The Trial of Trickery

Entering the realm of Helia, the Veiled Vanguard encountered a baboon-faced entity—a deity who made an ancient bargain with Casmir—who doubted their capacity to survive the trial. When Emelyne attempted to climb a staircase, the steps flattened to slide her back; only after Ro’Zaad successfully scaled them did the entity vanish. Descending a spiral staircase into a dark room, the stairs vanished behind them. After a wooden flagon of wine and six goblets materialized, Thalia served the party. As oxygen drained from the sealed room, Emelyne collapsed before drinking, prompting Naoki to force the wine down her throat. Swallowing the drink halted the shrinking walls and revealed an exit door. In the next chamber, the party transformed into chimpanzees—retaining their minds but losing all equipment and spellcasting abilities. Navigating a treacherous spike pit via hanging vines, Naoki and Renatus were impaled on bamboo spikes for heavy damage, while Craum deftly swung a snake-bitten Thalia to safety. Arriving at a steaming, crystal-blue pool, the party dove in to restore their true physical forms. The baboon deity reappeared nude at the poolside, taunting them for missing a set of hidden stairs and noting that Ro’Zaad was leading the trial while Craum was in last place.

Pressing into a room featuring twelve torches and a central monkey statue covering its eyes, Emelyne stepped forward and was struck by an invisible force that broke her ribs. After Kevin the dragon was incinerated on an adjacent tile and Thalia took heavy fire damage, the party deduced the solution from the entity's riddles: extinguishing all twelve torches allowed them to bypass the trap and proceed into a lush jungle. As a twelve-minute timer initiated, a deafening swarm of chimp sounds erupted, dealing psychic damage until Craum cast a spell to deafen the group, allowing them to clear a path and escape into the next room with minutes to spare. Moving into a room with five stone stools, the Vanguard was forced to play a game of charades in the order they drank the wine—taking psychic damage for incorrect guesses—successfully acting out "Monkey," "Banana," "Drink," "Snake," "Death," and "Eat."

Reaching a chamber with three monkeys depicting the classic "See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil" motifs, the Vanguard learned they could fully recover their strength before the final trial, though one member had to be banished back to the entrance. Choosing to stay together, they opened the final door to face the baboon god once more, who unleashed two electric-breathing Spirit Nagas. The Nagas fried Thalia with lightning breath, cornered an invisible Emelyne, and knocked Craum unconscious into a Naga's jaws. Regrouping with combined spellwork and weapon strikes, the party slew the first Naga before Thalia landed a brutal, final blow on the second. Impressed by their victory, the transparent baboon entity granted them his ultimate reward—the "Monkey King's Paw"—from a central sarcophagus, teleporting the party back to the Prime Material Plane.