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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8864498" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 13: YOU'RE UNDEAD TO MEPC Roster:Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 5             Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 5             Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 5             Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 5Game Session Date: 14 December 2022 - - -After turning Captain Oakcrown over to the Enstad government officials, the four heroes spent a bit of time checking out the Enstad shops.  Chaevaris picked up a quiver of Ehlonna and a variety of different types of arrows, but the group quickly found the more time they spent in town, the more veiled looks they were getting from the town's citizens; apparently Oakcrown had wasted little time in bad-mouthing his former training partner and her adventuring companions.  As one, they decided the sooner they were back on the road to Ghourmand Vale, the better.Fortunately, their four-day trek back towards the Vale was uneventful.  When they dismounted at the Stout farm and went into the farmhouse, Mrs. Stout handed Alistair a sealed piece of folded parchment.  "This was delivered for you," she said.Opening the letter, Alistair found it had been penned by Holyrood Carp, the bard for whom he'd recently been writing songs.  "He's performing at the Dark and Light Club," the sorcerer told the others.  "We're invited to watch his act."  Skimming over the rest of the brief missive, he added, "Oh!  And he's gotten a lot of positive feedback on the Harlan song.  He'll be performing the Ageratum song for the first time tonight."  That was reason enough to make the two-hour journey to the town of Ghourmand Vale after eight straight days of travel.  But first, they availed themselves of a home-cooked lunch by Mrs. Stout - well appreciated after more than a week eating on the trail.The Dark and Light Club had been undergoing some renovations since the last time the group had been there - there was now a second story that hadn't been there before.  As Alistair had been a steady customer at the club, picking the brains of the wizards and sorcerers who spent much of their spare time there, learning what he could about the ins and outs of spellcasting, he was recognized by the workers there and allowed to check the place out.  The upper story was mostly a balcony overlooking the tables facing the stage; the spiral staircase was over in the southeast corner and there was dumbwaiter leading to the kitchen below along the western wall.  According to Carp's letter, they had a box reserved along the balcony for the evening's act.With several hours to kill, the group picked up a few potions from a wizard's cart and ate a supper in one of the eating establishments that had sprung up all over the boomtown.  But they were back at the Dark and Light Club in time for the performance, in full gear - for one never knew when combat would erupt; the last time they'd spent time here they'd been attacked by weretigers.  They made their way up the stairs and took their seats.  There was some sort of illusion in place just outside the balcony seats, too (not surprising in a club run by retired wizards): looking out over the balcony, it appeared as if those seated were on the shore of a dark lake with still waters, flanked by a forest of thick trees in the distance.  It was a quite impressive illusion, but as the time for the performance came near, the waters of the illusory lake started clearing and the group could see Holyrood Carp on the stage below, as well as the tables where the audience sat.  Alistair was glad to see the seats were almost all filled; Carp had managed practically a full house."Hey, that's Kasselban!" Ageratum said, pointing down at the dwarven head of the Slippery Shaft Mines in the audience below.  He was being served a full mug of ale by one of the good-looking women who worked for the club.Harlan spotted a few other people in the crowd below that they knew: Macrell Slade, the head of the town guard; Merton Fink, the head of the public works who was responsible for hauling away trash (as well as dead bodies); and Caraban Monteison, head of the Merchant Guild.  "Hmmm," he murmured to himself, frowning."What is it?" asked Chaevaris."The serving girl down there by Funk and the others," he said.  "Does she look familiar to you?"Chaevaris squinted down into the dark level below.  The serving girl was just that: a girl, maybe as old as fifteen but surely no older; much younger than the other waitresses bringing drinks to the patrons before Carp began his set.  She did look somewhat familiar, but where had she seen her before?  Then it hit her: "She's that vampire spawn we fought in Shambles' bar up in Mitrek!" she hissed to Harlan."I say!" piped up Alistair, peering down at the group below and trying to make out the young waitress; it didn't help that he had no elven heritage like Chaevaris or Harlan to enable him to see better in dim lighting.  "Is she evil?"Harlan focused his paladin senses on the group below.  While he picked up slight readings from a few of them - likely indicating a leaning towards greediness or a willingness to screw over a neighbor to ensure a personal advantage - the young waitress's aura blazed with evil.  "Absolutely," Harlan answered.  "It's her.""Her name was Carly," Ageratum piped up.  She, at least, had remembered the vampire's name."What shall we do?" Alistair asked.  "We can't very well go shooting arrows or scorching ray spells down into a crowded bar area."  But the moment had passed in any case, for Carly, after placing drinks upon the table of the movers and shakers of Ghourmand Vale, departed back to the kitchen area, directly below the balcony."We need to check her out!" Ageratum answered.  She made her way to the dumbwaiter cabinet, opened the door, and saw that the device was down on the ground level.  Still, as a halfling, that posed little problem for her: she crawled into the opening and slid down the rope, landing upon the top of the dumbwaiter.  Taking out one of her daggers, she pried a few boards loose from the dumbwaiter's roof and peeked into the kitchen area.  Carly had just opened a back door to the alley behind the club and walked outside.Alistair, Harlan, and Chaevaris took the spiral stairs back down to the ground level, the sorcerer indicating to the bartender behind the bar that he needed to go into the kitchen and the other two were with him.  The bartender gave a "thumbs up" indicating he was okay with it, and the three went through the kitchen door, to find Ageratum climbing out of the dumbwaiter.  "We'll need to hammer the roof boards back in place," she told them, then went over to the back door, sliding it open a crack and peeking outside.  "She went out this way," Ageratum told the others.Carly was about 30 feet down the side alley, talking to a commoner.  He bent down, picked up a dead body, and passed it over to Carly; it was a blond woman dressed like the waitresses back in the club.  Carly shifted her over her shoulder, her vampiric status making her much stronger than she looked.  Then she continued on down the street while her conspirator took off in another direction."We follow," announced Harlan, stepping outside and heading in the direction Carly had taken.  Chaevaris did more than that; taking one of her newly-purchased silver-headed arrows from her quiver of Ehlonna, she placed it in her longbow, took careful aim, and sent the arrow flying across the distance to land with a "thunk" into Carly's back."Ow!" cried Carly, turning about to see who had just attacked her.  Alistair took the opportunity to fire a blast from his wand of magic missiles at her face, causing her to cry out in pain and irritation once again.  Ageratum started chasing after her, confident that her boots of striding and springing would allow her to keep pace with a human for once, even if that human was now a vampire.  As far as she was aware, Carly didn't have the full list of vampiric powers at her beck and call and wouldn't be turning into a bat or anything.  And carrying a corpse over her shoulder could only slow her down.  Ageratum was looking forward to finding a use for her silver dagger, as silver was said to be one of the substances particularly deadly to vampires.However, she didn't get the chance, for another silver-tipped arrow from Chaevaris's bow caused Carly to discorporate into mist.  The body she'd been carrying turned to mist as well, which made some sort of sense, since at this point it was merely an object the vampire spawn had with her, no different than a carried weapon or the clothes she wore."I say!" declared Alistair.  "It's a clear night out - we should be able to track her to her nearest coffin and then finish her off for good!"  When they'd "slain" her in Mitrek, it had been a foggy night out and her gaseous form had been unable to be tracked.  But now, in the moonlight, the group could see the small cloud of mist that had once been Carly's corporeal form, and as they watched, it drifted away from the city streets and off into the fields.  Best of all, it drifted at a much slower speed than Carly would have been able to maintain in human form, so keeping pace with her was no problem.  Alistair mentally called for his grackle familiar, Ambrose (who'd been waiting on the roof of the Dark and Light Club while his master went in to hear Carp's performance), and he even had time to summon Ogilvy, his unseen servant.  Chaevaris lit her bullseye lantern and handed it over to Ogilvy, and the spell effect, at Alistair's command, kept the light trained on the floating mist as they followed at her drifting pace.The mist led the group to a deep ravine in the middle of a field, then slid down the first of the slopes along the embankment.  There were three such sudden inclines before hitting the bottom of the ravine, which was empty save for a brush heap along one edge.  The mist flowed unerringly towards the brush heap."Down you go," Alistair ordered Ogilvy, and the unseen servant obediantly went down the various slopes, keeping the lantern-light focused upon the mist.  Ageratum leaped down from level to level without incident, aided by her new magic boots.  Harlan took a slower, more cautious approach during his descent, while Alistair and Chaevaris chose to stay up at the top of the ravine.  After all, if the mist had gone down into the ravine, Carly's coffin would likely be down there, and from their vantage point they could see the only place it could be hidden was inside the brush heap.  They'd wait for Ageratum and Harlan to dig it free, while they stood guard where they could see anyone who might try to interfere.However, the interference came not from above, but from within the ravine itself: a viny tendril came snaking out from the brush heap to strike Ogilvy's lantern, knocking it from the unseen servant's grip and sending it crashing to the stone floor of the ravine.  "I say!" declared Alistair, looking down from above.  "It's a shambling mound!"Despite the tales of various strange creatures about which the young sorcerer had been learning, it was not a shambling mound that rose up from the "brush heap."  It was worse - a tendriculos.  But despite not knowing exactly what it was he was fighting, Alistair sent a scorching ray blasting down at the "brush heap" as it reformed.  The spell hit true, but it did not cause the plant monster to be engulfed in flame as the sorcerer had hoped.  Chaevaris had likewise expected a fire-based spell to do more damage to the plant-beast than it had done, and decided she'd see what could be done about that.  Unstoppering a flask of oil from her belt, she threw it down at the tendriculos, already having achieved its full size and standard shape.  The oil soaked into the monster's vegetable fibers; hopefully that would encourage it to burst into flames upon the next fire-based spell.But before Alistair could put that theory into practice, Harlan charged forward, bringing his flaming burst longsword swinging at the creature's base.  Unfortunately, the oil had hit the creature much higher up, so while the half-elf's blade cut into its plant fiber and the flames singed a bunch of its leaves, the strike was likewise not enough to set the thing ablaze.  Then the tendriculos shambled forward, shooting two tendrils lashing out at the paladin while it bent over and tried to catch him in the massive maw opening up in its upper part, where stiff, pointed thorns took the place of teeth.  Fortunately for Harlan, he was able to avoid all three of the plant's attacks as he dodged off to one side.Carly, in mist form, slid beneath the tendriculos's massive bulk.  Ageratum noticed this and assumed that meant the vampire spawn had her coffin underground beneath the ravine, but right now she didn't have time to follow through with that thought - there was a giant, ambulatory plant attacking Harlan!  She threw a shortspear at the tendriculos and couldn't help but hit the thing, but whether she did much damage to it was a matter of conjecture.Alistair sent another scorching ray down at the tendriculos, setting a small portion of it on fire.  But the flames burned out before too long; the creature was probably somewhat damp from dew or something, the sorcerer reasoned.  Chaevaris sent a normal arrow into the plant-thing's mass, where its feathered end stuck out of the thing's "head" - if a creature made of plant fiber could be said to even have a head.  Down at its "feet," Harlan pressed on the attack with his flaming sword, and then found himself the target of the plant's attacks once again.  Unfortunately, this time the tendriculos was much more successful, whipping him with its flailing appendages and then catching him up in its thorny maw.  Harlan felt himself being elevated as the creature, having bent down to bite at him, once again stood to its full height.  Then the paladin felt himself being swallowed whole, his body falling down a fibrous tunnel to land inside some sort of gullet.  The half-elf grinned, in part at gladness to still be alive, but also because here, inside the beast's "stomach," he could no longer be swatted at by tendrils or bitten by a thorn-laced maw, whereas his flaming burst longsword could be used to chop up the creature from the inside as well as it could from outside!The plant shuffled around a bit again, startling Ageratum enough that her next thrown shortspear missed its mark entirely.  Alistair cast another scorching ray at it and Chaevaris sent another arrow striking the creature beside her previous shot, but the sorcerer noticed, with concern, that some of the previously singed areas were starting to grow back with fresh-looking vegetation.  Surely this creature couldn't regenerate?  It was starting to look as if it did, and if so, it was going to take a fair bit longer to bring the plant-thing down.Harlan swung his flaming blade at the stomach interior, cutting open a gash in the side of his plant-fiber cave.  It started oozing liquid, which at first the paladin took to be some sort of sap-like blood equivalent, until some of it dripped on him and burned like acid.  Belatedly, Harlan realized if the plant-beast had the equivalent of a stomach, it made sense for it to have some sort of stomach acid as well.  He vowed to cut the thing up from the inside as fast as he could...and that's when he noticed the secondary side effect from the plant's internal juices: his muscles had locked up and he was paralyzed!  An initial burst of panic threatened to overcome the paladin's mind, but he willed himself to calmness and thought his way through his current predicament.  True, he couldn't move his body, but his flaming blade was still alight and its fires were burning the creature's interior fibers, even if he couldn't use the sword to stab deep into the plant's mass.  Also, he didn't need to be able to move to be able to channel Pelor's positive healing energy into his body, healing the worst of his wounds.  Still, he had a limited amount of healing energy he could channel each day, whereas the plant thing would presumably continue to pump out its acidic secretions as long as it had someone inside its gullet...he hoped the other three could bring this beast down, and fast!Outside the beast, they were doing their very best to do just that.  Ageratum skirted away from an attack by the tendriculos, leaping over its striking tendrils and ducking beneath its attempt to bite her; there were times when it helped only being three feet tall, and this was definitely one of them!  At the top of the ravine, Chaevaris and Alistair continued sending down arrows and scorching ray spells, each doing their part to whittle the thing down.  Ageratum decided to switch to her short sword, figuring slashing at plant fiber would likely do more damage than just poking it with a spearhead.But then the tendriculos shifted again, crawling up the first slope, which brought it within range to snap out at Chaevaris.  Faster than the elf would have thought possible, it slapped her with two lashing tendrils and then darted its entire upper body forward, and she found herself inside its maw, thorny teeth clamping down upon her legs.  Ageratum continued slashing at the thing with her sword, but she got the sinking feeling it was like trying to chop down a tree with a pocket knife.Alistair backed up a considerable distance, but making sure he could still at least see the top of the creature's head.  He aimed and cast his last scorching ray spell of the day, fortunately finally hitting the spot where Chaevaris's flask of oil had landed, for the flames that burst forth from the spell were about twice as big as those from the sorcerer's previous scorching rays.  Inside the creature's maw, Chaevaris had no room for bow maneuvers and thus slashed at it using her rapier.  She could see a flickering light from below, no doubt Harlan's flaming blade doing its thing.  Unbeknownst to the archer, however, Harlan was not faring very well - he'd used up all of his available healing energy and was still unable to move at all.Ageratum continued attacking the tendriculos with her shortsword, while Alistair had been forced to switch over to blasts from his wand of magic missile.  He was glad he'd paid the highest possible price for his wand, ensuring it dealt the maximum amount of damage per charge, for the blasts from his wand were much more powerful than he was currently able to channel through casting the magic missile spell himself, although that would come over time and with experience, or so assured the wizards and other spellcasters back at the Dark and Light Club.  But the group's continued efforts - Ageratum's short sword, Chaevaris's rapier, Harlan's flaming blade, and Alistair's magic missile charges from his wand, eventually had the desired effect: the tendriculos crashed over sideways, landing in a heap.  So focused had the heroes been on dealing it damage to bring it down, they'd failed to notice when it had stopped attacking them in return; they'd had it finished some time ago but its plant body had been stabilized by the power of the Blood Mirror, and they'd had to deal it enough damage to overcome the magic ruby's stabilizing effects.  But once its metabolism ceased its gullet stopped producing acid, and Chaevaris was able to pull a still-paralyzed Harlan back up the passageway to its mouth, where she was able to drag the paladin out into the open night air.  Ageratum was there in a jiffy to pour the contents of a potion of cure light wounds down Harlan's mouth; it wasn't able to restore him to mobility, but it did heal over the acid burns that had been covering his body.  And, a few minutes later, mobility was restored to the paladin's limbs, the paralytic properties of the tendriculos's internal liquids having run their course."I say!" called down Alistair once it was apparent that combat was over and done with, "Is there any sign of a coffin?"  He'd go down and check for himself, but it looked rather muddy down there and he preferred not to get himself that dirty if at all possible.Chaevaris looked over at where she'd last seen the gaseous form of Carly the vampire spawn, where the "brush heap" had first been seen.  There was nothing but a solid stone layer at the bottom of the ravine - but wait a minute, there was a slight crack at the bottom.  Chaevaris tried widening the narrow hole with her fingers, but it was solid stone.  "She went through a crack in the rock," she called back up to Alistair.  "There's probably a cave underneath here, somewhere," she hazarded."I'm afraid we'll have to wait for another time to try to find the cave entrance," Harlan announced.  "We're not up for another battle like this last one.  For now, it'll have to be enough to know that Carly's in town.  That would have been a remarkable amount of effort on her part, getting at least one - if not more - of her coffins moved down here from Mitrek.  We'll need to be alert to the possible presence of Father Bouchard Coletrane, the vampire who sired her, as well - if she survived the purge in Mitrek, he may well have also done so.""You'd think with the resources of the entire church of Pelor at their disposal, they'd have been able to take care of two vampires..." grumbled Chaevaris."Vampires can be rather tricky to kill," replied Harlan.  "But in any case, I believe we'd best return to the club for now."  That sounded like a good plan to Alistair, who'd been eager to hear the response to the singing of his two songs.  Alas, by the time they returned the bard's session had been finished, but they were able to talk to him over a few drinks afterwards."They were both quite well received," Carp assured the group.  "I've sung the Harlan song several times now, and I dare say there are a few young ladies more than willing to get to know our paladin with the 'gorgeous blond locks' a bit better, if you know what I mean."  He threw Harlan a knowing wink."The pursuit of Pelor's goals leaves no time for such nonsense," Harlan replied."And Ageratum's song?" demanded Alistair."Went over quite well, quite well indeed," replied Carp.  "Here, this is for you."  And he handed over a small pouch of coins.  Alistair opened it and saw 15 pieces of gold.  He, along with his friends and comrades-in-arms, had unearthed quite a lot more gold in their short adventuring career, but this felt different to Alistair - this was money he had earned, using his mastery of the Common tongue and knowledge of song rhythms.  If this is what the common man felt after a day's hard work, he could understand why not everyone wanted to be a nobleman. - - -That tendriculos was the toughest opponent we've fought to date - Harlan was probably one round away from being permanently slain (or as permanently as it ever gets in D&D).  He was already into negative hp when we finally killed the tendriculos; we play that you're "dead-dead" once your hit point total reaches the negative of your Constitution score.  (Harlan has a 12 Constitution and was already at -5 hp, and the tendriculos stomach acid was dealing 3d6 acid damage a round.)It's a little bit of a bummer that Carly has escaped us twice now; maybe the third time will be the charm!Dan and his family are on vacation starting this week, so we won't have another session in this campaign until 4 Jan 23 (or possible even 11 Jan 23, depending on how much time he has when he gets back home to work on an adventure).  He's dropped hints that we'll be dealing with pirates soon, which will be a bit of a trick since Ghourmand Vale is landlocked, but we'll see what he comes up with.</blockquote>

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