True Dungeon 2020 - Infernal Redoubt - It's a Soul Well

Things seem to mostly be going well for the party.  But you knew that.  Or maybe you didn't?  Catch up on the last installment here!

 The corridor eventually spilled out into a room with a large well of sorts in the middle.  “I recognize this,” Patrick offered, “it’s a soul well.”

I started to ask what a soul well was before deciding to just go with it.  There was some sort of ring resting over the soul well and, conveniently, ten chains attached to it.  At one end of it was a red skull, demanding to be fed souls.

Ignoring the skull, I searched the room and found a door.  Unfortunately, the door wouldn’t budge.  I asked Matt to give it a try, but the skull interrupted to say it would open the door for us if we fed it a few souls.

I didn’t know how to do that, but Patrick said the ring was a soul ring and we could use it to trap the skulls.  Sadly, the well was far too large for us to easily control the so-called soul ring, but we could work together with the chains and trap the souls to bring them to the skull.

We fed the skull soul after soul, but it kept demanding, “More souls! More souls!” as the souls plead to be left alone.

“This is useless,” I said, as I dropped my chain.

Everyone gasped as the soul we’d trapped escaped and caused the well to overflow with lava, burning all of us.  Nothing serious, but enough to get me back in the business of feeding these stupid souls to the stupid skull.

“Fine,” I said, adding “more souls, more souls,” in a mocking tone.

Hundreds of souls later, the red skull announced it was sated and a foul creature emerged from the well.  True to his word, he turned to the door and emitted some awful beam from his eyes, opening the door.  After that, he flew upwards, passing through the cave above us, leaving a ring of blood dripping from the ceiling where he’d entered it.

“Glad that’s over,” I said, as I looked around the room to find several of us aghast by what we’d just witnessed.  “I’m sure it’s fine.  We almost certainly didn’t just unleash some unspeakable evil on the world.  I think I remember him saying something about the souls making him thirsty.  He’s probably just looking for a drink.”  I turned to Drew, “Maybe you should have offered him some of your precious water.”