“You want to hear the tale of the Mad Master Door Maker. Gax will tell you all he knows.”
“Long ago, there were two brothers on this island. Ezekiel and Snaggletooth Slowden. I have met snaggletooth when he shared my fire. He told a tale of him and his brother. 100 years ago they parted ways as Ezekiel grew into madness from the deep one’s influence. They were home builders. Ezekiel wanted to build something to use as a tool to help some malevolent beings. One day Ezekiel vanished.
Before hearing this tale, a group of us had come across the prototype to Ezekiel’s mad designs. A place was full of finely crafted doors that lead to long serpentine halls ways of more doors. The design could only be from a mad man. Designs that made no sense. I have since witnessed a few drops of sacks of doorknobs from the places we have destroyed of his.”
“After meeting Snaggletooth we came across his remains a few days later. Burned through by acid. I have come to surmise this was on behalf of a Gelatinous Cube Which I believe to be somehow controlled by Ezekiel. We found a second mad dungeon of white flagstone. Bigger and full of an oddity. I believe it to be partially cleared by the late snaggletooth. We found a will of his detailing his brothers’ descent into madness with a request that should he fall if the person who found it can lay his brother to rest.
That place also had a black ooze that fell from the sky. Be mindful to look everywhere when in his mad creations. They are dangerous, and never cut a black slime in half or use lightning.
We have spotted tracks of the ooze in the Ishtar plains. West of the den of Mistress Moonflower. Her faithful servant and my friend Brock Lee the bugbear told us he had met the gnome once. He was bald, googly-eyed with a big nose with red robes. He wanted to read a book owned by Mistress Moonflower and was denied. Ezekiel left by holding a crystal doorknob and turning it in the air opening a mystical doorway to another place and promptly vanished. He left behind this.”
Gax pulls a brass doorknob from his bag, set with rubies.
“There is some magic to it. You can feel it when you turn it. We made our way back to the first prototype and I was able to use it to open a compartment hidden in a flowing blood wall. It contained a note from Ezekiel. The note said his brother was a fool and talked of his need to finish his work.
If you choose to look for the Mad Master DoorMaker… be cautious. He is one step ahead and is very tricky. I know he now stalks us when we are in the plains. He is very dangerous and quite mad. Do not underestimate him.”
“The most troubling piece… we found on our last trek a survivor of snaggletooth party. He dragged behind him a wrapped corpse. The man had lost his will to live. In talk, we learned he was held captive somewhere but was robbed of all his senses. No sight, touch, smell or sound could he perceive. The only feeling he had left was pain. They tortured him for days on end. Suddenly after many moons of this, he awoke in a field next to his dead companion.”
“While the man slept Kaleb the Lizard and I examined the body. I will never forget the horror I saw. I could never describe such a sight. To look upon it was madness. My eyes could not seem to settle on it. I grew sick and even now it still haunts me. The face was unrecognizable as a humanoid. Countless stalks of eyes had protruded like tendrils of putrid flesh vines wrapping and twisting around a gnarled vaguely human-shaped face. Tendrils also had grown in abundance. Too many to count. The few teeth and jaw we saw was shaped into pure horror.”
“The pools of blood which form out of thin air on the plains unnerve me terribly so. You will see them in your quests there. But I ask the spirits that you never see the horror I have seen on that face.”