Nowhere Jones leads the rest of the party deeper into the caves. “The xvarts had a wagon,” he explains. “It’s back here.”
“And you don’t know where the xvart city is?” Sta’Ligir asks.
Nowhere Jones shrugs. “They hadn’t gotten me there yet. I imagine it was in the direction we were headed, but I can’t know for sure.” The passage opens up on a huge cavern. To either side a stone path stretches into the darkness. Directly ahead of them is a vast, quiet underground lake.
“Whoa,” says Nixie. “That looks big.”
“Let’s not go for a swim,” suggests Vann-La.
“This way.” Nowhere Jones turns to the right and begins down the path. The others follow him uneasily. In only about a minute, the wagon comes into view: two linked carts, with a pair of great beetles harnessed before them. The lead wagon is more comfortable; the rear wagon has benches and rungs set into the floor. “That’s where the slaves rode,” Nowhere Jones nods at it. “We were chained to those rungs by our necks.”
“How did you get out?” asks Heimall.
“Once the xvarts left to pursue the kobolds, I managed to do a combination of squirming and breaking my way out, as well as picking the lock with some improvised tools.”
“Well done,” nods Nixie. “And thank you for your help.”
The group inspects the wagon and the beetles. They decide to detach the slave wagon; it will only slow them down, since they can all fit in the front car and have no plans on taking slaves. The cook carefully inspects it for anything that seems like a mark of ownership that might give away its origin, but finds nothing. Thus, drawn by a pair of slow but steady beetles, the party begins a more luxurious stage of their journey. At last they are able to get off of their feet, for the first extended time in days for most of them. It is a joy to simply
ride.
After a time, they come to a wide area, big enough to park the wagon and comfortably camp out. They are all tired, and soon they have set a watch and most of them are drifting off to sleep. Each of them takes his or her turn on watch, keeping an eye out for trouble. Most of them do it in pitch blackness.
Sta’Ligir, however, has the means to make light. His magical skills are not yet as powerful as they could be- as they
will be, he tells himself- but they are powerful enough to give him a little illumination. As his companions snore around him, he keeps looking for any signs of trouble or anything to be concerned about.
Anything to be concerned about? We’re underground! That’s certainly cause for concern. He scowls to himself.
At least we have a goal. This city, Fandelose- if we can reach it, warn it, perhaps it can stop the Hand.
What’s that? He peers out across the surface of the dark lake. He heard something in the lake- but what was it?
Something in the water moves.
Sta’Ligir puts a
magic missile into it. “Hey! Wake up! I think we have trouble!” he shouts. The others wake and begin to scramble up.
Three crabs crawl out of the water, swiftly moving to engage the party.
Clack! Their huge claws snap together. They are about three feet across, and stand about two and a half feet tall.
Sta’Ligir drops a
scorching burst in the middle of them. There is a sizzle-BOOM! and the smell of burning crab. Two of them squeal and advance, but the wizard backs away. Heimall, who by now has managed to get to his feet and pull out his glaive, stabs at the lead crab, but his weapon rebounds ineffectually from its shell.
The two crabs that were moving on Sta’Ligir now scuttle in on Torinn, who is still on the ground. “Wha?” the dragonborn says, and then the crabs fall upon him, slicing him up badly. The dragonborn gives a scream of pain. Blood flies everywhere. His screams stop, but the crabs don’t look like they are going to.
The others try to come to Torinn’s rescue. Vann-La charges in, while Nixie fires off her
eldritch blast; each draws one of the crabs off of the downed cleric, at least for the moment. Sta’Ligir, meanwhile, blasts the unwounded crab with an
acid arrow. It ignores the wizard, continuing its assault on Heimall, who struggles to defend himself as a claw almost breaks his thigh and leaves his leg raw and bleeding profusely.
These things deal serious damage, he thinks, grimacing through the pain and attempting to use the famous White Raven onslaught technique. The pain prevents him, however, and the blood all over his arm and hand makes his blade nearly slip from his hand. It is all that he can do to keep his feet.*
Sta’Ligir casts another
scorching burst. He is trying to keep a careful distance- close enough to cast his spells at the enemy, but far enough away not to be an easy target for the crabs. Then, suddenly, something incredibly bright happens, and Sta’Ligir can’t see anything at all. “Hey!” he screams. “There’s something else out there!”
What was that? wonders Heimall. He looks out across the water. For a moment, a beam of brilliant light had pierced the darkness, shooting right into Iggy’s eyes. Now he doesn’t see any sign of its source, but- there had to be something!
Nixie, meanwhile, has passed her crab on to Vann-La, who seems
unstoppable. Then she drags Torinn back out of the fray. Torinn abruptly groans and shakes his head, then stands up. “You bastards!” he cries, and whips his spiked chain around over his head, then brings it down towards one of the crabs. It almost seems to burn with a white-hot flame as it comes down- and the crab scuttles aside and snaps its claw at Torinn’s side, taking a chunk of flesh out. The dragonborn shouts in pain, and though he almost collapses, he remains standing.
“Keep it up, Torinn!” shouts Heimall. “Don’t let this beast take you down!”
The dragonborn grits his teeth as the crabs tear into Heimall. “Lester, heal this adventurer companion of mine!” he intones, and his
healing word keeps Heimall on his feet.
Another brilliant shaft of light stabs out and blinds Sta’Ligir. The wizard screams out a series of Elvish obscenities. This time, Nixie manages to see its rough location- enough to fire an
eldritch blast in its general direction, but not enough to hit it.
At this point the party is holding their own- giving as good as they are getting, and with both Torinn and Heimall in the fight, they are able to keep enough of a stream of healing going that the party can take the outlandish amounts of damage the crabs can deal. The only question is, what will run out first- the party’s healing, or the crabs’ ability to sustain damage?
Vann-La proves to be the answer to that question when she finally brings down one of the crabs. Sta’Ligir is flailing about blindly, however, much to his chagrin. “Damn it!” he shouts. “What is this damn thing?” As his vision clears, he notes the direction and distance to a series of columns, and immediately heads for them.
Come and get me, you bastard, he thinks as he ducks behind them.
A moment later, it does: a small, frog-like humanoid, with big yellow eyes. It leaps forward and bites Sta’Ligir; then its eyes fire a shaft of brilliant light.
But Iggy is ready for it. He ducks and squints and manages to avoid being blinded!
Nixie hits the frog-thing with
curse of the dark dream, and it staggers around drunkenly for a moment, reeling away from Sta’Ligir. The wizard doesn’t waste an instant; he pursues and
magic missiles it. Suddenly it is the frog-thing that is in retreat, and then both he and Nixie bracket it, firing arcane energies at it! It blinds Nixie momentarily and darts around a column, just as Sta’Ligir did, to gain a momentary bit of cover. The wizard glances over his shoulder; seeing an opportunity, he fires another
scorching burst at the crabs, and flames lick out over the two remaining ones again.
But both of them are up on Vann-La, and though she pauses in her assault on them long enough to gain her second wind, the crabs are unrelenting. Both of them claw the Kree defender, and she collapses in a bloody heap. One of the crabs veers away, snapping its great claws at Heimall, who fends it off and backs up, his hands sweaty on the haft of his glaive.
“Damn it!” curses Nixie. “Where’d that frog thing go?”
There! thinks Sta’Ligir, and fires another
magic missile at it. “It’s trying to get back into the water!” shouts Iggy. “Stop it!!” Desperately, he focuses his mind on his Art, and manages to cast another missile at it before it reaches the water’s edge.** This one blasts it right in the center of the back, and it is momentarily transfixed- and then it collapses.
“Nice going!” Nixie grins enthusiastically.
Vann-La, on the ground, cracks an eye. The blow that took her down- that seemed almost lethal- turns out to be milder than it looked; she grimaces, but she’s still in the fight!*** One of the crabs is directly above her, and it has already taken a morsel-sized bite out of her side. “Hey, a little help here!” she cries.
Heimall, still defending himself desperately, nonetheless grins. “Vann-La, destroy our enemies!” he cries.
“Git!”
Vann-La lashes out, cracking her warhammer against the crab atop her. She knocks it back and then leaps to her feet.
Smash! Again, her hammer falls- and this time, so does the crab!
This leaves only one, and now that our heroes can do so, they fall upon it en masse. Its shell is tough, but it cannot withstand all the blows that our heroes deliver.
Then it’s over.
“Good gods!” exclaims Vann-La. “Those things were tough!” The others nod agreement.
“Now we take meat,” says the cook. “These things, good eating! And legs from frog thing!”
“I don’t know,” Heimall replies dubiously. “They could be diseased, or poisonous...”
“Nah, we be okay. I show you,” the dwarf responds. “Come on, help!” He starts cracking crab shells. With a shrug, Vann-La chips in, and soon the party has managed to pull out a good amount of crab meat. The party draws the line at the strange, frog-like creature, however. Examining it reveals that its huge eyes have a second inner eyelid, and even now the eyeballs emanate a dim- and fading- light.
Nixie yawns. “Interesting, but weren’t we resting?”
***
The rest of the party’s rest is undisturbed. When they rise, the eyes of the frog-creature no longer have any glow whatsoever. “Who knows?” shrugs Nixie. The party moves along, heading deeper and deeper into the tunnels beneath the mountain. Soon enough, the group move into an area thick with strange growths. At first only a few grey fans of fungus and strange wet things on the floor, but before long the area is replete with fungus and stranger things. Toadstools high as a man’s waist and the color of old bone; warty, hairy blue things shaped like an elephant’s ear; something squat and globular, that oozes and pops sickening white pus; things that look like root systems clinging to bare rock, giving off a strange brimstone stink. The place is weird and grotesque, though wondrous in a bizarre way. But before long, Vann-La calls out a warning.
“Hold up, this looks dangerous ahead.”
“What do you mean?” asks Nowhere Jones.
“Some of those liquids oozing from the fungi up there. The rocks are discolored- almost as if those fluids were changing or damaging them. And some of those things are probably toxic if we touch them.”
The party proceeds very carefully. Torinn uses some of the fungus on the walls, as well as some materials in his healing kit, to create an ointment to help protect the heroes from any ill effects. Sta’Ligir uses his knowledge of the dungeon environment to help Vann-La pick the best path through the dangerous zone, with Heimall using his glaive to destroy particularly foul-looking stuff before the group approaches it. Soon the party is through the zone, and the amount of fungi in evidence decreases to a sparse scattering of occasional clusters of a few mushrooms.
Then Vann-La tenses. “Hold on, guys,” she says.
“What do you see?” asks Heimall.
“There’s some kind of building ahead.”
Next Time: The hermit! More frog things! And- Chagmat!
*Rolled a 1. Shrug. Happens. It’s a shame, though; White Raven Onslaught is one of the best powers evar imho.
**Action point, in other words.
***Natural 20 on a death save. Which, no doubt, really helped- the party was in very rough shape at the end of this fight, with 3 pcs at 1 hit point. Incidentally, Heimall didn’t hit once this entire encounter. So far, each pc has had at least one session with terrible dice luck.