Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
Back in the safety of Mage Point, following a great deal of bartering for new equipment and the sale of captured goods, we began a series of divining the way forwards. I began by focussing on a portion of the destroyed phylactery as I cast a spell of legends. After a few hours, my mind filled with words.
“Master of the Wormcrawl Fissure,
Beware his negative breath,
His gaze will stop you in your tracks,
Prior planning will ward off attacks.”
Janga’s request for aid from Fahrlanghan came back with the suggestion that we “Seek the aid of the tripartite spirit”, and when we enquired what was meant by that we were then told that it was “the fractured soul of he who you once sought – the lost friend of your mentor.”
Balakarde was the only name we could come up with.
We then turned to a more powerful divination spell, and once again asked questions directly of Fahrlanghan –
Is Dragotha immune to damage from heat and fire? YES
Would we require a specific weapon substance to damage him? NO
Would we require a specific type of weapon to hurt him? YES
Would we have to use sweeping bladed weapons? NO
Would we be advised to use blunted weapons? YES
Would any weapon have to be aligned to damage Dragotha? NO
Does Dragotha breathe fire? YES
Does Dragotha have the ability to breathe any other type of element? NO
Does Dragotha’s breath weaken the soul directly? NO
Does Dragotha’s “negative breath” cause pain directly to the body? YES
Does he have minions protecting him and his lair? YES
Are some of those minions undead? YES
Are some of those minions living? YES
Would it be more than a three hour walk to his lair from the edge of the canyon? YES
Would it require walking for more than a day? NO
Will Dragotha’s agents reside in the first mile of his lair? NO
Can Dragotha cast the spell “Mordenkainen’s Disjunction”? NO
Is Dragotha a more powerful spellcaster than Endo? NO
Is he infested with the worms of Kyuss? NO
Other than being made undead, was Dragotha given any other gifts by Kyuss? YES
Can he mix fire and negative energies into a single breath attack? NO
Will we locate the ‘tripartate spirit’ within the Womcrawl Fissure? YES
Does Dragotha share his personal chamber within his lair with any other creature? YES
Is the being Dragotha shares his lair with a spellcaster? UNCLEAR
Are there any lingering spells cast upon Dragotha’s lair? YES
We then finally had an appointment to speak with Manzorian, after waiting for more than a day for him to become available. Once led into his study, we stood in a row in front of his desk and he peered over his glasses at us.
“I regret,” he began, “that I will be unable to accompany you. I have a pressing engagement elsewhere as I need to remonstrate with Tiamat. However, I have only to wish you luck in your endeavours.”
Realising that the powerful archmage wasn’t going to help us rescue our whole world, we set off – a rapid teleportation spell took us to the western end of the Rift Canyon, where it descended rapidly to become the Wormcrawl Fissure itself. Gazing down over the fissure, we could see the plunging depths disappearing into clouds deep within the fissure. Glimpses through the thick clouds we could see that the far end of the fissure was perhaps as much as a mile deep.
We began to descend, taking the long slow pathway down through the clouds and into the Wormcrawl fissure. Around the edge, we could see effigies and warnings – skeletons nailed to boards, some painted red and others with leather ‘worms’ crawling through them. We moved past these warnings and headed ever downwards into the depths.
.oOo.
At the bottom, the ground was damp and fog wreathed the soil amidst the stench of decay. The rough ground of the fissure stretched out before us, and abruptly something assaulted my mind.
A vision of the deep gorge pocked with rifts and tears deep into the floor, was followed abruptly by the image of a towering worm, whose head was a tangle of eyes and writhing filaments, which lunged out to consume me – I could see the beasts teeth closing even as it faded from my mind. Finally, I could see the vision of a stately looking man in an explorer’s outfit, with a high beard and moustache picking his way through a cavern. There was a sudden look of horror on his face as his skin dissolved and the flesh beneath began to rot away – worms burst from his chest and consumed him utterly, even as he attempted to cast a spell.
Amidst the cascading images of tentacles, I could hear the distant sound of screaming, and as I returned to my senses I began to realise that the voice was my own. As I blinked the images from my eyes, Janga dashed across to where I was curled into a ball on the floor, and with a murmured prayer he cured my afflictions. I was left with only a lingering feeling of connection – there was something ahead of me which I suddenly had a desire to seek out.
.oOo.
I guided the others forwards across the floor of the chasm, twisting and writhing in one direction or another into a maze of smaller chasms and rifts, and at the very narrowest part of the rift where we reached a narrow point ended with a flat wall.
Approaching the wall, my vision blurred through the magic of my enchanted spectacles. Suspecting an illusion, I stepped up the wall and pushed my hand through the curface as though it was a gauzy curtain – and immediately there was an unearthly screaming sound from beyond. Sticking his head through the illusionary wall, I saw Flynne blink once, and then a roaring curtain of fire blasted down over what I could see were a number of screaming mushrooms. In a heartbeat they were immolated and reduced to a series of burned crisps on the cavern floor.
We pushed through the illusionary wall, and into the wide cavern beyond, where we could see a broad cave digging into the cliff wall and curving out of sight to the left, as well as a second passageway to the right. Janga was still outside prodding ineffectually at the illusionary wall when Flynne’s fist simply pushed out of it, grabbed the front of his armour and dragged him through just in time to hear scuttling noises from the right hand cave.
From 50 feet away, we saw a group of 6 thirty five foot long centipedes, each writhing and curving around the other, their long pale sinuous bodies dripping worms and other vile icors to the ground, and where these drips landed then the earth erupted into decay and vile nodules of fungus burst from the ground.
The creatures hurtled, scuttling, towards us and teeth snapped shut, thwarted by Flynne’s fast reactions and Fez’s massively thick armour. I then pulled out a staff from its place slung over my shoulder, and triggered its magic. The last of the magics in the staff erupted in dramatic fashion, washing over the closest creatures and blasting them all with a ball of fire which would have seriously wounded me with its heat but which seemed to leave the beasts scorched but still healthy.
As I discarded the exhausted staff, Janga followed up with magic of his own, reading a scroll which silently burst the far end of the cavern with light which washed over the beasts even as Flynne started firing into the closest of the centipedes. With each shot he pulled an arrow from a different part of his quiver until he struck upon one which sank deeply into the flanks of the centipede. Smiling, he drew a second silver arrow and fired it, and then a third, which sank into the beast’s skull and left it quivering slightly on the ruined earth.
Fez quaffed a potion, and swelled to massive proportions, flying into the centre of the room. As he went, he pulled out a new blade – it was one I had been admiring before we had set out. The massively enchanted adamantine short-blade was layered with enchantments; on one side was a carving of dawn, whilst on the back was a sunset; each nearly identical, with elven script across the guard reading “Between dawn and dusk, ruin lies along my blade”. As he swung the weapon through the air, the razor edge of his sunblade glowed with the burning light for which it was named.
As the surrounding centipedes rotting jaws clattered off Fez, I started to encourage the others with a chant, and enthused, Flynne managed to slaughter a second with his heavily enchanted bow. This denied Fez his target, and so he flew a short distance across the cavern to stand between two others. As he got there, one of them reached up to snap at him, and caught him through the thick armour of his leg. Taken completely by surprise by this, he swing his sword and missed.
As Janga fired a shot from his sling from a few yards to my right, he and I were taken completely by surprise by two of the centipedes bursting from the floor in front of us. They twisted as they rose, and clattering jaws snapped down towards Flynne and Janga, but whilst Flynne was fortunate enough to escape, Janga was bitten deeply across his weapon arm.
Meanwhile, Fez was assaulted by 4 bites from the 2 centipedes around him; one of them bit deeply into him – he completely ignored the venom dripping from their chittering jaws. Likewise, Flynne ignored the lashing teeth which tried to clamp onto him as he fired another salvo of silvered arrows into the centipede attacking him. Spitted with 4 or 5 arrows, the beast collapsed.
Whilst I was casting a spell of haste, a 20 foot long scorpion-like beast burst from beneath rocks behind us. Lashing three crystal-tipped tails in the air behind its long low plated body, I could feel waves of mental energies assaulting me, and watched as Janga also shook the force off.
However, at the same time, a terrible claw scythed into my back; and I was snatched off the floor by the beast’s powerful forelimb. As it began to squeeze me tighter and tighter, I could dimly see Fez sweeping his enchanted sword through one of the centipedes – in a single blow he swept its head off, and then with a second swing he slaughtered another.
As Janga swept out of the cavern and flew into the air outside, I managed to croak out the words of a spell and disappear away to hang in the air next to the cleric and high above the terrifying scorpion. Flynne also flew away from the beast, further into the cave, and was pursued inwards by the massive scorpion-beast. Janga in turn flew back into the cavern, chanting all the while.
Floating downwards to view what was going on, I could see the scorpion blast out some strange effect around it, and this swept over Fez. The magics sank into him, and he was unable to shake them off. Succumbing to the beast’s powers, I paused to inspect him, but could see no appreciable effect on him whatsoever. He hacked downwards at it, cracking a couple of its thick armoured plates with his sunblade.
I produced a second, brand new enchanted staff and summoned up one of its powers, vaporising the scorpion instantly with a blazing ray of sunlight. This left only a single centipede in the chamber.
However, the fight was not yet over, as from my position near the entrance I saw a stream of vile spew rush in a torrent down the curving corridor to spatter across my comrades – with a brief flicker, a truly massive ulurghaster could be seen down the corridor – much like the creature which had burst forth into the Free City arena, but this one was far bigger, and even as it vomited forth bile over my comrades and lashed around with tendrils which were easily 40 feet in length, it faded once again from sight.
Flynne’s arrow flew out and was smashed out of the air by an unseen tentacle, and so he spun and slammed several other arrows into the last centipede, destroying it.
Janga, reading from a scroll, cured the injuries of everyone around him, and then he flew back through the air towards me at the entrance. Fez reacted in his usual violent manner by flying through the air straight towards the creature. Its invisibility dropped for the instant it took for him to be snatched out of the air by the massive toothy maw, and then he hung in the air stabbing down at the unseen foe.
Casting a spell, I managed to make the unseen beast visible – outlined in golden shimmers we could see the thousands of lashing tendrils each outlined in shining glitter as they tore through the air around the beast, raising welts and wounds on those close enough to the undead terror.
Casting a spell on him, Janga told Flynne that he would now be safe from being swallowed (he was looking grimly nervous at the realisation that one of these had killed him in the past). The ulurghasta, however, focussed and suddenly the cavern was filled with identical bodies – 9 of the massive glittering beasts writhed around one another, and all 9 of them seemed to gulp. Shouting in alarm, Fez was swallowed down one of the massive gullets.
As we were worrying about what to do next, the 9 ulurghastas all suddenly went rigid. The blistering light of the sunblade suddenly protruded from its chest and then disappeared once again. Amidst a sudden explosion of gore and rotting flesh, the vast beast simply exploded, decaying matter often vanishing from the air as the beast’s spells failed.
Standing amidst the wet mess, Fez stood – his pointed teeth grinning broadly as he sheathed his sunblade and cracked his knuckles in grim satisfaction.
.oOo.
We crept down another long corridor, circumnavigating a number of viciously powerful magical traps as we approached the end of the corridor, drawn inexorably onwards by the strange attraction I was still experiencing. At the end of the corridor was a small chamber which contained 7 chests. Checking them carefully, we opened them and marvelled at the riches contained within. Gems, coins and magical items all dwarfed by the mystical power contained within a small pouch in the second of the seven chests.
Picking up the pouch, the ‘tug’ on my mind ended abruptly, and my mind was flooded with unbidden knowledge, as though a series of expert scholars were whispering knowledge directly into my mind. The flood of new knowledge brought with it a burst of consciousness and spiritual awareness, together with the certain knowledge that two other items were nearby within the chasm – keyed to slaying and artistry.
With a sinking feeling, I took the pouch and passed it to Janga, feeling the elation of knowledge leave me abruptly as he took up the pouch and his face burst into a broad smile as he was taken suddenly closer to his god in terms of knowledge and spiritual power.
“Master of the Wormcrawl Fissure,
Beware his negative breath,
His gaze will stop you in your tracks,
Prior planning will ward off attacks.”
Janga’s request for aid from Fahrlanghan came back with the suggestion that we “Seek the aid of the tripartite spirit”, and when we enquired what was meant by that we were then told that it was “the fractured soul of he who you once sought – the lost friend of your mentor.”
Balakarde was the only name we could come up with.
We then turned to a more powerful divination spell, and once again asked questions directly of Fahrlanghan –
Is Dragotha immune to damage from heat and fire? YES
Would we require a specific weapon substance to damage him? NO
Would we require a specific type of weapon to hurt him? YES
Would we have to use sweeping bladed weapons? NO
Would we be advised to use blunted weapons? YES
Would any weapon have to be aligned to damage Dragotha? NO
Does Dragotha breathe fire? YES
Does Dragotha have the ability to breathe any other type of element? NO
Does Dragotha’s breath weaken the soul directly? NO
Does Dragotha’s “negative breath” cause pain directly to the body? YES
Does he have minions protecting him and his lair? YES
Are some of those minions undead? YES
Are some of those minions living? YES
Would it be more than a three hour walk to his lair from the edge of the canyon? YES
Would it require walking for more than a day? NO
Will Dragotha’s agents reside in the first mile of his lair? NO
Can Dragotha cast the spell “Mordenkainen’s Disjunction”? NO
Is Dragotha a more powerful spellcaster than Endo? NO
Is he infested with the worms of Kyuss? NO
Other than being made undead, was Dragotha given any other gifts by Kyuss? YES
Can he mix fire and negative energies into a single breath attack? NO
Will we locate the ‘tripartate spirit’ within the Womcrawl Fissure? YES
Does Dragotha share his personal chamber within his lair with any other creature? YES
Is the being Dragotha shares his lair with a spellcaster? UNCLEAR
Are there any lingering spells cast upon Dragotha’s lair? YES
We then finally had an appointment to speak with Manzorian, after waiting for more than a day for him to become available. Once led into his study, we stood in a row in front of his desk and he peered over his glasses at us.
“I regret,” he began, “that I will be unable to accompany you. I have a pressing engagement elsewhere as I need to remonstrate with Tiamat. However, I have only to wish you luck in your endeavours.”
Realising that the powerful archmage wasn’t going to help us rescue our whole world, we set off – a rapid teleportation spell took us to the western end of the Rift Canyon, where it descended rapidly to become the Wormcrawl Fissure itself. Gazing down over the fissure, we could see the plunging depths disappearing into clouds deep within the fissure. Glimpses through the thick clouds we could see that the far end of the fissure was perhaps as much as a mile deep.
We began to descend, taking the long slow pathway down through the clouds and into the Wormcrawl fissure. Around the edge, we could see effigies and warnings – skeletons nailed to boards, some painted red and others with leather ‘worms’ crawling through them. We moved past these warnings and headed ever downwards into the depths.
.oOo.
At the bottom, the ground was damp and fog wreathed the soil amidst the stench of decay. The rough ground of the fissure stretched out before us, and abruptly something assaulted my mind.
A vision of the deep gorge pocked with rifts and tears deep into the floor, was followed abruptly by the image of a towering worm, whose head was a tangle of eyes and writhing filaments, which lunged out to consume me – I could see the beasts teeth closing even as it faded from my mind. Finally, I could see the vision of a stately looking man in an explorer’s outfit, with a high beard and moustache picking his way through a cavern. There was a sudden look of horror on his face as his skin dissolved and the flesh beneath began to rot away – worms burst from his chest and consumed him utterly, even as he attempted to cast a spell.
Amidst the cascading images of tentacles, I could hear the distant sound of screaming, and as I returned to my senses I began to realise that the voice was my own. As I blinked the images from my eyes, Janga dashed across to where I was curled into a ball on the floor, and with a murmured prayer he cured my afflictions. I was left with only a lingering feeling of connection – there was something ahead of me which I suddenly had a desire to seek out.
.oOo.
I guided the others forwards across the floor of the chasm, twisting and writhing in one direction or another into a maze of smaller chasms and rifts, and at the very narrowest part of the rift where we reached a narrow point ended with a flat wall.
Approaching the wall, my vision blurred through the magic of my enchanted spectacles. Suspecting an illusion, I stepped up the wall and pushed my hand through the curface as though it was a gauzy curtain – and immediately there was an unearthly screaming sound from beyond. Sticking his head through the illusionary wall, I saw Flynne blink once, and then a roaring curtain of fire blasted down over what I could see were a number of screaming mushrooms. In a heartbeat they were immolated and reduced to a series of burned crisps on the cavern floor.
We pushed through the illusionary wall, and into the wide cavern beyond, where we could see a broad cave digging into the cliff wall and curving out of sight to the left, as well as a second passageway to the right. Janga was still outside prodding ineffectually at the illusionary wall when Flynne’s fist simply pushed out of it, grabbed the front of his armour and dragged him through just in time to hear scuttling noises from the right hand cave.
From 50 feet away, we saw a group of 6 thirty five foot long centipedes, each writhing and curving around the other, their long pale sinuous bodies dripping worms and other vile icors to the ground, and where these drips landed then the earth erupted into decay and vile nodules of fungus burst from the ground.
The creatures hurtled, scuttling, towards us and teeth snapped shut, thwarted by Flynne’s fast reactions and Fez’s massively thick armour. I then pulled out a staff from its place slung over my shoulder, and triggered its magic. The last of the magics in the staff erupted in dramatic fashion, washing over the closest creatures and blasting them all with a ball of fire which would have seriously wounded me with its heat but which seemed to leave the beasts scorched but still healthy.
As I discarded the exhausted staff, Janga followed up with magic of his own, reading a scroll which silently burst the far end of the cavern with light which washed over the beasts even as Flynne started firing into the closest of the centipedes. With each shot he pulled an arrow from a different part of his quiver until he struck upon one which sank deeply into the flanks of the centipede. Smiling, he drew a second silver arrow and fired it, and then a third, which sank into the beast’s skull and left it quivering slightly on the ruined earth.
Fez quaffed a potion, and swelled to massive proportions, flying into the centre of the room. As he went, he pulled out a new blade – it was one I had been admiring before we had set out. The massively enchanted adamantine short-blade was layered with enchantments; on one side was a carving of dawn, whilst on the back was a sunset; each nearly identical, with elven script across the guard reading “Between dawn and dusk, ruin lies along my blade”. As he swung the weapon through the air, the razor edge of his sunblade glowed with the burning light for which it was named.
As the surrounding centipedes rotting jaws clattered off Fez, I started to encourage the others with a chant, and enthused, Flynne managed to slaughter a second with his heavily enchanted bow. This denied Fez his target, and so he flew a short distance across the cavern to stand between two others. As he got there, one of them reached up to snap at him, and caught him through the thick armour of his leg. Taken completely by surprise by this, he swing his sword and missed.
As Janga fired a shot from his sling from a few yards to my right, he and I were taken completely by surprise by two of the centipedes bursting from the floor in front of us. They twisted as they rose, and clattering jaws snapped down towards Flynne and Janga, but whilst Flynne was fortunate enough to escape, Janga was bitten deeply across his weapon arm.
Meanwhile, Fez was assaulted by 4 bites from the 2 centipedes around him; one of them bit deeply into him – he completely ignored the venom dripping from their chittering jaws. Likewise, Flynne ignored the lashing teeth which tried to clamp onto him as he fired another salvo of silvered arrows into the centipede attacking him. Spitted with 4 or 5 arrows, the beast collapsed.
Whilst I was casting a spell of haste, a 20 foot long scorpion-like beast burst from beneath rocks behind us. Lashing three crystal-tipped tails in the air behind its long low plated body, I could feel waves of mental energies assaulting me, and watched as Janga also shook the force off.
However, at the same time, a terrible claw scythed into my back; and I was snatched off the floor by the beast’s powerful forelimb. As it began to squeeze me tighter and tighter, I could dimly see Fez sweeping his enchanted sword through one of the centipedes – in a single blow he swept its head off, and then with a second swing he slaughtered another.
As Janga swept out of the cavern and flew into the air outside, I managed to croak out the words of a spell and disappear away to hang in the air next to the cleric and high above the terrifying scorpion. Flynne also flew away from the beast, further into the cave, and was pursued inwards by the massive scorpion-beast. Janga in turn flew back into the cavern, chanting all the while.
Floating downwards to view what was going on, I could see the scorpion blast out some strange effect around it, and this swept over Fez. The magics sank into him, and he was unable to shake them off. Succumbing to the beast’s powers, I paused to inspect him, but could see no appreciable effect on him whatsoever. He hacked downwards at it, cracking a couple of its thick armoured plates with his sunblade.
I produced a second, brand new enchanted staff and summoned up one of its powers, vaporising the scorpion instantly with a blazing ray of sunlight. This left only a single centipede in the chamber.
However, the fight was not yet over, as from my position near the entrance I saw a stream of vile spew rush in a torrent down the curving corridor to spatter across my comrades – with a brief flicker, a truly massive ulurghaster could be seen down the corridor – much like the creature which had burst forth into the Free City arena, but this one was far bigger, and even as it vomited forth bile over my comrades and lashed around with tendrils which were easily 40 feet in length, it faded once again from sight.
Flynne’s arrow flew out and was smashed out of the air by an unseen tentacle, and so he spun and slammed several other arrows into the last centipede, destroying it.
Janga, reading from a scroll, cured the injuries of everyone around him, and then he flew back through the air towards me at the entrance. Fez reacted in his usual violent manner by flying through the air straight towards the creature. Its invisibility dropped for the instant it took for him to be snatched out of the air by the massive toothy maw, and then he hung in the air stabbing down at the unseen foe.
Casting a spell, I managed to make the unseen beast visible – outlined in golden shimmers we could see the thousands of lashing tendrils each outlined in shining glitter as they tore through the air around the beast, raising welts and wounds on those close enough to the undead terror.
Casting a spell on him, Janga told Flynne that he would now be safe from being swallowed (he was looking grimly nervous at the realisation that one of these had killed him in the past). The ulurghasta, however, focussed and suddenly the cavern was filled with identical bodies – 9 of the massive glittering beasts writhed around one another, and all 9 of them seemed to gulp. Shouting in alarm, Fez was swallowed down one of the massive gullets.
As we were worrying about what to do next, the 9 ulurghastas all suddenly went rigid. The blistering light of the sunblade suddenly protruded from its chest and then disappeared once again. Amidst a sudden explosion of gore and rotting flesh, the vast beast simply exploded, decaying matter often vanishing from the air as the beast’s spells failed.
Standing amidst the wet mess, Fez stood – his pointed teeth grinning broadly as he sheathed his sunblade and cracked his knuckles in grim satisfaction.
.oOo.
We crept down another long corridor, circumnavigating a number of viciously powerful magical traps as we approached the end of the corridor, drawn inexorably onwards by the strange attraction I was still experiencing. At the end of the corridor was a small chamber which contained 7 chests. Checking them carefully, we opened them and marvelled at the riches contained within. Gems, coins and magical items all dwarfed by the mystical power contained within a small pouch in the second of the seven chests.
Picking up the pouch, the ‘tug’ on my mind ended abruptly, and my mind was flooded with unbidden knowledge, as though a series of expert scholars were whispering knowledge directly into my mind. The flood of new knowledge brought with it a burst of consciousness and spiritual awareness, together with the certain knowledge that two other items were nearby within the chasm – keyed to slaying and artistry.
With a sinking feeling, I took the pouch and passed it to Janga, feeling the elation of knowledge leave me abruptly as he took up the pouch and his face burst into a broad smile as he was taken suddenly closer to his god in terms of knowledge and spiritual power.
