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Story Hour
Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8255263" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>Session 40: We Found Ildna! Also: How A Hag Repays A Favor</p><p></p><p>Players:</p><p>Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)/Wizard</p><p>Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)</p><p>Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge)</p><p>Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger (Horizon Walker)</p><p>Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)</p><p>Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)</p><p></p><p>GM - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p></p><p>14 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 105) (immediately after)</p><p></p><p>Immediately after the fight with the hag and the stone giants and a few beli, we took a short rest. Joybell, Taman and Orryk rested, strengthened by Mo’s song of rest. The others spent the time looting the bodies of the hag and the giants.</p><p></p><p>They didn’t find much on the hag’s body. We’d been hoping for another broom of flying, but it turned out that the staff she was flying on wasn’t magical. Apparently that ability to fly was inherent to her, not the object. They did find a potion, which Mo picked up with his mage hand and passed on to Fiona. Fiona identified it as a weirdly variant potion of cloud giant strength -- she couldn’t tell exactly what would happen but there will be something weird that happens at the end of the effect.</p><p></p><p>Thneed: I’d love that…</p><p></p><p>So we gave it to her. Orryk took the hag’s staff as a walking stick.</p><p></p><p>Toward the end of the rest, Joybell cast Find Scooby Steed. Taman did his ranger-thing and sensed for fey within five miles -- he detected something right at the edge of his range, vaguely (but not exactly) in the direction the orrery was pointing.</p><p></p><p>(Note: We realized later that we forgot to burn the bodies of the hag and the giants.)</p><p></p><p>After resting, we got back on our way, following the orrery. The rest of the day passed without incident.</p><p></p><p>The night passed without incident as well, except that Mo and Thneed whiled away second watch making hand shadows. (“Do Deformed Rabbit. I love that one!”)</p><p></p><p></p><p>15 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 106)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Taman checked for fey again and detected none within five miles. The orrery, when checked, snapped quickly to point in the same direction it has been pointing all along. Which was the behavior we’d gotten accustomed to.</p><p></p><p>Shortly after we got started in the morning, we spotted two large trolls a fair way ahead of us. As we got closer it became clear that these were weird looking trolls, maybe a bit decayed or something. Thneed, who’d spotted them first, put her hunters mark on one and took a couple of shots at it.</p><p></p><p>We then began to focus our attacks on that one -- Joybell charged at it and attacked, hitting it with a searing smite to do fire damage. Taman ran over and attacked it as well, having to use his bonus action to dash the last five feet. Orryk and Mo both shot at it.</p><p></p><p>Fiona, realizing that she hadn’t done so yet, cast mage armor on herself.</p><p></p><p>The other troll moved toward us but wasn’t able to get into combat with anyone. Which worked out well for us, because we were able to drop the first one with a couple of shots from Thneed, a couple of big hits from Joybell, and a great shot from Taman.</p><p></p><p>It smelled like rot and nastiness. Worse than a normal troll.</p><p></p><p>Orryk moved out of range of the other one and took a couple of shots at it.</p><p></p><p>Mo used the wand of web on the second troll, catching it the webbing. Seeing it ensnared he decided to “inspire” Orryk.</p><p></p><p>Mo: See how easy it is to web things…</p><p></p><p>Fiona used scorching ray on the troll in the webbing -- even the ray that missed helped, because it set the webbing on fire. So it took fire damage from the scorching ray and fire damage from the burning web. But the web hadn’t burned enough for it to free itself from the restraint.</p><p></p><p>Orryk, either inspired or irritated by Mo, put away his bow and got right up in the troll’s face and punched it. Omnath flew over his and Joybell’s heads and breathed fire on the troll.</p><p></p><p>Mo then viciously mocked the troll.</p><p></p><p>Mo: You’re on fire….</p><p></p><p>The troll took damage from the fire in the web, which burned away to the point that he wasn’t restrained any longer (doing him damage in the process). It missed with both of its clawed hands, waving wildly at Taman. It hit him with its nasty necrotic-rotting bite.</p><p></p><p>Thneed immediately turned around and killed it with her arrows.</p><p></p><p>Fiona and Omnath worked together to burn the bodies. These trolls looked like they’d been exposed to some sort of nasty magic -- they didn’t appear to regenerate like normal trolls, they just looked like they were decaying. It seemed like it could have been the work of the hag (or a hag). Or maybe the Epiphany Machine, except that seemed like it had different sorts of effects on people.</p><p></p><p>We continued on our way. That fight had been pretty early in the day, so we spent the whole rest of the day going up and down switchbacked mountain trails. Orryk took the opportunity presented by the switchbacks and the twisting mountain trails to use the orrery to triangulate the location of the Big Chaos it was picking up. From this he confirmed that we are getting closer.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the day passed without incident. So did the night.</p><p></p><p></p><p>16 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 107)</p><p></p><p>We hadn’t noticed the day before, but when we woke it dawned on us that we were in a less snowy area of the mountains than we had been. It had been notably colder and snowier than average when we were being shadowed by the Bheur Hag (an ice hag) but it was now a bit warmer and less snowy than expected for as far north and as high in the mountains as we were. The rangers felt that this was a magical effect.</p><p></p><p>Taman checked for fey and found none within five miles.</p><p></p><p>We stepped out of the hut and in the morning light spotted a stone giant wearing a mask (not like the Masks -- a scold’s bridle) sitting on a boulder outside of our camp. He was sitting with a piece of paper pinched between his forefinger and thumb, watching the hut carefully.</p><p></p><p>(Note: Scold’s bridles were historically made in many forms, some more painful and inherently tortuous than others. Some covered all or most of the face.)</p><p></p><p>Joybell saw him, smiled, and waved. He waved back.</p><p></p><p>Joybell, pointing at the paper: Is that for us?</p><p></p><p>He nodded and handed the paper to her. It was a note which read:</p><p></p><p>Thanks for killing that bitch Icenipple. I owe you for that, you did me a real favor.</p><p>-- N.A. Stoneshite</p><p></p><p>The note went on to say that she hated to be in debt so to repay us for the favor of killing the other hag, she was giving us the services of the stone giant. He could guide us to where we were going -- if he knew the way -- though he would not go into danger for us. She also said not to try to remove the bridle because it would hurt him.</p><p></p><p>We asked the giant if he could take us to Ildna, the broken dilyarli. He nodded and, with gestures (because the bridle made it impossible for him to speak) let us know that it was four mountains away and would take us two days to get there. He tried to convey something else to us but we couldn’t quite get it.</p><p></p><p>We agreed to that and let him lead us away from camp. He didn’t go in exactly the direction we could have gone, but it didn’t appear to be crazy either. After an hour or two we came to a cave entrance. He gestured in there and we finally understood that he was telling us we’d be going through the mountains in caves rather than over them.</p><p></p><p>Very good.</p><p></p><p>As we walked, we decided to call him Lurch, with his acquiescence. Joybell talked to him about the caverns and he communicated with signs and gestures. We noticed during the day that he was neither eating nor drinking, but appeared to be okay despite that.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the day passed without incident as we moved through the tunnels. The tunnels, which looked like dwarven mine tunnels, seemed to wander around a lot less than the switchback paths over the mountains. We made camp and a dome in the evening.</p><p></p><p>Fiona, with Lurch’s permission, cast detect magic (yes, very) and identify on the bridle. She identified it as a bridle of sustenance -- the wearer doesn’t need to eat, drink or sleep while wearing it. However, if it is taken off without uttering the command word (which the identify spell did not reveal) the wearer gains one level of exhaustion for each week they’d worn the bridle.</p><p></p><p>We asked Lurch if he’d been wearing it for more than six weeks and he nodded vigorously. So we asked if he wanted us to try and take it off and he shook his head with even more vigor.</p><p></p><p>The night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>18 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 108)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Taman checked for fey and found none within five miles. He also tried to detect any planar portals and found none of those within a mile either.</p><p></p><p>We resumed proceeding through the tunnel. There were lots of branches we didn’t take and the path we took had some twists and turns, but Lurch lead us confidently through the tunnels (still looking like an abandoned dwarven mine) and the orrery, when consulted, indicated that he was at least not leading us astray.</p><p></p><p>Traveling with a giant had its advantages, because we had no trouble with anything all day.</p><p></p><p>Around dinner time, Lurch stopped at the entrance to a side tunnel or chamber and pointed in that direction. With gestures he made it clear that he would go no further but what we sought was that way.</p><p></p><p>Joybell thanked him for his assistance and wished him well in his association with the other hag. Orryk tied a note to the staff he’d taken from the Bheur Hag we killed (apparently named Icenipple) and handed it to Lurch.</p><p></p><p>Orryk: Can you deliver this to your hag?</p><p></p><p>Lurch nodded and took the staff.</p><p></p><p>Before we went through the entrance, Mo pulled an ape from the bag of holding, so he’d have a companion again. He used prestidigitation to color its fur purple and named it Grape Ape.</p><p></p><p>Orryk brought Omnath back from the pocket dimension as an ice mephit and sent him through the doorway and down the hall, watching through his eyes. The passage was dimly lit with patches of something, maybe fungi maybe something else with some bioluminescence, on the walls that gave off a greenish glow. This looked to be a natural cavern with large stalactites (which had merged with stalagmites to form natural stone columns) dotted about.</p><p></p><p>Omnath saw a number of round things with many maws and stick legs in the chamber. We recognized these as things we fought in Tumeleen with the Skinless One (just before we found the Crazy Book in Jorlas’ wagon). Omnath counted half a dozen of them.</p><p></p><p>We figured they probably were an early warning system (we remembered them as making noise when we fought them in Tumeleen) and expected that other things would come to fight with them.</p><p></p><p>In fact the beachball things, called Grues, began to chatter and gibber when they spotted Omnath in the room.</p><p></p><p>Thneed moved into the hall and spotted a giant, that looked to be about stone giant sized, but weird and lumpy looking and with mottled skin, just entering the back of the large chamber, obviously investigating the noise from the grues. She then took a shot at a grue, hitting it and killing it.</p><p></p><p>Thneed: There’s something else. Something big.</p><p></p><p>Joybell rode into the room, toward one of the two clusters of them, and dropped one with two blows. Three of them swarmed her and one moved toward Taman, but fortunately all of their attacks missed.</p><p></p><p>Orryk took a shot at one and dropped it. Mo moved up, with Grape Ape close behind him, so he could see what was going on better, but that left him unable to attack.</p><p></p><p>The weird giant, a fomorian, moved up and cast a spell that caught Mo and Joybell, Grape Ape and Scooby, doing a tremendous amount of psychic damage (synaptic static is the spell) and scrambled their minds up a bit. Scooby disappeared back to the celestial plane and Grape Ape dropped to the brain damage. Joybell fell prone to the ground as her mount disappeared from beneath her.</p><p></p><p>Fiona moved a little closer and cast storm sphere centered on the giant. It stood in the middle of a howling storm with lightning crackling around it.</p><p></p><p>Joybell was on the ground in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by grues and with the giant looming not too far away.</p><p></p><p>Orryk, to Thneed: Cover Joybell.</p><p></p><p>Thneed was able to take out two of the ones surrounding Joybell with two arrows. Taman dashed in, dropped the last one, then continued moving so we were spread out.</p><p></p><p>Joybell, pissed off, stood up and threw the lightning javelin at the fomorian, but missed because her brain was still sizzling from the synaptic static. She then moved to the very edge of the storm sphere and threw a regular javelin which also missed.</p><p></p><p>Orryk shot at it twice, then put away his bow to prepare for hand to hand combat. Mo used the wand of web to catch the giant, hoping to hold him in the storm sphere, but the giant misty stepped out of the storm sphere and the web and then attacked Taman with its great club twice. Fortunately he missed.</p><p></p><p>Fiona hit it with scorching rays and a lightning bolt then Thneed hit it with an arrow. Taman cast hunters mark on the fomorian and waited for someone in the party to get into combat with it.</p><p></p><p>Joybell immediately obliged and moved in to fight the giant. She missed with both of her attacks, but Taman hit with his held attack.</p><p></p><p>Orryk moved up and hit the fomorian then went into a defensive stance. Mo cast a vicious mockery on it.</p><p></p><p>Mo: We hit you in the balls. No. We hit your….I had it…</p><p></p><p>The fomorian cast a spell that had Taman, Orryk and Joybell resisting a force that felt like it would have moved or teleported them. We all saved, though, and the fomorian stayed in place.</p><p></p><p>Which might have been unfortunate for it, because Fiona promptly hit him with two searing rays and Thneed with two arrows.</p><p></p><p>As we were fighting the fomorian, some of us saw a dilyarli appear from further down the corridor, a patch of bioluminescent fungi reflecting off his white skin and blue hair.</p><p></p><p>Thneed, on seeing the dilyarli: Hey, there’s someone else back there!</p><p></p><p>Taman, to the dilyarli: Friend or foe?</p><p></p><p>The dilyarli answered his question by making a gesture and creating barely visible clouds of sounds, corrupting sussurations, that whispered at Taman, Orryk and Joybell and got into our brains doing rather a lot of damage. (This was neither an attack nor a spell.) Then he took a shot at Taman with a longbow, but Mo shouted some cutting words and the arrow missed its mark.</p><p></p><p>Orryk continued to focus on the fomorian. Mo tried to cast polymorph on the dilyarli, to turn it into a trout, but he saved.</p><p></p><p>Before anyone else could attack the fomorian, it cast thunderstep (damaging all three of the party members around it) and reappeared down the hall, then ran further away into the darkness.</p><p></p><p>So we turned our attention to the dilyarli. Fiona cast a guiding bolt on him, which let Thneed hit him with both of her attacks. Taman cast hunters mark on the dilyarli and took a shot at him.</p><p></p><p>Joybell almost cast misty step to get close, then Mo reminded her of the wand of magic missile, so she used that to shoot him instead.</p><p></p><p>The sussurating clouds, which looked like heat haze on a highway, moved to stay close to those they were afflicting, then the dilyarli took two shots at Orryk, which Orryk didn’t even bother deflecting. He just stood there like a badass and let the arrows come at him.</p><p></p><p>Orryk then closed his eyes and ran up to attack the dilyarli with his tremor sense to guide him. Mo cast a shatter spell, just missing Orryk, and hitting the dilyarli with a great crash of thunderous sound. Fiona hit him with scorching rays. The final blow was Thneed’s two arrows both hitting him and dropping him.</p><p></p><p>Looking at the body, this was not a dilyarli any of us recognized -- not Ildna and not the one who’d come to Embernook. He had some fancy clothes (somewhat bloodstained and tattered now), a rapier, a longbow, and 12 arrows, which were added to the hoard of arrows.</p><p></p><p>Joybell immediately sat down and started to cast Find Steed.</p><p></p><p>We’d noticed earlier that the fomorian was twisted and mottled, physically affected by something. As soon as we looked at the dilyarli, we could see that he was as well -- his bones and muscles becoming misshapen and asymmetrical. The blue-white of his skin was turning grey and black in patches.</p><p></p><p>We hoped to find papers or something like that on him, something to indicate what was going on, but we found nothing of that nature.</p><p></p><p>After a short rest, we began to track the fomorian based on the blood trail he left behind. As we did so, we noticed that we were also back-tracking the dilyarli. It had come from wherever the fomorian was going.</p><p></p><p>We were still in the abandoned, probably played out, dwarven mines and we passed several branching tunnels along the way, but we stayed on the fomorian’s blood trail. As we went Taman took a minute to check for fey and got two individuals, fairly close, in the direction we were heading. He took another moment to check for planar portals and detected a sealed portal to the Feywild -- one that was not merely closed or inactive/dormant, but positively sealed.</p><p></p><p>Taman explained as we went that the Fomorians used to be fey giants and were expelled from the Feywild because they tried to expose it to the Hunger Between Worlds. The Fey Nobles had cast them out.</p><p></p><p>Orryk checked the orrery -- it pointed in the direction we were heading but didn’t snap as quickly as expected for as close as Taman said we were to the two fey. So the Epiphany Machine was not with the fey.</p><p></p><p>After a bit of following the blood trail, we came to a natural arch where the mine opened into a large cavern. Inside there was a dead fomorian on the ground, which we recognized as the one we’d fought. It was not dead or even likely dying when it escaped from the combat so it might have been killed when it returned to the cavern. There were a couple of dead dwarves who looked like many cysts had burst open and things emerged from their bodies There were also two dilyarli -- Ildna and a woman, probably Allina (the dilyarli he’d broken according to the Ice Maiden we’d spoken to outside of Auriqua), a living fomorian, many of the grues (which had probably come out of the dead dwarves).</p><p></p><p>In the split second in which we took in what lay in front of us, we heard coming up behind us two manglers (the gribbly monster from Harl’s library) and a skinless thing (like we fought in Tumeleen with the grues).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8255263, member: 7016699"] Session 40: We Found Ildna! Also: How A Hag Repays A Favor Players: Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)/Wizard Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore) Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge) Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger (Horizon Walker) Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients) Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave) GM - Everyone Else 14 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 105) (immediately after) Immediately after the fight with the hag and the stone giants and a few beli, we took a short rest. Joybell, Taman and Orryk rested, strengthened by Mo’s song of rest. The others spent the time looting the bodies of the hag and the giants. They didn’t find much on the hag’s body. We’d been hoping for another broom of flying, but it turned out that the staff she was flying on wasn’t magical. Apparently that ability to fly was inherent to her, not the object. They did find a potion, which Mo picked up with his mage hand and passed on to Fiona. Fiona identified it as a weirdly variant potion of cloud giant strength -- she couldn’t tell exactly what would happen but there will be something weird that happens at the end of the effect. Thneed: I’d love that… So we gave it to her. Orryk took the hag’s staff as a walking stick. Toward the end of the rest, Joybell cast Find Scooby Steed. Taman did his ranger-thing and sensed for fey within five miles -- he detected something right at the edge of his range, vaguely (but not exactly) in the direction the orrery was pointing. (Note: We realized later that we forgot to burn the bodies of the hag and the giants.) After resting, we got back on our way, following the orrery. The rest of the day passed without incident. The night passed without incident as well, except that Mo and Thneed whiled away second watch making hand shadows. (“Do Deformed Rabbit. I love that one!”) 15 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 106) The next morning, Taman checked for fey again and detected none within five miles. The orrery, when checked, snapped quickly to point in the same direction it has been pointing all along. Which was the behavior we’d gotten accustomed to. Shortly after we got started in the morning, we spotted two large trolls a fair way ahead of us. As we got closer it became clear that these were weird looking trolls, maybe a bit decayed or something. Thneed, who’d spotted them first, put her hunters mark on one and took a couple of shots at it. We then began to focus our attacks on that one -- Joybell charged at it and attacked, hitting it with a searing smite to do fire damage. Taman ran over and attacked it as well, having to use his bonus action to dash the last five feet. Orryk and Mo both shot at it. Fiona, realizing that she hadn’t done so yet, cast mage armor on herself. The other troll moved toward us but wasn’t able to get into combat with anyone. Which worked out well for us, because we were able to drop the first one with a couple of shots from Thneed, a couple of big hits from Joybell, and a great shot from Taman. It smelled like rot and nastiness. Worse than a normal troll. Orryk moved out of range of the other one and took a couple of shots at it. Mo used the wand of web on the second troll, catching it the webbing. Seeing it ensnared he decided to “inspire” Orryk. Mo: See how easy it is to web things… Fiona used scorching ray on the troll in the webbing -- even the ray that missed helped, because it set the webbing on fire. So it took fire damage from the scorching ray and fire damage from the burning web. But the web hadn’t burned enough for it to free itself from the restraint. Orryk, either inspired or irritated by Mo, put away his bow and got right up in the troll’s face and punched it. Omnath flew over his and Joybell’s heads and breathed fire on the troll. Mo then viciously mocked the troll. Mo: You’re on fire…. The troll took damage from the fire in the web, which burned away to the point that he wasn’t restrained any longer (doing him damage in the process). It missed with both of its clawed hands, waving wildly at Taman. It hit him with its nasty necrotic-rotting bite. Thneed immediately turned around and killed it with her arrows. Fiona and Omnath worked together to burn the bodies. These trolls looked like they’d been exposed to some sort of nasty magic -- they didn’t appear to regenerate like normal trolls, they just looked like they were decaying. It seemed like it could have been the work of the hag (or a hag). Or maybe the Epiphany Machine, except that seemed like it had different sorts of effects on people. We continued on our way. That fight had been pretty early in the day, so we spent the whole rest of the day going up and down switchbacked mountain trails. Orryk took the opportunity presented by the switchbacks and the twisting mountain trails to use the orrery to triangulate the location of the Big Chaos it was picking up. From this he confirmed that we are getting closer. The rest of the day passed without incident. So did the night. 16 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 107) We hadn’t noticed the day before, but when we woke it dawned on us that we were in a less snowy area of the mountains than we had been. It had been notably colder and snowier than average when we were being shadowed by the Bheur Hag (an ice hag) but it was now a bit warmer and less snowy than expected for as far north and as high in the mountains as we were. The rangers felt that this was a magical effect. Taman checked for fey and found none within five miles. We stepped out of the hut and in the morning light spotted a stone giant wearing a mask (not like the Masks -- a scold’s bridle) sitting on a boulder outside of our camp. He was sitting with a piece of paper pinched between his forefinger and thumb, watching the hut carefully. (Note: Scold’s bridles were historically made in many forms, some more painful and inherently tortuous than others. Some covered all or most of the face.) Joybell saw him, smiled, and waved. He waved back. Joybell, pointing at the paper: Is that for us? He nodded and handed the paper to her. It was a note which read: Thanks for killing that bitch Icenipple. I owe you for that, you did me a real favor. -- N.A. Stoneshite The note went on to say that she hated to be in debt so to repay us for the favor of killing the other hag, she was giving us the services of the stone giant. He could guide us to where we were going -- if he knew the way -- though he would not go into danger for us. She also said not to try to remove the bridle because it would hurt him. We asked the giant if he could take us to Ildna, the broken dilyarli. He nodded and, with gestures (because the bridle made it impossible for him to speak) let us know that it was four mountains away and would take us two days to get there. He tried to convey something else to us but we couldn’t quite get it. We agreed to that and let him lead us away from camp. He didn’t go in exactly the direction we could have gone, but it didn’t appear to be crazy either. After an hour or two we came to a cave entrance. He gestured in there and we finally understood that he was telling us we’d be going through the mountains in caves rather than over them. Very good. As we walked, we decided to call him Lurch, with his acquiescence. Joybell talked to him about the caverns and he communicated with signs and gestures. We noticed during the day that he was neither eating nor drinking, but appeared to be okay despite that. The rest of the day passed without incident as we moved through the tunnels. The tunnels, which looked like dwarven mine tunnels, seemed to wander around a lot less than the switchback paths over the mountains. We made camp and a dome in the evening. Fiona, with Lurch’s permission, cast detect magic (yes, very) and identify on the bridle. She identified it as a bridle of sustenance -- the wearer doesn’t need to eat, drink or sleep while wearing it. However, if it is taken off without uttering the command word (which the identify spell did not reveal) the wearer gains one level of exhaustion for each week they’d worn the bridle. We asked Lurch if he’d been wearing it for more than six weeks and he nodded vigorously. So we asked if he wanted us to try and take it off and he shook his head with even more vigor. The night passed without incident. 18 Harfastin 748 (Campaign day 108) The next morning, Taman checked for fey and found none within five miles. He also tried to detect any planar portals and found none of those within a mile either. We resumed proceeding through the tunnel. There were lots of branches we didn’t take and the path we took had some twists and turns, but Lurch lead us confidently through the tunnels (still looking like an abandoned dwarven mine) and the orrery, when consulted, indicated that he was at least not leading us astray. Traveling with a giant had its advantages, because we had no trouble with anything all day. Around dinner time, Lurch stopped at the entrance to a side tunnel or chamber and pointed in that direction. With gestures he made it clear that he would go no further but what we sought was that way. Joybell thanked him for his assistance and wished him well in his association with the other hag. Orryk tied a note to the staff he’d taken from the Bheur Hag we killed (apparently named Icenipple) and handed it to Lurch. Orryk: Can you deliver this to your hag? Lurch nodded and took the staff. Before we went through the entrance, Mo pulled an ape from the bag of holding, so he’d have a companion again. He used prestidigitation to color its fur purple and named it Grape Ape. Orryk brought Omnath back from the pocket dimension as an ice mephit and sent him through the doorway and down the hall, watching through his eyes. The passage was dimly lit with patches of something, maybe fungi maybe something else with some bioluminescence, on the walls that gave off a greenish glow. This looked to be a natural cavern with large stalactites (which had merged with stalagmites to form natural stone columns) dotted about. Omnath saw a number of round things with many maws and stick legs in the chamber. We recognized these as things we fought in Tumeleen with the Skinless One (just before we found the Crazy Book in Jorlas’ wagon). Omnath counted half a dozen of them. We figured they probably were an early warning system (we remembered them as making noise when we fought them in Tumeleen) and expected that other things would come to fight with them. In fact the beachball things, called Grues, began to chatter and gibber when they spotted Omnath in the room. Thneed moved into the hall and spotted a giant, that looked to be about stone giant sized, but weird and lumpy looking and with mottled skin, just entering the back of the large chamber, obviously investigating the noise from the grues. She then took a shot at a grue, hitting it and killing it. Thneed: There’s something else. Something big. Joybell rode into the room, toward one of the two clusters of them, and dropped one with two blows. Three of them swarmed her and one moved toward Taman, but fortunately all of their attacks missed. Orryk took a shot at one and dropped it. Mo moved up, with Grape Ape close behind him, so he could see what was going on better, but that left him unable to attack. The weird giant, a fomorian, moved up and cast a spell that caught Mo and Joybell, Grape Ape and Scooby, doing a tremendous amount of psychic damage (synaptic static is the spell) and scrambled their minds up a bit. Scooby disappeared back to the celestial plane and Grape Ape dropped to the brain damage. Joybell fell prone to the ground as her mount disappeared from beneath her. Fiona moved a little closer and cast storm sphere centered on the giant. It stood in the middle of a howling storm with lightning crackling around it. Joybell was on the ground in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by grues and with the giant looming not too far away. Orryk, to Thneed: Cover Joybell. Thneed was able to take out two of the ones surrounding Joybell with two arrows. Taman dashed in, dropped the last one, then continued moving so we were spread out. Joybell, pissed off, stood up and threw the lightning javelin at the fomorian, but missed because her brain was still sizzling from the synaptic static. She then moved to the very edge of the storm sphere and threw a regular javelin which also missed. Orryk shot at it twice, then put away his bow to prepare for hand to hand combat. Mo used the wand of web to catch the giant, hoping to hold him in the storm sphere, but the giant misty stepped out of the storm sphere and the web and then attacked Taman with its great club twice. Fortunately he missed. Fiona hit it with scorching rays and a lightning bolt then Thneed hit it with an arrow. Taman cast hunters mark on the fomorian and waited for someone in the party to get into combat with it. Joybell immediately obliged and moved in to fight the giant. She missed with both of her attacks, but Taman hit with his held attack. Orryk moved up and hit the fomorian then went into a defensive stance. Mo cast a vicious mockery on it. Mo: We hit you in the balls. No. We hit your….I had it… The fomorian cast a spell that had Taman, Orryk and Joybell resisting a force that felt like it would have moved or teleported them. We all saved, though, and the fomorian stayed in place. Which might have been unfortunate for it, because Fiona promptly hit him with two searing rays and Thneed with two arrows. As we were fighting the fomorian, some of us saw a dilyarli appear from further down the corridor, a patch of bioluminescent fungi reflecting off his white skin and blue hair. Thneed, on seeing the dilyarli: Hey, there’s someone else back there! Taman, to the dilyarli: Friend or foe? The dilyarli answered his question by making a gesture and creating barely visible clouds of sounds, corrupting sussurations, that whispered at Taman, Orryk and Joybell and got into our brains doing rather a lot of damage. (This was neither an attack nor a spell.) Then he took a shot at Taman with a longbow, but Mo shouted some cutting words and the arrow missed its mark. Orryk continued to focus on the fomorian. Mo tried to cast polymorph on the dilyarli, to turn it into a trout, but he saved. Before anyone else could attack the fomorian, it cast thunderstep (damaging all three of the party members around it) and reappeared down the hall, then ran further away into the darkness. So we turned our attention to the dilyarli. Fiona cast a guiding bolt on him, which let Thneed hit him with both of her attacks. Taman cast hunters mark on the dilyarli and took a shot at him. Joybell almost cast misty step to get close, then Mo reminded her of the wand of magic missile, so she used that to shoot him instead. The sussurating clouds, which looked like heat haze on a highway, moved to stay close to those they were afflicting, then the dilyarli took two shots at Orryk, which Orryk didn’t even bother deflecting. He just stood there like a badass and let the arrows come at him. Orryk then closed his eyes and ran up to attack the dilyarli with his tremor sense to guide him. Mo cast a shatter spell, just missing Orryk, and hitting the dilyarli with a great crash of thunderous sound. Fiona hit him with scorching rays. The final blow was Thneed’s two arrows both hitting him and dropping him. Looking at the body, this was not a dilyarli any of us recognized -- not Ildna and not the one who’d come to Embernook. He had some fancy clothes (somewhat bloodstained and tattered now), a rapier, a longbow, and 12 arrows, which were added to the hoard of arrows. Joybell immediately sat down and started to cast Find Steed. We’d noticed earlier that the fomorian was twisted and mottled, physically affected by something. As soon as we looked at the dilyarli, we could see that he was as well -- his bones and muscles becoming misshapen and asymmetrical. The blue-white of his skin was turning grey and black in patches. We hoped to find papers or something like that on him, something to indicate what was going on, but we found nothing of that nature. After a short rest, we began to track the fomorian based on the blood trail he left behind. As we did so, we noticed that we were also back-tracking the dilyarli. It had come from wherever the fomorian was going. We were still in the abandoned, probably played out, dwarven mines and we passed several branching tunnels along the way, but we stayed on the fomorian’s blood trail. As we went Taman took a minute to check for fey and got two individuals, fairly close, in the direction we were heading. He took another moment to check for planar portals and detected a sealed portal to the Feywild -- one that was not merely closed or inactive/dormant, but positively sealed. Taman explained as we went that the Fomorians used to be fey giants and were expelled from the Feywild because they tried to expose it to the Hunger Between Worlds. The Fey Nobles had cast them out. Orryk checked the orrery -- it pointed in the direction we were heading but didn’t snap as quickly as expected for as close as Taman said we were to the two fey. So the Epiphany Machine was not with the fey. After a bit of following the blood trail, we came to a natural arch where the mine opened into a large cavern. Inside there was a dead fomorian on the ground, which we recognized as the one we’d fought. It was not dead or even likely dying when it escaped from the combat so it might have been killed when it returned to the cavern. There were a couple of dead dwarves who looked like many cysts had burst open and things emerged from their bodies There were also two dilyarli -- Ildna and a woman, probably Allina (the dilyarli he’d broken according to the Ice Maiden we’d spoken to outside of Auriqua), a living fomorian, many of the grues (which had probably come out of the dead dwarves). In the split second in which we took in what lay in front of us, we heard coming up behind us two manglers (the gribbly monster from Harl’s library) and a skinless thing (like we fought in Tumeleen with the grues). [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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