This episode begins with the intrepid adventurers trapped inside the tower wondering what to do next. Leaving Arthur and Mishkal to hold off the zombies coming through the window, the rest of the team tried to work out the best approach for exploring downwards. Emily took the initiative and tried descending the wrecked stairs. Predictably they collapsed so, after leaping backwards to safety, Emily got Mishkal to cast light on her dagger and dropped nimbly down into the darkness.
Hobbling away from a bad landing on a severely twisted ankle, Emily raised her dagger and looked around the room she had dropped into. There were a collection of ancient bedframes; the metal blackened and corroded with age and ... not a lot else. The place was so old it was a wonder anything was still there at all. The only thing of note was a chest sitting at the foot of one of the beds. Rogue senses tingling, Emily wandered over to investigate.
Meanwhile, up above, Arthur was battling zombies and had chopped off an arm. The arm, feeling it hadn't done its full days work, crawled around the floor before throwing itself at Mishkal. Whilst Mishkal fought valiently and Margaret looked around the room, fascinated with something or other, Ug lowered a rope and Beard climbed down. Wandering through the next level, he found Emily poking a chest. "Are you sure that's safe?" he said as he approached. "Well, there are no traps. I'm just about to open it - it should be perfectly sa - " BOOM.
The ball of fire from the opened chest engulfed Emily and licked to Beard's feet. As the smoke cleared, he saw a singed girl standing there looking very surprised. "Oops." Poking through the chest, Emily found the remains of a book in a foreign tongue and, underneath, a small but very pretty statue in what looked like glass. While Beard started pouring over the pages, Emily took a closer look at the statue. It seemed very sparkly and on closer inspection actually was made of ... DIAMOND!! At a conservative estimate, Emily figured it was worth around 15000 gold pieces - and that was just on the strength of the materials. Quickly she showed it to Beard and, as Margaret dropped down the hole, secreted it in the pocket of her adventurers garb.
Whilst Margaret helped Beard with the text, Emily explored the next few levels. They were all pretty much the same as the first (unfortunately minus expensive items of art) with rotten doors and destroyed stairs. Finally, Margaret and Beard caught up with Ug and Mishkal in tow just as Emily found a door behind which she could hear crying. Understandably surprised (although this was the third place they had explored and found a blockage with crying behind) they decided to search the current room first, which appeared to be the remains of a library with one set of shelves made of stone and the rest wood. Whilst the wizards looked through the ruins of the wooden shelves looking for books, Emily checked the door for traps then wandered over to the stone shelves assuming there was something suspicious there. Sure enough, hidden under a false shelf was a sapphire necklace which she immediately put around on, thus starting the parties unique approach to magic items.
Finally the party moved through the door and found themselves in an open area. Above them was an enormous dome of what appeared to be glass, but considering previous descoveries and the amount of mud it must be supporting (they were now 5 or so stories down in the buried tower) Emily and Beard were suspicious as to what else it could be. The crying appeared to be coming from the steps down into the central area. On the other side of the dome, a buried zombie noticed them and started banging on the glass. Just as they were debating what to do next, a faint shout from above reminded them of the missing party member. Grabbing a healing potion from Margaret, Emily ran for the rope and climbed upwards as fast as she could. At the top she found Arthur finishing off a zombie that actually got through and had clawed his face. The outside seemed clear for the time being so, after sucuring the entrance as best they could and Arthur chugged the healing drought, they headed back down the rope.
Downstairs, Beard decided to let Confuscious do the dying for him and sent the poor bird down the stairs to investigate. He didn't see anything at all, but fled when the crying voice suddenly asked who was there. The Mynah Bird was followed up by the ghost of Harry Potter who called himself Michael. He proceeded to explain the plot whilst the others arrived. Apparently this was the site of the final battle between the demon and the wizards. They were baracaded into the great hall with it by a priest who daubed holy runes all over the place to stop anything emerging. Nothing came out, although apparently they were successful. Meanwhile Pixus, then a student, fled promising to come back with help to get Michael. Now he's 10 000 years late his return is looking unlikely, but still Michael hadn't given up hope. He agreed to help the party escape by showing them the way Pixus got out. Sadly, this was a portal generator across the hall containing the box with the demon in it as well as whatever remained of the wizards...
Despite it getting late, Mishkal was up for exploring the room immediately pointing out Pelor would protect them all from harm. There were arguments against entering the final resting place of a powerful demon from the sanity camp (Beard: "The thing about Pelor, he's very much a day god...") and the party eventually decided to take a look at the doors into the hall before finding somewhere to rest for a time. The doors were blocked with some broken furniture (Emily: "They've baracaded the door with a chair - clearly it's a powerful demon.") so the party retired to a nearby room for the night. The night was largely uneventful except for an attack by a zombie which Ug dug up whilst bored on guard duty. This was rapidly killed before everyone returned to sleep.
The following morning, the party had another discussion about their actions. They all agreed that entering the chamber beyond was a remarkably poor idea. They all agreed it could result in the freeing of the powerful evil contained within. For some reason they did it anyway (Beard: "We're adventurers aren't we? It's our duty to destroy the world."). Inside they found a pair of Vargoyles which immediately paralyzed the entire party with their screams and proceeded to kiss each one in an attempt to infect them with their hideous disease. After finally becoming free, the party beat the hell out of one of the flying heads and Arthur held up the second one before Emily, feeling pretty nausious after the kiss, drove her dagger deep into the top of its head.
The party advanced into the room, and edged around the huge sinister box glowing with a frightening purple light. They found the lab containing the portal generator. At this point Mishkal, who had been pretty quiet since the fight, suddenly spoke up and proclaimed he was the spirit of the archmage of the tower...
And there we leave it, with the possessed Mishkal explaining quite why the party should open the portal to the domain of Ultimate Evil and chuck the box through and Emily noticing her hair is starting to fall out...