Then she can sell the potions for a much fairer price, excellent, thank you so much! Horgus Gwerm is now Dyra's favorite surfacer!

"We don't have a secure way to the surface yet," Seelah warns him. "We're going to try this 'maze' dungeon, but if we fail it might take until tomorrow, when a bigger party of the neathers will go up to the surface. And then it wouldn't really be us who helped you, or not just us."

"I'm paying for someone to guard me, personally, on my way up to the surface. If it takes until tomorrow for it to be safe, so be it. And I'd rather trust my life to you than to strangers."

That is...sort of fair...even if she's pretty sure Seelah is a stranger to him too. Anyhow. 

"I think Camellia was the only one who'd rather wait, and those kids could get in more trouble with a delay..." 

Camellia spends several seconds considering the option of staying in safety with the neathers and Horgus Gwerm while the others fight monsters in the dark.

It's the smart, obvious, boring option. She hates it. Too much of her life so far has been staying 'somewhere safe' with Horgus Gwerm. Maybe this maze has something fun to kill.

"I'll come with you, against my better judgement."

Grateful smile. "I really appreciate it." 

That's a very nice smile! Unfortunately, going by all she's heard about Lucette Wex, she probably combines "fun" and "killing" in entirely the wrong way.

...she smiles back, of course.

Okay, cool. Everyone who's going in is present and accounted for...can they have a couple of Neathers who can handle themselves in a fight waiting by the doors, to slam the doors closed behind the group if the group comes out fleeing from something. 

That's coming perilously close to risking that those two extra Neathers will get involved in a fight with whatever's chasing them, which seems counter to the spirit of Chief Sull's orders. 

On the other hand, anything that comes out of the maze and after them is a risk to the tribe. Lann can probably convince Sull to send one or two helpers who'll stay outside the Maze.

Unfortunately, when they get to the door into the Maze (a short boat-trip away from the village), it turns out the earthquake warped the doorframe; the door is now stuck half-open and will neither close easily nor open all the way.

"Well, I don't love that. I wonder if there are boulders that could be piled up to block the entrance..."

Yes, but not quickly enough if they're fleeing from something in close pursuit! Unless they want the door to be blocked behind them when they enter, they can totally do that.

Probably safer for the tribe. They can arrange a coded knock to let the rearguard know it's them and to take the boulders off. 

Then they will do that! The door can probably be forced close with enough effort, but it's anyone's guess whether it will open again afterwards, so they'll just make a big pile of rocks. A strong enough monster can probably push the door open against the rocks, but it's not as if they had a key to lock it even when it did close properly, so.

(Who built the door and why is a mystery. As far as they know, it was here when their ancestors first settled the Neath.)

Anything in the first room of the Maze will have heard them by now (what with the half-open door); they won't be able to sneak until, hopefully, the second room. 

Who wants to walk first into the maybe-ambush of the antechamber?

"I'm the best armored. The door's a tight fit but I can stick my head in for a quick look." Does anyone have a better idea?

Is she actually the best armored, Lucette is only wearing chain but she also has natural armor. 

That's really hard to call! Maybe they should butt heads to compare their hardness Lucette can, uh, put on Seelah's helmet for a bit if it would help?

Anevia is tempted to have a quick peek while the ambushers are distracted by this fascinating argument, but ultimately rules in favor of safety helmets.

Sure, Lucette will borrow Seelah's helmet. 

"Nope, we're clear." For the moment.

The first room is approximately square, about forty feet on a side. It's well built and fairly richly appointed; the walls and even the ceiling are made of worked stone, and the floor is polished and covered in geometric designs. There's a chandelier, and candle-holders around the wall; they're unlit, but contain stubs of candles.

There's a closed door in the far wall, flanked by two stone reliefs of Baphomet's goat-head.

"Damnation. Of course a 'maze' under the city would be infested with Baphomet cultists." Anevia sighs. "At least this makes it likely there's a way into the city; they wouldn't invest in a big maze if the only way in or out was by dimension door. If this is their base for the invasion, we might get a chance to hit them in the back - but that also means their force here could be too strong for us to take on."

"We've been living on top of a cultist base all this time?!" Lann looks at Wenduag in shock.

"How should I know? I've seen humans here before, but we didn't talk. Things changed every time I went in - sometimes there would be vermin instead of humans, sometimes a whole new room would appear. And I haven't been inside for two hundred gongs."

"What about the goat head, does that change?"