Keef told me that he asked Throntax if she could check out his soul for him. She said she could, but that it would take about a month to do all the preparations. I will have to tell her about the Keef Glimmer possibility, so that she knows exactly what she's getting into.
Keef decided that he was going to hunt down the giant shrooms he'd seen over a year ago in the mine near River's End. I had told him I'd go with him, so I did, even though I was feeling a bit under the weather. He also somehow roped Sanjay and Hal into accompanying us.
Keef didn't have the maps of the mine which his friends had made when they'd explored the mine before (the maps had been lost sometime), so we were depending on Keef and Hal's memory. We wandered around until we came across some goblins who were chained up and mining. Keef questioned them, and they said that they had been enslaved by some beings who came from the lower levels of the mines, and that their leader, Hairy-toe had been killed by these beings. They also told Keef that those beings had taken the shrooms away.
The goblins took us to the stairway leading down to the next level of the mine, and down we went. We went down to the third level, and were attacked by some undead. We put them down. In the process, we discovered what sort of magic Conflagrator has. If one says its name while holding it, it burns. I also discovered that The Tongue of Death is a very nice sword, indeed.
After de-animating the undead creatures, we looked around the area. Keef couldn't figure out how to extinguish the sword, so we were pretty obvious. We went into the large cavern where Keef and his friends had fought the mage who had been acting for the Draco-impersonator, and were accosted by a bunch of goblins. Keef "negotiated" with them, and got us in to talk to their leader, Hairy-toe (who was not dead). He told us that his kingdom had been attacked by these two guys who came to replace the mage as the agent for the power from the bottom of the mine, whoever that was. He told us that the giant shrooms were in the area held by those guys. Keef said that if the gobs showed us where the shrooms were, we'd help them take care of the nasty guys. Hairy-toe agreed, and sent his crack goblin ranger squad with us. Somewhere in there, Keef figured out that touching the sword to its sheath doused the flame.
On an interesting sidenote, it seems as if BRB has had an effect on these gobs; a cult of Odin has sprung up among them. It would be interesting to see how goblins worship Odin, although not so interesting that I'm going to go stay underground with them to find out.
The goblin rangers had maps of the mine, but they were goblin-style maps, and thus utterly incomprehensible to any sensible being. Thus, we had to rely upon the gobs for guidance. This didn't turn out as badly as one might think--we found the shrooms. There were two of them, in a room, oddly surrounded by lots of silver coins. When light fell on them, they produced a high-pitched scream which did not stop when the light was removed. Keef cut one of the mushrooms off at its base, and packed it onto his back, and we headed out.
Unfortunately, the screaming fungus attracted its guardians, the "guys" who were terrorizing the goblins. We were travelling down a hallway when we were charged by a minotaur wielding a big axe/mace. We fought it. It was joined by another minotaur, who stuck me in the back. 'twas very painful. With much effort, we finished the two of them off. After the fight, we found that the goblin squad had killed a third minotaur which had been approaching from the other end of the hall. (Lesson: never trust a goblin's counting skills.) There was much rejoicing. We and the goblins searched around until we found the minotaur's lair. There was a huge quantity of coinage, mostly copper, which was most likely the money the minotaurs had taken from the goblins and other denizens of the mine as tribute. There was also a small statue of an owl, covered in magical lettering, and maps of the mine. The writing on the maps is in a language which seems to bear some similarity to Greek; I guess it is the minotaur language. I will try to see if I can puzzle out any of the writing. The goblins claimed the money as their loot, we took the statue and the maps. Keef, Hal, and I were all wounded, and were in a hurry to get back to R.E. so that we could get some medical attention.
Oh, right, I almost forgot. After the minotaur fight, Keef decided he wanted to try out the shroom then and there. He cut off a piece and munched it down. To everyone's surprise, he climed right up the wall, to the ceiling of the hallway. He seemed to think he was a spider. After about 10 minutes, he fell down, and spent the next hour trying to climb the walls.