In the previous session the Favorites of Selune killed a dragon in return for the druid Bredel advising them on how to reverse their transformation into svirfneblin. So this session started with them being led by Bredel to the entrance of the Underdark which had recently opened in the area. The entrance was one day's march south of Bredel's home. So to find the underground source of the spring they knew they had to walk the same distance back north in the Underdark, probably taking longer due to winding tunnels. They also knew that the Underdark had an upper region (the shallows) and a lower region (the deeps), and that a source reaching the surface was more likely to be found in the shallows. Thus they could navigate generally northwards, generally upwards at any tunnel branch.

While as svirfneblin everybody had darkvision, that vision requires at least some dim light to work. But they had their adventuring gear, including a lantern with several flasks of oil, and an eternal torch. They also had iron rations, and they were able to find some edible mushrooms. Still it was a long trek through winding, dark tunnels. And while previously they had benefited from the druids create campsite ritual, that didn't work underground and they had a less comfortable night after their first day in the Underdark.

On their second day the Favorites of Selune entered a cave and came close to a giant mushroom, which poisoned the rogue (who was ahead of the group). And then troglodytes who were hidden behind the stalagmites and rocks attacked with javelins. That combat was quite interesting, because the mushroom poisoned a 7x7 square area in the middle of the cave every round, which the combatants tried to avoid. The group druid used that cleverly with a spell that pulled enemies towards him, so that they ended up in the poison zone. The warrior, presumably tired from slaying dragons, exchanged ineffective blows with one troglodyte savage.

I especially liked the design of the troglodyte deepscourge (ranged caster type), who had a ray attack which did very little damage, but weakened enemies if they already were in the troglodyte savages stinking aura. And he had a recharging area attack which also weakened "non-reptile creatures", so he could fire it into melee and not affect his allies. As I had used the wrong stats for the dragon, the troglodytes also hit a lot harder than the dragon, and the fight was more interesting. The cleric cast a lot of daily spells and kept everybody alive, plus he set the mushroom on fire with a column of fire spell. As the mushroom wasn't a creature, I didn't give it a saving throw to extinguish the fire, and so it slowly burned down. And the group killed the troglodytes one after another.

Resting after the fight, the Favorites of Selune are found by a patrol of *real* svirfneblin. They wore tabards with strange symbols, which a nature / arcane check revealed to be crystallographic structures: A Fluorite was leading half a dozen Gypsum. With three chemists in the room the players quickly figured out that the svirfneblin had military ranks named after Mohs scale of mineral hardness, so this was a sort of sergeant leading a group of privates first class. The svirfneblin spoke common, but always referred to svirfneblin in the first person plural. So the sergeant asked them "What are we doing here? Why aren’t we wearing our tabards?". But the sorceress quickly came up with an idea and said that they had been on a secret mission for the Diamond to the surface, "in disguise", with a rather high roll on his bluff check. So the sergeant believed them and led them to the cave where the svirfneblin lived.

The cave, or rather network of caves, was lighted by luminescent mushrooms. They were handed from one rank to the next, until they stood before the king of the svirfneblin, Diamond Quirrit. The king was wise enough to see that not only he hadn't sent any secret missions out, but also that while the adventurers looked like svirfneblin, they didn't behave right. Nevertheless he was quite friendly, and when the adventurers revealed that they had been transformed into svirfneblin and were looking for the source of a magical spring to turn them back, he offered his help. He drew them a map to the spring, but warned them that recently a strange beholder, all deformed, had moved into the cave with the spring and subjugated the local troglodytes. The players immediately realized that this was the beholder they had let go from Gardmore Abbey.

With the troglodyte fight and the svirfneblin roleplaying encounter the players had gained enough xp to reach level 10. So we stopped at this point and leveled up.