The First Expedition: The Alchemist's Vault

Elara’s chant rises above the din, and the fungoids blink, momentarily stunned. Before they can react, her staff crackles with arcane power, loosing a spear of lightning that explodes in a blinding flash. When the blaze subsides, four fungoid corpses lie sprawled and smoking on the stone floor.

A heartbeat later, Subeen’s oil ignites around the fifth creature, and it erupts into flames with a hideous shriek. It thrashes wildly, scattering burning droplets that hiss and sizzle on every surface. Acrid smoke curls through the chamber as the lashing fire begins to devour the surrounding vegetation.

Terrified, the last two fungoids look like they're about to scramble for the western stairs, while the choking black smoke thickens.

The lightning bolt has destroyed a swath of the pods outright, leaving a black gash across the floor where the lightning touched.

The nearby pods are catching on fire, especially the ones that splashed with burning oil from the flailing of the fungoid engulfed in flames. The pods sizzle and spit as they burn. But, there are still a lot of pods in the cavernous room.

Shrieking in desperation, the two fungoids scramble for the western exit, limbs flailing as they flee the inferno. The third, engulfed in flames, staggers into the swirling mist and collapses in a frenzy, unwittingly having spread fire across the damp undergrowth. Yet the thick humidity clinging to the floor fights back, thwarting the blaze from reaching its full fury.

From the balcony, Subeen descends into the flickering light, her silhouette dancing across the walls. She wades through the tangled vegetation and unleashes a fresh torrent of oil, feeding the flames until they surge with renewed hunger. Nearby pods snap and sizzle like sautéing mushrooms, each burst, fuelling the fire’s growing appetite. Acrid smoke spirals upward, and is sucked through the cracks in the south wall, the very fissures the repair construct had been labouring to seal, vanishing into the unseen space beyond.

The guardian construct stands like a silent sentinel, its single crimson eye glowing as it observes the spreading inferno. Though its command card is gone, you can almost feel the restrained violence simmering behind its metal visage. On the other side of the room, the repair construct remains frozen in place, the vacant green of its gaze betraying no hint of purpose, as though it has forgotten the mending work it once endeavoured to complete.

Amidst this chaos, Trix slips down a veil of vines with practised ease, touching down on the chamber floor. Without lingering, he darts eastward, discovering a corridor that unfurls ahead before bending north. Halfway along, a staircase branches off to the north as well.

Subeen finds the wet vines difficult but not impossible to spread the flames to. This is clearly going to take some time, and the air is filling with thick, black smoke, which stings everyone's eyes and consumes your sense of smell. Some of it is being sucked through the cracks along the south wall, but the repair robot has mostly sealed that up. The constructs passively watch as the vegetation catches fire around them, unmoving.