Vann-La hurls a javelin at one of the giant sundews, but it goes wide.
There is no response.
“Do you suppose they are sentient?” wonders Hkatha. He calls out in Elven (figuring that it is the language that intelligent plants are most likely to speak): “We come in peace! Hello?”
There is still no response.
Vann-La and Shakgar move forward cautiously as Cook fades into the shadows, sneaking around the side somewhere. The Kree’s perceptions are exceptional; as she moves forward, she detects a tremor in the ground, so faint that she is certain that none of her companions is aware of it. “There’s something underground,” she calls.
The sundews jerk into motion at just that moment. One flails out without appalling reach and misses Vann-La. The second starts shambling slowly towards her. The third is closer, and it heaves itself forward, also lashing out at her.
She hurls another javelin, hitting it with a disruptive strike, and it misses her.
“Come and get it!” she howls, and the sundews roll closer to her. She strikes all around her, hewing at the sticky plants. Behind them, a flaming sphere appears, courtesy of Hkatha, and the echo of Iggy’s gun barks in the air.
Then Shakgar, proving once again that he really likes to attack from above, leaps over a copse of trees and lands next to one of the sundews, bringing his axe down in a blur of motion. Sticky sap splatters all around him. The sundews flail about, trying to drag the heroes down and make the Garden of Delights their final resting place.
“Oi, look!” Cook emerged from his hiding place a moment ago in order to fight, and now he jerks his head to the southeast, where a small, suspicious-looking bank of fog is rolling towards the fight. “Something else is coming!”
“And there’s still something underground!” Vann-La shouts. The vibration is increasing.
Sta’Ligir slays the first of the giant sundews with a magic missile, but even while he does so, one of the others whips its tendrils out, grabbing Shakgar and pulling him through a thorny row of roses. “Aargh!” the barbarian roars, and enters into a silver phoenix rage.
Simultaneously, the underground threat emerges as three ankhegs burst forth from beneath our heroes’ feet!* Cook, Vann-La and Shakgar are all thrown from their feet as the huge insectoid monsters tear into them.
“It’s up to us wizards!” Captain Ligir calls over to Hkatha.
“You already took out one of these things,” Captain Hkatha replies. “Now it’s my turn!” His flaming sphere rolls forward into one of the other sundews, scorching it. The plant quivers and tries to draw back, but the sticky sap on it catches fire. The thing makes a loud hissing sound as it starts to boil, and it goes limp, dead.
Meanwhile Cook leaps to his feet and manages to push his ankheg friend back a few paces. “Need breathing room!” he cries.
Heimall says, “Let me see if I can draw it off of you for a moment!” He jabs his magical glaive at the ankheg, but it rears back and the attack misses. The ankheg darts forward, biting at him, but the links of his armor take the blow and prevent him from being harmed. He swings the butt of the glaive around and strikes the monster, but it isn’t out of fight yet.
Shakgar, meanwhile, is being dragged off by the last giant sundew. With an enraged howl, he cuts it in two and then scrambles up, panting and looking for a new target. He sees Cook tumbling into flanking on the bug that is trying to chew on Heimall and rushes forward to join the fun, even as the fog bank rolls closer. As it closes around him, it begins to burn his skin. Acid! he thinks, and it just pisses him off even more.
Torinn bloodies one of the ankhegs with his spiked chain, and the beast burrows back into the earth. But a few seconds later, it comes back up and bites him, knocking him from his feet. “Damn it!” the Dragon of Fandelose roars. “All bets are off!!” He strikes the ankheg with his chain, wrapping it around the beast’s neck, and then gives a great tug, drawing the spikes of his chain ruthlessly through the monster’s chitin. Bug juice sprays all over, and the first of the ankhegs falls!
Iggy and Hkatha focus their arcane firepower on the plant shrouded by fog. The fog lifts as it really gets into the fun, trying to devour any meaty figures nearby. The flames of the two wizards’ attacks don’t seem to bother it terribly at first, but this soon changes as they keep pouring it on. Meanwhile, Shakgar slays the second ankheg with a devastating strike, and then Vann-La takes care of the fog-spewing plant with a steel serpent strike.
“Shakgar!” cries Heimall. “In the name of the Empire, destroy that bug!”
And with a final terrific blow, the goliath does so.
Panting, our heroes clean the sap and bug juice off of their weapons. Those that the sundews hit take a few moments to pour dirt onto their stickier surfaces, hoping to cover the sap so that it doesn’t hinder them too badly. Iggy and Hkatha step up, using their arcane might to clean the worst of it off of their allies.
Torinn, meanwhile, walks to the rose garden. At least one section of it has seen better days, what with having had a raging goliath barbarian jerked through it. Even so, it doesn’t take long for him to find a large, healthy-looking rose bush with but a single rose growing on it.
A single silver rose.
“Hey guys,” the dragonborn calls, “I found something over here!”
The others walk over to the rose. “That looks like a silver rose to me,” nods Hkatha.
“Do we just pick it, or what?” wonders Heimall.
“Oi, this garden may have wondrous herbs for cooking in it,” Cook says, and starts to wander about, searching for them.
Torinn suddenly jerks as if he had been shocked. “Did you hear that?” he exclaims.
“What?” asks Iggy.
“The rose!” Torinn looks at his friends. “You didn’t hear it?” At their blank looks, he exclaims, “It spoke to me!”
***
The Silver Rose of Garnet doesn’t seem inclined to speak to anyone else, at least initially. According to Torinn, it sounds like three voices speaking in unison, all three of them female. Also according to the dragonborn, it wants him to pick it. So he does, and he affixes it to his cloak like a pin.
“It is a strong and holy relic of Garnet,” he reports to his companions. “Even though I don’t worship her, it will function to channel the sacred powers of my god- Lester- and it might be able to aid us greatly.”
“Well, we need it before we go to Tirchond, at least according to that unicorn,” Heimall says. “Does that mean it’s time to go there?”
“We don’t have a way to get there,” answers Hkatha.
“Maybe,” Cook suggests, “we can find coordinates for a teleport circle there.”
“Not a bad idea,” Iggy says, “if we can figure out where to get them.”
“Well, now what?” asks Heimall. “We’re here to scout, at least ostensibly. Maybe we should check out that tower and the haze around it.”
The party debates for a few moments. Some of them think they should simply head back to Fandelose; others favor going to Northshore in order to free the enslaved people there. After some discussion, they decide to check out the tower, then report in to Colonel Jaxe via sending (as General Argos is probably very busy, and has requested that the heroes follow the chain of command when contacting him) and see what he says.
At one point, someone mentions the name of Arawn (the death knight who leads the Six-Fingered Hand). Torinn sputters, “Hold on- the Rose knew him!”
“What?” exclaims Iggy.
“One of its bearers was involved with him,” Torinn reports, clearly listening to a voice that only he can hear. Then he gasps.
“Her name was Dawn.”
Next Time: Our heroes investigate the tower!
*Please note that these were one of my own ankheg versions, not the level 3 types in the MM2- in fact, this encounter happened well before the release of the MM2 and includes two monsters that appeared in it. The versions of the ankheg that I used were 15th level (ankheg earthshakers, for those of you who saw them in the Monster Project) and 10th level (the greenvise fogger, see Vines in the MM2).