JollyDoc
Explorer
KRAKEN COVE
In the days that followed, a spirit of celebration gripped Tashluta, for a festival was fast approaching, and it was not just any festival…it was Wormfall! This year would be the second such celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the god of worms, Kyuss. In truth, the festival was bittersweet, for when Kyuss fell in the city of Starmantle, over a thousand miles to the north of Tashluta, Starmantle and most of its populace fell with him. Thus was born the Ebon Triad, and the burgeoning worship of the Lord of the End of All Things…Jergal. In fact, many cities throughout Faerun did not mark the anniversary at all, but in Tashluta there truly was reason to celebrate, for in the jungles of Chult lay the Spire of Long Shadows, the former abode of Kyuss. During Kyuss’ rebirth, a small army of undead had erupted from this place of ancient evil, along with several powerful demons known as broodfiends. These creatures had descended on Tashluta, but they were destroyed by a band of powerful adventurers, including one local hero, Tillian Wanderfar, the proprietor of the Plucked Parrot. So it was that the excitement of the festival could be felt throughout Tashluta.
Lavinia Vanderboren, however, was not in a festive mood. Since the revelations about her brother’s involvement in the death of her parents, her mind had been restless. More and more her feelings of sorrow and despair had turned to anger. She wanted Vanthus brought to justice for his crimes. With this in mind, and at Anwar’s urging, she summoned the Legion to her manor once again.
“The information you provided to me indicated that Vanthus and Brissa were journeying to Kraken Cove,” she said once her team was assembled. “There they were to meet a band of pirate smugglers, and this meeting was to occur this week. Perhaps, if you make haste, you might still find my brother there. I want him captured and returned if possible, or put to death if not.” Her eyes were hard as she said this, and her lips were pressed razor-thin.
“I have heard of this place,” Basil spoke up. “It lies some sixty miles west along the coast, on the eastern shore of Blood Bay. It would be a long, grueling journey by land, mostly through trackless swamp. Sea travel would be swifter.”
“Perhaps the Blue Nixie, my love?” Anwar offered helpfully. Lavinia looked pensive for a moment, then nodded decisively.
“An excellent idea, but you’ll have to find a crew to sail her. The Shipwright’s Guild should be able to provide a proper outfit.”
“It’s settled then,” Anwar said. “By sea we should be able to reach Kraken’s Cove in no more than two days. We’ll bring your brother back, my Lady…dead or alive.”
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The Blue Nixie lay at anchor at sunset of the first day out from Tashluta. It had been an uneventful journey up to that point, and the passengers and crew took their ease. Gotr had positioned himself near the wheel, where he could more easily dispense his (unasked for) advice as to proper navigation, while Basil looked on in amusement. Samson and Sepoto busied themselves about the main deck and foc’s’le, lending more appreciated help to the sailors. Meanwhile, Thrisp had taken up residence in the captain’s quarters and was resting in relative comfort, while Marius and Anwar dosed below decks in the private guest cabins. Xerxes wandered through the hold of the ship restlessly. He didn’t like bathing, much less traveling on water by boat. He couldn’t relax, but he certainly did not want to be on deck staring at those endless miles of liquid. He found himself almost missing the sewer tunnels of the Lotus Dragons.
One of the seamen, a sailor by the name of Angus, was on duty in the crow’s nest that evening, and fortunately for the others onboard, the man took his job seriously. Therefore, when the water around the ship began to churn, and slimy, scaled figures began clambering up the sides, Angus was the first to notice, and the first to sound the alarm. Those on deck below instinctively looked up to where Angus was perched, when they should have been looking towards the sea. Thus they found themselves suddenly surrounded by eight humanoids with webbed digits and sharp fangs. They each had long tails, ending in curved fins, and they also bore fins on their arms, backs and heads. Their great, staring eyes were deep black, and they all bore wickedly-barbed tridents.
“Sea Devils!” Angus cried. In point of fact, the creatures were sahuagin, but the sailor’s description was appropriate. The marine predators were marauders, preying on coastal villages and ships alike. They were also merciless, killing all who stood against them, and enslaving all others. Samson knew none of this. He only knew that the creatures had boarded their ship without permission, and obviously bore them no good will. This was enough for the dragon shaman. Pulling his morningstar from his belt, he leapt down the foc’s’le stairs to the main deck, slugging one of the raiders as he reached the bottom. As he moved, a sickly green corona surrounded him, and an acrid odor burned the nostrils of those nearby. The sahuagin began surrounding him. One jabbed with its trident, its tines pricking his chest before he batted it away. As soon as his blood touched the air, it began to sizzle, and the sea devil which had struck him cried out in pain as its own flesh began to blister as well.
Below decks Xerxes heard the alarm and the sounds of battle from above. Quickly he ran to the closed doors of the guest cabins and began hammering on them.
“We’re under attack!” he shouted, and then hustled towards the stairs. Still in their bunks, Anwar and Marius awoke reluctantly, sleep-addled and confused at the noise and mayhem. Blearily they hit the deck, opening their respective doors and peering dazedly at each other, and then at the ceiling above, where the melee raged on.
Gotr crouched behind the wheel as a trio of sahuagin advanced across the quarter deck. The wheelman cowered in abject terror behind him.
“Come on, then ya slimy mackerel snappers!” the gnome snarled. In answer, the marauders raised their weapons to strike, but then the priest spoke a single word which reverberated as loud as a thunderclap. All three of the sahuagin grabbed their ears in agony, and one sagged to its knees, blood leaking from both auricles. Meanwhile, Basil, who had rendered himself invisible when he first saw the raiders, drew a slender wand from his belt and pointed it at Sepoto who was still standing atop the foc’s’le.
“Switcheroo!” he said. The sea devils looked towards the space where the voice had come from, only to see a burly, chain-wrapped goliath suddenly appear out of thin air. Still unseen, but now on the foc’s’le himself, Basil chuckled at his own ingenuity.
As the sahuagin still gaped in horror at its burning arm, Samson struck, smashing the creature’s skull in and then shouldering it over the side. Pivoting where he stood, he caved in the chest of the devil he had already wounded, and it soon joined its mate back in the briny depths. The odds where shifting, but he was still outnumbered three-to-one, and another of the raiders stabbed at him, piercing deeper this time, but suffering the same acidic burn for its effort as its brethren had.
The two sahuagin still standing near Gotr underwent a sudden transformation. Their eyes widened even further, and foam began dripping from their snapping jaws. In a blind frenzy, they flung themselves towards the gnome. Gotr quickly brought up his bow, snapping off one shot at the nearest one before it reached him. At the same time, Sepoto leaped over the wheel housing and crashed into the second raider, bearing it to the deck beneath him. Two quick blows from his chain-shrouded fists ended its rage, and its life. He regained his feet in one fluid motion, spun towards the other sahuagin and looped his chain around its neck from behind, strangling the life out of it.
“I coulda’ taken’im,” Gotr muttered.
Samson was still holding his own, but Basil could see the sea devils moving around to flank the dragon shaman. Quickly the young wizard began casting, and from out of nowhere, a barrage of icy snow balls fell from the sky, pelting two of the sahuagin, bludgeoning them to death. Just then, the door of the captain’s cabin flew open, and Thrisp appeared in the door. He hurled his own spell at the last marauder facing Samson, striking it with a shockwave of power. Staggered, it turned drunkenly towards its new assailant. A fatal mistake, as Samson’s club cracked its neck. The dragon shaman then rushed across the deck, towards where the last sahuagin was regaining its feet behind an unsuspecting Sepoto.
“Watch out!” he shouted, but suddenly the sea devil leaped towards him, stabbing into his shoulder with its trident, and then sinking its teeth into his neck. Abruptly, the creature let go, stumbling back as its mouth began to dissolve. Blood and saliva combined in a gruesome tableau and the sahuagin collapsed to the deck in a jerking heap.
The hatch leading below deck suddenly burst open, revealing Xerxes, Anwar and Marius. The dwarf and the seeker surveyed the carnage in amazement. Anwar just yawned and stretched.
“Wake me when we reach Blood Bay,” he said, heading back towards his cabin.
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The following afternoon, the Blue Nixie rounded the western edge of Blood Bay.
“Here’s where we let’cha off,” the navigator said. “The bay’s full’o reefs. Only a mad man’d try and sail across’er.”
Anwar didn’t argue. Gotr had confirmed this information when he had first viewed the maps of the area. By prior arrangement, the Legion took a longboat to shore, and began making their way on foot around the bay to Kraken’s Cove. The remainder of the day was spent slogging their way through the verdant overgrowth, until finally they reached a small game trail. They were still a mile or more from the cove when they first spotted the plume of smoke coming from that direction.
“I’d say Vanthus beat us here,” Gotr said.
“Yes, but maybe he’s still there, enjoying his plunder,” Anwar answered. “Let’s step it up a bit.”
As they traveled on, they began to notice that something was horribly wrong in this part of the bush. Swaths of dead wildlife, from parrot to gull to monkey to snake, lay scattered across the ground, their bodies horribly distorted and deformed. What few living animals they saw were similarly deformed, and shockingly aggressive. As they watched, a pair of toucans with wickedly serrated beaks and bony protrusions sprouting from their heads, swooped down upon a two-headed ground squirrel, though one of the heads hung lifeless and limp from its neck. In a matter of moments, the birds had ripped the squirrel’s limbs off and disemboweled it, all while it was still alive.
“What in the name of the All Seeing?” Sepoto gasped, horrified. At that moment, a commotion to their right drew their attention. There, a group of four monkeys, their jaws filled with tiny fangs and their bodies covered with open sores from which hooked bonespurs protruded, came swarming out of the trees with alarming speed. Apparently unafraid of humans three-times their size, they ran towards the group, shrieking and howling.
Basil barely had time to react, quickly conjuring a volley of arcane missiles, before the deranged monkeys were among them. One of them leaped at Xerxes, who swung at it while it was still in mid-air with his axe. He connected solidly, and what would have ordinarily cleaved the animal in two instead merely left a deep gouge in its purulent flesh. A second one scrambled up Samson’s back, sinking its teeth into his neck, while a third flung itself at Sepoto. The goliath also connected with his snapping chain, but again, the little monster was barely scathed. Xerxes continued to hack at his assailant, but it kept at him, darting between his legs and nipping at his ankles.
“Duck boy!” Gotr yelled, just as the dwarf turned his back to him. Xerxes heard the twang of the gnome’s bow, but he was too busy trying to evade the crazed simian to react. Instead, he felt the arrow sink deep into his shoulder.
“I don’t need yer help!” he howled.
“I told you to duck,” Gotr sneered.
Samson snatched the monkey from his back, and hurled it to the ground. As it skittered to its feet, he smashed his morning star across its back which cracked in an audible snap. The beast began thrashing about in its death throes, and managed to snap at the dragon shaman’s foot before it finally died. Then something truly incredible and horrifying happened. The creature dissolved into a steaming pool of viscous, yellow fluid. Samson stepped quickly back as the puddle expanded. The putrid smell told him it was caustic. What kind of insanity had happened here, he wondered.
Basil stumbled back from his pursuing assailant, hurling barrage after barrage of missiles. The monkey jumped, but one final volley dropped it back to the ground, where it too began to dissolve. Unfortunately, it happened to fall right at Gotr’s feet. The gnome cursed roundly as his boots began to smoke and sizzle. He didn’t see another of the tiny demons coming towards him, but a combined missile volley from Marius and Basil stopped it dead. Meanwhile, Sepoto put an end to Xerxes opponent with one well placed blow. The dwarf was red-face, both with pain and shame at his inability to stop a single monkey, lunatic though it may have been.
“Something terrible has happened,” Thrisp said as he stared at the acid pools, and the savaged bodies of the local fauna around them, “and I’m afraid Vanthus is behind it.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Anwar said as he started once more down the trail. “Just over this next ridge and we should be able to see the cove.”
He was right. The company cleared the ridge top and found themselves atop a cliff, gazing down upon Kraken Cove some forty feet below. The sight that greeted them was both terrible and tragic. An inferno raged atop the water of the sheltered bay. Several ships, including a two-masted caravel, a sizeable frigate, a long barge, and what might have once been a schooner, were all ablaze. Further out, a three-masted caravel seemed to have escaped the fire for the moment. A shiny slick on the surface of the water itself burned as well, creating a wall of wood and flame. The heat rose in searing sheets, and the roar of the flaming maelstrom mixed with the crashing surf masked any other sounds that might have been issuing up from below. Through periodic gaps in the smoke, however, movement on the beach was visible. Something still lived in the inferno below.
“How we gonna get down there?” Gotr asked. “And do we even want to?”
“We have to,” Thrisp replied. “We have to know what’s happened, and find Vanthus, alive or dead.”
“I can ferry most of you down,” Sepoto said, pulling a flask of sky-blue liquid from his belt pouch. He quickly gulped it down, and as the others watched in amazement, he floated slowly into the air.
“Thrisp, you and Gotr climb aboard,” he said. “I’ll come back for the others once your down.” The two gnomes scrambled onto the goliath’s shoulders.
“There are handholds in the cliff wall,” Samson observed. “Xerxes and I will start climbing. Once we know it’s safe, you can retrieve Anwar, Basil and Marius.” Sepoto nodded, and then soared into the sky above the cove, circling lazily down towards the beach below.
The beach was approximately fifty feet at its widest, and it separated the burning waters of Kraken’s cove from the cliffs to the north. A ten-foot wide cave opened at the base of the northwest cliff, while to the northeast, several planks provided a crude bridge across a tidal pool to a second, smaller cave entrance. The swaths of blood and body parts strewn across the beach testified to a terrible and recent battle. Broken crates and bamboo cages littered the area, blood and bits of bone sprayed across bolts of silk and cracked barrels of ambergris seeped into the coarse, rocky sand. A number of mangled corpses, each stripped nearly clean of flesh, and bones cracked open, lay strewn about the beach. The casualties were staggering, with a quick count putting the dead at nearly twenty. As the trio landed in the shelter of the cliffs, Gotr caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. From the wreckage along the shore emerged three creatures. They may once have been men, but now their gray skin, strangely flopping arms and legs, and the vacant-eyed, vestigial heads hanging from their necks made them anything but. Perhaps worst of all were the creatures’ mouths, cavernous wounds in their twisted faces filled with a writhing landscape of teeth…mouths designed for only one thing…the tearing of flesh from bone. Oddly, they were dressed in the remnants of sailor’s garb, and each clutched a curved scimitar in one hand. They paused as they saw the three figures on the far side of the beach, but then they threw their heads back, shrieked inhumanly, and came charging across the sand.
As the first of the creatures approached, Sepoto snaked his chain out, wrapping it around the loping monster’s ankles, and sending it crashing into the dirt. Gotr brought up his bow and sent an arrow straight into the neck of the next one, but the missile bounced harmlessly off of the thing’s dead, grey skin. Sepoto swung his chain again, slashing into the same one, tearing a large chunk from one of its arms, but on it came. Desperately, Thrisp spoke the words to a spell, sending a bright fan of brilliant colors from his fingers. With any normal creature, the color spray would have temporarily knocked it senseless, but the savage pirates were completely unaffected. The one that Sepoto had tripped sprang nimbly to its feet, and when the goliath struck again, the creature seized the chain in mid-strike, jerking it with a strength that belied its size. Sepoto hadn’t expected this, and when he tried to keep the weapon from being snatched from his hands, he stumbled, sprawling face-first at the feet of the pirate.
“They’re in trouble,” Basil said, gazing down at the battle below.
“You think?” Marius snapped. The war mage rolled up his sleeves, spoke a sharp word, and a barrage of magic missiles streaked towards the beach, striking one of the misanthropes in the back.
“Oh.” Basil said, looking chagrined. “Good idea.” The young wizard loosed his own volley, and was rewarded by the creature’s cries of pain and the frustrated shaking of its fist at the prey it could not reach.
Meanwhile, Samson had made it about three-fourths of the way down the cliff wall, climbing as fast as he dared to come to the aid of his friends. Above him, Xerxes was having trouble. The stocky dwarf’s heavy armor was proving a hindrance, and when he lowered one foot, searching for the next toe-hold, he slipped. The weight of his gear dragged him down, and he tumbled from the cliff top. Samson reflexively reached out as the dwarf fell past him, but the effort caused the dragon shaman to lose his own balance, and he to plummeted, though only for about ten feet. Still, both warriors ended up prone on the beach, mere feet away from the slavering pirates, who turned slowly to gaze at the fresh meat that had fallen into their midst.
Sepoto scrambled to his feet, but the pirate in front of him slashed his shoulder with its scimitar as he rose. Then the creature somersaulted away from the goliath, heading towards Xerxes. Sepoto swung as the thing moved, slashing it again, but still it reached its destination. One of its brethren beat it there, and as the groaning dwarf struggled to sit up, the pirate sank its teeth into his face, tearing loose a flap of hanging flesh. Xerxes eyes went wide, then rolled back into his head as he collapsed back to the sand. The second pirate leaned towards him, preparing to tear his throat out, but another volley of arcane bolts from Marius blew a sizeable hole in the creature’s chest. It collapsed to the ground beside the dwarf, but as it did, it began to dissolve. Unfortunately, both the dwarf and Samson were caught in the spreading pool of acid. Samson quickly rolled to his feet, suffering a glancing bite from the nearest pirate as he did so. The acid burned his flesh, but only superficially. He was horrified, however, to see it slowly eating away at Xerxes’ skin. He didn’t know if the dwarf was dead or alive, but if he still breathed, it wouldn’t be for much longer. Samson leaped at the pirate, beating it with his morningstar at the same time that another blast of missiles, courtesy of Basil, struck the beast.
Sepoto took a step towards Samson, but at that moment, the third pirate leaped onto his back, biting and snapping at his neck. Snarling, the goliath punched at the monster again and again with his chain-wrapped fists until it too collapsed into liquid, drenching the crusader as it did so. Sepoto howled in agony, dropping to the ground and rolling as if he were on fire. Gotr rushed quickly to his side, laying his hands on the thrashing goliath and muttering a brief prayer. Sepoto’s pain eased, and his wounds stopped seeping, but he was still too weak to regain his feet. At that moment, there was a cracking sound, like splitting rock. Then a hail of fist-sized stones erupted out of the air above the last savage pirate. Marius had conjured the barrage, and in seconds the pirate collapsed beneath the miniature avalanche…right next to Xerxes. Once more the dwarf was engulfed in acid, and when Samson saw the bone visible beneath his melted flesh, he knew the brave mercenary was no more.
In the days that followed, a spirit of celebration gripped Tashluta, for a festival was fast approaching, and it was not just any festival…it was Wormfall! This year would be the second such celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the god of worms, Kyuss. In truth, the festival was bittersweet, for when Kyuss fell in the city of Starmantle, over a thousand miles to the north of Tashluta, Starmantle and most of its populace fell with him. Thus was born the Ebon Triad, and the burgeoning worship of the Lord of the End of All Things…Jergal. In fact, many cities throughout Faerun did not mark the anniversary at all, but in Tashluta there truly was reason to celebrate, for in the jungles of Chult lay the Spire of Long Shadows, the former abode of Kyuss. During Kyuss’ rebirth, a small army of undead had erupted from this place of ancient evil, along with several powerful demons known as broodfiends. These creatures had descended on Tashluta, but they were destroyed by a band of powerful adventurers, including one local hero, Tillian Wanderfar, the proprietor of the Plucked Parrot. So it was that the excitement of the festival could be felt throughout Tashluta.
Lavinia Vanderboren, however, was not in a festive mood. Since the revelations about her brother’s involvement in the death of her parents, her mind had been restless. More and more her feelings of sorrow and despair had turned to anger. She wanted Vanthus brought to justice for his crimes. With this in mind, and at Anwar’s urging, she summoned the Legion to her manor once again.
“The information you provided to me indicated that Vanthus and Brissa were journeying to Kraken Cove,” she said once her team was assembled. “There they were to meet a band of pirate smugglers, and this meeting was to occur this week. Perhaps, if you make haste, you might still find my brother there. I want him captured and returned if possible, or put to death if not.” Her eyes were hard as she said this, and her lips were pressed razor-thin.
“I have heard of this place,” Basil spoke up. “It lies some sixty miles west along the coast, on the eastern shore of Blood Bay. It would be a long, grueling journey by land, mostly through trackless swamp. Sea travel would be swifter.”
“Perhaps the Blue Nixie, my love?” Anwar offered helpfully. Lavinia looked pensive for a moment, then nodded decisively.
“An excellent idea, but you’ll have to find a crew to sail her. The Shipwright’s Guild should be able to provide a proper outfit.”
“It’s settled then,” Anwar said. “By sea we should be able to reach Kraken’s Cove in no more than two days. We’ll bring your brother back, my Lady…dead or alive.”
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The Blue Nixie lay at anchor at sunset of the first day out from Tashluta. It had been an uneventful journey up to that point, and the passengers and crew took their ease. Gotr had positioned himself near the wheel, where he could more easily dispense his (unasked for) advice as to proper navigation, while Basil looked on in amusement. Samson and Sepoto busied themselves about the main deck and foc’s’le, lending more appreciated help to the sailors. Meanwhile, Thrisp had taken up residence in the captain’s quarters and was resting in relative comfort, while Marius and Anwar dosed below decks in the private guest cabins. Xerxes wandered through the hold of the ship restlessly. He didn’t like bathing, much less traveling on water by boat. He couldn’t relax, but he certainly did not want to be on deck staring at those endless miles of liquid. He found himself almost missing the sewer tunnels of the Lotus Dragons.
One of the seamen, a sailor by the name of Angus, was on duty in the crow’s nest that evening, and fortunately for the others onboard, the man took his job seriously. Therefore, when the water around the ship began to churn, and slimy, scaled figures began clambering up the sides, Angus was the first to notice, and the first to sound the alarm. Those on deck below instinctively looked up to where Angus was perched, when they should have been looking towards the sea. Thus they found themselves suddenly surrounded by eight humanoids with webbed digits and sharp fangs. They each had long tails, ending in curved fins, and they also bore fins on their arms, backs and heads. Their great, staring eyes were deep black, and they all bore wickedly-barbed tridents.
“Sea Devils!” Angus cried. In point of fact, the creatures were sahuagin, but the sailor’s description was appropriate. The marine predators were marauders, preying on coastal villages and ships alike. They were also merciless, killing all who stood against them, and enslaving all others. Samson knew none of this. He only knew that the creatures had boarded their ship without permission, and obviously bore them no good will. This was enough for the dragon shaman. Pulling his morningstar from his belt, he leapt down the foc’s’le stairs to the main deck, slugging one of the raiders as he reached the bottom. As he moved, a sickly green corona surrounded him, and an acrid odor burned the nostrils of those nearby. The sahuagin began surrounding him. One jabbed with its trident, its tines pricking his chest before he batted it away. As soon as his blood touched the air, it began to sizzle, and the sea devil which had struck him cried out in pain as its own flesh began to blister as well.
Below decks Xerxes heard the alarm and the sounds of battle from above. Quickly he ran to the closed doors of the guest cabins and began hammering on them.
“We’re under attack!” he shouted, and then hustled towards the stairs. Still in their bunks, Anwar and Marius awoke reluctantly, sleep-addled and confused at the noise and mayhem. Blearily they hit the deck, opening their respective doors and peering dazedly at each other, and then at the ceiling above, where the melee raged on.
Gotr crouched behind the wheel as a trio of sahuagin advanced across the quarter deck. The wheelman cowered in abject terror behind him.
“Come on, then ya slimy mackerel snappers!” the gnome snarled. In answer, the marauders raised their weapons to strike, but then the priest spoke a single word which reverberated as loud as a thunderclap. All three of the sahuagin grabbed their ears in agony, and one sagged to its knees, blood leaking from both auricles. Meanwhile, Basil, who had rendered himself invisible when he first saw the raiders, drew a slender wand from his belt and pointed it at Sepoto who was still standing atop the foc’s’le.
“Switcheroo!” he said. The sea devils looked towards the space where the voice had come from, only to see a burly, chain-wrapped goliath suddenly appear out of thin air. Still unseen, but now on the foc’s’le himself, Basil chuckled at his own ingenuity.
As the sahuagin still gaped in horror at its burning arm, Samson struck, smashing the creature’s skull in and then shouldering it over the side. Pivoting where he stood, he caved in the chest of the devil he had already wounded, and it soon joined its mate back in the briny depths. The odds where shifting, but he was still outnumbered three-to-one, and another of the raiders stabbed at him, piercing deeper this time, but suffering the same acidic burn for its effort as its brethren had.
The two sahuagin still standing near Gotr underwent a sudden transformation. Their eyes widened even further, and foam began dripping from their snapping jaws. In a blind frenzy, they flung themselves towards the gnome. Gotr quickly brought up his bow, snapping off one shot at the nearest one before it reached him. At the same time, Sepoto leaped over the wheel housing and crashed into the second raider, bearing it to the deck beneath him. Two quick blows from his chain-shrouded fists ended its rage, and its life. He regained his feet in one fluid motion, spun towards the other sahuagin and looped his chain around its neck from behind, strangling the life out of it.
“I coulda’ taken’im,” Gotr muttered.
Samson was still holding his own, but Basil could see the sea devils moving around to flank the dragon shaman. Quickly the young wizard began casting, and from out of nowhere, a barrage of icy snow balls fell from the sky, pelting two of the sahuagin, bludgeoning them to death. Just then, the door of the captain’s cabin flew open, and Thrisp appeared in the door. He hurled his own spell at the last marauder facing Samson, striking it with a shockwave of power. Staggered, it turned drunkenly towards its new assailant. A fatal mistake, as Samson’s club cracked its neck. The dragon shaman then rushed across the deck, towards where the last sahuagin was regaining its feet behind an unsuspecting Sepoto.
“Watch out!” he shouted, but suddenly the sea devil leaped towards him, stabbing into his shoulder with its trident, and then sinking its teeth into his neck. Abruptly, the creature let go, stumbling back as its mouth began to dissolve. Blood and saliva combined in a gruesome tableau and the sahuagin collapsed to the deck in a jerking heap.
The hatch leading below deck suddenly burst open, revealing Xerxes, Anwar and Marius. The dwarf and the seeker surveyed the carnage in amazement. Anwar just yawned and stretched.
“Wake me when we reach Blood Bay,” he said, heading back towards his cabin.
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The following afternoon, the Blue Nixie rounded the western edge of Blood Bay.
“Here’s where we let’cha off,” the navigator said. “The bay’s full’o reefs. Only a mad man’d try and sail across’er.”
Anwar didn’t argue. Gotr had confirmed this information when he had first viewed the maps of the area. By prior arrangement, the Legion took a longboat to shore, and began making their way on foot around the bay to Kraken’s Cove. The remainder of the day was spent slogging their way through the verdant overgrowth, until finally they reached a small game trail. They were still a mile or more from the cove when they first spotted the plume of smoke coming from that direction.
“I’d say Vanthus beat us here,” Gotr said.
“Yes, but maybe he’s still there, enjoying his plunder,” Anwar answered. “Let’s step it up a bit.”
As they traveled on, they began to notice that something was horribly wrong in this part of the bush. Swaths of dead wildlife, from parrot to gull to monkey to snake, lay scattered across the ground, their bodies horribly distorted and deformed. What few living animals they saw were similarly deformed, and shockingly aggressive. As they watched, a pair of toucans with wickedly serrated beaks and bony protrusions sprouting from their heads, swooped down upon a two-headed ground squirrel, though one of the heads hung lifeless and limp from its neck. In a matter of moments, the birds had ripped the squirrel’s limbs off and disemboweled it, all while it was still alive.
“What in the name of the All Seeing?” Sepoto gasped, horrified. At that moment, a commotion to their right drew their attention. There, a group of four monkeys, their jaws filled with tiny fangs and their bodies covered with open sores from which hooked bonespurs protruded, came swarming out of the trees with alarming speed. Apparently unafraid of humans three-times their size, they ran towards the group, shrieking and howling.
Basil barely had time to react, quickly conjuring a volley of arcane missiles, before the deranged monkeys were among them. One of them leaped at Xerxes, who swung at it while it was still in mid-air with his axe. He connected solidly, and what would have ordinarily cleaved the animal in two instead merely left a deep gouge in its purulent flesh. A second one scrambled up Samson’s back, sinking its teeth into his neck, while a third flung itself at Sepoto. The goliath also connected with his snapping chain, but again, the little monster was barely scathed. Xerxes continued to hack at his assailant, but it kept at him, darting between his legs and nipping at his ankles.
“Duck boy!” Gotr yelled, just as the dwarf turned his back to him. Xerxes heard the twang of the gnome’s bow, but he was too busy trying to evade the crazed simian to react. Instead, he felt the arrow sink deep into his shoulder.
“I don’t need yer help!” he howled.
“I told you to duck,” Gotr sneered.
Samson snatched the monkey from his back, and hurled it to the ground. As it skittered to its feet, he smashed his morning star across its back which cracked in an audible snap. The beast began thrashing about in its death throes, and managed to snap at the dragon shaman’s foot before it finally died. Then something truly incredible and horrifying happened. The creature dissolved into a steaming pool of viscous, yellow fluid. Samson stepped quickly back as the puddle expanded. The putrid smell told him it was caustic. What kind of insanity had happened here, he wondered.
Basil stumbled back from his pursuing assailant, hurling barrage after barrage of missiles. The monkey jumped, but one final volley dropped it back to the ground, where it too began to dissolve. Unfortunately, it happened to fall right at Gotr’s feet. The gnome cursed roundly as his boots began to smoke and sizzle. He didn’t see another of the tiny demons coming towards him, but a combined missile volley from Marius and Basil stopped it dead. Meanwhile, Sepoto put an end to Xerxes opponent with one well placed blow. The dwarf was red-face, both with pain and shame at his inability to stop a single monkey, lunatic though it may have been.
“Something terrible has happened,” Thrisp said as he stared at the acid pools, and the savaged bodies of the local fauna around them, “and I’m afraid Vanthus is behind it.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Anwar said as he started once more down the trail. “Just over this next ridge and we should be able to see the cove.”
He was right. The company cleared the ridge top and found themselves atop a cliff, gazing down upon Kraken Cove some forty feet below. The sight that greeted them was both terrible and tragic. An inferno raged atop the water of the sheltered bay. Several ships, including a two-masted caravel, a sizeable frigate, a long barge, and what might have once been a schooner, were all ablaze. Further out, a three-masted caravel seemed to have escaped the fire for the moment. A shiny slick on the surface of the water itself burned as well, creating a wall of wood and flame. The heat rose in searing sheets, and the roar of the flaming maelstrom mixed with the crashing surf masked any other sounds that might have been issuing up from below. Through periodic gaps in the smoke, however, movement on the beach was visible. Something still lived in the inferno below.
“How we gonna get down there?” Gotr asked. “And do we even want to?”
“We have to,” Thrisp replied. “We have to know what’s happened, and find Vanthus, alive or dead.”
“I can ferry most of you down,” Sepoto said, pulling a flask of sky-blue liquid from his belt pouch. He quickly gulped it down, and as the others watched in amazement, he floated slowly into the air.
“Thrisp, you and Gotr climb aboard,” he said. “I’ll come back for the others once your down.” The two gnomes scrambled onto the goliath’s shoulders.
“There are handholds in the cliff wall,” Samson observed. “Xerxes and I will start climbing. Once we know it’s safe, you can retrieve Anwar, Basil and Marius.” Sepoto nodded, and then soared into the sky above the cove, circling lazily down towards the beach below.
The beach was approximately fifty feet at its widest, and it separated the burning waters of Kraken’s cove from the cliffs to the north. A ten-foot wide cave opened at the base of the northwest cliff, while to the northeast, several planks provided a crude bridge across a tidal pool to a second, smaller cave entrance. The swaths of blood and body parts strewn across the beach testified to a terrible and recent battle. Broken crates and bamboo cages littered the area, blood and bits of bone sprayed across bolts of silk and cracked barrels of ambergris seeped into the coarse, rocky sand. A number of mangled corpses, each stripped nearly clean of flesh, and bones cracked open, lay strewn about the beach. The casualties were staggering, with a quick count putting the dead at nearly twenty. As the trio landed in the shelter of the cliffs, Gotr caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. From the wreckage along the shore emerged three creatures. They may once have been men, but now their gray skin, strangely flopping arms and legs, and the vacant-eyed, vestigial heads hanging from their necks made them anything but. Perhaps worst of all were the creatures’ mouths, cavernous wounds in their twisted faces filled with a writhing landscape of teeth…mouths designed for only one thing…the tearing of flesh from bone. Oddly, they were dressed in the remnants of sailor’s garb, and each clutched a curved scimitar in one hand. They paused as they saw the three figures on the far side of the beach, but then they threw their heads back, shrieked inhumanly, and came charging across the sand.
As the first of the creatures approached, Sepoto snaked his chain out, wrapping it around the loping monster’s ankles, and sending it crashing into the dirt. Gotr brought up his bow and sent an arrow straight into the neck of the next one, but the missile bounced harmlessly off of the thing’s dead, grey skin. Sepoto swung his chain again, slashing into the same one, tearing a large chunk from one of its arms, but on it came. Desperately, Thrisp spoke the words to a spell, sending a bright fan of brilliant colors from his fingers. With any normal creature, the color spray would have temporarily knocked it senseless, but the savage pirates were completely unaffected. The one that Sepoto had tripped sprang nimbly to its feet, and when the goliath struck again, the creature seized the chain in mid-strike, jerking it with a strength that belied its size. Sepoto hadn’t expected this, and when he tried to keep the weapon from being snatched from his hands, he stumbled, sprawling face-first at the feet of the pirate.
“They’re in trouble,” Basil said, gazing down at the battle below.
“You think?” Marius snapped. The war mage rolled up his sleeves, spoke a sharp word, and a barrage of magic missiles streaked towards the beach, striking one of the misanthropes in the back.
“Oh.” Basil said, looking chagrined. “Good idea.” The young wizard loosed his own volley, and was rewarded by the creature’s cries of pain and the frustrated shaking of its fist at the prey it could not reach.
Meanwhile, Samson had made it about three-fourths of the way down the cliff wall, climbing as fast as he dared to come to the aid of his friends. Above him, Xerxes was having trouble. The stocky dwarf’s heavy armor was proving a hindrance, and when he lowered one foot, searching for the next toe-hold, he slipped. The weight of his gear dragged him down, and he tumbled from the cliff top. Samson reflexively reached out as the dwarf fell past him, but the effort caused the dragon shaman to lose his own balance, and he to plummeted, though only for about ten feet. Still, both warriors ended up prone on the beach, mere feet away from the slavering pirates, who turned slowly to gaze at the fresh meat that had fallen into their midst.
Sepoto scrambled to his feet, but the pirate in front of him slashed his shoulder with its scimitar as he rose. Then the creature somersaulted away from the goliath, heading towards Xerxes. Sepoto swung as the thing moved, slashing it again, but still it reached its destination. One of its brethren beat it there, and as the groaning dwarf struggled to sit up, the pirate sank its teeth into his face, tearing loose a flap of hanging flesh. Xerxes eyes went wide, then rolled back into his head as he collapsed back to the sand. The second pirate leaned towards him, preparing to tear his throat out, but another volley of arcane bolts from Marius blew a sizeable hole in the creature’s chest. It collapsed to the ground beside the dwarf, but as it did, it began to dissolve. Unfortunately, both the dwarf and Samson were caught in the spreading pool of acid. Samson quickly rolled to his feet, suffering a glancing bite from the nearest pirate as he did so. The acid burned his flesh, but only superficially. He was horrified, however, to see it slowly eating away at Xerxes’ skin. He didn’t know if the dwarf was dead or alive, but if he still breathed, it wouldn’t be for much longer. Samson leaped at the pirate, beating it with his morningstar at the same time that another blast of missiles, courtesy of Basil, struck the beast.
Sepoto took a step towards Samson, but at that moment, the third pirate leaped onto his back, biting and snapping at his neck. Snarling, the goliath punched at the monster again and again with his chain-wrapped fists until it too collapsed into liquid, drenching the crusader as it did so. Sepoto howled in agony, dropping to the ground and rolling as if he were on fire. Gotr rushed quickly to his side, laying his hands on the thrashing goliath and muttering a brief prayer. Sepoto’s pain eased, and his wounds stopped seeping, but he was still too weak to regain his feet. At that moment, there was a cracking sound, like splitting rock. Then a hail of fist-sized stones erupted out of the air above the last savage pirate. Marius had conjured the barrage, and in seconds the pirate collapsed beneath the miniature avalanche…right next to Xerxes. Once more the dwarf was engulfed in acid, and when Samson saw the bone visible beneath his melted flesh, he knew the brave mercenary was no more.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
