You continue to discuss your plans among yourselves for a bit. Ploop finally rises and announces it is nearly time to go and to make yourselves ready. You redo your 'bindings' and Erevan casts his disguise spell. Ploop orders a few of his people to take your packages of supplies to the docks.
When you are ready, you are lead out of the tent. Ploop stops and gazes at the statue one more time as the procession moves past. You are lead not to the shrine of the Deep Father but a bit southward and west towards the docks. There you see two keel boats being loaded with your supplies. Once you seem satisfied you return to the Sea Mother shrine and then straight West to the Shrine of the Deep Father.
The idol to Leemooggoogoon consists of a large hide cut roughly in the shape of a manta ran and stretched out on cords between two support poles. A dead, splayed out manta ray is pinned to the center of the hide. Two dead octopuses are draped across the top, their tentacles artfully arrayed, their heads tied together and painted with red and blue pigments. The idol reeks of decay, and the broad stone altar below the idol is stained dark with blood. There is a grate below the altar where blood and gore can drop down into the lake.
On the altar is a body (or what remains of it) of a recent sacrifice. Probably one of the prisoners you saw earlier. Six kuo-toa work cleaning up the altar, flaying off pieces of meat from the body and dropping them into the grate. A whip and two monitors stand by overseeing things. You feel a reflexive wretch at the macabre sight.
A bulbous kuo-toa dressed in robes stands nearby. Its robes, "jewelry" and staff with a mummified double octopus mounted on it indicate this must be Bloppblippodd. When she sees her father, she straightens herself, shifts her blubber under her robes and steps before her altar.
Ploop steps forward.
"The time has come," he says,
"for us to acknowledge your divine vision and unite our people. I have brought these offerings in reconciliation." He gestures toward all of you, standing within a circle of guards behind him.
"Will Leemooggoogoon accept them?"
"
He will, father," the younger archpriest replies. She shouts to the assembled crowd (that is growing as people become aware that something is happening)
"May their blood nourish and strengthen him and along with it, our people!" A blurbling cheer goes up from the surrounding kuo-toa, raising fists and weapons in the air.
Kuo-toa begin to parade around the altar, chanting. Their path sends them splashing into the shallows near the shore of the Darklake. Blopp motions for you to come forward and four kuo-toa come behind and start guiding you forward. Glugg and Ploop hang back. Blopp is flanked by a whip and a monitor.
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OOC:
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It is easy enough for Ezraen to inch forward to be "first" and Orsik to hang back. The first character will be right up next to Blopp and her two cohorts. The last character will be about 20' away. Ploop and Glugg are about 35' from the altar. The crowd is growing and is a mix of loyalists of both sides. Ploop's loyalists are agape at what is happening.
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