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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Menexenus" data-source="post: 3403519" data-attributes="member: 8951">Session 24: Against the Undead Minions of the Kyuss Cultist7th of Richfest.  This was the big day - the finale of the Champions Games, the day that the Arena would be packed with more spectators than it would see on any other day of the year, and the day that something or someone was trying to unleash an evil harbinger of the Age of Worms to devour the city.  The party had been convinced by their patron Eligos to try to prevent the release of the Apostle of Kyuss with the help of an enigmatic young investigator named Celeste.  Celeste had shown the party a hidden path to the catacombs below the Arena via the sewers.  First the party encountered and defeated a warren of ghasts.  However, this encounter had sickened the party.  They pressed on nonetheless.  They made their way through tight subterranean passageways that finally led to an underground cave containing run-off from an ancient sewer pipe.  However, as soon as they arrived, they were attacked by large yellowish oozes clinging to the ceiling and walls.    First, Tarric entered the room.  He swang his mace at the closest one, cleaving it in two.  However, being cut in half did not seem to damage the creature.  Instead, there were now more of them to fight!  Killick came into the room and tried hitting one of the smaller jellies, but that just caused it to divide again into 2 even smaller jellies.  Alees moved into the room and cautiously waited for something to attack.  When it did, she struck first, causing it to divide into 2 opponents as well.  By this time, the party realized that physical force would be useless against these strange creatures.  Katawan tumbled to the far side of the room and lit a torch which he used to burn the creatures.  Alexander stood in the doorway and used his Magic Missile wand to good effect.  Alees threw her bottles of Alchemist Fire.  Killick cast a spell and threw balls of flame at the creatures.  All the while, the oozes lashed out with pseudopods.  Through the entire combat, the yellow blobs only hit twice.  When they hit, they tried to grab their targets, but both times, the grab was unsuccessful.  Those who were hit took both physical and acid damage.  After the party had deduced that physical attacks did no good, they had little trouble dispatching the oozes.    Celeste told the party that her sewer maps indicated that the party needed to climb up the mildly inclined sewer pipe on the far wall for about 20 feet and then up a vertical pipe for about 10 feet.  She thought that this should bring them into a sub-basement level of the Greyhawk Arena where she had seen Spawn of Kyuss.  Rather than pressing on immediately, the party decided to wait until the ghast sickness wore off.  In the mean time, Alees searched the jelly corpses for valuables, Tarric cleaned Celeste's Mace of Disruption (which he had carelessly dropped into the sewage), and Thorash cast Detect Magic to see if he could find anything of value in the cavern.  Alees came up empty in her search, finding only humanoid bones and half-digested muscle tissue.  But Thorash found a dim glow beneath the filthy water on the far side of the cavern.  He dug around until he found the object.  The enchanted item turned out to be a thoroughly befouled gauntlet on a severed hand that had been resting underwater for who knows how long.  Thorash wiped the rusty gauntlet off a bit and found that it radiated Transmutation magic.  He then greedily placed the filthy object on his hand, to the disgust of his party-mates.  However, without knowing the item's command word, he was unable to determine the gauntlet's magical properties.    After the party's nausea subsided, they began climbing into the 4-foot diameter sewer pipe.  The party deemed Tarric to be the best climber, so he took Katawan's Rope of Climbing to the intersection with the pipe leading straight up.  Tarric was able to see what looked like a stone room up above with a lamp hanging from a chain on the ceiling.  He commanded the Rope to fix itself to the chain and knot itself.  Then he tossed the other end of the Rope back to the rest of the group.  Tarric climbed the rope into the small circular stone room, joined soon after by Killick and Alees.  Alees began looking for traps in the hallway outside the room while she waited for the other members of the party to arrive.  She quickly found herself almost nose to nose with 3 Spawn of Kyuss sitting on coffins in a small 10x10 room.  Alees and Killick leapt to the fight, but Tarric found the appearance of the Spawn too horrific to face.  He dropped Celeste's mace and started climbing back down the rope.  Alexander flew up and found himself horrified as well.  He immediately flew back down.  Having seen this effect before, Thorash knew to cast Remove Fear.  Luckily, Alexander and Tarric were still close enough to be affected by the spell.  Their panic subsided.  Katawan climbed up and found himself horrified as well.  As he fled back to the cavern, he felt a hand brush against him and some words of magic spoken by a female voice, and suddenly he was unafraid once again.    Meanwhile, Killick and Alees were on their own against the Spawn.  One of the Spawn managed to put a worm directly on Killick's flesh.  The worm immediately tried to start burrowing into his skin.  Terrified by the prospect of being infested by the undead worms again, he dropped his guard in order to grab the worm and remove it.  The same happened to Alees.  Killick and Alees were holding their own against the Spawn, and when the rest of the party started to arrive, the 3 Spawn in this first room were quickly defeated.  Celeste's disembodied voice mentioned to the party that this was the room she had briefly entered and then quickly retreated from.  She said she had entered from a secret door behind a coffin on the north wall.  The party decided to open the door in case a quick escape route was needed.    Down the hall the group found a side passage as well as a door straight ahead.  Alees checked the floor for traps while Killick and Thorash walked down the separate passageway.  Killick noticed that the passageway was very dusty from disuse, so he gave up and returned to the rest of the party without opening a door around the corner.  Thorash returned as well, which was a good thing because as soon as Alees opened the door at the end of the hallway, she found herself horrified to see six more of the Spawn of Kyuss led by a similar skeleton-like creature inhabited and animated by a large purple worm.  She fell to the floor in fear.  Tarric also felt the need to flee.  Celeste warned the party that she had no more Remove Fears memorized.  Things seemed bleak.  But, just in the knick of time, Thorash used his Pearl of Power to recall Remove Fear and cast it again.  The undead leader ordered one of his Spawn of Kyuss to go warn its master, and one of the Spawn shambled off toward a set of double doors as commanded.  Thorash cast Sound Burst in the middle of the room to damage some of the undead.  Celeste cast a spell to Bless the party's struggle against evil.  Katawan entered the room and attacked one of the vile creatures.  He struck the creature successfully but was quickly surrounded by 5 of them and seriously wounded.  As he cried out in pain, Celeste called to him to retreat to the back of the line so she could heal his wounds.  Tarric stepped forward to take Katawan's place.  With two swings of Celeste's Mace of Disruption, he was able to destroy all 5 of the Spawn of Kyuss standing around the doorway.  As the rest of the party cheered and clapped him on the back, he allowed himself a moment of amazement during which he looked at his own hands, marveling at the destruction he had wrought.    The undead leader seemed incredulous.  As the party entered the long rectangular room (that seemed like it might once have been a training room), the undead leader stepped forward to attack with its claws as well as its wormy purple tongue.  The tongue struck Tarric and injected him with some toxin which his body was able to overcome.  The undead leader could not stand for long under assault by all 6 members of the party.  It took damage from quarterstaff blows, magic missiles, and the Mace of Disruption.  It was destroyed in a matter of seconds.  At about this time, the last Spawn of Kyuss reached his master's sleeping chamber after going down two short hallways and traversing a medium-sized altar room with a strange beam of green energy cutting the room in half.  When the undead warned the master of intruders, the master commanded it to fight them.  Soon thereafter a large white ape-ish creature with four arms emerged from his room and moved to face Tarric.  Thorash shot a Searing Light at it, wounding it.</blockquote>

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