Part 1: No Business Like Show Business

Fallenta shakes her head. "No, you won't need anything special."

The theater’s foyer appears in pristine condition with thick blue carpet on the floor and shining crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling providing soft lighting. Sweeping staircases lead upward in both of the foyer’s southern corners, rising to an arch obscured by a thick purple curtain. The foyer contains numerous displays of theatrical paraphernalia, including miniature stage sets depicting a burning volcano, a score of mangy costumes (including a pantomime horse) displayed on mannequins, and even a pair of ten-foot poles that lie on the floor as if forgotten. To the north stand three doors. One near the west side of the foyer is marked with a glowing silver number two and an animated painting of a burning sailing ship, while another near the east side is decorated with a glowing silver number three and an animated painting of crows flying in a cloudy sky above a gloomy prison. Directly opposite the entrance, a double door adorned with a glowing silver number four bears an animated painting of an army of pixies fighting a dragon. Flickering images of burning nets stretching from the west door and iron chains stretching from the east door appear to wrap tightly around the central door.

Once you are ready, you head through the door marked with the number two. This room appears as a section of a sailing ship’s hold. Above, an iron-reinforced wooden hatch provides glimpses through its bars of the sky above—along with plumes of smoke, tongues of flame, and cries of terror, as if one were peering up from the cargo hold of a burning ship. The east and west walls are cluttered with shelves on which hundreds of objects have been crammed with countless alchemical tools and strangely labeled bottles (empty, full, and all stages in between) of various shapes and size. One great bottle—an enormous carboy—has an open top. Here and there between the shelves, gaps in the wall reveal portholes that look out over a rough ocean with no land in sight.

As you enter the room, Fallenta’s voice speaks to you while glowing words in Common manifest around the enormous carboy. The message repeats the following. "Your ship burns! Somewhere among these chemicals lies a solution. Fill the carboy with the right chemicals and assemble a method of dispersal! Move quickly!"

Horace and Ramank work together to mix the right chemicals while Aurelia and Bekassine craft the disperser. The disperser rises into the air and appears to spray the chemicals all over the flames, dousing them entirely! The illusory fire and smoke fades away. When you return to the previous room, you see that the burning nets that once extended from this door to the central door have vanished.

Once you are ready, you head through the door marked with the number three. This gloomy chamber is lit by a few fitfully burning candles within strategically placed wall-mounted holders. Between the candles, thirteen small wooden dovecotes have been mounted to the walls. Each has been carved with oddly unsettling facial expressions, so that any birds coming and going from the shelters give the impression of being eaten or spat out of gaping mouths. Brief glimpses of something dark moving within each imbue the room with the sensation of being watched from all sides. In the room’s center stands an impressive iron statue of a four-foot-wide turtle, its eyes closed and its shell adorned with three small brass-ringed plates, each of which bears a numbered dial.

Fallenta's voice speaks as you enter. "You’ve escaped prison, but final freedom lies within a slumbering toothsome guard. You are watched on all sides, but stealthy shellback work might go unseen."

With Bekassine’s assistance, Ramank wastes no time in getting the turtle's shell to swing open, revealing a comically oversized key that glows silver. The illusion fades, and when you return to the foyer, you note that the chains that once extended to the central door have faded, granting access to it. You pass through that door now, marked with the number four.

The "walls" of this chamber consist of densely packed tree trunks and undergrowth, with the ceiling fifty feet above revealing a full moon in the night sky. No obvious exits lead from this room, save for the double doors that provided you entry, which from this room appear to be strangely set into the sides of a particularly thick wall of tree trunks. Many of the trees and foliage still burn. The scorch marks marring the ground suggest that the immense dead dragon sprawled along the north a mere ten feet from those doors has only recently been slain, while the charred bodies of equally unfortunate dead pixies lie strewn all about, giving the impression of having just missed the end of an intense battle in which neither side won.

Fallenta's voice speak. "The spirits of this recent battlefield shall rise in but three minutes! Quell their rage and soothe their fear with threats, promises, lies, and song!"

As soon as the introduction is complete, ghostly images of tormented pixies start to claw their way up from the bodies, while the dead dragon to the north begins to twitch and shudder, an unholy fire kindling to life within its many wounds.