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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2343707" data-attributes="member: 1210">TzalraughThe passage widens, growing ever wider as the party swims down it.  Soon it widens into a huge chamber with a high ceiling.  The coral is shaped or carved into a series of benches in four levels up the wall, all overlooking what has the look of some kind of arena.  Dominating the scene- though only the deep halflings can see it at this point- is a horrendous monster.It is huge.  Its body is nearly twenty feet long, built along the lines of a shark but with some differences.  Its fins end in jagged spurs.  Its tail has a jagged, vicious look to it.  Its eyes glow an infernal orange color.  Its great mouth could engulf a human, and it gnashes its razor-sharp teeth and roars a challenge as our heroes swim to a halt with it in view.Tweewak attacks!  He can’t see it, but his echolocation has found his target anyway.  Propelling himself forward, the merellin smashes into the creature, but he rebounds to a surprising extent.  “Beware, it’s hideous!” he cries.Then, the hapless merellin feels the immense jaw of the devil-shark crush down on him.  Terrible agony flares through him as, in a single crushing bite, the monster slays the merellin.  As Federico moves close enough to see the thing with his darkvision, he gapes in horror as it gulps half of the merellin’s body down.  Nara is moving forward, her morningstar glowing with light.  Federico yells out, “It’s some kind of mutant shark!”  Snickering, he starts to jape and joke, inspiring his allies with courage. Nara stops her advance (as most of our heroes have done) as the light starts to pick out a cloud of scarlet swirling in the water.  Both merellin are gone, she realizes with a shudder.  We need some bodies here.  She begins an involved prayer to Coila, summoning a trio of fiendish sharks of her own that swim forward to engage the huge monster.Tzalraugh is its name.It is not the smartest creature on the block, but it certainly is the hungriest.  It is a grandchild of Sekolah the Great Shark himself.  And it wants nothing more than to devour.  And look at this little collection of bite-sized morsels!  Tzalraugh’s dim intellect determines immediately that they are too small to pose a real thread; first it will devour the inferior shark-scum aiding the little snacks.  At least they have teeth.Naomi starts blasting at the devil-shark with her mental powers, but to her dismay she finds that it is resistant to psionics.  Federico has a similar bit of frustration with his wand of magic missiles, which fires a single glowing blip of force that splatters off Tzalraugh’s resistance like water off a duck.  It finishes off Nara’s fiendish sharks and flicks its tail.  It shoots forward, mouth gaping, and Nara kicks madly to swim away in time.  Its teeth crush down on her, breaking ribs and bringing more red fluid into the water.  She gasps and cries out in pain.  But she has prepared an inflict wounds spell and now she touches Tzalraugh as he is right next to her.  Her spell strikes through the monster’s resistance, opening a serious wound.Naomi glares at the devil shark, grimly blasting away mentally.  Ari, Erasmuz and Federico start to flee, but they realize instantly that the shark-thing will out swim them with ease.  Desperately hoping to find an escape, Federico casts detect secret doors as he swims back.  To his delight, the chamber at the far end of the hall- one of the bed chambers- seems to have a secret passage in the floor!  He yells for the others, scrabbling at the trap door- and to his dismay he finds that it is only a small compartment with some hidden treasure.  “Never mind!” he cries in frustration, turning back towards the fight.  Nara has slipped away from Tzalraugh thanks to the freedom of movement she cast at the beginning of the caves.  Now she retreats, and Erasmuz suddenly finds himself in the rear.  “Hey, buddy, don’t leave me here alone!” he cries.  He pulls out his rapier, shaking with fear, as Tzalraugh charges and its great maw chomps down on him.  He has been spending the last few moments activating all the protections he has, though- and it is enough to deflect the blow from him.  Quivering, he pokes the creature with his rapier- and it doesn’t even get through Tzalraugh’s hide.  Damage reduction, the shaven-headed halfling thinks sickly.Well, all is not lost.He manages to cast a spell without lowering his guard, and suddenly his rapier glows with magic.  The next time he pokes it, he draws blood... albeit not much.*Naomi stops her retreat, hesitant to leave even the creepy old guy behind.  He’s a halfling, after all!  But she has barely been able to harm the monster so far... and underwater, fire magic won’t work- will it?  Desperate to try anything, she pulls out the wand of fireballs taken from the serpent-folk who slew Sandy, Beau and Lundey and points it at the devil-shark.  Focusing all her mental energy, she concentrates- Nothing.Cursing, she starts moving forward.  At least she has her energy retort when it bites her.  And she can’t leave Erasmuz behind.**  Nara, meanwhile, is firing sound bursts that splatter off Tzalraugh’s native resistance.***  Groaning at the ineffectiveness of it all, she starts healing her wounds and bracing herself to go back into battle.  Once she’s in reasonable shape- that bite is vicious!- she swims back to the melee.  Tzalraugh and Erasmuz are having a time of it.  The devil-shark finds the deflective and guarding magic and psionics around the halfling very frustrating, while Erasmuz finds the blow that gets through now and then frighteningly dangerous.  He’s bleeding from two major wounds, losing strength fast; but he has pricked his foe several times now.  When the two girls come up and begin aiding him, he starts to land more blows than before, and then he gets the one that really counts- a swift jab through the eye and into the brain!  Tzalraugh thrashes for a few more moments, but it is clearly in its death throes.  Nara, Naomi and Erasmuz retreat for a few moments while it dies.  Then the group reassembles.“That thing was tough,” exclaims Erasmuz.  The party is wounded and low on spells.  Nara uses the wand of cure serious wounds that Sandy had for so long to heal the party most of the way up, and then the group decides to leave.  “We should search on the way back,” Federico opines.  “I already found a little treasure.”The group agrees to this sensible suggestion, examining the bodies of the sahuagin already slain and the rooms explored.  From the secret compartment they take 28 gold pieces and a silver necklace.  Another chamber has a whalebone comb and a silver dagger within it.  Many of the sea devils the party has slain have a few coins on them.  A couple have gems- pearls or, in one case, opals.  The shark-rider’s trident radiates magic, so our heroes take that as well.  Nara, as a prophet, performs a few auguries on unexplored areas, trying to gain a clue or two as to the location of the captives the sahuagin have taken.  Then they return to the Proud Pentor to recuperate.When they speak to Weeweerinwee he begs them to keep trying.  “Pleeeeease,” the whale implores, “you must help meeeeeeeeee find theeem.”The party, in turn, speaks to the captain, who is plainly very nervous about the prospects of remaining in sahuagin-infested waters.  Again, Weeweerinwee offers to stay close enough to keep an eye on things.   Finally, the party successfully persuades the captain to stay one more day.Rest ensues.Next time: Our heroes find some captives!*Tell us Erasmuz’ strength score, Brain. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />**There we see the Lawful part of Naomi’s LE alignment come out. ***Though it sounds like he had really good SR, it wasn’t really all that hot.  But a lot of our heroes have low caster levels, and they rolled crap all night iirc.</blockquote>

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