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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4771965" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #6: Shar-shazaluk's Lair PART TWO Across the expanse of a wide, shallow lake sits a huge, slimy monster on top of a rock.  Membranous organs flutters under a translucent, slimy cocoon, and several of the purple-skinned goblins stand guard nearby. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“What…in the Nine Hells is THAT?” the genasi mutters, but six failed Dungeoneering checks later do not reveal the monster’s nature.  They’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.  It continues watching them with three unblinking red eyes, and then the feminine voice speaks in all their heads:“COME TO ME.”Well, the group isn’t exactly keen on getting transformed into slimespawn, but they inch closer, skirting the wall and looking for a way around the monster without getting too close.  The goblinspawn continue watching them without moving, almost surely following telepathic orders.  And then twelve more creatures simultaneously appear, their heads and eyes rising in unison from the water depths to stare at the party. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar7.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“JOIN ME. COME…MY CHILDREN. TO SHAR-SHAZALUK.”Again, the telepathic voice in their heads.  The group is now about thirty feet from the monster, and neither it nor the goblinspawn have moved. Then Nari-lana sees that there are five more goblinspawn waiting on a rock ahead of them. They’ll have enemies practically all around them if they keep going. They whisper among themselves and decide to fall back and start launching ranged attacks from where they first entered this chamber.They retreat about 1 foot when every creature in the room attacks them simultaneously.The goblin slimespawn launch into motion, fluidly jetting through the water while the slimy abomination, their “mother” Shar-shazaluk, bombards each member of the party with painful psychic energy.  The results are crippling. Nari-lana is Stunned, reeling from agony, and cannot move at all.  Raven and Douvan are Immobilized, their legs locking up.  Merric is overwhelmed by debilitating nausea and begins puking into the water, and Jolen the priest is Blinded, a purple film coating his eyes. Only Blackjack escapes unscathed.<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar8.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />  The slimespawn, an eclectic mixture of goblins, lizardmen and other subterranean races, swarm around the heroes, biting, clawing and stabbing with crude stone daggers. One of them is larger than all the rest, a hulking brute with the scaly head of a fish that savages the helpless Nari-lana with its talons.  And then there are the goblinspawn who’s heads violently erupt when slain, yet another problem to contend with.<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar9.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“We got to get out of here!” shouts Douvan, but that’s easier said than done.  The slimespawn die easily enough, falling under sword and arrows, but their mother Shar-shazaluk endlessly hits the group again and again and again with her psychic barrage, crippling their movement and stacking debilitating effects round after round. Raven the druid casts Icy Wind, and finds that this is possibly the most useful thing she could have done (and it’s an At-Will).  The gusting, bitter wind slides the minions away one square, a split second before the latent psychic energy in their brains explodes in a gory bloom of purple blood and bone. Jolen is overwhelmed by a psychic order that makes him swing wildly at Raven, but she assumes it was a mistakes because he’s still blind (and was blind most of the encounter). Things begin to look very grim for the heroes, and for a while there they suspect that Blackjack the Pig Farmer might be the only survivor of Tallow’s Deep [“Sorry Boss, those guys weren’t so good after all!”].  This is reinforced when the psychic barrage overwhelms Merric, and he sees an unholy beast explode from the water in front of him!  <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar10.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It’s a full grown, healthy aboleth (well, the Slime Monster, as they know it), its tentacles lashing and groping, and the halfing is immobilized by terror.  Oddly enough, no one else sees the thing surge up. Blubbering to himself, Merric can do nothing but gape in fear at the abomination as it rushes toward him. But soon it vanishes, and Merric realizes with relief that it was just an illusion. But the group has slowly managed to edge away from the beast, and they discover that there is a range limit to the aboleth’s power, although the exact line is nebulous.  But Nari-lana has made no progress at all, hampered by terrible conditions for the entire fight and Stunned practically six rounds in a row and taking continual damage. [GM Note – Stunned is an ass kicker of a condition, one I would use very, very sparingly].But bit by bit, the group has consistently whittled down the slimespawn. Dead bodies bob in the cold water, and Douvan makes consistent arrow attacks from his perch on a rock, adding more corpses to the fray. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar11.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />But the vile aboleth is completely unharmed and still using her psionic powers with impunity.  The fishman attacking Nari-lana enters a terrible rage, and it is not a minion like its brethren.  Horrid claws rake down the swordmage’s body, but her allies concentrate attacks on the thing and it is finally vanquished, sinking under the water with a dying wet gurgle. Jolen is overcome by a vision of himself drowning to death in purple mucous, so real and disturbing that he suffers -4 to all Defenses until he can banish the thought from his mind.  And then he sees the huge aboleth explode from the water, and he sinks down, worshipping its magnificence.  There is no point resisting their incredible might…<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar12.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The heroes finally manage to reach the bend in the cavern and safety from the psychic assault. The minions are all slain, their corpses littering the cavern, but Shar-shazaluk is still alive and well and…communicating.“JOIN ME…” her voice whispers in the minds. “RETURN TO ME…”<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar13.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar14.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The heroes answer with a retaliatory hail of arrows and spells.  Flame, they find, is not very useful against the wet, rubbery membrane, but the monster does not have the capability to move.  In fact, the only movement they’ve seen from it at all is the involuntary flexing and pulsing of its internal organs. [GM Note – This is going to put a little dent in your arrow reserves].But the aboleth can do nothing without her minions to protect her.  Spell and steel sink into her cold alien flesh, and after a long time, the thing is finally destroyed.  Her voice ceases to speak in their minds and viscera squirts from uncountable wounds.The party cautiously advances, sloshing through the frigid water and crawl atop her stony island, wary of a surprise attack.  But no, Shar-shazaluk is slain, and upon closer inspection, it looks like something else tried to kill her already.The aboleth’s tail has had a huge bite ripped out of it, the wounds still fresh and raw.  A tentacle is missing, bitten off half way, and huge claws have raked her side, rending the gills and ribcage.  In fact, it looks like the aboleth was trying to regenerate the grievous damage, hence its immobile state.They don’t see any treasure, but with growing despair, they realize that something even worse than the Slime Monster might be lurking in the dark down here.  They search around briefly, finding the Basin room where Jolen and Douvan were originally dumped.  There are also two small streams that flow out, leading down, down, down into ever greater gloom…<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/shar15.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />And there we stopped. [GM Note – Level up to 5th next time we play guys.  You’re severely wounded and I don’t know if you want to risk pressing on or not, but there are not many safe places around here to rest for 6 hours.  On the other hand, the goblins probably won’t come into this cave looking for you]. </blockquote>

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