6/15/2022 Picking up from the last session, the party started at the top of a staircase leading down into the temple, knowing that a group of gnolls were waiting for them. Chance threw a torch down the stairs to be able to see better, and it landed at the foot of the stairs, about 60 feet away. Rather than foolishly charge in, the party decided to be strategic. Gunther cast a spell to cause the ground at the bottom of the stairs to form a low wall to hinder the gnolls charging up the stairs. Unfortunately, the gnolls began to take positions to use the wall as cover with their ranged attacks! Chance used his Wand of Wonder, which cast a fireball at the gnolls doing great damage. In response, one gnoll cast a spell causing tentacles to sprout from the ground at the top of the stairs and attack the party, and then the gnolls fled out of sight. Igny deftly avoided the tentacles, but Xaris was ensnared and bludgeoned. As Dethjak entered the area to try to assist Xaris, he also was quickly restrained and attacked by the tentacles. Eventually, the party became unentangled and started down the stairs as Gunther lowered his wall. Igny rushed ahead to the bottom of the stairs to discover that the gnolls were waiting for him, just outside of view of the top of the stairs. Knowing he would soon be surrounded, Igny used Kekax to cast Shield IV to protect him from incoming attacks. The  gnolls had summoned two creatures to fight the party: something resembling a giant badger, and some sort of fiend that appeared to be using a spell to appear in triplicate. As these two creatures fell upon Igny, four of the gnolls formed a firing squad with their bows and unleashed volleys of arrows at Igny. However, most of the attacks deflected off of Igny's armor and he was mostly unharmed. Xaris and Dethjak came down the stairs on the left and fell upon the fiend. As he targeted one of the copies of the fiend, Xaris noticed that his attacks appeared to be doing the expected amount of damage, but to no avail! The fiend kept going despite taking hit after hit. Eventually the party switched tactics and targeted a different copy of the fiend, and this time when they connected they broke the creature's concentration and the two illusionary duplicates disappeared. After a while, both the fiend and the giant badger creature fell at the hands of the party, and the cowardly gnolls once again fled the battle. The party decided to take a short rest to recover from the battle and examine their surroundings; they were now in a large rectangular room at the foot of the temple stairs, with passages ahead and at either side. Chance peaked around the corner of the passage the gnolls had fled from to discover an open secret doorway along the wall. From the door emerged a large lizard creature with a horn on it's head. Chance waved and then told the party what he had seen. The party quickly investigated and found the secret door which had since been closed. The door led to a small room, and as they began to search around, the party noticed an odd narcotic aroma before all falling unconscious. When they awoke, the party was in a different room but was unharmed and had all of their gear. The lizard creature Chance had seen approached the party and introduced himself as Kralla. He explained that slimes and demons -- which the party suspected were linked to Bilious -- have been interrupting his work and he believed the party could help him. The party deduced that Kralla was the "Lizard Wizard" of whom they been told. Kralla explained that he wished to reactivate a portal to his world so he can return with his leader who had been frozen in an amber substance to protect him. To activate the portal, three stones were needed. Kralla had one, the party had another, and Kralla believed that the leader of the slimes had the final stone. In exchange for our help, Kralla would give the party pages from the book they sought as part of Mango the Mad's quest. The party expressed hesitation in agreeing to help Kralla, fearing that the lizard people would seek to conquer Zhalindor once the portal was opened and their leader unfrozen. To help ease their fears, Kralla brought the party to another room deep within the complex. This room contained an oracle. Each member of the party could ask a single question of the oracle and get a yes or no response. The party quickly realized that this was a unique opportunity to learn about much more than just whether they could trust Kralla. The party deliberated on what questions to ask the oracle. And with that the session ended. TLDR: The party fought the gnolls again, passed out from some drugs, met the Lizard Wizard, and now stands before an oracle