Vala Has Been Through This Maze Before

Jonah broke open a trapped door expecting another maze hazard and found Vala Gearsprocket instead. She was also called Toolbox: an older gnome inventor connected to the Benevolent Lodge of Mystery, which made the Mystery Machine tokens feel less like random loot and more like breadcrumbs from an organization with history in these impossible places.

The rescue was not clean. Laughing gas poured through the trap and briefly incapacitated them, turning the introduction into another Vithyrex joke at the party's expense. Once coherent, Vala explained she had been in the maze many times before and did not trust Vithyrex's endless love-game structure.

That mattered. She was not just another prisoner. She was a veteran of the trap, someone who could name its repetition. Then she immediately made herself useful by upgrading Jonah's Boots of the Devout First Step with heelies. If Jonah moved at least ten feet and stopped, he could slide another ten feet once per movement. In a maze built around bad positioning, even a little more motion was a kind of mercy.