ADVENTURE 59: TEN LORDS A-LEAPING
PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
Game Session Date: 16 February 2019
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Gilbert Fung passed a pouch of coins to the scroll merchant. "It all there," he announced and was slightly disappointed when the wizard-scribe insisted on counting it all out for himself. As if Gilbert Fung, the premiere wizard in the kingdom of Kordovia, would be the type to short-change a creator of arcane scrolls!
"It's all here, all right," the wizard nodded to Gilbert, passing over the scrolls the heavyset mage had requested.
"Of course it all there! I already say it--" but then suddenly Gilbert's tirade stopped abruptly, for he felt the tingling sensation at the base of his skull that warned him an imminent message spell. Sure enough, while the scroll merchant looked on expectantly for Gilbert to finish his thought, a couple of brief sentences imprinted themselves directly in Gilbert's mind: "Rale Bodkin in trouble. Need full team in Greyhawk City immediately. Seek Thunderwolf at Adventurers Guild Headquarters for details. Hurry!"
"Ah, crap!" Gilbert swore to himself. Without another word, he scooped up his new purchases and rolled them up all together - he'd have to sort them out later. He looked around, visualizing where he was in the city. Since he was closer to Ivenheart Manor than Battershield Keep, he swung there first to alert Malrin to gear up and meet them at the keep. Then he huffed off across town, his earth elemental familiar Mudpie keeping pace behind him. Once they got out of the city proper things went better for the portly wizard (if not for poor Mudpie), as he had the elemental sink down halfway into the ground and support Gilbert's weight in his outstretched hands, which he kept over his head while earth gliding through the dirt. Frankly, Gilbert needed the break; he was winded from what little running he'd done thus far.
When they arrived at Battershield Keep to rouse the other heroes, Gilbert was surprised to see them already assembled and in full gear. He was about to ask how they knew to make their preparations - and then he saw a familiar owl perched on Finoula's shoulder - Malrin had obviously geared up herself and then wildshaped into an owl to fly the distance to Battershield Keep. Malrin couldn't speak while in owl form, but the others knew enough that if the young elven druid had flown to them as an owl, there was adventuring to be done.
"We're all ready," teased Binkadink. "What took you so long?"
Ignoring the question, Gilbert looked around at the assembled heroes and asked one of his own. "Where Castillan?"
"We haven't seen him all day," admitted Darrien. "He said he was going to hit the taverns last night and try his luck at cards. Presumably it's going well and he's still at it, or he was up all night and is crashing in an inn somewhere." This wasn't unusual behavior for Malrin's oldest brother; Castillan often made a bit of money on the side playing cards at all hours of the night. However, he made it a habit to try his hand at all of the local gambling establishments rather than pick a favorite; as a result, he could be in any of a half-dozen locations.
"Well, we leave without him," Gilbert decided. He briefly explained the message spell he'd received. "You remember location of Greyhawk Adventurers Guild?" he asked Hagan.
"I do," replied the half-orc. The group had visited there once before, after having rescued Thunderwolf and what was left of his Guild from slavery on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Thunderwolf's Adventurers Guild was hidden away in an extradimensional pocket in the slums of Greyhawk City - at the insistence of the Lords of Greyhawk, after the original building (and several others on either side of it) had been destroyed by a rampaging black dragon the Guild had managed to irritate. The Lords allowed Thunderwolf to start up a new Adventurers Guild, but its new location was not to be public knowledge. "I can teleport us to the alleyway behind the building where it's housed," Hagan promised. "Who all's going?" He looked expectantly at the group of animals surrounding the heroes.
"I'm taking Wrath," Finoula decided, indicating her timber wolf. "Not much sense in bringing Daisy, though. She can stay here."
"I'm bringing Grumps!" Darrien announced. The half-elf ranger had recently become a great fan of the animal growth spell that made his dire bear cub expand to the size of an adult grizzly and he hadn't been able to use that stratagem for awhile now.
"Obvious is coming along," Binkadink said from the jackalope's saddle. Given his position, that was rather obvious.
"Okay, then, gather around," Hagan said, his own weasel familiar Wezhley in his customary place on the sorcerer's left shoulder. With the utterance of an arcane syllable the assembled heroes and animals disappeared from Battershield Keep and appeared in a back alleyway of the Styes, Greyhawk City's slums. "The Guild Headquarters is this way," Hagan said, pointing with his thumb. But before they could open the door to the decrepit-looking building that served as a front for the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild, the door opened and an armored warrior stepped out. He wore a large sword strapped to his hip.
"Thanks for coming so quickly," Thunderwolf said to the group. "Come on - Rale's this way." And he led them away from the Guild Headquarters, across the street and down a few buildings to an equally questionable-looking structure. He opened the door and stepped inside, beckoning for the others to follow. The building was rather like a small barn or large shed, all one big chamber but for a smaller room off in one corner. Thunderwolf opened the door to this smaller room, and there, on a cot along the back wall, sat Rale Bodkin, one of the Guildmasters who also served as a Lord of Greyhawk.
Rale looked up at the group's approach, and the first thing the Kordovians noticed was that the Guildmaster's left eye was particularly bloodshot. But then, upon closer inspection, that wasn't the case at all: rather, the white part of his eye was entirely red and the iris a deep violet - in stark contrast to Rale's brown right eye.
"What happened to you?" Finoula asked.
"Well, that's a story," Rale admitted, looking up at the elven ranger with his mismatched eyes. He still couldn't get over how much she looked like her little sister, Feron Dru, who had been part of the same Wing of the old Greyhawk Adventurers Guild with the rogue, some twenty years back or more - long before he'd taken over as the leader of the Guild of Thieves and become one of the ten Lords who kept the city functioning.
"So here's the short version. I'm walking down the street, minding my own business, when I feel a sting on the back of my neck. I pull out a dart, see the tip's covered in some sort of poison, and then that's pretty much all I remember until waking up in some underground lab, strapped to a table. I was in and out of it for awhile, but I remember seeing this red and purple eye" - here he indicated his left eye - "floating in a jar of bubbling liquid. Then I blacked out again for awhile, and when I woke up again the jar was empty and my left eye was hurting me something fierce."
"Somebody removed your eye and replaced it with that one?" Finoula asked, aghast at the very concept.
"Whatever for?" asked Darrien.
"Beats me," Rale admitted. "But I wasn't gonna stick around to find out. I managed to free myself from the table and staggered out of the room - and that's when I found myself in the sewers."
"This story just gets worse," Finoula commented to herself, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
"About that time, I felt this...presence in my mind," Rale continued. "It was like a bunch of voices, all trying to tell me what to do. I wasn't having none of that, so I found a ladder up to the surface and figured out where I was. It was near here, in the Styes. I found my way to this antimagic field room we set up for such occasions as this, and as soon as I entered the field the voices - and the attempts at dominating me - stopped at once. But I've tried stepping outside the field and as soon as I do the voices return."
"So he's stuck here for now," Thunderwolf cut in. "We've got Desdemona leading the Collectors in scouring the city for any leads as to who might behind this. And my Guild members will stay here guarding Rale, because we don't know if the telepathic presence trying to dominate Rale is aware of his present location. If it is, they could be coming here for him, as we speak."
"So why we here?" asked Gilbert, cutting to the chase.
"I want you guys to see if you can track down the lab in the sewers," Rale repied. "See if you can find out where the operation was done, who was behind it, and put a stop to it. And if you can find my own eyeball, that would be great."
"I take it, then, you're not sure where in the sewers you were?" Finoula prompted.
"No idea. I can direct you to which manhole cover I popped up out of - that should give you a good idea of where to start. But I was too busy fighting off the attempts at mental domination to keep track of every twist and turn I took in the sewers. Hey, whatcha doing?" As Rale had been answering the ranger, she had brought Wrath over to sniff Rale's boots. She also lifted them up to get a good look at their soles, the better to recognize any tracks he might have left - judging by the muck on the bottoms of his boots, there was a good chance she might be able to spot his tracks and backtrack from there. And having Wrath get the Guildmaster's scent would only help in the endeavor. Rale gave them verbal directions to the manhole cover he used to exit the sewers and the Kordovians were off.
But while following Rale's instructions, Darrien came to a sudden realization. "How are we going to get Grumps down through a manhole?" It was a good question; there was no way the dire bear cub would fit through a hole just barely big enough to allow a human - Gilbert was going to find the process a pretty close fit as it was. The group took a side path into a dark alley so Binkadink could unroll the carpet of teleporting he kept in the group's portable hole. Laying it out flat in the alley, Darrien and Grumps stepped onto it and disappeared. The ranger returned a few minutes later, having put his cub in the animal pen inside the lower, extradimensional deck of their dragonfly spelljamming vessel. "He's fine," Darrien reported back. "I gave him some food from the larder." Looking at the gnome, he asked, "Do you want to do the same with Obvious?"
But Binkadink had been talking it over with Finoula during Darrien's absence. The gnome wanted to bring his jackalope along in the sewers, but given Obvious was the size of a full-grown horse that was going to be a problem. Finoula was the one to suggest a reduce animal spell, which would shrink Obvious to human size - small enough to squeeze through a sewer opening and yet still big enough for his gnome rider to be able to fit in the saddle. She cast the spell on the jackalope once they found the correct manhole and Binkadink climbed back into the saddle. "Is that going to work?" Finoula asked.
"The saddle's kind of a tight fit," Binkadink complained, "but yeah, this'll work. Thanks, Finoula."
Gilbert cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell that encompassed all of the heroes, linking them together in a mental connection that allowed them to communicate to each other without actually speaking. With Castillan absent, Gilbert could actually affect the entire assembled group, which was a welcome change.
"Are we ready?" asked Binkadink, climbing back down from the saddle and lifting the manhole cover up and to the side. An unpleasant odor wafted up from below, and the gnome wrinkled his prodigious nose in disgust. Obvious would now fit through the opening, but not with the gnome on his back - he'd have to climb back on once they were both in the sewers below.
"One minute, gnome," Gilbert responded, pulling a vial of some potent-smelling unguent from a pouch and dabbing it under his nostrils. "Don't want to smell sewers." That was too good an opportunity for Binkadink to pass up: using his racial ability to cast prestidigitation, Binkadink altered the scent of the unguent beneath Gilbert's nose to mirror that of the stench rising from the sewers below. "Guh!" Gilbert complained, looking suspiciously at the bottle before he put it back in his pouch. He suspected he'd been had by the merchant he'd purchased this gunk from - it didn't seem to be working worth...well, crap. Binkadink suppressed his smile and looked the other way, the very face of innocence.
"I'll take Wrath down first," Finoula offered. Leaning down, she scooped up her timber wolf and stepped onto the ladder leading down into darkness. Once fully below the surface of the street, she stepped off the ladder and onto the wall, shifting her weight as she did so, and walking down the rest of the way, courtesy of her boots of spider climbing. The everburning torch tucked under her arm provided enough light for her to see when she got to the bottom - it was about 30 feet or so below the street above. Once reaching the bottom, she gratefully set Wrath down - he was heavy! The wolf snorted at the unpleasant odors in the sewers but sniffed about, seeking Rale's scent. Malrin alit upon Finoula's shoulder, still in her owl form. The owl's smaller size would likely come in handy while maneuvering through the cramped tunnels; this tunnel was circular in cross-section but only about 5 feet tall, forcing most of the adventurers to have to hunch forward when passing through them.
Obvious scrambled through the opening next, wriggling through head-first and dropping the full distance, landing easily on all fours and then waiting patiently while Binkadink climbed down the ladder at a much slower pace. He was glad to leap into the saddle, though: looking at the foul-smelling liquid trickling along the floor, it looked like the little gnome was going to be the only one who wouldn't need to wash his boots at the end of this particular excursion!
The others climbed down after the gnome, leaving MARCI to follow once everyone else had made it down below - they weren't sure if the construct's metal construction would be too heavy for the aging metal ladder, and thought it best not to have anyone standing directly beneath her when she climbed down. But the medical construct made it to the lower level without incident. She scanned about with the red beam from her single eye.
"Rale's boot print," Finoula pointed out to the others. She was able to backtrack his path to an open room, where at least the ceiling was 10 feet tall and she could stand up straight. "He came from this direction." But there were several branches from this central chamber, one being a winding passageway that meandered in a southerly direction, with a larger, circular side-tunnel, some 10 feet in cross-section, leading from east to west. Darrien took a southern side tunnel that broke off from the central tunnel before even hitting the larger chamber and decided to explore it. He saw the larger east-west tunnel before him, but other than the occasional rat he saw no signs of life. Still, he held his Arachnibow at the ready, an arrow nocked and ready to fire should the need arise.
Wrath and Finoula had gone south along the meandering route, reaching the western edge of the east-west tunnel. She could see Darrien's head peeking out from his side tunnel east of her position, and beside him looked to be a larger opening in the side of the tunnel, this one heading north. She doubted Darrien could even see it from his position, so she alerted him to its presence over the mental link. <I'll check it out!> offered Malrin, flapping off of Finoula's shoulder and flying east down the wide tunnel.
Gilbert, in the meantime, had gone to the western edge of the initial chamber and saw a passageway to the north. It made an almost immediate left turn to the east, which, surprisingly, led to a set of wide stairs leading up to another level 10 feet higher. He was about to check out these stairs when his eye was caught by a dot of red on the filthy floor ahead of him - it was a drop of blood, likely Rale's. Behind him, Mudpie and MARCI followed, keeping close to the man each considered his or her master. Binkadink followed behind on Obvious; it was easier to stick to the taller passageways while mounted, and the way Gilbert was exploring had the advantage of containing 10-foot-high ceilings.
Malrin reached the passage by Darrien - her silent flight causing several rats to scurry away in panic, apparently not having expected to have to worry about owls in the sewers - and flew through it. It, too, opened into a set of stairs leading up, so the druid followed, providing a running narrative of what she saw to the others over the telepathic link. Her owl eyesight could see the passage ahead took a turn to the right, and she mentally envisioned it likely meeting up with the set of stairs Gilbert had announced he'd found - and then Malrin's owlish hearing picked up a slight buzzing from just ahead. She didn't have time to puzzle over its likely source before a mass of tentacles dropped down upon her.
Malrin felt a sudden pain in her side and realized she's just been stabbed; looking down, she saw a tentacle-tip had impaled her, and while the appendage had wrapped around her, keeping her imprisoned, its tip was draining blood from her body. She screeched instinctively in pain, but also called for help over the telepathic bond.
Binkadink and Obvious were the first to respond. Scampering past Gilbert, they raced up the steps, down the corridor, and turned the corner ahead to find themselves facing a floating, pale-skinned orb, from which sprang nearly a dozen tentacles. Obvious bit down on one of them with his lupine incisors, while Binkadink stabbed his glaive's blade deep into the thing's body. They could both hear the same buzzing sound Malrin had heard before the death kiss dropped down on her.
Darrien splashed into the east-west tunnel long enough to turn the corner and race up the stairs. From his vantage point, he could see a blood-red eye in the middle of the spherical body from which the tentacles sprang. He shot his readied arrow at the eye, but the body swerved in midair at the last moment, causing the arrow to strike the body to the side of the unblinking eye. Behind him, Darrien could hear Finoula and Wrath splashing down the wide tunnel and bounding up the stairs. Farther back, Hagan followed in the ranger's wake, Wezhley still perched nervously on his shoulder.
Gilbert ran up the stairs behind Obvious and Binkadink, casting a resist electricity spell upon himself and his familiar as he ran. MARCI followed, not to leap into battle but to stay near the only true human in the vicinity. She had been built to aid humans, and even though she had been ordered by Gilbert to treat the others as "honorary humans," she knew he was her predominant concern.
Malrin struggled feebly against the strength of the tentacle wrapped around her and constricting her like an anaconda - and then she changed tactics. Willing the change in her body, she wildshaped from an owl to a grizzly bear. The tentacle binding her was forced to loosen its grip as her body expanded, but not enough to allow the druid to escape its clutches. Worse, the tentacle's tip was still embedded in her side and it still sucked up her blood, pulling it through the hollow appendage and into the death kiss's spherical body.
But Malrin wasn't a sufficient meal to the death kiss, especially with other perfectly suitable morsels at hand. It floated toward Darrien, close enough that three of its needle-tipped tentacles could swing at him while six more could still reach out to attack Binkadink and Obvious on its other side. The gnome was hit by two of the tentacles, but fortunately his armor prevented them from getting enough of a hold on him to allow blood drain; Darrien and Obvious weren't as lucky, and they found themselves in Malrin's unenviable position as blood snacks for a hungry death kiss.
With a mighty surge, Darrien managed to extricate himself from the tentacle grappling him. He staggered back, away from the floating beast; Finoula helped pull him back out of range. Binkadink, fearing being caught up in the tentacles wrapping around Obvious, abandoned the saddle and leaped to the floor - but he didn't abandon his mount and friend, instead bringing the glaive cutting deep into one of the tentacles pinning Obvious's limbs and preventing him from escaping. The blade severed through the tentacle entirely, causing its end to drop to the ground, spilling jackalope blood from its hollow length. Obvious, although still pinned, managed to bite into one of the tentacles grappling him, causing his mouth to fill with his own siphoned blood. Then Binkadink's glaive severed that tentacle and the jackalope fell to the floor, no longer attached to the death kiss. But Binkadink's attack had come at a slight cost, for a surge of electricity came channeling down his blade, shocking the gnome. Still, as he saw Obvious extricate himself from the severed tentacles and back away from the floating aberration, Binkadink considered it a price worth paying.
Finoula had her lightning bolt amulet in hand and was about to turn herself into a living blast of electricity to go jolting through the death kiss, but Binkadink called out through the link, <It's got an electrical zap! The thing's probably immune to electricity!> "Well, shoot!" said Finoula aloud, dropping her amulet and pulling out Tahlmalaera from its scabbard as she ran up to the death kiss. A tentacle stabbed out at her as she approached the floating monster, but she slapped it away with her left hand before it could attach itself to her skin, and then she stabbed deep into the monster's core with her longsword, unleashing a wave of sonics through the embedded blade.
Instinctively, the death kiss floated away from Finoula's painful sword, spinning around to face Obvious. With the bleeding jackalope right before it, the creature sent several of its remaining tentacles stabbing at the pony-sized, antlered rabbit, siphoning the jackalope's blood through its hollow tentacles. The death kiss used the blood to heal some of the wounds it had already sustained thus far in fighting these creatures from the world above. It also levitated higher, so it could enjoy the two morsels it had already captured and imprisoned within its coiled appendages.
Even without being mounted on Obvious, Binkadink's glaive could reach high enough to stab up at the death kiss, but before the gnome could strike Gilbert stepped up behind him and cast a flesh to stone spell at the death kiss. The monster's writhing tentacles ceased moving immediately, as its pale coloration darkened to a medium gray. Then the creature plummeted back to the floor below, its stone tentacles snapping off as they impacted the solid floor. Malrin, still in bear form, and Obvious felt the thud of sudden impact with the floor, but as it freed them from the abomination in whose blood-draining clutches they had been trapped, neither complained. Malrin staggered away from the death kiss's shattered body and resumed her normal elven form. Then, with her staff of healing at hand, she liberally applied healing spells to those who needed them - primarily herself, Obvious, and Darrien.
<So now what?> asked Binkadink, looking up at the ceiling. <There's a tunnel up there, directly above, where the monster dropped down from. Do we try to get up there?>
Finoula had spent some time investigating the floor along the upper level where they had fought the death kiss. <There's no trace of Rale having been this way,> she said. <I want to go check out that area where Gilbert found drops of blood.> So saying, she backtracked the way Gilbert had come, going down the western steps back to the area by the original main chamber. Hagan and Wezhley volunteered to accompany her.
<I want to check out this way,> Darrien decided. With Obvious's permission, he climbed up onto the jackalope's back, then stepped onto the top of his head and from there onto his branching antlers. It still wasn't enough to get him to the top of the tunnel, which he could see from this distance turned to the east and leveled out. But that was easily fixed by a shot from his Arachnibow, the ranger causing the arrow to become a strand of sturdy spider-silk that instantly adhered to the top of the wide, vertical tunnel. Climbing up its length, Darrien pulled himself onto the vertical part of the tunnel - this, like the wider sewer tunnel below, was circular and about 10 feet wide in cross-section - and peeked down into the room beyond once he got to the passage's end and saw it veered downward.
The chamber below was a sphere, the tunnel Darrien was in dropping down onto its topmost pole. Looking inside the hollow sphere, Darrien could see another circular tunnel at the chamber's equator, but there were smaller niches all along the inner surface of the hollow sphere, each one holding a humanoid skull; the half-elf ranger could pick out those of elves and dwarves as well as those taken from humans. There were others that were either halflings or gnomes or - worse yet - children.
This all seemed somehow vaguely familiar to Darrien, but rather than try to figure out where he'd seen such an architectural configuration before he shot another silk-thread at the top of the tunnel and lowered himself down into the empty chamber below. He wasn't sure if he could run up the slope to the side tunnel, but he didn't have to; another strand from the Arachnibow aimed at the top of the side tunnel and he could easily pull himself up.
Gilbert, in the meantime, cast a fly spell upon himself and Mudpie. Turning to MARCI, he said, "Go follow Finoula. Stay with her in case she need any healing." Once he saw the medical construct follow his orders (it seemed simpler to send the metal automaton on the path that didn't require extensive climbing), he and his familiar flew up the ceiling shaft to follow Darrien's path. Malrin wildshaped back to owl form and followed.
<What do you think, Obvious?> Binkadink asked his jackalope friend in the language of burrowing mammals they both spoke. He was back in the saddle again and ready to follow either Darrien's way or Finoula's - but Darrien's seemed more intriguing. <Can you make it up there?>
"<Just watch!> replied Obvious eagerly, readying himself for a vertical leap. He made it through the opening, and some mad scrambling with his powerful legs once he got up there got him up to the level section of the tunnel. He then dropped easily into the lower sphere, and from there leaping up into the side tunnel was child's play. By then, Darrien was walking down this side tunnel's length, turning to the right when the tunnel did so. It was then that he recalled where he'd seen spherical rooms connected by circular tunnels before: in the lair of Gzornyx the Evil Eye, a beholder he'd helped Lord Cavelthorne's adventurers fight.
Of course, the beholder floating in the back of the spherical, domed chamber down the passageway around the bend of the side tunnel might have helped Darrien make the connection.
The beholder wasn't alone, either; standing before him were an elf wizard, Felforan the Gray; a dwarven fighter, Captain Ironbull; and an elderly human cleric, Davinda Solarus, who wore the sun-symbol of Pelor upon the tabard over her armor. Darrien gave an involuntary bleat of surprise before backing up back around the corner, casting a spell as he went. A constrictor snake suddenly appeared before him, which coiled and struck at Captain Ironbull, who wore the symbol of the City Guard on his armor. The snake didn't last long as a distraction, though, as the burly dwarf decapitated it with a single blow from his axe. Severed head and headless serpentine body both vanished.
The elderly cleric stepped forward, just enough to be able to see Darrien around the corner. A ray flashed from her left eye, striking the surprised half-elf in the torso. Darrien had submitted himself to magical healing many times during his adventuring career; this felt quite the opposite, as healing energy was drained from his body. He briefly wondered how a cleric of Pelor was able to do that with her eye, and that's when he noticed her eyes weren't both the same color.
But then Felforan stepped around the corner. He lashed out with a chain lightning spell, targeting Obvious as the primary and sending arcs of electricity to strike at Binkadink, Darrien, and Malrin. The elicited cries of pain indicated the spell had had its desired effect upon the intruding heroes.
<We're fighting a beholder and three cohorts!> Darrien called over the link, to let Finoula and Hagan in on what was transpiring on this side of the sewers. Finoula, however, had just discovered a secret door along a slightly discolored span of bricked sewer wall; pushing along the right side caused the section of wall to hinge inwards. Stepping into the narrow passageway thus exposed, the elven ranger noted the handle on the other side of the door - it was a "secret" door only from the rest of the sewers; from this side, it was perfectly obvious there was a door there.
<I've just found a secret door!> Finoula explained over the mental link. <Do you want us to come help you guys?>
Gilbert gave it a moment's thought. <No, you check out your way. Maybe it a way to sneak behind beholder.> That decided, Finoula pressed forward, Wrath, Hagan and MARCI following behind her. The passageway kept going north for a ways before turning west and leading up a short flight of stairs. The passageway seemed to come to a dead end there, but based on her previous discovery, Finoula imagined if she pushed along the right side of the wall any secret door hidden there would open - and she was right. The trio stepped into a crude bedroom, with a cot along one wall and a crate and barrel serving as a makeshift table and chair. A wooden coat rack in the corner held several robes and bloody aprons. Finoula frowned in distaste but pressed on through the room. There were doors to the south and west; she chose the western door as that was the one most likely to lead to the other heroes.
Malrin flapped around the corner and cast a flame strike at the assembled enemies; the way they were distributed she had to ignore the dwarf in order to get the beholder, the elf, and the human. As the flames erupted down from the room's ceiling, she was glad the beholder's central eyelid was closed; she'd heard a beholder's big eye sent out an anti-magic ray that would have negated her spell. But the spell went off without hitch, and with any luck the druid's enemies would assume she was just a harmless familiar or pet, not the source of the spell.
Vrgolkryn kept his central eye shut despite the pain of the spell; as things stood, he had no other option, for his three hivemind minions were in the path of his central eye's range - and in any case, he could see perfectly fine around him with the ten eyes on his eyestalks. Most of the intruders were still around the corner, so there wasn't much he could do offensively with his eye rays at the moment, so he called upon their newest power: three of the eyes shot beams of energy in the corner of the tunnel, and in the areas where they hit three more of his hivemind minions popped into view. The first of these was a powerfully-built dwarf, Borrin Stonefist; the next was a half-elven woman in a flowing dress, Jillianna Vanderblaine; the third was a big-bellied human man, Robun Krendlemann. Like the first trio, each had a pair of mismatched eyes, the left eye being a graft from tissue from the end of one of Vrgolkryn's own eyestalks. Also like the first trio (and Rale Bodkin before them), each was also one of the secret Lords and Ladies of Greyhawk. Vrgolkryn's charmed assistants had abducted each of the Lords in turn, allowing them to be ocularly modified and joined into the hivemind which allowed the elder orb to control their actions - all but Rale, who had somehow managed to overcome the attempted domination, even now.
Captain Ironbull turned the corner to face the enemies, taking the opportunity to slice the head of his axe into the owl flying nearby. Malrin called out, <I'm hit!> over the Rary's telepathic bond spell, adding <I'm playing dead!> for the benefit of the rest of the team as she dropped to the stone floor and remained motionless. Hopefully, the beholder and its dominated foes would assume she was dead and leave her alone, for she was seriously hurt by the axe's blow - but she was equally sure she could surreptitiously cast a healing spell upon herself without being noticed.
Felforan rounded the bend, stepping beside the dwarven Guard Captain and casting a flesh to stone spell at Darrien. The half-elf ranger was struck square-on by the spell, and only just managed to shrug off its intended effects. But then Davinda stepped up behind the elven wizard and targeted Darrien with a slay living spell, and this time the half-elf's fortitude was not up to the task of fending off the spell. His heart exploding in his chest, Darrien keeled over where he stood, his mental cries of pain diminishing to nothing over the Rary's telepathic bond spell.
Borrin raced forward, stepping on Malrin's fallen form (it was all she could do not to cry out in pain as he did so) on his way to Obvious. Once he got to the jackalope - he endured a slap of the flat side of Binkadink's glaive to do so - he punched the surprised riding mount in the face, hard. Jillianna, not looking at all like a combat enthusiast, send a beam from her eye lancing out at Binkadink, hoping to cause him to be charmed into her service. Fortunately for the little gnome, he was able to fend off the spell's effect. Robun did the same thing, sending a charm monster ray from his left eye to strike Obvious, hoping to get the jackalope to buck off his armored rider - but Obvious's mind was as firm as Binkadink's had been.
Binkadink assume these people they were fighting were all charmed and, like Rale, had not been willing participants in their eye upgrades. Thus, disinclined to meet them in combat, he pulled the horn of goodness from his belt, brought it to his lips, and blew for all he was worth. The note he sounded caused Borrin Stonefist to blink rapidly and look around in surprise at his surroundings. As Binkadink had hoped, the magic circle against evil created by his horn had unlinked (even if only temporarily) the dwarf from the beholder's mental sway.
"By Moradin's beard!" cried the dwarf. "Where th' bleedin' 'ell am I?"
"You were being controlled by a beholder!" Binkadink cried as he urged Obvious forward - not far, just enough for the spell effect to encompass Captain Ironbull, Felforan, and Jillianna while still keeping Borrin well within the spell's radius. These three also snapped immediately out of the beholder's hivemind, looking about them in bewilderment. The half-elf diplomat held a hand to her nose, finding the stench of the nearby sewers unbearable.
But while Vrgolkryn was having four of his hivemind minions stolen from his grasp, his as-yet-unseen ally opened wide the double doors behind the elder orb and stepped forward at the beholder's side. This was a bloodstained human wearing a leather apron over his clothes, a wizard going only by his title: the Chirurgeon. It had been he who had performed the arcane surgery upon the Lords of Greyhawk, to create the hivemind that was to allow Vrgolkryn to be the secret ruler of the city of Greyhawk, by making its ten Lords his mental puppets. And best of all, the Chirurgeon didn't need to be charmed by Vrgolkryn; he was doing this of his own free will, in part because he wanted the experience of performing such an elaborate arcane experiment, and in part because having the secret ruler of all of Greyhawk in his debt could only be advantageous to the Chirurgeon.
Seeing the benefits of Binkadink's magic circle against evil, Gilbert cast the same spell upon himself and stepped forward, catching first Borrin and then the others within his spell's radius. <Go ahead, Bink!> the wizard called to the gnome, knowing the mounted fighter was eager to take the fight to the beholder itself. Seeing she was now surrounded by allies, Malrin raised herself to a standing position and cast a summon nature's ally spell, bringing an ogre-sized earth elemental into being just beside the beholder. Vrgolkryn reacted immediately by backing up, through the doors opened by the Chirurgeon; the elemental swiped at the elder orb with a massive fist but failed to connect. Then Vrgolkryn shot a disintegrate ray at the earth elemental, causing him to dissipate into dust, while simultaneously catching Felforan the Gray in the back with a telekinesis ray. The elf was dragged toward the beholder, taking him out of the area of effect of the two magic circle against evil spells and back into the hivemind - and thus under the beholder's mental domination. A third eye ray shot out, the flesh to stone ray striking Davinda Solarus (Vrgolkryn was more interested in taking her out of the fight for the moment - he could always have the Chirurgeon restore her once the beholder had defeated these intruders and was ready to add her back into his hivemind) - but the cleric managed to avoid petrifaction by mere force of will, perhaps bolstered by the will of her patron deity.
Then, to the beholder's surprise, Captain Ironbull came around the corner. He was too far away from the beholder to attack with a weapon unless he was willing to throw his battleaxe, but rather than do that he shot a ray from his left eye - the effrontery! Vrgolkryn was being attacked by a slow ray that Ironbull wouldn't even have had had it not been for the Chirurgeon's actions! Fortunately for the elder orb, the spell had no effect on him.
But now his other former minions were attacking their former hivemind master. Davinda cast a flame strike down at the beholder, quite accidentally catching the Chirurgeon - who she couldn't even see from her angle - in the spell's area of effect. Robun used his charm monster eye ray on Vrgolkryn, thinking how delicious the irony would be if the monster who had taken over his will would now fall under the Merchant Lord's own mental sway. Unfortunately, Vrgolkryn's will was powerful enough to overcome the attempt.
Felforan, now back in the hivemind, used his own disintegrate eye ray on Binkadink, who managed to shrug it off. Jillianna, in turn, used her charm person eye ray on Felforan, hoping to use enchantment magic to pull the elven wizard out of his mental dominance. It, too, had no effect. Binkadink decided he'd do better staying in the midst of the former hivemind-slaves rather than move forward, so he pulled his seldom-used sling from his belt and sent a stone flying at the elder orb's massive, spherical body. It hit, but did little damage.
But then Finoula opened the door from the Chirurgeon's bedroom and found herself standing behind the beholder, with the Chirurgeon also within view. Hagan didn't even bother entering the room; he cast a feeblemind spell at the beholder. Perhaps because of the unexpectedness of the attack, the spell overcame Vrgolkryn's mental defenses and his mouth gaped open. Furthermore, as at that point Felforan shared the beholder's mind through the hivemind, he too was affected by the half-orc sorcerer's spell and he, too, ceased all attacks and just looked about him in a stupified daze.
Finoula held her amulet aloft and activated it, becoming a sizzling shaft of lightning that burned through the beholder and set her standing before it in her elven form in the space of a fraction of a second. Startled, and having taken a severe amount of damage from Davinda's flame strike spell earlier, the Chirurgeon ran his likelihood of defeating these interlopers when his beholder ally was now a drooling idiot and found his likely success rate staggeringly low. He thus began the words to a dimension door spell, hoping to vanish in the sewers and relocate elsewhere - preferably in an entirely different city. Finoula reacted to the wizard's spellcasting, bringing Tahlmalaera slicing across his chest. She saw his leather apron start to fall forward, its straps severed by her attack and a line of blood well up through his shirt beneath - and then he was gone, his spell apparently having worked.
Gilbert stepped forward, forgetting to keep Borrin Stonefist within the bounds of his magic circle against evil spell, and as soon as the dwarf was outside of its protection Vrgolkryn's feebleminded hivemind kicked in, subjecting the dwarf to the spell's effects. His mind was too shaken at this point to ward off any further mental attacks, and he too lost the ability to reason or do much more than stand about with a dazed look on his bearded face.
"Oops," said Gilbert belatedly. But then he did what he had stepped forward around the corner to do: cast a flesh to stone spell at the beholder. The spell was a success, and for the second time that day Gilbert brought a hovering stone creature falling to the floor and shattering into dozens of pieces.
The beholder slain, Davinda looked worriedly at Captain Ironbull and then both stepped away from Binkadink's magic circle against evil, seeing if the hivemind effect had ended with the elder orb's death. Both were relieved to see that it had - their minds were their own again.
Malrin resumed her elven form again and used her staff of healing on those who needed it. "I'm afraid I can't cast a heal spell on those who were affected by Hagan's feeblemind spell," Malrin apologized.
"Never you mind, dearie," reassured Davinda Solarus. "I'll take them with me to the Temple of Pelor - we'll get them the healing they need."
"Nice spellcasting there, Hagan!" congratulated Finoula. "You took the fight right out of them!"
"What the--?" sputtered Robun Krendlemann suddenly, as he was unceremoniously shoved up against the wall by an unseen force. Borrin Stonefist approached with a sheepish look on his face. "Sorry," he said. "I were just tryin' sumthin' - didn't think these eye rays'd still work once th' beholder were dead an' all - but it looks like they do!"
Experimentation showed that the same held true for the other Lords of Greyhawk. "I say," remarked Captain Ironbull, thinking of how easy it would be catching fleeing criminals with a slow ray always at the ready.
"Shall we get out of the sewers?" asked Hagan. "I can teleport us all back up to the surface, although it will take a few trips."
"Yes, get us out of here!" groused Gilbert. "This place smell awful - and that unguent I use to block smell worthless!" Binkadink remained silent and successfully kept his smirk at bay.
- - -
This took a surprising turn right from the beginning, when I learned Jacob wouldn't be playing with us after all: he'd forgotten an appointment that lasted until 2:30 PM (we start gaming around noon), and as he lives 45 minutes away he'd likely spend more travel time than actual game play by the time he got here. So he had authorized Dan to run Castillan in his place, but I opted to forgo anyone running the bounder at all, simply having Castillan unavailable at the start of the adventure. (As I usually do, I decided he'd have an "off-screen adventure" that kept him at the same XP level as the rest of the PCs.)
I also didn't anticipate the PCs turning Vrgolkryn's hivemind minions against him that easily, but that's what makes this game so fun, even for the DM who knows what all's going on in the background. So we finished this session around 4:15 PM.
Harry excused himself from game play about halfway through the session, complaining of a stomach ache; he went upstairs to go lie down and rest. As a result, Joey ran Hagan for the rest of the session, which actually turned out okay once Darrien got killed - at least this way Joey had a PC to run. And it was Joey's brilliance to have the half-orc sorcerer attack Vrgolkryn with a feeblemind spell; had Harry still been running his own PC, he'd likely have stuck to his usual chain lightning, polar ray, and disintegrate spells - he's all about the damage dice, that one.
Fortunately, I had built in variable treasure for this adventure: the Lords of Greyhawk would reward the PCs with 10,000 gp per Lord rescued from the hivemind without being slain; since they managed to do so without a single Lord's death, that netted them a cool 100,000 gp. Even after paying for a true resurrection spell for Darrien, that left everyone sufficiently rewarded that the players are all going to be thumbing through the DMG to see what their PCs might wish to purchase before leaving Greyhawk City.
- - -
T-Shirt Worn: My plain grey T-shirt, to represent Greyhawk City.
PC Roster:
Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 16
Darrien, half-elf ranger 16
Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 16
Gilbert Fung, human wizard 16
Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 16
Darrien, half-elf ranger 16
Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 16
Gilbert Fung, human wizard 16
Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 16
NPC Roster:
Malrin Ivenheart, elf druid 10
MARCI, humanoid construct
MARCI, humanoid construct
Game Session Date: 16 February 2019
- - -
Gilbert Fung passed a pouch of coins to the scroll merchant. "It all there," he announced and was slightly disappointed when the wizard-scribe insisted on counting it all out for himself. As if Gilbert Fung, the premiere wizard in the kingdom of Kordovia, would be the type to short-change a creator of arcane scrolls!
"It's all here, all right," the wizard nodded to Gilbert, passing over the scrolls the heavyset mage had requested.
"Of course it all there! I already say it--" but then suddenly Gilbert's tirade stopped abruptly, for he felt the tingling sensation at the base of his skull that warned him an imminent message spell. Sure enough, while the scroll merchant looked on expectantly for Gilbert to finish his thought, a couple of brief sentences imprinted themselves directly in Gilbert's mind: "Rale Bodkin in trouble. Need full team in Greyhawk City immediately. Seek Thunderwolf at Adventurers Guild Headquarters for details. Hurry!"
"Ah, crap!" Gilbert swore to himself. Without another word, he scooped up his new purchases and rolled them up all together - he'd have to sort them out later. He looked around, visualizing where he was in the city. Since he was closer to Ivenheart Manor than Battershield Keep, he swung there first to alert Malrin to gear up and meet them at the keep. Then he huffed off across town, his earth elemental familiar Mudpie keeping pace behind him. Once they got out of the city proper things went better for the portly wizard (if not for poor Mudpie), as he had the elemental sink down halfway into the ground and support Gilbert's weight in his outstretched hands, which he kept over his head while earth gliding through the dirt. Frankly, Gilbert needed the break; he was winded from what little running he'd done thus far.
When they arrived at Battershield Keep to rouse the other heroes, Gilbert was surprised to see them already assembled and in full gear. He was about to ask how they knew to make their preparations - and then he saw a familiar owl perched on Finoula's shoulder - Malrin had obviously geared up herself and then wildshaped into an owl to fly the distance to Battershield Keep. Malrin couldn't speak while in owl form, but the others knew enough that if the young elven druid had flown to them as an owl, there was adventuring to be done.
"We're all ready," teased Binkadink. "What took you so long?"
Ignoring the question, Gilbert looked around at the assembled heroes and asked one of his own. "Where Castillan?"
"We haven't seen him all day," admitted Darrien. "He said he was going to hit the taverns last night and try his luck at cards. Presumably it's going well and he's still at it, or he was up all night and is crashing in an inn somewhere." This wasn't unusual behavior for Malrin's oldest brother; Castillan often made a bit of money on the side playing cards at all hours of the night. However, he made it a habit to try his hand at all of the local gambling establishments rather than pick a favorite; as a result, he could be in any of a half-dozen locations.
"Well, we leave without him," Gilbert decided. He briefly explained the message spell he'd received. "You remember location of Greyhawk Adventurers Guild?" he asked Hagan.
"I do," replied the half-orc. The group had visited there once before, after having rescued Thunderwolf and what was left of his Guild from slavery on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Thunderwolf's Adventurers Guild was hidden away in an extradimensional pocket in the slums of Greyhawk City - at the insistence of the Lords of Greyhawk, after the original building (and several others on either side of it) had been destroyed by a rampaging black dragon the Guild had managed to irritate. The Lords allowed Thunderwolf to start up a new Adventurers Guild, but its new location was not to be public knowledge. "I can teleport us to the alleyway behind the building where it's housed," Hagan promised. "Who all's going?" He looked expectantly at the group of animals surrounding the heroes.
"I'm taking Wrath," Finoula decided, indicating her timber wolf. "Not much sense in bringing Daisy, though. She can stay here."
"I'm bringing Grumps!" Darrien announced. The half-elf ranger had recently become a great fan of the animal growth spell that made his dire bear cub expand to the size of an adult grizzly and he hadn't been able to use that stratagem for awhile now.
"Obvious is coming along," Binkadink said from the jackalope's saddle. Given his position, that was rather obvious.
"Okay, then, gather around," Hagan said, his own weasel familiar Wezhley in his customary place on the sorcerer's left shoulder. With the utterance of an arcane syllable the assembled heroes and animals disappeared from Battershield Keep and appeared in a back alleyway of the Styes, Greyhawk City's slums. "The Guild Headquarters is this way," Hagan said, pointing with his thumb. But before they could open the door to the decrepit-looking building that served as a front for the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild, the door opened and an armored warrior stepped out. He wore a large sword strapped to his hip.
"Thanks for coming so quickly," Thunderwolf said to the group. "Come on - Rale's this way." And he led them away from the Guild Headquarters, across the street and down a few buildings to an equally questionable-looking structure. He opened the door and stepped inside, beckoning for the others to follow. The building was rather like a small barn or large shed, all one big chamber but for a smaller room off in one corner. Thunderwolf opened the door to this smaller room, and there, on a cot along the back wall, sat Rale Bodkin, one of the Guildmasters who also served as a Lord of Greyhawk.
Rale looked up at the group's approach, and the first thing the Kordovians noticed was that the Guildmaster's left eye was particularly bloodshot. But then, upon closer inspection, that wasn't the case at all: rather, the white part of his eye was entirely red and the iris a deep violet - in stark contrast to Rale's brown right eye.
"What happened to you?" Finoula asked.
"Well, that's a story," Rale admitted, looking up at the elven ranger with his mismatched eyes. He still couldn't get over how much she looked like her little sister, Feron Dru, who had been part of the same Wing of the old Greyhawk Adventurers Guild with the rogue, some twenty years back or more - long before he'd taken over as the leader of the Guild of Thieves and become one of the ten Lords who kept the city functioning.
"So here's the short version. I'm walking down the street, minding my own business, when I feel a sting on the back of my neck. I pull out a dart, see the tip's covered in some sort of poison, and then that's pretty much all I remember until waking up in some underground lab, strapped to a table. I was in and out of it for awhile, but I remember seeing this red and purple eye" - here he indicated his left eye - "floating in a jar of bubbling liquid. Then I blacked out again for awhile, and when I woke up again the jar was empty and my left eye was hurting me something fierce."
"Somebody removed your eye and replaced it with that one?" Finoula asked, aghast at the very concept.
"Whatever for?" asked Darrien.
"Beats me," Rale admitted. "But I wasn't gonna stick around to find out. I managed to free myself from the table and staggered out of the room - and that's when I found myself in the sewers."
"This story just gets worse," Finoula commented to herself, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
"About that time, I felt this...presence in my mind," Rale continued. "It was like a bunch of voices, all trying to tell me what to do. I wasn't having none of that, so I found a ladder up to the surface and figured out where I was. It was near here, in the Styes. I found my way to this antimagic field room we set up for such occasions as this, and as soon as I entered the field the voices - and the attempts at dominating me - stopped at once. But I've tried stepping outside the field and as soon as I do the voices return."
"So he's stuck here for now," Thunderwolf cut in. "We've got Desdemona leading the Collectors in scouring the city for any leads as to who might behind this. And my Guild members will stay here guarding Rale, because we don't know if the telepathic presence trying to dominate Rale is aware of his present location. If it is, they could be coming here for him, as we speak."
"So why we here?" asked Gilbert, cutting to the chase.
"I want you guys to see if you can track down the lab in the sewers," Rale repied. "See if you can find out where the operation was done, who was behind it, and put a stop to it. And if you can find my own eyeball, that would be great."
"I take it, then, you're not sure where in the sewers you were?" Finoula prompted.
"No idea. I can direct you to which manhole cover I popped up out of - that should give you a good idea of where to start. But I was too busy fighting off the attempts at mental domination to keep track of every twist and turn I took in the sewers. Hey, whatcha doing?" As Rale had been answering the ranger, she had brought Wrath over to sniff Rale's boots. She also lifted them up to get a good look at their soles, the better to recognize any tracks he might have left - judging by the muck on the bottoms of his boots, there was a good chance she might be able to spot his tracks and backtrack from there. And having Wrath get the Guildmaster's scent would only help in the endeavor. Rale gave them verbal directions to the manhole cover he used to exit the sewers and the Kordovians were off.
But while following Rale's instructions, Darrien came to a sudden realization. "How are we going to get Grumps down through a manhole?" It was a good question; there was no way the dire bear cub would fit through a hole just barely big enough to allow a human - Gilbert was going to find the process a pretty close fit as it was. The group took a side path into a dark alley so Binkadink could unroll the carpet of teleporting he kept in the group's portable hole. Laying it out flat in the alley, Darrien and Grumps stepped onto it and disappeared. The ranger returned a few minutes later, having put his cub in the animal pen inside the lower, extradimensional deck of their dragonfly spelljamming vessel. "He's fine," Darrien reported back. "I gave him some food from the larder." Looking at the gnome, he asked, "Do you want to do the same with Obvious?"
But Binkadink had been talking it over with Finoula during Darrien's absence. The gnome wanted to bring his jackalope along in the sewers, but given Obvious was the size of a full-grown horse that was going to be a problem. Finoula was the one to suggest a reduce animal spell, which would shrink Obvious to human size - small enough to squeeze through a sewer opening and yet still big enough for his gnome rider to be able to fit in the saddle. She cast the spell on the jackalope once they found the correct manhole and Binkadink climbed back into the saddle. "Is that going to work?" Finoula asked.
"The saddle's kind of a tight fit," Binkadink complained, "but yeah, this'll work. Thanks, Finoula."
Gilbert cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell that encompassed all of the heroes, linking them together in a mental connection that allowed them to communicate to each other without actually speaking. With Castillan absent, Gilbert could actually affect the entire assembled group, which was a welcome change.
"Are we ready?" asked Binkadink, climbing back down from the saddle and lifting the manhole cover up and to the side. An unpleasant odor wafted up from below, and the gnome wrinkled his prodigious nose in disgust. Obvious would now fit through the opening, but not with the gnome on his back - he'd have to climb back on once they were both in the sewers below.
"One minute, gnome," Gilbert responded, pulling a vial of some potent-smelling unguent from a pouch and dabbing it under his nostrils. "Don't want to smell sewers." That was too good an opportunity for Binkadink to pass up: using his racial ability to cast prestidigitation, Binkadink altered the scent of the unguent beneath Gilbert's nose to mirror that of the stench rising from the sewers below. "Guh!" Gilbert complained, looking suspiciously at the bottle before he put it back in his pouch. He suspected he'd been had by the merchant he'd purchased this gunk from - it didn't seem to be working worth...well, crap. Binkadink suppressed his smile and looked the other way, the very face of innocence.
"I'll take Wrath down first," Finoula offered. Leaning down, she scooped up her timber wolf and stepped onto the ladder leading down into darkness. Once fully below the surface of the street, she stepped off the ladder and onto the wall, shifting her weight as she did so, and walking down the rest of the way, courtesy of her boots of spider climbing. The everburning torch tucked under her arm provided enough light for her to see when she got to the bottom - it was about 30 feet or so below the street above. Once reaching the bottom, she gratefully set Wrath down - he was heavy! The wolf snorted at the unpleasant odors in the sewers but sniffed about, seeking Rale's scent. Malrin alit upon Finoula's shoulder, still in her owl form. The owl's smaller size would likely come in handy while maneuvering through the cramped tunnels; this tunnel was circular in cross-section but only about 5 feet tall, forcing most of the adventurers to have to hunch forward when passing through them.
Obvious scrambled through the opening next, wriggling through head-first and dropping the full distance, landing easily on all fours and then waiting patiently while Binkadink climbed down the ladder at a much slower pace. He was glad to leap into the saddle, though: looking at the foul-smelling liquid trickling along the floor, it looked like the little gnome was going to be the only one who wouldn't need to wash his boots at the end of this particular excursion!
The others climbed down after the gnome, leaving MARCI to follow once everyone else had made it down below - they weren't sure if the construct's metal construction would be too heavy for the aging metal ladder, and thought it best not to have anyone standing directly beneath her when she climbed down. But the medical construct made it to the lower level without incident. She scanned about with the red beam from her single eye.
"Rale's boot print," Finoula pointed out to the others. She was able to backtrack his path to an open room, where at least the ceiling was 10 feet tall and she could stand up straight. "He came from this direction." But there were several branches from this central chamber, one being a winding passageway that meandered in a southerly direction, with a larger, circular side-tunnel, some 10 feet in cross-section, leading from east to west. Darrien took a southern side tunnel that broke off from the central tunnel before even hitting the larger chamber and decided to explore it. He saw the larger east-west tunnel before him, but other than the occasional rat he saw no signs of life. Still, he held his Arachnibow at the ready, an arrow nocked and ready to fire should the need arise.
Wrath and Finoula had gone south along the meandering route, reaching the western edge of the east-west tunnel. She could see Darrien's head peeking out from his side tunnel east of her position, and beside him looked to be a larger opening in the side of the tunnel, this one heading north. She doubted Darrien could even see it from his position, so she alerted him to its presence over the mental link. <I'll check it out!> offered Malrin, flapping off of Finoula's shoulder and flying east down the wide tunnel.
Gilbert, in the meantime, had gone to the western edge of the initial chamber and saw a passageway to the north. It made an almost immediate left turn to the east, which, surprisingly, led to a set of wide stairs leading up to another level 10 feet higher. He was about to check out these stairs when his eye was caught by a dot of red on the filthy floor ahead of him - it was a drop of blood, likely Rale's. Behind him, Mudpie and MARCI followed, keeping close to the man each considered his or her master. Binkadink followed behind on Obvious; it was easier to stick to the taller passageways while mounted, and the way Gilbert was exploring had the advantage of containing 10-foot-high ceilings.
Malrin reached the passage by Darrien - her silent flight causing several rats to scurry away in panic, apparently not having expected to have to worry about owls in the sewers - and flew through it. It, too, opened into a set of stairs leading up, so the druid followed, providing a running narrative of what she saw to the others over the telepathic link. Her owl eyesight could see the passage ahead took a turn to the right, and she mentally envisioned it likely meeting up with the set of stairs Gilbert had announced he'd found - and then Malrin's owlish hearing picked up a slight buzzing from just ahead. She didn't have time to puzzle over its likely source before a mass of tentacles dropped down upon her.
Malrin felt a sudden pain in her side and realized she's just been stabbed; looking down, she saw a tentacle-tip had impaled her, and while the appendage had wrapped around her, keeping her imprisoned, its tip was draining blood from her body. She screeched instinctively in pain, but also called for help over the telepathic bond.
Binkadink and Obvious were the first to respond. Scampering past Gilbert, they raced up the steps, down the corridor, and turned the corner ahead to find themselves facing a floating, pale-skinned orb, from which sprang nearly a dozen tentacles. Obvious bit down on one of them with his lupine incisors, while Binkadink stabbed his glaive's blade deep into the thing's body. They could both hear the same buzzing sound Malrin had heard before the death kiss dropped down on her.
Darrien splashed into the east-west tunnel long enough to turn the corner and race up the stairs. From his vantage point, he could see a blood-red eye in the middle of the spherical body from which the tentacles sprang. He shot his readied arrow at the eye, but the body swerved in midair at the last moment, causing the arrow to strike the body to the side of the unblinking eye. Behind him, Darrien could hear Finoula and Wrath splashing down the wide tunnel and bounding up the stairs. Farther back, Hagan followed in the ranger's wake, Wezhley still perched nervously on his shoulder.
Gilbert ran up the stairs behind Obvious and Binkadink, casting a resist electricity spell upon himself and his familiar as he ran. MARCI followed, not to leap into battle but to stay near the only true human in the vicinity. She had been built to aid humans, and even though she had been ordered by Gilbert to treat the others as "honorary humans," she knew he was her predominant concern.
Malrin struggled feebly against the strength of the tentacle wrapped around her and constricting her like an anaconda - and then she changed tactics. Willing the change in her body, she wildshaped from an owl to a grizzly bear. The tentacle binding her was forced to loosen its grip as her body expanded, but not enough to allow the druid to escape its clutches. Worse, the tentacle's tip was still embedded in her side and it still sucked up her blood, pulling it through the hollow appendage and into the death kiss's spherical body.
But Malrin wasn't a sufficient meal to the death kiss, especially with other perfectly suitable morsels at hand. It floated toward Darrien, close enough that three of its needle-tipped tentacles could swing at him while six more could still reach out to attack Binkadink and Obvious on its other side. The gnome was hit by two of the tentacles, but fortunately his armor prevented them from getting enough of a hold on him to allow blood drain; Darrien and Obvious weren't as lucky, and they found themselves in Malrin's unenviable position as blood snacks for a hungry death kiss.
With a mighty surge, Darrien managed to extricate himself from the tentacle grappling him. He staggered back, away from the floating beast; Finoula helped pull him back out of range. Binkadink, fearing being caught up in the tentacles wrapping around Obvious, abandoned the saddle and leaped to the floor - but he didn't abandon his mount and friend, instead bringing the glaive cutting deep into one of the tentacles pinning Obvious's limbs and preventing him from escaping. The blade severed through the tentacle entirely, causing its end to drop to the ground, spilling jackalope blood from its hollow length. Obvious, although still pinned, managed to bite into one of the tentacles grappling him, causing his mouth to fill with his own siphoned blood. Then Binkadink's glaive severed that tentacle and the jackalope fell to the floor, no longer attached to the death kiss. But Binkadink's attack had come at a slight cost, for a surge of electricity came channeling down his blade, shocking the gnome. Still, as he saw Obvious extricate himself from the severed tentacles and back away from the floating aberration, Binkadink considered it a price worth paying.
Finoula had her lightning bolt amulet in hand and was about to turn herself into a living blast of electricity to go jolting through the death kiss, but Binkadink called out through the link, <It's got an electrical zap! The thing's probably immune to electricity!> "Well, shoot!" said Finoula aloud, dropping her amulet and pulling out Tahlmalaera from its scabbard as she ran up to the death kiss. A tentacle stabbed out at her as she approached the floating monster, but she slapped it away with her left hand before it could attach itself to her skin, and then she stabbed deep into the monster's core with her longsword, unleashing a wave of sonics through the embedded blade.
Instinctively, the death kiss floated away from Finoula's painful sword, spinning around to face Obvious. With the bleeding jackalope right before it, the creature sent several of its remaining tentacles stabbing at the pony-sized, antlered rabbit, siphoning the jackalope's blood through its hollow tentacles. The death kiss used the blood to heal some of the wounds it had already sustained thus far in fighting these creatures from the world above. It also levitated higher, so it could enjoy the two morsels it had already captured and imprisoned within its coiled appendages.
Even without being mounted on Obvious, Binkadink's glaive could reach high enough to stab up at the death kiss, but before the gnome could strike Gilbert stepped up behind him and cast a flesh to stone spell at the death kiss. The monster's writhing tentacles ceased moving immediately, as its pale coloration darkened to a medium gray. Then the creature plummeted back to the floor below, its stone tentacles snapping off as they impacted the solid floor. Malrin, still in bear form, and Obvious felt the thud of sudden impact with the floor, but as it freed them from the abomination in whose blood-draining clutches they had been trapped, neither complained. Malrin staggered away from the death kiss's shattered body and resumed her normal elven form. Then, with her staff of healing at hand, she liberally applied healing spells to those who needed them - primarily herself, Obvious, and Darrien.
<So now what?> asked Binkadink, looking up at the ceiling. <There's a tunnel up there, directly above, where the monster dropped down from. Do we try to get up there?>
Finoula had spent some time investigating the floor along the upper level where they had fought the death kiss. <There's no trace of Rale having been this way,> she said. <I want to go check out that area where Gilbert found drops of blood.> So saying, she backtracked the way Gilbert had come, going down the western steps back to the area by the original main chamber. Hagan and Wezhley volunteered to accompany her.
<I want to check out this way,> Darrien decided. With Obvious's permission, he climbed up onto the jackalope's back, then stepped onto the top of his head and from there onto his branching antlers. It still wasn't enough to get him to the top of the tunnel, which he could see from this distance turned to the east and leveled out. But that was easily fixed by a shot from his Arachnibow, the ranger causing the arrow to become a strand of sturdy spider-silk that instantly adhered to the top of the wide, vertical tunnel. Climbing up its length, Darrien pulled himself onto the vertical part of the tunnel - this, like the wider sewer tunnel below, was circular and about 10 feet wide in cross-section - and peeked down into the room beyond once he got to the passage's end and saw it veered downward.
The chamber below was a sphere, the tunnel Darrien was in dropping down onto its topmost pole. Looking inside the hollow sphere, Darrien could see another circular tunnel at the chamber's equator, but there were smaller niches all along the inner surface of the hollow sphere, each one holding a humanoid skull; the half-elf ranger could pick out those of elves and dwarves as well as those taken from humans. There were others that were either halflings or gnomes or - worse yet - children.
This all seemed somehow vaguely familiar to Darrien, but rather than try to figure out where he'd seen such an architectural configuration before he shot another silk-thread at the top of the tunnel and lowered himself down into the empty chamber below. He wasn't sure if he could run up the slope to the side tunnel, but he didn't have to; another strand from the Arachnibow aimed at the top of the side tunnel and he could easily pull himself up.
Gilbert, in the meantime, cast a fly spell upon himself and Mudpie. Turning to MARCI, he said, "Go follow Finoula. Stay with her in case she need any healing." Once he saw the medical construct follow his orders (it seemed simpler to send the metal automaton on the path that didn't require extensive climbing), he and his familiar flew up the ceiling shaft to follow Darrien's path. Malrin wildshaped back to owl form and followed.
<What do you think, Obvious?> Binkadink asked his jackalope friend in the language of burrowing mammals they both spoke. He was back in the saddle again and ready to follow either Darrien's way or Finoula's - but Darrien's seemed more intriguing. <Can you make it up there?>
"<Just watch!> replied Obvious eagerly, readying himself for a vertical leap. He made it through the opening, and some mad scrambling with his powerful legs once he got up there got him up to the level section of the tunnel. He then dropped easily into the lower sphere, and from there leaping up into the side tunnel was child's play. By then, Darrien was walking down this side tunnel's length, turning to the right when the tunnel did so. It was then that he recalled where he'd seen spherical rooms connected by circular tunnels before: in the lair of Gzornyx the Evil Eye, a beholder he'd helped Lord Cavelthorne's adventurers fight.
Of course, the beholder floating in the back of the spherical, domed chamber down the passageway around the bend of the side tunnel might have helped Darrien make the connection.
The beholder wasn't alone, either; standing before him were an elf wizard, Felforan the Gray; a dwarven fighter, Captain Ironbull; and an elderly human cleric, Davinda Solarus, who wore the sun-symbol of Pelor upon the tabard over her armor. Darrien gave an involuntary bleat of surprise before backing up back around the corner, casting a spell as he went. A constrictor snake suddenly appeared before him, which coiled and struck at Captain Ironbull, who wore the symbol of the City Guard on his armor. The snake didn't last long as a distraction, though, as the burly dwarf decapitated it with a single blow from his axe. Severed head and headless serpentine body both vanished.
The elderly cleric stepped forward, just enough to be able to see Darrien around the corner. A ray flashed from her left eye, striking the surprised half-elf in the torso. Darrien had submitted himself to magical healing many times during his adventuring career; this felt quite the opposite, as healing energy was drained from his body. He briefly wondered how a cleric of Pelor was able to do that with her eye, and that's when he noticed her eyes weren't both the same color.
But then Felforan stepped around the corner. He lashed out with a chain lightning spell, targeting Obvious as the primary and sending arcs of electricity to strike at Binkadink, Darrien, and Malrin. The elicited cries of pain indicated the spell had had its desired effect upon the intruding heroes.
<We're fighting a beholder and three cohorts!> Darrien called over the link, to let Finoula and Hagan in on what was transpiring on this side of the sewers. Finoula, however, had just discovered a secret door along a slightly discolored span of bricked sewer wall; pushing along the right side caused the section of wall to hinge inwards. Stepping into the narrow passageway thus exposed, the elven ranger noted the handle on the other side of the door - it was a "secret" door only from the rest of the sewers; from this side, it was perfectly obvious there was a door there.
<I've just found a secret door!> Finoula explained over the mental link. <Do you want us to come help you guys?>
Gilbert gave it a moment's thought. <No, you check out your way. Maybe it a way to sneak behind beholder.> That decided, Finoula pressed forward, Wrath, Hagan and MARCI following behind her. The passageway kept going north for a ways before turning west and leading up a short flight of stairs. The passageway seemed to come to a dead end there, but based on her previous discovery, Finoula imagined if she pushed along the right side of the wall any secret door hidden there would open - and she was right. The trio stepped into a crude bedroom, with a cot along one wall and a crate and barrel serving as a makeshift table and chair. A wooden coat rack in the corner held several robes and bloody aprons. Finoula frowned in distaste but pressed on through the room. There were doors to the south and west; she chose the western door as that was the one most likely to lead to the other heroes.
Malrin flapped around the corner and cast a flame strike at the assembled enemies; the way they were distributed she had to ignore the dwarf in order to get the beholder, the elf, and the human. As the flames erupted down from the room's ceiling, she was glad the beholder's central eyelid was closed; she'd heard a beholder's big eye sent out an anti-magic ray that would have negated her spell. But the spell went off without hitch, and with any luck the druid's enemies would assume she was just a harmless familiar or pet, not the source of the spell.
Vrgolkryn kept his central eye shut despite the pain of the spell; as things stood, he had no other option, for his three hivemind minions were in the path of his central eye's range - and in any case, he could see perfectly fine around him with the ten eyes on his eyestalks. Most of the intruders were still around the corner, so there wasn't much he could do offensively with his eye rays at the moment, so he called upon their newest power: three of the eyes shot beams of energy in the corner of the tunnel, and in the areas where they hit three more of his hivemind minions popped into view. The first of these was a powerfully-built dwarf, Borrin Stonefist; the next was a half-elven woman in a flowing dress, Jillianna Vanderblaine; the third was a big-bellied human man, Robun Krendlemann. Like the first trio, each had a pair of mismatched eyes, the left eye being a graft from tissue from the end of one of Vrgolkryn's own eyestalks. Also like the first trio (and Rale Bodkin before them), each was also one of the secret Lords and Ladies of Greyhawk. Vrgolkryn's charmed assistants had abducted each of the Lords in turn, allowing them to be ocularly modified and joined into the hivemind which allowed the elder orb to control their actions - all but Rale, who had somehow managed to overcome the attempted domination, even now.
Captain Ironbull turned the corner to face the enemies, taking the opportunity to slice the head of his axe into the owl flying nearby. Malrin called out, <I'm hit!> over the Rary's telepathic bond spell, adding <I'm playing dead!> for the benefit of the rest of the team as she dropped to the stone floor and remained motionless. Hopefully, the beholder and its dominated foes would assume she was dead and leave her alone, for she was seriously hurt by the axe's blow - but she was equally sure she could surreptitiously cast a healing spell upon herself without being noticed.
Felforan rounded the bend, stepping beside the dwarven Guard Captain and casting a flesh to stone spell at Darrien. The half-elf ranger was struck square-on by the spell, and only just managed to shrug off its intended effects. But then Davinda stepped up behind the elven wizard and targeted Darrien with a slay living spell, and this time the half-elf's fortitude was not up to the task of fending off the spell. His heart exploding in his chest, Darrien keeled over where he stood, his mental cries of pain diminishing to nothing over the Rary's telepathic bond spell.
Borrin raced forward, stepping on Malrin's fallen form (it was all she could do not to cry out in pain as he did so) on his way to Obvious. Once he got to the jackalope - he endured a slap of the flat side of Binkadink's glaive to do so - he punched the surprised riding mount in the face, hard. Jillianna, not looking at all like a combat enthusiast, send a beam from her eye lancing out at Binkadink, hoping to cause him to be charmed into her service. Fortunately for the little gnome, he was able to fend off the spell's effect. Robun did the same thing, sending a charm monster ray from his left eye to strike Obvious, hoping to get the jackalope to buck off his armored rider - but Obvious's mind was as firm as Binkadink's had been.
Binkadink assume these people they were fighting were all charmed and, like Rale, had not been willing participants in their eye upgrades. Thus, disinclined to meet them in combat, he pulled the horn of goodness from his belt, brought it to his lips, and blew for all he was worth. The note he sounded caused Borrin Stonefist to blink rapidly and look around in surprise at his surroundings. As Binkadink had hoped, the magic circle against evil created by his horn had unlinked (even if only temporarily) the dwarf from the beholder's mental sway.
"By Moradin's beard!" cried the dwarf. "Where th' bleedin' 'ell am I?"
"You were being controlled by a beholder!" Binkadink cried as he urged Obvious forward - not far, just enough for the spell effect to encompass Captain Ironbull, Felforan, and Jillianna while still keeping Borrin well within the spell's radius. These three also snapped immediately out of the beholder's hivemind, looking about them in bewilderment. The half-elf diplomat held a hand to her nose, finding the stench of the nearby sewers unbearable.
But while Vrgolkryn was having four of his hivemind minions stolen from his grasp, his as-yet-unseen ally opened wide the double doors behind the elder orb and stepped forward at the beholder's side. This was a bloodstained human wearing a leather apron over his clothes, a wizard going only by his title: the Chirurgeon. It had been he who had performed the arcane surgery upon the Lords of Greyhawk, to create the hivemind that was to allow Vrgolkryn to be the secret ruler of the city of Greyhawk, by making its ten Lords his mental puppets. And best of all, the Chirurgeon didn't need to be charmed by Vrgolkryn; he was doing this of his own free will, in part because he wanted the experience of performing such an elaborate arcane experiment, and in part because having the secret ruler of all of Greyhawk in his debt could only be advantageous to the Chirurgeon.
Seeing the benefits of Binkadink's magic circle against evil, Gilbert cast the same spell upon himself and stepped forward, catching first Borrin and then the others within his spell's radius. <Go ahead, Bink!> the wizard called to the gnome, knowing the mounted fighter was eager to take the fight to the beholder itself. Seeing she was now surrounded by allies, Malrin raised herself to a standing position and cast a summon nature's ally spell, bringing an ogre-sized earth elemental into being just beside the beholder. Vrgolkryn reacted immediately by backing up, through the doors opened by the Chirurgeon; the elemental swiped at the elder orb with a massive fist but failed to connect. Then Vrgolkryn shot a disintegrate ray at the earth elemental, causing him to dissipate into dust, while simultaneously catching Felforan the Gray in the back with a telekinesis ray. The elf was dragged toward the beholder, taking him out of the area of effect of the two magic circle against evil spells and back into the hivemind - and thus under the beholder's mental domination. A third eye ray shot out, the flesh to stone ray striking Davinda Solarus (Vrgolkryn was more interested in taking her out of the fight for the moment - he could always have the Chirurgeon restore her once the beholder had defeated these intruders and was ready to add her back into his hivemind) - but the cleric managed to avoid petrifaction by mere force of will, perhaps bolstered by the will of her patron deity.
Then, to the beholder's surprise, Captain Ironbull came around the corner. He was too far away from the beholder to attack with a weapon unless he was willing to throw his battleaxe, but rather than do that he shot a ray from his left eye - the effrontery! Vrgolkryn was being attacked by a slow ray that Ironbull wouldn't even have had had it not been for the Chirurgeon's actions! Fortunately for the elder orb, the spell had no effect on him.
But now his other former minions were attacking their former hivemind master. Davinda cast a flame strike down at the beholder, quite accidentally catching the Chirurgeon - who she couldn't even see from her angle - in the spell's area of effect. Robun used his charm monster eye ray on Vrgolkryn, thinking how delicious the irony would be if the monster who had taken over his will would now fall under the Merchant Lord's own mental sway. Unfortunately, Vrgolkryn's will was powerful enough to overcome the attempt.
Felforan, now back in the hivemind, used his own disintegrate eye ray on Binkadink, who managed to shrug it off. Jillianna, in turn, used her charm person eye ray on Felforan, hoping to use enchantment magic to pull the elven wizard out of his mental dominance. It, too, had no effect. Binkadink decided he'd do better staying in the midst of the former hivemind-slaves rather than move forward, so he pulled his seldom-used sling from his belt and sent a stone flying at the elder orb's massive, spherical body. It hit, but did little damage.
But then Finoula opened the door from the Chirurgeon's bedroom and found herself standing behind the beholder, with the Chirurgeon also within view. Hagan didn't even bother entering the room; he cast a feeblemind spell at the beholder. Perhaps because of the unexpectedness of the attack, the spell overcame Vrgolkryn's mental defenses and his mouth gaped open. Furthermore, as at that point Felforan shared the beholder's mind through the hivemind, he too was affected by the half-orc sorcerer's spell and he, too, ceased all attacks and just looked about him in a stupified daze.
Finoula held her amulet aloft and activated it, becoming a sizzling shaft of lightning that burned through the beholder and set her standing before it in her elven form in the space of a fraction of a second. Startled, and having taken a severe amount of damage from Davinda's flame strike spell earlier, the Chirurgeon ran his likelihood of defeating these interlopers when his beholder ally was now a drooling idiot and found his likely success rate staggeringly low. He thus began the words to a dimension door spell, hoping to vanish in the sewers and relocate elsewhere - preferably in an entirely different city. Finoula reacted to the wizard's spellcasting, bringing Tahlmalaera slicing across his chest. She saw his leather apron start to fall forward, its straps severed by her attack and a line of blood well up through his shirt beneath - and then he was gone, his spell apparently having worked.
Gilbert stepped forward, forgetting to keep Borrin Stonefist within the bounds of his magic circle against evil spell, and as soon as the dwarf was outside of its protection Vrgolkryn's feebleminded hivemind kicked in, subjecting the dwarf to the spell's effects. His mind was too shaken at this point to ward off any further mental attacks, and he too lost the ability to reason or do much more than stand about with a dazed look on his bearded face.
"Oops," said Gilbert belatedly. But then he did what he had stepped forward around the corner to do: cast a flesh to stone spell at the beholder. The spell was a success, and for the second time that day Gilbert brought a hovering stone creature falling to the floor and shattering into dozens of pieces.
The beholder slain, Davinda looked worriedly at Captain Ironbull and then both stepped away from Binkadink's magic circle against evil, seeing if the hivemind effect had ended with the elder orb's death. Both were relieved to see that it had - their minds were their own again.
Malrin resumed her elven form again and used her staff of healing on those who needed it. "I'm afraid I can't cast a heal spell on those who were affected by Hagan's feeblemind spell," Malrin apologized.
"Never you mind, dearie," reassured Davinda Solarus. "I'll take them with me to the Temple of Pelor - we'll get them the healing they need."
"Nice spellcasting there, Hagan!" congratulated Finoula. "You took the fight right out of them!"
"What the--?" sputtered Robun Krendlemann suddenly, as he was unceremoniously shoved up against the wall by an unseen force. Borrin Stonefist approached with a sheepish look on his face. "Sorry," he said. "I were just tryin' sumthin' - didn't think these eye rays'd still work once th' beholder were dead an' all - but it looks like they do!"
Experimentation showed that the same held true for the other Lords of Greyhawk. "I say," remarked Captain Ironbull, thinking of how easy it would be catching fleeing criminals with a slow ray always at the ready.
"Shall we get out of the sewers?" asked Hagan. "I can teleport us all back up to the surface, although it will take a few trips."
"Yes, get us out of here!" groused Gilbert. "This place smell awful - and that unguent I use to block smell worthless!" Binkadink remained silent and successfully kept his smirk at bay.
- - -
This took a surprising turn right from the beginning, when I learned Jacob wouldn't be playing with us after all: he'd forgotten an appointment that lasted until 2:30 PM (we start gaming around noon), and as he lives 45 minutes away he'd likely spend more travel time than actual game play by the time he got here. So he had authorized Dan to run Castillan in his place, but I opted to forgo anyone running the bounder at all, simply having Castillan unavailable at the start of the adventure. (As I usually do, I decided he'd have an "off-screen adventure" that kept him at the same XP level as the rest of the PCs.)
I also didn't anticipate the PCs turning Vrgolkryn's hivemind minions against him that easily, but that's what makes this game so fun, even for the DM who knows what all's going on in the background. So we finished this session around 4:15 PM.
Harry excused himself from game play about halfway through the session, complaining of a stomach ache; he went upstairs to go lie down and rest. As a result, Joey ran Hagan for the rest of the session, which actually turned out okay once Darrien got killed - at least this way Joey had a PC to run. And it was Joey's brilliance to have the half-orc sorcerer attack Vrgolkryn with a feeblemind spell; had Harry still been running his own PC, he'd likely have stuck to his usual chain lightning, polar ray, and disintegrate spells - he's all about the damage dice, that one.
Fortunately, I had built in variable treasure for this adventure: the Lords of Greyhawk would reward the PCs with 10,000 gp per Lord rescued from the hivemind without being slain; since they managed to do so without a single Lord's death, that netted them a cool 100,000 gp. Even after paying for a true resurrection spell for Darrien, that left everyone sufficiently rewarded that the players are all going to be thumbing through the DMG to see what their PCs might wish to purchase before leaving Greyhawk City.
- - -
T-Shirt Worn: My plain grey T-shirt, to represent Greyhawk City.
