East of the Hag’s caves, the passage transitions from natural to worked stone. They are in a structure.
A long passage took the party eastward to an antechamber before a vast room with a high vaulted ceiling.
Along the northern and southern walls, eight enormous vats sat on timbered trusses ten feet above the ground. Piping defended from the ceiling to each of the vats.
Along the south wall, the third of the four vats was tipped and its contents emptied.
(More on that another time)
Investigating the room, black ooze depended from the ceiling and attacked the party, which was split on the eastern and western corridors.
The Anti-Saturday Squad learned several important things about flighting oozes. First, oozes strike with pseudopods, and the first rule of Ur states quite clearly, nothing with a pseudopod friendly. The ooze does more acid damage than blunt force damage. Acid is bad, naturally.
Second, when you slash an ooze or strike with with a blunt instrument, the ooze will splash on you. Acid is bad, naturally.
Third, if you strike the ooze with certain magical attacks, the ooze will divide.
Last, ooze is somewhat intelligent. It can attack with tactics, like ambush; or, worse, it can get help.
While some of the oozes kept the party busy in the fight, other oozes set about knocking over other vats. They managed to get more than half of the vats down, and the fight was getting extremely dangerous.
The party did an uncommonly sensible thing: they retreated.
Maeglin dashed out the eastern exit, while the rest of the party retreated to the west back to the antechamber they originally entered from.
As Maeglin was exiting out, he witnesses an earthen golem melt out of the wall and begin taking long purposeful strides across the floor of the vat room.
Not long after the party safely exited the room, both entrances were blocked by earthen golems.
Maeglin found himself in an small room leading into a circular room, featuring a statue in the center and mirrors aligned along the walls.
Investigating the foyer, Maeglin discovered a secret door leading to a series of passages leading back to the west. These were clearly service corridors of one sort or another.
A door leading back into the vat room, Maeglin noticed several golems at work reassembling the vats.
Proceeding west, he found a door that eventually opened up into the antechamber, reuniting the party.
Investigating these operational rooms, the party discovered three locked doors. Despite Maeglin’s best efforts, the party could not open the doors. They abandoned them to explore the hall and circular room with the statue and the mirrors.