In which the party uses caution and creativity to make up for a lack of "Thief Skills"...
Yamtwit/Frantiska
Yamtwit stares at the weasels for a bit, then notices his friends leaving. "It only lasts a few minutes..." he calls after them.
"You have no additional control over the beasts?" Frantiska asks.
Yamtwit just shakes his head in reply.
"They don't look like they will allow themselves to be slaughtered either." Frantiska sighs, "Donovan, can you incapacitate them in a more efficient manner? I would rather not leave predators behind us. Especially when they are likely to become hostile again in a matter of minutes..."
Donovan/Winona
Donovan tosses a bit of sand in the weasel's general direction and mutters some words. The two weasels, standing peacefully as they are, close their eyes and lay down to sleep.
"Come on..." Winona tucks her flind-bars back into her belt, picks up Ryesha in her arms, and stomps past the weasels and up the passage.
GM
The passage at the bottom of the pit slopes gently downward for a few feet before leveling off. The walls appear to be made of thick, black peat, slick with moisture, with occasional patches of harder stone. The floor is hard-packed, but muddy, with an inch of standing, stagnant water. The ceiling low, but not uncomfortably so, perhaps 6 feet high.
The broken body of the second weasel that Teldicia threw down here lies in the center of a seven-way intersection. The ceiling here is higher here, almost twelve feet, and a small overlook can be seen in the wall opposite you as you come in, about nine feet off the floor. Directly across from where you came into the intersection and directly below the overlook is a small passage, only about four feet high, with a raised oaken portcullis set into iron tracks in the walls. The mechanism for raising and lowering the portcullis, clearly visible, appears to be controlled from the overlook above.
To your immediate right as you enter the intersection is a 3-foot-tall iron-bound door. Ahead and right is a narrow passage, sloping sharply upward. Centered between the two right-hand passages is a third, as tall as the one you came through, wide enough for Hrud to walk comfortably and running strait for a long ways.
Two passages lead off to the left. The closest being of similar height, width, and straitness to the central right-passage. The second left passage is wide enough for two men to walk abreast, but shorter, only about four feet high, and slopes upward at a steep angle.
Hrud
Not sure where to go, Hrud tries to glean any information he can from the tracks by the passages.
GM
There are some bloody weasel body-prints in the soft walls, but the muddy water covering the floor makes it almost impossible to see any tracks on that surface. Judging by the smell, Hrud decides that the portcullised passage ahead is clearly the weasels' den. The metal-bound door on the right smells faintly of smoke.
Yamtwit/Frantiska
Frantiska finishes off the two sleeping weasels cleanly, using Sir Guy's Spoon to deliver sharp blows at the point where their spines meet their skulls. She retrieves her bow, slinging it over her shoulder, and proceeds up the hallways after Hrud and the others. Stopping at the intersection she asks, "Sister Winona, can you discern anything about these passages?"
Yamtwit whistles for Rast who comes to the edge of the pit and looks over, «Rast, keep watch up there, okay? We'll be back in a bit...» He then turns, smiling unconsciously on seeing the fully intact giant weasels, or really their pelts, then scurries after the others.
Hrud
Hrud crosses the chamber to where the overlook is and jumps, grabbing for the edge with one hand and using the hooked head of his hammer with the other, works himself up onto the ledge.
GM
As Hrud pulls himself up onto the ledge, he finds himself looking eye-to-eye with a very frightend-looking kobold. The small god-like creature is lying flat on the platform, clearly trying its best to avoid notice. Seeing Hrud's face crest the ledge, the kobold's eyes go wide and it begins belly-crawling backwards away from the huge barbarian.
Donovan
Smelling the smoke, Donovan turns and begins examining the iron-bound door. Looking at it closely with his heightend senses, pulling out a stiletto and carefully prodding it gently, and giving a light rap in the center and listening for any reverberations.
GM
The bottom edge of the door, from the floor to about 6 inches up, is scorched, blackened, and brittle. It looks like a good hit could break off the bottom 3-4 inches of the door easily. Despite the damage at the bottom, the door is otherwise in good shape and the hinges look sound. The door is not locked. Judging from the echoes, it seems like the area beyond the door is mostly vertical, with some fairly dense metal structure in the center.
Hrud
Hrud looms over the kobold, feeling almost sorry for him. "Iki banget ora adil. Nanging sampeyan nyoba kanggo matèni kita karo kéwan iku ora biso ditompo." he says, drawing his sword. "Aku bakal cepet." The barbarian attacks.
The first blow crushes the kobold's spine, the second bisects it from stem to stern. It doesn't even have time to scream.
Donovan/Winona/Ryesha
Donovan stands up, "Looks like this door has been burned, a good kick could probably smash away most of the bottom half. Sounds like the other side is probably the bottom of another pit, vertical shaft, with something big and metal in the middle." He points across the way, "Should we go check out the weasel-den, to make sure there are no more, then decide which way to go from there?"
Winona looks at the short passages and smaller door, "Exploring this place is going to require a lot of crawling..." Seeing Hrud let go of the ledge to swing at something, she make a 'hmmm' sound in her throat. "I vote we check all the areas that are big enough for us to swing our weapons and clear out as many kobolds as possible before sticking out heads into places where they can be easily speared."
Rye, settling down a bit after the weasel incident, pulls out a pair of knives and heads boldly into the sloping passage near Hrud's feet. Curling up and around to come out on the ledge. "Nothing else interesting this way," she says, waving down at where Hrud dropped.
"Okay, one less passage to worry about." Donovan says, "Rye, Yamtwit can you two do a quick scout of the other small ones?"
Lyra
Lyra looks around, concerned. "They will have built their warrens so that they are at a tactical advantage." Her mind went, briefly, to the decanter of endless water they'd found in the tower and their supply villagers with bows and arrows, then felt horrible for even considering the possibility.
Yamtwit
Yamtwit grumbles, "Mwense yon komèsanpa yon Ekstèminatè." He pulls out a club and points to the up-sloping passage on the left. "I'll take this one I guess..."
GM
A small trickle of water flows down the passage, which slopes up a short way then dead-ends at a large stone. Daylight can be seen around the edges of the stone and the flow of water is seeping beneath it. The stone has metal rings set into it, which are affixed to similar rings on the walls with iron spikes, preventing it from being rolled away from the outside.
Yamtwit
Yamtwit slides back down the passage. "This one looks like an exit," he says, then to Hrud, "Ana watu gedhe. Yen kita mindhah iku kita bisa metu."
Hrud
After looking around the overlook for anything interesting, Hrud climbs down to look at the rock Yamtwit spoke of. Hrud pulls the pins locking the stone in place and, hesitantly, opens it a little.
GM
There is a slight rush of water as the stone moves and then, through the widened crack between the stone and the wall you see daylight. Vines overhang the opening in a rather unnatural way, as if some deliberate attempt was made to conceal the rock. The opening appears to lead out onto the same hill that the dragon's head and neck were resting on, and you can see a bit of the thing's tail curling around the hillside off to the right as you look out. Just outside the opening is a small depression in the hill, filled with stagnant, dark-brown water. Like the vines, the depression looks like it was artificially made--perhaps to conceal tracks that might identify this back door to casual observers, or to conceal some other security mechanism.
Donovan
Donovan looks past Hrud at the opening to the outside. "Looks like a bolt-hole." He smiles wickedly, "Hey Lyra, did you bring any of those exploding runes? The walls are soft enough that we could probably plant the boards in them, then just bomb this passage if they try to escape via the back door..."
Lyra
Lyra nods, and looks around, doing some quick mental calculations involving blast radius and the apparent structural integrity of the warren. "I thought they might come in handy."
Lyra shuffles through the stack of boards. "It might be prudent to check the hillside for other concealed entrances. I'm not sure collapsing a single tunnel will do much, but I think we actually have enough of these to bring down the entire hill, if we needed to. Aside from the dragon parts, the construction is rather poorly reinforced."
Hrud
While the others fuss about over what to do, Hrud takes another quick look around the area, on the off-chance that they might have missed something interesting before. Finally, sheathing his sword and reclaiming his spear from Donovan, he begins to proceed down the (relatively) open central passage [the one that runs straight for a while], keeping an eye out for unusual track patterns that might indicate another trap.
Donovan
"Blowing up the hill sounds like a good start..." Winona grins. "Shall we just wait outside and kill anything that crawls out when the ground starts heaving?"
Donovan sighs and heads after Hrud. "They've been receiving tribute. It'd be a shame to destroy it. Let's find their treasure room before we collapse the place..."
Lyra
Lyra smiles and nods. "An excellent point. We should return what we can to the villagers."
GM
Hrud proceeds for about a hundred feet, bent over in half due to the low clearance. The smell of musk gets progressively worse as he proceeds. Then the passage opens up into a rounded chamber, littered with bones and fur. Three small giant-weasels, just slightly larger than their mundane brethren and covered with short, downy fur, lay sleeping, curled together in a ball. They start slightly and one opens an eye as the blue light from Hrud's hammer illuminates the den.
Hrud
Hrud glances around, doubting that he'd find much of interest, then leaves.
"Uwak cilik" he mentions to Yamtwit, as he returns, then heads down one of the other passages.
GM
Hrud heads down the tallest of the right-hand passages. The tunnel is relatively strait, diverting only occasionally to avoid harder places in the ground, sloping up for a few feet, then subtly downward for a long stretch. The tunnel bottoms out at a dark, stagnant pool, deep enough to reach mid-calf on the barbarian. On the other side of the pool, you see the tunnel begin to slope upwards again.
Hrud
Hrud pokes around in the water with his spear, waiting to see if any traps or creatures reveal themselves before continuing up the tunnel.
His spear comes out with a few leeches clinging to it. Hrud shakes the leeches from the spear, moves to one of the walls to cross the pool - stopping to check himself for (and remove) any leeches he may have picked up - and continuing up the passage.
GM
The pool is no less deep around the edges, but is not too far across. After the pool, the passage slopes up more sharply and bends to the right, ending at the bottom of another pit, this one complete with a mess of metal spikes set into the floor with most of a skeletal lizard-man impaled on them, looking severely gnawed-on.
Donovan/Winona
Donovan watches Hrud turn down the right-hand passage and then turns and looks at the left. "We should split up to cover more ground," he says. "It looks like this lower level was meant for keeping the weasels more than anything else. I wager we'll end up having to go through the burned door to reach anywhere interesting..." He checks his crossbow, then strikes out into the left-hand passage.
"Guess we're with you then," Winona says, falling into step behind Donovan, flail at the ready. "Come on Bunny."
GM
The left-hand passage runs flat for quite a ways, then bends sharply to the left, terminating at the bottom of yet another pit. In the light filtering down from above, Donovan spies a pile of recently dead kobolds and more heavily decayed lizard men crawling with large, hungry centipedes at the bottom of the long shaft.
Donovan/Winona/Ryesha
Ryesha looks at the dead kobolds and the centipedes and begins backing up the corridor. "Well, we're done here..." she squeaks.
Donovan nods, "Yeah, this is clearly the first pit we found." He turns and heads back to the intersection. "Looks like the conspicuously burned, and therefore probably fire-trapped, door is the way to go..."
Winona looks grim. "Great...", she says with a sarcastic eyeroll, "So who's going first?"
Yamtwit/Frantiska
Yamtwit shrugs, walks up to the small door, and pushes it open.
Frantiska kneels and levels an arrow at the door as it is opened, ready to fire at anything on the other side that moves.
GM
Behind the small door is a spiral, iron staircase with wide shallow treads, going up about forty feet to another door. Empty, iron torch-brackets stick out of the wall, three feet off the ground, every eighth step. The staircase has a fair amount of carbon and rust built up on it, as if it has been regularly exposed to high temperatures.
Yamtwit
Yamtwit raises an eyebrow, "Yeah....that's not threatening at all..." he mutters. "Whatever happened to that dwarf who said he was good with traps and stuff?" He tightens his grip on his club and walks forward, placing a foot gingerly on the first step. "Here goes..."
Yamtwit waits with his foot on the step for a long, tense moment, then cautiously walks up a few more steps. His movements are slow and laborious and his muscles are tensed, sure that something horrible is about to happen any minute and ready to leap down the stairs into the hopefully waiting arms of his compantions.
GM
Yamtwit reaches the seventh step up before he hears an unpleasant clicking noise. He throws himself backwards just as the front edge of the step collapses, followed by the rest of the steps, as they suddenly become a smooth ramp. As Yamtwit lands at the bottom of the staircase, on his ass but unharmed, two streams of thick black crude oil begin pouring down the slide from the top of the shaft. The door begins to slam shut, pulled by some kind of spring mechanism between the hinge and the frame...
Donovan/Winona
Donovan stands watching, fascinated by the first _real_ trap he's ever seen, muttering, "I don't like the look of that oil..."
Sister Winona, meanwhile, puts her shoulder into the door to hold it, then jams the metal shaft of her flind bars into the gap just below the hinge to wedge it open. Sister Rye, egged on by the whispers of her cloak, dashes in and grabs Yamtwit under the armpits. "Come on!" she says, trying to pull him up and back before something manages to ignite the stuff.
GM
As Winona jams the door open, there is a spark as the iron shaft of her weapon hits against rough flint shards that have been set into the door's frame. Luckily it does not hit the oil that has begun pooling at the bottom of the ramp-stairs.
Yamtwit/Frantiska
"Thanks ladies," Yamtwit says to the two Tyrran Sisters before stepping carefully back into the room and looking at the doorframe mechanism. "So, no fire...any guesses how it resets? Or how to get up an oil-slicked twisty-slide?"
Frantiska shoulders her bow and ducks through the door. "The torch brackets may help. For those of us tall enough to reach between them at least." She sticks her head back through the door and calls out for Hrud, not too loudly, "Guru barbar, Hrud.. Anda seorang pendaki yang terampil. Bisakah Anda bangun jalan ini dan mengikat dari tali untuk teman-teman kecil kita?" She then turns to Lyra and Donovan, "Any other ideas?"
Hrud
"Aku bisa pendaki. Ora ana wong duwe tali supaya mudhun nalika aku tekan ndhuwur?" Hrud replies, returning from his inspection of the reptilian corpse.
Yamtwit
Yamtwit pipes up, "Big guy says he ca climb up but he needs some rope."
Donovan
Donovan passes a rope to Hrud. "If he can string it along the torch brackets, that would make a pretty effective railing for the rest of us to hang onto."
Yamtwit
Yamtwit translates, "Donovan ngandika kanggo dasi tali kanggo tandha kurung senter kanggo adamêl ril a."
Hrud
Hrud nods as he takes the rope and inspects the ramp, turning back to the group he asks, "Apa kowe bisa kanggo nglindhungi kawula saking latu, mung ing kasus?"
Lyra
Lyra steps carefully up to the door, looking for exits and ignition mechanisms. "Climbing will be slow going, even with rope. It would be safer to either close the door and ignite it to burn off the oil before we go in, or bypass it entirely with a dimensional gateway."
Donovan/Winona
Winona looks at the doorframe again before replying to Lyra, "It looks like the thing was set up to make a person slide down the ramp, fall into the pooling oil here at the bottom, and then the slamming of the door would create sparks to set it off." She points to the flint set into the plates of the metal hinges. "We could all just walk out of here and shut the door if we wanted to burn it off."
"That could take hours," Donovan said. "And fire and smoke in enclosed spaces tends to make it hard to breath afterwards. Using one of Lyra's portals seems like a pretty good idea."
GM
Lyra's dimension door opens into a small room, somewhere inside the petrified dragon's lungs judging from the strange honeycombed, spongy appearance of the walls. A passage opens opposite the psionic doorway, obscured by an ornately-woven, wool rug, hanging over the opening--clearly not kobold work, and probably part of the "tribute" they've been receiving from the sheep farmers. A pile of weasel furs and woolen blankets makes a massive bed off to one side, and a trio of lizard-man skulls hang on the walls as crude trophies, giving this place the look of belonging to some kobold of importance, though it is currently vacant. Three knotted ropes hang from the curved 12-foot ceiling, somewhat incongruously, not low enough for a kobold to grab, even by jumping.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
Cyllibrym, or "Let's make a wand of paralysis more bad-ass"
Yet another magic item from my current game. Written for use with the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Because paralysis in the real world is often a lot scarier then ye olde lame hold person spell makes it seem.
Cyllibrym
This short wand is carved from a willow branch, then wrapped with a willow frond, and lacquered to hold it in place. The command word, “Cyllibrym”, is inscribed in elvish script on the shaft. Any character able to read and speak Elvish (Espruar) may use the wand.
Speaking the command word causes the wand to emit a thin beam of yellow-green light which twists, turns, and bends to unerringly strike a single target within 60 feet. The target must make a Charisma save (DC 15) or become paralyzed. Each round the target may make another save, with a successful save ending the effect.
The paralyzation of the victim’s muscles caused by Cyllibrym is not limited to those related to movement. The character appears dead to any cursory examination—their heart does not beat, their lungs do not inflate, their eyes do not move. Only the fact that they are still standing, rooted in their last pose, gives any indication that they may still be alive. A successful Wisdom (medicine) check against DC 15 will reveal the exact nature of their affliction.
The subject can remain alive for only a short time in this state without intervention. The paralyzation of the target’s heart means that the victim immediately begins suffocating (see pg. 65 of the Basic Rules pdf), though the paralyzation of the lungs means that the character is effectively holding their breath. A character with high Constitution may survive without oxygen traveling to their brain for as long as six minutes.
The wand has 5 charges
Cyllibrym
This short wand is carved from a willow branch, then wrapped with a willow frond, and lacquered to hold it in place. The command word, “Cyllibrym”, is inscribed in elvish script on the shaft. Any character able to read and speak Elvish (Espruar) may use the wand.
Speaking the command word causes the wand to emit a thin beam of yellow-green light which twists, turns, and bends to unerringly strike a single target within 60 feet. The target must make a Charisma save (DC 15) or become paralyzed. Each round the target may make another save, with a successful save ending the effect.
The paralyzation of the victim’s muscles caused by Cyllibrym is not limited to those related to movement. The character appears dead to any cursory examination—their heart does not beat, their lungs do not inflate, their eyes do not move. Only the fact that they are still standing, rooted in their last pose, gives any indication that they may still be alive. A successful Wisdom (medicine) check against DC 15 will reveal the exact nature of their affliction.
The subject can remain alive for only a short time in this state without intervention. The paralyzation of the target’s heart means that the victim immediately begins suffocating (see pg. 65 of the Basic Rules pdf), though the paralyzation of the lungs means that the character is effectively holding their breath. A character with high Constitution may survive without oxygen traveling to their brain for as long as six minutes.
The wand has 5 charges
The Third Party: Session 16 (GM's notes)
30 Alturiak
The party stood indecisively staring at the teleporter that would take them down to the aboleth's cave, dreading the coming confrontation with "Master". Ash passed out a number of protective amulets that he had made with Grimnir's help--simple devices that he said should guard against at least one use of the Aboleth's enslavement powers. Traithe handed his gauntlets over to Melastasya, passed Krar-Nu-Get's sword to an undead barbarian who had been given command of their detachment, and drew the sword of Halfrek. Tactics were discussed, if not quite agreed upon, and numerous spells were cast in preparation.
Finally deeming themselves to be ready, the large force joined hands and plunged into the portal.
They appeared back in the vast cave where they had first met the aboleth. The black lake stretched out before them, the great pipe in the center still siphoning off the black, viscous water to be deposited in the river above. Traithe and Kevorkian lit up their weapons with continual flame spells and Dame cast faerie fire into the water, outlining their massive, tentacled prey in cheerfully flickering pink lights.
Mel and the Barbarian dived into the water. Mel slipping the Amulet of Vulnerability onto one of the thing's tentacles, and the barbarian hacking gleefully at it. As soon as his massive sword bit into the thing's flesh, the colossal beast simply vanished.
While the party tensed and readied for the aboleth to return, Mel suddenly felt a sharp pain in her ankles, looking down to see a crazy-eyed, white-skinned, water-gulping halfling armed with a carving knife and fork gnawing on her achilles-tendon.
The aboleth reappeared, only to take a barrage of lightning bolts from Ash, Zorch, and their mephit allies, and promptly disappeared again.
Mel kicked the halfling away and dropped her own protective amulet over his head, freeing him from the Aboleth's control. The halfling, dressed for a dinner party and sporting an outrageous accent, briefly introduced himself as "La Bouche of Tadoussac", and made it clear that he was suddenly of a mind to eat some calamari (and that the party looked similarly "meat-like" to him), before the Aboleth appeared again.
This time the party was ready, and the entire undead brigade attacked as one, pounding into the flickering tentacled mass with everything at their disposal. Spears, swords, axes, and pikes bit into the Aboleth rending massive wounds. Traithe called down a burning moon beam and Dame once again lit it up with faerie fire. When it vanished once again, La Bouche pointed out that there was no displacement of water when it appeared and disappeared and Ash informed them that they were battling some kind if phantasm or projected image.
A quick locate creature from Ash pinpointed the actual aboleth as being deep below them, in the faintly phosphorescent, coral-like sahuagin city on the floor of the underground lake. Traithe, Kevorkian, Melastasya, La Bouche, and their undead hordes dove, sucking in the aboleth's taint so as to be able to breathe the water and swimming down as fast as they could. Ash tried to stay dry, water-walking and directing them with message spells, but was yanked under by a pseudopod which manifested from the water itself. With a harrumph, the elf swam after them. Dame was the last to follow, transforming herself into a reef shark and darting after them at top speed.
As they neared the submerged city, a small army of six-armed sahuagin came pouring out. Their undead escort peeled off to intercept the sahuagin and the party kept swimming down, winding their way through the twisting, escher-like concavities of the city. After nearly a mile of swimming, their arms aching from pulling themselves through the thick, murky liquid, Ash directed them to a smaller cave near the floor of the lake, off to one side of the submerged city.
As they swam in, their minds were assaulted. La Bouche and their undead barbarian companion immediately turned on them, striking out at Melastasya, who was the closest target. Dame darted between the combatants and sunk her shark's teeth into the glistening flesh of the aboleth who waited just inside the cave.
Traithe passed Verittanattukkut to Mel, the sword offering less resistance in the
water than her axes. Aided by a sudden burst of speed from the sword, Mel dove away from her more-humanoid assailants and swam directly into the aboleth's gaping maw, stabbing at the insides of its mouth. The thing bit down on Mel with its many rows of jagged teeth, then grabbed Kevorkian with a tentacle and deposited him in the mouth with Mel.
Ash, ever the extremist when it comes to his toys, pulled out Yarash's Spoon and transformed the poor aboleth into an ogre. The sudden writhing of the colossal tentacled monstrosity battered many of the party, and the collapsing size of the thing's mouth bit into Mel and Kevorkian again. Mel slashed a hole in the not-quite-humanoid cheek for them to get out before it had completed shrank.
As if things couldn't get worse for our poor-saving-throw rolling tentacled hero, Traithe then promptly paralyzed the aboleth-turned-ogre with Cyllibrym. Kevorkian freed Le Bouche from domination again using protection from good and evil, Mel ran interference against the dominated undead barbarian, and everyone else proceeded to beat the paralyzed ogre to a fine bloody mess.
Ash finally ended the thing's suffering by freezing its brain with a ray of frost. The final brain-death of the aboleth had the beneficial effect of freeing the barbarian from his enslavement. Unfortunately, it also freed the party from their ability to breath underwater--all except for Kevorkian (thanks to his bracers), Dame (who was still a shark), and the zombie (who didn't need to breathe in the first place) that is-- Leaving them breathless and nearly crushed by the pressure of being 800 feet beneath the surface of the subteranean lake.
Everyone grabbed onto Dame's dorsal fin and she swam out of the cave as fast as she could. Once in the larger lake, Ash, Mel, and Traithe activated their rings of water walking for some extra boyancy, and Ash bubbled out his last thunder wave spell which shot them all up to the surface like a cork from a bottle. Luckily their recent use of liquid ventilation saved them from decompression sickness. Kevorkian trailed after, hauling the body of the dead ogre.
When they reached the surface, they found Yarash (or his most recent clone) standing there, Zorch perched just above his shoulder, looking a little confused. He seemed to think the date was close to two hundred years prior, and had few recollections of his experiments with the aboleth or the sahuagin.
1 Ches
When Kevorkian surfaced, he offered Yarash the ogre body for his research, which was happily accepted. The party suddenly found themselves in Yarash's surgery room, where the old vivisectionist quickly tore the aboleth-turned-ogre down into its component parts, carefully jarring and labelling the organs and limbs and placing them on their shelves next to the rest of his collection.
Kevorkian quickly asked for Yarash to help him get rid of his tattoo, by replacing his decorated arm with a new one. The old wizard happily strapped the cleric down to his workbench, sawed off the massive clawed arm that he had installed last time, and replaced it with a fairly normal-looking arm which he said came from a relatively small orc-ogre hybrid. Kevorkian then asked for some other upgrades, gaining an attractive new pair of black, dragon-like legs.
Melastasya asked to have her tattoo removed too and Yarash was happy to oblige, cutting off her red-scaled Slaad arm and then grafting some parts from a new specimen onto it as it was growing back. La Bouche asked about livers, had some rather convoluted discussions with Yarash who was very confused that he would want to smash and eat a perfectly good wyvern's liver rather than having his own replaced with it, then requested a gastric update and was gifted with the stomach of a carrion crawler--which seemed quite appropriate given his indescriminate eating. The others, as usual, refused Yarash's hospitality and kept their own organs.
La Bouche asked Yarash whether he had any eggs, which resulted in his opening a wall to reveal a cornucopia of eggs of all kinds, carefully preserved. La Bouche fixed a wide variety of hard-boiled eggs for Mel to eat, in order to fulfill her oath: eggs boiled in vinegar with mustard, boiled in kraken blood, spiced with cinnamon and cardamom, and so on. Melastasya's small, girlish stomach was not really capable of holding that much food though, and she nearly wretched after the seventh, forcing Traithe to use a grease spell to coat the eggs and La Bouche to force-feed her to make sure she fulfilled the letter of her vow.
As the surgeries were taking place, the rest of the party relaxed and regrouped, taking a week to plan and plot what to do next. The excitable halfling gourmand fixed them a variety of interesting dishes, ranging from aboleth-ogre flank steaks to other things best left unmentioned.
They introduced the Blessed Afflictor to Yarash, who showed them that the skin he had taken from the Eraka woman was starting to decompose and show damage from their recent engagements. Yarash happily lead him to the vat room, where a pair of clones of Melastasya and Kevorkian had almost reached maturity. The Praetor took out one of the Kevorkian clones, skinned it, and worked his way into the new, pristine Kevorkian skin, turning him into a perfect lookalike of the cleric (had the real cleric not had half of his body parts replaced).
7 Ches
After being reminded of their oath made to the Blessed Afflictor, to see that he was safely escorted to "a place occupied by no less than eight thousand and eight living and mortal human souls", the party decided to bypass Phlan and head strait to Hillsfar with their undead army. The army could march along the base of the Moonsea, but the rest of them would need a boat. Traithe and Ash (both magically disguised) and La Bouche, who was not yet known by the council, headed into Phlan to make see about hiring, buying, or stealing a ship.
Ash stopped by Kryptgarten, then moved around Phlan, taking in the news since their prolonged absence. It seemed that Kryptgarten was coping well, had even grown, but had regressed considerably socially, having burned down the church and tore down the bathhouses--the citizens, now numbering more than five hundred looked happy, filthy, and entirely human. Politics in Phlan seemed unchanged--the party was still the top public bounty (not counting the unspecified bounty for clearing the river), Lord and Lady Mondaviak were still quite popular (despite Squire Grimnir still being on the lamb and rumors that Markos was rather hen-pecked by his wife), and some positive construction and expansion of the walls was starting to be done into the Slums quarter.
Traithe wandered down to the docks and found that Valkur's Wake was in port. He revealed himself to Nat Wyler and Captain Stormhammer, who were very happy to see "such a lucrative partner" despite having heard of the party's persona non-grata status in Phlan. The dwarven sailors informed Traithe that all passage into and out of Hillsfar was still closed due to the plague, but agreed to get the party as close to city as possible if they could guarantee a load of settlers that could be returned to Phlan for a profit. After some more small-talk, the not-quite-law-abiding crew of Valkur's Wake agreed to pick up the party on the far side of Thorn Island in two days, in order to avoid the party having to get through the town.
La Bouche entered town in fashion, passing out dozens of tarts and chocolates made with goodberries to the starving masses of the Slums, gathering quite the entourage and even some positive recognition from the guards watching the gates. Having been informed by Ash of the bounty for cleaning the river, he made his way to the Council Clerk's office and boldly claimed that he could clean out the river forthwith.
The less-than-impressed head-clerk handed him the paper-work to fill out, which he promptly marked by stabbing his dagger through the entire stack (not like she hadn't seen that kind of bravado before). Shrugging, the woman stamped an adventuring charter for "Mr. X" and handed it to him. La Bouche asked if there was a cafe from which they could see the river then invited the clerk to dinner. He headed to the Bitter Blade, ensconced himself on the rooftop patio that had recently been built at Lady Bivant's request, and dropped a thousand electrum coins borrowed from the party on ordering a whole pig and its accompaniments.
La Bouche busied himself overseeing the preparation of his meal and invited anyone and everyone to join him. On the patio he could occasionally hear the soft thunk of an arrow from the orcs on the other side of the river. He tied a bundle of goodberries to a fat bird summoned using animal messenger and sent it over to the orcs with a message that "this bird is delicious, and so are its cargo", which stopped the incessant shooting for a time.
The river, particularly upstream, had been getting steadily clearer over the last several days as the last of the aboleth's toxin was pumped out of the underground lake and diluted by the spring thaw which was starting to swell the Stojanow. At a message from a La Bouche, the party sent their undead army, two-hundred thousand strong, marching along the floor of the river from Sorcerer's Island south and then out into the bay. The steady push of so many bodies entering the river and displacing its water built an ever growing crest of water, which, by the time it passed the city, was a great, roiling white-capped wave pushing the last of the river's contamination ahead of it and leaving the waters of the recent ice-melt clean, fresh, and pristine behind.
There was a mixture of cheering and stunned silence from the various people crowded on the roof watching the river. When the wave had passed and it was clear that the river was, in fact, clean, Markos Mondaviak made his way over to La Bouche to congratulate him and offered to personally escort the amazing halfling back to the Council Hall to see to his payment. La Bouche accepted and walked to the building along with Markos, the Clerk, and Markos' wife. There they were met by the rest of the Council, word having quickly spread through the small civilized portion of town.
La Bouche was thoroughly, if discreetly, scanned for all manner of evils, magic, or deceptions. When none was found, guards brought out a chest, and Markos proudly announced that the not-too-public reward for the clearing of the river was 100,000 gold pieces in uncut gems from the Bivant mines. The councilmen took turns opening each of the seven locks on the chest so that La Bouche could see, then closed it and passed him the keys. Markos then offered to make La Bouche the new "Squire of Kryptgarten", sighting that the property had fallen under mismanagement and needed a such skilled hands as his to guide it. La Bouche accepted, and, while he was distracting the crowd with proclamations and obeisances to the Council, Traithe quietly lifted the chest with his ogrish strength, and vanished back to the docks.
The party stood indecisively staring at the teleporter that would take them down to the aboleth's cave, dreading the coming confrontation with "Master". Ash passed out a number of protective amulets that he had made with Grimnir's help--simple devices that he said should guard against at least one use of the Aboleth's enslavement powers. Traithe handed his gauntlets over to Melastasya, passed Krar-Nu-Get's sword to an undead barbarian who had been given command of their detachment, and drew the sword of Halfrek. Tactics were discussed, if not quite agreed upon, and numerous spells were cast in preparation.
Finally deeming themselves to be ready, the large force joined hands and plunged into the portal.
They appeared back in the vast cave where they had first met the aboleth. The black lake stretched out before them, the great pipe in the center still siphoning off the black, viscous water to be deposited in the river above. Traithe and Kevorkian lit up their weapons with continual flame spells and Dame cast faerie fire into the water, outlining their massive, tentacled prey in cheerfully flickering pink lights.
Mel and the Barbarian dived into the water. Mel slipping the Amulet of Vulnerability onto one of the thing's tentacles, and the barbarian hacking gleefully at it. As soon as his massive sword bit into the thing's flesh, the colossal beast simply vanished.
While the party tensed and readied for the aboleth to return, Mel suddenly felt a sharp pain in her ankles, looking down to see a crazy-eyed, white-skinned, water-gulping halfling armed with a carving knife and fork gnawing on her achilles-tendon.
The aboleth reappeared, only to take a barrage of lightning bolts from Ash, Zorch, and their mephit allies, and promptly disappeared again.
Mel kicked the halfling away and dropped her own protective amulet over his head, freeing him from the Aboleth's control. The halfling, dressed for a dinner party and sporting an outrageous accent, briefly introduced himself as "La Bouche of Tadoussac", and made it clear that he was suddenly of a mind to eat some calamari (and that the party looked similarly "meat-like" to him), before the Aboleth appeared again.
This time the party was ready, and the entire undead brigade attacked as one, pounding into the flickering tentacled mass with everything at their disposal. Spears, swords, axes, and pikes bit into the Aboleth rending massive wounds. Traithe called down a burning moon beam and Dame once again lit it up with faerie fire. When it vanished once again, La Bouche pointed out that there was no displacement of water when it appeared and disappeared and Ash informed them that they were battling some kind if phantasm or projected image.
A quick locate creature from Ash pinpointed the actual aboleth as being deep below them, in the faintly phosphorescent, coral-like sahuagin city on the floor of the underground lake. Traithe, Kevorkian, Melastasya, La Bouche, and their undead hordes dove, sucking in the aboleth's taint so as to be able to breathe the water and swimming down as fast as they could. Ash tried to stay dry, water-walking and directing them with message spells, but was yanked under by a pseudopod which manifested from the water itself. With a harrumph, the elf swam after them. Dame was the last to follow, transforming herself into a reef shark and darting after them at top speed.
As they swam in, their minds were assaulted. La Bouche and their undead barbarian companion immediately turned on them, striking out at Melastasya, who was the closest target. Dame darted between the combatants and sunk her shark's teeth into the glistening flesh of the aboleth who waited just inside the cave.
Traithe passed Verittanattukkut to Mel, the sword offering less resistance in the
water than her axes. Aided by a sudden burst of speed from the sword, Mel dove away from her more-humanoid assailants and swam directly into the aboleth's gaping maw, stabbing at the insides of its mouth. The thing bit down on Mel with its many rows of jagged teeth, then grabbed Kevorkian with a tentacle and deposited him in the mouth with Mel.
Ash, ever the extremist when it comes to his toys, pulled out Yarash's Spoon and transformed the poor aboleth into an ogre. The sudden writhing of the colossal tentacled monstrosity battered many of the party, and the collapsing size of the thing's mouth bit into Mel and Kevorkian again. Mel slashed a hole in the not-quite-humanoid cheek for them to get out before it had completed shrank.
As if things couldn't get worse for our poor-saving-throw rolling tentacled hero, Traithe then promptly paralyzed the aboleth-turned-ogre with Cyllibrym. Kevorkian freed Le Bouche from domination again using protection from good and evil, Mel ran interference against the dominated undead barbarian, and everyone else proceeded to beat the paralyzed ogre to a fine bloody mess.
Ash finally ended the thing's suffering by freezing its brain with a ray of frost. The final brain-death of the aboleth had the beneficial effect of freeing the barbarian from his enslavement. Unfortunately, it also freed the party from their ability to breath underwater--all except for Kevorkian (thanks to his bracers), Dame (who was still a shark), and the zombie (who didn't need to breathe in the first place) that is-- Leaving them breathless and nearly crushed by the pressure of being 800 feet beneath the surface of the subteranean lake.
Everyone grabbed onto Dame's dorsal fin and she swam out of the cave as fast as she could. Once in the larger lake, Ash, Mel, and Traithe activated their rings of water walking for some extra boyancy, and Ash bubbled out his last thunder wave spell which shot them all up to the surface like a cork from a bottle. Luckily their recent use of liquid ventilation saved them from decompression sickness. Kevorkian trailed after, hauling the body of the dead ogre.
When they reached the surface, they found Yarash (or his most recent clone) standing there, Zorch perched just above his shoulder, looking a little confused. He seemed to think the date was close to two hundred years prior, and had few recollections of his experiments with the aboleth or the sahuagin.
1 Ches
When Kevorkian surfaced, he offered Yarash the ogre body for his research, which was happily accepted. The party suddenly found themselves in Yarash's surgery room, where the old vivisectionist quickly tore the aboleth-turned-ogre down into its component parts, carefully jarring and labelling the organs and limbs and placing them on their shelves next to the rest of his collection.
Kevorkian quickly asked for Yarash to help him get rid of his tattoo, by replacing his decorated arm with a new one. The old wizard happily strapped the cleric down to his workbench, sawed off the massive clawed arm that he had installed last time, and replaced it with a fairly normal-looking arm which he said came from a relatively small orc-ogre hybrid. Kevorkian then asked for some other upgrades, gaining an attractive new pair of black, dragon-like legs.
Melastasya asked to have her tattoo removed too and Yarash was happy to oblige, cutting off her red-scaled Slaad arm and then grafting some parts from a new specimen onto it as it was growing back. La Bouche asked about livers, had some rather convoluted discussions with Yarash who was very confused that he would want to smash and eat a perfectly good wyvern's liver rather than having his own replaced with it, then requested a gastric update and was gifted with the stomach of a carrion crawler--which seemed quite appropriate given his indescriminate eating. The others, as usual, refused Yarash's hospitality and kept their own organs.
La Bouche asked Yarash whether he had any eggs, which resulted in his opening a wall to reveal a cornucopia of eggs of all kinds, carefully preserved. La Bouche fixed a wide variety of hard-boiled eggs for Mel to eat, in order to fulfill her oath: eggs boiled in vinegar with mustard, boiled in kraken blood, spiced with cinnamon and cardamom, and so on. Melastasya's small, girlish stomach was not really capable of holding that much food though, and she nearly wretched after the seventh, forcing Traithe to use a grease spell to coat the eggs and La Bouche to force-feed her to make sure she fulfilled the letter of her vow.
As the surgeries were taking place, the rest of the party relaxed and regrouped, taking a week to plan and plot what to do next. The excitable halfling gourmand fixed them a variety of interesting dishes, ranging from aboleth-ogre flank steaks to other things best left unmentioned.
They introduced the Blessed Afflictor to Yarash, who showed them that the skin he had taken from the Eraka woman was starting to decompose and show damage from their recent engagements. Yarash happily lead him to the vat room, where a pair of clones of Melastasya and Kevorkian had almost reached maturity. The Praetor took out one of the Kevorkian clones, skinned it, and worked his way into the new, pristine Kevorkian skin, turning him into a perfect lookalike of the cleric (had the real cleric not had half of his body parts replaced).
7 Ches
After being reminded of their oath made to the Blessed Afflictor, to see that he was safely escorted to "a place occupied by no less than eight thousand and eight living and mortal human souls", the party decided to bypass Phlan and head strait to Hillsfar with their undead army. The army could march along the base of the Moonsea, but the rest of them would need a boat. Traithe and Ash (both magically disguised) and La Bouche, who was not yet known by the council, headed into Phlan to make see about hiring, buying, or stealing a ship.
Ash stopped by Kryptgarten, then moved around Phlan, taking in the news since their prolonged absence. It seemed that Kryptgarten was coping well, had even grown, but had regressed considerably socially, having burned down the church and tore down the bathhouses--the citizens, now numbering more than five hundred looked happy, filthy, and entirely human. Politics in Phlan seemed unchanged--the party was still the top public bounty (not counting the unspecified bounty for clearing the river), Lord and Lady Mondaviak were still quite popular (despite Squire Grimnir still being on the lamb and rumors that Markos was rather hen-pecked by his wife), and some positive construction and expansion of the walls was starting to be done into the Slums quarter.
Traithe wandered down to the docks and found that Valkur's Wake was in port. He revealed himself to Nat Wyler and Captain Stormhammer, who were very happy to see "such a lucrative partner" despite having heard of the party's persona non-grata status in Phlan. The dwarven sailors informed Traithe that all passage into and out of Hillsfar was still closed due to the plague, but agreed to get the party as close to city as possible if they could guarantee a load of settlers that could be returned to Phlan for a profit. After some more small-talk, the not-quite-law-abiding crew of Valkur's Wake agreed to pick up the party on the far side of Thorn Island in two days, in order to avoid the party having to get through the town.
La Bouche entered town in fashion, passing out dozens of tarts and chocolates made with goodberries to the starving masses of the Slums, gathering quite the entourage and even some positive recognition from the guards watching the gates. Having been informed by Ash of the bounty for cleaning the river, he made his way to the Council Clerk's office and boldly claimed that he could clean out the river forthwith.
The less-than-impressed head-clerk handed him the paper-work to fill out, which he promptly marked by stabbing his dagger through the entire stack (not like she hadn't seen that kind of bravado before). Shrugging, the woman stamped an adventuring charter for "Mr. X" and handed it to him. La Bouche asked if there was a cafe from which they could see the river then invited the clerk to dinner. He headed to the Bitter Blade, ensconced himself on the rooftop patio that had recently been built at Lady Bivant's request, and dropped a thousand electrum coins borrowed from the party on ordering a whole pig and its accompaniments.
La Bouche busied himself overseeing the preparation of his meal and invited anyone and everyone to join him. On the patio he could occasionally hear the soft thunk of an arrow from the orcs on the other side of the river. He tied a bundle of goodberries to a fat bird summoned using animal messenger and sent it over to the orcs with a message that "this bird is delicious, and so are its cargo", which stopped the incessant shooting for a time.
The river, particularly upstream, had been getting steadily clearer over the last several days as the last of the aboleth's toxin was pumped out of the underground lake and diluted by the spring thaw which was starting to swell the Stojanow. At a message from a La Bouche, the party sent their undead army, two-hundred thousand strong, marching along the floor of the river from Sorcerer's Island south and then out into the bay. The steady push of so many bodies entering the river and displacing its water built an ever growing crest of water, which, by the time it passed the city, was a great, roiling white-capped wave pushing the last of the river's contamination ahead of it and leaving the waters of the recent ice-melt clean, fresh, and pristine behind.
There was a mixture of cheering and stunned silence from the various people crowded on the roof watching the river. When the wave had passed and it was clear that the river was, in fact, clean, Markos Mondaviak made his way over to La Bouche to congratulate him and offered to personally escort the amazing halfling back to the Council Hall to see to his payment. La Bouche accepted and walked to the building along with Markos, the Clerk, and Markos' wife. There they were met by the rest of the Council, word having quickly spread through the small civilized portion of town.
La Bouche was thoroughly, if discreetly, scanned for all manner of evils, magic, or deceptions. When none was found, guards brought out a chest, and Markos proudly announced that the not-too-public reward for the clearing of the river was 100,000 gold pieces in uncut gems from the Bivant mines. The councilmen took turns opening each of the seven locks on the chest so that La Bouche could see, then closed it and passed him the keys. Markos then offered to make La Bouche the new "Squire of Kryptgarten", sighting that the property had fallen under mismanagement and needed a such skilled hands as his to guide it. La Bouche accepted, and, while he was distracting the crowd with proclamations and obeisances to the Council, Traithe quietly lifted the chest with his ogrish strength, and vanished back to the docks.
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