el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Session #36 (part II)
The silently sobbing figure did not respond.
“Get up here fast!” Ratchis called back to his companions, never taking his eyes off the woman that appeared to be Jana. “I don’t know when I’ll have to cut the rope!”
Kazrack hurried over the edge and onto the top of the hill.
“Nephthys, imbue my weapon with your divine favor,” Ratchis intoned, casting magic weapon on his long sword.
Kazrack invoked his gods and cast the same spell on his halberd.
Meanwhile, at the base of the hill…
“Jeremy, you go up first,” Martin said to the Neergaardian, and gestured with the rope he held to steady it. Jeremy leapt to it, shimmying up the rope like a monkey.
“Jeremy, hold the rope if Ratchis let’s go,” Beorth called after him.
“Let’s hope I get up there before he does,” Jeremy winked and doubled his pace.
Seeing that Jeremy needed no help from him, Martin let go of the rope and cast prestidigitation.
Ratchis and Kazrack were still keeping a safe distance from “Jana” when Jeremy got up there. He walked over to the half-orc and untied the rope from around his waist.
“I’m going to see if Jana’s okay,” Ratchis said, to the others.
“Jana?” Jeremy was puzzled, but he made sure to wrap the rope around his arm twice, while stealing a look at the balled up human form.
He called down to Martin to begin to climb.
“If that’s Jana, she’s a ghost,” Kazrack said softly.
Martin began his awkward climb up the rope, using his feet against the snowy hillside for support.
Beorth cast magic weapon on his own blade.
Kazrack took a step towards the girl, moving beneath the sparse branches of the drooping tree.
She looked up, and it was clearly Jana. Tears streamed down her face and she let out a gas of air, and then fell into ball again, wracked with silent sobs.
“Everyone should get up here!” Ratchis barked, and the he grasped his belt of broken chain links and whispered to his goddess, “Nephthys, please aid me in this struggle against this hideous monster that has devoured and replaced our companion.”
Jeremy moved to where he could tie the rope around a rock, but the movement of the rope threatened to knock Martin from it, so the watch-mage merely held on for dear life, making no progress.
“Sorry!” Jeremy called down, tying off the knot very tightly.
“Hurry up!” Helrahd growled from below the watch-mage.
“Lady of the Raised Shield, please protect my companion should we have to fight unnatural and evil things this day, as I fear we must,” Kazrack prayed, as he touch Ratchis on the shoulder, and took another step towards “Jana”.
“Martin! Hurry up!” Beorth echoed the dwarf, and Martin looked back down and sighed with annoyance. He slowly continued to climb.
‘Jana’ stood, and made as if to step towards Kazrack, but stumbled, and as she threw her head up to right herself, she opened her mouth –From it emerged a barbed slimy tentacle of a tongue, over ten feet long. It raked Kazrack across the face, and moved to wrap about his neck. The dwarf leapt to the right to avoid being grabbed.
“Hurry up!” Helrahd could be heard yelling from below.
Ratchis roared in horror and charged at the false Jana, swinging his sword down from over his head.
He suffered for his rash attack, as the tongue-tentacle whipped back from Kazrack and cut Ratchis across the face, but he ignored the pain of it and continued onward.
Ratchis brought his sword down, cleaving Jana’s head clear in half, down through the shoulders. There was the sickening sound of tearing flesh, as the organ-less cartilage-like inside squirmed and pulsed and oozing slime slid down the outer flesh that still looked like Jana’s sad face. She tumbled over into the snow.
Hearing the sound of combat behind him, Jeremy’s patience for Martin grew thin and he began to haul the watch-mage up. In a moment, the green-robed wizard rolled over the edge of the hill.
Kazrack ran forward and thrust his halberd into the prone form of Jana, closing his eyes as he jabbed it again and again.
“Jeremy! I need the rope!” Beorth cried up from the base of the hill.
The mutilated and pulsing form of Jana swelled up like balloon and rolled away from the reach of the dwarf’s pole arm.
“Come on!” Helrahd cried up to the top of the hill, impatiently.
“You cannot escape our righteous wrath!” Ratchis roared, and ran at the crawling form, but suddenly he noticed the shadow of moment above him. The tree branch above him, whipped down and grabbed him about the neck and shoulder. The half-orc tore himself free in shock. He could see the branch waving back and forth, the bark of the ‘tree’ rolling back to reveal the pinkish-orange texture of the alien creature.
“The tree! It’s the tree, too!” Ratchis called out.
“Eh? I didn’t hear that. What did he say?” Helrahd grumbled and spit, below, looking to Beorth to illuminate the situation for him.
At that moment Jeremy threw the rope back down and Beorth grabbed it, but he fumbled awkwardly, and could not get the traction he needed to make any progress up the steep snowy incline. He fell back into the snow bank.
Helrahd laughed, and grabbed the rope and began to make his way up.
Martin was on his feet by now, and had pulled out a torch and lit it with prestidigitation. He dropped it on an area of bare rock.
Kazrack chopped at a large tree branch, and cut it deeply. It crackled and bubbled, as all the branches came to life. One of the branches whipped at Ratchis who ducked, but Kazrack received another flesh-tearing blow. Ratchis swung back, but the tree suddenly seemed very ‘awake’ and easily avoided the blow.
Jeremy hauled up the dwarf.
“That’s how ya do it,” Helrahd said, with rasping up a green and yellow hawker to spit back down to where he had come from.
“Manus Magiae!” Martin canted, and an invisible hand lifted the burning torch and moved it towards the tree.
The branches now teased the stocky dwarf, whipping at him from above, but staying out of reach of the halberd. Kazrack felt the whip of one of the tentacles again, and he threw himself down to rip himself free of the thing’s grasp. Ratchis was not as lucky, and he had to struggle for moment, before pulling free again.
Martin’s torch was now floating among the base of the most offensive branches, and the flames licked against the glistening bark.
Kazrack leapt to his feet and swung his halberd, in an attempt to take the thing by surprise by his sudden attack, but again, it easily avoided the blow.
One of the smaller branches grabbed the base of the torch and began to try lowering it into the snow. Martin felt the strain on the fabric of his dweomer, but he was able to keep it from being lowered all the way down. (176)
Kazrack continued to struggle with one strong branch that whipped at him again and again, but avoided his blows.
“Aaaaaagghuraagh!” Ratchis hollered, and charged the tree- thing, burying his blade deep into its trunk. It seemed to explode open, with a hundred tiny tendrils squirming back and forth, and its inner essence rolling and bloating and bursting disgustingly. He looked down and saw what was once the form of the Jana-thing being reabsorbed into the tree trunk.
Helrahd tossed the rope down to Beorth, as he got to his feet on the top of the hill.
“Don’t climb, I’ll pull you!” Jeremy called down to the paladin.
Martin concentrated, and the torch went back up into the branches again. Tiny flames expanded across a branch.
Suddenly, the ground shuddered. Eight of the largest branches shoved themselves deep into the snow and took stable purchase in the frozen good, as the rest of the smaller branches and the roots in the ground shrivel back into the trunk of the tree. There was an echoing cracking sound, as the branches, now not unlike segmented spider legs flexed and pulled the oozing and changing tree trunk from the ground. The trunk shriveled and flipped up, revealing a huge beak like the owlbear had had. However, this huge misshapen head, was now at the center of these spider legs, with two bulbous eyes, that looked around frantically.
All the snow falling from the branches extinguished the torch, and the thing just seemed to “abandon” the burning branch, letting it fall off into the deep snow. The thing lurched forward and the beak pecked deeply into Kazrack’s chest, while one of the legs pinned him down to the ground.
Helrahd patiently took his bow from his back and began to string it. “I thought the plan called for fire?” he called over to Martin, and spit.
Ratchis was among the rear spider legs, and he hacked at one with his sword. A layer of the cartilage peeled off like a spring, and flesh rolled beneath it, trying to grow back.
Beorth finally made it to the top of the hill.
Martin let go his concentration on the mage hand holding the torch, and used his still present prestidigitation spell to light Helrahd’s arrow. The dwarf let the flaming arrow go, and it sunk into the abnormal owlbear-spider head, but the fire went out as it flew.
Kazrack frantically struggled to get to his feet, but he felt the bite of the beak again, and he fell onto his face. He barely rolled out of the way of one of thick spidery legs, trying to pin him again.
“Get up! Get up!” Ratchis called to the dwarf.
Again, Ratchis whacked the leg, and this time he cut nearly halfway through. This distracted the thing long enough for Kazrack to stand and thrust his halberd into one of the bulbous eyes, it burst, leaking over the beak.
The thing was not happy. It pinned Kazrack between the clawed points of its two front legs and lifted him to the beak and took a bite. The dwarf lay in a puddle of snow melting from the warmth of his pouring blood. One of the spider-legs was resting on his chest, and already seemed to be twisting and changing to fuse with the dwarf’s body.
“Kazrack is down!” Ratchis screamed.
Helrahd drew another arrow, and again Martin lit it with his spell, but this one sailed over the thing, in an attempt to not hit Ratchis or Kazrack.
“Kazrack is down!” Ratchis yelled again, and hacked at the thing’s head, prying the beak open at the corner. It screamed silently.
Jeremy dropped the rope and pulled out his own bow, while Beorth charged the thing, avoiding a leg and bringing his sword down on it face. “Anubis, grant me the power to destroy this creature!” And he called his god’s power to smite evil.
The spider-owlbear- thing crept backward, leaning heavily to one side to avoid using the leg Ratchis had crippled. It dragged Kazrack back with it.
Martin lit another of Helrahd’s arrows, and again it sailed over the thing missing.
Ratchis chased after the thing, but it lifted one of its front legs and suddenly it melted into more pliable tentacle form, grabbing the half-orc about the neck. Ratchis was jerked short of completing his charge.
Jeremy held an arrow ready for Martin’s spell, but cursed under his breath as Ratchis was slowly being dragged back and forth as he tried to pry the thing off. Ratchis felt a wave chill deep within, as if he suffered from a fever. Beorth ran to join the melee, failing to notice that Kazrack as well was growing pale. (177)
Helrahd was too impatient to wait for Martin to decide whose arrow to light and let his go. This one bit into the snow, short of its target. The dwarf spit in anger.
Finally, Ratchis ripped himself free of the tentacle and dropped to the snow, gasping.
Martin lit Jeremy’s arrow, but it missed as well.
Beorth swung at the thing, but it knocked the blow out of alignment with the tentacle that had just let go of Ratchis, and grabbed the paladin around the waist. Beorth could feel the sharp scales of the tentacle rip into his side. He could see it moving and pulsing, changing from scales, to short thick sharp hairs and the needles, and then boney spikes and then teeth and then back again.
Martin lit another of Helrahd’s arrow, but archery seemed to be failing as a tactic. He also pulled out a torch and lit that as well.
Ratchis picked up his sword and jogged over, burying it in the empty eye socket. Ichor burst out in a shower covering him from head to toe. More tendrils burst out, and then melted away again, as it tried to rebuild itself.
Jeremy cursed and dropped his bow. He charged at the thing, rolling away from its beak attack and thrusting the Right Blade of Arofel into its mouth. He jabbed it around in there and then yanked it out, as the beak came snapping shut again.
“Ah Ha!” Jeremy cried, with smile, wiping ichor from his eye. “That was for Jana!”
Beorth was being held at bay by the tentacle about his waist. He struggled to free himself, but his strength was not up to the task, as he had no leverage. Instead, he felt his internal organs shudder, as the tentacle grew thicker and thicker and squeezed tighter and tighter.
Martin cast mage hand again, and moved toward the fight. The torch bobbed up and down beside him.
“Slow down, Pudgy!” Helrahd growled and he jogged forward, lighting his arrow on the torch as he let it go. It sailed in a perfect arch, landing deep behind the ridge of the thing’s remaining eye. The ichor on the surface caught fire, and thing began to crackle and peel.
Ratchis cleaved the thing’s immense beak with his sword, as it tried to retreat once again, but by now it was on the opposite side of the hill, and the force of the blow made it begin to slide down the snowy embankment.
Beorth sensed the thing panic and loosen its grip a bit. He was able to pull free and drop to the snow. The tentacle peeled back to expose a spidery leg again, at it drop itself in the ground to try to halt its fall.
It continued to slide.
Kazrack began to be dragged down with it, but the thing let go of him in a last attempt to grab something stable enough to hold it. The thing tumbled down the sharp incline about thirty feet and then freefalled another forty feet into a deep snow bank.
Jeremy hustled to the edge and looked down.
Beorth knelt beside Kazrack’s bleeding form. “Anubis, I call upon you to halt my friend’s journey towards death.” The paladin laid his hands upon the dwarf to heal him.
“Is he alright?’ Martin asked Beorth, coming over to the still unconscious, but now stabilized, dwarf.
Beorth nodded.
“Is it dead?” Helrahd asked, coming along side Jeremy on the hill edge.
Ratchis sheathed his sword and readied his bow. He held one of the prepared arrows at the ready.
Jeremy jogged back to get his own bow, and did the same.
In the meantime, Martin had walked over with torch, and then sent it with the mage hand down towards the hole in the snow, but it could not illuminate the bottom, as he could not get it to go down far enough. He brought it back up and lit Ratchis’ arrow.
The half-orc fired, but the arrow clipped the top of the hole in the snow and went out asit tumbled down awkwardly.
Beorth ran over, pulling the stopper off a flask of oil. He tossed it, oil trailing in a stream behind it, into the hole.
Martin lit another Ratchis’ arrows and this time it went right into the whole. There was flash and then smoke rose from inside, as clumps of snow slid down into the hole from the collapsing sides.
Helrahd and Ratchis fired a few more flaming arrows, as Beorth lobbed two more flasks of oil in there. The was hissing and popping and more smoke and falling snow.
“Is Kazrack alright?” Jeremy asked.
“Kazrack will be fine,” Beorth replied.
Ratchis made his way down the incline towards the hole, and Jeremy followed as far as he could. Only Ratchis could walk right up to the edge of the hole, because Uller’s Boots allowed him to walk atop snow, and without leaving footprints.
Ratchis looked down, and all that was left of the thing was flatten bubbling piece of soft cartilage. It was blackened, and every few seconds it would sprout tendrils as if in a coughing fit, but they would melt away and be reabsorbed into the disk of flesh.
Ratchis poured more oil on it, and it burned and burned. Until all that was left was a brittle blacked wedge. He called up for one of Kazrack’s shovels and he broke it up, and slipped the pieces into a sack and tied the end in a knot, and slipped it into his backpack.
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A few hours later they were back in the cave. Ratchis used most of his healing spells on Kazrack, who mumbled as he came into semi-consciousness. He was fed some water and then he spoke.
“Did we kill it?”
“Yes,” Ratchis replied.
“Did anyone else die?”
“No.”
The dwarf slipped back into unconsciousness.
“I will have to go back tomorrow to Belear,” Helrahd announced. “Will you come with me?”
“We will come,” Ratchis said. “The thing is killed and we can go back to our original goal of helping the gnomes.”
“At least until I get a ‘feeling’ about the Book of Black Circles,” Martin commented.
Jeremy’s head drooped.
Martin sighed and cast prestidigitation again, to clean the ichor off everyone.
Ralem, 22nd of Onk – 564 H.E.
The next day Ratchis used some orisons to repair one of the damaged tents, and then the party set out towards Ogre’s Bluff.
Kazrack marched sluggishly. And his face was scared and puffy from the raking tentacles.
As they left the paired hills, Beorth looked back, and noticed the form of an immense golden ram looking down at them as they departed.
“What a beautiful creature,” he thought. “I wonder what it is doing here?” (178)
They marched for hours, led alternately by Ratchis and Helrahd. And at last lights they could see the lamps of Aze Nuquerna to their right as they passed north of it. Finally, as real darkness settled in they could spy the twinkling of three small cooking fires and the sound of many deep dwarven voices.
End of Session #36
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Notes
(176) DM’s Note: I ruled then that Martin’s player could roll an opposed Intelligence check against the thing’s strength to keep it from being moved, but upon reflection I would now rule that Mage Hand has an effective strength of 2 (which is to say, up to 6 lbs is a light load – yes, I am being generous).
(177) DM’s Note: Both Kazrack and Ratchis suffered Constitution drain.
(178) Jana had not gotten to the part about the ram, in her re-telling of the party’s adventures to the amnesiac Beorth.
The silently sobbing figure did not respond.
“Get up here fast!” Ratchis called back to his companions, never taking his eyes off the woman that appeared to be Jana. “I don’t know when I’ll have to cut the rope!”
Kazrack hurried over the edge and onto the top of the hill.
“Nephthys, imbue my weapon with your divine favor,” Ratchis intoned, casting magic weapon on his long sword.
Kazrack invoked his gods and cast the same spell on his halberd.
Meanwhile, at the base of the hill…
“Jeremy, you go up first,” Martin said to the Neergaardian, and gestured with the rope he held to steady it. Jeremy leapt to it, shimmying up the rope like a monkey.
“Jeremy, hold the rope if Ratchis let’s go,” Beorth called after him.
“Let’s hope I get up there before he does,” Jeremy winked and doubled his pace.
Seeing that Jeremy needed no help from him, Martin let go of the rope and cast prestidigitation.
Ratchis and Kazrack were still keeping a safe distance from “Jana” when Jeremy got up there. He walked over to the half-orc and untied the rope from around his waist.
“I’m going to see if Jana’s okay,” Ratchis said, to the others.
“Jana?” Jeremy was puzzled, but he made sure to wrap the rope around his arm twice, while stealing a look at the balled up human form.
He called down to Martin to begin to climb.
“If that’s Jana, she’s a ghost,” Kazrack said softly.
Martin began his awkward climb up the rope, using his feet against the snowy hillside for support.
Beorth cast magic weapon on his own blade.
Kazrack took a step towards the girl, moving beneath the sparse branches of the drooping tree.
She looked up, and it was clearly Jana. Tears streamed down her face and she let out a gas of air, and then fell into ball again, wracked with silent sobs.
“Everyone should get up here!” Ratchis barked, and the he grasped his belt of broken chain links and whispered to his goddess, “Nephthys, please aid me in this struggle against this hideous monster that has devoured and replaced our companion.”
Jeremy moved to where he could tie the rope around a rock, but the movement of the rope threatened to knock Martin from it, so the watch-mage merely held on for dear life, making no progress.
“Sorry!” Jeremy called down, tying off the knot very tightly.
“Hurry up!” Helrahd growled from below the watch-mage.
“Lady of the Raised Shield, please protect my companion should we have to fight unnatural and evil things this day, as I fear we must,” Kazrack prayed, as he touch Ratchis on the shoulder, and took another step towards “Jana”.
“Martin! Hurry up!” Beorth echoed the dwarf, and Martin looked back down and sighed with annoyance. He slowly continued to climb.
‘Jana’ stood, and made as if to step towards Kazrack, but stumbled, and as she threw her head up to right herself, she opened her mouth –From it emerged a barbed slimy tentacle of a tongue, over ten feet long. It raked Kazrack across the face, and moved to wrap about his neck. The dwarf leapt to the right to avoid being grabbed.
“Hurry up!” Helrahd could be heard yelling from below.
Ratchis roared in horror and charged at the false Jana, swinging his sword down from over his head.
He suffered for his rash attack, as the tongue-tentacle whipped back from Kazrack and cut Ratchis across the face, but he ignored the pain of it and continued onward.
Ratchis brought his sword down, cleaving Jana’s head clear in half, down through the shoulders. There was the sickening sound of tearing flesh, as the organ-less cartilage-like inside squirmed and pulsed and oozing slime slid down the outer flesh that still looked like Jana’s sad face. She tumbled over into the snow.
Hearing the sound of combat behind him, Jeremy’s patience for Martin grew thin and he began to haul the watch-mage up. In a moment, the green-robed wizard rolled over the edge of the hill.
Kazrack ran forward and thrust his halberd into the prone form of Jana, closing his eyes as he jabbed it again and again.
“Jeremy! I need the rope!” Beorth cried up from the base of the hill.
The mutilated and pulsing form of Jana swelled up like balloon and rolled away from the reach of the dwarf’s pole arm.
“Come on!” Helrahd cried up to the top of the hill, impatiently.
“You cannot escape our righteous wrath!” Ratchis roared, and ran at the crawling form, but suddenly he noticed the shadow of moment above him. The tree branch above him, whipped down and grabbed him about the neck and shoulder. The half-orc tore himself free in shock. He could see the branch waving back and forth, the bark of the ‘tree’ rolling back to reveal the pinkish-orange texture of the alien creature.
“The tree! It’s the tree, too!” Ratchis called out.
“Eh? I didn’t hear that. What did he say?” Helrahd grumbled and spit, below, looking to Beorth to illuminate the situation for him.
At that moment Jeremy threw the rope back down and Beorth grabbed it, but he fumbled awkwardly, and could not get the traction he needed to make any progress up the steep snowy incline. He fell back into the snow bank.
Helrahd laughed, and grabbed the rope and began to make his way up.
Martin was on his feet by now, and had pulled out a torch and lit it with prestidigitation. He dropped it on an area of bare rock.
Kazrack chopped at a large tree branch, and cut it deeply. It crackled and bubbled, as all the branches came to life. One of the branches whipped at Ratchis who ducked, but Kazrack received another flesh-tearing blow. Ratchis swung back, but the tree suddenly seemed very ‘awake’ and easily avoided the blow.
Jeremy hauled up the dwarf.
“That’s how ya do it,” Helrahd said, with rasping up a green and yellow hawker to spit back down to where he had come from.
“Manus Magiae!” Martin canted, and an invisible hand lifted the burning torch and moved it towards the tree.
The branches now teased the stocky dwarf, whipping at him from above, but staying out of reach of the halberd. Kazrack felt the whip of one of the tentacles again, and he threw himself down to rip himself free of the thing’s grasp. Ratchis was not as lucky, and he had to struggle for moment, before pulling free again.
Martin’s torch was now floating among the base of the most offensive branches, and the flames licked against the glistening bark.
Kazrack leapt to his feet and swung his halberd, in an attempt to take the thing by surprise by his sudden attack, but again, it easily avoided the blow.
One of the smaller branches grabbed the base of the torch and began to try lowering it into the snow. Martin felt the strain on the fabric of his dweomer, but he was able to keep it from being lowered all the way down. (176)
Kazrack continued to struggle with one strong branch that whipped at him again and again, but avoided his blows.
“Aaaaaagghuraagh!” Ratchis hollered, and charged the tree- thing, burying his blade deep into its trunk. It seemed to explode open, with a hundred tiny tendrils squirming back and forth, and its inner essence rolling and bloating and bursting disgustingly. He looked down and saw what was once the form of the Jana-thing being reabsorbed into the tree trunk.
Helrahd tossed the rope down to Beorth, as he got to his feet on the top of the hill.
“Don’t climb, I’ll pull you!” Jeremy called down to the paladin.
Martin concentrated, and the torch went back up into the branches again. Tiny flames expanded across a branch.
Suddenly, the ground shuddered. Eight of the largest branches shoved themselves deep into the snow and took stable purchase in the frozen good, as the rest of the smaller branches and the roots in the ground shrivel back into the trunk of the tree. There was an echoing cracking sound, as the branches, now not unlike segmented spider legs flexed and pulled the oozing and changing tree trunk from the ground. The trunk shriveled and flipped up, revealing a huge beak like the owlbear had had. However, this huge misshapen head, was now at the center of these spider legs, with two bulbous eyes, that looked around frantically.
All the snow falling from the branches extinguished the torch, and the thing just seemed to “abandon” the burning branch, letting it fall off into the deep snow. The thing lurched forward and the beak pecked deeply into Kazrack’s chest, while one of the legs pinned him down to the ground.
Helrahd patiently took his bow from his back and began to string it. “I thought the plan called for fire?” he called over to Martin, and spit.
Ratchis was among the rear spider legs, and he hacked at one with his sword. A layer of the cartilage peeled off like a spring, and flesh rolled beneath it, trying to grow back.
Beorth finally made it to the top of the hill.
Martin let go his concentration on the mage hand holding the torch, and used his still present prestidigitation spell to light Helrahd’s arrow. The dwarf let the flaming arrow go, and it sunk into the abnormal owlbear-spider head, but the fire went out as it flew.
Kazrack frantically struggled to get to his feet, but he felt the bite of the beak again, and he fell onto his face. He barely rolled out of the way of one of thick spidery legs, trying to pin him again.
“Get up! Get up!” Ratchis called to the dwarf.
Again, Ratchis whacked the leg, and this time he cut nearly halfway through. This distracted the thing long enough for Kazrack to stand and thrust his halberd into one of the bulbous eyes, it burst, leaking over the beak.
The thing was not happy. It pinned Kazrack between the clawed points of its two front legs and lifted him to the beak and took a bite. The dwarf lay in a puddle of snow melting from the warmth of his pouring blood. One of the spider-legs was resting on his chest, and already seemed to be twisting and changing to fuse with the dwarf’s body.
“Kazrack is down!” Ratchis screamed.
Helrahd drew another arrow, and again Martin lit it with his spell, but this one sailed over the thing, in an attempt to not hit Ratchis or Kazrack.
“Kazrack is down!” Ratchis yelled again, and hacked at the thing’s head, prying the beak open at the corner. It screamed silently.
Jeremy dropped the rope and pulled out his own bow, while Beorth charged the thing, avoiding a leg and bringing his sword down on it face. “Anubis, grant me the power to destroy this creature!” And he called his god’s power to smite evil.
The spider-owlbear- thing crept backward, leaning heavily to one side to avoid using the leg Ratchis had crippled. It dragged Kazrack back with it.
Martin lit another of Helrahd’s arrows, and again it sailed over the thing missing.
Ratchis chased after the thing, but it lifted one of its front legs and suddenly it melted into more pliable tentacle form, grabbing the half-orc about the neck. Ratchis was jerked short of completing his charge.
Jeremy held an arrow ready for Martin’s spell, but cursed under his breath as Ratchis was slowly being dragged back and forth as he tried to pry the thing off. Ratchis felt a wave chill deep within, as if he suffered from a fever. Beorth ran to join the melee, failing to notice that Kazrack as well was growing pale. (177)
Helrahd was too impatient to wait for Martin to decide whose arrow to light and let his go. This one bit into the snow, short of its target. The dwarf spit in anger.
Finally, Ratchis ripped himself free of the tentacle and dropped to the snow, gasping.
Martin lit Jeremy’s arrow, but it missed as well.
Beorth swung at the thing, but it knocked the blow out of alignment with the tentacle that had just let go of Ratchis, and grabbed the paladin around the waist. Beorth could feel the sharp scales of the tentacle rip into his side. He could see it moving and pulsing, changing from scales, to short thick sharp hairs and the needles, and then boney spikes and then teeth and then back again.
Martin lit another of Helrahd’s arrow, but archery seemed to be failing as a tactic. He also pulled out a torch and lit that as well.
Ratchis picked up his sword and jogged over, burying it in the empty eye socket. Ichor burst out in a shower covering him from head to toe. More tendrils burst out, and then melted away again, as it tried to rebuild itself.
Jeremy cursed and dropped his bow. He charged at the thing, rolling away from its beak attack and thrusting the Right Blade of Arofel into its mouth. He jabbed it around in there and then yanked it out, as the beak came snapping shut again.
“Ah Ha!” Jeremy cried, with smile, wiping ichor from his eye. “That was for Jana!”
Beorth was being held at bay by the tentacle about his waist. He struggled to free himself, but his strength was not up to the task, as he had no leverage. Instead, he felt his internal organs shudder, as the tentacle grew thicker and thicker and squeezed tighter and tighter.
Martin cast mage hand again, and moved toward the fight. The torch bobbed up and down beside him.
“Slow down, Pudgy!” Helrahd growled and he jogged forward, lighting his arrow on the torch as he let it go. It sailed in a perfect arch, landing deep behind the ridge of the thing’s remaining eye. The ichor on the surface caught fire, and thing began to crackle and peel.
Ratchis cleaved the thing’s immense beak with his sword, as it tried to retreat once again, but by now it was on the opposite side of the hill, and the force of the blow made it begin to slide down the snowy embankment.
Beorth sensed the thing panic and loosen its grip a bit. He was able to pull free and drop to the snow. The tentacle peeled back to expose a spidery leg again, at it drop itself in the ground to try to halt its fall.
It continued to slide.
Kazrack began to be dragged down with it, but the thing let go of him in a last attempt to grab something stable enough to hold it. The thing tumbled down the sharp incline about thirty feet and then freefalled another forty feet into a deep snow bank.
Jeremy hustled to the edge and looked down.
Beorth knelt beside Kazrack’s bleeding form. “Anubis, I call upon you to halt my friend’s journey towards death.” The paladin laid his hands upon the dwarf to heal him.
“Is he alright?’ Martin asked Beorth, coming over to the still unconscious, but now stabilized, dwarf.
Beorth nodded.
“Is it dead?” Helrahd asked, coming along side Jeremy on the hill edge.
Ratchis sheathed his sword and readied his bow. He held one of the prepared arrows at the ready.
Jeremy jogged back to get his own bow, and did the same.
In the meantime, Martin had walked over with torch, and then sent it with the mage hand down towards the hole in the snow, but it could not illuminate the bottom, as he could not get it to go down far enough. He brought it back up and lit Ratchis’ arrow.
The half-orc fired, but the arrow clipped the top of the hole in the snow and went out asit tumbled down awkwardly.
Beorth ran over, pulling the stopper off a flask of oil. He tossed it, oil trailing in a stream behind it, into the hole.
Martin lit another Ratchis’ arrows and this time it went right into the whole. There was flash and then smoke rose from inside, as clumps of snow slid down into the hole from the collapsing sides.
Helrahd and Ratchis fired a few more flaming arrows, as Beorth lobbed two more flasks of oil in there. The was hissing and popping and more smoke and falling snow.
“Is Kazrack alright?” Jeremy asked.
“Kazrack will be fine,” Beorth replied.
Ratchis made his way down the incline towards the hole, and Jeremy followed as far as he could. Only Ratchis could walk right up to the edge of the hole, because Uller’s Boots allowed him to walk atop snow, and without leaving footprints.
Ratchis looked down, and all that was left of the thing was flatten bubbling piece of soft cartilage. It was blackened, and every few seconds it would sprout tendrils as if in a coughing fit, but they would melt away and be reabsorbed into the disk of flesh.
Ratchis poured more oil on it, and it burned and burned. Until all that was left was a brittle blacked wedge. He called up for one of Kazrack’s shovels and he broke it up, and slipped the pieces into a sack and tied the end in a knot, and slipped it into his backpack.
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A few hours later they were back in the cave. Ratchis used most of his healing spells on Kazrack, who mumbled as he came into semi-consciousness. He was fed some water and then he spoke.
“Did we kill it?”
“Yes,” Ratchis replied.
“Did anyone else die?”
“No.”
The dwarf slipped back into unconsciousness.
“I will have to go back tomorrow to Belear,” Helrahd announced. “Will you come with me?”
“We will come,” Ratchis said. “The thing is killed and we can go back to our original goal of helping the gnomes.”
“At least until I get a ‘feeling’ about the Book of Black Circles,” Martin commented.
Jeremy’s head drooped.
Martin sighed and cast prestidigitation again, to clean the ichor off everyone.
Ralem, 22nd of Onk – 564 H.E.
The next day Ratchis used some orisons to repair one of the damaged tents, and then the party set out towards Ogre’s Bluff.
Kazrack marched sluggishly. And his face was scared and puffy from the raking tentacles.
As they left the paired hills, Beorth looked back, and noticed the form of an immense golden ram looking down at them as they departed.
“What a beautiful creature,” he thought. “I wonder what it is doing here?” (178)
They marched for hours, led alternately by Ratchis and Helrahd. And at last lights they could see the lamps of Aze Nuquerna to their right as they passed north of it. Finally, as real darkness settled in they could spy the twinkling of three small cooking fires and the sound of many deep dwarven voices.
End of Session #36
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Notes
(176) DM’s Note: I ruled then that Martin’s player could roll an opposed Intelligence check against the thing’s strength to keep it from being moved, but upon reflection I would now rule that Mage Hand has an effective strength of 2 (which is to say, up to 6 lbs is a light load – yes, I am being generous).
(177) DM’s Note: Both Kazrack and Ratchis suffered Constitution drain.
(178) Jana had not gotten to the part about the ram, in her re-telling of the party’s adventures to the amnesiac Beorth.
