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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 3967888" data-attributes="member: 198">Half an hour later…The Angels look cautiously out of the mouth of a tunnel, gazing at the strange landscape which stretches before them, lit by a dim violet light. There are more tunnel openings in the cave wall beside theirs, emerging onto a ledge from which stone ramps lead down thirty feet to the bottom of an immense cavern.On the cavern floor sits a strange town*, beginning at the foot of the curving ramps. Gigantic polyps and multicolored fungi up to twenty feet tall interweave with twisted stone structures of various kinds, growing over and covering some of them. Some of the smaller structures are presumably homes, with dolgrims emerging from or entering them. But others are simply edifices with no clear function, such as twisted towers which support nothing and have no obvious entrances. Undulating walls form roads and avenues, some of which lead neatly through the town and others of which seem to have no sense to them. Bizarre statues dot the landscape, mostly of gnarled, tentacled things. A sequence of low red domes towards the far side of the settlement form the outlines of what looks like a gigantic, many-eyed face, and from amongst them three columns of stone reach up to the ceiling like gigantic stalagmites. Each of the pillars is wreathed in unearthly flame, which bathes the central part of the cavern in a nauseating violet light and makes the darkness around its edges deeper. Just beyond the pillars, about four hundred feet from where the Angels stand and at the limits of their vision, is an underground stream, with twisting stone bridges reaching across the thirty foot wide span of water. Channels from it lead into the city and off into the darkness on the far side. The air here has a thick and noxious quality to it, with an underlying taint of rot.“Just beautiful,” says Six dryly, before looking at Nameless. “You okay?”The alienist removes his tentacle from the back of his head, where a dull pain has sprung up. “Just my ‘wound’ acting up for a moment. And I can feel the manifest zone. It’s out on that side of the cavern.” He points off into the distance. “That’s where the ziggurat is,” says Korm.“Okay. I’ll just dimension door us over. Luna, you’ll have to change back.”The bear changes back into Luna’s normal form, but she shakes her head. “Nope. I want to see a little more of this place.” Producing a potion, she says, “I’ve been wanting to use this for a while. I’ll go gaseous form and float over. You guys go ahead.” Gareth frowns. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”Luna promptly turns back into a bear and sticks her giant tongue out at him. “I didn’t ask you! Don’t be such a party-pooper. Nobody’ll notice me and I won’t attack anyone. Promise!” The bear swigs the potion and quickly dissolves into mist.Nameless sighs. “Fine! It’ll take you a little while, since you’re slower in that form. Fly up to the ceiling and move along it so there’s little chance of you being spotted. I’ll pop us across in three or four minutes and you can join us.”The mist flows out of the cave and heads for the cavern ceiling. Korm watches it go and then says, with cheerful pessimism, “You know this is going to go bad, right?”“Yes,” says Nameless, “But, nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to try.”While the others wait, the shifter in giant bear form in gaseous form floats up to the cavern roof and then across over the top of the city. Luna looks down to see more of what she already had, but now her comparatively better vantage lets her notice more about the fungus and the structures. The fungal growths are more widespread than she had originally thought, actually carpeting large swathes of the town and spreading a good twenty feet up the three pillars. It also seems to have combined with the structures in certain places to make them almost seem alive, and in a manner that is more animal than vegetative. In one place, instead of a doorway, a giant forked tongue extends from a building, slowly licking the green growths on its surface. Further along, a two-story tall lung clings to the side of another building, gasping irregularly with a heaving that shakes the entire structure. The walls of another gruesome edifice are alive with four-foot long cilia that wave gently in the air. This is icky! think Luna, with an appreciative shudder of her misty form.A couple of minutes after Luna has departed, Nameless says, “I’ll pop us across now. Korm, how far away was the ziggurat?”“About six hundred feet.”“Okay. I’ll make it five hundred feet then, to be on the safe side. Is the cavern floor approximately at the same height all through? And are there any obstructions?”Korm shakes his head. “Yes. And nope. Put us five feet above the ground at five hundred and we should be fine.”  Once the others are ready, Nameless does so. And that’s when things go very, very awry.Nameless feels a strange sense of dislocation, much stronger than the mild disorientation that accompanies a dimension door, and everything goes dark around him. And then there is the tearing pain and sense of being hurled sideways which he recognizes as the result of appearing inside a solid object and being shunted to the nearest open space. The alienist stumbles and almost falls as he appears on the cavern floor, emerging from one of the walls. He is looking back at the dolgrim town, still visible in the light of the towers, but the illumination does not extend to his position, so he can only see out to sixty feet in the immediate area. Where are the others? A split second later, Korm emerges from the floor of the cavern forty feet away, skin torn and ripped in multiple places. The Gatekeeper ignores the blood running down his chest and arms and growls, “What the hell happened?” Nameless shakes his head. “Where are Gareth and Six?” Half the question is answered by a startled yell above the two and the appearance of a plummeting Gareth, who slams into the ground between them with bone-shattering force. The paladin rolls over, tries to sit up, falls back and hurriedly lays healing hands on himself. Korm reaches down to lift him to his feet and then begins to heal his own wounds. “Nameless?”“The manifest zone’s been bleeding over into the area around it, I’m guessing,” says Nameless, “And apparently affecting astral travel too. We each got shifted in a different direction when I moved us. A little deeper and we could have been killed.”Gareth wipes blood off his face and growls, “You think?”Nameless doesn’t even look at him, continuing to look around the area, as he snaps, “Shut up, Gareth. You’re alive. Six, I’m not sure about yet.”As he speaks, there are three sudden flashes of violet light, one from each of the pillars. And a giant roar as Luna appears in her bear form against the roof, some fifty feet behind them, and drops like a stone. “Sh*t!” say Nameless, Korm and Gareth simultaneously.Six has precisely the same thought, being in the perfect position to see Luna drop, having been shunted to a spot some twenty feet below the dolgrim town, about eighty feet from the pillars. Luckily, nobody sees him as he pops out of the floor, and he quickly summons the shadows from his harness. They immediately take on the color and apparent texture of the stone around him, and he begins to make his way stealthily towards the stream. Above him, Luna is floating towards the pillars when they suddenly flare with light, and she feels her gaseous form fade away. There’s no time for her to react before she drops, actually smashing a small stone dome to smithereens. Luna rises, bruised and growling, from the rubble, to see what seemed like part of a stone wall near her resolve itself into Six. “What happened?” he asks. She shrugs. “Damn pillars dispelled me, I think. Why are you here?”“No idea. Let’s get on the other side first.” Six points at the scores of shouting dolgrims which are heading in their direction, with six or seven dolgaunts among them. “We’ve been noticed.” Hard to miss a giant falling bear, of course.“I guess so,” says Luna, looking in the opposite direction. “Look!”Six turns to see the giant mass of fungus in the area moving. Ripples run through it as the huge carpet of mold flows together, receding off buildings and away from the towers, beginning to roll itself into a giant mass. “That’s not good, whatever it is. Move!” His color changes again and he begins to move towards the stream again. Luna nods, activates her magical belt and begins to fly in the same direction.Looking behind her, Luna sees that the mass of mold has formed into a rough ovoid some fifteen feet across, which begins to roll slowly after her, growing as it comes. What the f*ck? Apparently the dolgrims are not much happier to see it, slackening their speed at its appearance, but the dolgaunts urge them on and they begin to move forward slowly. Their advance ends in screams as a cloud of ugly green vapor suddenly appears, enveloping the latter end of the giant fungal ball and extending over the leading dolgrims.“Nameless!” Luna turns to see the flying form of the alienist, the source of the cloudkill. Korm flies behind him, borne on large leathery wings like a cloaker’s, as does Gareth, with wide angelic wings extending from his magical tunic. “Get a move on!” shouts Nameless, pointing at the fungal mass, which is building up speed as it rolls over the obstructions in its path. Luna waves a paw dismissively as she flies forward. “Relax – I’m flying!” Then, as she flies between two of the pillars, a comically startled look crosses her ursine face and she slaps the paw against her muzzle. Beneath her, Six stumbles and then catches his balance. As they reached the pillars, a wave of nausea enveloped the two. The warforged continues, but moving more slowly and carefully, trying to fight off a desire to void the contents of his stomach. And I don’t even have a stomach!Trying to resist a similar desire, Luna looks back. The giant fungal mass is now twenty feet in width, dwarfing even her huge bulk, and a wide slash divides it almost into two, the segments on either side flapping back and forth like giant lips, pus leaking from between them. A giant tentacle, each another twenty feet in length, now juts from each side, flailing at the air. Okay, that’s just freaky! Good thing I can still fly faster!Apparently the giant creature, whatever it is, realizes the same thing. The two tentacles stop in their flailing for a second and then reach out directly of the creature. There is nothing for them to grab onto, but they curl and flex, as if latching onto thin air. And then the creature hauls itself into the air, pulling itself along with its tentacles faster than Luna can fly.“Oh, come on!” growls Luna, “That’s not fair!” The bear spins around in mid-air and unleashes a flame strike, scorching the creature. The column of magical flame slams down on the target and promptly disappears. “Aaaarrgh!” Luna howls in frustration. “That’s REALLY not fair!”“Very well. I guess we’re fighting it,” says Nameless, flying closer behind Luna. He swiftly uses the assay resistance spell Saala had taught the Angels on their first meeting, and then hurls an empowered fireball, which leaves large blackened patches on the fungal mass. “Time to do it old school,” says Korm, raising his sword, as does Gareth. But before they can attack, the giant fungus hurls itself forward. The giant mouth slams shut around Luna’s upper half, leaving her hind-quarters hanging outside. As she kicks at the outside and rips and tears at the inside, Gatekeeper and paladin fly in, slashing wide rips in the fungal surface. Six’s chain scores the creature’s underbelly.Despite the gaping wounds, the creature’s only response is a muscular flexing of the ‘lips.’ Luna’s legs kick for a moment and then disappear into the huge maw. “Better and better!” says Nameless dryly, flying backwards and lashing the creature with more spells, some of which work and others do not. The others continue to hack at it, inflicting more wounds, but some of them are clearly regenerating. It strikes back with brutal force, and a tentacle wraps around Korm and another around Gareth. The paladin struggles vainly, helpless in the grasp, sword pinned against his side. With a command, the Endless Blade shrinks into a dagger and he saws at the tentacle, but the damage is too little to affect it. The tentacle rises towards the huge mouth, which gapes in preparation.Then, just as it prepares to cram Gareth in, the creature stops. Beneath it, Six notices another strange rippling motion in the lower section. The warforged leaps out of the way just as another gash appears, almost as large as the mouth, and a stream of glutinous acidic fluid pours out. Along with fifteen thousand pounds of wet, bleeding, seriously pissed off bear.“Nobody eats me!” roars Luna, rearing up and tearing at the fungal monster with claws and teeth.Torn and tattered, her target clearly feels the effects of the assault. It flings Gareth and Korm away and slams both tentacles down on Luna, but the enraged bear ignores them. Then it pivots in mid-air, almost rolling over, and the mouth slams shut on her. A second later, Luna disappears into it again.“This thing clearly doesn’t learn!” says Nameless, blasting it with a cone of cold from his staff. The spell takes effect, and a large part of the surface freezes solid, and then shatters as Korm, Gareth and Six renew their attacks. The creature batters at them for a few seconds, but its blows are clearly slackening in power and effectiveness. Despite its ability to regenerate and incredible size, there is a limit to what the fungal mass can absorb, and this time it has reached the limit. The giant ovoid falls apart as Luna tears herself free again, this time ripping the gargantuan mass into two halves. “I said – NOBODY eats me!” Luna shouts, before beginning to rip what remains of the creature into small shreds. When it’s clear that it is dead, she rears up on her hind legs, roaring her rage and defiance. The echoes roll reverberate around the cavern, momentarily drowning out the screams of the dolgrims dying under or fleeing from Nameless’ cloudkill. “Yes,” says the alienist. “Very impressive, Luna. Now let’s get to the ziggurat.”The Angels proceed away from the town, the others seeing that Korm was correct about the channels leading away from the stream. They form a network that flows two hundred feet towards an area of the cavern that is much larger than the earlier part, stretching to a height and width well beyond the darkvision of the adventurers. So too does the gigantic ziggurat that the streams converge at. It is made of an incredibly dark purple, almost black, material, very different from the stone in the rest of the cavern.At first glance, the clean lines and right angles of the structure make it seem very different to the buildings of the town, but closer examination reveals that its sides are festooned with detailed carvings of reptilian and simian monsters wrapped and cradled in endless coils of tentacles. The ziggurat consists of four giant steps, each 25 feet in height and 20 feet in from the lower step. A large and steep ramp rises to a huge rectangular frame on the second level. It is like a very wide doorframe, thirty feet wide and fifteen tall, but blocked by a stone door or wall. Two of the streams of water run up to and under the stone door/wall, ignoring such mundane matters as gravity. Several cracks mar the structure’s masonry, revealing sections of what look like pale green, diseased flesh within. Putrid swathes of mold of a similar shade grow on two of the ziggurat’s sides. In places, great slicks of tacky, dried blood stain the ramp. “Looks like a fun place, doesn’t it?” says Korm, heading for the doorway. “Let’s knock.”. . .And somewhere far away in the depths of Khyber, a pair of eyes open.Large lavender orbs, they are set in a face of unearthly beauty, but the effect is marred by what lies around it. The face protrudes from a large glutinous mass of mingled flesh and jelly, glistening darkly with slime. The shapeless form rests in the embrace of a curved stone receptacle that could be a seat or a throne.A small frown mars the perfect brow, and then it clears. Thin, perfect lips spread slowly, and accompanying ripples run through the gelatinous body. Kyrzin, lord of fungus, master of ooze, smiles.The sacrifices have arrived!* I took some of the town’s and ziggurat’s description from that of Golismorga in JollyDoc’s Savage Tide SH.</blockquote>

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