Dreams Into Journey

Gark creeps forward to the stairs trying to stay as  quiet as possible and takes a look to see if he can see any movement downstairs

stealth 24 
Perception 23 

Lia also moves towards the stairs.

Perception: 17

Stealth: 23

Valentia whispers to the group as she starts following them. "I can hear shouting downstairs... Let's be quiet, and we may be able to surprise them." She casts Guidance on herself again, in fear of her armor ruining yet another opportunity at being stealthy.

Stealth 15 + 3 = 19

Oswin and SD will follow at the rear of the group, watching their back.

Oswin Stealth: 11
Oswin Perception (adv with SD helping): 13
SD Stealth: 19

DM screen:

As the group moves down to the stairs, they attempt to be as sneaky as possible

With Gark and Lia being the first down the staircase 30 ft. staicase, they see a smaller, dimly lit room with some simple furnishings a door on one east side, and a second staircase going further down on the north side. There are a few small stools strewn about and a table on the west side with three chairs by it.

With her attention to the table Lia sees that there was a card game in progress, she can tell there has been obvious signs of cheating from all of the players involved.

Gark is able to make out see that the door seems to be straining from something.

While most of the party has been rather inconspicuous, Oswin was paying more attention to their six than his footsteps which were heavier due to his armor. Such sounds suddenly make the shouting downstairs stop.

After a second, a voice from downstairs shouts "What the ****'s going on up there?! Just finish 'em and feed 'em to our pet so they don't stink up the joint!"

Gark looks on the floor to see if he can see any signs that might indicate what kind of creature is locked behind the door

survival 16 

Lia casts minor illusion using it to say "Bones will break!" in the bugbear from earlier's voice. She makes it loud enough so the ones below can clearly hear it.

She moves to the stairs down and nods in that direction, giving the others a questionoing look.

After scanning for signs of the creature straining to get through the door, Gark nods at Lia and moves toward the stairs heading down.

As Gark is inspecting the door, he is hearing the wood creak and crack and pop and bow out, as if a constant force is pressing on it. After a moment the wood seems to get softer?

Lia uses magical mimicry to try and allay suspicions.

The voice below yells "Whatever, just get it done! It doesn't have a nose, but it can smell blood. It was a ***** and a half to get it in there in the first place, but I'm pretty sure it can eat through the door! So, don't keep it waiting!"

Satisfied with his survey of the door, Gark turns to join Lia. After taking a few steps towards the other stairway, he hears the sharp sound of splintering wood behind him followed by a wet splat.

Andivus tried to quickly drag and toss one of the dead bodies to whatever beast is approaching.  “If it needs to eat, let’s feed it before it gets angry.”

Oswin will pick up a stone or something similar, use Magical Tinkering to make it smell strongly of fresh blood, and toss it down the stairs, "Maybe it'll follow that, back up!" And he'll follow his own advice and move back to the larger room again.

 As Andivus considers bring down a corpse of one of the bugbears they just killed, Oswin imbues a piece of broken wood with a smell of rotting iron and tosses it into the next stairway. He then backs up onto the stairway back up.

The smell does rouse whatever is in the to come slowly slinking out and whoever is looking in a generally northward direction can see what it is. It is a large, flowing, amorphous mass of mostly inky-black with patches of swirling and shifting shades pink and purple. As it emerges from from its confinement a piece of the door breaks off and falls onto it, which then seems to slowly sink into it.

At first it starts toward the stairs leading to the voice, following the smelly wood. However, it then starts creeping towards the nearest thing that has fresh blood on it. Gark, who still has some bugbear blood flecked on his armor. Some of the colors move strangely and more excitedly. as it inches toward him.

Roll initiative

Ooze initiative: 2

Initiative: 13

Valentia

Initiative: 18

Oswin initiative: 14

(It was worth a shot.)

Gark initiative 20 

Lia initiative: 4

Map:

 Everyone can post their turn!

Andivus move back to I4 to place the chair between him and the ooze.  Pointing his trident he lets and eldritch blast go.

He curses the thing with his hexblade’s curse.

Attack: 20 Damage: 6

Oswin will move up towards the ooze (L7) and make a long throw of his spear, SD coming to his side to defend him.

Attack: 22 Damage: 13