Raiders of the Overreach

ADVENTURE 27: THE SHATTERED HOURGLASS

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 9 July 2020

- - -

"This is taking forever," grumbled Khari Hammerslammer from the back of the wagon. "How's anybody all the way out here gonna be able to help us?" It had been four days of travel through the pass around the Desolate Waste, during which time the group had seen a small village or two but not much in the way of neighboring kingdoms they might be able to sway to join the alliance to aid Greenvale.

"The Greenvale drow wouldn't have sent us on a fool's errand," pointed out Marlo. "If they thought it was worth our while to travel this distance, there's got to be potential allies out this way. Plus," she added, "Dracovania was at least this far away from Greenvale, just in the other direction."

"Seems longer," grumbled Khari. Part of the problem might have been the bleakness of the terrain, given they were skirting the edge of a vast wasteland of bare desert.

"Sea!" called Jhasspok suddenly from the back of the wagon, raising his head and opening his reptilian nostrils wide.

"See what?" asked Khari, looking around for what had piqued the lizardfolk's interest this time. Probably some new feature of the surface world that wasn't present in the Underdark, and thus was something the lifelong slave had never seen before. Khari was getting tired of explaining every new plant, animal, and insect they encountered to Jhasspok; plus, the lizardfolk frequently mixed up the stuff they'd already explained to him. Just yesterday, the foolish reptile had tried telling them he'd been stung by a daisy and it had taken Marlo several minutes to get straight in his head which one was a daisy and which one was a bee.

"I can smell the sea!" Jhasspok insisted. "Like the Bioluminescent Sea back home, but a little different."

"I wouldn't call the Overreach 'back home,' Jhasspok," chided Cramer at the front of the wagon. "With any luck, it'll just be your former home and none of us will need to ever see it again." But then the horse-drawn wagon went over a hill and sure enough, there was a sea - or possibly an ocean; Cramer had no maps of the area by which to reference - in the distance up ahead.

As the road brought them closer to the edge of the water, the slaves could see a pair of buildings by a pier stretching out into the water. There was a group of five children playing in the sand, alternately heading towards the water and running back screaming in delight up the beach as they were chased by waves. But when they noticed the horse-drawn wagon and its five inhabitants, their screams changed from delight to terror and they fled into the water.

"Land sahuagin!" one cried out in the Aquan language, grabbing a smaller child and pulling her into the waves with her. Cramer translated to the others what she'd said, having had it deciphered for him by the helm of comprehend languages he wore.

"What's a--" Jhassok began to ask, but Cramer cut him off. "You are," he said. "Or at, least they think you are."

"A sahuagin is kind of like a lizardfolk who lives in the sea," Marlo explained. "They're said to eat people. That's why they're afraid of you." Jhasspok frowned in puzzlement, trying to decide what was so inherently wrong about eating people. Sure, he wouldn't go out of his way to kill someone just because he was hungry, but if a person was already dead and their meat was just lying there not being used....

"Running into th' water like that's not very smart," Utred exclaimed. "Fool kids c'n get themselves hurt, or drowned."

A woman in gray robes exited one of the buildings, having heard the screaming. She turned to face the five strangers and her eyes suddenly went all white, the pupils seeming to fade away to nothing. Cramer recognized the effect; she was likely employing some sort of divination spell to detect whether they were evil, or undead, or perhaps magical in nature. Besides the all-white eyes, the woman's face was quite distinctive, with red, flamelike runes tattooed upon her cheeks and neck.

The woman shook her head as if waking from a trance and called out, "Please - I must speak with you! Come with me into the inn, if you will." Her eyes returned to their normal state, a deep emerald green that contrasted the red of her hair.

"What about them kids?" Utred asked.

The woman smiled. "They will be fine," she assured the dwarf. "The ocean is their natural environment."

"What's an--" began Jhasspok, but Utred cut him off. "An ocean's the same as the sea," he said. Jhasspok just nodded sagely to himself; he'd encountered multiple words meaning the same thing before, like "wolf" and "dog" or "food" and "meat."

Once inside, the woman introduced herself. "My name is Lauren," she said, which prompted the five slaves to each introduce themselves. Then Lauren explained about her tattoos.

"Some 32 years ago - I was but 5 years old at the time - an evil wizard experimented upon me. I come from a sorcerous bloodline, which prompted him to try to transmute my familial power into a source of prophetic visions."

"That's terrible!" commiserated Marlo, herself a sorcerer who drew her arcane power from her family's bloodline - which, she'd recently come to find out, included a red dragon somewhere back in her family tree. "And the tattoos - that was part of the experiment?" She also knew quite well what it was like to be tattooed against her will, as did each of her four companions, for each wore the House Jalamir emblem tattooed upon their backs.

"Yes," Lauren replied. "And the experiment was a success, for what it's worth: I am unable to cast any spells but those of the divination spell school. When I first saw you approach, I had a prophetic vision: I saw you five, quite clearly, freeing the Mithral Mage from a place of molten metal. The two dwarves looked particularly uncomfortable being there, it seemed." she said, indicating Khari and Utred. "Although our reasons for doing so are likely quite different, it seems we all have the same goal in mind. I'd like you to join with the Seekers of Eternity to help us both to achieve that goal."

"Seekers of Eternity?" Cramer asked. He'd never heard of them.

"The group to which I belong," Lauren explained. She pulled back her hair and turned her back to the group, exposing the nape of her neck to them - and the tattoo of a shattered hourglass, laying upon its side.

"We've seen that tattoo before," observed Marlo. "Remember? That fighter helping the mind flayer with his Cult of Eternal Bliss had a tattoo on the back of her neck, just like this one."

"I am unaware of this 'Cult of Eternal Bliss,'" admitted Lauren. "But the Seekers of Eternity have several different factions, all seeking the same goal - to escape the forces of death, so we may live forever. Just think of all the good we could do without the fear of death hanging over our heads our whole lives!"

"How does this Mithral Mage fit into all this?" Cramer asked. The prophecy they'd received about him was he was one way of three the Dying One could be stopped forever; apparently, he knew of some means by which to imprison the Elder God's severed head forever, in such a way even He couldn't escape. Of course, the Mithral Mage was currently imprisoned himself - in Hell no less, apparently. That didn't say much about his qualifications as a good person, although it was entirely possible he hadn't earned himself a place in Hell after death through his actions while living his life so much as having been kidnapped and imprisoned there while still alive.

"He is the founder of the Seekers of Eternity," Lauren replied. "It was his vision that first set us all on this path, to overcome Death forever."

"We're not talking liches or vampires or anything, are we?" Cramer asked warily. He had no use for the undead.

"No, no, of course not - that's not really life," Lauren replied. "Our experiments are of an alchemical nature, trying to recreate the potions of longevity that were apparently once quite common."

"Well, we're on a quest of our own," Marlo said, briefly explaining their own mission to try to gain allies against the Overreach drow army that would rise up to attack Greenvale in less than two months. "Do you think your Seekers of Eternity group could help us?"

"Very possibly," Lauren replied. "My grandfather, Arcturus, is a high-ranking member of the Seekers. We should go to him; he'd be well suited to get you the help you need - and if you're involved in freeing the Mithral Mage, I'm sure the Seekers would aid you in any way they could."

"Does he live far from here?" Khari asked. He was hoping the answer wouldn't involve another half-dozen days in the wagon explaining things to a curious Jhasspok.

"He lives in the Azure Glade," Lauren explained, which was no explanation at all to the five strangers. "It's a kingdom to the east of Durnhill, the kingdom this area - Yondall's Bay - is a part of. But Durnhill is the land of the minions of the evil wizard who cursed me with these tattoos and I fear they are still trying to hunt me down. We'd be best off skirting to Ashfall to the north of Durnhill or Ossirna to the south and heading to the Azure Glade that way. It's probably about three and a half, maybe four days of travel, all told." Khari sighed in weary acceptance.

"Do you think you could sketch us out a map?" asked Cramer.

"Certainly." That set the gnome cleric's mind at ease; he liked having maps to refer to whenever possible.

"So if we escort you to get safely to your grandfather, he'll be able to help us fight off the Overreach drow armies?" Marlo reiterated.

"I'm sure of it," Lauren replied. "The Seekers' ranks are filled with powerful wizards of all types, and quite a few clerics as well. And the Azure Glade is run by a Council of Guilds containing plenty of both." Marlo and Cramer exchanged hopeful looks; perhaps this alliance would be easier than it had seemed at first! And the greater distance would mean little to powerful spellcasters who could likely teleport their allies to Greenvale in no time at all.

At Lauren's suggestion, they decided to head south to Ossirna rather than north to Ashfall. Utred passed over his hat of disguise, suggesting Lauren wear it if she was being hunted by the minions of the evil wizard who had forcibly altered her bloodline powers to become a divinatory source. "I like makin' meself a copy of Cramer," the dwarf admitted, pointing a meaty thumb to the gnomish cleric of Fharlanghn climbing up into the driver's seat of the wagon. The children had advanced cautiously back upon the beach as the five slaves spent time inside the inn talking to Lauren, but once Jhasspok stepped back outside they went screaming back into the ocean.

"What are they, anyway?" asked Khari. "Sea sprites?"

"Merfolk children, actually," replied Lauren.

"What? Impossible!"

"They have magic belts that transform their fishlike tails into legs when on land," Lauren explained, plopping Utred's magic hat on her head and altering her appearance to become Cramer's duplicate. Her offhand comment got Jhasspok's interest, though: fish tails? He liked fish tails! He looked longingly at the children diving into the waves, not seeing any evidence of fish tails at all.

Marlo tied the customary rope around her ankle and used her boots of levitation to rise forty feet into the sky, confident that Utred would keep his end wrapped around his forearm so she wouldn't get left behind. Truffles poked out of a pocket of her robes, apparently enjoying the view. Then Cramer snapped the reins and the horse drew the wagon away from the pier. Jhasspok looked hungrily for any fish-tailed children, but they had vanished once again beneath the waves.

The next half hour passed quietly, interspersed only with the occasional query from Jhasspok. Then Marlo called down from her aerial perch: "Humanoid cloud approaching!"

Everyone looked to where she was pointing, and sure enough, a cloud was drifting down from the sky at a rather rapid pace, its form somewhat humanoid in appearance. "Do clouds normally do that?" Jhasspok asked - he seriously didn't know, as clouds were well outside his normal area of experience. There were no clouds in the Underdark.

"Definitely not!" replied Utred, pulling free his Elderwood flaming longsword and standing up in the cart, ready to leap down or fend off an attack.

The cloud shape lowered itself down to just above the level of the people in the wagon. In a wispy voice, it whispered, "Where is the spy? Hand over the spy!" It held one arm back, ready to strike if anyone tried to attack. Khari couldn't help but notice this cloud-shape was easily twice the height of a human, even a full-sized one (as Marlo was significantly shorter than the norm for her race).

Lifting his earthglide warhammer and activating its power, Khari leaped off the far side of the wagon and disappeared below the surface of the earth. He ran forward, beneath the wagon, beneath the horse, beneath the air elemental hovering before the frightened horse, and rose up behind the floating cloud-mass. He readied his weapon to strike.

Jhasspok tried a different tactic, one that made perfect sense to the lizardfolk: if this cloud person was going to try to get its nebulous hands on this "spy," he'd give it a target to focus upon. He leaped off the other side of the wagon, running away and leaping onto the nearby stump of an old tree, where he spun in place and faced the air elemental. Then, magic battleaxe in hand, he called out, "Here I am! I am the spy!" He had to stifle a hissing laugh at the cleverness of his scheme; no sense in giving away the ruse!

Cramer cast a true seeing spell, figuring the air elemental had probably been summoned by a spellcaster and wanting to ensure said spellcaster wasn't right there among them, hidden behind an invisibility spell. He looked around with his magically-enhanced sight but the only thing he saw that wasn't as it appeared was Lauren, whose true form was revealed behind her "Cramer Appleknocker knock-off" form.

Marlo lowered herself from her aerial vantage point, noting as she did so a bit of movement from further down a clearing between the trees of the forest flanking the road. One was a lithe figure in dark robes, his or her head covered in a hood that obscured any facial features. The other was more easily identifiable: a halfling woman in dark leather armor astride a riding dog. As she had a better view of the halfling, Marlo made her the target of the empowered magic missile spell she hurled and was pleased to see the apparent rogue topple from her canine mount, hitting the ground with a senseless thud. Whether she was dead or merely unconscious Marlo couldn't tell, but either way it looked like she was out of the fight for now. The sorcerer dropped onto the overhanging branch of a tree beside the road on which the group had been traveling, deeming it a suitable perch from which to continue to contribute to the combat at hand.

Khari got a surprise when he swung his warhammer at the air elemental: you can't really sneak up behind something whose "front" and "back" are readily interchangeable! His blow went wide as the air elemental easily dodged away, but so too did its counter-strike with an arm made of whirling winds.

Unseen behind a clump of trees, a water elemental - the same height as the air elemental, although sporting a broader overall build - rose up from a creek and readied itself to dive into combat with any who might approach it. At least it hoped a foe would approach, for otherwise it meant trudging up onto land and fighting from there, where it was at a distinct disadvantage.

Utred charged from the wagon to the air elemental, screaming a battle cry as he brought his flaming blade through the winds making up the elemental's airy form. But at the same time another elemental, this one made of dirt and rocks, rose up from the ground and attacked Khari from behind for the effrontery of trespassing onto its domain; never before in the earth elemental's experience had it seen a dwarf or a member of any other mortal race earth glide in the manner normally reserved for creatures from the Elemental Plane of Earth. Khari was struck on both sides of the head by a pair of massive, boulderlike fists, causing the clanging of his metal helmet to ring in his ears.

Lauren, hampered by her tattoos into only being able to cast divination spells, knew her spellcasting abilities were all but useless in a fight, so she picked up the light crossbow she kept for emergencies and fired a bolt at the air elemental. The bolt hit true, but then swirled around and around inside the elemental's body until it was flung away to the side; it was difficult to see whether the weapon had had any effect at all, for despite their particular element, these creatures didn't bleed. But the air elemental didn't seem fazed at all by the attack, ignoring the bolt completely as it slammed its wind-fists at Utred, battering the dwarven barbarian with the fury of its attacks.

Khari whirled in place and sent his warhammer slamming into the side of the earth elemental, feeling this was a more worthy foe than a creature made up entirely of air. At least he had the satisfaction of seeing clumps of dirt and rocks cascade from the elemental's body at the point of impact of the dwarven fighter's weapon.

Jhasspok, standing upon the tree stump, was puzzled as to why his brilliant scheme hadn't worked and the air elemental hadn't focused its attacks upon him. Giving a mental shrug - after all, there was so much of this surface world that didn't make sense to the lizardfolk - he sprang towards the air elemental, bringing his battleaxe crashing down into its body in an overhead swing. If the silly thing wouldn't come to Jhasspok, then Jhasspok would have to go to it.

Back behind most of the action, Carl whined at his halfling rider's unconscious form and did his best to lick Orion back to wakefulness. The robed figure, Daleth, ran over to her side and pulled two items from his robes. The first of these was a reddish gem, which he tossed to the ground and then pointed at the wagon when a Large fire elemental rose up from the shattered gem, indicating the targets the flame-beast was to attack. The second item was a potion of cure light wounds, which he unstoppered and gently poured down the halfling's throat.

Cramer cast a shield of faith spell upon Utred, firmly believing the ounce of prevention it caused - in making it that much more difficult to deal any damage to the battle-crazed barbarian - was worth the pound of cure after the fact in the form of healing spells. Marlo, in the meantime, saw the fire elemental approaching from behind the trees and realized she had an opportunity to catch both it and the earth elemental in a single lightning bolt spell, as they were so nice as to line up for her. The blast seemed to cause both elementals no small amount of pain. But off to the fire elemental's right, Marlo spotted the water elemental crawling up onto land, muttering to itself in Aquan about the indignity of having to fight on solid ground.

The earth elemental struck at Utred while the barbarian's attention was focused upon the air elemental; with a curse, he brought his Elderwood flaming longsword crashing into the rocky body of this new foe. The fire elemental moved up but was still out of range to join the fracas at once; the crackling of its flames alerted the others to its presence, however. The air elemental continued swinging its fists at Khari, another of Lauren's crossbow bolts hitting its body and being blown off to the side.

Khari took a moment to apprise the situation with the air and earth elementals. It was hard to tell with the air elemental, but the earth elemental's humanoid form was looking fairly damaged, with large divots missing from its arms, legs, and torso where he and Utred had struck it with their weapons. So, judging it to being closer to being destroyed than the air elemental, he brought his warhammer crashing into the earth-beast's side, sending dirt and pebbles flying from the force of his blow. Jhasspok was there to take up any slack in attacking the air elemental, bringing his battleaxe swinging into its body and instinctively snapping at the thing with his sharp teeth; the lizardfolk wasn't really surprised to learn that air elementals don't really taste like anything at all.

Cramer cast a spiritual weapon spell, sending the force-quarterstaff thus formed crashing into the earth elemental's head. Marlo slew the earth elemental and further damaged the fire elemental with a second lightning bolt spell; the fire elemental had taken quite a bit of damage now without having even gotten to land a blow of its own!

By now the water elemental had reached its foes and decided it wasn't going to play the fool's game by fighting these landbound foes in their own element; rather, he'd snatch one up and drag him back to be drowned in the creek. He grabbed at Khari, hoping to snatch him up and cart him away, but the fighter was too fast for him, sending his warhammer crashing into the elemental's hand and splashing it away, to soak the nearby ground. By the time the elemental had redistributed its mass to reform a new hand, the dwarf had shuffled off to the side and was out of reach. Bother!

With another roar of rage, Utred charged into the air elemental, his flaming blade cutting through its airy body to unknown effect. Lauren shot another crossbow bolt at the thing, this time targeting its head, but was unsure if the new target location had had any effect.

Orion sputtered and sat up, coughing. "I thought the spy was supposed to be traveling alone!" she complained. "Who are all those other guys?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea," Daleth replied. "But they seem to be way out of our league; I doubt if there is much more we can add to the fight. Best we report back what we know to Skevros - he may have further thoughts about how to capture this Lauren person." Their decision made, Orion crawled back up onto Carl's saddle and the trio turned about and went back the way they had come, retreating back to the Durnhill capital city.

The fire elemental brought a swinging fist crashing down upon Khari's head, leaving behind wisps of flame burning along his armor. But then the air elemental changed tactics, spinning its body into a virtual whirlwind and flying directly at Utred, Cramer, Jhasspok, and Khari in turn. It tried battering each foe and lifting them up into the air to be flung about, but while it did manage to deal some damage to the little gnome none of the heroes was lifted about as it had intended.

Khari ignored the howling winds suddenly buffeting his body and brought his warhammer swinging into the water elemental's body, causing a splash of water to go spraying out the creature's back and moisten the surrounding dirt, making small puddles of mud. But that wasn't all: there was a fish flopping around on the ground all of a sudden; with sudden amazement, Jhasspok realized the water elemental's liquid body contained a fish or two from the creek-waters in which it had been formed. This immediately made the water elemental the most interesting foe the lizardfolk had ever seen and he refocused his attention accordingly.

Cramer finished off the air elemental with a sound burst spell; he'd known there was little chance of actually stunning an elemental but he was counting on the sonic damage being enough to take it out - and he'd been quite correct. Better yet, the fire elemental was close enough to the spell's target point to likewise take some damage.

From her tree-branch perch, Marlo looked down at the remaining combatants: a fire elemental and a water elemental, each about the same size and neither one giving much of an indication of how much damage it had taken or how weak it was. So she chose her target based upon the spells she had available and cast an empowered scorching ray spell at the water elemental, realizing fire was likely a weakness to it whereas the fire elemental was most likely completely immune. She couldn't help the satisfied smirk from crossing her face when the water elemental, being hit by two separate rays of pure flame, boiled away into nothingness.

Jhasspok, in the meantime, couldn't help the satisfied smirk from crossing his reptilian muzzle when he saw the fish swimming around inside the water elemental's form were not only laying there on the ground waiting to be claimed, but had also apparently been boiled as well. Jhasspok was no purist; he was perfectly fine with eating raw fish but had no qualms against eating fish that had been cooked, as the mammals of his group seemed to prefer.

Utred dropped his longsword, the green flames extinguishing once the weapon left his grip, and pulled the greataxe from his back, realizing it was a more suitable weapon when fighting a fire elemental. His trusty axe-blade went slicing into the blazing elemental's form as the flame-beast swatted at him in turn with a massive arm. Jhasspok was close enough to the elemental to be struck by a flaming limb as well; fortunately, as his scales were engulfed in flames, there was a convenient patch of muddy earth right there to drop into. Jhasspok rolled around in the mud, dousing the flames coating his body, and grabbing up the boiled fish as long as he was right there.

Khari finished the fire elemental off shortly thereafter with a series of blows from his warhammer, the final swing extinguishing the flame-beast like a blown-out candle.

"Anybody need healing?" Cramer offered, now that the battle seemed to be over. Marlo, seeing Jhasspok's muddy form, sent him over to the creek to wash off before she'd allow him back into the wagon; that was perfectly fine with the lizardfolk, who took the opportunity to hunt down an extra fish or two while he was in there getting his scales cleaned.

Then, once Cramer had attended to everyone's wounds, the group gathered back into the wagon and the gnome sent the horse back on its way south, towards the border of Ossirna.

"Do you guys get into scrapes like this very often?" Lauren asked.

"Yeah, fairly often," Utred replied. "But we're all still alive. It'll take more than a bunch of elementals to take us out!"

- - -

This adventure took place during the same span of time where, in the "Durnhill Conscripts" campaign, Galen, Kaspar, and Syngaard were attempting to steal a copy of a book about the Mithral Mage from the Diviners' Library in the Azure Glade. During that Wednesday night session, neither Vicki nor Joey had showed up (they were off doing other things), so neither of their PCs went on that mission. And now we know why: Skevros had sent them on a mission to try to track down Lauren, aided by four one-time-use elemental gems that summoned forth Large elementals.

Incidentally, Logan wasn't pulling any punches with Orion and Daleth; while they were 4th-level at that point in time and our (current campaign) PCs are all 9th level, had we managed to kill either of them their deaths would have been canonical; in Logan's mind, a death during this adventure (and subsequent return to life via raise dead, naturally) would actually help explain why they lagged behind in level from the other three PCs. (The out-of-game explanation, or course, being than neither Dan, Harry, nor I ever missed a session of our Durnhill campaign, while Vicki and Joey were frequent absentees, especially in the beginning months.) But Marlo's empowered magic missile spell dropped Orion immediately to -3 hp, knocking her out but not killing her, and giving Daleth enough time to administer some much-needed healing in potion form.

It's entirely possible we may be seeing either or both of them in upcoming adventures in this campaign.

ADVENTURE 28: DEATH MARSH

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 16 July 2020

- - -

The road being traversed by the horse-drawn wagon on its southward journey was starting to look more like a trail, and at times a rather faint one at that. Progress slowed as the forest environment became more and more swampy and eventually, as the sun started to go down, the group called it a night and set up the ironsilk tent by the side of the trail - a patch of dry land large enough to accommodate the dimensions of the tent but little else. The horse was unhitched, fed, and tethered by a rope long enough to allow it some movement.

It was a relatively quiet evening. The next morning the group made a quick breakfast of trail rations and got back on their way. (Jhasspok was saddened but not entirely surprised when Lauren turned down his kind offer of a dried dung beetle; he'd figured out by now that there was probably something wrong with mammals' taste buds or something - likely to do with their ridiculously flat-tipped teeth.) Cramer took up the reins and they were off, skirting Durnhill - the kingdom from where the forces trying to capture Lauren hailed - and making for the southern kingdom of Ossirna, where Marlo would make her pitch for an alliance against the Overreach drow before heading back northeast to get to the Azure Glade, the land where Lauren's grandfather, Arcturus, was an important wizard in their Council of Guilds.

It was slow going, with several false starts and having to backtrack more than once; eventually, Jhasspok started scouting ahead and finding out in advance whether the horse and wagon would make it down a particular path or if they needed to find an alternate route. The lizardfolk was of two minds about the swampy terrain: on the one hand, it was good to be in water again, but this was like no water Jhasspok had ever seen before - it was muddy, and murky, and you couldn't see very far through it. All in all, it just served to make him homesick for the Bioluminescent Sea of the Underdark.

Jhasspok had just ambled back from scouting once again to give directions to Cramer when they heard a scream off to the side, along a different path than the one the lizardfolk had checked out. Without hesitation, Cramer pulled on the reins and sent the horse trotting down this new path, heading toward the sounds of the screams. The cleric cast a longstrider spell upon himself, anticipating the need to be able to keep up with the others once they were all on foot.

It wasn't long before the group approached the screaming woman and it became perfectly understandable why she'd been doing so: she was down on the ground, doing her best to keep a hungry manticore at bay. It was obviously trying to begin eating her before even bothering to go to all the trouble of slaying her first; she was doing everything in her power to wriggle away, but from what the group by the wagon could see she didn't appear to even have a weapon with her - or if she had, it had apparently been knocked away and was likely somewhere in the shallow marsh water.

While the others were grabbing up their weapons or bringing combat spells to the forefront of their brains, Khari Hammerslammer was looking up at the clouds - or rather, at one particularly low-hanging one which seemed to hover just above the treetops. "That's a weird-looking cloud," he observed. "I wonder why it's so low?"

"Might've been somebody she was traveling with, who escaped using gaseous form," Cramer guessed.

"What, that big of a cloud?" scoffed Khari. But Cramer was no longer paying attention to him and Khari turned his attention to the matter at hand, for the gnome was bringing the horse to a halt (no sense in letting it get eaten by the manticore - it would make for a much better meal than a scrawny human woman) and the others were jumping off the wagon. Khari did likewise, sprinting forward and taking up a defensive position, calling at the manticore to "come get some from someone who could fight back!"

Before everyone got too far away, Cramer cast a water walk spell on those of the group still within range (Khari was already too far away and Lauren was staying in the wagon as she'd been told), thinking that would at least prevent them from being dragged underwater or stepping into an unseen hole or something. Utred raced across the shallow waters, charging straight for the manticore with his greataxe out and ready. He powered a swing right at the thing's head - a surprisingly dwarven-looking head, Utred thought, ringed with a lionlike mane that looked rather like the barbarian's own unkempt hair and beard. Five magic missiles went streaking past Utred's shoulder to strike the manticore in a pattern hitting the side of his head, his shoulder, and his batlike left wing. The beast roared in pain from both attacks.

Jhasspok followed suit with a charge of his own but his was not as successful, for halfway through his sprint he was distracted by the fact his feet weren't touching the water but rather hovering an inch or so above the surface. What in the world? As a result, his swing went wide and the manticore pulled his right wing back in time to avoid Jhasspok's battleaxe altogether.

Still, the creature was bleeding profusely from Utred's deep cut and wounded by Marlo's magic missiles; snarling in fury, he lashed out with both sets of forepaws and snapped his vicious teeth at Jhasspok. Fortunately, by then the lizardfolk had overcome his surprise at the water walk effect he was experiencing for the first time in his short life and was back to paying attention to the life-or-death fight in which he was currently engaged; as a result, he was able to get his shield up in time to fend off the manticore's attacks.

And then the woman lying in the mud, apparently bleeding from having been bitten several times by the manticore, stepped purposefully to her feet, showing no signs of discomfort whatsoever...and dropped the illusory disguise making her appear like a hapless human victim of the vicious winged monster that had been savaging her. Now, her illusion abandoned, she showed herself for what she truly was: an annis hag, 8 feet of hunched crone with claws capable of ripping a victim's entire face right off its skull.

Jhasspok happened to be closest to the annis so he became the hag's first target. Striking out with her wicked claws, she ripped through the lizardfolk's scales before he even realized she was a threat, as his attention had been focused solely on the manticore and his back had been turned to her. Jhasspok hissed in pain, whirling around to face this new threat and simultaneous wondering where this tall, ugly woman had come from and what had ever happened to the younger woman the manticore had been attacking.

Following the cue of their leader that the time for subterfuge was now past, the two harpy archers dropped down out of their obscuring fog cloud spell and both shot at Cramer before flapping back up into the protective vapors. Cramer arched his back in pain as both arrows hit him between the shoulder blades, the pain of their piercing intensified by the infusion of incredible cold they shot into the little gnome's wounds.

Khari, however, hadn't yet noticed the harpies; he was rushing up to strike the manticore since the fool thing hadn't come to him. Racing through the water, splashing with every step as he was not under the effects of a water walk spell, he brought his warhammer crashing into the side of the manticore's head with every ounce of force he could muster behind it. There was a loud snap! as the weapon caved in the side of the manticore's oversize skull and the bearded beast collapsed into a heap in the shallow waters of the swamp.

Once again the harpies dropped out of their cloud and attacked, this time splitting their shots between Marlo and Cramer and hitting each with a frost arrow, for they had identified these two as potential spellcasters and wanted them out of the way first. Cramer hadn't even had time yet to try to heal the wounds from their first attack; now, it was all he could do to activate his ring of invisibility and stagger a bit away, so the harpies wouldn't know exactly where he was and would have a hard time shooting him again - and he was glad he'd had the foresight to cast the water walk spell, for by hovering just above the swamp waters he wasn't giving away his position. Marlo followed suit, casting an invisibility spell upon herself, then activating her boots of levitation to elevate herself a good 30 feet high; it had the same effect, for now the harpies would have to either guess her location or go shoot at somebody else for a while.

Utred attacked the annis with his greataxe - she was right there and his axe was better suited for ground combat; he didn't want to have to switch to a ranged weapon to try to take out one of the harpies. The hag grunted in pain as his blade struck true, but she looked to still have plenty of fight left in her. She expertly dodged Jhasspok's battleaxe, but then he did the same against her counterattack with her claws, now that he was aware of her. Khari moved away from the manticore's corpse and added his warhammer to the fight against the annis.

"Get down here and give me a hand, you cowards!" the annis called out in the Giant language, which Cramer understood perfectly well as he wore his helm of comprehend languages. The harpies reluctantly complied, dropping back down out of their fog cloud again and targeting the dwarves attacking their leader, while Cramer staggered up behind Utred and cast a magic circle against evil spell, hopefully protecting the gnome and both dwarves and maybe even the lizardfolk. It was too hard for Cramer to figure out the distances involved; he'd have to see to his own healing before he passed out....

Utred's greataxe went biting into the annis hag again, causing her to shriek with pain. Marlo cast an empowered magic missile spell at one of the harpies, since they'd conveniently stayed down out of their fog cloud for a bit and this was the first real opportunity she'd had to target one of them. (Plus, there were already a trio of her friends piled on the annis; Marlo was pretty sure between the three of them they'd be able to take her out.) Jhasspok proved Marlo's unvoiced assertion correct soon thereafter, bringing down the annis with a powerful overhand strike from his battleaxe, cutting deep into her black heart and slaying her on her feet; he barely had enough time to tug his weapon out of her corpse before she collapsed into the dark, brackish marsh waters and lay still.

Holding his breath as always when he performed this maneuver, Khari used the power of his earth glide warhammer to disappear beneath the surface of the ground, then sprinted into position before popping back up where he wanted to be: directly behind one of the harpies, who'd had to fly down low to get in her latest bow-shot against the dwarves. Cramer, still invisible, took the opportunity to activate the power of his prayer bead, casting a cure serious wounds spell upon himself. The arrows popped out of his back and back into visibility as he cast the pre-set spell from the prayer bead; fortunately, they sank below the surface of the ankle-deep water and were out of view almost immediately and the little gnome suspected neither of the harpies, in the midst of battle, had even noticed. His position was likely safe, then, which was good - he was too tired to move at the moment.

Utred spun in place and charged the second harpy as she was fitting another frost arrow from the quiver at her hip; the dwarf imagined an over-the-shoulder quiver would be problematic for a creature with the upper body of a woman but a pair of eagle's wings growing out of her shoulders. He caught her with the edge of his blade even as she scrambled to flap backwards out of range.

Marlo repeated her empowered magic missile strategy, once again targeting the harpy currently about to be struck from behind by Khari. Jhasspok attacked that same harpy; history had shown that no matter what Utred was fighting, he usually didn't need much help. Then, reeling from the lizardfolk's attack and Marlo's magic missiles, the harpy was nearly slain by Khari's unexpected attack: how in the Hell did that damned dwarf get behind her? She dropped to the ground and took an involuntary step to the side, nearly bumping into a tree, and saw she was now facing down a hulking lizardfolk and a hammer-wielding dwarf, both intent upon her death. She didn't have time to fit another arrow to her longbow, for they'd be upon her before she could wield her bow and she could only target one of the two in either case.

So she began to sing.

As ugly as the harpy might be (and make no mistake, these two harpies had been vying with their annis hag leader for the coveted "Most Hideous Inhabitant of the Sanguine Swamp" title), her song was quite captivating: a beautiful, trilling burst of music quite at odds with her bestial appearance. With any luck, she'd have the entire gang of enemies dropping out of combat and then she and her sister could pick them off at their leisure. But that wasn't how it turned out; of the five combatants, only Jhasspok's reptilian brain froze up at the beauty of the song; Utred continued his attacks upon the other harpy and Khari raised his warhammer, ready to strike.

Still, the lizardfolk's captivation at least granted the severely-wounded harpy a possible avenue of escape. Pushing past the dazed reptile - who offered no resistance and let his battleaxe hang unused at his side - she started to take to the skies. Her sister, she noted, was still fighting the other dwarf, flapping backwards to grant her enough space to shoot him with an arrow from her frost longbow. She was gaining in elevation, too, apparently having come to the same decision as her sister: that these people were far too much trouble than it was worth fighting them, especially since if they fled to the safety of the skies the troublemakers would likely soon be on their way, leaving the bodies of the manticore and the annis behind (both of whom would make perfectly acceptable, if not particularly appetizing, meals for the harpy sisters).

Cramer saw the two harpies both starting to rise higher in the air; soon they'd be too high up for the ground-based combatants to be able to reach them with their melee weapons. But the clever gnome had a solution to that problem: he cast a fly spell on Utred and called for him to fly after the retreating harpy. Utred was only too happy to comply; he found that just by willing it he was able to soar straight up at the startled harpy, whose face froze in a look of complete shock as the dwarven barbarian attacked her in her own element.

Marlo cast another empowered magic missile spell, this time splitting the targets between the two harpies; the one fleeing by Jhasspok looked to be about dead in any case so she only sent one of the five streaking her way. Both harpies died instantly, falling back into the muck of the swamp and dropping their frost longbows in the process. Utred noted where the one wielded by the harpy he'd been fighting had fallen and went to go retrieve it - he was intrigued by its ability to empower arrows with cold energy and had determined he'd be adding it to his rapidly-expanding arsenal of weapons.

Shortly after the harpies had been slain, Jhasspok snapped out of his enforced reverie and looked about in confusion. Apparently, while he'd been lost in the beauty of the harpy's song, the others had finished the combat without him. Oh well. The dwarves had snapped up the longbows the harpies had been wielding and had removed the quivers of arrows from around their waists, but Marlo and Cramer had found a bag of coins and valuable gems tied at the annis hag's belt; there was plenty enough to go around.

Jhasspok set aside his battleaxe and brought out his dagger, approaching the dead manticore. Seeing the lizardfolk's intention, Cramer called out, "Leave it, Jhasspok!"

"But meat is--" began the lizardfolk before getting cut off with a determined, "Leave it!" Cramer explained further. "We don't need the meat right now, but we do need to get through this blasted swamp while there's still daylight. Lauren thinks we can be back on solid ground in about six hours or so and I for one don't want to waste any daylight we don't have to. Come on: back to the wagon, everybody!" he called to the others. Jhasspok just shrugged and put his dagger back into its sheath at his hip.

Cramer's advice turned out to be wise, for it was nearly nightfall before the ground beneath the group returned to a more solid footing and they no longer had to push the wagon out of the mud, as they'd had to do countless times that day. They found a good spot for an overnight campsite and Cramer saw to setting up the ironsilk tent. However, while doing so he suddenly stiffened, casting his head to one side as if listening intently.

"Everything okay?" Marlo asked, hearing nothing out of the ordinary herself.

"Sending spell," Cramer explained. "From Niradi. We're to hit Ossirna and the Azure Glade, but they'll be sending other envoys to Durnhill and Ashfall. Apparently they're concerned we're too recognizable from our encounter with those elementals trying to capture Lauren."

"We do kind of stand out a bit from the crowd," Utred said, grinning.

Jhasspok didn't understand why everyone was looking at him.

- - -

Logan had intended this adventure to go much longer than it did, even though the entire setup was just one simple ambush fight, but he hadn't counted on the manticore getting a "3" on initiative and then completely whiffing all three attacks against Jhasspok - it died before it got to land a single attack. And we made much quicker work of the annis and harpy archers than he had anticipated. As it was, we were done with the entire session in just a little over an hour. (We were done before 8:00 PM, with a 6:30 start time and a good chunk of chatter as we were getting set up, as usual.) But that's the way it goes sometimes.

I just realized there was a brief part to the last write-up I forgot to mention. Some weeks back, Vicki took Logan aside in our family room for a brief, secret discussion at the end of the session while Dan and Joey were packing up their stuff in our gaming room. Last adventure I got to find out what that was all about.

While in the swamps, before taking off after having slain the ambushers, Jhasspok was eyeing Truffles again (as he pretty much does any time the toad is in view); while on the one hand he realizes the toad is Marlo's familiar and very important to her, on the other hand he also realizes toads are a delicious part of a balanced diet. So every once in awhile when Marlo puts her toad to use, I have Jhasspok eyeing him hungrily. I've even had Jhasspok offer to allow Truffles to "ride in his mouth" and give Marlo a break from constantly carrying the toad around in her pocket.

She's never taken him up on the offer - until this particular session. Once we were out of combat and Jhasspok made his offer to let Truffles ride in his mouth, Marlo asked, "Do you really want to eat him, Jhasspok? Do you? Well then here, go ahead." And then she passed Truffles over to him.

Jhasspok took the toad in his hands, looked questioning at Marlo (trying to figure out if this was a trick or something), but when she reaffirmed the lizardfolk should eat her toad familiar he took her at her word and popped the delicious morsel into his mouth. Only it turns out Vicki had been talking to Logan earlier about how the contingency spell works, and had Marlo pay a wizard in one of the towns we'd been passing through for arcane spell scrolls containing the fire shield and contingency spells, so she could cast the contingency spell to activate a fire shield spell on Truffles if the toad ever found himself in Jhasspok's mouth.

So Jhasspok tossed Truffles into his mouth and the toad immediately burst into flame, which didn't harm it at all but burned the inside of the lizardfolk's mouth something fierce. Fortunately, they were in a swamp at the time, so Jhasspok spit him out into his hand, doused the toad in swamp water to wipe off whatever hot sauce he'd apparently been dipped into, and tried again - with the same results. (Logan allowed the fire shield spell to turn on and off throughout the normal duration of the spell, only becoming active when Truffles was actually inside Jhasspok's mouth.) Undeterred, Jhasspok tried cleaning off the toad in swamp water again - more thoroughly, this time - and popped him back into his mouth, but it was no good. Eventually, he dejectedly turned the toad back over to Marlo, who placed him back into the pocket of her robes.

Marlo tried explaining to Jhasspok that that had been the reason she hadn't let him eat Truffles all this time - because toads burst into flame as a protective measure when you try to eat them - but Jhasspok's not convinced; Marlo may not know it, but they have frogs and toads in the Underdark and Jhasspok's eaten his fair share of them in the past. He has a sneaking suspicion she's tricking him somehow with magic but isn't quite sure just how; in the meantime, he's going to wait for an opportunity to try to eat Truffles when they're both in deep enough water that the lizardfolk can pop the toad into his mouth when they're both fully submerged and see if that prevents the toad from bursting into flames. (He was only ankle-deep in the marsh waters when he tried eating Truffles this time.)

It might take some time before circumstances align themselves to give Jhasspok the opportunity, but lizardfolk are nothing if not patient.

ADVENTURE 29: THE HELLFORGE

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 23 July 2020

- - -

The group decided on posting one member on guard detail for two-hour shifts during the night, but nothing disturbed them in their ironsilk tent. Marlo, having taken the last shift so she could get an uninterrupted block of sleep, was about to rouse the others when she found Lauren stumbling out of the interior room in which she'd been sleeping. She walked as if in a daze and as Marlo approached her, concerned, she saw Lauren's eyes were rolled up in her head, showing only the whites. The rune-tattoos on her face and body were glowing slightly.

"Are you okay?" asked Marlo, touching the other woman on the shoulder. As if awakened by the contact, Lauren snapped out of her trance and her eyes resumed their normal look, the glow of her tattoos subsiding.

"I believe there is a good possibility," the diviner replied, "that I will die today." She gave this dire prediction in a rather matter-of-fact tone, her attitude one of slight puzzlement rather than panic or terror. Cramer exited his own interior room of the tent as the two women were talking and Lauren turned to him with another prophetic statement. "Although the far lane by which you travel cares little for mortal contrivances, today it would behoove your friends' strikes to be aligned with the higher powers." Despite not yet wearing his helm of comprehend languages - he'd just crawled out of bed, after all - Cramer was immediately able to translate Lauren's statement from "prophecy-ese" into a warning he'd better prepare enough align weapon spells for everyone today, as they'd likely be fighting the forces of evil.

"But what about your impending death?" pressed Marlo, more concern for the event in her voice than was present in Lauren's.

"A scar-faced man will stand before me, as I am stabbed in the back and then shoved into a pit."

"I'll start getting my day's spells ready," Cramer announced, returning back to his interior room in the tent. The others were roused and started getting dressed. The cleric had just finished praying for his day's allotment of spells when Jhasspok and Utred heard the unmistakable clomp of booted feet approaching. "We got company!" the burly dwarf called to the others.

Sure enough, pulling back the front flap of the ironsilk tent, Utred could see a ring of armed and armored men surrounding them. If they were as evenly spaced all along the tent's perimeter as the men he could see before him, there were likely a dozen or so of them ringing their dwelling.

One of the soldiers commanded, "Come out and explain your trespass upon the lands of Ossirna."

Marlo knew that to be her cue. Stepping forward, the circlet of persuasion on her brow, she smiled pleasantly at the stern men in their armor of reddish metal. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said. "We are on our way to seek an audience with the leader of your fine land, to warn him of an impending attack upon the surface world by the drow and seek to bring him into an alliance of kingdoms eager to send the dark elves fleeing back to their Underdark holes." Cramer, hanging back unseen in his own quarters in the tent, quietly cast a detect evil spell from his day's allotment and sensed evil from the other side of the tent's outer walls. He nodded sagely to himself - it confirmed his suspicions.

"Are you from Durnhill?" demanded the soldier doing the talking for the Ossirnan forces.

"No," replied Marlo. Deciding that a full explanation of where they were all originally from would be too confusing and not relevant to the current conversation, she explained, "We are from Greenvale. We edged along the outskirts of Durnhill to get here, but we have no dealings with that kingdom, for they seek to capture one of our traveling companions." At this, Lauren stepped forward, turned about, and pulled her hair to the side, exposing the tattoo upon the back of her neck: the shattered hourglass, laying upon its side, spilling the sands of time upon the ground.

At the sight of Lauren's neck tattoo, the men visibly relaxed. "Very well," said the captain of the troop of soldiers. "If you'd like to pack up your tent, we'll escort you to the capital for your talk with our king."

The soldiers were visibly impressed with how quickly the group was able to pack up their gear, for they hadn't expected the ironsilk tent to fold itself up upon verbal command and be placed inside a bag of holding. Just that quickly, the Greenvale envoys were ready to go. Cramer took his customary seat at the front of the wagon, the others got in and, surrounded by six men in front and six men behind, they started their trek to the capital city of Ossirna.

It was a journey of several hours, but they eventually came to a stop before a grand palace. The guard captain stepped forward and explained the situation to an armored woman who had come forward from the castle as Lauren and the five heroes exited the wagon. "Welcome to Ossirna," said the guardswoman, introducing herself as Maelina. "If you will follow me, I will escort you to the king." Cramer's detect evil spell had long since expired, but he felt he could pretty much sense the no-nonsense evil coming from the female guard captain without having to rely upon any such spell - she looked like she'd decapitate any or all of them at a moment's notice, were she but given the order. He noticed they hadn't been asked to surrender their weapons before being brought inside the palace and wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

"Please wait here," said Maelina, opening the door to a waiting room, the tone of her voice making perfectly clear this was not a request. She indicated Lauren. "You will come with me to see King Velkis at once, concerning a private matter about the organization." Maelina wasn't aware of it, but the heroes before her were already aware of the Seekers of Eternity and their individual, bickering factions and knew immediately that was the organization of which she spoke.

Cramer, Marlo, and Utred looked helplessly between themselves. They knew this was likely a trap; judging from her stoic expression, Lauren likely knew this was a trap as well. (Khari, on the other hand, was looking around the room, disappointed that this waiting room didn't have any refreshments; a nice, frothy ale would hit the spot right about now! And Jhasspok saw a shelf of books against the wall, which led him to idly wonder if any of them might have pictures of fish in them or if they were just filled with those boring, scribbly letters which somehow made words. Neither of them had any inkling they were now inside a castle likely filled with enemies.)

There was little likelihood Marlo would be able to talk their way out of this, so she did the one thing she could think of to do: she surreptitiously dropped her toad familiar Truffles into the pocket of Lauren's robes as the diviner brushed past her to follow Maelina to meet with the king. Lauren, Marlo knew, was a sorcerer like herself, even if those tattoos covering her body channeled all of her arcane power strictly into divination magic; as such, it would not seem suspicious if she carried a familiar with her, and although Lauren had no familiar these Ossirnans were unlikely to know that. Truffles could at least be a means by which the heroes could learn what all was going on here, as the toad shared an empathic link with Marlo.

Once Maelina and Lauren had exited the waiting room, Cramer lost no time in casting align weapon spells upon each of the heroes' primary weapons, as Utred explained to Khari and Jhasspok just what they were up against here. Marlo, in the meantime, by concentrating on the link with Truffles, was getting a general feel for the local layout of the castle: Lauren hadn't been taken far, for the king was in a receiving room just a dog-leg away: out the door, to the left, and around a corner to the right. She passed on this information to her friends, wondering if they'd be taken to see the king or if they'd have to try to go rescue Lauren on their own. "We shouldn't have let her leave, not after having foreseen her own death like that," Marlo said, worried for her fellow sorceress.

"Wasn't much we could do about it," grunted Utred. "Not unless we was ready to take on their whole guard at once."

"It may come to that, I fear," added the gnome. "But if needs be, I have a teleport spell prepared. I can get us out of here if we all stick close together."

"I dunno if we're gonna be gettin' any help for Greenvale from these guys anyways," piped up Khari. "Mebbe we should just leave."

But before Cramer could reply Marlo gave a sudden cry of alarm, mirroring a cry of shock and pain from Lauren that they could hear through the closed door of the waiting room. That was all Khari needed to hear: it was apparently on! Channeling the power from his earth glide warhammer, he dropped through the floor and raced in the direction of Lauren's cries, having to pop up into the hallway because he sensed while underground there was no floor beneath him just ahead: apparently there was a lower level below where Lauren and this king were. As he turned around the corner, he saw several things all at once: Lauren was wincing in pain and blood stained her lower back, where she'd apparently just been stabbed; Maelina, with blood on the tip of her sword, had her hand upon Lauren's shoulder and was pushing her toward a ten-foot-wide pit in the floor at her feet; a scarred man with a crown upon his head sat on a throne on the other side of the pit, watching the fun with an expression of intense satisfaction.

Without slowing his momentum in the least, Khari barreled into Maelina, swinging his warhammer into her and attempting to topple her into the pit instead of Lauren. It took some doing, but the nimble guard captain managed to deflect her momentum sideways, avoiding the pit but only by dropping onto Lauren's unconscious body; the tattooed diviner had collapsed to the floor from her wound.

"Envoy of Greenvale!" called the king on the throne. "Any further attacks upon my Royal Guard will be taken as an act of war!" The disdain in his voice was palpable; he apparently didn't appreciate the fact his entertainment was being waylaid from its intended course.

Utred realized Cramer hadn't had time to cast the longstrider spell he usually cast upon himself to allow him to keep up with his much-taller companions, so the burly dwarf picked up the little gnome and carried him along as he burst through the waiting room door and raced down the hallway towards Khari. Marlo cast a fly spell upon herself from a scroll she'd purchased earlier and flew past them both, headed toward Lauren and Truffles. Jhasspok followed, trying to grab Lauren out from underneath Maelina, who was struggling to regain her footing without toppling backwards into the pit.

But just as the lizardfolk had started pulling the limp form of Lauren toward him, Maelina yanked her from Jhasspok's grasp - she was much stronger than she looked! - and tossed her over the edge of the pit. Truffles leapt from the diviner's pocket at the last moment, scrabbling across the floor in a scramble to get away from being trodden upon. Jhasspok found his eyes following the toad's path without conscious volition and had to forcibly bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Khari, from his viewpoint at the pit's edge, could see a pair of goatmen in the large room below them grab up Lauren's unconscious - hopefully not dead! - form and start to drag her away.

"Ossirna will never join in a proxy war between gods," King Velkis told the group before him, putting as much disdain as possible in the final word of his sentence. "You are free to leave if you wish - or you can try to save the traitorous bitch if you think you can manage to do so." Again, the tone of his voice betrayed the low level of confidence he had in their chances to perform that second option.

"We might just surprise you, Your Majesty," Cramer replied, putting an equal amount of disdain in his own final two words. Then he followed up with the casting of a summon monster spell, causing a celestial bison to manifest in the room below. The bison immediately charged forward, bringing his powerful horns stabbing into the closest goatman and smiting him with a blast of holy energy for good measure.

It was a good 20-foot drop into the pit below. Khari didn't want to break an ankle or anything, so he ran through the southern wall using the power of his earth glide warhammer and from there went straight down through the solid rock, exiting from an outer wall of the larger pit room below. He saw the celestial bison goring one of the goat-headed humanoids; as that one bleated in pain and terror, however, the other one continued dragging Lauren toward a large crack in the far wall - a narrow tunnel, now that Khari got a better look at it, from which reddish light spilled forth. There was a much larger goatman in the vast cavern on the other side of the tunnel, easily twice as tall as the others, working at a massive anvil with an equally massive hammer in his hand. A pool of bubbling magma separated this enormous, horned figure from the cave opening.

Utred lacked a means of making it safely down a drop of 20 feet but also lacked any worries about the dangers inherent in doing so. Dropping to the lower pit, he raced toward the nearest goatman and swung his greataxe at him, the axe-head imbued with Cramer's align weapon spell. The blade sliced deep into the goatman's flesh, severing through any protections the beast might have otherwise had.

At the sounds of battle, the Hellsmith turned from his anvil and, seeing the dwarf impeding the delivery of the virgin sacrifice he needed to forge hellsteel weapons and armor for the mortal allies in the world above, snarled in fury and marched through the shallow magma pool, his hooves feeling none of the heat and none of the hair on his shaggy legs catching fire.

Marlo scooped up Truffles from the floor and flew down into the pit below, casting a magic missile spell at the fiendish ibixian the celestial bison had just gored, which caused him to bleat involuntarily from the pain of her rapid-fire spell-strikes. Jhasspok followed Marlo down into the pit, attacking the same goatman with his spell-enhanced battleaxe once he'd landed painfully on the lower floor and hobbled over to the attack. The lizardfolk's blade pierced the ibixian's flesh, drawing a line of blood across his chest that stained his shaggy fur. These beastmen were made of stern stuff, but the heroes were beginning to whittle them down!

The ibixian whirled around to face Utred, striking at him with a hellsteel blade of his own, while the other one continued dragging Lauren into Hell. He'd gotten her through the narrow tunnel and into the larger chamber beyond.

The only Greenvale envoy still upstairs at this point, Cramer cast a fly spell upon himself and dropped down into the pit, seeing the fiendish ibixian dodge another attack from the gnome's summoned celestial bison. Then, with the grating sound of stone on stone, the pit opening above Cramer was somehow sealed off, for the ceiling above was now a solid, smooth surface. That was certainly discomforting!

It was getting crowded around the fiendish ibixian, what with Utred, Jhasspok, and a white-furred celestial bison all lined up to attack him. So Khari earth glided beneath the four, popping back up behind the oblivious goatman. However, rather than attack the unsuspecting foe - and he'd have had a good shot at him - Khari continued down the tunnel beyond, hoping to rescue Lauren before that other goatman had a chance to do anything else to her. Besides, he was sure the others could handle that first goatman. (And he was right: Utred dropped him almost immediately thereafter with another powerful blow of his greataxe.)

But then the Hellsmith waded to the edge of the lava pool and brought his unholy warhammer crashing down upon Khari Hammerslammer, who found himself getting "hammerslammed" for once. (He found he didn't like it.) Reeling from the attack, Khari almost toppled over but at the last moment found the strength within himself to stay on his feet.

Marlo empowered a magic missile spell and sent the five darts of energy blasting into the fiendish ibixian dragging Lauren; she was worried at the trail of blood the unconscious diviner was leaving behind her as she was dragged about. Jhasspok pushed past the sorcerer and sprinted through the passageway, bringing his battleaxe crashing down into the goatman's side, finally dropping him at last. Lauren's head dropped to the ground and she lay there, unmoving save for the discernible motion of her chest as she breathed - she was still alive!

Cramer flew through the narrow tunnel, realizing as he did so he was entering an entirely different plane of existence. Using his prayer bead, he cast a cure serious wounds spell upon Lauren, sealing up her stab-wound nicely.

Khari retaliated against the Hellsmith, bringing his own warhammer crashing into the side of the goatman's knee. And now the others rushed forward into battle with him, Utred swinging his greataxe into a meaty thigh. The Hellsmith responded in kind, smashing Utred with his oversize warhammer and goring him with a swipe of his curving horns. He also took a swipe at him with a smaller weapon of some kind, appearing dagger-sized in his huge hand but more the size of a longsword if Utred would have wielded it (something he swore he'd soon do - it was an intriguing-looking weapon he'd love to add to his arsenal) - but he missed. Had it struck its target, the Hellsmith knew, the foolish dwarf would have been dimensionally anchored for an hour and unable to use plane-shifting magic to escape from the plane of Hell.

Marlo sent another empowered magic missile spell blasting straight into the Hellsmith's face; at his size, ranged weapons and spells were the only way to reach him that high. The numerous attacks were starting to take their toll, enough that a final charge by Jhasspok, swinging his battleaxe for all he was worth, finally eviscerated the Hellsmith, who dropped his weapons and fell backwards into the pool of magma. Utred had the presence of mind to grab the dimensional branding iron weapon from the Hellsmith's unfeeling fingers before it too fell into the magma, from where it would likely have been unrecoverable.

"Fall back to the pit room," commanded Cramer, leading by example as he flew back to the basement level beneath the king's throne. Everyone gathered up around him, including a now-revived Lauren.

"It looks like the premonition of your death didn't come true," remarked Marlo with a smile.

"Not everything I foresee comes to pass," admitted Lauren. "I'm glad this was one of those times. But thank you," she said, looking around the group. "Thank you all."

"Hey!" cried out Khari, looking up at the ceiling and noticing its smoothness for the first time. "Where'd the hole go? How're we s'posed to get out now?"

"I can teleport us away," Cramer reassured the dwarven fighter.

"All of us?" pressed Marlo, more savvy in the ways of magic spells than the others.

"Well no, not all at once," admitted Cramer sheepishly. "I can take myself and three others."

"I will wait for the second trip if you like," offered Jhasspok.

"It's...not that easy," Cramer explained. "I can only cast the spell once at all, all day today. Anybody I leave behind I won't be able to come get until tomorrow. And I doubt the Ossirnans will let anybody left behind just sit here patiently to be picked up the next day."

"No tellin' what all might come crawling outta that pool of lava, neither," Utred observed. "This is Hell - all sorts o' devils could easily travel through lava, easy as you please."

"That's Hell over there?" Jhasspok asked, eyes wide in surprise. Nobody had told him about that! He looked around expectantly at the others. When nobody picked up on it, he asked, "Where is the metal man? Isn't there a metal man we're supposed to find in Hell? I'll go look for him!"

Marlo grabbed the lizardfolk by the shoulder as he passed to stop him. (It was a good thing her fly spell was still active or it would have been hard for her to reach.) "Hell is a really big place," she informed him. "You know all the places we've been to since coming to the surface? Hell is like that, only much, much bigger."

"It's not just that cave?" Jhasspok asked, deflated. He'd thought they were about to fulfill one of the prophecies about how to defeat that tentacle-monster-god-thing they were destined to fight.

"No, Jhasspok," Marlo confirmed.

"Let's get back to all of us getting out of here," replied Utred. "We can't be leaving anyone behind - they'd be dead before we can get back to 'em. What about the bag of holding? Could we stick some of us inside that, an' you take it with you when ye teleport away?"

"That would work," agreed Cramer. "But there's no air inside a bag of holding."

"I can hold my breath," offered Jhasspok. It wasn't a foolish suggestion, either; as a lizardfolk, he could hold his breath for quite a long time - it was one of the things that had made him so well-suited as a fisher slave. "That's one - how many more do you need?" Jhasspok had already forgotten how many people Cramer could teleport and didn't want to have to do the math to figure out how many that meant he couldn't.

"We'd need one more in the bag," Cramer mused.

"I'll go," Marlo volunteered.

"Where we gonna teleport to?" Utred asked. "Back to the wagon?"

"I'm afraid we've lost the wagon," Cramer frowned. "It's likely already been impounded - and even if it wasn't, we'd end up having to fight our way through the entire kingdom of Ossirna. Nope, better we get out of Ossirna entirely."

"But that means backtracking the way we've come!" said Marlo. "You'd need to go someplace you're already familiar with!"

"Not necessarily," interjected Lauren. She raised a hand and placed it on Cramer's forehead, then closed her eyes and concentrated. Her tattoos flared momentarily as she placed an image of the Azure Glade directly into the gnome's head: a field of unnaturally blue grass. "Focus on that image," she told the cleric. "Once we're there, I'll be able to get my bearings and we can head to my grandfather - he'll need to know of Velkis's betrayal."

"What about the horse?" Jhasspok asked.

"We're leaving him behind," Utred answered. "There's no helpin' it."

"But the meat--" the lizardfolk began, before Marlo shushed him and got him to step into the bag of holding. She took a big breath and followed suit, then Cramer closed up the bag, gathered the others around him, and said the words to his teleport spell.

Moments later, Marlo and Jhasspok were released from the extradimensional space inside the bag of holding. "The grass is all blue!" Marlo gasped, astonished at the sight.

"Where are we?" Jhasspok asked.

"We're in the Azure Glade," Cramer stated proudly.

Jhasspok was puzzled. "I thought that was four days away by wagon," he said.

"It is. It's much faster when we teleport directly there." That only confused Jhasspok further. If they could teleport, why had they bothered with horses and wagons all this time? That didn't make any sense!

"Cramer only just recently learned how to cast the teleport spell," Marlo explained, seeing the confusion on the lizardfolk's reptilian face. "As time goes on, he'll get even better at it, and be able to bring more people with him." That at least made a little sense to Jhasspok; after all, it had taken him many months to get as good at catching fish as he was, so he could imagine it might be similar with casting spells.

But Khari had an even simpler explanation. "Magic is weird," he stated.

That, at least, Jhasspok could agree with completely.

- - -

Logan deliberately seeded Lauren's "death prophecy" so we'd assume the scar-faced man was Syngaard and the back-stabber was Orion, two of our PCs from the previous/concurrent campaign, "The Durnhill Conscripts." But at least we (the players, not the current PCs) can rest easy knowing that King Velkis and Maelina will be slain by the Durnhill heroes towards the end of that campaign.

Logan was also concerned for a bit there we were going rescue Lauren before she even got dumped into the pit, given that the bulk of the adventure was planned to take place below ground, in the pit area and the pocket of Hell where the Ossirnans get their hellsteel forged. It ended up being a good thing Cramer couldn't teleport us all away at once like Dan had originally thought, before he re-read the spell description and realized he currently had a "three passenger" limit. (And he wouldn't even have had access to the teleport spell had he not been a cleric of Fharlanghn with Travel as one of his two domains.) But it all worked out.

We actually have one ibixian D&D Mini; for the other goatman, Logan used a satyr D&D Mini and for the Hellsmith he used a D&D Mini of a Large minotaur. The part of the castle we were in and the pit below he crafted using Dungeon Tiles, and assembled the Hell section using nine Paizo Flip-Tiles from a Darklands starter set he got me for Christmas last year (and which has already seen extensive use in our campaigns since.)

ADVENTURE 30: RITES OF INITIATION

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 30 July 2020

- - -

The six figures stood in a field of blue grass. A city was visible about a mile away. Lauren identified it as the Guilded City, the capital of the Azure Glade, so that's where the group all headed - on foot, as they'd had to abandon their horse and wagon back in Ossirna. Fortunately, it was a nice day out and the walk was a pleasant one.

Once inside the city's boundary, Lauren led them unerringly to the Diviners Guild tower, the first floor of which was the Diviners Library. As the group entered, they heard a booming voice berating one of the young initiates to the Guild. "You have aided in the first successful theft of a book from this library in recorded history!" called out the voice, which echoed throughout the otherwise silent library.

"That sounds like Grandfather," said Lauren in a hushed tone - one more appropriate for inside a library, Marlo thought to herself. "Come on - he's this way."

She led them to a white-robed man of some sixty years or so, scowling at the sight of a young wizard in the robes of a Diviners Guild initiate being dragged off by a pair of blue-robed members of the Azure Guard, the security force among the Azure Glade's arcane-focused guilds. The young wizard's face was nearly as white as his robes, for he likely knew the dire fate awaiting him.

Arcturus's face, however, softened at the sight of his tattooed granddaughter and he beamed at her arrival. "I foresaw the likelihood of your presence today," he said, looking at the strangers she'd brought with her into his Guild's library.

"These people saved my life - on several occasions, actually. If not for them I wouldn't be here. But I must warn you of King Velkis's treachery. He tried to have me killed!"

"Come," decided Arcturus, gesturing for the others to approach. They did, and with the uttering of a few magical syllables the seven of them teleported away to Arcturus's private chambers. "We can talk undisturbed in here," he said, indicating the others were to help themselves to a decanter of wine and a series of crystal goblets he'd had laid out on a side table. Cramer was impressed with the diviner's ability to bring all seven along in the casting of a single teleport spell - so far, he'd only been able to transport himself and three others at one time. Arcturus was apparently very skilled in spellcraft to be able to handle so many at once.

"You are, then, familiar with the Seekers of Eternity?" Arcturus asked the Overreach slaves.

"We are, to some extent," admitted Cramer. "I understand that the Ossirnan king belongs to a different faction than your own?"

"That is correct. The Seekers of Eternity was originally founded by a man known as the Mithral Mage and his friend Hirek to find a cure for death - they believed they could discover the secret to immortality, so that they need never die. However, upon the disappearance of the Mithral Mage, the original group fell apart. The Seekers were refounded by a previous king of Ossirna, a man named Selvik, in order to complete the Mithral Mage's work on immortality. However, once it became known that the Mithral Mage had become a lich with an indestructible phylactery, the Seekers splintered into several different factions.

"The largest group became infatuated with the idea of becoming indestructible liches like the Mithral Mage, so they sought to free him from Hell, where he was imprisoned, that he might teach them to become as he was. Another group, seeing that one form of undeath had become an acceptable end goal, took to calling themselves the Followers of Hirek and decided vampirism was a much simpler solution; after all, the means of becoming a vampire were already well known and didn't require the preparation of a phylactery of any kind, let alone the indestructible one the Mithral Mage had somehow stumbled upon. This, naturally, was also easier in that the Followers of Hirek could advance their own agendas without having to find and free the Mithral Mage - they just needed the services of a vampire willing to sire them into vampires themselves."

"So this Hirek was a vampire?" Cramer asked.

"That was the belief, although some legends differ on that front. In any case, while I am the leader of the entire Seekers of Eternity organization as a whole, I am also the leader of the third faction, the Mithral Redeemers, which believes the Mithral Mage's descent into lichdom was accidental in nature and an incorrect path that has prevented him from carrying out his true work: finding the formula for a potion of longevity which will greatly expand the human lifetime, if not extend it indefinitely. We seek to not only find and free him from the Hell in which he has been imprisoned but also to reverse his lichdom and restore him to his full humanity, so he can get back on the original path of the Seekers.

"And that leaves the fourth and final faction, led by King Velkis of Ossirna, who have formed a religious cult that worships the Mithral Mage, although it's become apparent King Velkis seeks to somehow take over the Mithral Mage's phylactery and usurp his position as the god of their religion."

"Nice," laughed Cramer. "'Start off worshiping this guy, and then transfer your worship to me.' A good job, if you can get it."

"Quite right," agreed Arcturus. "In the past some of the other factions have attempted to undermine my authority over the Seekers, but Velkis's attempt upon my granddaughter's life - which I am indeed grateful you were able to prevent - is the first time they have physically made an attack upon us. I fear my time leading the Seekers will soon be at an end, and without me to protect the members of my own faction, I will be unable to prevent their destruction by these...lich worshipers."

Marlo had on her circlet of persuasion and figured now was as good a time as any to push her own agenda forward: getting the Azure Glade to assist in the upcoming battle against the drow forces of Overreach, who would soon be attacking Greenvale - after all, Arcturus was the one who had brought up how much he owed the heroes for saving his granddaughter. Lauren added the details of the attacks upon her in Durnhill, when four elementals had been sent to slay her and the arena slaves had fought them off. But the capper was when the details of the prophecy wherein the five arena slaves would rescue "the metal man from Hell, who would put an end to the Undying One" was revealed, for Arcturus recognized in the tale the fact that they would be instrumental in finding and rescuing the Mithral Mage, which aligned very nicely with his own goals.

"This is what I can do," offered Arcturus. "Tomorrow I will convene the Council of Guilds, the ruling body of the Azure Glade, in order to discuss your call for aid and assistance. But whatever their overall ruling, I can pledge the support of the Mithral Redeemers to your cause. I would ask, in return, that Greenvale be open to offering asylum to those members of my faction who might need to seek refuge from the other Seekers who will very well try to slay them."

"I believe that can be easily arranged," promised Marlo.

"Very well, then. I will see to it you are given room and board for the evening. Until tomorrow, then - and again, my thanks."

True to his word, Arcturus put them up for the evening in a building in the richer part of the Guilded City. "I could get used to this," Utred observed. "These Mithral Redeemers are okay!"

The next morning, Lauren led the group to the meeting hall of the Council of Guilds. They stood together in a group in the middle of a circular room, under the watchful gaze of nine members seated in alcoves above them, their chairs spaced equidistant along the perimeter of the circle. Lauren had explained the colors of the robes denoted the arcane school specialization of the Guild: diviners, as an example, wore gowns of white. The one exception was the man in gray robes, for he was no arcane spellcaster at all but the leader of the Church of Boccob, God of Knowledge. Each Guildmaster wore a mask covering his or her face, for their identities were not necessarily known to the city at large. The heroes, of course, knew the white-robed man seated above would be Arcturus.

Arcturus explained why he had called this session together, then he gave the floor over to Marlo, who made a heartfelt plea for help for the Greenvale elves, her words aided by her circlet of persuasion. After giving her speech and answering a few questions from various members of the Guild leaders, the representatives took a vote on whether or not to render aid.

The Guilds of Abjuration, Conjuration, and Divination all pledged support for Greenvale. Khari frowned that only a third of the Guild members were on their side, but Marlo seemed pleased that they'd at least gotten that many - after all, she had no idea how many members there were in each Guild, but any number of wizards being added to the Greenvale armies could only be a good thing.

The Guilds of Evocation, Necromancy, and Transmutation all voted against granting assistance to Greenvale; they had other, more pressing matters to attend to, they argued, and Greenvale was distant enough the Azure Glade was in no likely danger from the drow invasion of a land so far away.

The three other Guilds - Evocation, Illusion, and the Church of Boccob - abstained from voting one way or another. "That's three for, three against, and three undecided - now what?" asked Cramer.

The Council decided upon the following ruling: while the Azure Glade as a nation would remain neutral in the upcoming battle against the drow armies of Overreach, any who wished to aid Greenvale were welcome to do so in a mercenary capacity, making their own separate alliances with the beleaguered kingdom that did not bring the rest of the Azure Glade into any alliances or commitments. It was, Marlo admitted later to the others, more than she had hoped for.

Upon the dissolution of the meeting, Lauren led the others to a smaller building nearby. Inside were 25 robed figures, all with the Seekers of Eternity neck tattoos like Lauren's, as well as Arcturus. They wore a variety of colors of robes, indicating members of various different Guilds were willing to come to Greenvale's aid; while the white Diviners were the largest group, the heroes saw robes of every color represented save for the black Necromancers and the gray robes of the Church of Boccob.

"These are the immediate members of the Mithral Redeemers," Arcturus explained. "They will be aiding Greenvale and hiding there from those who would try to slay them. I will be staying behind with a few of my closest associates in our faction to try to recruit a few more members to your cause, but Lauren and these wizards will teleport to Greenvale directly."

"Do they know where they're going?" asked Cramer. "Teleporting in the blind..."

"They have scried upon Greenvale and will appear just outside the city gates," Arcturus explained. "We would not want them mistaken for a marauding force."

"I should probably try to send word of your impending arrival," began Cramer, suddenly realizing he did not have the means to do so currently at hand.

But then Arcturus passed him over a scroll. "It's a sending spell," he explained, smiling and adding, "There are times having a diviner at hand makes things so much easier."

Cramer cast the spell, warning T'puuli Tine of the impending arrival of the wizards from the Azure Glade and assuring him they were allies. As part of the spell's casting, he received an acknowledgment from T'puuli that the message had been received and understood. "We're good," the little gnome informed the Diviners Guild leader. At Arcturus's nod, Lauren and the 25 wizards teleported away, leaving only the six of them remaining in the building.

"Now then, I have a final favor to ask of you," he said. "There was an abjurer by the name of Dave Quillbender I was trying to recruit into the Mithral Redeemers, and due to certain events that man's life is now in jeopardy. The Lich Seekers - those wishing to follow the Mithral Mage into lichdom - are attempting to slay him and he's currently on the run. I would like you to find him and take him with you when you return to Greenvale. If you agree, I will teleport you to Dave's last known location. Having saved my granddaughter - twice! - I have full faith in your abilities to keep this man alive and slay his would-be assassins."

The heroes looked at each other for confirmation they were all behind this plan. "Sure," Cramer answered for the group.

With another group of arcane syllables, Arcturus teleported the five arena slaves to the interior of a darkened warehouse. One corner was illuminated by a series of candles, gathered around a magic circle inscribed upon the floor - in some haste, judging by the way it seemed to be scrawled; most magic circles, in both Cramer's and Marlo's experience, were assembled with much more care and precision. There were three figures standing just outside the circle: a half-orc and two human women, the women dressed in dark combat leathers and wielding unsheathed weapons; the man in full plate armor. "Any sign of him?" one whispered softly to the others.

"None," answered another. The half-orc was the closest to the heroes and the two dwarves could see quite clearly even in the flickering candlelight the shattered hourglass tattoo upon the back of his thick neck.

Fortunately, there were boxes, barrels, and crates stacked haphazardly around the room, so Cramer was fully hidden from sight. In a low tone, he started casting a bear's endurance spell upon himself, beefing his stamina before the upcoming fight, for he had no doubts these were the assassins seeking to slay Dave Quillbender.

One of the women turned her head immediately in Cramer's direction. "What was that?" she demanded, having heard his quiet voice. Squinting in the dim light, she saw piles of boxes and crates...and the unmistakable head of a lizardfolk staring right back at her. Jhasspok, at a full six feet tall, towered over the two dwarves, gnome, and the diminutive human woman with whom he traveled and had not thought to duck his head upon suddenly arriving in an unknown warehouse. As the ranger focused her attention on the reptilian face, the other slaves scattered quietly to find hiding places in the deep shadows in the murky building.

"Wh--what are you doing there?" the woman demanded, her two companions turning to see who she was addressing. They, too, were quite surprised to see a lizardfolk inside the warehouse with them.

Jhasspok knew he had to come up with a good excuse for his presence - and quickly. His reptilian brain focused immediately upon the subject of so many of the former fisher slave's thoughts.

"I cannot read the words on these crates," he said. "Can you tell me which ones contain fish?"

"Wh--what?" repeated the astonished ranger.

"I want to buy some fish," repeated Jhasspok. "Do not be concerned: I know all about how money works!"

"How'd you get in here?" demanded the half-orc.

"Through the door," Jhasspok replied, thinking it a logical answer and idly wondering where this door he was supposed to have entered through might actually be situated - he had no idea. "But getting back to the fish: where do you keep them?"

"Um...in the marketplace?" suggested the ranger, slowly realizing she was dealing with an idiot.

"Isn't this part of the marketplace?" asked Jhasspok, a look of confusion crossing his reptilian features.

"No. It isn't."

"Then where is this marketplace - the one with the fish?" Jhasspok looked around, as if it might somehow be within sight while standing inside a dark warehouse.

"Back outside, take a right, down the street a ways."

"Back outside..." echoed Jhasspok, looking around for the door. The exasperated ranger stepped forward to lead the idiot out of the building into which they were pretty sure they'd tracked down Dave Quillbender. Jhasspok stepped forward to walk beside her toward the door, mostly to allow his bulk to block the woman's view of what was behind him: the other four arena slaves hiding as best they could behind stacks of boxes.

The ranger opened the door and pointed off to the street to her right. "That way," she said, her brow furrowed in puzzlement at the lizardfolk's appearance, for from the light spilling in from the open door she saw his turtle shell shield, his spears, and the battleaxe he held gripped in his right hand. This was not a lizardman on his way to the fish market....

At about the same time, the other woman caught sight of the other Overreach slaves hiding in the shadows. She started to warn the others but Marlo beat her with the words to the spell she'd been readying - and suddenly a tangle of black tentacles rose up from the warehouse floor, entangling the black-clad woman and the armored half-orc in the back of the warehouse by the hastily-scratched magic circle.

Seeing the jig was now up (and frankly, quite amazed Jhasspok had stalled successfully for as long as he had), Utred raced across the warehouse, his greataxe out and swinging toward the ranger, who was just now coming to the realization that she and her fellow assassins were under attack. The knowledge came too late, for as she swung her swords about in a defensive posture Utred's blade was already slicing into her upper arm. Her left arm went numb and she almost dropped the short sword she held in that hand as she gritted her teeth, convinced herself that there was no pain, and pressed on with the battle at hand.

But now Khari Hammerslammer was upon her as well, his warhammer crashing into the side of her leg and almost causing her to fall to the warehouse floor. Jhasspok attacked her with his battleaxe as well, explaining to her as he did so - as if she hadn't figured it out by herself by this time - "I was lying about looking for fish."

The half-orc did his best to wrest himself free from the black, rubbery tentacles starting to crush him to death - but fell just short of success. He grunted in the effort and immediately regretted the expulsion of air, for the constricting appendages were squeezing the breath out of him and black dots were already beginning to form at the edges of his vision. To pass out now, he realized, was to die; he redoubled his efforts, to no avail.

Cramer, in the meantime, mentally triggered the freedom of movement effect that came so freely to those who served Fharlanghn, God of Travelers, and stepped boldly into the mass of writhing tentacles. They were unable to get a grasp upon him as he stepped up to the struggling woman and cast an inflict serious wounds spell upon her. There was little she could do to resist the spell; this was rather like shooting fish in a barrel (a simile the gnome was sure Jhasspok would appreciate, although then he supposed he'd have to explain what a simile was, and that there weren't actually any fish in any of the barrels...he mentally dismissed the very notion of ever using the phrase within the lizardfolk's hearing).

Faced with three foes at hand, the ranger focused her attacks on the hulking lizardfolk who she blamed for the predicament she was in. Longsword and short sword flashed out in a flurry of strikes, Jhasspok doing his best to deflect the blades with his shield but failing twice; each blade managed to pierce him once between his scales, causing twin rivulets of blood to drip down his green body. But like his black-clad foe, he had trained himself to ignore the pain of any wounds he received until after combat had been completed and the lizardfolk fought on. But the combat didn't last much longer in any case, for Utred brought the ranger down with another blow from his greataxe. At that, Jhasspok set his weapon down on the warehouse floor, grabbed the dead ranger by her ankles, and dragged her back inside the warehouse while Khari stepped up to the door. "Mornin'," he smiled to a passerby on the street before closing the door tight, keeping anyone outside from seeing what was going on inside the building.

The rogue struggled against her tentacular bondage, to no avail; she was helpless against the little gnome cleric's spell attacks and couldn't understand why the black tentacles were ignoring him as if he wasn't even there beside her.

Khari, by the warehouse door - seemingly the only entrance into or out of the building - cocked his head to the side suddenly and strained to hear what he thought he'd just heard. Yes, there it was again: the unmistakable sound of a wheezing breath. Following the sounds of heavy breathing trying to be stifled, the dwarf walked up to a barrel and pulled the lid off it. There, inside, huddled an elderly human man in orange robes. As he fit the description of the man they had been sent to protect, Khari gave him a big, bearded smile and said, "Dave Quillbender, I presume? Arcturus sent us to see to your safety. We're just finishin' up with the others who were out to kill you."

Marlo took the opportunity of two pinned and nearly helpless opponents to try out a new spell. She cast phantasmal killer at the half-orc, curious to see the result of him imagining his worst fears had come to life. But the brute's mind was stronger than the sorcerer had imagined and he shrugged off the spell's effects much more easily than he was having any success in shrugging off the tentacles that were even now crushing the very life out of him. Beside him, the rogue was having no better luck with escaping Marlo's previously-cast spell.

Cramer stepped nonchalantly out of the field of waving tentacles and cast a spiritual weapon spell as he did so. A shimmering field of energy in the shape of a quarterstaff appeared in the air above his head, striking down to crush into the rogue's head with one flat end of its length. The rogue's head snapped back, her skull crushed in and her neck snapped; her head lolled at an unnatural angle as the tentacles crushed whatever life might have remained within her.

Not wanting to miss out on any of the fun, Utred uncoiled his life-flame whip as he stepped up to the field of tentacles and sent it snapping out to strike the half-orc's face - about all that was left uncovered by tentacles by this point. As Khari remained to help Dave out of the barrel in which he'd been hiding and Jhasspok pulled the dagger from the sheath at his hip to remove the eyes from the dead ranger on the warehouse floor before him (they were a delicacy, the lizardfolk had decided, even if none of the mammals he traveled with shared his opinion), Marlo cast an empowered magic missile at the half-orc, hastening his path into death.

But then, in an act of pure desperation, the half-orc gave a hiss of effort - all the air he had to spare in creating the roar of triumph he'd attempted - and pulled himself from the grip of the ebon tentacles entwining around his body. Staggering with each hard-fought step, he pulled himself out of the field of grasping appendages, even though in the act of doing so he received another whip-slash from Utred for his efforts. Cramer redirected his spiritual quarterstaff at the assassin's head, then stepped up to the staggering brute and brought his little mace crashing into an armored kneecap. Almost dead upon his feet from the ruthless attack, Marlo surmised it wouldn't take much, at this point, to bring the oaf down and tested that theory with one of her weakest spells. The acid splash struck the half-orc in the face and he fell dead to the floor like a felled tree.

"It was a valiant effort, I'll give him that," remarked Cramer.

The group grabbed whatever looked to be of value from the trio of assassins; most of their armor and weapons looked to be magical in nature, so whatever they couldn't personally use they were sure could be put to good use by those defending Greenvale in the upcoming skirmish with the Overreach drow.

"I don't understand," Dave said to the five who had saved him from the assassins. "Why would Arcturus save me? I thought it was the Seekers of Eternity who were trying to kill me in the first place!" He pointed to the shattered hourglass symbols tattooed on the backs of the necks of the three dead assassins.

"There are different factions of the Seekers," explained Marlo. "These guys are trying to take over the Seekers as a whole and remove the faction to which Arcturus belongs." She briefly caught the elderly wizard up on what she'd been told about the various splinter groups of the Seekers of Eternity. "But in the meantime," she finished, "We need to take you to somewhere you'll be safe from any further assassination attempts."

"That sounds perfectly acceptable to me!" agreed Dave.

Cramer explained about the passenger limitations he currently had with the teleport spell and Dave agreed to ride in the bag of holding with Jhasspok. The fact the elderly mage had missed out completely on the lizardfolk's quick eyeball snack helped him not feel threatened being alone, however briefly, with a six-foot-tall lizardman. But the others opened the bag of holding mere moments after he had stepped in, and now Dave Quillbender found himself standing before the Pantheon Wall of Greenvale. "You'll be safe in here," Marlo assured him.

Once inside Greenvale, T'puuli Tine took the five arena slaves aside and explained what they'd learned about the Tarrasque soul prison since last they'd met in person. "There are two methods of activation," he said. "Smashing it releases the Tarrasque's soul permanently - and causes the creature to rampage directly to the area where the prison was shattered."

"That sounds great!" enthused Cramer. "Then let's smash the thing in the middle of the Overreach and let the big monster do our work for us!"

"Unfortunately," replied the celestial drider, "the Tarrasque's body currently lies in slumber on the other side of the world, in a land called Jakura. Smashing the soul prison doesn't simply teleport the beast to the site of its destruction, it causes the Tarrasque to head there in a direct path. Getting it to head to the Overreach from its present location will cause it to wreak a path of destruction along half the planet."

"Oh," frowned the gnome. He liked the image of the Tarrasque taking apart the entire Underdark city of Overreach, but that was certainly not the way to go about it. Plus, he needed to find Honeycomb Buzzwort and free him before any thoughts of destroying Overreach could be entertained. "So what's the second method?"

"There is an ornate ritual that can be performed to release the Tarrasque's soul and command it to action while still allowing it to be resealed inside the prison afterwards. Both methods require the relic to be in the place the Tarrasque is to be brought to."

"So even that second method brings it lumbering across the world?" asked Cramer. "What if we went to Jakura and performed the ritual there?"

"I believe it would be best not to mess with the soul prison at all," replied T'puuli. "Our main goal is not to use the Tarrasque ourselves, but to ensure the Mortal Queen is unable to use it."

"Yeah, that makes a lot more sense," agreed Marlo. "So we're going to try to steal it away from the Mortal Queen?"

"That is indeed the plan. Matron Ky'hulcressen will draw out the Mortal Queen and while she is distracted we will send you to in to infiltrate House Bel'vior to reobtain the Tarrasque soul prison."

"I like it," Cramer replied, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Striking a blow against the drow always put him in a good mood. "When do we start?"

- - -

This ended up being another short session, since Marlo's single casting of the Evard's black tentacles did most of the work for us. But it was nice seeing the events of this adventure plugging in so seamlessly into the "Durnhill Conscripts" campaign: the poor diviner student taken away for aiding in the theft of a book from the Diviners Library was the poor schmuck Galen, Kaspar, and Syngaard had paid to remove the book for them after their own efforts failed spectacularly; that was Ashfall Dave we were saving from the assassins, grandfather to Maria Quillbender, cousin to Syngaard's dead wife. And, of course, the Durnhill conscripts slew Arcturus in the last campaign after he tried slaying their mentor Skevros in their own tavern headquarters, being brought to trial in the Azure Glade in the exact same circular courtroom our PCs found themselves in during this adventure. Running through "subsequent but concurrent" campaigns is kind of cool!

Jhasspok distracting the ranger was great! I lol'd at his "I was lying about looking for fish."

ADVENTURE 31: THE TARRASQUE AT HAND

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 6 August 2020

- - -

Returning to Greenvale, the House Jalamir arena slaves - who had not performed that actual function for some time now - prepared for their next mission by upgrading some of their equipment. Utred had his magic greataxe honed such that the blade was extra-sharp, while Cramer had the protection afforded by his amulet of natural armor enhanced. Khari had an enchantment added to his earth glide warhammer that would even further increase its ability to strike true and deal damage to those struck. Marlo placed an order for a magic ring that would allow her to walk up the sides of walls and across ceilings; it would take the wizard crafter some time to create such a ring, so she paid him in advance and was told when to return for her finished product.

Jhasspok bought a fish at the market and ate it, head and all. He'd amassed a pile of coins but not enough to do what he wanted done, so on the advice of his dwarven allies he saved his money for now. "Ye never know, this next mission could turn out t'be a lucrative one," Utred winked at the lizardfolk. He then found himself explaining that "lucrative" meant "liable to bring in a lot of money" to the puzzled reptile.

When they arrived for their pre-mission briefing, they were handed some new equipment. Each received a magical ring, which resized to perfect fit the finger upon which it was placed; more importantly, it cloaked the wearer in a nondetection spell. Cramer's shoulders unclenched as soon as he placed the ring on his finger; it was nice to know he was currently no longer able to be scried upon through his House Jalamir slave tattoo. The sunborn drow passed over three pairs of goggles of darkvision, allowing those not of dwarvish ancestry to see as well in pitch blackness as any dwarf. "You'll want to turn off your slave-light cloaks," he advised. "You will be traveling through the shadow path to House Ky'hulcressen in the Overreach and the light will attract the undead wraiths who haunt that area." Without further prompting, all five slaves extinguished the lights from their cloaks, then were led through the Plane of Shadow to the allied House for which they served as "secret double slaves" - at least according to Jhasspok.

Matron Ky'hulcressen was there to meet them, along with 20 drow mercenaries. They wore no House insignia and, the Matron explained, had belonged to various Lesser Houses that had been recently wiped out as a result of the infighting caused by the Mortal Queen's self-proclaimed ascension to the rule of all drow in Overreach.

"I believe you all know the plan," Matron Ky'hulcressen told all assembled before her. "I will openly challenge the Mortal Queen's right to rule. This will lead to a trial by combat, in which only one of us will emerge with her life. If I manage to slay her - which is unlikely - we will have put an end to her madness and restored a sense of normalcy to our city and its people. If she slays me, I will have forfeited my life but bought you the time needed to find and steal back the Tarrasque soul prison, for even if she learns of your presence during your attempt she cannot leave my formal duel challenge without forfeiting her rule. While you infiltrate the Mortal Queen's own chambers to find the relic" - here she looked at the five arena slaves - "these mercenaries will stage an attack upon House Bel'vior, making it look like another simple takeover attempt to jockey for power."

She passed over four potion vials, giving one to each of the slaves but Utred. "You, I understand, have a hat of disguise by which you can take on the appearance of a drow mercenary like these before you. The other four slaves will drink these potions of disguise self, which will have the same effect." Marlo, Cramer, Khari, and Jhasspok each dutifully downed their potion, taking on the semblance of a dark-skinned drow of their own gender; Marlo, looking around, saw a few of the drow mercenaries were female and was pleased she wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. All drow clerics, she had seen during her time as a slave, were female but not all drow females were clerics, it seemed.

"Finally, here is a shadow key," Matron Ky'hulcressen said, handing a black key to Cramer. "Once you have obtained the Tarrasque soul prison, use it to activate a shadow walk spell attuned to the permanent gate here in our own House Pillar. It can be used but once per day." Cramer accepted the key and realized, despite his avowed hatred of all drow, he was actually feeling something very much like respect for this House Matron, who was willingly going to go start a battle to the death she likely could not win with the Mortal Queen, just to ensure her people were freed from the machinations of the House Bel'vior leader.

"Let us go," Matron Ky'hulcressen said, opening the gate and leading the group through the shadows and then over to the ceiling surrounding the House Bel'vior pillar back on the Material Plane. Marlo looked "up" and saw the Bioluminescent Sea, meaning they were upside-down under the permanent reverse gravity effect of the cavern ceiling. Her stomach churned involuntarily - she wasn't a big fan of all of this inverted gravity nonsense.

Cramer had taken the opportunity of the brief trip through the Plane of Shadows to cast some preparatory spells: longstrider, death ward, divine favor, and magic circle against evil on himself, aid on Khari, shield of faith on Utred, and a bless spell on the entire group. "Good luck," Matron Ky'hulcressen said before becoming a shadow herself as she glided back out of the Material Plane - she had a date in the combat arena with the Mortal Queen.

There were enemy drow warriors guarding access to the enormous doors to the House Bel'vior pillar, scattered in a loose arc. The allied drow mercenaries slunk away, splitting into smaller groups to meet up with other hired drow mercenaries from displaced Lesser Houses so they could make a concentrated assault upon multiple doors to the pillar at once, leaving the ten present enemies guarding this entrance for the five arena slaves to deal with. That seems about right, Utred thought to himself. We ought t'be able to take ten out ourselves.

Khari led the charge against the Bel'vior forces, although they didn't realize it until he was already upon them for he used the power of his earth glide warhammer to perform the majority of his charge below the ground, springing up from the stone to swing his weapon into the face of a startled warrior, instantly crushing his nose and sending a spray of teeth and blood flying off to the side. Hearing the sentry's cry of pain, the two personal bodyguards of the unit's leader readied their hand crossbows, looking for any sign of the enemy. But Khari had his foe blocking the others' view of him and they couldn't see Cramer either, for he had activated his ring of invisibility and followed in Khari's wake (although he stuck to above-ground travel).

But they did see Jhasspok, who leaped out from behind the small building the group had appeared beside and sprinted toward a drow warrior. The two bodyguards turned and fired at what looked to be a drow mercenary without House insignia swinging a battleaxe at one of their men. The quarrels zipped by Jhasspok's head as he ran, neither one hitting their mark. But his weapon hit his target, nearly knocking the drow warrior off his feet with the power of his blow.

The unit leader, a female drow cleric in ironsilk full plate armor, cast a bless spell over her own troops, right as Utred plucked a bead from his necklace of fireballs and hurled it into a cluster of drow warriors. One drow was burned to death almost immediately, while the exploding flames caused pain to another warrior, the cleric, and both of her bodyguards.

Another drow warrior came to the aid of the one fighting Khari, while the other five surrounded Jhasspok. But by now they were rattled, for they had a hard time hitting their foes with enough force to deal them any real harm. Marlo cast an Evard's black tentacles spell centered on the cleric - she'd long ago learned that the drow women in heavy armor were the ones you had to take out quickly - but that blasted drow spell resistance prevented any of the grasping tentacles from getting a hold on those within the spell's area of effect. Marlo let out a quite unladylike curse, fortunately from far enough away she wasn't heard, for the drow enemies would likely wonder why she swore in the slave tongue, given she looked to be a mercenary drow herself.

Khari swung his warhammer with wild abandon, and in several seconds had two drow corpses at his feet. He whooped in triumph and looked about for more enemies to slay. The bodyguards - identifiable by their better armor and weapons - were scrambling out of the writhing tentacles, moving much slower than normal as they avoided getting grabbed up, but each successfully making it to freedom without incident.

Cramer cast a spiritual weapon spell and sent the quarterstaff of pure force flying over to aid Jhasspok. The weapon conked a drow warrior on the back of the head, sending him reeling. Jhasspok was grateful for the aid, but it was perhaps not as needed as the gnome cleric had assumed, for the lizardfolk's battleaxe went cleaving through the bodies of three drow foes in a matter of seconds, slaying the trio (one not with his axe but his own snapping teeth). Jhasspok hadn't realized it before, but being surrounded by enemies meant you didn't have to move very far when swinging your weapon about! He idly wondered if he could get all of his future enemies to stand all around him like that.

The drow cleric extricated herself from the black tentacles and repositioned herself on the steps to the Pillar Gate, the entrance to House Bel'vior she was sworn to protect with her life - and those of her men. Utred saw her and decided she'd be his next target, so he grabbed up his greataxe and charged at her, his blade slicing through her armor and into her midsection. A drow warrior came running up next to her to give her what aid he could, for he had decided he'd rather face this mercenary with the greataxe than that crazy one who had just bitten out the throat of a Bel'vior soldier while cutting down two others with his battleaxe. What kind of a freak did that?

Marlo fired a scorching ray at the cleric and her nearby soldier, slaying both. Utred and Khari noticed she'd fired through her own black tentacles, which had moved out of the way of her twin rays of flame to see to her success. That was certainly strange!

The other drow didn't last very much longer, and while they were being stripped of their armor and weapons (all of which was tossed into the bag of holding Marlo carried), Utred found a key around the neck of the cleric; sure enough, it opened the doors to the gate she'd been guarding. Pulling open the massive metal doors, Utred stepped inside, the others following at his side.

There were two armed and armored female drow fighters in the large chamber just beyond and a drider filling up a side-passageway to the right. There were corridors straight ahead and off to the left as well; Cramer realized he'd need to cast his locate object spell from the scroll once they'd dealt with this wave of guardians to even find their way to where the Tarrasque soul prison was being stored.

The drider was the first to react to the sudden appearance of unknown drow mercenaries, but he sought his own safety first, casting a mage armor spell upon himself from the safety of the webs upon which he was suspended. Khari used the power of his earth glide warhammer to sink beneath the stone floor, only to pop back up behind the first fighter. As he spun to face his designated foe, he caught a glimpse of someone approaching from the corridor ahead - she looked vaguely familiar, and Khari finally realized who it was: Eri'dia Jalamir. Well, that was good; she owed them one for getting her to the safety of Greenvale when her own mother had tried slaying her, and the group could no doubt use all the help they could get.

Then there was no further time for any thoughts of the little sister to their own slavemaster, for both drow fighters had focused their weapons upon him. The dwarven fighter dodged one sword but couldn't do likewise with the other; its blade cut him in the arm, sliding between the grooves of metal by his elbow. It hurt, but Khari didn't let that bother him; he'd get healed up after they took down this wave, and maybe even sooner, for Cramer had a habit of healing up his friends when it looked like they needed it. He hadn't failed any of them yet!

Jhasspok, the largest by far of the five heroes, saw it as his duty to take down the largest of their foes. With that thought in mind, he charged at the drider, bringing his battleaxe crashing down to strike the creature's spindly legs as it reared up like a horse to try to fend off the lizardfolk's attack. Cramer redirected his spiritual quarterstaff, sending it to go aid Jhasspok against the drider, while the crafty gnome cast a silence spell on the floor by Jhasspok's feet. He'd seen the drider cast his mage armor spell earlier and didn't want it able to cast any offensive spells against any of the Jalamir slaves. At the same time, Marlo targeted the drider with a pair of empowered scorching rays, one missing the darting creature's head but the other striking him straight in the chest.

Utred charged one of the fighters, coming to a halt beside his fellow dwarf and allowing them to fight their drow enemies side by side. His greataxe cut down the foe he'd attacked and he followed up the swing with a cut into the one directly across from Khari. But by then Eri'dia had arrived, and she turned out not to be the source of aid Khari had thought, for at this closer range he could see the stitches holding her body parts together. This was one of the flesh golems her mother had created from the dismembered pieces of her regenerating body! The golem held up a fist charged with a reddish energy and swung it at Khari's head. The Hammerslammer dwarf dodged the attack, but it brought on the obvious question: what in blazes was a flesh golem of Eri'dia Jalamir doing here in House Bel'vior?

Then Khari decided it really didn't matter a whole lot: it was here trying to kill him so he was going to do the same thing right back at it. He slammed his warhammer into the side of her head, glad that this flesh golem was only the size of the nimble drow woman - he'd heard these things could be crafted to reach 7 feet tall or even larger! The remaining drow fighter focused her attention on Utred, seeing as the golem had the other dwarf's full attention now.

The drider stabbed at Jhasspok with a pair of sharp-tipped rapiers; the lizardfolk deflected one off his shield but the other pierced his scales. Jhasspok hissed in pain - that hurt! - and channeled his anger into a powerful, sideways blow with his battleaxe, cutting through the drider's torso and spilling him onto the ground at the reptile's feet. Jhasspok stepped back, ready to bring his axe down upon the thing's head, but it looked like such a maneuver was not needed - the thing was dead.

Cramer redirected his spiritual quarterstaff again, this time causing it to strike the flesh golem - but it missed. Marlo empowered another scorching ray spell and sent the twin beams of fire over at the golem, hitting with both and noticing the stitched thing was moving slower as a result of her attack. That was good to know! "Fire slows the golem down!" she called out to her friends as the hideous mockery of Eri'dia slammed a fist at Khari again; the dwarf dodged the clumsy attack with ease.

Utred's greataxe swung into the drow's side and she almost dropped her weapon as a result; she certainly dropped her guard, allowing Khari's warhammer to plow into the side of her skull, killing her instantly. The dwarf continued his hammer-swing into the flesh golem, hearing a satisfying crunch that likely meant a broken rib or two - pity the unliving thing didn't seem to feel any pain.

The drider dead, Jhasspok turned and saw the two dwarves squaring off against the flesh golem. He raced across the plaza, bringing his battleaxe to bear against their foe. (He didn't hesitate for a moment upon seeing its likeness; the dwarves were fighting it and that was all the lizardfolk needed to know - he trusted their instincts in such matters.) Cramer's spiritual weapon struck the golem in the head and surprisingly shattered to pieces, each piece disappearing before hitting the floor; it had come up against spell resistance it couldn't overcome. But he ran up, bringing his Elderwood flaming mace to bear, slamming the golem in the side of the leg and grinning as he realized the magical flames would only extend the slow effect. But that wasn't even really needed, for Marlo brought the thing down with another casting of an empowered scorching ray spell. The stitched thing that looked like Eri'dia collapsed to the ground, its body ablaze and filling the chamber with the smell of charred flesh and burnt hair.

Cramer pulled out his scroll of locate object while the dwarves grabbed weapons and armor from the slain drow fighters and the drider, tossing them hurriedly into the bag of holding Marlo held open. "It's this way!" the gnome called, pointing down the corridor from which the false Eri'dia had come.

Khari headed down the indicated hallway, ignoring two sets of stairs which led down on either side of the corridor. As he approached a set of eight statues of Lolth (four on the ground showing her in a driderlike configuration, four directly above on the ceiling showing her as a drow-headed spider), a dark-clad figure stepped out from behind them, blade in one hand and the other arm - the one pointed in Khari's direction - wielding a hand crossbow. This was also a figure the dwarf had seen before, but this time he needed no time at all to recognize it, for it was none other than Calish Jalamir, the slavemaster! Calish fired his weapon at what he thought was an enemy drow mercenary, one he'd never seen before, but Khari dodged the incoming bolt partly by dint of fact he wasn't as tall as the illusion making him look like a drow made him appear to be.

Jhasspok was right behind Khari and he too recognized Calish. But any automatic hesitation he might have once had preventing him from attacking his slavemaster had long since been burned out of the lizardfolk's brain: Calish was an enemy of the sunborn drow and needed to be killed! He brought his battleaxe slamming into the drow's side, but the slavemaster rolled at the last minute and at least avoided the sharp blade, if not the solid axe-head entirely.

Cramer ran down the corridor, activating his ring of invisibility again as he did so. Marlo cast a lightning bolt at the slavemaster and scowled as it shattered, unspent, against his inherent spell resistance. Calish backed away from Khari and Jhasspok, activating a ring of his own, and he suddenly started blinking in and out of existence in an unpredictable pattern: one moment he was there, the next he was not.

Neither Khari nor Jhasspok had ever experienced the blink spell effect at work before; with a shrug, they each pressed on with their attacks. And luck was with them both, for their weapons struck unerringly against the drow slavemaster, who was then unceremoniously knocked unconscious by a second casting of Cramer's spiritual weapon spell. This quarterstaff of pure force was not hampered by the drow's resistance to spell energy and he fell forward, knocked into instant insensibility from the blow to the back of the head.

Unsure of what to do with him - he deserved to die, but maybe the Greenvale forces could get some information out of him? - Cramer stabilized him with a cure minor wounds spell (just enough to stop him from bleeding, not enough to restore him to consciousness) and they took the time to strip him of his valuables, bind him tightly with rope, and prop him into the bag of holding such that his head and shoulders stuck out, ensuring he wouldn't suffocate to death inside the extradimensional space. That just meant Marlo couldn't close the bag up all the way and had to carry it over one shoulder, but Cramer's locate object spell was telling him they needed to get past the door behind where Calish had been taken out and the gnome was eager to get moving - no telling how long the spell would last!

Entering through the door, the room beyond looked to be a royal waiting room, with elegant furniture and elaborately-woven carpets; but of primary notice were the 20-foot-tall double doors engraved with a depiction of Lolth in her demonic spider form. The carving practically radiated evil, to the point where the heroes were hesitant to even touch the doors.

"The Tarrasque soul prison's on the other side of these doors!" Cramer said, knowing they needed to open the doors but unable to will himself to do so. In one sense stalling for time, Marlo cast a detect magic spell and examined the doors with her magically-enhanced sight. "They're magic, all right," she announced. "Some kind of...abjuration effect."

"Ensuring we can't get in!" snarled Utred, for he could feel the waves of malevolence coming off the double doors and felt, to his own shock, his own unwilling desire to simply run away.

"They can't keep me out!" muttered Khari, sinking below the surface of the stone floor. And it was true: whatever spell was messing with the heroes' minds and making it so they feared to even touch the door, it didn't prevent Khari Hammerslammer from sinking below the stone floor, advancing forward, and popping back up into the room beyond. Looking about with his darkvision, he noted this was the Mortal Queen's throne room, fortunately empty at the moment. But there were no other exits, which meant...yep, there it was: the Tarrasque soul prison was over in the corner, nestled upon a pile of bones.

Khari was torn. One part of him wanted to go grab the soul prison and dive back beneath the floor, returning with it to his friends. Another part was sure as soon as he touched it something bad would happen - surely the Mortal Queen would have put up some sort of safeguard? He should probably open the double doors and let his friends in - maybe the doors weren't trapped from the inside? (He certainly felt no hesitation in touching the metal doors, so maybe that meant the magic was focused in the Lolth carving on the other side of the doors?)

"Ah, screw it!" Khari said to himself. This was too much thinking - and thinking had never been his strong suit! Before he could be gripped with any further indecision, he pushed the doors open.

A blaring alarm spell went off as soon as he - a non-drow - touched the doors. Worse yet, it caused the pile of bones in the corner to activate, rising up as a ten-foot-tall bone golem with the Tarrasque soul prison now trapped inside a cage in the hollow of the construct's chest.

Khari spent no time on self-recrimination; time was now of the essence - there was no telling how long they had before reinforcements would show up! He raced across the room, advancing upon the vaguely humanoid bone-thing. Jhasspok was across the room in a shot, passing by the slower dwarf and swinging his battleaxe at the construct's central mass; he got a painful slam from the thing's fist for his trouble, as the bone golem's arms were as long as the lizardfolk's entire body. Jhasspok's momentum was deflected to the side, and then the thing brought its other fist crashing down on the reptile's head. Jhasspok saw stars but retained his footing, shaking his head furiously to clear it.

Cramer ran up behind Khari and Jhasspok, using his most powerful weapon: his knowledge of all things magical. "This is probably a bone golem!" he cried. "Most spells will be ineffectual against it! Our best bet is simple brute force!"

Not sure which of her spells would be the most likely to be effective against a golem of a type she'd never faced before - but she knew each golem was subject to only a small handful of spells, ignoring all others - Marlo uncoiled the life-flame whip she wore on her belt. This had two main advantages: it was a physical attack, not a spell, and it allowed the sorcerer to strike the construct from far enough away that it couldn't reach her in retaliation.

Utred was a walking arsenal of weapons but he couldn't fault Marlo's logic; he uncoiled his own life-flame whip and together they sent their weapons snapping at the bone golem, over the heads of Jhasspok and Khari. Each strike singed the bones making up the construct's vaguely humanoid form.

Khari sent his earth glide warhammer crashing into the golem's leg - it was a perfect weapon for smashing bone, although the process used to create this monstrosity had not only fused mismatched bones together but hardened them as well. Still, he was pleased to see bone chips flying off with every strike of his hammer.

Jhasspok continued swinging his battleaxe at the golem as well, and even bit at the thing when a limb got within biting range. The lizardfolk was spurred on by the realization that some of the bones used in the golem's construction still had bits of flesh hanging on to them. But after having bitten it a couple of times, Jhasspok realized that while meat was meat, this meat was far from tasty.

The bone golem, for its part, ignored the whips snapping at it and slammed the two figures immediately before it. Then Cramer crept forward and, on a hunch, cast a cure serious wounds spell on it - it might be a golem, but its build practically screamed necromancy and it was about as close to an undead thing as you could get. The ploy worked; while it was up in the air whether the healing energy had caused it any harm (it at least certainly hadn't healed it!), the creature's attacks slowed, just as fire had slowed the flesh golem made of Eri'dia Jalamir's severed parts.

Marlo and Utred continued whipping the bone golem as Jhasspok and Khari brought their melee weapons to bear. But then the bone golem changed tactics: pointing a twisted forearm at Utred, it fired off a chunk of itself. The dwarven barbarian felt a mass of bone strike him in the chest and then immediately begin to twist and reform, expanding all around him until it had formed a skin-tight bone cage around him - and one which, he saw, had rooted itself to the stone floor. The dwarf was completely immobilized. But not for long, he vowed, stoking the internal fires of his rage and pushing every last ounce of power against his bone prison, until--

Well, crap. He was still confined in the latticework of bones all around him. That hadn't worked out like he had planned at all. He struggled again, to no avail; pinned as he was in place, he had no leverage. It was frustrating, and he vented with a roar of impotent anger.

"We'll get you out!" promised Cramer, casting another cure serious wounds spell onto the bone golem, hoping once they defeated it the bone prison might crumble away to nothingness. The healing spell did seem to affect the golem, but it now redirected its attention down at the gnome cleric and slammed at him with a massive arm - an arm which was slowly growing fully back after a piece of it had been shot at Utred to bind him into place. Marlo continued whipping the golem from a safe distance, while Khari's warhammer sent individual pieces of bone flying with each strike - entire bones now, not just splinters and fragments, possibly a sign the golem was wearing down.

Such indeed was the case. Jhasspok swung his battleaxe into the golem's torso a final time and bones went flying, causing a cascade effect: as the necromantic energy binding the construct together leaked away into the ether, the bones all fell away from each other in a loose pile. The Tarrasque soul prison, now released from its own bone cage inside the golem's central mass, came rolling across the floor and Marlo quickly scooped it up. "Got it!" she cried. "Let's get out of here!"

"Hey! Wait!" cried Utred, still stuck within his bone prison. The thing hadn't crumpled apart when the bone golem was destroyed; apparently it was fastened together by a different process than that which had given the bone golem its mobility. The group hastily started hacking away at the intertwined bones imprisoning Utred, until finally they had broken away enough of it the barbarian was able to step out. "Thanks," he growled, angry he'd missed out on the end of destroying the bone golem and had had to be rescued. "But yeah, we'd better get going." The alarm spell was still blaring away and the group could hear footsteps and angry shouts rapidly approaching.

Marlo scooped her bag of holding back up - Calish Jalamir's unconscious head still poking out of the top of it - and indicated her readiness. Then Cramer pulled out the shadow key, held it out before him in the air, and twisted it as if putting it inside a lock. A rift opened up in the throne room, a rent between this reality and the Plane of Shadow, and the five heroes ran through into shadowy darkness. The rift closed up behind them, leaving the House Bel'vior guards wondering how to explain the open doors to the throne room and the pile of bones scattered in the back of the room. "Search the area!" one called. "Whoever tried breaking in here couldn't have gotten far!" It was wishful thinking on his part, for he knew the Mortal Queen would not be pleased to learn they hadn't caught whoever had invaded the sanctity of her own throne room.... With a gulp of worry, he frantically led his team exploring the nearby rooms and hallways.

The five heroes stepped through the permanent gate and back into House Ky'hulcressen. They weren't home free quite yet, but they knew it was just a walk through the shadow path back to Greenvale and all would be well. They'd retrieved the Tarrasque soul prison before the Mortal Queen had been able to divine how it worked and set the rampaging beast onto Greenvale, and even managed to snag some loot off the drow soldiers they'd slain and capture Calish Jalamir in the process. All in all, a successful mission!

- - -

And we all made it to 10th level, as a bonus.

Logan informed us after we had finished that by saving Calish's life and bringing him back to Greenvale for questioning, we inadvertently uncovered and foiled his plot to betray Matron Jalamir to House Bel'vior. It turns out the only reason he was there in the first place was he had switched teams: anticipating that the Mortal Queen would come out on top, he offered to become a member of House Bel'vior, bringing along a flesh golem made from his little sister Eri'dia as an additional enticement, but the real point of sale was an opportunity to betray Matron Jalamir and put his House under the leadership of someone more inclined to do the Mortal Queen's bidding. Offered to sell his own mother up the river, that one! Nice guy.

...There will now be an intermission of unknown duration: this campaign is being put on indefinite hold due to the COVID-19 situation.

Here's the situation: this campaign contains five players and a DM from two families living in the same small town. Both families have been more or less quarantined at home since March, and Dan and I are already exposed to each other at work (although we take all the normal precautions: masks, hand sanitizer, social distancing, ranged temperature scans upon entering our work building, etc.), so we had decided cross-contact between two otherwise quarantined family groups was presenting no further danger to each other and continued playing through our two campaigns. And that was all fine and dandy...but next week both Harry and Joey start school.

Now granted, they'll be taking their own precautions at their respective schools, but there will now be a lot more opportunities for either one of them to pick up germs and bring them home to pass them on to their families. And I have a doubly at-risk wife at home: she's 72 years old (high risk category) with on-going medical conditions (higher risk category). So as much as we've enjoyed being able to continue on with our D&D campaigns, it's not worth risking my wife's life to keep playing. And thus our hiatus.

I'm not sure how long we'll put these campaigns on hold. We might be able to get in a game at the end of Christmas break, if it's long enough (and the two schools sync up their vacations) that we can get in a two-week quarantine period at our individual homes to ensure everyone's still doing fine and then fit in a game session towards the end. Failing that, we'll probably start up in May again, once the schools have let out for the summer.

But school starting back up is going to affect us more than just putting our D&D campaigns on hold. We're also going to have to break into two camps here at the Richards household; Logan's going to have to be the one with direct contact with my wife Mary (getting her pills, etc.) since they'll be the only ones at home while Harry's in school and I'm at work (right now, I work one week and then telework the next week), while I'll be the one in direct contact with Harry, since we'll need to limit his contact with Mary and also with Logan, as he'll be in direct contact with Mary. (Harry's school does offer an option to do classes on-line but he's not eligible as he's in a special needs program and they want the continued daily physical presence with the special education teachers.) So we've got some massive changes coming up over the horizon.

In any case, thanks for reading and hopefully I'll be in a position to continue this Story Hour before too long.

Johnathan

ADVENTURE 32: CITIZENS OF THE DEPTHS

PC Roster:

Game Session Date: 1 January 2021

- - -

One of the advantages of dealing with House Ky'hulcressen was they had quite a few wizards devoted solely to the creation of magic weapons and items and the upgrading in power of those already in existence. The five House Jalamir arena slaves, fresh from their mission in stealing back the Tarrasque soul prison (and snagging the traitorous slavemaster Calish Jalamir in the process), took the opportunity to have some of their weapons further enhanced. Due to direct orders from Matron Ky'hulcressen herself, their requests were dealt with immediately, even if it meant bumping pre-existing orders to be dealt with later. With the money they had left over, some of the arena slaves even purchased a few new items that looked like they'd be of aid in future combats.

To their surprise, after they left the Ky'hulcressen marketplace and returned to their temporary quarters in the drow House pillar, Matron Jalamir was there waiting for them.

“Line up,” she commanded without any further explanation. “Kneel and expose your backs.”

Jhasspok dropped immediately, a lifetime of slavery conditioning him to instant obedience. The others dropped to their knees as well, but unlike the lizardfolk they wore armor and robes that needed to be removed; Jhasspok had only to sweep his slave-light cloak over his shoulder to hang before him before he had complied with his Matron's demands.

A drow wizard approached, a male the lizardfolk thought looked familiar, although he couldn't quite place him. Cramer, glancing at the mage suspiciously from the corner of his eye as he removed his armor, recognized him at once: he was the drow in attendance when Matron Jalamir had had her daughter Eri'dia dismembered and rebuilt into a series of flesh golems before allowing her to regenerate back to her full form. The little gnome wasn't sure why the drow wizard had been brought here to the five arena slaves, but he doubted he'd like whatever was going on.

But he was quite wrong on that front, for the drow mage knelt down behind Jhasspok and, with a modified version of the erase spell, began removing the slave tattoo that had been etched upon the lizardfolk's scales shortly after he was hatched. The process took but a few minutes, then the drow wizard moved on to Marlo, removing the slave tattoo from between her shoulder blades as well. Cramer almost wept with joy as his hated tattoo was removed from his back. The dwarves were stoic, their stony faces hiding any expressions of their relief that the slave tattoos were being taken away.

Once all five had had their tattoos removed, they were allowed to put their armor and robes back on, then another attendant stepped forward and handed each of them a metal cloak pin in the shape of the House Jalamir emblem. “Prick your thumb with the pin,” Matron Jalamir commanded. “That will allow the pins to drink your blood, which in turn will ensure they can each only be used by the person to whom they belong.” She then had them attach the House pins to the left side of their slave-light cloaks.

Motioning for them to stand back up, Matron Jalamir gave a slight smile. “Congratulations,” she said. “Your days of slavery are now over; you are citizens of House Jalamir, in recognition of your loyalty and dedication.” Cramer was aghast to recognize the swell of pride in his chest at her words for what it was. Surely he wasn't actually glad to have been elevated to the equivalent of a drow! Still, he reasoned, it was good to be acknowledged as something more than a slave.

“With the slave tattoos gone, the Mortal Queen can no longer take advantage of the loophole in the law that allowed her to scry upon you,” the drow matron explained. “Drow law prohibits scrying upon citizens of other Houses, so if she tries to do so we will have legal leverage against her.”

"Then...what are our duties, if we are no longer slaves, Matron?" asked Marlo hesitantly.

"Your duties will be roughly the same, attending to the needs of the House. However, you will be paid for your services in real coin, not the slave tokens to which you have been accustomed." That didn't seem like such a big difference to Jhasspok, replacing one type of money with another type of money. But the dwarves seemed impressed, so the lizardfolk assumed this was a good thing.

"To that end," continued Matron Jalamir, "in the morning you will report to the Jalamir fishing shore for your next assignment. House Falmakyorl has been performing naval maneuvers in the Bioluminescent Sea outside the confines of the vast cavern housing the Eight Great Pillars of Overreach, and with most of their House pulled away elsewhere, a pair of threats have entered the cavern through the Sea Gates in their absence. Reports from the fishing slaves are that a pair of scrags have moved into the area as well as a swarm of abysseels. The eels seem to drag their victims into the ruins of the city below, while the scrags stay closer to shore to avoid the spirits of the unquiet dead. You will deal with both threats." With that, the House Matron dismissed the newly-sanctified citizens to rest up for their next day's mission.

"What's an abysseel?" Marlo asked Jhasspok, assuming the lizardfolk's five years as a fisher slave would have made him an expert on the local aquatic wildlife.

"I don't know," Jhasspok admitted.

"And what's this about city ruins on the sea floor?" Cramer wanted to know. Jhasspok had no answers for him, either, as the waters below the Eight Great Pillars were very deep and his job as a fisher slave had kept him to the shallower waters, where the bulk of the fish swam.

"Here's another stupid question," Utred said. "If the Mortal Queen's about to attack the surface world - Greenvale in particular - what's she doin' havin' the Overreach Navy goin' out on maneuvers? It's not like they're likely to be of much use in a surface raid - Greenvale's not next to any bodies of water!" Nobody had any answer to that question, either, but trying to figure out the Mortal Queen's thought processes was a fool's game in any case. But Cramer at least had heard about scrags: they were aquatic trolls, capable of regeneration and susceptible to both fire and acid.

"That won't help us underwater, will it?" pointed out Marlo.

"More than you'd expect," Cramer answered. "Your scorching ray and fireball spells, for instance - they can both be cast underwater, you just don't get open flames out of them, more like scalding steam. But they'll be just as effective underwater in killing scrags."

"I wonder what scrag meat tastes like," wondered Jhasspok aloud, gaining him a slightly disturbed frown from Marlo. Her scowl only intensified when Cramer pointed out that Jhasspok could take a bite out of a scrag and then take that exact same bite again shortly thereafter once the creature had regenerated its wound. The concept intrigued the lizardfolk greatly: meat that grew back! This was something he wanted to try out for himself!

The next morning, the group assembled at the Jalamir fishing shore as commanded and decided to interview the fisher slaves to gather what information they could before braving the dangers of the Bioluminescent Sea. The slaves warned the abysseels had an electric bite, so Cramer shuffled his spell preparations accordingly: he'd not only need to provide the ability to breathe underwater to the members of the group, but also shield them from electricity damage. After finishing his prayers, he cast a longstrider spell upon himself, then cast resist energy spells on the entire group. He was about to do the same with a water breathing spell, but Marlo cut him off. "Don't bother casting it on me," she advised. "My ioun stone allows me to survive without air."

"And I can hold my breath," added Jhasspok.

"Okay, you're exempt," Cramer acknowledged to Marlo, casting the water breathing spell on just the four males. "But you're getting one anyway, Jhasspok. No telling how long we'll be underwater - no need for you to have to keep heading back to the surface for more air. Okay then, let's go."

Jhasspok needed no further prompting. With a splash, he leaped into the water and started swimming, glad to be fully immersed in the sea where he had spent so much of the first five years of his life. The others stepped into the water more hesitantly, it being a more alien environment to them. Cramer and the dwarves immediately took in deep breaths of water, letting the magic of the gnome's spell work so they'd be able to talk while submerged. Jhasspok, not trusting the magic, kept his mouth clamped shut, well aware he could hold his breath for at least eight solid minutes; he'd start breathing underwater only when he absolutely needed to.

"Lead on, Jhasspok," suggested Marlo. The fisher slaves having explained to the five citizens the areas where they'd seen the scrags before, Jhasspok figured the marine trolls preferred a depth of about 50 feet. Even at that depth, the bioluminescent plankton that suffused the Underdark sea and gave it its name allowed for an almost normal range of vision for the landbound adventurers and it wasn't long before they spotted a pair of large, humanoid forms swimming their way from the open sea in the center of the vast cavern's waters. Of the five, only Jhasspok was waterborne, the other four standing on the surface of the sloping sea bottom, among various coral formations and fronds of plant life.

The scrags were as Cramer had described them the day before: possessing powerful, muscular bodies with webbing between their fingers and toes, the main difference between their terrestrial cousins being the lack of the standard troll's ridiculously-long nose. The two approached the five side by side, grinning evil grins filled with rows of sharp teeth like those of a shark.

Utred rushed forward, charging with his greataxe and bringing it crashing into the side of the first scrag. Greenish blood seeped from the wound, making a small cloud around the combatants. With a flick of his powerful tail, Jhasspok was there above the dwarven barbarian's head, bringing his own battleaxe crashing down upon the scrag's head. Khari raced forward as well, but he was a much slower sprinter than his barbaric fellow dwarf and hadn't even made it to his target when Cramer suddenly appeared before the scrag Utred and Jhasspok were fighting, arriving courtesy of a dimension door spell. But as the second scrag was still somewhat off by himself, Marlo targeted him for her first underwater fireball spell. It worked as Cramer had assured her it would; while there were no flames, a burst of scalding bubbles erupted around the marine troll, causing it to cry out in unexpected pain.

The first scrag bent forward and bit at Utred, while the second one retaliated against its scalding by lashing out at the closest target: Jhasspok. The lizardfolk's scales were raked by a set of powerful claws and the scrag's horrible mouth closed down on Jhasspok's shield arm; only the fact that its sharklike teeth had the shield pinned partly in its mouth prevented the foul beast from biting completely through the reptile's arm. A cloud of Jhasspok's red blood added to the green from the first scrag's wounds.

Recalling Cramer's recommendation, Utred pulled out his Elderwood flaming longsword and stabbed it straight into the chest of the marine troll towering above him. It hissed as the sword went in and was pulled out, and Utred was pleased to see the wound he had inflicted was not healing over, as the one from his and Jhasspok's axes were already starting to do.

Testing a theory, Khari activated the power of his earthglide warhammer and disappeared beneath the surface of the seabed floor, only to pop back up behind the scalded scrag, slamming his weapon into the back of the sea-beast's left knee. Jhasspok, in the meantime, had freed his shield arm from that scrag - its inarticulate cry of pain from Khari's attack certainly helped on that front! - and switched back to his original target, the scrag fighting Utred. He brought his battleaxe crashing down on its skull and he chopped right through it, causing the massive sea troll to crash in a lifeless heap before Utred. As the lizardfolk understood it, that didn't mean the scrag was really dead, but he was sure one of the others could permanently slay it with fire or acid. But before that, Jhasspok took advantage of the opportunity and bit off a hunk of flesh from the back of the scrag's calf, chewing it briefly and swallowing it almost whole. Then he made a face of disapproval; scrag meat, he'd learned, wasn't anywhere near as succulent as fish flesh: it was stringy and had an unpleasant taste that would make it a definite last resort, to be eaten only if there weren't any other meats available. How disappointing! When Cramer pulled out his Elderwood flaming mace and started smashing it repeatedly into the dead scrag to prevent it from regenerating, Jhasspok didn't even care that it meant his "bite" would no longer grow back - one bite had been quite enough!

Marlo cast another fireball at the remaining scrag and this time it saw who had been responsible for both blasts of scalding pain. It headed straight for her with a look of absolute hatred on its horrid face, but only got a few strokes before it collapsed to the seabed floor, dropped by a warhammer swing from Khari as it passed above him. It lay there motionless for a brief moment, causing Khari to believe he might have slain it, before it raised itself up on its arms and stood back up, its skin blistered and unhealing from the sorceress's spells. But before it could attack, Utred was upon it, slaying it permanently with the glowing green heat from his Elderwood flaming longsword. Just to be sure, those with flaming weapons applied them liberally to the corpses of the two scrags until they were sure neither would rise again.

"Well, that's the first threat taken care of," observed Cramer. "Now we just gotta find those abysseels."

But that wasn't a problem at all, for the abysseels found them almost immediately, no doubt drawn by the scent of blood in the area. Five of the creatures swam up, each of their thin bodies longer than Jhasspok was tall (even taking the lizardfolk's tail into account). Utred was the first to spot them and warned the others, switching back to his trusty greataxe as they approached since he had the time to spare. They spread out, each apparently choosing a separate victim for themselves. Utred readied his weapon and gave it a powerful swing directly into the creature's head as it swam up to bite him and the blow cleaved the creature's skull in twain. It collapsed to the sea floor before the dwarf as the other abysseels dashed forward to try to bite their intended prey. As the group had been warned, electricity flashed in the teeth of the giant eels, but the protective spells Cramer had cast upon the group protected them fully.

Marlo sent a magic missile spell darting into the one coming for her and it was enough to slay the beast. The others had no particular difficulty in slaying the eels trying to eat them, either. "That was a lot easier than the scrags!" Khari said. "So, I guess we're done here."

But that announcement was premature, for another five abysseels came slithering up from the same direction as the first five had come. Marlo caught sight of them and warned the others. This time, even though there were five eels attacking five adventurers, they changed up their tactics: two of them converged upon Cramer and two others targeted Utred while the fifth hung back, apparently just observing. But this second batch didn't last much longer than the first set; Utred slew two in a row with one mighty swing of his greataxe, cleaving through the bodies of the two trying to bite him. Khari and Jhasspok stepped forward to help slay the pair attacking the gnome, and Marlo sent another magic missile spell to take care of the "observer" eel. "Weird," she said.

"This is even weirder," Cramer pointed out, looking at the tail of one of the slain eels. It had teeth marks upon it; upon further examination, so did all of the others, including those of the first wave the group had fought. Marlo gave the tails a lengthy examination, noting their ragged edges, as if there had been more flesh behind the eels' bodies that had been ripped away. She also spent some time peering into the eels' mouths, noting the placement of the sharp teeth and then going back to look at their tails again. "It doesn't make a whole lot of sense," she told the others, "but I think these guys all bit their own tails off!"

"What? Why?" demanded Cramer.

"The tooth placement matches," argued Marlo, demonstrating how one dead eel, with a slightly dislodged tooth that stuck forward ahead of the others in that particular eel's mouth, matched up with the bite marks on its tail - where one tooth mark was placed forward of the others.

"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense," agreed Cramer, stroking his beard in thought.

"Maybe they just taste good," suggested Jhasspok, testing his own theory by taking a bite out of the side of the nearest abysseel corpse. That was more like it! Abysseels, Jhasspok decided, tasted much better than scrags did. And with that, he had the problem solved to his own personal satisfaction: the eels probably ate the rest of their own tails because they tasted so good. But then that thought led to another one and Jhasspok found himself wondering what lizardfolk flesh tasted like. His brow furrowed as he contemplated the tip of his own tail.

"I wonder if there are any more of them," Khari wondered aloud.

"I don't know," Cramer admitted, "but since they both came from the same direction, we'd better head that way and find out. Remember, these things have shown a tendency to drag their prey back to those underground city ruins Matron Jalamir told us about yesterday."

"So we're going into a haunted underwater city?" asked Khari. "On purpose?"

"We should be okay," assured Cramer, casting hide from undead spells on each of the adventurers and explaining how they worked: simple undead, like skeletons and zombies, shouldn't be able to even tell the adventurers were standing right there in front of them. "Just don't attack them - or even touch them - and we should be fine. Remember, we're there for the eels, not any undead!"

Jhasspok led the way, swimming just over the surface of the dropping seabed floor as he knew the others, weighed down by their armor, preferred walking. But they kept going down further and further, until the lizardfolk was much deeper than he'd even been in the Bioluminescent Sea. Even at these depths, though, visibility was normal; if you didn't know you were this deep you'd never have guessed it.

Sure enough, eventually the group encountered the ruins of buildings ahead, some of them merely vague forms covered in plant growths and others piles of collapsed stone. But there were figures walking around on the sea floor between the buildings, going on with their lives as if nothing was different from the centuries previous when this had undoubtedly been a city above the sea.

"What are they?" Marlo wanted to know.

"Ghosts, I'd imagine," Cramer speculated. "Drow ghosts from who knows how long ago?" Cramer's hide from undead spells seemed to work against these translucent figures, who gave the adventurers no heed.

"I'll go look for any more eels," offered Jhasspok, swimming above the city for a top-down view. He promised if he saw any he'd come back to tell the others before engaging them in battle. "And don't mess around with the ghosts!" Cramer reinforced. Khari offered to look below the city by earthgliding below the ruins, using the power of his hammer. "Just be careful," the gnome said, not wanting the dwarven fighter to pop up from the floor bottom straight into a ghost or anything.

Khari didn't have any luck, and having to pop back up above the surface of the solid stone every so often to get a breath of water (which still kind of creeped him out when he thought about it) didn't help matters much. After a cursory exploration in the immediate vicinity of his friends, he returned with a negative report. "It'll take forever looking for eel-caves that way," he admitted. "We'd better wait for Jhasspok."

Jhasspok was having no better luck in finding stray eels, but he did swim over quite a large swath of the city ruins and saw quite a few oblivious ghosts going about their business below him. One ghost, though, stopped what he was doing and looked straight up at Jhasspok as he swam by overhead. Jhasspok noticed his attention and was somewhat surprised when the figure rose up from the seabed floor to approach him. Even though his body was see-through, the lizardfolk noted his drowish features, and when he started speaking Jhasspok recognized the drow language being spoken, even though he himself only knew the "slave tongue" Cramer and the others referred to as "Common." Not knowing what else to do, and careful not to touch the ghost (like Cramer had said not to do), Jhasspok spun about and swam back the way he had come. The ghostly drow wizard, under the effects of a fly spell, followed.

Dropping back among his friends, Jhasspok pointed to the ghost and said merely, "He followed me here. I didn't touch him!" The ghost dropped down beside Jhasspok and continued his verbal inquiries, which only Cramer, wearing his magical helmet that allowed him to understand all spoken tongues, could understand.

"What's he saying?" Marlo wanted to know.

"He doesn't recognize our House insignia and is asking where we're from," Cramer answered.

The gnome cleric held up a hand in a "wait a minute" gesture and cast a quick tongues spell before answering the ghost. "We are from House Jalamir, a...much newer House than the ones you are accustomed to," he said. Then, wanting to get back to their primary mission, he asked the ghost if they had seen any eels nesting around their city.

"A what?" the gnome asked when the ghost answered his question. "What's that?" he followed up with.

"What's he saying?" interrupted Marlo, eager to find out what the ghost had been saying.

Cramer turned to the others. "He says an eel has made a lair in his home, and it's grown the rest of its body into a deep hydra that's now too big to leave. It's been biting off its own heads and sending them out to fetch food for it. Those 'abysseels' we've been fighting? Those are deep hydra heads!"

"We need to slay the hydra then," reasoned Utred. "Tell the ghost we'll take care of it for him if he'll show us where it is."

Cramer did as asked and the ghost led the group through the city; none of the other ghosts seemed to notice their appearance among them, going about their otherworldly business as if they were still alive after all these centuries. Finally, the undead drow wizard pointed to a collapsed building straight ahead, a massive pile of stone with a single opening visible, a passageway about ten feet tall and half of that wide. Normally, the interior would have been sheathed in pitch darkness at this depth, but the ever-present bioluminescent algae illuminated the place like the most well-lit of terrestrial dwellings.

Utred wasted no time; he charged into the collapsed building at full speed, his greataxe out and ready to slice into the first creature he met within. But the deep hydra turned from around a corner and attacked the dwarven barbarian at range. Utred had a mere moment to see his enormous foe before it struck: ten eellike heads on thin, long necks opened their teeth-filled mouths and ten blasts of lightning erupted from them, striking the dwarf in one massive jolt of electricity that quickly overcame the magical protection he'd received from Cramer before entering the Bioluminescent Sea. The hair stuck out from the top of his head and his beard bristled out in all directions as the electricity surged through his body.

And then, to make matters worse, five more "abysseels" - each a previously-bitten-off head and neck from the multiheaded hydra - swam up behind the parent creature, swimming up to attack those who would defile its new lair. Utred's greataxe slashed out and suddenly there were only four abysseels in the ruin's interior.

Getting a glimpse of the creature Utred was facing inside the ruins, Khari sunk below the surface of the stone bottom of the fallen city and resurfaced over by the back of the hydra, between its right rear leg and its thrashing tail. He slammed his weapon into the hydra's hip, causing it to hiss in pain. Jhasspok, in the meantime, took advantage of his aquatic maneuverability and swam over Utred's head, making a beeline for one of the hydra's still-connected heads. His battleaxe sliced completely through the thing's neck, releasing it from the hydra's body. But before it could spin about and bite him, the lizardfolk had the presence of mind to swing at the newly-formed abysseel with his battleaxe and sliced through its skull. It sank to the floor of the ruins, leaving the hydra with only nine heads - for now.

Cramer stepped up and allowed Fharlanghn's healing energies flow through his fingertips and into Utred's body, healing him of a goodly chunk of the damage he'd taken from the deep hydra's concentrated breath weapons. Marlo cast an empowered scorching ray over their heads at the deep hydra, targeting its body as she feared slaying a head might only cause two more to grow back in its place - and not wanting to create any more of these abysseels in the process in any case. Utred saw how little the hydra liked being hit by the fire-based spell and yanked a bead from his necklace of fireballs, tossing it at the front of the creature's body as well. The blast took out one of the four remaining free-swimming abysseels as well as dealing the other three eels and the main creature considerable harm.

In swift retaliation, the deep hydra darted out with its remaining nine heads, three each concentrating on Jhasspok, Khari, and Utred, the only combatants within immediate reach. The three remaining abysseels each focused their attacks on Utred, perhaps realizing the amount of damage the furious dwarf could dish out with his greataxe. But the adventurers pressed on with their attacks, Khari with his earthglide warhammer, Jhasspok with his battleaxe, and Utred with his greataxe, although they stopped attacking the creature's heads and necks and focused their weapons upon the great beast's body. Cramer, in the meantime, stepped forward and cast an inflict moderate wounds spell on one of the abysseels, slaying it outright.

Marlo empowered a fireball spell and set it off such that it exploded into two of the three remaining abysseels and the front of the deep hydra. The blast of superheated steam took down everything it hit, leaving only a sole abysseel remaining - which Utred handily finished off with his greataxe. Upon the destruction of all of the invaders to his home, the ghost of the drow wizard floated through the wall, took a look around, and fired off a question to Cramer, the only one capable of understanding him. The gnome heard the question, "Are you by any chance 'the Dark Champions?'" through the translation properties of his magical helm.

"We have been referred to as such in a prophecy or two," admitted the gnome, speaking Drow through his still-active tongues spell.

"I recall a tablet, looted from some duergar ruins, that had a message for the Dark Champions," replied the drow ghost. "Although the place has been smashed up a bit since the Mad Queen brought the destruction of Lolth upon our city," he said, waving his hands about to encompass the crumbled remains of his once-proud dwelling and the ruins of the ancient city surrounding it, "the tablet came through the destruction mostly unscathed. The message reads, 'The long road shall lead you where you need to be; shortcuts will cut short the lives of the innocent.' And there's a strange symbol at the bottom. Here: see for yourself." Leading the gnome to a stone tablet off to one side of the ruins, far away from the deep hydra's corpse, the ghost pointed to it. The rune at the bottom of the tablet might have been strange to the ancient drow ghost, but Cramer immediately recognized it as the holy symbol of Fharlanghn.

"Tell me of this Mad Queen," Cramer asked the ghost.

"This was centuries ago," the ghost advised. "The Mad Queen proclaimed herself a living avatar of Lolth, which apparently did not sit well with the Demon Queen of Spiders. Lolth sent an earthquake rending the wall of our great cavern apart, letting in the Bioluminescent Sea to wipe out our entire city. Such is the way the Spider-Goddess deals with great hubris."

And that's probably why the Overreach Houses haven't had a Queen in the centuries since, reasoned Cramer. Until this Mortal Queen elevated herself to such a position. I wonder if she knows how dangerous a game she's playing?

"We done here?" Utred asked, eager to get back to solid ground and fresh air if there was no longer any need for them to stick around breathing water. He wasn't sure how long the water breathing spell would last, but he didn't want to be still underwater breathing the stuff when it wore off!

"We're done here," agreed Cramer and indicated for Jhasspok to lead them back to the surface.

- - -

This was a blast to play through, especially since it was our first session in this campaign since August! It took us all a while to get back into the groove; more than one of the players was scanning through their equipment lists to recall what all their PCs had on them. Logan had us guessing with those "abysseels," and the deep hydra was an inspired creation.

And for the first time in this campaign, we started up around noon instead of our normal 6:30 PM. As a result, we had an opportunity to go through a second adventure in the same game session.

Glad to see that you were able to pick it back up!