ADVENTURE 52: THE HOUSE OF HENRIETTA HIGGENBOTHAM
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Game Session Date: 25 August 2018
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The group opted to camp overnight by the ruins of the amphitheater - it was already past twilight and likely dangerous to travel after nightfall. But the night passed without incident, and in the morning the group broke camp and started their day-and-a-half trek back to Kordovia.
Laerornith was in miserable spirits; not only had her hopes of being welcomed into the bardic Conservatory of the Ineffable Chord been dashed but she was well aware of the danger she had brought to her family and friends. She no longer felt in the mood to sing or play her lute, so it was a much quieter return than the trip to the false "tryout" had been.
Malrin wasn't in much better spirits. She had been thrilled at the opportunity to join the group and work with her two brothers, but if this was the kind of life an adventurer led she wasn't sure it was something she wished to make a part of her day-to-day existence. The others had already brushed off the previous day's fight with a pair of demons from the deepest, darkest corner of the Abyss, it apparently being just a normal part of the routine for them. But the druid wasn't sure she could bring herself to forget the terror she'd felt at their presence any time soon. She sat in the Vistani wagon, deep in thought beside her little sister, while their brother Aithanar drove the wagon back towards home. Hagan and Gilbert shared the wagon's interior with the two sisters, occasionally trying to engage them in conversation, but they quickly tired of the effort. Outside, Binkadink led the wagon train mounted on Obvious, while Finoula rode her pony Daisy beside the wagon, her timber wolf Wrath trotting alongside; Darrien sat on the wagon's roof, keeping a vigilant watch for danger.
But all in all, it was a quiet ride home - until the forest was split by the sound of a woman's scream from just around a bend in the road.
Darrien immediately slid from his perch atop the roofed wagon, drawing his Arachnibow as he ran ahead and around the corner. Seeing his master back on solid ground, Grumps Junior trotted up beside the green-haired ranger. Together, they were the first to see the reason for the scream: a couple dozen feet ahead, a small group of horse-sized beetles were attacking an elderly human woman. As the ranger first got sight of the attack, the woman was pulled to the ground, her frail body gripped in the strong, oversized mandibles of one of the black-shelled insects.
The scream had been quite audible even inside the Vistani wagon; Hagan, the nearest to the door, opened it and jumped out the back, running to the sounds of battle. Wezhley tensed up on the half-orc's shoulder, fearful of what they might find.
On the other side of the wagon, Finoula spurred Daisy to sprint forward and Wrath kept pace. Seeing the attack, the elven ranger cast an entangle spell that caused the grasses and plants growing in places along the dirt road to reach up and grasp at three of the beetles' bodies. However, the nimble beetles avoided the entwining tendrils of plant matter and turned to face these new possible food sources.
Binkadink likewise spurred Obvious forward at best speed and the gnome struck at the nearest beetle with his magic glaive as he passed by. The blade just about cut the beetle in half; with a practiced motion, the littler fighter spun his glaive in an arc and sliced through another beetle on the other side of his mount, then reversed direction with his blade again and skewered one of the beetles just ahead in the area of Finoula's entangle spell. In a blur of motion, Binkadink had slain three of the beetles in twice as many seconds. The other two beetles in the entangle field, not having learned anything from this display of martial proficiency, skittered up to flank the jackalope and his armored rider. Binkadink stabbed at the one facing in his direction, killing it as well.
At that point, there were only two giant beetles still alive. One had the woman in its mandibles, but released her once it became apparent he couldn't chew her up as expected. The woman crawled away in the dirt of the street and Finoula's keen elven vision noticed she held a wand in each hand.
"What going on?" demanded Gilbert as he and Mudpie exited the Vistani wagon after Aithanar brought it around the bend and had the draft horses slow to a stop to avoid getting too close to the combat. Malrin and Laerornith looked at each other in fear - was this another demon attack? - and scrambled to the narrow window-slits on either side of Aithanar's seat at the front of the wagon to see what was going on.
Darrien shot a trio of arrows at the beetle that had had the old woman in his mandibles, but they bounced off. "I'm sorry," called out the woman in the street, still crawling to safety. "I accidentally stoneskinned that one, I'm afraid. Got my wands mixed up."
Hagan cast a chain lightning spell at the beetle beside Obvious and had it arc over to strike the one with the stoneskin protection. Neither strike slew the targets, but the smoke rising from the carapace of the primary target showed it had been badly burned by the spell.
Seeing the entangle spell was ineffective at this point, Finoula dismissed it and the plants went back to their normal size and shape. She struck the stoneskinned beetle, first with her flaming whip of thorns and then with her longsword Tahlmalaera as she got closer. Several of her attacks did the beetle actual harm, having made it past the protections of the accidental stoneskin spell.
At Binkadink's urging, Obvious stabbed down at the nearest beetle with his antlers and then hippity-hopped over to the tougher threat. The gnome's glaive flashed out at the stoneskinned beetle, dealing so much damage the magical protection was overcome and the giant insect was slain. Over on the other side of the street, the last of the six beetles decided to seek elsewhere for food and shuffled off through the undergrowth.
"Thank you all," said the elderly woman, rising to her feet. "I don't know what I'd have done without your timely arrival. I thought I had the wand of shocking grasp in my right hand and the stoneskin wand in my left, but I guess it was the other way around. In any case--thank you again." The woman's face was flushed; she'd apparently had much more excitement than she had expected.
"What are you doing out here all on your own?" asked Finoula, passing over her waterskin and allowing the woman to take a drink from it.
"Oh, thank you," replied the woman, passing the waterskin back to Finoula after a quick drink. "I live just a ways away. I was out collecting herbs and plants for my potions--oh! We haven't been introduced! Forgive me; my name is Henrietta Higgenbotham. I've lived here my whole life; I'm what the locals call a "wise-woman.' Born with the sight, and so on. Oh, forgive me! I'm babbling." She took a deep breath to calm herself. "Would you like a cup of tea? It's the least I can do. I can divine your fortunes, too, if you're interested." She walked back to where she had first been attacked and fetched an overturned wicker basket, replacing the spilled contents.
Hagan looked at the others, then replied, "It would be an honor."
"Here: I should offer this to you as well," said Henrietta, handing over her wand of stoneskin. "It's just about out of charges, I fear, but I have the ingredients to whip up another one. It saved my life today, that's for sure."
"You keep it, ma'am," said Hagan, declining the offer. "I'm sure you can use it more than we can."
"Well, aren't you the sweetest thing," replied Henrietta, putting the wand in her wicker basket. "Come along, then - the cottage is just this way."
The way to Henrietta's cottage was off the main road, along a side-branch that at times was little more than a mere hint of a path; several times there were branches dragging along both sides of the wagon as Aithanar led the draft horses after the wise-woman. And then once they got there, they saw the "cottage" was in truth a two-story wooden building, more a manor home than a mere cottage. It had seen better days, too; Henrietta looked to be a woman in her sixties and her home looked to be at least twice that age. But despite the weeds growing on either side of the steps to the front porch and the house needing a good paint job and perhaps a few repairs here and there, it looked to be of generally sturdy construction.
Aithanar parked the Vistani wagon off to the side of the manor and offered to stay with the animals while the others went inside; both of his sisters opted to stay with him. So while the rest of the group followed Henrietta into her home, Gilbert loitered behind at the wagon just long enough to ensure the Ivenhearts were all okay - but also to drink down a potion of neutralize poison and cast a detect magic spell upon himself. Sure, it was possible that little old ladies you met in the middle of the forest were perfectly trustworthy, but Gilbert Fung for one preferred only to give his trust to those who had earned it.
"The others are in the study, to your right," called Henrietta from the kitchen as Gilbert and Mudpie entered the residence. "I'll be there in a minute, once I've got the tea on." Gilbert entered a dining room, with six wooden chairs arranged around a full-length table with a dingy white tablecloth hanging to the floor. There was an open doorway to his right, and there were the rest of his group. Binkadink and Hagan sat in chairs facing each other from either side of the room; Gilbert passed between them to plop down beside Darrien on an old sofa covered in a woolen blanket. Finoula stood between Darrien and Hagan; Mudpie took position standing before his master. There was a footstool before him, but being made of living stone he had no muscles to get tired - he preferred to stand.
While the group was all together in one area, Gilbert cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell linking everyone together. <Everybody hear me okay?> asked Gilbert through the mental link.
<Loud and clear> replied Hagan. <But what's up? We usually only do this right before combat.>
<Never know. Might be 'right before combat' right now.>
Sure enough, Gilbert's inherent distrustfulness paid off this time. The four sitting heroes felt their seats jostle beneath them, then appendages rose up from the furniture and struck out at them. <Mimics!> cried Gilbert over the shared link. Finoula jumped with a start at the commotion and drew her primary weapons from her belt, surprised to see the others being attacked by furniture. And it wasn't just the chairs and sofas, either - the bookcase was shuffling over from the corner, and the footstool grew an appendage that looked to be swinging in Mudpie's direction. Not only that, but from the corner of her eye Finoula spotted the doorway to the dining room being blocked by the table and chairs, which moved as one unified figure, tipping forward to prevent any escape from the study.
Hagan jumped up from the chair trying to adhere itself to his robe and attacked with his favorite go-to attack spell: chain lightning. He chose the combined dining-room-table-and-chairs-thing as his primary target and had arcs of lightning stretch over to attack every piece of mobile furniture in the study. The spell was amazingly effective, slaying all of its designated targets but the "sofa" upon which Darrien and Gilbert were still struggling. Unfortunately, because of their contact to the mimics targeted by the chain lightning spell, Gilbert, Darrien, and Binkadink all took damage as well.
Unseen by the heroes, two more smaller mimics - in the shape of a metal stove and a pile of cordwood - started ambling over from the kitchen to the dining room. This is because all of the mimics in the house were different parts of the same creature: a hivemind of fake furniture spread throughout this part of the house. There was one final mimic in the kitchen as well, wearing the form of a metal washtub, but it walked away through the outer door to the back yard, which Henrietta Higgenbotham had left open when she had stepped outside moments before. But the "washtub" mimic - as part of the hivemind - knew that as long as one member of the mimic hive stayed alive, it would be able to grow and split into others of its type, and eventually they could repopulate the house in the manner in which they had become accustomed.
Darrien leaped up from the sofa - possibly in part due to the electric shock he'd just received from Hagan's spell - and stepped away from the offending mimic. Pulling out his Arachnibow, he sent an arrow shooting into the spot where he'd been sitting a moment ago. But that didn't have the intended effect; instead of puncturing into the mimic's pliant body, it caused a rift to split the creature in two, and all of a sudden there was a pair of half-sofas along the back of the room - one of them still holding an astonished Gilbert Fung. Darrien cursed his bad luck and switched weapons, pulling the scimitar from his belt.
But Binkadink got there first. He extended his magical glaive and sent the blade crashing into the recently-vacated half-sofa, discovering as a result that slashing weapons had the same effect as piercing ones, for the half-sofa split into two quarter-sofa pieces, each sprouting pliant appendages with which to strike out at the heroes. <Blunt weapons!> Binkadink sent over the shared link. <Use blunt weapons!>
Gilbert stood up and cast a haste spell upon all of the heroes, surprised when he was battered by a trio of mimics still wearing the forms of bits of a comfortable sofa. Mudpie stepped forward to protect his master but Gilbert waved him away, not wanting his familiar to get stuck to a mimic's adhesive form.
Finoula used two of her magic items at once: stepping on the side of the wall with her boots of spider climbing, she activated the lightning amulet she wore around her neck and transformed her elven body into a blast of lightning that coursed through the bodies of all three sofa-piece mimics. Then, at the other side, she returned to her elven form and stood in place on the far wall, looking down at her handiwork: all three mimics had been slain by her attack. She looked smugly at her compatriots, as if to say, "That's how you do it!"
Hagan stood on his tippy-toes, peering over the top of the body of the larger mimic from the dining room; as it deteriorated after death, its pliant body was losing cohesion like a deflating balloon. With another casting of the chain lightning spell he had slain the "stove" and "woodpile" mimics and started scrambling up over the corpse of the "dining-room-table-and-chairs" mimic, planning on heading to the kitchen to check on Henrietta. After all, despite Gilbert's inherent lack of trust, the half-orc wasn't sure that the mimics hadn't snuck into Henrietta's house while she was away - she could very well be in danger! Darrien scrambled over the deflating mimic and together the two half-breeds explored the now-empty kitchen. The back door was open and they popped their heads out, but there was nobody in the backyard, either. They did see a large, round, stone slab with various runes etched deeply into it, though. It lay flat in the backyard like an oversized manhole cover.
"Those runes mean anything to you?" asked Darrien.
"Nah," admitted Hagan. "Sorcery comes naturally to me, so I never bothered studying up on the various arcane runes or anything. We should probably get Gilbert to look at it, though."
Binkadink crawled into the dining room and then went down the length of the entry hall, finding an empty library at the far end. Apparently empty, he amended to himself, eyeing the various bookcases warily. It was entirely possible this entire house was filled with mimics instead of furniture - or there were rumors of enormous mimics that could take on the appearance of an entire house. It was entirely possible that the heroes were already standing inside the body of a gigantic mimic! The thought gave the gnome little comfort.
Finoula followed the gnome's path into the main hallway, followed closely behind by Gilbert and Mudpie. They looked around, aware that an attack could come from any direction.
It came from the stairwell ahead, one of two leading up to the house's upper level. From the stairwell flew a winged creature looking like an animated ice sculpture of a tiny gargoyle. Finoula instinctively snapped her flaming whip of thorns at the ice mephit, and it hissed in pain as the hated flames licked its body. But then Freezeface opened its mouth wide and sent shards of ice particles flying out at Finoula and Gilbert, causing them to flinch in surprise but dealing neither of them very much harm at all.
But then Henrietta raced down the steps behind her familiar, stepping to the side at the main level to line up the lightning bolt she shot at Finoula, Gilbert, and Mudpie in turn. The elderly woman cackled an evil laugh as the three cried out in pain and surprise. "I think instead of just tea, I'll have you over as the main course!" she laughed.
<This why I never trust people!> Gilbert griped over the mental link. The blast had taken a lot out of him; combined with the beatings he'd taken from the mimics earlier, he was hurting bad. He staggered backwards, touched Mudpie - and then, with the utterance of a magical syllable, both figures teleported away to the Vistani wagon, where Malrin could use Ingebold's staff of healing to undo the worst of the heavyset mage's wounds.
Hagan and Darrien got an update on what was going on through the Rary's telepathic bond spell, so as the half-orc sorcerer ran back into the house through the kitchen, the half-elf ranger dropped his ebony fly from a pocket and mounted it as it grew to full size beneath him. He flew it over the roof to the front of the building, bringing it to a landing on a balcony jutting out over the front door and porch directly below.
Binkadink spun around to see Henrietta Higgenbotham in combat with Finoula. He raced up, bringing his glaive swinging down at her. (It was nice that he could mentally extend and retract the length of the weapon's shaft - it made fighting inside tight quarters like a manor hallway that much easier!) But while he was surprised he was even in combat with a 60-year-old lady in the first place, he was even more surprised that his blow didn't drop her on the spot. And then he remembered she was still protected by a stoneskin spell from her "fight" with the beetles - if that had even been a legitimate fight in the first place, and not a ruse to gain sympathy from the heroes and get them to drop their guards. For all the gnome knew, Henrietta might have even summoned the giant beetles in the first place!
Flanking their common foe with Binkadink, Finoula sent both her sword and her whip slashing and lashing out at the witch. She drew blood, causing Henrietta curse in a fashion not at all in harmony with her "sweet little grandmother" appearance. "I'll have your bones for that, dearie!" Henrietta promised the ranger.
In a flash, Freezeface sent a magic missile crashing into Finoula, jolting her in surprise. And then Henrietta opened her mouth and shrieked.
The shriek was like nothing any of the heroes had heard before. Binkadink momentarily feared they were facing some sort of banshee, but then he thought he remembered them being some sort of undead, and Henrietta was very much alive. But the sonic assault caused both Finoula and Binkadink's ears to bleed at once; Hagan, Wezhley, Darrien, and his ebony fly mount were all able to hear the shriek and while they were far enough away not to suffer any ear-bleeds, all but Darrien of the four suffered from one of the shriek's side effects: a magical confusion that muddled their thoughts and messed with their perceptions.
Hagan was instantly filled with rage and started sprinting forward through the dining room, looking for someone - anyone, really - to attack. Freezeface the ice mephit happened to be the first potential victim the half-orc stumbled upon, so he was the recipient of one of Hagan's most devastating spells: a disintegrate. Freezeface cried out in alarm, but was blasted into nothingness by the furious half-orc's spell.
On Hagan's shoulder, Wezhley the weasel was also suddenly filled with rage, although his wasn't random but rather focused upon the originator of the shriek. Racing down his master's body, Wezhley scampered across the hallway and bared his teeth, clamping down upon one of Henrietta's ankles. He would have drawn blood if not for her stoneskin protection. "Nasty thing!" cried Henrietta, kicking the weasel away with her foot.
Darrien was a bit worried at the erratic way his giant fly was acting, so he dismissed it and it returned to statuette form. Pocketing it for later use, the ranger opened the door from the balcony and entered the second floor of Henrietta's manor home. There was a long hallway before him, but a door to either side. Fearful of potential mimics, Darrien opened the door to the right and sent an arrow crashing into the toilet he found in the small room. But the toilet was just a toilet, a ceramic bowl beneath a wooden seat with a hole at the top. Embarrassed at his overreaction, the ranger retrieved his arrow.
In the hallway beneath, Binkadink attacked Henrietta again with his glaive, putting his full strength into each blow. She was visibly hurt by the attacks, enough so that she no longer kept up the appearance of a kindly old human woman; instead, her features blurred and took on her true visage: an ancient crone of the shrieking hag variety. A crooked nose bent down from her wrinkled face, thin strands of gray hair falling flat against the sides of her head. Her neat and trim homespun garment also altered to its true form: a featureless sack of a dress, dark in color but aged to the point it was difficult to say exactly which color.
Finoula snarled in fury at the deception and attacked the hag with renewed vigor. Then the front door opened beside her, and there stood Gilbert and Mudpie, reinvigorated by Malrin and her borrowed staff of healing. "Nice of you to show back up!" said Finoula while she concentrated on bringing down Henrietta. Enraged by getting a whip-strike across the face, the shrieking hag cried out, "I'll eat the eyes out of your pretty face!" to Finoula as she clawed at her with fingernails that would do a troll proud. Scoring grooves across the ranger's face, she cackled in triumph and licked the blood from her nails as Finoula staggered back in pain. Gilbert caught her and pulled her back from combat, steadying her before she passed out from shock.
"You'll die for that!" promised Binkadink, attacking with renewed fury.
"If I do, I'll be avenged, an' avenged again!" countered Henrietta, spinning to claw at the little gnome. Off to the side behind her, Hagan stared at the spot on the floor containing Freezeface's ashes and started babbling nonsensically, his mind still under the effects of the confusion aspect of the hag's shriek. Wezhley spun around in circles in the hallway, his fury abated and now presenting no more danger than a possible tripping hazard.
Darrien approached the top of the stairway and sent a flurry of arrows down at Henrietta. As the hag looked up at him in surprise, Binkadink saw an opening and sent his glaive cutting deep into the crone's side, nearly cutting her in half. She dropped to the floor, dead.
"Glad that over with," commented Gilbert.
He spoke too soon. With a crashing sound outside, the stone slab in the backyard of the Higgenbotham Manor burst apart and an ebon form arose. It was humanoid in build, but stood a good 20 feet tall. It stared right at the back of the house as if it could see through the walls and stepped forward with purpose. Without even breaking its stride, it smashed through the back wall of the house, sending Darrien - who had come down the rest of the stairs to ensure the hag was really dead - sprawling forward onto the hallway floor, to land in a heap beside Henrietta's corpse.
Gilbert got a quick glimpse of the nightwalker as it bent down and entered the house and recognized it at once from his studies; the fact that his magically-enhanced eyes were telling him it blazed with an aura of undead was a mere conformation of what the portly mage already knew. <That thing a nightwalker!> he called to the others, <Whatever you do, don't look into its eyes!> Then he grabbed Finoula and rushed back outside to the front of the house. He cast a quick mage armor spell upon both him and Mudpie in preparation of the battle to come. Finoula fumbled for a healing flask at her belt and drank down its contents. She wasn't back to full strength by any means, but it would keep her in the fight - for now.
Hagan ignored the nightwalker stepping into his field of vision; instead, his gaze was drawn to the dead hag on the floor before him, and to his befuddled mind it was the most horrific sight he'd ever seen. He turned and fled back to the dining room, took a left through the kitchen, and was well on his way out the back door once again when the sudden panic attack subsided.
Binkadink saw the massive form bearing down on him and had the presence of mind to scoop up Wezhley from the floor on his way out the manor's front door. Realizing he was likely the nightwalker's primary target - as he had been the one to slay the shrieking hag, and this was undoubtedly some sort of prearranged vengeance contingent upon her death - he also drank down a healing potion from his belt. Unfortunately, it was the last of the "Winkidew specials" which had come embedded with a magic mouth spell put there by Binkadink's cousin Jinkadoodle. As a result, although it wasn't Binkadink it was certainly his voice which boomed out the following announcement: "I like taking goats from behind!"
Darrien scrambled to his feet and followed the gnome out the front door. Upon Gilbert's advice over the shared telepathic bond, he cast a freedom of movement spell upon Binkadink as soon as he was within touching distance of the gnome. <That at least protect glaive from getting stolen and crushed> Gilbert thought. <Might not help you any, though.>
<Appreciated nonetheless> said Binkadink.
Making a bee-line for the gnome, the nightwalker smashed through the front of the house, rising to its full height once he cleared the porch's roof. It pointed an accusing finger at Binkadink and a flash of necromantic energy shot out from the pointing digit, striking Binkadink in the chest. He staggered back a step, but he managed to overcome the finger of death spell that threatened to stop his heart. At his side, Gilbert cast a protection from evil spell that had the advantageous side effect of clearing up Wezhley's confused mind. "Go to wagon!" Gilbert called to the weasel, and it darted off at once, trusting that his master would be okay without him.
"I'm going to try something," declared Finoula, touching her amulet and facing the gleaming, black giant - and careful not to look at it too high. Then she willed her body into a lightning bolt that shot through the nightwalker's body. The ranger ended up in the backyard by the shattered rune-slab, having passed through both smashed walls in the process. But looking back at her handiwork, it didn't seem as if the undead thing had been affected by her electrical attack in the least. <Probably spell resistance> offered up Gilbert. <Might work if you try it again.>
Hagan watched Finoula remanifest in the backyard and babbled in surprised confusion. Then he was distracted by imaginary bubbles he thought he saw floating at the edges of his visual periphery. His attention thus drawn away, he failed to see Malrin come running up to Finoula. "Gilbert sent me," she said by way of explanation as she summoned a charge from the staff of healing to partially heal some of the ranger's wounds. "He said you guys need all the healing we can get out here."
"That's true enough," agreed Finoula.
In the front yard, Darrien reached up to his own amulet and activated it, causing the preying mantis trapped in the lump of amber to disappear and reappear many times larger in mid-air, flying toward the nightwalker's face. It perched itself on the front of the undead being, blocking its gaze. That done, Darrien ran around the side of the house to try to get into position behind the nightwalker. He had an inkling about trying to trip it with a strand of webbing from his Arachnibow....
Having failed to kill the hag's slayer with its finger of death attack, the nightwalker bent forward and sent its fists smashing into the little gnome. Binkadink could swear he heard bones cracking, but it might have just been his imagination. Still, he held his ground, realizing his best bet at staying alive was to slay this thing before it had a chance to do the same to him.
Gilbert cast an Evard's black tentacles spell centered on the nightwalker; the grasping appendages failed to imprison the undead thing but it had been worth a shot. Binkadink attacked furiously with his glaive, having extended it to its full length so he could stay well outside the area of effect of Gilbert's spell, although his still-active freedom of movement spell would have kept him from being crushed by the tentacles in any case.
Finoula activated the last daily charge of her lightning amulet and went streaking through the nightwalker again as a bolt of electricity, this time actually doing it some harm. <You were right!> she thought at Gilbert over the link.
<Usually am!> replied the mage.
The nightwalker struck out at Binkadink again with its massive fists, and this time the gnome was nearly staggered from the blows - a lesser man would already have fallen into unconsciousness by now. <I need a breather for some healing!> the gnome called out, and Gilbert responded by casting an invisible wall of force from one front wing of the manor to the other, effectively blocking off Binkadink from the nightwalker. When the nightwalker went to strike the little gnome again, its fists crashed against the invisible barrier, giving Binkadink a moment to catch his breath.
"Healer!" called Gilbert, aloud this time since Malrin wasn't part of the Rary's telepathic bond spell. The druid heard the call from the backyard, and wildshaped into an owl so she could fly above the manor house rather than waste the time to run around it - running through it was no longer an option, not with writhing black tentacles rising up from the floor! Fortunately, the druid was adept at casting her spells while in animal form, so she was able to alight on Binkadink's shoulder and heal him in that fashion.
Darrien by this time had crept around to the back of the building, but Hagan - still confused - took him for an enemy and attacked. Fortunately, there was some little bit of his messed-up mind that must have recognized the ranger as a friend at the last minute, for instead of using a more powerful spell like disintegrate he went with hold monster instead. Darrien froze up immediately, but in a few seconds the confusion had passed and Hagan no longer wanted to kill his friend. Shortly after that, Darrien found the force of will to break free from the enchantment, allowing him to move once more.
Gilbert had created his wall of force such that both sides touched the wings of the house, but the top didn't reach up to the roof above the porch. That gave him a strip of open space allowing him to cast a magic missile spell at the nightwalker - not that powerful of a spell, admittedly, but one guaranteed to hit if he could overcome the undead thing's inherent spell resistance. His casting was spot-on this time and the creature's ebon body sizzled with the impacts of each magical streak of force energy.
But although the nightwalker was indeed blocked from reaching his target by physical means, he had other methods available. He willed an unholy blight effect around Binkadink, catching Finoula in its radius as well. The ranger was able to shrug off the worst of the effects; Binkadink was not so lucky.
In a brief moment of clarity, Hagan realized the enemy was the nightwalker standing at the other end of the two holes he's punched through the dwelling - and the half-orc was standing in full view of the undead creature's back. With practiced precision, Hagan targeted a delayed blast fireball at the creature's lower back, setting no delay on the time before impact - he wanted the higher-level spell's higher damage output, not a delay in the explosion. He likewise was able to overcome the nightwalker's innate spell resistance and reveled in the way it staggered forward from the blast, smoke streaming from its back.
<I'm ready!> called Binkadink over the shared link. <Drop the wall!>
<You sure, gnome?>
<I'm sure! Drop it!> Gilbert obediently dismissed the wall of force spell, not that there were any indications he had done so, for the wall was invisible in any case. But Binkadink, knowing it was gone while the nightwalker did not yet, was able to take advantage of the situation first. He sprang forward, his magical glaive striking in a series of rapid blows with all of the little gnome's power behind it. While it was thus distracted, Finoula used her boots of spider climbing to run up along the inside wall of the western front wing of the house, slashing out at the nightwalker's arm with her flaming whip of thorns, careful not to hit the giant praying mantis still crawling on the nightwalker's head and face.
The undead creature took a moment to fling the mantis away so it could better strike at Binkadink, but that maneuver took up valuable time - time Binkadink put to good use with his glaive. The nightwalker was beginning to falter in its steps; was it possible they were actually close to bringing it down?
They were. The confusion effect now having run its full course, Hagan's mind was his own again and he knew what he had to do. Walking confidently forward, he cast a disintegrate spell at the undead monstrosity. It reared back, arching backwards as if having received a physical blow...and then disintegrated into nothingness.
"Thank the Goddess!" sighed Finoula. "I'm glad that's over with!"
But her words turned out to be premature, for now the entire house started shaking as if the ground beneath it were in the throes of an earthquake. Afraid of having the house collapse with her still perched on its upper-level wall, the nimble ranger dropped down to the ground and ran a few steps away from the shaking building. Hagan had similar thoughts, but it was quicker for him to run back through the hole in the back wall and end up by the shattered stone rune-seal, next to Darrien (who was ready to try to dodge if it looked like the sorcerer was about to attack him again with a spell, but Hagan seemed to be back to his old self now).
The house shuddered and shook, but it didn't fall apart - not exactly. Individual tiles from the roof fell away to land to the ground, but the majority of the building's movement was lateral: the two outer wings of the house started moving toward each other, as the building suddenly seemed to grow a third floor, then a fourth. The central overhanging balcony above the front porch rose higher and higher, as the house of Henrietta Higgenbotham assumed a relatively humanoid form - only one standing some 60 feet tall!
"Oh, crap," sighed Binkadink, a sudden realization hitting him: Henrietta's last words included the phrase "avenged, and avenged again."
As the house finished its reassembly into humanoid form, Darrien sighted up at the thing's "head" with his Arachnibow. He let fly an arrow, willing it to turn into a strand of webbing as it left the bow. Then, gripping the lower end of the strand, Darrien started climbing his way up the creature's back. If it noticed, it gave no indication of it.
The mantis flew up to the front side of the creature's "face," attempting to block its vision as it had done with the nightwalker. But although there was a pair of windows in the rough position where a set of eyes would be on a man, it was questionable whether the wooden colossus was actually seeing through them or not. It took a lumbering step forward, the earth shaking at the massive creature's tread.
Gilbert cast a fireball spell at the thing's chest - it seemed logical that when fighting a creature made out of a wooden house, fire was the way to go. From behind the thing, Hagan came up with the same idea, casting another delayed blast fireball without the delay - and careful not to hit it where it might encompass Darrien, who was diligently climbing his way to the top.
As one, Binkadink and Finoula ran forward, each picking a different leg to attack, the gnome with his magical glaive, the elf with her magical longsword and flaming whip of thorns. It seemed they would be fairly safe all the way down here; the creature, after all, had formed "arms" and "fists" from the wooden walls of the house and it would be unwieldy for the massive creature to try to punch at foes way down here. Finoula immediately saw the flaw in that logic when the wood colossus lifted up its left foot and brought it crashing down upon her.
Fortunately, the ground was soft enough that the ranger wasn't immediately crushed to a pulp; she had had the breath knocked out of her and quite possibly broken a rib or two, but she was now pinned in place inside a Finoula-shaped depression in the ground. She struggled, but there was no extricating herself from beneath the weight of the house-monster; she'd have to try to hang on until her friends could destroy it. A sudden flapping sound alerted her to the fact that Malrin, still in owl form, had come to give her what aid she could, channeling the healing energy of a cure moderate wounds spell through her talons before flying away to safety once again.
Darrien reached the top of his web-line and stood perched between the sloping roofs of the colossus's "shoulders," wondering the best approach now that he was up there. The gabled section that served as the creature's "head" seemed a good place to start, so the ranger used his scimitar to best effect, chopping away at the wood making up the back part of the head structure while wishing he had an axe.
Binkadink continued a similar assault upon the colossus's right leg, chopping away at it with his glaive as best he could. The thing seemed unwilling to remove its left leg and thus free the one hero it had pinned, so the gnome was sure to scoot back and forth a bit between attacks, so the massive construct wouldn't know exactly where he was at any one given time.
Gilbert cast another fireball at the colossus's broad chest area. It didn't respond in any way but to bear down upon Finoula, crushing the consciousness from her pinned form. The others realized if they didn't get it off her soon, she was going to be little more than a squashed stain on the ground under the behemoth's "foot."
Fortunately, Hagan came through again. With the extra power a delayed blast fireball had over the standard version, he was able to scorch its wooden timbers making up its enormous back black. With a loud snapping sound, the boards and planks making up its structure collapsed in on themselves, and from that point on it was just a slow-motion collapse into a pile of rubble. Malrin landed by Finoula and returned to her normal elven form and pulled the unconscious ranger (who she secretly hoped would one day soon be her sister-in-law) to safety. Once she had dragged her safely out of the way, the druid cast one of her last healing spells upon her, waking her back to consciousness.
As the colossus collapsed, it started to reform back into a house but it didn't quite make it all the way. It ended up somewhere between the two forms, with a distinct second story if not an entirely level one. Before the others could stop him, Binkadink ran inside and made his way up one of the flight of stairs.
<Bink!> called Gilbert over the link. <What you doing, stupid gnome?>
<Just a quick reconnoiter before the whole place falls apart!> Binkadink promised.
<You'd better hurry, then> advised Finoula. <The place looks like it'll fall over with a brisk wind.>
<I still have my freedom of movement spell active if I run into any more mimics> Binkadink mentioned. He peeked into a couple of rooms; one was a guest bedroom or something, unlikely to store treasure; another room was pretty much empty and the gnome was about to pass it over when he heard a distinct clunk from behind the closet door. Opening it warily, he got quite an unexpected sight.
Shackled to the back of the closet by a pair of heavy chains at her wrists stood a woman in the oddest-looking armor Binkadink had ever seen. It was extremely form-fitting, so much so that he doubted the metal could be very thick unless there was a much smaller woman in there than he had at first guessed. She stood as tall as a human so the gnome had mentally assigned her human status in his mind, but now he was beginning to wonder. "Are you okay?" he asked.
The woman said nothing in response, only a hissing noise came from behind her helmet. But it was the strangest helmet Binkadink had ever seen. For one thing, there was only one eye-hole, where the woman's left eye would be, and it stuck out a good inch or so, like the tip of a telescope. There was no open area in the helmet so he could see the color of her skin; instead, she seemed totally encased inside her armor.
A red beam suddenly shot out from her eye, striking the top of Binkadink's helmet and widening into a triangular plane, which then traveled down his body. He tensed as if it were an attack, but he felt nothing bad happening from this strange ray. <Gilbert, I think you'd better get up here> he advised.
<I not crawling up there in that rickety old building! It fall down any second now!>
<There's somebody trapped in here!>
Grumbling, the wizard cautiously entered the building from the gaping hole in its back wall and mounted the rickety stairs. Binkadink called out verbally so the wizard could tell which side of the house he was in, and before long he was staring at the strange woman. She turned her head and shot her red eye-beam at Gilbert, letting it travel down his whole body and then back up again. Then she repeated the string of hisses.
"Stupid gnome!" cursed Gilbert. "That no person - that a construct!"
"We should still free her," countered the gnome.
"It not a 'her,' stupid, it an 'it.'"
"Okay, but still."
"Hang on a minute first," said the wizard, then he cast a quick mending spell on the construct. Immediately, the hissing sounds turned into language, but no language either of the two had ever heard before, although if it was similar to anything it was most like the native language of Kozakura, the land of Gilbert's mother's birth. It had the same almost musical cadence to it.
"Shan tao, tanake windiru Marci," the construct said. "Then, shaking the chains keeping it bound, she added, "Santuki sha no vinichiwa kanusuke."
"Maybe we should get Aithanar up here," suggested Binkadink with a wry smile on his face. "That sounds like the nonsense he was spouting after he hit his head."
A sudden shift in the building changed the mood all of a sudden. "Let's get out of here," said Gilbert. "Bink: you break chains?"
"I'll give it a shot," he said, shrinking down the length of the shaft of his glaive so he could wield it in the confined space of a closet. After several attempts, he managed to cut through the chains.
"We out of here," announced Gilbert, turning to head back down the stairs. Binkadink followed, and with some prompting the metal woman followed. The three hadn't been out of the building for more than a minute before one side of the house collapsed inward, taking the middle section with it. Before long, it was a featureless pile of timber in a clearing in the Vesve Forest.
"Who's your friend?" asked Darrien, eyeing the female construct.
"Not sure yet," replied Gilbert. "But I find out." He cast a comprehend languages spell upon himself and then turned to the construct, who was busy shooting her red light at each of the heroes in turn. He put a hand on her left shoulder and spun her around to face him. In doing so, he brushed some of the dirt off her armor, revealing a few letters at the top of her left breast. "Please excuse," he said, brushing off the rest of the dirt, to reveal five clear letters: MARCI."
"Your name Marci?" he asked, and she replied with the same five words she had spoken earlier: "Shan tao, tanake windiru Marci." But although his ears heard the unfamiliar words, his spell-enhanced brain translated them perfectly: "Hello, my name is Marci."
"Her name Marci," he explained to the others.
"How'd she get out here?" asked Finoula. "And where's she from?" Gilbert repeated the questions, but the spell only allowed her unfamiliar words to be translated to him, not the other way around. He'd need a tongues spell for two-way communication, and he didn't have that at hand. She said nothing further, apparently not seeing the need to communicate with the group.
"I'll betcha anything she's from wildspace," Binkadink hazarded.
"Guys!" interrupted Hagan. "Look at this! Wezhley's found something?" Sure enough, with all the combat and rune-stone shattering and house-collapsing going on in the area, sections of the ground behind the house were in a state of upheaval. Hagan's sharp-eyed weasel familiar had spotted the glint of metal poking up from beneath a chunk of earth; with a little digging, the group unearthed a massive metal trunk. Inside was what must have been Henrietta's long-term treasure: assorted coins and gems likely worth tens of thousands of gold pieces.
"Nice!" observed Malrin, for the first time understanding just why it was these friends of her brothers continued on with the dangers of their adventuring existence.
- - -
I did a few sneaky things with this adventure. First of all, knowing my players would immediately know something was up if I had separate flat tokens for the individual pieces of furniture in Henrietta's study and kitchen, I drew them onto the room tiles like I would normally do - and only once the mimics attacked did I swap out the room tiles with the furniture drawn on with room tiles with no furniture, then put my individual "mimic-as-furniture" tiles and tokens down in the appropriate places. The chairs, sofa, and footstool in the study and the table-and-six-chairs and silverware-cabinet mimics in the dining room were flat tokens, while the stove, tub, stack of cordwood, and bookcase were all stand-up tokens. The ruse worked; nobody suspected a thing until it was too late.
I have a nightwalker D&D Mini so that was easy to represent on our battle-mat, but for the wood colossus I didn't have anything at all appropriate, so I had made a scale model of the wood colossus from one of the Pathfinder Bestiaries using colored cardstock paper and construction paper. I had it hiding in a box in the room next door to my man-cave so the players wouldn't see it (or wonder what was in the box) until the time was right for the wood colossus to make an appearance.
And as far as the wood colossus goes, I scaled it back a bit from the Pathfinder version, stripping away the mythic power stuff and its aura of selective anti-magic; we don't play with the mythic rules in the first place and I wanted to allow Hagan - and his penchant for destructive spells - a chance to shine by being able to cut loose an something that would take extra damage from fire. I probably scaled it back a little too much, considering they destroyed it fairly easily (at least when compared to the nightwalker); as it was, it took many hours longer to build the thing than I got any use out of it. (But not to worry: the group's already decided when I design the next campaign when this one finished up in a year and a half or so, the next party should have a wood colossus as a mobile headquarters, so we may just get some more use out of it yet.)
Finally, we usually have music playing in the background when we play, and more times than not it's several hour-long programs of "Music from the Hearts of Space," preferably of an appropriate theme to whatever's going on in the adventure. This time, I deliberately didn't play any music to begin with until the wagon turned the corner and the PCs saw what they were up against in their first fight; then I started my first music selection: the "Help!" album by the Beatles. It's not every day I get an opportunity for a joke that works on two separate levels like that!
- - -
T-Shirt Worn: I didn't have anything particularly appropriate, so I went with a red Iron Man T-shirt to somewhat represent MARCI, a metallic construct with a general humanoid build.
PC Roster:
Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 15
Darrien, half-elf ranger 15
Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 15
Gilbert Fung, human wizard 15
Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 15
NPC Roster:
Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 3
Laerornith Ivenheart, elf bard 4
Malrin Ivenheart, elf druid 7
Game Session Date: 25 August 2018
- - -
The group opted to camp overnight by the ruins of the amphitheater - it was already past twilight and likely dangerous to travel after nightfall. But the night passed without incident, and in the morning the group broke camp and started their day-and-a-half trek back to Kordovia.
Laerornith was in miserable spirits; not only had her hopes of being welcomed into the bardic Conservatory of the Ineffable Chord been dashed but she was well aware of the danger she had brought to her family and friends. She no longer felt in the mood to sing or play her lute, so it was a much quieter return than the trip to the false "tryout" had been.
Malrin wasn't in much better spirits. She had been thrilled at the opportunity to join the group and work with her two brothers, but if this was the kind of life an adventurer led she wasn't sure it was something she wished to make a part of her day-to-day existence. The others had already brushed off the previous day's fight with a pair of demons from the deepest, darkest corner of the Abyss, it apparently being just a normal part of the routine for them. But the druid wasn't sure she could bring herself to forget the terror she'd felt at their presence any time soon. She sat in the Vistani wagon, deep in thought beside her little sister, while their brother Aithanar drove the wagon back towards home. Hagan and Gilbert shared the wagon's interior with the two sisters, occasionally trying to engage them in conversation, but they quickly tired of the effort. Outside, Binkadink led the wagon train mounted on Obvious, while Finoula rode her pony Daisy beside the wagon, her timber wolf Wrath trotting alongside; Darrien sat on the wagon's roof, keeping a vigilant watch for danger.
But all in all, it was a quiet ride home - until the forest was split by the sound of a woman's scream from just around a bend in the road.
Darrien immediately slid from his perch atop the roofed wagon, drawing his Arachnibow as he ran ahead and around the corner. Seeing his master back on solid ground, Grumps Junior trotted up beside the green-haired ranger. Together, they were the first to see the reason for the scream: a couple dozen feet ahead, a small group of horse-sized beetles were attacking an elderly human woman. As the ranger first got sight of the attack, the woman was pulled to the ground, her frail body gripped in the strong, oversized mandibles of one of the black-shelled insects.
The scream had been quite audible even inside the Vistani wagon; Hagan, the nearest to the door, opened it and jumped out the back, running to the sounds of battle. Wezhley tensed up on the half-orc's shoulder, fearful of what they might find.
On the other side of the wagon, Finoula spurred Daisy to sprint forward and Wrath kept pace. Seeing the attack, the elven ranger cast an entangle spell that caused the grasses and plants growing in places along the dirt road to reach up and grasp at three of the beetles' bodies. However, the nimble beetles avoided the entwining tendrils of plant matter and turned to face these new possible food sources.
Binkadink likewise spurred Obvious forward at best speed and the gnome struck at the nearest beetle with his magic glaive as he passed by. The blade just about cut the beetle in half; with a practiced motion, the littler fighter spun his glaive in an arc and sliced through another beetle on the other side of his mount, then reversed direction with his blade again and skewered one of the beetles just ahead in the area of Finoula's entangle spell. In a blur of motion, Binkadink had slain three of the beetles in twice as many seconds. The other two beetles in the entangle field, not having learned anything from this display of martial proficiency, skittered up to flank the jackalope and his armored rider. Binkadink stabbed at the one facing in his direction, killing it as well.
At that point, there were only two giant beetles still alive. One had the woman in its mandibles, but released her once it became apparent he couldn't chew her up as expected. The woman crawled away in the dirt of the street and Finoula's keen elven vision noticed she held a wand in each hand.
"What going on?" demanded Gilbert as he and Mudpie exited the Vistani wagon after Aithanar brought it around the bend and had the draft horses slow to a stop to avoid getting too close to the combat. Malrin and Laerornith looked at each other in fear - was this another demon attack? - and scrambled to the narrow window-slits on either side of Aithanar's seat at the front of the wagon to see what was going on.
Darrien shot a trio of arrows at the beetle that had had the old woman in his mandibles, but they bounced off. "I'm sorry," called out the woman in the street, still crawling to safety. "I accidentally stoneskinned that one, I'm afraid. Got my wands mixed up."
Hagan cast a chain lightning spell at the beetle beside Obvious and had it arc over to strike the one with the stoneskin protection. Neither strike slew the targets, but the smoke rising from the carapace of the primary target showed it had been badly burned by the spell.
Seeing the entangle spell was ineffective at this point, Finoula dismissed it and the plants went back to their normal size and shape. She struck the stoneskinned beetle, first with her flaming whip of thorns and then with her longsword Tahlmalaera as she got closer. Several of her attacks did the beetle actual harm, having made it past the protections of the accidental stoneskin spell.
At Binkadink's urging, Obvious stabbed down at the nearest beetle with his antlers and then hippity-hopped over to the tougher threat. The gnome's glaive flashed out at the stoneskinned beetle, dealing so much damage the magical protection was overcome and the giant insect was slain. Over on the other side of the street, the last of the six beetles decided to seek elsewhere for food and shuffled off through the undergrowth.
"Thank you all," said the elderly woman, rising to her feet. "I don't know what I'd have done without your timely arrival. I thought I had the wand of shocking grasp in my right hand and the stoneskin wand in my left, but I guess it was the other way around. In any case--thank you again." The woman's face was flushed; she'd apparently had much more excitement than she had expected.
"What are you doing out here all on your own?" asked Finoula, passing over her waterskin and allowing the woman to take a drink from it.
"Oh, thank you," replied the woman, passing the waterskin back to Finoula after a quick drink. "I live just a ways away. I was out collecting herbs and plants for my potions--oh! We haven't been introduced! Forgive me; my name is Henrietta Higgenbotham. I've lived here my whole life; I'm what the locals call a "wise-woman.' Born with the sight, and so on. Oh, forgive me! I'm babbling." She took a deep breath to calm herself. "Would you like a cup of tea? It's the least I can do. I can divine your fortunes, too, if you're interested." She walked back to where she had first been attacked and fetched an overturned wicker basket, replacing the spilled contents.
Hagan looked at the others, then replied, "It would be an honor."
"Here: I should offer this to you as well," said Henrietta, handing over her wand of stoneskin. "It's just about out of charges, I fear, but I have the ingredients to whip up another one. It saved my life today, that's for sure."
"You keep it, ma'am," said Hagan, declining the offer. "I'm sure you can use it more than we can."
"Well, aren't you the sweetest thing," replied Henrietta, putting the wand in her wicker basket. "Come along, then - the cottage is just this way."
The way to Henrietta's cottage was off the main road, along a side-branch that at times was little more than a mere hint of a path; several times there were branches dragging along both sides of the wagon as Aithanar led the draft horses after the wise-woman. And then once they got there, they saw the "cottage" was in truth a two-story wooden building, more a manor home than a mere cottage. It had seen better days, too; Henrietta looked to be a woman in her sixties and her home looked to be at least twice that age. But despite the weeds growing on either side of the steps to the front porch and the house needing a good paint job and perhaps a few repairs here and there, it looked to be of generally sturdy construction.
Aithanar parked the Vistani wagon off to the side of the manor and offered to stay with the animals while the others went inside; both of his sisters opted to stay with him. So while the rest of the group followed Henrietta into her home, Gilbert loitered behind at the wagon just long enough to ensure the Ivenhearts were all okay - but also to drink down a potion of neutralize poison and cast a detect magic spell upon himself. Sure, it was possible that little old ladies you met in the middle of the forest were perfectly trustworthy, but Gilbert Fung for one preferred only to give his trust to those who had earned it.
"The others are in the study, to your right," called Henrietta from the kitchen as Gilbert and Mudpie entered the residence. "I'll be there in a minute, once I've got the tea on." Gilbert entered a dining room, with six wooden chairs arranged around a full-length table with a dingy white tablecloth hanging to the floor. There was an open doorway to his right, and there were the rest of his group. Binkadink and Hagan sat in chairs facing each other from either side of the room; Gilbert passed between them to plop down beside Darrien on an old sofa covered in a woolen blanket. Finoula stood between Darrien and Hagan; Mudpie took position standing before his master. There was a footstool before him, but being made of living stone he had no muscles to get tired - he preferred to stand.
While the group was all together in one area, Gilbert cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell linking everyone together. <Everybody hear me okay?> asked Gilbert through the mental link.
<Loud and clear> replied Hagan. <But what's up? We usually only do this right before combat.>
<Never know. Might be 'right before combat' right now.>
Sure enough, Gilbert's inherent distrustfulness paid off this time. The four sitting heroes felt their seats jostle beneath them, then appendages rose up from the furniture and struck out at them. <Mimics!> cried Gilbert over the shared link. Finoula jumped with a start at the commotion and drew her primary weapons from her belt, surprised to see the others being attacked by furniture. And it wasn't just the chairs and sofas, either - the bookcase was shuffling over from the corner, and the footstool grew an appendage that looked to be swinging in Mudpie's direction. Not only that, but from the corner of her eye Finoula spotted the doorway to the dining room being blocked by the table and chairs, which moved as one unified figure, tipping forward to prevent any escape from the study.
Hagan jumped up from the chair trying to adhere itself to his robe and attacked with his favorite go-to attack spell: chain lightning. He chose the combined dining-room-table-and-chairs-thing as his primary target and had arcs of lightning stretch over to attack every piece of mobile furniture in the study. The spell was amazingly effective, slaying all of its designated targets but the "sofa" upon which Darrien and Gilbert were still struggling. Unfortunately, because of their contact to the mimics targeted by the chain lightning spell, Gilbert, Darrien, and Binkadink all took damage as well.
Unseen by the heroes, two more smaller mimics - in the shape of a metal stove and a pile of cordwood - started ambling over from the kitchen to the dining room. This is because all of the mimics in the house were different parts of the same creature: a hivemind of fake furniture spread throughout this part of the house. There was one final mimic in the kitchen as well, wearing the form of a metal washtub, but it walked away through the outer door to the back yard, which Henrietta Higgenbotham had left open when she had stepped outside moments before. But the "washtub" mimic - as part of the hivemind - knew that as long as one member of the mimic hive stayed alive, it would be able to grow and split into others of its type, and eventually they could repopulate the house in the manner in which they had become accustomed.
Darrien leaped up from the sofa - possibly in part due to the electric shock he'd just received from Hagan's spell - and stepped away from the offending mimic. Pulling out his Arachnibow, he sent an arrow shooting into the spot where he'd been sitting a moment ago. But that didn't have the intended effect; instead of puncturing into the mimic's pliant body, it caused a rift to split the creature in two, and all of a sudden there was a pair of half-sofas along the back of the room - one of them still holding an astonished Gilbert Fung. Darrien cursed his bad luck and switched weapons, pulling the scimitar from his belt.
But Binkadink got there first. He extended his magical glaive and sent the blade crashing into the recently-vacated half-sofa, discovering as a result that slashing weapons had the same effect as piercing ones, for the half-sofa split into two quarter-sofa pieces, each sprouting pliant appendages with which to strike out at the heroes. <Blunt weapons!> Binkadink sent over the shared link. <Use blunt weapons!>
Gilbert stood up and cast a haste spell upon all of the heroes, surprised when he was battered by a trio of mimics still wearing the forms of bits of a comfortable sofa. Mudpie stepped forward to protect his master but Gilbert waved him away, not wanting his familiar to get stuck to a mimic's adhesive form.
Finoula used two of her magic items at once: stepping on the side of the wall with her boots of spider climbing, she activated the lightning amulet she wore around her neck and transformed her elven body into a blast of lightning that coursed through the bodies of all three sofa-piece mimics. Then, at the other side, she returned to her elven form and stood in place on the far wall, looking down at her handiwork: all three mimics had been slain by her attack. She looked smugly at her compatriots, as if to say, "That's how you do it!"
Hagan stood on his tippy-toes, peering over the top of the body of the larger mimic from the dining room; as it deteriorated after death, its pliant body was losing cohesion like a deflating balloon. With another casting of the chain lightning spell he had slain the "stove" and "woodpile" mimics and started scrambling up over the corpse of the "dining-room-table-and-chairs" mimic, planning on heading to the kitchen to check on Henrietta. After all, despite Gilbert's inherent lack of trust, the half-orc wasn't sure that the mimics hadn't snuck into Henrietta's house while she was away - she could very well be in danger! Darrien scrambled over the deflating mimic and together the two half-breeds explored the now-empty kitchen. The back door was open and they popped their heads out, but there was nobody in the backyard, either. They did see a large, round, stone slab with various runes etched deeply into it, though. It lay flat in the backyard like an oversized manhole cover.
"Those runes mean anything to you?" asked Darrien.
"Nah," admitted Hagan. "Sorcery comes naturally to me, so I never bothered studying up on the various arcane runes or anything. We should probably get Gilbert to look at it, though."
Binkadink crawled into the dining room and then went down the length of the entry hall, finding an empty library at the far end. Apparently empty, he amended to himself, eyeing the various bookcases warily. It was entirely possible this entire house was filled with mimics instead of furniture - or there were rumors of enormous mimics that could take on the appearance of an entire house. It was entirely possible that the heroes were already standing inside the body of a gigantic mimic! The thought gave the gnome little comfort.
Finoula followed the gnome's path into the main hallway, followed closely behind by Gilbert and Mudpie. They looked around, aware that an attack could come from any direction.
It came from the stairwell ahead, one of two leading up to the house's upper level. From the stairwell flew a winged creature looking like an animated ice sculpture of a tiny gargoyle. Finoula instinctively snapped her flaming whip of thorns at the ice mephit, and it hissed in pain as the hated flames licked its body. But then Freezeface opened its mouth wide and sent shards of ice particles flying out at Finoula and Gilbert, causing them to flinch in surprise but dealing neither of them very much harm at all.
But then Henrietta raced down the steps behind her familiar, stepping to the side at the main level to line up the lightning bolt she shot at Finoula, Gilbert, and Mudpie in turn. The elderly woman cackled an evil laugh as the three cried out in pain and surprise. "I think instead of just tea, I'll have you over as the main course!" she laughed.
<This why I never trust people!> Gilbert griped over the mental link. The blast had taken a lot out of him; combined with the beatings he'd taken from the mimics earlier, he was hurting bad. He staggered backwards, touched Mudpie - and then, with the utterance of a magical syllable, both figures teleported away to the Vistani wagon, where Malrin could use Ingebold's staff of healing to undo the worst of the heavyset mage's wounds.
Hagan and Darrien got an update on what was going on through the Rary's telepathic bond spell, so as the half-orc sorcerer ran back into the house through the kitchen, the half-elf ranger dropped his ebony fly from a pocket and mounted it as it grew to full size beneath him. He flew it over the roof to the front of the building, bringing it to a landing on a balcony jutting out over the front door and porch directly below.
Binkadink spun around to see Henrietta Higgenbotham in combat with Finoula. He raced up, bringing his glaive swinging down at her. (It was nice that he could mentally extend and retract the length of the weapon's shaft - it made fighting inside tight quarters like a manor hallway that much easier!) But while he was surprised he was even in combat with a 60-year-old lady in the first place, he was even more surprised that his blow didn't drop her on the spot. And then he remembered she was still protected by a stoneskin spell from her "fight" with the beetles - if that had even been a legitimate fight in the first place, and not a ruse to gain sympathy from the heroes and get them to drop their guards. For all the gnome knew, Henrietta might have even summoned the giant beetles in the first place!
Flanking their common foe with Binkadink, Finoula sent both her sword and her whip slashing and lashing out at the witch. She drew blood, causing Henrietta curse in a fashion not at all in harmony with her "sweet little grandmother" appearance. "I'll have your bones for that, dearie!" Henrietta promised the ranger.
In a flash, Freezeface sent a magic missile crashing into Finoula, jolting her in surprise. And then Henrietta opened her mouth and shrieked.
The shriek was like nothing any of the heroes had heard before. Binkadink momentarily feared they were facing some sort of banshee, but then he thought he remembered them being some sort of undead, and Henrietta was very much alive. But the sonic assault caused both Finoula and Binkadink's ears to bleed at once; Hagan, Wezhley, Darrien, and his ebony fly mount were all able to hear the shriek and while they were far enough away not to suffer any ear-bleeds, all but Darrien of the four suffered from one of the shriek's side effects: a magical confusion that muddled their thoughts and messed with their perceptions.
Hagan was instantly filled with rage and started sprinting forward through the dining room, looking for someone - anyone, really - to attack. Freezeface the ice mephit happened to be the first potential victim the half-orc stumbled upon, so he was the recipient of one of Hagan's most devastating spells: a disintegrate. Freezeface cried out in alarm, but was blasted into nothingness by the furious half-orc's spell.
On Hagan's shoulder, Wezhley the weasel was also suddenly filled with rage, although his wasn't random but rather focused upon the originator of the shriek. Racing down his master's body, Wezhley scampered across the hallway and bared his teeth, clamping down upon one of Henrietta's ankles. He would have drawn blood if not for her stoneskin protection. "Nasty thing!" cried Henrietta, kicking the weasel away with her foot.
Darrien was a bit worried at the erratic way his giant fly was acting, so he dismissed it and it returned to statuette form. Pocketing it for later use, the ranger opened the door from the balcony and entered the second floor of Henrietta's manor home. There was a long hallway before him, but a door to either side. Fearful of potential mimics, Darrien opened the door to the right and sent an arrow crashing into the toilet he found in the small room. But the toilet was just a toilet, a ceramic bowl beneath a wooden seat with a hole at the top. Embarrassed at his overreaction, the ranger retrieved his arrow.
In the hallway beneath, Binkadink attacked Henrietta again with his glaive, putting his full strength into each blow. She was visibly hurt by the attacks, enough so that she no longer kept up the appearance of a kindly old human woman; instead, her features blurred and took on her true visage: an ancient crone of the shrieking hag variety. A crooked nose bent down from her wrinkled face, thin strands of gray hair falling flat against the sides of her head. Her neat and trim homespun garment also altered to its true form: a featureless sack of a dress, dark in color but aged to the point it was difficult to say exactly which color.
Finoula snarled in fury at the deception and attacked the hag with renewed vigor. Then the front door opened beside her, and there stood Gilbert and Mudpie, reinvigorated by Malrin and her borrowed staff of healing. "Nice of you to show back up!" said Finoula while she concentrated on bringing down Henrietta. Enraged by getting a whip-strike across the face, the shrieking hag cried out, "I'll eat the eyes out of your pretty face!" to Finoula as she clawed at her with fingernails that would do a troll proud. Scoring grooves across the ranger's face, she cackled in triumph and licked the blood from her nails as Finoula staggered back in pain. Gilbert caught her and pulled her back from combat, steadying her before she passed out from shock.
"You'll die for that!" promised Binkadink, attacking with renewed fury.
"If I do, I'll be avenged, an' avenged again!" countered Henrietta, spinning to claw at the little gnome. Off to the side behind her, Hagan stared at the spot on the floor containing Freezeface's ashes and started babbling nonsensically, his mind still under the effects of the confusion aspect of the hag's shriek. Wezhley spun around in circles in the hallway, his fury abated and now presenting no more danger than a possible tripping hazard.
Darrien approached the top of the stairway and sent a flurry of arrows down at Henrietta. As the hag looked up at him in surprise, Binkadink saw an opening and sent his glaive cutting deep into the crone's side, nearly cutting her in half. She dropped to the floor, dead.
"Glad that over with," commented Gilbert.
He spoke too soon. With a crashing sound outside, the stone slab in the backyard of the Higgenbotham Manor burst apart and an ebon form arose. It was humanoid in build, but stood a good 20 feet tall. It stared right at the back of the house as if it could see through the walls and stepped forward with purpose. Without even breaking its stride, it smashed through the back wall of the house, sending Darrien - who had come down the rest of the stairs to ensure the hag was really dead - sprawling forward onto the hallway floor, to land in a heap beside Henrietta's corpse.
Gilbert got a quick glimpse of the nightwalker as it bent down and entered the house and recognized it at once from his studies; the fact that his magically-enhanced eyes were telling him it blazed with an aura of undead was a mere conformation of what the portly mage already knew. <That thing a nightwalker!> he called to the others, <Whatever you do, don't look into its eyes!> Then he grabbed Finoula and rushed back outside to the front of the house. He cast a quick mage armor spell upon both him and Mudpie in preparation of the battle to come. Finoula fumbled for a healing flask at her belt and drank down its contents. She wasn't back to full strength by any means, but it would keep her in the fight - for now.
Hagan ignored the nightwalker stepping into his field of vision; instead, his gaze was drawn to the dead hag on the floor before him, and to his befuddled mind it was the most horrific sight he'd ever seen. He turned and fled back to the dining room, took a left through the kitchen, and was well on his way out the back door once again when the sudden panic attack subsided.
Binkadink saw the massive form bearing down on him and had the presence of mind to scoop up Wezhley from the floor on his way out the manor's front door. Realizing he was likely the nightwalker's primary target - as he had been the one to slay the shrieking hag, and this was undoubtedly some sort of prearranged vengeance contingent upon her death - he also drank down a healing potion from his belt. Unfortunately, it was the last of the "Winkidew specials" which had come embedded with a magic mouth spell put there by Binkadink's cousin Jinkadoodle. As a result, although it wasn't Binkadink it was certainly his voice which boomed out the following announcement: "I like taking goats from behind!"
Darrien scrambled to his feet and followed the gnome out the front door. Upon Gilbert's advice over the shared telepathic bond, he cast a freedom of movement spell upon Binkadink as soon as he was within touching distance of the gnome. <That at least protect glaive from getting stolen and crushed> Gilbert thought. <Might not help you any, though.>
<Appreciated nonetheless> said Binkadink.
Making a bee-line for the gnome, the nightwalker smashed through the front of the house, rising to its full height once he cleared the porch's roof. It pointed an accusing finger at Binkadink and a flash of necromantic energy shot out from the pointing digit, striking Binkadink in the chest. He staggered back a step, but he managed to overcome the finger of death spell that threatened to stop his heart. At his side, Gilbert cast a protection from evil spell that had the advantageous side effect of clearing up Wezhley's confused mind. "Go to wagon!" Gilbert called to the weasel, and it darted off at once, trusting that his master would be okay without him.
"I'm going to try something," declared Finoula, touching her amulet and facing the gleaming, black giant - and careful not to look at it too high. Then she willed her body into a lightning bolt that shot through the nightwalker's body. The ranger ended up in the backyard by the shattered rune-slab, having passed through both smashed walls in the process. But looking back at her handiwork, it didn't seem as if the undead thing had been affected by her electrical attack in the least. <Probably spell resistance> offered up Gilbert. <Might work if you try it again.>
Hagan watched Finoula remanifest in the backyard and babbled in surprised confusion. Then he was distracted by imaginary bubbles he thought he saw floating at the edges of his visual periphery. His attention thus drawn away, he failed to see Malrin come running up to Finoula. "Gilbert sent me," she said by way of explanation as she summoned a charge from the staff of healing to partially heal some of the ranger's wounds. "He said you guys need all the healing we can get out here."
"That's true enough," agreed Finoula.
In the front yard, Darrien reached up to his own amulet and activated it, causing the preying mantis trapped in the lump of amber to disappear and reappear many times larger in mid-air, flying toward the nightwalker's face. It perched itself on the front of the undead being, blocking its gaze. That done, Darrien ran around the side of the house to try to get into position behind the nightwalker. He had an inkling about trying to trip it with a strand of webbing from his Arachnibow....
Having failed to kill the hag's slayer with its finger of death attack, the nightwalker bent forward and sent its fists smashing into the little gnome. Binkadink could swear he heard bones cracking, but it might have just been his imagination. Still, he held his ground, realizing his best bet at staying alive was to slay this thing before it had a chance to do the same to him.
Gilbert cast an Evard's black tentacles spell centered on the nightwalker; the grasping appendages failed to imprison the undead thing but it had been worth a shot. Binkadink attacked furiously with his glaive, having extended it to its full length so he could stay well outside the area of effect of Gilbert's spell, although his still-active freedom of movement spell would have kept him from being crushed by the tentacles in any case.
Finoula activated the last daily charge of her lightning amulet and went streaking through the nightwalker again as a bolt of electricity, this time actually doing it some harm. <You were right!> she thought at Gilbert over the link.
<Usually am!> replied the mage.
The nightwalker struck out at Binkadink again with its massive fists, and this time the gnome was nearly staggered from the blows - a lesser man would already have fallen into unconsciousness by now. <I need a breather for some healing!> the gnome called out, and Gilbert responded by casting an invisible wall of force from one front wing of the manor to the other, effectively blocking off Binkadink from the nightwalker. When the nightwalker went to strike the little gnome again, its fists crashed against the invisible barrier, giving Binkadink a moment to catch his breath.
"Healer!" called Gilbert, aloud this time since Malrin wasn't part of the Rary's telepathic bond spell. The druid heard the call from the backyard, and wildshaped into an owl so she could fly above the manor house rather than waste the time to run around it - running through it was no longer an option, not with writhing black tentacles rising up from the floor! Fortunately, the druid was adept at casting her spells while in animal form, so she was able to alight on Binkadink's shoulder and heal him in that fashion.
Darrien by this time had crept around to the back of the building, but Hagan - still confused - took him for an enemy and attacked. Fortunately, there was some little bit of his messed-up mind that must have recognized the ranger as a friend at the last minute, for instead of using a more powerful spell like disintegrate he went with hold monster instead. Darrien froze up immediately, but in a few seconds the confusion had passed and Hagan no longer wanted to kill his friend. Shortly after that, Darrien found the force of will to break free from the enchantment, allowing him to move once more.
Gilbert had created his wall of force such that both sides touched the wings of the house, but the top didn't reach up to the roof above the porch. That gave him a strip of open space allowing him to cast a magic missile spell at the nightwalker - not that powerful of a spell, admittedly, but one guaranteed to hit if he could overcome the undead thing's inherent spell resistance. His casting was spot-on this time and the creature's ebon body sizzled with the impacts of each magical streak of force energy.
But although the nightwalker was indeed blocked from reaching his target by physical means, he had other methods available. He willed an unholy blight effect around Binkadink, catching Finoula in its radius as well. The ranger was able to shrug off the worst of the effects; Binkadink was not so lucky.
In a brief moment of clarity, Hagan realized the enemy was the nightwalker standing at the other end of the two holes he's punched through the dwelling - and the half-orc was standing in full view of the undead creature's back. With practiced precision, Hagan targeted a delayed blast fireball at the creature's lower back, setting no delay on the time before impact - he wanted the higher-level spell's higher damage output, not a delay in the explosion. He likewise was able to overcome the nightwalker's innate spell resistance and reveled in the way it staggered forward from the blast, smoke streaming from its back.
<I'm ready!> called Binkadink over the shared link. <Drop the wall!>
<You sure, gnome?>
<I'm sure! Drop it!> Gilbert obediently dismissed the wall of force spell, not that there were any indications he had done so, for the wall was invisible in any case. But Binkadink, knowing it was gone while the nightwalker did not yet, was able to take advantage of the situation first. He sprang forward, his magical glaive striking in a series of rapid blows with all of the little gnome's power behind it. While it was thus distracted, Finoula used her boots of spider climbing to run up along the inside wall of the western front wing of the house, slashing out at the nightwalker's arm with her flaming whip of thorns, careful not to hit the giant praying mantis still crawling on the nightwalker's head and face.
The undead creature took a moment to fling the mantis away so it could better strike at Binkadink, but that maneuver took up valuable time - time Binkadink put to good use with his glaive. The nightwalker was beginning to falter in its steps; was it possible they were actually close to bringing it down?
They were. The confusion effect now having run its full course, Hagan's mind was his own again and he knew what he had to do. Walking confidently forward, he cast a disintegrate spell at the undead monstrosity. It reared back, arching backwards as if having received a physical blow...and then disintegrated into nothingness.
"Thank the Goddess!" sighed Finoula. "I'm glad that's over with!"
But her words turned out to be premature, for now the entire house started shaking as if the ground beneath it were in the throes of an earthquake. Afraid of having the house collapse with her still perched on its upper-level wall, the nimble ranger dropped down to the ground and ran a few steps away from the shaking building. Hagan had similar thoughts, but it was quicker for him to run back through the hole in the back wall and end up by the shattered stone rune-seal, next to Darrien (who was ready to try to dodge if it looked like the sorcerer was about to attack him again with a spell, but Hagan seemed to be back to his old self now).
The house shuddered and shook, but it didn't fall apart - not exactly. Individual tiles from the roof fell away to land to the ground, but the majority of the building's movement was lateral: the two outer wings of the house started moving toward each other, as the building suddenly seemed to grow a third floor, then a fourth. The central overhanging balcony above the front porch rose higher and higher, as the house of Henrietta Higgenbotham assumed a relatively humanoid form - only one standing some 60 feet tall!
"Oh, crap," sighed Binkadink, a sudden realization hitting him: Henrietta's last words included the phrase "avenged, and avenged again."
As the house finished its reassembly into humanoid form, Darrien sighted up at the thing's "head" with his Arachnibow. He let fly an arrow, willing it to turn into a strand of webbing as it left the bow. Then, gripping the lower end of the strand, Darrien started climbing his way up the creature's back. If it noticed, it gave no indication of it.
The mantis flew up to the front side of the creature's "face," attempting to block its vision as it had done with the nightwalker. But although there was a pair of windows in the rough position where a set of eyes would be on a man, it was questionable whether the wooden colossus was actually seeing through them or not. It took a lumbering step forward, the earth shaking at the massive creature's tread.
Gilbert cast a fireball spell at the thing's chest - it seemed logical that when fighting a creature made out of a wooden house, fire was the way to go. From behind the thing, Hagan came up with the same idea, casting another delayed blast fireball without the delay - and careful not to hit it where it might encompass Darrien, who was diligently climbing his way to the top.
As one, Binkadink and Finoula ran forward, each picking a different leg to attack, the gnome with his magical glaive, the elf with her magical longsword and flaming whip of thorns. It seemed they would be fairly safe all the way down here; the creature, after all, had formed "arms" and "fists" from the wooden walls of the house and it would be unwieldy for the massive creature to try to punch at foes way down here. Finoula immediately saw the flaw in that logic when the wood colossus lifted up its left foot and brought it crashing down upon her.
Fortunately, the ground was soft enough that the ranger wasn't immediately crushed to a pulp; she had had the breath knocked out of her and quite possibly broken a rib or two, but she was now pinned in place inside a Finoula-shaped depression in the ground. She struggled, but there was no extricating herself from beneath the weight of the house-monster; she'd have to try to hang on until her friends could destroy it. A sudden flapping sound alerted her to the fact that Malrin, still in owl form, had come to give her what aid she could, channeling the healing energy of a cure moderate wounds spell through her talons before flying away to safety once again.
Darrien reached the top of his web-line and stood perched between the sloping roofs of the colossus's "shoulders," wondering the best approach now that he was up there. The gabled section that served as the creature's "head" seemed a good place to start, so the ranger used his scimitar to best effect, chopping away at the wood making up the back part of the head structure while wishing he had an axe.
Binkadink continued a similar assault upon the colossus's right leg, chopping away at it with his glaive as best he could. The thing seemed unwilling to remove its left leg and thus free the one hero it had pinned, so the gnome was sure to scoot back and forth a bit between attacks, so the massive construct wouldn't know exactly where he was at any one given time.
Gilbert cast another fireball at the colossus's broad chest area. It didn't respond in any way but to bear down upon Finoula, crushing the consciousness from her pinned form. The others realized if they didn't get it off her soon, she was going to be little more than a squashed stain on the ground under the behemoth's "foot."
Fortunately, Hagan came through again. With the extra power a delayed blast fireball had over the standard version, he was able to scorch its wooden timbers making up its enormous back black. With a loud snapping sound, the boards and planks making up its structure collapsed in on themselves, and from that point on it was just a slow-motion collapse into a pile of rubble. Malrin landed by Finoula and returned to her normal elven form and pulled the unconscious ranger (who she secretly hoped would one day soon be her sister-in-law) to safety. Once she had dragged her safely out of the way, the druid cast one of her last healing spells upon her, waking her back to consciousness.
As the colossus collapsed, it started to reform back into a house but it didn't quite make it all the way. It ended up somewhere between the two forms, with a distinct second story if not an entirely level one. Before the others could stop him, Binkadink ran inside and made his way up one of the flight of stairs.
<Bink!> called Gilbert over the link. <What you doing, stupid gnome?>
<Just a quick reconnoiter before the whole place falls apart!> Binkadink promised.
<You'd better hurry, then> advised Finoula. <The place looks like it'll fall over with a brisk wind.>
<I still have my freedom of movement spell active if I run into any more mimics> Binkadink mentioned. He peeked into a couple of rooms; one was a guest bedroom or something, unlikely to store treasure; another room was pretty much empty and the gnome was about to pass it over when he heard a distinct clunk from behind the closet door. Opening it warily, he got quite an unexpected sight.
Shackled to the back of the closet by a pair of heavy chains at her wrists stood a woman in the oddest-looking armor Binkadink had ever seen. It was extremely form-fitting, so much so that he doubted the metal could be very thick unless there was a much smaller woman in there than he had at first guessed. She stood as tall as a human so the gnome had mentally assigned her human status in his mind, but now he was beginning to wonder. "Are you okay?" he asked.
The woman said nothing in response, only a hissing noise came from behind her helmet. But it was the strangest helmet Binkadink had ever seen. For one thing, there was only one eye-hole, where the woman's left eye would be, and it stuck out a good inch or so, like the tip of a telescope. There was no open area in the helmet so he could see the color of her skin; instead, she seemed totally encased inside her armor.
A red beam suddenly shot out from her eye, striking the top of Binkadink's helmet and widening into a triangular plane, which then traveled down his body. He tensed as if it were an attack, but he felt nothing bad happening from this strange ray. <Gilbert, I think you'd better get up here> he advised.
<I not crawling up there in that rickety old building! It fall down any second now!>
<There's somebody trapped in here!>
Grumbling, the wizard cautiously entered the building from the gaping hole in its back wall and mounted the rickety stairs. Binkadink called out verbally so the wizard could tell which side of the house he was in, and before long he was staring at the strange woman. She turned her head and shot her red eye-beam at Gilbert, letting it travel down his whole body and then back up again. Then she repeated the string of hisses.
"Stupid gnome!" cursed Gilbert. "That no person - that a construct!"
"We should still free her," countered the gnome.
"It not a 'her,' stupid, it an 'it.'"
"Okay, but still."
"Hang on a minute first," said the wizard, then he cast a quick mending spell on the construct. Immediately, the hissing sounds turned into language, but no language either of the two had ever heard before, although if it was similar to anything it was most like the native language of Kozakura, the land of Gilbert's mother's birth. It had the same almost musical cadence to it.
"Shan tao, tanake windiru Marci," the construct said. "Then, shaking the chains keeping it bound, she added, "Santuki sha no vinichiwa kanusuke."
"Maybe we should get Aithanar up here," suggested Binkadink with a wry smile on his face. "That sounds like the nonsense he was spouting after he hit his head."
A sudden shift in the building changed the mood all of a sudden. "Let's get out of here," said Gilbert. "Bink: you break chains?"
"I'll give it a shot," he said, shrinking down the length of the shaft of his glaive so he could wield it in the confined space of a closet. After several attempts, he managed to cut through the chains.
"We out of here," announced Gilbert, turning to head back down the stairs. Binkadink followed, and with some prompting the metal woman followed. The three hadn't been out of the building for more than a minute before one side of the house collapsed inward, taking the middle section with it. Before long, it was a featureless pile of timber in a clearing in the Vesve Forest.
"Who's your friend?" asked Darrien, eyeing the female construct.
"Not sure yet," replied Gilbert. "But I find out." He cast a comprehend languages spell upon himself and then turned to the construct, who was busy shooting her red light at each of the heroes in turn. He put a hand on her left shoulder and spun her around to face him. In doing so, he brushed some of the dirt off her armor, revealing a few letters at the top of her left breast. "Please excuse," he said, brushing off the rest of the dirt, to reveal five clear letters: MARCI."
"Your name Marci?" he asked, and she replied with the same five words she had spoken earlier: "Shan tao, tanake windiru Marci." But although his ears heard the unfamiliar words, his spell-enhanced brain translated them perfectly: "Hello, my name is Marci."
"Her name Marci," he explained to the others.
"How'd she get out here?" asked Finoula. "And where's she from?" Gilbert repeated the questions, but the spell only allowed her unfamiliar words to be translated to him, not the other way around. He'd need a tongues spell for two-way communication, and he didn't have that at hand. She said nothing further, apparently not seeing the need to communicate with the group.
"I'll betcha anything she's from wildspace," Binkadink hazarded.
"Guys!" interrupted Hagan. "Look at this! Wezhley's found something?" Sure enough, with all the combat and rune-stone shattering and house-collapsing going on in the area, sections of the ground behind the house were in a state of upheaval. Hagan's sharp-eyed weasel familiar had spotted the glint of metal poking up from beneath a chunk of earth; with a little digging, the group unearthed a massive metal trunk. Inside was what must have been Henrietta's long-term treasure: assorted coins and gems likely worth tens of thousands of gold pieces.
"Nice!" observed Malrin, for the first time understanding just why it was these friends of her brothers continued on with the dangers of their adventuring existence.
- - -
I did a few sneaky things with this adventure. First of all, knowing my players would immediately know something was up if I had separate flat tokens for the individual pieces of furniture in Henrietta's study and kitchen, I drew them onto the room tiles like I would normally do - and only once the mimics attacked did I swap out the room tiles with the furniture drawn on with room tiles with no furniture, then put my individual "mimic-as-furniture" tiles and tokens down in the appropriate places. The chairs, sofa, and footstool in the study and the table-and-six-chairs and silverware-cabinet mimics in the dining room were flat tokens, while the stove, tub, stack of cordwood, and bookcase were all stand-up tokens. The ruse worked; nobody suspected a thing until it was too late.
I have a nightwalker D&D Mini so that was easy to represent on our battle-mat, but for the wood colossus I didn't have anything at all appropriate, so I had made a scale model of the wood colossus from one of the Pathfinder Bestiaries using colored cardstock paper and construction paper. I had it hiding in a box in the room next door to my man-cave so the players wouldn't see it (or wonder what was in the box) until the time was right for the wood colossus to make an appearance.
And as far as the wood colossus goes, I scaled it back a bit from the Pathfinder version, stripping away the mythic power stuff and its aura of selective anti-magic; we don't play with the mythic rules in the first place and I wanted to allow Hagan - and his penchant for destructive spells - a chance to shine by being able to cut loose an something that would take extra damage from fire. I probably scaled it back a little too much, considering they destroyed it fairly easily (at least when compared to the nightwalker); as it was, it took many hours longer to build the thing than I got any use out of it. (But not to worry: the group's already decided when I design the next campaign when this one finished up in a year and a half or so, the next party should have a wood colossus as a mobile headquarters, so we may just get some more use out of it yet.)
Finally, we usually have music playing in the background when we play, and more times than not it's several hour-long programs of "Music from the Hearts of Space," preferably of an appropriate theme to whatever's going on in the adventure. This time, I deliberately didn't play any music to begin with until the wagon turned the corner and the PCs saw what they were up against in their first fight; then I started my first music selection: the "Help!" album by the Beatles. It's not every day I get an opportunity for a joke that works on two separate levels like that!
- - -
T-Shirt Worn: I didn't have anything particularly appropriate, so I went with a red Iron Man T-shirt to somewhat represent MARCI, a metallic construct with a general humanoid build.
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