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The Kordovian Adventurers Guild
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6895896" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 21: THE EVIL EYE</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Darrien, half-elf ranger 7</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Caliandra, human sorcerer 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Kizzie Birdsong, halfling bard 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Quincy "Jorg" Battleborn, half-orc fighter 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thomas the Seeker, human monk 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Vance Pelorian, human cleric 6 (Pelor)</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 2 July 2016</p><p></p><p>This game session was a bit different, as shown by the PC/NPC rosters above. Due to Darrien having been slain by the band of ogres in "Ogre Eight" and subsequently returned to life via a <em>raise dead </em> spell, he was lagging one level below the rest of the party. (So was Ingebold, for a similar reason, but as she was the party NPC and "backup PC," I wasn't quite as concerned about her.) So the only reason this adventure came about was I wanted an opportunity for Darrien to catch up to the rest of the group on the XP front. I didn't even bother calculating the XP for this session, just hand-waving it that Darrien would end up with the exact XP count as the rest of the PCs at the end of this adventure, so when they next level up they'll all do so. (Again, Ingebold leveling up separately wasn't really an issue, as I generally level her up myself and can easily do so at home between gaming sessions.)</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Darrien was alone, several miles deep into the Vesve Forest. He'd been patiently tracking a deer and the past few hours of silent work was about to finally pay off. The buck stood in a clearing, looking around but failing to notice the half-elf ranger. Darrien pulled back on the <em>Arachnibow</em>, lining up his shot...</p><p></p><p>...And then the deer panicked at the sound of terrified screaming coming from the south, accompanied by the noise of rapid footfalls tearing through the forest undergrowth. Darrien lowered his bow, his shot – and the prospects of venison for dinner – ruined, and turned to see what the commotion was all about.</p><p></p><p>Tearing through the underbrush came a half-orc in shiny, half-plate armor, a look of total panic in his face. Right behind him raced a scantily-clad human woman with long, dark hair, her face also showing an expression of abject horror. Behind them trailed three figures: a male human in brown robes, effortlessly carrying under his arm a halfling woman wearing a long skirt, with a bluish lizard bringing up the rear. Assuming the lizard was chasing the group of four, Darrien raised his bow and aimed at the trailing reptile.</p><p></p><p>"Don't shoot!" cried the halfling woman as path of the man carrying her veered over by Darrien. "That's <strong>Zapper</strong> -- he's with us!"</p><p></p><p>Once again, Darrien lowered his bow without having gotten off a shot. By then, the armored half-orc and the barely-dressed woman had slowed down, and the brown-robed man followed suit, placing the halfling gently on the ground on her own two feet.</p><p></p><p>"Are you two all right now?" asked the man in the brown robes, lowering his hood. Darrien could see his head was shaved completely bald.</p><p></p><p>"What the--?" sputtered the half-orc. "Why'd we run like that? And <em>where's my greatsword?</em>"</p><p></p><p>"You dropped it in your haste to flee," responded the dark-haired woman. "And we ran because we were under the effects of a <em>fear</em> spell. That damned beholder got both of us, after turning <strong>Vance</strong> to stone."</p><p></p><p>"Beholder?" asked Darrien, looking around. "Near here?"</p><p></p><p>"About half a mile or so back that way," responded the bald man. He extended his hand to Darrien. "I am <strong>Thomas the Seeker</strong>," he said by way of introduction.</p><p></p><p>"Darrien," replied the half-elf, shaking the monk's hand.</p><p></p><p>"'Darrien?'" asked the half-orc. "I thought you looked familiar. You was at Bunnihilde's party, wasn't you?"</p><p></p><p>"Uh, yes, I was," Darrien admitted. "I take it you were there too?"</p><p></p><p>"Yeah. Up until recently, I was one of Bunnihilde's bodyguards. Now I'm the leader of Lord Cavelthorne's adventuring band. M'name's <strong>Jorg</strong>."</p><p></p><p>"Lord Cavelthorne wants you to use the name '<strong>Quincy Battleborn</strong>,'" pointed out the tall woman, smoothing out the silk of her skin-tight dress and causing Darrien to stare in obvious approval as she did so. The blue-skinned lizard walked over to her and rubbed up against her ankle.</p><p></p><p>"'Jorg' is short for 'Quincy'," argued Jorg.</p><p></p><p>"So you claim. In any case, Darrien, my name is <strong>Caliandra</strong>, and this is Zapper, my familiar. And this," she said, indicating the little halfling, "is <strong>Kizzie Birdsong</strong>."</p><p></p><p>"Very pleased to meet you," replied Kizzie, looking up at Darrien in undisguised awe. "We have all heard very much about you and your band; in fact, Lord Cavelthorne decided to fund our little team here based on the success Kordovia was having with theirs."</p><p></p><p>"We should consider going back to face the beholder," suggested Thomas. "There's no telling what he might do to Vance if we don't get back to him in time."</p><p></p><p>"Yeah -- and I wanna get my greatsword back."</p><p></p><p>"Darrien," asked Kizzie, "Would you consider coming with us? We could certainly use the assistance, if you're willing. Cali has a vial of <em>stone salve</em> that can restore our petrified cleric, and now that we know that we'll be up against a beholder we can take precautions. He kind of took us by surprise, popping out from behind a tree like he did."</p><p></p><p>"I'd-- uh, sure, I'll help," answered Darrien, forcing his gaze away from Caliandra's low-cut dress. "What's the plan?"</p><p></p><p>"I think invisibility's the way to go," replied Caliandra. "Between Kizzie and me, we can cast enough spells to cover all five of us. Hopefully, that should allow us to get close enough to the beholder without it seeing us."</p><p></p><p>"Just remember to stay away from its central eye," suggested Thomas. "If you fall into its arc, you'll become visible again in an instant. And likewise, the spells will hold only until you first attack a foe." And then he vanished into apparent nothingness, Kizzie having cast the first of the <em>invisibility</em> spells upon the wandering monk.</p><p></p><p>Caliandra faced the half-orc. "Are you ready, Quincy?" she asked.</p><p></p><p>"Wait!" Jorg answered. "Hey, Darrien, you got a sword I can borrow?"</p><p></p><p>Darrien unbuckled his weapon belt and passed it over to the half-orc fighter. "Just this scimitar," he replied.</p><p></p><p>"That'll do," said Jorg, buckling it on and pulling the gleaming weapon out of its scabbard. "Okay, now I'm ready," he said to Caliandra. "And it's 'Jorg,'" he belatedly corrected her.</p><p></p><p>Once everybody was invisible, Darrien took the lead, suggesting the others stay back a bit from him - he didn't want Jorg's clanking armor to alert the beholder of intruders. Following the trail they had left was child's play; apparently nobody in Lord Cavelthorne's band had any ranger training. Darrien had no trouble finding the spot where the group had encountered the beholder, for it was marked by Jorg's shining greatsword lying abandoned in the dirt. However, there were no signs of either the beholder or the cleric it had petrified.</p><p></p><p>"C'mere, you!" said Jorg's disembodied voice as the greatsword lifted up off the ground. "Here's your scimitar back, Darrien." The half-elf and the half-orc waved their arms around, neither being able to see the other, until their hands collided and Darrien felt the leather of his scabbard pressed into his palm. It popped into full visibility once it left the half-orc's hand. Putting the belt on and buckling it around his waist, Darrien was surprised that once on it remained visible - as did Jorg's held greatsword.</p><p></p><p>"You two are going to blend in just perfectly," remarked Caliandra. "That beholder will never see you coming."</p><p></p><p>"So where's Vance? An' where is that blasted beholder?" snarled Jorg.</p><p></p><p>"Look here," said Darrien, pointing at a set of scrape marks in the dirt by a half-buried boulder, and then realizing nobody could see where he was pointing. "There, by the boulder," he articulated. "It looks like the stone was dragged to the side and then something else heavy was dragged over to it. Give me a hand lifting the boulder, will you?"</p><p></p><p>The group all approached the boulder, inevitably bumping into each other in doing so, as again, nobody could see anything other than Jorg and Darrien's general positions due to their floating blades. Once everyone was positioned around the boulder, they lifted it up - it ended up being a relatively flat slab of stone, not the upper part of a round boulder after all - and carried it off to the side. Hidden beneath it was a tunnel drilling straight down into the ground. "I'd bet anything your friend's down there," Darrien remarked.</p><p></p><p>Jorg peered over the head of the shaft, using his inherent darkvision to see how far down it went. "Quite a fall," he declared. Caliandra took the time before the descent to cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon herself and Zapper, while Kizzie and Thomas downed potions - she drank a <em>potion of spider climb</em> and he quaffed a <em>potion of darkvision</em>.</p><p></p><p>"So, who's got rope?" Darrien asked the group at large. Surprisingly, for a group of four professional adventurers, nobody had any rope on them. "You guys don't do a whole lot of underground explorations, do you?" Darrien asked, as he pulled out his own 50-foot length of sturdy rope.</p><p></p><p>"As a habit, no," replied Caliandra. "Most of our encounters have been above ground." Darrien tied one end of his rope to a sturdy tree limb - a process made immeasurably more difficult by not being able to see what he was doing, until he wised up and dropped the rope completely, allowing it to return to its visible state, before picking it back up and tying it off.</p><p></p><p>"Anything worth seeing down there, Jorg?" the ranger asked.</p><p></p><p>"Nah. It goes down for about 30 feet or so, then it widens out for a bit, then goes back to this size for another 30 feet or so."</p><p></p><p>"This may help," said Kizzie, sending a <em>dancing lights</em> spell down the shaft to hover in the center of the wider section. Darrien peered over the edge, saw nothing approaching, and apprised the group of his intentions. "This rope won't go all the way down to the bottom," he said. "So I've tied the end around my waist, and I'll go down as far as I can go. I have a way to make more rope once I get down that far."</p><p></p><p>"You do? Interesting," commented Thomas.</p><p></p><p>Lowering himself down the shaft, Darrien kept his feet against the wall and both hands on the rope. Jorg's estimates were pretty accurate; the vertical shaft from the surface was about 30 feet deep before opening into a spherical chamber with a 40-foot diameter - Darrien entered this chamber via the hole in its ceiling and dangled just above the "equator" when he ran out of rope. He could see four side tunnels spaced equidistant around the equator, and a fifth tunnel directly below him, continuing on for some distance. In addition, there were four other tunnel openings about halfway down between the equator and the lowest opening; these were centered diagonally between the four tunnels along the equator.</p><p></p><p>The half-elf climbed back up a couple of feet, tied himself off in this new position, and then pulled out his <em>Arachnibow</em>. He aimed for just above one of the four equator tunnels and let fly with an arrow, having it convert to a strand of spider silk as it hit its target. Holding on to the silk line, he untied himself from the end of the rope - and jumped. He landed hard on the lower curve of the bottom hemisphere of the chamber, but kept his hand gripped on the line to prevent himself from sliding all the way to the tunnel entrance at its bottom center.</p><p></p><p>"Next guy, come on down!" he called up to the others. "And let me know when you get to the end of the rope!" In the meantime, he rummaged through his invisible backpack until he found an invisible metal piton by touch, and tied the end of the silk rope to its middle, again letting go of both so he could actually see what he was doing. <em>This invisibility stuff makes life difficult!</em> he thought to himself.</p><p></p><p>"I'm in position!" Thomas called from the end of the rope. "What do you want me to do?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm going to throw this piton up to you!" Darrien replied. "If you can catch it, tie the end of the silk rope to the end of your rope, and then you can all climb straight over to one of the tunnels!" It took some doing, but Thomas eventually got the two lines tied together, and then Jorg climbed down, followed by Caliandra (with Zapper perched on her back).</p><p></p><p>"Who does that leave? Kizzie?" called up Darrien.</p><p></p><p>"I'm right here, beside you," said the halfling.</p><p></p><p>"What? How'd you get down here?"</p><p></p><p>"I drank a <em>potion of spider climb</em> and walked down."</p><p></p><p>"Hmmm. Just out of curiosity, it didn't have spider legs in it when you drank it down by any chance, did it?"</p><p></p><p>"Ew! I should say not! Why ever do you ask?"</p><p></p><p>"No reason," muttered Darrien.</p><p></p><p>With everybody finally in the central cavern, standing carefully around the 10-foot-diameter hole at the bottom to prevent them from falling in, it made sense for Kizzie to go exploring. "I'll just pick a tunnel, go peek, and report back," she promised. She had her <em>dancing lights</em> spell travel along with her, providing illumination.</p><p></p><p>Kizzie decided to try the lower tunnels first, as they would be the easiest for the others to gain access to. However, the first tunnel sloped down at a 45-degree angle, swerved off to the right, and ended up in a smaller, spherical room, this one about 20 feet in diameter. It was covered in sheets of thick webbing, and the halfling thought she saw the shadow of a spider about her size traversing one of the webs. Deciding there was no way Vance would be in there, she retreated back to the others and reported her findings.</p><p></p><p>The next tunnel she tried also veered downwards before opening up into a 20-foot-wide spherical chamber. This one was occupied by a pair of strange-looking creatures. Each had a snakelike build, with a head containing a parrotlike beak flanked by four tentacles. Kizzie had heard of these creatures - they were called gricks. But she didn't recall them having a fifth tentacle at the top of their heads, ending in an eyeball. These two did, though, and they had some way of detecting her presence as well, for each one shot a ray out of its eyeball. Fortunately for the little halfling neither ray hit its mark, but they were both too close for comfort. "Guys? Help!" she called.</p><p></p><p>Caliandra was the closest to the tunnel Kizzie had gone down and thus was the first to respond. Hiking up her dress, she ran up the curved section of the hollow sphere's exterior, grabbing at the bottom of the tunnel with both hands and pulling herself up. Zapper, being a shocker lizard and better suited for climbing, had an easier time of it. They each reached the top of the tunnel at the same time, and then the sorceress let herself slide down the winding shaft as her familiar ran alongside her. Caliandra managed to steer herself between the two gricks, and fearing to attack them this early and thus make herself visible, she opted instead to cast a <em>shield</em> spell on herself.</p><p></p><p>Zapper had no such hesitation; he blasted the closest grick with an electrical charge, ending the duration of his <em>invisibility</em> spell in the process. Kizzie, in the meantime, followed Caliandra's lead and found a way to be helpful without attacking directly; she started singing an inspiring tune to aid her friends' attacks.</p><p></p><p>Jorg was the next to slide down the tunnel shaft, and unable to see his two invisible female companions, plowed straight into Caliandra, sending her sprawling across the room. Back up at the central chamber, both Thomas and Darrien initially failed to make it far enough up the sloping wall to pull themselves up to the tunnel, but the ranger made it on his second try. Unfortunately, his path was identical to that of Jorg, and he went crashing into the invisible half-orc, sending him prone. But that only got the fighter's dander up; rising up to a standing position, he sent his magical greatsword crashing down into the grick at his left, nearly cleaving it in half with one stroke. Then, in a practiced maneuver, he swung around and sent his blade slamming down into the other grick's body, cleanly severing it in half. Writhing half-gricks flopped around the room spewing blood, and Jorg stood - now fully visible - grinning down at his handiwork. "Now <em>that's</em> what I'm talking about!" he said.</p><p></p><p>"Thanks, guys!" said Kizzie. "I'm going to go try out another tunnel." Jorg gave the grick chamber a quick once-over, at first seeing nothing but small rocks and pebbles - but then noticing that a trio of the rocks was actually leathery eggs. He took great satisfaction in smashing them each underneath his boot heels.</p><p></p><p>The next tunnel at the same elevation turned out to lead to a chamber filled with a pile of rotting animal parts. Kizzie gave it a quick once-over with a hand over her nose to block out the stench, when a slight movement caught her eye. Amidst the carrion and rotting meat, an eyestalk popped up, followed by the head of what looked like a giant caterpillar - only one with eight writhing tentacles ringing its mouthparts. Recalling how the gricks-with-eyestalks were able to sense her presence, Kizzie opted to immediately exit back the way she had come.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, back in the grick room, the other adventurers were trying to do just that, but the slope of the tunnel was just too steep. They managed to figure out that by shifting their sideways direction back and forth they could use gravity to their advantage in the curved tunnel to get a boost of speed, but it was still tough going. Finally, in frustration, Darrien shot another arrow up to the top of the tunnel, having it turn into spider silk that allowed Jorg, Caliandra, and himself to climb back up to the central chamber, with an invisible Kizzie and an invisible Thomas. (Zapper didn't need the silk strand and looked down pityingly at the struggling humanoids as he passed them climbing effortlessly up the tunnel.)</p><p></p><p>When they did get back, though, they saw the carrion crawler exit its own tunnel shaft. "Look out!" called Darrien. Thomas spun around and instinctively punched out at the wriggling beast, turning himself visible as he did so. Darrien shot at it with his magical bow, likewise returning to visibility. Kizzie began singing again, encouraging the efforts of the monk and the ranger, and together, they got the monster on the ropes before it could hit anyone with its paralytic tentacles or its grafted-on eyestalk. But it was a well-targeted <em>magic missile</em> spell from Caliandra that finally slew the beast.</p><p></p><p>"Well, that's all of us but you visible now, Kizzie," remarked the sorceress. "So much for us being able to sneak up on the beholder."</p><p></p><p>"What's the deal with all of the eyestalks on these beasts?" asked Jorg. "Did somebody carve up our beholder and hand out the pieces?"</p><p></p><p>"Whatever process was used, it wouldn't have happened that fast," replied Caliandra. "When we first encountered the beholder, it had all of its eyestalks in place. One would assume it's been grafting eyestalks from others of its kind onto these...guard-beasts, I presume."</p><p></p><p>"Unless it has a means of regeneration," pointed out Darrien. "Then it could be using its own eyestalks, and allowing them to grow back."</p><p></p><p>"That...is disgusting," decided Caliandra. "But also a distinct possibility." The half-elf beamed at the implied praise at his deductions; he found himself wanting the shapely sorceress to think highly of him.</p><p></p><p>While this discussion was going on, Kizzie was checking out the fourth and final of the lower tunnels. It arced downward for a bit before leveling out, and as the halfling turned a corner and the inevitable 20-foot-diameter spherical chamber came into view, so did a hideous creature with a large, central eye, an open mouth filled with sharp teeth, and numerous eyestalks growing out from its spherical body. Kizzie stifled a shriek of terror at the sight of the beholder, but then realized it wasn't moving at all. Daring to step closer, she discovered to her immense relief that it was simply a carving, a three-dimensional projection from the far wall. She also noticed that it seemed to have more than the usual amount of eyestalks, but Kizzie didn't stop to figure out why - Vance wasn't in this room, and neither was its beholder captor, and that was all that mattered. She returned to the others and described what she had seen.</p><p></p><p>"We'll have to focus on the higher-level tunnels, then," reasoned Thomas. "I'll try this one." With that, he raced up as high as he could along the curved wall, then spun around, raced back down the way he had come - making sure to skirt around the pit in the floor - and up even higher on the opposite side of the chamber. He pulled himself up to the tunnel's level, gave the group a thumbs up, and cautiously explored the horizontal shaft, his potion-granted darkvision allowing him to see perfectly fine in the blackness of the winding corridor.</p><p></p><p>About this time, Kizzie's <em>dancing lights</em> spell expired. She gave a little shriek of surprise and Darrien called out for nobody to move - they were standing around a 10-foot diameter hole in the floor and he didn't want anyone to fall in. Feeling around in his backpack, he pulled out and activated a sunrod. "That's better," he said, passing it to the halfling before activating a second one for himself.</p><p></p><p>"I'm not gonna be able to run up that far like Thomas did," admitted Jorg. "Not in this armor."</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, me neither," agreed Darrien. "But this'll help." And he shot three more arrows, sending silk strands up to the other three upper tunnels. Jorg took one, Kizzie another, and Caliandra a third, with Zapper climbing up on her back as she pulled herself up the silken cord. Darrien spent almost no time at all in deciding which tunnel he'd explore, following Caliandra up the rope to the west.</p><p></p><p>Jorg pulled himself up into the southern tunnel and was pleased to see that while it veered off to the left, it remained level. Furthermore, the tunnel ended in the typical 20-foot-diameter spheroid, but this one had a floor level with the rest of the tunnel. But while Jorg tightened his grip on his weapon in anticipation of a potential fight with a beholder, when he reached the room he found it filled with statues of animals: a deer, a bear, a turtle, a rabbit, and even a racing snake.</p><p></p><p>"Hmmph," he snorted and turned to leave, but a bit of motion caught his eye - up near the ceiling, there was a bobbing form, like that of a balloon. Stepping further into the room, he saw a beholder from an unusual angle: directly below it. With a grin on his face, he swung his greatsword up into an arc, slicing into the eye tyrant's spheroid form. "This's for Vance!" he called as his blade bit deep.</p><p></p><p>The beholder roared in pain and swung around to face its enemy. "Who's there?" it demanded. "Who attacks <strong>Jvirniqqa the Maimed</strong>?"</p><p></p><p>Jorg's mouth opened in surprise. The beholder he faced had a gaping hole where its central eye had once been, and each of its ten eyestalks was nothing more than a severed stub. Apparently the fighter had found the source of the beholder eyestalks that had been grafted onto the gricks and the carrion crawler - and perhaps the spider as well. "You're not the beholder who turned Vance to stone," he said.</p><p></p><p>"No, I am not," agreed Jvirniqqa. "The one you seek is an Evil Eye, an abomination that must be slain, for it is a mutant deviating from the perfect image of the Great Mother. I will help you slay it, and then you can lead me out of his lair. Agreed?"</p><p></p><p>Jorg actually thought about it for a moment, then gave his answer with a two-handed slash with his greatsword, which carved another gash in the side of the maimed eye tyrant - or eyeless tyrant, as the case might be. Jvirniqqa roared again in pain and frustration and tried dropping down to Jorg's level, the better to bite his head off, but the half-orc fighter easily avoided the blind monster's fumbling bites. He gave it another deep gash, then realized he was wasting his time and turned to leave. Jvirniqqa tried following him, teeth gnashing and eyestalk stumps twitching in helpless futility, but he constantly bumped into the wall and bounced off. Jorg got to the end of the tunnel and climbed back down to the bottom of the central chamber, then started climbing up the way Caliandra had gone.</p><p></p><p>In the meantime, Kizzie had come to the end of the eastern tunnel. It was much shorter than the others, reaching a mere 10 feet or so before angling straight down. The spheroid chamber at the end of it was filled with water up to its equator. Standing on the side of the tunnel, Kizzie squinted to see through the water without actually entering it, and finally tossed in the sunrod Darrien had given her. It splooshed into the water, causing no creatures to fly out of the pool, and the water was clear enough for the halfling to see to the bottom once the sunrod had fully submerged. Chocking it up to a source of drinking water for the denizens of the underground network - which, Kizzie suddenly realized, consisted of creatures capable either of levitation, like the beholder, or climbing vertical surfaces like she was currently doing, and thus would have no problems lowering themselves down for a drink - she cast an <em>unseen servant</em> spell to retrieve the sunrod from the bottom of the pool.</p><p></p><p>Thomas was exiting his tunnel as Kizzie headed over to the tunnel Caliandra and Darrien had entered. "Anything?" she called.</p><p></p><p>"An empty chamber," the monk replied. "Possibly a beholder bedroom, for all I could tell. But no beholder."</p><p></p><p>"Then it's either in the western chamber, or the tunnel leading directly below us," reasoned the halfling.</p><p></p><p>"Let's catch up with the others, just in case."</p><p></p><p>The western tunnel, like most of the others spreading out from the central chamber's equator, remained level, although it did take a hard turn to the right halfway down its length. Caliandra opted to send Zapper down the corridor as a spy, thinking he'd have a better chance of remaining unseen by the beholder if it was in the chamber beyond. The brave little shocker lizard crawled forward slowly on its belly, scootching up silently to the spheroid at the end of the tunnel. Before he got to the end, though, he got a good idea of what was stored here: humanoid statues. He could make out a gnoll, an elven archer - and there, in the front, was the petrified form of Vance Pelorian, shield held before him and mace at the ready. "I found him, Mistress!" he called back to Caliandra in the private language they shared.</p><p></p><p>"Finally," Caliandra replied, passing the goods news on to Darrien. "We found your friend," Darrien passed on to Jorg, who had approached the half-elf in the meantime. Behind Jorg, Thomas and Kizzie were entering the tunnel as well.</p><p></p><p>And then, without warning, Vance shuffled forward, causing Zapper to retreat in confusion. He looked back at the cleric's form to confirm that he was still petrified, and sure enough, his entire form was still that of solid stone. "He's moving!" Zapper explained to his mistress.</p><p></p><p>"Vance is okay!" Caliandra exclaimed to the others, and as a group they turned the corner, expecting to see a revived Vance, somehow hale and hearty once more. Instead, Vance swung his mace at the nearest target, Thomas, who easily ducked the blow.</p><p></p><p>Thomas wasn't sure what was going on, but his combat training kicked in, and without conscious thought he ducked around Vance's stone form, positioning himself directly behind him so that one of his companions could get into a flanking position. However, in doing so, Thomas saw what hadn't been patently obvious from in front of Vance - there was a beam of light extending back from between the cleric's shoulder blades. Following the beam back to its source with his eyes, Thomas saw a beholder floating up at the top of the ceiling, one of its ten eyestalks aimed directly at the petrified form of Vance Pelorian, connecting the two with a barely-seen ray.</p><p></p><p>"Beholder!" called the monk to the others, as he rushed forward and leapt up to drive the side of his hand into the Evil Eye's underside. He had hoped it might be softer there, but the monk was disappointed in the sheer hardness of its armored form.</p><p></p><p>Jorg rushed up, eager to do battle with a worthy foe, as Darrien notched an arrow to the <em>Arachnibow</em> and let fly. Caliandra pulled the vial of <em>stone salve</em> from her pouch, popped off the top, and scooped its contents up into her fingers. Then, rushing forward and dodging a blow from Vance's mace, she wiped the salve onto the side of his arm. It glowed where it hit, and almost immediately began spreading across his arm, down his torso, and outward in all directions until his entire body glowed with an aura of transformation magic. Then, with a gasp of expelled breath, Vance Pelorian stumbled forward.</p><p></p><p>"Welcome back," Caliandra smiled at him.</p><p></p><p>"It looks like I have the opportunity for several new experiments," said the Evil Eye, a beholder mutant named <strong>Gzornyx</strong>. Addressing Thomas, who was attacking it with a flurry of hand-to-hand blows to little effect, it pondered, "I wonder what you'd look like with an eyestalk growing out of your face?" As it focused its verbal attention on the monk, several of its eyestalks suddenly shot out various-colored rays. The one that had been constantly shooting at Vance's petrified form turned off, then refocused on the gnoll statue, bringing it instantly to a semblance of life. It swung at Thomas with a stone paw, while Darrien was hit with another ray that sapped him of both his strength and dexterity. And while the monk was busy evading the petrified gnoll, he was hit in the back with another eye ray; fortunately, his inherent focus on physical perfection allowed him to shrug off whatever effects it might have brought.</p><p></p><p>Vance spun around, facing the creature that had petrified him what seemed to him like only seconds ago, back up on the surface. Deciding his best contribution to the group effort was a <em>prayer</em> spell, he stepped back out of the field of battle. Kizzie had similar thoughts and burst into a hearty song that bolstered her friends' fighting abilities.</p><p></p><p>Caliandra sent a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell cascading into Gzornyx's body; in immediate retaliation, he sent an eye ray crashing into her that caused her to turn to stone. Zapper flipped out at the apparent death of his mistress, and immediately fled down the tunnel back to the relative safety of the central chamber. In the back of the familiar's mind, though, he wondered how the eye ray - and Cali's spell, for that matter - had managed to work while within the arc of the Evil Eye's central eye. Wasn't a beholder's central eye supposed to negate all magic?</p><p></p><p>Darrien managed to get a small barrage of arrows into the Evil Eye by moving forward as he shot, narrowing the distance each arrow had to fly. Thomas continued his flurry of blows, darting around to strike the creature here with a fist and there with a well-placed kick, but it was Jorg - and his magic greatsword - that felled the vile creature. A deep gash running along its side, the Evil Eye started lowering to the floor of the statue room. The eye ray that had been animating the gnoll statue shut off, and the hyena-man froze in its new position. Gzornyx's final words were muttered in its own language, and thus had no meaning to anyone there in the room with it.</p><p></p><p>"Great, so we got Vance back but lost Cali!" grumbled Jorg. "Now what are we gonna do? We don't have any more of that gunk she used, do we?"</p><p></p><p>They did not. But Darrien offered to fetch a wagon to transport her petrified form to the Temple of Moradin in Kordovia, if they could figure out how to get her out of the underground lair in one piece. Going through their items, Jorg finally realized he had a <em>potion of gaseous form</em>, and that if he hefted Caliandra up into his arms while somebody fed him the potion, she ought to turn to mist along with him. There was some discussion about possibly saving the elf as well, but as he was unknown to the group they had no way of knowing his status; for all they knew, he could be a force of evil better left petrified. (In addition, Jorg was certainly strong, but not strong enough to carry them both at the same time.) Darrien promised to send word of the petrified elf's description to the elves of his small kingdom, and see if he could be identified and rescued.</p><p></p><p>But before the group left, they finished exploring the network, just in case. The bottom shaft led to a fungal garden, fortunately a source of food instead of a den of mobile monsters. The shrine with the carved beholder gave up 20 good-sized gemstones, one at the end of each of its eyestalks - Vance suggested this was likely a representation of the beholder deity, as conceived by the Evil Eye. By mutual agreement, the gemstones were sorted into five shares of four, with Caliandra and Vance splitting one share between them and a full four stones going to each of the other adventurers. Darrien pocketed his share, thinking to himself he'd rather have forgone the treasure and had Caliandra unharmed. But he made sure everybody got up to the surface safely, then hurried off on his own to Battershield Keep, leaving the others to guard their fallen sorceress's form.</p><p></p><p>Hours later, Darrien returned to the group with his teammates' mule cart, pulled by Franco and Tantrum. Caliandra's body was hauled up onto the back, and then Darrien drove it back to Kordovia, the others walking or riding with him. He knew the dwarven clerics would likely be able to restore Caliandra back to her normal flesh and blood (especially once Jorg assured him that Lord Cavelthorne would repay the dwarves the cost of the required spellcasting). During the whole ride back, Darrien thought only of how good it would be to have Caliandra back among the living. To hear her voice again, to see the warm glow of her skin...</p><p></p><p>There was no doubt about it. Darrien was smitten.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>This was a welcome change of pace and an opportunity for the players to get to try out some new races and classes that they hadn't had the opportunity to play before. Vicki has lamented the fact that my well-known hatred of halflings made a halfling PC unlikely (or at least short-lived), so I thought I'd give her the opportunity to run one - and a bard at that, a class she had wondered whether it would be fun to run. (Her verdict: it was okay for a single session but she didn't think she'd have much fun running a full-time bard PC. I concur.) Dan enjoyed the relative simplicity - and high damage potential - of running a half-orc fighter, and Jacob has a newfound appreciation for the monk's good points and bad points. Logan's played sorcerers before (even a female one, in a prior campaign) so that was nothing new, but I wanted to round out the party a bit and I knew he wouldn't mind playing a PC of the opposite gender.</p><p></p><p>I don't envision having to use these NPCs as "stand-in PCs" to catch one of our normal PCs up to the others in the XP department like I did for this adventure, but they're there if we ever need them. And who knows, having a rival adventuring band, even a friendly rival one, can't be a bad thing in a campaign - we may be seeing Lord Cavelthorne's group again sometime in the future.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and after we finished this adventure Joey leveled up Darrien, so now everyone's at 8th level except for Ingebold. Joey opted to spend 2 skill points to have Darrien learn the Draconic language. I asked him to justify how Darrien would have done that, and sure enough, checking the PC sheets Caliandra speaks fluent Draconic. So I figure she was more than happy to teach him the basics in a "crash course" between this adventure and the one that follows, which I had already decided would take place a week or more later in game time. Darrien having rescued her petrified form from a beholder's lair and getting her restored to flesh and blood, I'm sure she saw it as a well-deserved reward. (And I'm sure Darrien enjoyed the one-on-one time learning the basics of Draconic from her.)</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: A light blue Red Cross T-shirt I received recently when donating blood. I figured it was a good way to represent the "new blood" of Lord Cavelthorne's band of adventurers.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6895896, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 21: THE EVIL EYE[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Darrien, half-elf ranger 7[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Caliandra, human sorcerer 6 Kizzie Birdsong, halfling bard 6 Quincy "Jorg" Battleborn, half-orc fighter 6 Thomas the Seeker, human monk 6 Vance Pelorian, human cleric 6 (Pelor)[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 2 July 2016 This game session was a bit different, as shown by the PC/NPC rosters above. Due to Darrien having been slain by the band of ogres in "Ogre Eight" and subsequently returned to life via a [i]raise dead [/i] spell, he was lagging one level below the rest of the party. (So was Ingebold, for a similar reason, but as she was the party NPC and "backup PC," I wasn't quite as concerned about her.) So the only reason this adventure came about was I wanted an opportunity for Darrien to catch up to the rest of the group on the XP front. I didn't even bother calculating the XP for this session, just hand-waving it that Darrien would end up with the exact XP count as the rest of the PCs at the end of this adventure, so when they next level up they'll all do so. (Again, Ingebold leveling up separately wasn't really an issue, as I generally level her up myself and can easily do so at home between gaming sessions.) - - - Darrien was alone, several miles deep into the Vesve Forest. He'd been patiently tracking a deer and the past few hours of silent work was about to finally pay off. The buck stood in a clearing, looking around but failing to notice the half-elf ranger. Darrien pulled back on the [i]Arachnibow[/i], lining up his shot... ...And then the deer panicked at the sound of terrified screaming coming from the south, accompanied by the noise of rapid footfalls tearing through the forest undergrowth. Darrien lowered his bow, his shot – and the prospects of venison for dinner – ruined, and turned to see what the commotion was all about. Tearing through the underbrush came a half-orc in shiny, half-plate armor, a look of total panic in his face. Right behind him raced a scantily-clad human woman with long, dark hair, her face also showing an expression of abject horror. Behind them trailed three figures: a male human in brown robes, effortlessly carrying under his arm a halfling woman wearing a long skirt, with a bluish lizard bringing up the rear. Assuming the lizard was chasing the group of four, Darrien raised his bow and aimed at the trailing reptile. "Don't shoot!" cried the halfling woman as path of the man carrying her veered over by Darrien. "That's [b]Zapper[/b] -- he's with us!" Once again, Darrien lowered his bow without having gotten off a shot. By then, the armored half-orc and the barely-dressed woman had slowed down, and the brown-robed man followed suit, placing the halfling gently on the ground on her own two feet. "Are you two all right now?" asked the man in the brown robes, lowering his hood. Darrien could see his head was shaved completely bald. "What the--?" sputtered the half-orc. "Why'd we run like that? And [i]where's my greatsword?[/i]" "You dropped it in your haste to flee," responded the dark-haired woman. "And we ran because we were under the effects of a [i]fear[/i] spell. That damned beholder got both of us, after turning [b]Vance[/b] to stone." "Beholder?" asked Darrien, looking around. "Near here?" "About half a mile or so back that way," responded the bald man. He extended his hand to Darrien. "I am [b]Thomas the Seeker[/b]," he said by way of introduction. "Darrien," replied the half-elf, shaking the monk's hand. "'Darrien?'" asked the half-orc. "I thought you looked familiar. You was at Bunnihilde's party, wasn't you?" "Uh, yes, I was," Darrien admitted. "I take it you were there too?" "Yeah. Up until recently, I was one of Bunnihilde's bodyguards. Now I'm the leader of Lord Cavelthorne's adventuring band. M'name's [b]Jorg[/b]." "Lord Cavelthorne wants you to use the name '[b]Quincy Battleborn[/b],'" pointed out the tall woman, smoothing out the silk of her skin-tight dress and causing Darrien to stare in obvious approval as she did so. The blue-skinned lizard walked over to her and rubbed up against her ankle. "'Jorg' is short for 'Quincy'," argued Jorg. "So you claim. In any case, Darrien, my name is [b]Caliandra[/b], and this is Zapper, my familiar. And this," she said, indicating the little halfling, "is [b]Kizzie Birdsong[/b]." "Very pleased to meet you," replied Kizzie, looking up at Darrien in undisguised awe. "We have all heard very much about you and your band; in fact, Lord Cavelthorne decided to fund our little team here based on the success Kordovia was having with theirs." "We should consider going back to face the beholder," suggested Thomas. "There's no telling what he might do to Vance if we don't get back to him in time." "Yeah -- and I wanna get my greatsword back." "Darrien," asked Kizzie, "Would you consider coming with us? We could certainly use the assistance, if you're willing. Cali has a vial of [i]stone salve[/i] that can restore our petrified cleric, and now that we know that we'll be up against a beholder we can take precautions. He kind of took us by surprise, popping out from behind a tree like he did." "I'd-- uh, sure, I'll help," answered Darrien, forcing his gaze away from Caliandra's low-cut dress. "What's the plan?" "I think invisibility's the way to go," replied Caliandra. "Between Kizzie and me, we can cast enough spells to cover all five of us. Hopefully, that should allow us to get close enough to the beholder without it seeing us." "Just remember to stay away from its central eye," suggested Thomas. "If you fall into its arc, you'll become visible again in an instant. And likewise, the spells will hold only until you first attack a foe." And then he vanished into apparent nothingness, Kizzie having cast the first of the [i]invisibility[/i] spells upon the wandering monk. Caliandra faced the half-orc. "Are you ready, Quincy?" she asked. "Wait!" Jorg answered. "Hey, Darrien, you got a sword I can borrow?" Darrien unbuckled his weapon belt and passed it over to the half-orc fighter. "Just this scimitar," he replied. "That'll do," said Jorg, buckling it on and pulling the gleaming weapon out of its scabbard. "Okay, now I'm ready," he said to Caliandra. "And it's 'Jorg,'" he belatedly corrected her. Once everybody was invisible, Darrien took the lead, suggesting the others stay back a bit from him - he didn't want Jorg's clanking armor to alert the beholder of intruders. Following the trail they had left was child's play; apparently nobody in Lord Cavelthorne's band had any ranger training. Darrien had no trouble finding the spot where the group had encountered the beholder, for it was marked by Jorg's shining greatsword lying abandoned in the dirt. However, there were no signs of either the beholder or the cleric it had petrified. "C'mere, you!" said Jorg's disembodied voice as the greatsword lifted up off the ground. "Here's your scimitar back, Darrien." The half-elf and the half-orc waved their arms around, neither being able to see the other, until their hands collided and Darrien felt the leather of his scabbard pressed into his palm. It popped into full visibility once it left the half-orc's hand. Putting the belt on and buckling it around his waist, Darrien was surprised that once on it remained visible - as did Jorg's held greatsword. "You two are going to blend in just perfectly," remarked Caliandra. "That beholder will never see you coming." "So where's Vance? An' where is that blasted beholder?" snarled Jorg. "Look here," said Darrien, pointing at a set of scrape marks in the dirt by a half-buried boulder, and then realizing nobody could see where he was pointing. "There, by the boulder," he articulated. "It looks like the stone was dragged to the side and then something else heavy was dragged over to it. Give me a hand lifting the boulder, will you?" The group all approached the boulder, inevitably bumping into each other in doing so, as again, nobody could see anything other than Jorg and Darrien's general positions due to their floating blades. Once everyone was positioned around the boulder, they lifted it up - it ended up being a relatively flat slab of stone, not the upper part of a round boulder after all - and carried it off to the side. Hidden beneath it was a tunnel drilling straight down into the ground. "I'd bet anything your friend's down there," Darrien remarked. Jorg peered over the head of the shaft, using his inherent darkvision to see how far down it went. "Quite a fall," he declared. Caliandra took the time before the descent to cast a [i]mage armor[/i] spell upon herself and Zapper, while Kizzie and Thomas downed potions - she drank a [i]potion of spider climb[/i] and he quaffed a [i]potion of darkvision[/i]. "So, who's got rope?" Darrien asked the group at large. Surprisingly, for a group of four professional adventurers, nobody had any rope on them. "You guys don't do a whole lot of underground explorations, do you?" Darrien asked, as he pulled out his own 50-foot length of sturdy rope. "As a habit, no," replied Caliandra. "Most of our encounters have been above ground." Darrien tied one end of his rope to a sturdy tree limb - a process made immeasurably more difficult by not being able to see what he was doing, until he wised up and dropped the rope completely, allowing it to return to its visible state, before picking it back up and tying it off. "Anything worth seeing down there, Jorg?" the ranger asked. "Nah. It goes down for about 30 feet or so, then it widens out for a bit, then goes back to this size for another 30 feet or so." "This may help," said Kizzie, sending a [i]dancing lights[/i] spell down the shaft to hover in the center of the wider section. Darrien peered over the edge, saw nothing approaching, and apprised the group of his intentions. "This rope won't go all the way down to the bottom," he said. "So I've tied the end around my waist, and I'll go down as far as I can go. I have a way to make more rope once I get down that far." "You do? Interesting," commented Thomas. Lowering himself down the shaft, Darrien kept his feet against the wall and both hands on the rope. Jorg's estimates were pretty accurate; the vertical shaft from the surface was about 30 feet deep before opening into a spherical chamber with a 40-foot diameter - Darrien entered this chamber via the hole in its ceiling and dangled just above the "equator" when he ran out of rope. He could see four side tunnels spaced equidistant around the equator, and a fifth tunnel directly below him, continuing on for some distance. In addition, there were four other tunnel openings about halfway down between the equator and the lowest opening; these were centered diagonally between the four tunnels along the equator. The half-elf climbed back up a couple of feet, tied himself off in this new position, and then pulled out his [i]Arachnibow[/i]. He aimed for just above one of the four equator tunnels and let fly with an arrow, having it convert to a strand of spider silk as it hit its target. Holding on to the silk line, he untied himself from the end of the rope - and jumped. He landed hard on the lower curve of the bottom hemisphere of the chamber, but kept his hand gripped on the line to prevent himself from sliding all the way to the tunnel entrance at its bottom center. "Next guy, come on down!" he called up to the others. "And let me know when you get to the end of the rope!" In the meantime, he rummaged through his invisible backpack until he found an invisible metal piton by touch, and tied the end of the silk rope to its middle, again letting go of both so he could actually see what he was doing. [i]This invisibility stuff makes life difficult![/i] he thought to himself. "I'm in position!" Thomas called from the end of the rope. "What do you want me to do?" "I'm going to throw this piton up to you!" Darrien replied. "If you can catch it, tie the end of the silk rope to the end of your rope, and then you can all climb straight over to one of the tunnels!" It took some doing, but Thomas eventually got the two lines tied together, and then Jorg climbed down, followed by Caliandra (with Zapper perched on her back). "Who does that leave? Kizzie?" called up Darrien. "I'm right here, beside you," said the halfling. "What? How'd you get down here?" "I drank a [i]potion of spider climb[/i] and walked down." "Hmmm. Just out of curiosity, it didn't have spider legs in it when you drank it down by any chance, did it?" "Ew! I should say not! Why ever do you ask?" "No reason," muttered Darrien. With everybody finally in the central cavern, standing carefully around the 10-foot-diameter hole at the bottom to prevent them from falling in, it made sense for Kizzie to go exploring. "I'll just pick a tunnel, go peek, and report back," she promised. She had her [i]dancing lights[/i] spell travel along with her, providing illumination. Kizzie decided to try the lower tunnels first, as they would be the easiest for the others to gain access to. However, the first tunnel sloped down at a 45-degree angle, swerved off to the right, and ended up in a smaller, spherical room, this one about 20 feet in diameter. It was covered in sheets of thick webbing, and the halfling thought she saw the shadow of a spider about her size traversing one of the webs. Deciding there was no way Vance would be in there, she retreated back to the others and reported her findings. The next tunnel she tried also veered downwards before opening up into a 20-foot-wide spherical chamber. This one was occupied by a pair of strange-looking creatures. Each had a snakelike build, with a head containing a parrotlike beak flanked by four tentacles. Kizzie had heard of these creatures - they were called gricks. But she didn't recall them having a fifth tentacle at the top of their heads, ending in an eyeball. These two did, though, and they had some way of detecting her presence as well, for each one shot a ray out of its eyeball. Fortunately for the little halfling neither ray hit its mark, but they were both too close for comfort. "Guys? Help!" she called. Caliandra was the closest to the tunnel Kizzie had gone down and thus was the first to respond. Hiking up her dress, she ran up the curved section of the hollow sphere's exterior, grabbing at the bottom of the tunnel with both hands and pulling herself up. Zapper, being a shocker lizard and better suited for climbing, had an easier time of it. They each reached the top of the tunnel at the same time, and then the sorceress let herself slide down the winding shaft as her familiar ran alongside her. Caliandra managed to steer herself between the two gricks, and fearing to attack them this early and thus make herself visible, she opted instead to cast a [i]shield[/i] spell on herself. Zapper had no such hesitation; he blasted the closest grick with an electrical charge, ending the duration of his [i]invisibility[/i] spell in the process. Kizzie, in the meantime, followed Caliandra's lead and found a way to be helpful without attacking directly; she started singing an inspiring tune to aid her friends' attacks. Jorg was the next to slide down the tunnel shaft, and unable to see his two invisible female companions, plowed straight into Caliandra, sending her sprawling across the room. Back up at the central chamber, both Thomas and Darrien initially failed to make it far enough up the sloping wall to pull themselves up to the tunnel, but the ranger made it on his second try. Unfortunately, his path was identical to that of Jorg, and he went crashing into the invisible half-orc, sending him prone. But that only got the fighter's dander up; rising up to a standing position, he sent his magical greatsword crashing down into the grick at his left, nearly cleaving it in half with one stroke. Then, in a practiced maneuver, he swung around and sent his blade slamming down into the other grick's body, cleanly severing it in half. Writhing half-gricks flopped around the room spewing blood, and Jorg stood - now fully visible - grinning down at his handiwork. "Now [i]that's[/i] what I'm talking about!" he said. "Thanks, guys!" said Kizzie. "I'm going to go try out another tunnel." Jorg gave the grick chamber a quick once-over, at first seeing nothing but small rocks and pebbles - but then noticing that a trio of the rocks was actually leathery eggs. He took great satisfaction in smashing them each underneath his boot heels. The next tunnel at the same elevation turned out to lead to a chamber filled with a pile of rotting animal parts. Kizzie gave it a quick once-over with a hand over her nose to block out the stench, when a slight movement caught her eye. Amidst the carrion and rotting meat, an eyestalk popped up, followed by the head of what looked like a giant caterpillar - only one with eight writhing tentacles ringing its mouthparts. Recalling how the gricks-with-eyestalks were able to sense her presence, Kizzie opted to immediately exit back the way she had come. Meanwhile, back in the grick room, the other adventurers were trying to do just that, but the slope of the tunnel was just too steep. They managed to figure out that by shifting their sideways direction back and forth they could use gravity to their advantage in the curved tunnel to get a boost of speed, but it was still tough going. Finally, in frustration, Darrien shot another arrow up to the top of the tunnel, having it turn into spider silk that allowed Jorg, Caliandra, and himself to climb back up to the central chamber, with an invisible Kizzie and an invisible Thomas. (Zapper didn't need the silk strand and looked down pityingly at the struggling humanoids as he passed them climbing effortlessly up the tunnel.) When they did get back, though, they saw the carrion crawler exit its own tunnel shaft. "Look out!" called Darrien. Thomas spun around and instinctively punched out at the wriggling beast, turning himself visible as he did so. Darrien shot at it with his magical bow, likewise returning to visibility. Kizzie began singing again, encouraging the efforts of the monk and the ranger, and together, they got the monster on the ropes before it could hit anyone with its paralytic tentacles or its grafted-on eyestalk. But it was a well-targeted [i]magic missile[/i] spell from Caliandra that finally slew the beast. "Well, that's all of us but you visible now, Kizzie," remarked the sorceress. "So much for us being able to sneak up on the beholder." "What's the deal with all of the eyestalks on these beasts?" asked Jorg. "Did somebody carve up our beholder and hand out the pieces?" "Whatever process was used, it wouldn't have happened that fast," replied Caliandra. "When we first encountered the beholder, it had all of its eyestalks in place. One would assume it's been grafting eyestalks from others of its kind onto these...guard-beasts, I presume." "Unless it has a means of regeneration," pointed out Darrien. "Then it could be using its own eyestalks, and allowing them to grow back." "That...is disgusting," decided Caliandra. "But also a distinct possibility." The half-elf beamed at the implied praise at his deductions; he found himself wanting the shapely sorceress to think highly of him. While this discussion was going on, Kizzie was checking out the fourth and final of the lower tunnels. It arced downward for a bit before leveling out, and as the halfling turned a corner and the inevitable 20-foot-diameter spherical chamber came into view, so did a hideous creature with a large, central eye, an open mouth filled with sharp teeth, and numerous eyestalks growing out from its spherical body. Kizzie stifled a shriek of terror at the sight of the beholder, but then realized it wasn't moving at all. Daring to step closer, she discovered to her immense relief that it was simply a carving, a three-dimensional projection from the far wall. She also noticed that it seemed to have more than the usual amount of eyestalks, but Kizzie didn't stop to figure out why - Vance wasn't in this room, and neither was its beholder captor, and that was all that mattered. She returned to the others and described what she had seen. "We'll have to focus on the higher-level tunnels, then," reasoned Thomas. "I'll try this one." With that, he raced up as high as he could along the curved wall, then spun around, raced back down the way he had come - making sure to skirt around the pit in the floor - and up even higher on the opposite side of the chamber. He pulled himself up to the tunnel's level, gave the group a thumbs up, and cautiously explored the horizontal shaft, his potion-granted darkvision allowing him to see perfectly fine in the blackness of the winding corridor. About this time, Kizzie's [i]dancing lights[/i] spell expired. She gave a little shriek of surprise and Darrien called out for nobody to move - they were standing around a 10-foot diameter hole in the floor and he didn't want anyone to fall in. Feeling around in his backpack, he pulled out and activated a sunrod. "That's better," he said, passing it to the halfling before activating a second one for himself. "I'm not gonna be able to run up that far like Thomas did," admitted Jorg. "Not in this armor." "Yeah, me neither," agreed Darrien. "But this'll help." And he shot three more arrows, sending silk strands up to the other three upper tunnels. Jorg took one, Kizzie another, and Caliandra a third, with Zapper climbing up on her back as she pulled herself up the silken cord. Darrien spent almost no time at all in deciding which tunnel he'd explore, following Caliandra up the rope to the west. Jorg pulled himself up into the southern tunnel and was pleased to see that while it veered off to the left, it remained level. Furthermore, the tunnel ended in the typical 20-foot-diameter spheroid, but this one had a floor level with the rest of the tunnel. But while Jorg tightened his grip on his weapon in anticipation of a potential fight with a beholder, when he reached the room he found it filled with statues of animals: a deer, a bear, a turtle, a rabbit, and even a racing snake. "Hmmph," he snorted and turned to leave, but a bit of motion caught his eye - up near the ceiling, there was a bobbing form, like that of a balloon. Stepping further into the room, he saw a beholder from an unusual angle: directly below it. With a grin on his face, he swung his greatsword up into an arc, slicing into the eye tyrant's spheroid form. "This's for Vance!" he called as his blade bit deep. The beholder roared in pain and swung around to face its enemy. "Who's there?" it demanded. "Who attacks [b]Jvirniqqa the Maimed[/b]?" Jorg's mouth opened in surprise. The beholder he faced had a gaping hole where its central eye had once been, and each of its ten eyestalks was nothing more than a severed stub. Apparently the fighter had found the source of the beholder eyestalks that had been grafted onto the gricks and the carrion crawler - and perhaps the spider as well. "You're not the beholder who turned Vance to stone," he said. "No, I am not," agreed Jvirniqqa. "The one you seek is an Evil Eye, an abomination that must be slain, for it is a mutant deviating from the perfect image of the Great Mother. I will help you slay it, and then you can lead me out of his lair. Agreed?" Jorg actually thought about it for a moment, then gave his answer with a two-handed slash with his greatsword, which carved another gash in the side of the maimed eye tyrant - or eyeless tyrant, as the case might be. Jvirniqqa roared again in pain and frustration and tried dropping down to Jorg's level, the better to bite his head off, but the half-orc fighter easily avoided the blind monster's fumbling bites. He gave it another deep gash, then realized he was wasting his time and turned to leave. Jvirniqqa tried following him, teeth gnashing and eyestalk stumps twitching in helpless futility, but he constantly bumped into the wall and bounced off. Jorg got to the end of the tunnel and climbed back down to the bottom of the central chamber, then started climbing up the way Caliandra had gone. In the meantime, Kizzie had come to the end of the eastern tunnel. It was much shorter than the others, reaching a mere 10 feet or so before angling straight down. The spheroid chamber at the end of it was filled with water up to its equator. Standing on the side of the tunnel, Kizzie squinted to see through the water without actually entering it, and finally tossed in the sunrod Darrien had given her. It splooshed into the water, causing no creatures to fly out of the pool, and the water was clear enough for the halfling to see to the bottom once the sunrod had fully submerged. Chocking it up to a source of drinking water for the denizens of the underground network - which, Kizzie suddenly realized, consisted of creatures capable either of levitation, like the beholder, or climbing vertical surfaces like she was currently doing, and thus would have no problems lowering themselves down for a drink - she cast an [i]unseen servant[/i] spell to retrieve the sunrod from the bottom of the pool. Thomas was exiting his tunnel as Kizzie headed over to the tunnel Caliandra and Darrien had entered. "Anything?" she called. "An empty chamber," the monk replied. "Possibly a beholder bedroom, for all I could tell. But no beholder." "Then it's either in the western chamber, or the tunnel leading directly below us," reasoned the halfling. "Let's catch up with the others, just in case." The western tunnel, like most of the others spreading out from the central chamber's equator, remained level, although it did take a hard turn to the right halfway down its length. Caliandra opted to send Zapper down the corridor as a spy, thinking he'd have a better chance of remaining unseen by the beholder if it was in the chamber beyond. The brave little shocker lizard crawled forward slowly on its belly, scootching up silently to the spheroid at the end of the tunnel. Before he got to the end, though, he got a good idea of what was stored here: humanoid statues. He could make out a gnoll, an elven archer - and there, in the front, was the petrified form of Vance Pelorian, shield held before him and mace at the ready. "I found him, Mistress!" he called back to Caliandra in the private language they shared. "Finally," Caliandra replied, passing the goods news on to Darrien. "We found your friend," Darrien passed on to Jorg, who had approached the half-elf in the meantime. Behind Jorg, Thomas and Kizzie were entering the tunnel as well. And then, without warning, Vance shuffled forward, causing Zapper to retreat in confusion. He looked back at the cleric's form to confirm that he was still petrified, and sure enough, his entire form was still that of solid stone. "He's moving!" Zapper explained to his mistress. "Vance is okay!" Caliandra exclaimed to the others, and as a group they turned the corner, expecting to see a revived Vance, somehow hale and hearty once more. Instead, Vance swung his mace at the nearest target, Thomas, who easily ducked the blow. Thomas wasn't sure what was going on, but his combat training kicked in, and without conscious thought he ducked around Vance's stone form, positioning himself directly behind him so that one of his companions could get into a flanking position. However, in doing so, Thomas saw what hadn't been patently obvious from in front of Vance - there was a beam of light extending back from between the cleric's shoulder blades. Following the beam back to its source with his eyes, Thomas saw a beholder floating up at the top of the ceiling, one of its ten eyestalks aimed directly at the petrified form of Vance Pelorian, connecting the two with a barely-seen ray. "Beholder!" called the monk to the others, as he rushed forward and leapt up to drive the side of his hand into the Evil Eye's underside. He had hoped it might be softer there, but the monk was disappointed in the sheer hardness of its armored form. Jorg rushed up, eager to do battle with a worthy foe, as Darrien notched an arrow to the [i]Arachnibow[/i] and let fly. Caliandra pulled the vial of [i]stone salve[/i] from her pouch, popped off the top, and scooped its contents up into her fingers. Then, rushing forward and dodging a blow from Vance's mace, she wiped the salve onto the side of his arm. It glowed where it hit, and almost immediately began spreading across his arm, down his torso, and outward in all directions until his entire body glowed with an aura of transformation magic. Then, with a gasp of expelled breath, Vance Pelorian stumbled forward. "Welcome back," Caliandra smiled at him. "It looks like I have the opportunity for several new experiments," said the Evil Eye, a beholder mutant named [b]Gzornyx[/b]. Addressing Thomas, who was attacking it with a flurry of hand-to-hand blows to little effect, it pondered, "I wonder what you'd look like with an eyestalk growing out of your face?" As it focused its verbal attention on the monk, several of its eyestalks suddenly shot out various-colored rays. The one that had been constantly shooting at Vance's petrified form turned off, then refocused on the gnoll statue, bringing it instantly to a semblance of life. It swung at Thomas with a stone paw, while Darrien was hit with another ray that sapped him of both his strength and dexterity. And while the monk was busy evading the petrified gnoll, he was hit in the back with another eye ray; fortunately, his inherent focus on physical perfection allowed him to shrug off whatever effects it might have brought. Vance spun around, facing the creature that had petrified him what seemed to him like only seconds ago, back up on the surface. Deciding his best contribution to the group effort was a [i]prayer[/i] spell, he stepped back out of the field of battle. Kizzie had similar thoughts and burst into a hearty song that bolstered her friends' fighting abilities. Caliandra sent a [i]lightning bolt[/i] spell cascading into Gzornyx's body; in immediate retaliation, he sent an eye ray crashing into her that caused her to turn to stone. Zapper flipped out at the apparent death of his mistress, and immediately fled down the tunnel back to the relative safety of the central chamber. In the back of the familiar's mind, though, he wondered how the eye ray - and Cali's spell, for that matter - had managed to work while within the arc of the Evil Eye's central eye. Wasn't a beholder's central eye supposed to negate all magic? Darrien managed to get a small barrage of arrows into the Evil Eye by moving forward as he shot, narrowing the distance each arrow had to fly. Thomas continued his flurry of blows, darting around to strike the creature here with a fist and there with a well-placed kick, but it was Jorg - and his magic greatsword - that felled the vile creature. A deep gash running along its side, the Evil Eye started lowering to the floor of the statue room. The eye ray that had been animating the gnoll statue shut off, and the hyena-man froze in its new position. Gzornyx's final words were muttered in its own language, and thus had no meaning to anyone there in the room with it. "Great, so we got Vance back but lost Cali!" grumbled Jorg. "Now what are we gonna do? We don't have any more of that gunk she used, do we?" They did not. But Darrien offered to fetch a wagon to transport her petrified form to the Temple of Moradin in Kordovia, if they could figure out how to get her out of the underground lair in one piece. Going through their items, Jorg finally realized he had a [i]potion of gaseous form[/i], and that if he hefted Caliandra up into his arms while somebody fed him the potion, she ought to turn to mist along with him. There was some discussion about possibly saving the elf as well, but as he was unknown to the group they had no way of knowing his status; for all they knew, he could be a force of evil better left petrified. (In addition, Jorg was certainly strong, but not strong enough to carry them both at the same time.) Darrien promised to send word of the petrified elf's description to the elves of his small kingdom, and see if he could be identified and rescued. But before the group left, they finished exploring the network, just in case. The bottom shaft led to a fungal garden, fortunately a source of food instead of a den of mobile monsters. The shrine with the carved beholder gave up 20 good-sized gemstones, one at the end of each of its eyestalks - Vance suggested this was likely a representation of the beholder deity, as conceived by the Evil Eye. By mutual agreement, the gemstones were sorted into five shares of four, with Caliandra and Vance splitting one share between them and a full four stones going to each of the other adventurers. Darrien pocketed his share, thinking to himself he'd rather have forgone the treasure and had Caliandra unharmed. But he made sure everybody got up to the surface safely, then hurried off on his own to Battershield Keep, leaving the others to guard their fallen sorceress's form. Hours later, Darrien returned to the group with his teammates' mule cart, pulled by Franco and Tantrum. Caliandra's body was hauled up onto the back, and then Darrien drove it back to Kordovia, the others walking or riding with him. He knew the dwarven clerics would likely be able to restore Caliandra back to her normal flesh and blood (especially once Jorg assured him that Lord Cavelthorne would repay the dwarves the cost of the required spellcasting). During the whole ride back, Darrien thought only of how good it would be to have Caliandra back among the living. To hear her voice again, to see the warm glow of her skin... There was no doubt about it. Darrien was smitten. - - - This was a welcome change of pace and an opportunity for the players to get to try out some new races and classes that they hadn't had the opportunity to play before. Vicki has lamented the fact that my well-known hatred of halflings made a halfling PC unlikely (or at least short-lived), so I thought I'd give her the opportunity to run one - and a bard at that, a class she had wondered whether it would be fun to run. (Her verdict: it was okay for a single session but she didn't think she'd have much fun running a full-time bard PC. I concur.) Dan enjoyed the relative simplicity - and high damage potential - of running a half-orc fighter, and Jacob has a newfound appreciation for the monk's good points and bad points. Logan's played sorcerers before (even a female one, in a prior campaign) so that was nothing new, but I wanted to round out the party a bit and I knew he wouldn't mind playing a PC of the opposite gender. I don't envision having to use these NPCs as "stand-in PCs" to catch one of our normal PCs up to the others in the XP department like I did for this adventure, but they're there if we ever need them. And who knows, having a rival adventuring band, even a friendly rival one, can't be a bad thing in a campaign - we may be seeing Lord Cavelthorne's group again sometime in the future. Oh, and after we finished this adventure Joey leveled up Darrien, so now everyone's at 8th level except for Ingebold. Joey opted to spend 2 skill points to have Darrien learn the Draconic language. I asked him to justify how Darrien would have done that, and sure enough, checking the PC sheets Caliandra speaks fluent Draconic. So I figure she was more than happy to teach him the basics in a "crash course" between this adventure and the one that follows, which I had already decided would take place a week or more later in game time. Darrien having rescued her petrified form from a beholder's lair and getting her restored to flesh and blood, I'm sure she saw it as a well-deserved reward. (And I'm sure Darrien enjoyed the one-on-one time learning the basics of Draconic from her.) - - - T-Shirt Worn: A light blue Red Cross T-shirt I received recently when donating blood. I figured it was a good way to represent the "new blood" of Lord Cavelthorne's band of adventurers. [/QUOTE]
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