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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2606017" data-attributes="member: 1210">Cur and Otis Enter the CystWhat are these things?! Cur cries out inwardly as the strange creatures reel them in.  His pulse pounds; his lungs burn as the stink of sickness pours in his nostrils.  He can see Otis’ eyes rolling.  Then the strong fingers of the weird figures are on him, and he is being hauled towards something horrible- a great spread of brownish-yellow stuff on the ground that covers a huge area.  It’s like some kind of unnatural vomit, Cur thinks despairingly, and they’re taking me inside of it!!Indeed.  The freakish creatures’ shambling gait takes them along, out of the light and into the warm moist air within the cyst, redolent with the odor of phlegm and illness.  Cur groans deep in his throat, wriggling weakly in a vain attempt to break free.  The sun is left behind, the natural light fading as the alien creatures take him into their lair.  And then, a moment later, he is dumped unceremoniously onto the seeping floor of the place.  A vent opens on the ground, and a foul burst of vapors gusts out, dulling his mind and making him feel sick and disoriented. The figures walk away, and Cur struggles with his bonds.  But only a few moments later the creatures return, dropping Otis next to him, and then a moment later one of them is bending over Cur.  It reaches to the ground next to him and pulls a taffy-like string of brown matter from the floor itself.  It stretches like a rope and in only another moment it has been wrapped around the hapless half-orc, reinforcing his bonds.  Next to him he sees another of the things do the same to Otis.  More vapors burst from the ground.  Then one of the creatures touches the wall, and slowly a gap opens in it, almost like a mouth drawing open in a yawn.  Cur groans again as his captors pick him up and carry him deeper into the cyst, into a large chamber and through it.  He has a vague impression of a clutch of large eggs and some sort of weird crawling thing, and he shudders in the tight grip of the resin-armored monsters carrying him.Then he sees an unnatural illumination flicking at his eyes from up ahead.  Brownish, painful to see, it pours from the walls and floor and ceiling of the chamber they are taking him into, and Cur can feel the weird luminescence itself dulling his mind.  His eyes widen as fear slaps down on him, like an elephant sitting on his chest.  He gasps.  This place is terrible! he cries inwardly.  The chamber reeks of that sickroom smell.  A huge pool, almost 30’ in diameter, churns sluggishly with flesh-colored gunk, hissing and bubbling and smoking.  Two cages of resinous material in the far corners of the chamber wait, their doors open.  They have splayed, seven-pronged feet on them.  Cur feels a strong urge to hide in one of the cages, but somehow he keeps his wits enough to realize that doing so might not be in his best interests.  But then, it isn’t as if he has a choice.“What are you going to do to me?” he cries.  “What do you want??”The figures hurl him into one of the cages and turn to leave.  He sees the door to the cage start to swing shut of its own accord, but manages to thrust his feet out just in time.Pain! The door slams shut on his ankles, and Cur howls in pain.  The pressure is immense.  But at least he stopped it from shutting him in completely.  His ankles have caught the door, but it presses fiercely against them, and already he can tell that if he remains in this position too long they will break like twigs.  He hisses in pain and tries to keep his wits about him; maybe if he can slip out... Then he hears the sound of the figures approaching again, and Otis groaning and struggling.  If I can’t break free of them, Cur thinks, I doubt whether you can...  He lifts his head to watch, dreading what he will see.The figures toss Otis into the other cage, and the wizard begins to scream in terror.  The cage door slams shut, sealing him in, and their captors leave, apparently- hopefully- failing to notice that Cur has kept his cage from closing completely.  (My ankles, he thinks despairingly.)  Then, as Otis shrieks wordlessly, utterly panicked, the cage holding him starts to move.  It rises up on its splayed feet and starts to scuttle towards the fleshy pool.  “Otis!” screams Cur in horror, but he can do nothing but watch.  And then the cage- and Otis- submerge into the pool.***Outside and uphill (and a day and a half before), Cara, Kyle, Dahlia, Sir Cedric and Jorgen are examining the bodies of the things they have slain.  They are disgusted to find that both the resinous armor and the corpses themselves are softening, almost liquefying, at a rapid rate.  “Thethe thingth are dithguthting,” Sir Cedric states, the distaste plain in his voice.  “But what are they?” wonders Kyle.  “I’ve never seen anything like them.”“I’ve never even heard of anything like them,” Cara adds.“Well, they certainly aren’t natural,” Dahlia offers.Nobody has any answers.  Maybe if Otis were here, thinks Cara, he might know something about them.  She shakes her head slowly.  “Let’s get away from the smell,” she suggests.  The group moves several dozen yards from the corpses after pushing them behind the face of the hill.  That way, at least they won’t be immediately visible to anything emerging from the cyst.  The group’s conversation is muted; they all keep an eye on the cyst below until they drop into sleep, carefully setting watches.  When the morning comes, our heroes examine the corpses again.  They are little more than brown stains on the grass now.  Dahlia shudders and again thinks about how unnatural these things are.For several hours the party keeps watch nervously, waiting for the cyst to disgorge more of the creatures.  Finally, at about midday, it happens.  A group of the creatures, leading a couple of strange quadrupeds- perhaps their alien equivalent of hounds?- emerges.  It is almost immediately apparent that they are hunting for something.  Probably us, thinks Kyle.“Let’th get them,” Sir Cedric says, loosening his bastard sword in its baldric.  He mounts up and Thunderpuss whinnies.  “But more carefully this time,” Jorgen nods.  “I don’t think you should ride out ahead like you did before, my lord, or they might get their filthy hands on you again!”  He shudders, picturing the stains on the grass behind the hill.  Kyle studies the group below them, which numbers seven plus the ‘hounds’.  “There are more of them this time, too- we should be careful.”The party moves downhill, and almost immediately the enemy turns to meet them.  Cara pulls the bag of salt she harvested from Zeem’s building, intending to try it out as a weapon, and suggests the same to the others.  Kyle grins at the idea.  The others have their weapons in hand.  The enemy, too, draws forth their weapons- more of those weird ribbon-like daggers.  Then the battle is joined as our heroes begin to fire bows and slings.  Jorgen’s first shot sinks deep into one of the resin-armored beings’ throat, and it staggers back, clamping a hand around the shaft, and falls twitching to the ground.  Only seconds later the confusion of melee ensues.  Cara immediately fumbles her bag of salt, dropping and spilling it, and one of the creatures makes jerky passes through the air and causes a shimmering cloud of twirling multicolored gas to appear around Sir Cedric and Cara.  The knight cries out and his horse whinnies, but Cara stumbles to a halt, unable to do anything but stand stupefied in the cloud.  Dahlia duels one of the monsters, her scimitar forcing the thing to back away a step but then its ribbon-like weapon whipping out and driving her a step back in turn.  Her badger, however, rushing forward barking and takes a bite from its calf!  Simultaneously Kyle manages to run one of the unnatural hound-things through, but then the being that created the cloud of colorful gas gestures again and his blade begins to vibrate and shake in his hands.  He cries out and grips it firmly as it tries to shake itself apart, and after a moment it subsides.  Jorgen, meanwhile, brings down another of the creatures, hewing off its left hand. Things start to look ugly as one of the monsters whips Kyle across the face, knocking him back and wounding him badly.  The lapidary reels, and then falls as another one of the creatures slices his arms badly with its ribbon dagger.  Another of them fires a purple energy beam and Cedric and drains his strength.  But then Cara breaks her fascination with the vapors and stumbles from the cloud, rejoining the battle and stabbing at one of the enemies.    The one that created the cloud and tried to shatter Kyle’s weapon begins to flee.  Dahlia rushes after it; her foe has fallen, and she and the badger are ready for another.  But the others are still in battle; Sir Cedric slays another of the humanoids, and Jorgen moves to aid him as the other bizarre, hound-like creature moves to flank the knight.  Jorgen spears it and it howls in agony as the sheriff’s weapon sends it into its death throes.  Then it is over. “The leader got away!” Cara curses.  She has fired a couple of arrows at it, but now it has re-entered the cyst.“Kyle!” Sir Cedric cries, rushing to his side.  “I will thave you!  Let me put my bandageth all over your thucculent body and bind your woundth!”  He begins staunching his friend’s wounds.  When he is done, the party takes stock of their situation.  Most of them are wounded, Kyle is unconscious and Sir Cedric has been weakened.  Not too good.  They elect to retreat and rest.“I don’t think it’s safe to just go up the hill,” Dahlia points out.  “We should withdraw to the place we camped the night before we got to the gorge.”The group rapidly agrees, and they retreat.  Next Time: Goer meets up with the party, and we check in on poor Cur and Otis!!</blockquote>

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