Old Kentfield Country Estate, June 7th, AE 420
Despite Gavin’s misgivings about winning (?) the contest to open the secret door, there prove to be no traps, and the party descends the long spiral stair down to the temple. The temple is a good seventy feet below the castle, and the stair winds around many times until it opens into a short corridor. At the end of the corridor is the door into the temple proper.
They open the door, and find the area fairly dark. Lights are brought out, and they can see that the hundred foot long chamber is empty.
Aris’ locate object runs out at this point, with the last impression of direction indicating that the door way to the cave under the waterfall is the path to take. The party makes their way to the door, and Anthius begins picking the lock.
“Hurry up there,” Brennen says. “We haven’t got all day.”
“Be quiet,” Anthius replies. “I’m not a master lockpicker, all these distractions make me take longer…”
Soldago is watching to the rear. He hears a deep rumble, almost without a definite origin. Towards the far end of the chamber, he sees something stirring.
Something big.
“Look out! There’s a … thing coming our way!”
He draws and fires three greater magic weaponed arrows at the immense form coming towards him, and two find their target. As it comes further forward, the party can see it better. It is immense, nearly eighteen feet tall, even stooped over. It has a body like a gorilla, with its knuckles draggin along the ground, and the head of a bison. It is larger than the Ghour Demon that they fought in Ulfang, but clearly more animalistic in nature, although almost certainly demonic in origin.
“Great googley-moogley,” Jovah stammers.
Soldago continues to send rapid fire arrows towards the thing as most of the rest of the party advances. Corwin, Aris and Reana move up along the narrow stairs that lead up to the sacrificial platform at the far end, roughly above the beast’s head. Brennen and Gavin advance straight towards it. Anthius breaks off his lock picking and starts playing an inspirational tune.
The beast reaches down next to it, and picks several boulders out of a pile. He then hurls them at high speed at Soldago. The archer breathes a sigh of relief as none hit the mark.
Corwin launches a set of magic missiles, but they break uselessly off his skin as his spell resistance holds. Aris tries a lightning bolt, with the same effect.
As the party closes in, the beast roars, and stomps down hard, driving its cloven feet into the ground, setting off a major tremor. Everyone nearby is knocked off-balance, some falling over, and stones from the ceiling fall, as the temple begins to collapse. A cloud of dust rises from the fallen debris, and Soldago can no longer see his target. He closes in to get a new vantage point.
Gavin finally regains his footing and reaches the thing, braving its fists to slip inside its reach and swing. He cuts deep into its side. The thing brings its fist down, just missing, but breaking the stone underfoot and nearly throwing Gavin off-balance again. Reana and Brennen use the opportunity to move in closer.
The beast bellows in anger at Gavin’s blow, and swings hard at the swordsman. He connects powerfully, and everyone winces at the sounds of bones cracking and Gavin screaming in pain. Gavin goes down.
The demon landed a critical hit on Gavin, and did 48 points of damage, knocking him unconscious. Brennen’s player helpfully pointed out that had he taken two more points he would have had to make a fortitude save versus massive damage.
Jovah sees Gavin go down, and begins flying in to help. Reana and Brennen redouble their attacks, and Aris tumbles into position to help as well. Brennen lands several massive blows, and Reana also lands multiple blows, and finally the thing drops. Jovah casts a cure on Gavin, and the party makes their way out towards the waterfall cave, as the ceiling of the temple begins to fall in on itself.
When they reach the cave, they find it empty. The hobgoblin’s pirate vessel is there, a medium sized single masted ship with places for oars as well. A quick look around reveals Jalea, about thirty foot under water just of the ship’s bow. Circling around the area are five sharks.
“Well, at least they’re not very big sharks,” Aris says.
“Who’s talking?” Jovah replies. “They could swallow me in one bite!”
Big or not, they are twelve to fifteen footers. Big enough to be a problem.
“I wonder if there’s any chum around here,” Corwin wonders, only to find a bucket so close by if he had taken another step he’d be standing in it. He gives the bucket to Jovah, who flies to the edge of the waterfall. Just for grins, he stick his head out of the waterfall to see if he can see where Kentfield got off to. He sees a rowboat about a hundred yards off, being rowed by a troll. Kentfield is in the front, trying to signal his vessel docked alongside the cliffs. Quinn is in the back, looking towards the waterfall, but doesn’t appear to notice the gnome.
Brennen checks the ship out and finds sufficient block and tackle to lift a statue the size of an elf out of the water, and Jovah begins tossing chum in by the waterfall, leading the sharks away from Jalea. Reana dives in and attaches the rope to the statue-elf, and Brennen, Gavin, and Corwin lift him up out of the water.
“That went well,” Jovah says, and tries a break enchantment on the hapless rogue. It fails.
“Dang it.”
He uses his luck ability to bend probability back and try one more time. It still fails.
“Dang it!”
“Okay, we’ll have to carry him,” Jovah says.
“No problem,” Aris says. “We prepared for this. I’ve got the reduce scroll we bought in Cape Varna. That will get him to a weight we can carry through the dimensional folding.”
Aris reduces Jalea to about 60 pounds, and Jovah prepares to cast his extended dimensional folding spell. This one will stay open twelve seconds, allowing the party more time to go through.
He casts the spell, and the familiar portal opens up, but this time something is wrong: An emerald field covers the portal, and Jovah can barely see the courtyard of his house in Fencig. Aris tosses a stone at the fold. Instead of going through as it should, it bounces off the shimmering emerald force field.
“Uh, Jovah?” Reana says, inquiringly.
“I… I’ve never seen that happen before!” Jovah stutters.
“What do we do now?”
