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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8910006" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 15: A SATISFYING, COOLING MISTPC Roster:Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 6             Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 6             Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 6             Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 6Game Session Date: 18 January 2023 - - -Right as the noontime sun was reaching its peak, two horses and their riders rode up to the Stout farm where the group who called themselves the Trained Professional Adventurers - as if they were the only four to ever have earned that distinction - made their temporary headquarters.  One of the riders was Caraban Montieson, head of the Merchants Guild; the other, a man named Oscar Poppert, unknown to any residing in the Stout farm.Caraban insisted upon being heard first, telling Oscar to wait at the entrance of the farmhouse while he conducted his business.  "We've an urgent matter that needs looking into," he told the four heroes.  "The water in Ghourmand Vale is becoming fouled.  We've taken our observations and complaints to the town council, but they insist everything is fine and refuse to do anything about it.  But I tell you, each day the water becomes worse and worse!  I've talked personally to Merton Funk, but he won't do anything without the council's say-so.  We tried sending in a few folks to check out the sewers, but I think Funk had a few of his boys rough them up and send them packing, which is why we'd like you to go check it out - Funk won't be able to stop you four from checking it out and seeing what's what."  He quoted a payment he was willing to hand over if the Trained Professional Adventurers would enter the sewers and determine what was fouling up the town's water supply.  Harlan agreed that they'd check it out."Good!" declared Caraban.  "I hope you can get to the bottom of it, and fast - before people start to get sick!"  But, having gotten the answer he was hoping for, he remounted his horse and departed back for Ghourmand Vale."And as for you," replied Harlan, looking over at Oscar, "What can we do for you?""Are you Alistair?" the man asked."No, that would be me," replied the young nobleman, stepping forward."Well, I got a message for you is all.  Lady name of Miss Rogers--""Nanny Rogers?""Yeah, that's her.  She says your sister-in-law Julianna has given birth to a set of twins, a boy and a girl.""I say!  Did she say what she named them?""Nope, that's all she told me.""But they're both healthy?""I guess so - she didn't say.""And the mother?  She's all right?""Listen, I've told you everything I was told."  He held his hand out expectantly, and with a sudden realization about the expectations of the matter, Alistair opened his coin purse and dropped a piece of silver into the man's palm.  Oscar pocketed it happily and returned to his own horse.Alistair wheeled on the others.  "I know we're to check out the Ghourmand Vale water situation," he began, "but I must check up on Julianna and the babies first.  Do you want to go on ahead of me and I'll catch up, or...?""No, we'll go with you," Harlan replied.  "Make sure your family is okay, then we can head over to the Vale and check out the sewers.  This has been going on for days, so I don't imagine a few more hours will make that much of a difference.""Yeah, let's go check out your niece and nephew, Uncle Alistair!" said Ageratum, nudging her elbow into Alistair's leg playfully."I say!  I am officially an uncle now!  And that makes Father a grandfather - twice over, in fact: I wonder what he'll think of that?"  Chaevaris just made a quiet smirk but said nothing; as far as she was concerned, even Alistair's father was little more than a child himself, grandfather or no grandfather.The group packed up their adventuring gear, got their mounts from the stables, and were off.  They opted to leave the wagon behind so they could make better time; Ambrose flew off ahead and sat perched on a tree waiting for them to catch up, making a game of it while still keeping an eye out for trouble.  But they arrived at the Stone Keep without incident, where Father Kilkenny took them to see Julianna and her twins.  "She's fine - they're all fine," the elder cleric reassured a visibly nervous Alistair.  "Cute little babes, too, the pair of them!"Julianna asked Alistair if he'd be willing to return to Greyhawk City to inform his older brother Atherton that he was now a father, and that they were all safe and healthy.  "But of course!" replied the newly-minted (and quite proud) uncle.  Alistair wouldn't mind letting his parents know that he had made it just fine despite being virtually kicked out of the family; in fact, the more he thought of it, the more eager he was to return.  "However, there's a matter we must first attend to in Ghourmand Vale," he told Julianna.  Consulting with Harlan and the others, they determined to remain at the Stone Keep overnight and head to the Vale the next morning.Caraban was there to open the locks to the sewer system personally.  "I was expecting you yesterday afternoon," he grumbled."A personal issue demanded our attention," Alistair replied, waving him off.  "Now then...ew."  With the doors opened, the nobleman got his first look - and more importantly, smell - of a sewer system.  He immediately cast a prestidigitation spell to mask the foul whiff of the sewer waters.  Ageratum just laughed.  "This is water from the river," she scoffed.  "Look: you can see three different branches of fresh water coming in here from three different directions."  Off to the left, the waters spilled about ten feet down over a dam.  "That's where the sewer water is, over there!" she pointed out.  "This water's perfectly fine.""Perhaps, perhaps not," replied the fussy nobleman.  "I smelled something quite foul.""He's not wrong," pointed out Chaevaris.  "Look!"They were underground, in curved tunnels that held water about halfway up; along the one edge was a wooden walkway just above the waterline.  There was a metal grate about 20 feet ahead to the right, and stacked up before this grate - and being pushed up against it by the flow of the water - were dozens of corpses.  Or, in some cases, pieces of corpses."I think we may have found our problem," Ageratum pointed out wryly.  There were torches hanging in sconces above the wooden walkway, and in their flickering light she thought she saw movement from the middle of the pile of bodies.  She pointed it out, right as Alistair was climbing across to the other side of the pile of corpses, hanging on to the metal grating so he wouldn't have to step on any body pieces.  Chaevaris fitted an arrow to her bow and sent it flying into the center of the mass."I say!" declared Alistair, in the middle of casting an unseen servant spell and then passing one of the torches to Ogilvy once he had taken his invisible form.  "Give a fellow a bit of warning, if you please!""I'm not picking up any indications of evil in the vicinity," Harlan interjected, facing the pile of bodies and then slowly scanning all around him, until he was facing the dam leading to the actual sewer waters below.  But then, after having given such a proclamation, the tangle of bodies rose up, with chunks falling off and to the sides as a roundish body popped out of the middle of the pile.  "Leave my meat!" the creature demanded, as three tentacles rose up from the sections of human corpses.  One of the tentacles went swinging towards Alistair and hit him with a wet plop; it was difficult to say whether the high-pitched squeak emanating from between the sorcerer's lips was caused by pain from the tentacle's rough spikes at its fleshy tip or the mere thought of being touched by a monster who ate pieces of dead bodies floating in a sewer grate.  The other tentacle went crashing down at Ageratum, but the nimble halfling dodged out of the way.  The creature's third tentacle stood straight up from the corpse-pile, for on its tip were perched the creature's eyes, which scanned on both sides of its food stash.  It pivoted its thick torso and snapped its powerful jaws at Alistair, but the creature's teeth failed to catch the sorcerer.Ageratum, having avoided the otyugh's tentacle attack, made as if to flee away from the beast but then doubled back, catching it off guard and enabling her to stab the blade of her magic short sword deep into its body.  It roared in pain, and then Harlan came rushing up at it, hitting it with his own flashing blade - only his was sheathed in flames, which caused the offalvore to roar even louder.  Alistair stepped back, away from the tentacle, and sent a blast from his wand of magic missiles crashing into its filth-coated body.  The otyugh retaliated almost immediately against the sorcerer, raking him with the pointed barbs of its tentacle tip, then grabbing him up and squeezing him in a constricting vice.  But then, almost as an afterthought, the creature spilled a gush of blood from its mouth and its tentacle loosened around Alistair, as its death belatedly caught up to it.  With a final gasp of foul breath, the otyugh fell back into the waters and expired.Alistair immediately walked farther away from the dead otyugh and focused his entire attention on his prestidigitation spell, cleaning his clothes everywhere the foul beast had touched him.  Harlan, Ageratum, and Chaevaris grabbed up its tentacles and started hauling it - with most of its dead bulk floating in the river waters, buoyed by its own internal gases - before pushing it over the edge of the dam.  Alistair, finally clean to his own satisfaction, put Ogilvy to work tugging bits from the corpse-pile and sending them on the same aquatic path; best these rotting bodies go to the sewer portion, not stay in the fresh water section, where the putrefaction was getting mingled in with the water the populace above rose up from their wells."Hey," pointed out Chaevaris.  "Look at those markings on the necks!"  Sure enough, the archer's keen elven eyes had picked out the unmistakable puncture marks common to a feeding vampire.  "I'll bet it's Carly behind this!" she surmised.  "Remember, we brought her down to mist form and she seeped through the ground, leaving us to deal with that plant monster?  I'll bet this is what she does now with the bodies of those she feeds on!"The fresher bodies had all been piled up on the north side, so it was assumed they'd floated down this way from the northern stream.  Harlan, Ageratum, and Chaevaris crossed past the vertical grate over by Alistair and the half-elf paladin led them northward, along the wooden platforms just above the level of the slow-flowing water.  After a bit, the platform crossed over to the other side of the river, where it dead-ended at a cave opening.  The light from the torch Ogilvy carried and Harlan's flaming longsword allowed those with elven blood - Chaevaris and Harlan - to make out two figures within the cave: one, the unmistakable 14-year-old form of the vampire spawn Carly; the other, a human man in armor, wearing an unholy symbol showing him aligned with an archfiend.Harlan immediately cast a protection from evil spell upon himself as he advanced.  "There is evil in the cave," he announced, after having sensed a great deal of it emanating from the shadows within.  Ageratum moved up to the point where the wooden platform made a left turn to lead to the cave opening, holding her silver short sword in her left hand and readying a kobold spear in her right - if Carly popped her hed out the cave, she was going to get a spear-point in the kisser!  But the elves weren't the only ones capable of seeing in the dark, for Carly's voice called out petulantly from the back of the cave, "I know you!  You killed my monster!"  Chaevaris nocked an arrow and pointed it at the undead form, taking a very careful aim; she wanted her undead bane arrow do deal as much damage to the vampire spawn as it could.As Ogilvy moved up and the torchlight lit up the cave even further, Alistair could see well enough to make out which shape was Carly's and which the cleric's.  Pointing his wand at the teenaged vampire spawn, he fired off a shot, which went streaking across the river into the cave to hit Carly straight in the chest - and then dissipate harmlessly as it hit some sort of invisible barrier.  Alistair cursed, realizing she was probably wearing a brooch of shielding, the surest protection against the otherwise nearly foolproof magic missile spell.  Then he perked up at the thought that after they had managed to permanently kill her - something he was sure they'd be able to do this time, for her coffin was visible just behind her - he could claim the brooch of shielding for himself.  But then his mood soured again at the thought that he's just used up a good portion of its protection with his five-missile attack.The evil cleric, a man named Raten Splurgg, stepped forward and cast a spell in Harlan's direction.  The half-elf felt a tingling in the back of his head but shook off the effects; later, he'd recognize it as a failed hold person spell.  But the attempt to take him out angered the paladin and he charged across the cave, swinging his flaming burst longsword at the cleric, cutting through links of chain covering his broad chest and forcing the man to grunt in pain.  He then felt another tingle in the back of his head and realized Carly was focusing her attention upon him as well, trying to dominate him, but she was stymied not only by his half-elven heritage but, more importantly, the protection from evil spell he'd cast upon himself earlier, which prevented such magics from affecting him.  Now it was Carly's turn to curse aloud.Ageratum raced into the cave and stabbed the cleric in the leg with her short sword, as Carly swung a fist at Harlan in frustration, swearing again when she failed to connect.  Across the running water, Chaevaris followed Carly's movements with her aimed arrow, and when the vampire spawn stopped moving for a moment, the archer let fly.  The arrow went streaking across the gap between the two, hitting Carly just below the throat.  Carly screamed, partly in surprise - for she hadn't seen the arrow coming - but mostly in pain, for the arrowhead's enchantment ensured it maximized the damage to the vampire spawn's undead flesh.  Alistair continued moving closer along the wooden walkway, firing off a scorching ray spell at Carly that hit her square on; the sorcerer was well and truly pleased that the undead teenager didn't seem to have any sort of special protection against flames.Ogilvy entered the cave and stood in the back, his torch lighting up the whole place.  There was Carly's wooden coffin in the back of the cave, and next to it a smaller coffin the size of a small child.  Seeing it, Alistair hoped there wasn't some sort of vampire baby in there; slaying an undead teenager was one thing, but killing a vampire baby would be something else altogether and the sorcerer didn't know if he had it in him.Raten stepped over behind Carly and cast an inflict wounds spell upon her, flooding her undead body with negative energy - for an undead creature, this was the equivalent of having a healing spell cast upon you.  The burned flesh smoothed over, the wound from Chaevaris's arrow - which was plucked angrily by the vampire spawn and tossed away - closed up and healed over.  While none of the heroes had voiced any particular overall plan, each had been hoping to focus their attention on the undead foe before them and put her out of business; now it seemed as if they might have to take out her clerical support staff to prevent him from prolonging her ability to stay in the fight.But Harlan was still willing to give "taking the vampire spawn out first" a shot.  He stepped forward, channeling positive energy through his flaming blade to bring it crashing down onto Carly's shoulder in a smiting blow.  However, she must have anticipated such a move on the paladin's part because by the time the blade got to where she had been, she was no longer there.  The positive energy dissipated from the blade as Harlan swung it in a sideways arc, hoping to catch her in his follow-on attack, but she managed to skip backwards just far enough for the blade to go whizzing by her without making contact.Carly's expression was one of triumph - which immediately changed to one of irritation and pain when Ageratum stabbed her in the calf with her silver short sword.  She cried out "Ow!" in surprise and hopped backwards by her coffin.  She stared down at the halfling in an attempt to dominate her, and Ageratum was taken completely by surprise; her mind suddenly got fuzzy and she forgot what it was she had been doing, when the stray thought - "stab the paladin in the back!" - manifested in her brain.  That's right, Ageratum thought to herself, I need to stab Harlan in the back!  How could she have forgotten?Chaevaris shot another of her undead bane arrows at Carly, hitting her in the chest and causing a lot of damage to her undead flesh.  Carly turned to Raten to get him to heal her with his necromantic touch, but then Alistair entered the cave and blasted her again with another scorching ray spell.  The flames coursing over her body were too much for the vampire spawn to handle; unconscious, her body dissipated into fine beads of mist, which started floating unaided over in the direction of her coffin.Raten stepped forward, saw it was too late to help his mistress, and determined these four heroes would not get the opportunity to do anything to her undead body once it reformed in her coffin.  The inflict wounds spell in his hand, which he'd intended to use to heal Carly (but couldn't now that she was a cloud of mist - it was too late for that to have any effect upon her now), he instead used to harm Harlan, his mere touch siphoning off some of the paladin's life force.  But Harlan scooted around the cleric, thinking to catch him between himself and Ageratum where the little halfling would be able to get in a nice back-stabbing, and channeled another blast of positive energy into his sword, priming it to smite evil once again.  That ought to keep his focus on me! the half-elf thought to himself as he brought his flaming sword crashing into Raten's side.  However, Ageratum's back-stabbing abilities had no time to come into play, for the paladin's smite evil attack caused Raten to fall to the cave floor, unconscious and bleeding out.  For some reason, the Blood Mirror in Harlan's belt pouch wasn't stabilizing the wounded cleric's body like it normally did.  (Had Raten been conscious, he'd recognize that it was the desecrate spell he's cast upon the cave, along with the two protection from good spells on himself and his mistress when they heard the heroes fighting the otyugh, that was overcoming the Blood Mirror's normal ability to prevent death from those about to leave the mortal coil.)But then Alistair stepped up, saw the current status of things, and cast a scorching ray directly into the cleric's face.  His head burned almost to cinders, there was no way the Blood Mirror would have been able to do anything to keep him alive, even had the desecrate spell not been in effect.  Unseen by any of the heroes in the cave, Raten Splurgg's dark soul went screaming off to its Hellish afterlife.Harlan was temporarily surprised to see Ageratum veering around him in an arc, keeping her distance from the reach of his blade as she maneuvered to get behind him.  With both of their opponents out, the paladin couldn't figure out what she was doing, unless--he spun around to face her and leapt back as she attacked, her silver short sword stabbing in his direction.  He deflected the blade with his shield and then, not wanting to have to fight her off - and realizing the reason for her sudden betrayal - threw both shield and sword to the cave floor and leaped out at her with his arms open wide.Had Ageratum been of her own mind at the time, she might have been able to take advantage of the opening to get in a good strike at his undefended chest, and possibly even pierce the armor he wore, in the split second before he was upon her.  But then he had her in a bear hug, squeezing her tightly against him, arms pinned to her sides and short sword unable to maneuver enough to be able to stab him.  She tried wresting herself free, but the half-elf had both a strength and a height advantage on her, and her struggles remained fruitless.By this time, Carly's gaseous form had seeped into her coffin.  Chaevaris was at the coffin's side in a moment, lifting the lid with one hand while snatching up one of the undead bane arrows she'd shot at the vampire spawn with the other.  Looking down at Carly's body, once again taking on a solid form now that she was "safe" within her coffin, the elven archer snapped the arrow's shaft in half (knowing full well the "undead bane" magic of the weapon had already been spent) and stabbed the undead thing through the heart with the impromptu wooden stake.  Carly's face animated just enough to show a rictus of pain before she slumped over, dead.  Chaevaris knew that this dead state would only last for as long as the stake remained piercing the vampire spawn's heart, but right now there was nobody there willing to pull it out, so it ought to be safe for now."Get off me, Harlan!" came Ageratum's voice from underneath the paladin's body as he lay prone upon the stone floor of the cave.  "Seriously, I'm no longer under that bitch's mental control!"  Sure enough, as soon as Chaevaris had plunged the broken arrow through Carly's black heart, the veil had lifted from Ageratum's thoughts and she found her will back to being her own.  Harlan climbed off the little halfling, stood up, and offered her his hand.  He got her to her feet and then retrieved his discarded sword and shield.Once Chaevaris showed the others what she'd done to Carly's undead corpse, Harlan sheathed his longsword and scooped her up in his arms.  Doing so showed that mixed in with her burial dirt at the bottom of the coffin were a bunch of golden coins and a pair of potions; Ageratum gathered up the treasure from the bottom of the coffin while Alistair unpinned the brooch of shielding from the dead vampire spawn's garment and pinned it to his own cloak.  "Please continue," he told Harlan after the brooch was in place.Without a word, the paladin stepped back out of the cave and onto the wooden platform, where he sat, with his feet dangling into the water.  Looking down into the water with his superior elven vision, he saw the bottom was close enough he could stand without being completely submerged.  Saying a quick prayer under his breath - "Pelor, take this young woman's spirit; she did not ask to become an undead monstrosity" - he leaped into the river, holding Carly's body before him.  The water only came up to his chest, but it completely engulfed Carly's corpse; only Chaevaris's arrow sticking up from her heart reached up above the slowly-flowing water.  But within a few seconds the broken arrow began to wobble as Carly's body started dissolving in the slow current; Harlan could feel the weight of her decrease with each passing heartbeat as she was slowly washed away to nothingness.  When the arrow started floating down the river and the paladin could no longer feel the teenager's body against his arms, he turned to face the wooden walkway and Alistair helped him climb back up.  A quick prestidigitation spell helped dry the paladin and clean his armor."Let's go," he said to others.  "I think we're done here." - - -This was a very satisfying adventure for the four of us players, as Carly had managed to avoid a permanent death at our hands twice before.Incidentally, Dan explained after the adventure was over the smaller coffin had been built because Carly had gotten it into her mind to transform a living baby into a vampire; in her undead state, that was the only way for her to "have kids."  We're all glad we were able to kill her before she went any further down that particular path!</blockquote>

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