring that the cleric is going to get screwed since Myass is stuck at level 3, and loses excess XP, since we never found him a trainer. I suppose we kill Darius, since he isn't mentioned again.
There is nothing else in this area, so I have the party head out and heal back at the Brotherhood. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do right now. No ladder down to another tier near Darius' location or cache of food that would allow us to escape. I can continue to explore Tier 5, looking for a way down, if that's the consensus.
Hey, and check out B4 The Lost City in google images. You guys are immortalized!
Enough to send anyone into a beserker rage....
I had to refight the battle, and in the second go Jaesun fell unconscious and lost out on the XP instead of Magnus. That is why Magnus is close to fifth level, Midge is level 4/4 and Jaesun is still level 3. Magnus did get missed twice by the wraith, and Myass did turn it. THAT was indeed lucky.
Looks like we need another meat shield. 
