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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3576927" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Tragedy of the Toad!The Deadgrass Lands are uneven, unreliable terrain. Sometimes, it is flat and favors easy walking for miles; at other times, sinkholes abound, cracks and chasms cut the landscape and rises and depressions are everywhere. The grass itself is sharp, brittle and unpleasant, and varies in height up to eight or even ten feet high. Our heroes are traveling through a lower area, with several shallow creeks cutting across it. The day creeps into afternoon. As the party moves through a particularly foul-smelling and scum-covered pond, they hear a frighteningly loud croak.“What was-” Kain starts, and suddenly a toad hops forth.A toad larger than Kain.His mouth hangs open in disbelief as the thing’s throat-sac inflates to the size of a large shield, and it gives out another thunderous croak. And then it opens its mouth to attack- and a long, sticky tongue shoots out, swatting- and sticking to- Kain!“Hey!” he shouts, drawing his sword out. He is being reeled quickly towards the dire toad’s mouth, despite his strongest struggles.“Kain!” barks Barouk, and he springs forward, smacking the toad with one meaty fist. It barely seems to notice the blow, merely concentrating on pulling its chosen victim to its mouth. The party unleashes a storm of attacks with weapons and fists, but the toad catches Kain in its mouth and begins gnawing on him, trying to pull him into its throat and swallow him whole!“Aagh!!” Kain yells as the toad’s bite cracks the bones of his arm. His struggles are growing weaker. The sticky tongue jerks his upper body into the thing’s mouth! “Help!!” he screams.Grom springs into the fray and Barouk redoubles his efforts, but in his frantic haste to strike it, he misses. A bolt from Kifla flies wide. Grom cuts the toad across the back, but it ignores the blow.Kain struggles to push himself back out of the frog’s mouth. He is, quite literally, looking down its throat. Its tongue convulses, shoving him further in, and he screams in pain as the monster’s powerful bite crushes his ankles. Only his feet are still outside of the beast. Grom and Barouk kick, pummel and chop into the toad to great effect, and it stumbles away a pace. It is now battered, bruised and bleeding, but with another convulsion of its mouth and throat, Kain is completely lost from view. “Noooo!” cries Kifla, firing another bolt from her crossbow. Frantically, our heroes struggle to slay the dire toad. It tries to hop away, but they manage to catch and slay it before it can do so. Quickly, they cut open its belly.Too late. Kain is dead.Barouk harumphs. He grudgingly shows Kain the respect due the dead, but to tell the truth, he never liked or trusted the revolutionary anyway. Being a dwarf and therefore practical, the monk quickly strips his dead companion’s body of everything of use. Kain even had some money- almost 70 gp in mixed coins!“We have to bury him,” Kifla says. “Of course,” Grom agrees, before Barouk can object. The dwarf sighs and nods.So they set about to do so. It takes about an hour of digging to create a grave of appropriate size, and then another twenty minutes to bury the body; and then Barouk, Kifla and Grom share a moment of silence over the death of their friend. Well, companion, anyway.The three of them continue on. It is almost dusk by now; before long, they are forced to begin looking for an appropriate spot to camp. Upon finding one, they build a fire and cook some food, then erect the tent and roll out their respective bedrolls. Soon everyone but Grom (who is taking first watch) is asleep. The night is beautiful, warm and pleasant. The stars glitter like jewels in the firmament above him. He keeps a sharp eye out. I hope my people are okay, he thinks. Thankfully, these folks are willing to help us. Goblins have always plagued us- but they are never so persistently harassing as they are being this last year. He broods over the goblin menace to his home town of Drellin’s Ferry for several hours, until his watch is over and he wakes Barouk. Then Grom goes to sleep with a sigh.In the morning- for the rest of the night is uneventful- our heroes wake and begin their morning routines. After a quick breakfast, they set out, but they have only traveled for about twenty minutes when Barouk spots a campsite up ahead, with two elves in it. He motions to his companions to drop back behind some cover. Quietly, he informs them of what he saw, and Grom volunteers to go check the campsite out. He heads down the slope towards the elves, trying to be sneaky, but they have plainly seen him by the time he arrives and are watching him.“I’m friendly!” Grom tells them, holding his empty hands out. “I’m, uh, just checking out what you’re up to.”“We’re travelers,” one of the elves- the male- says. “Uh, yeah, us too.”“Us?” the female elf asks, arching an eyebrow. “Are there more orcs with you?”“No- I’m a half-orc, and my companions are a gnome and a dwarf.”The two elves exchange a glance. Grom has encountered racism before, and he imagines that they are debating internally whether to believe him or not. Then the two relax, letting their hands fall away from the hilts of their weapons. Grom calls up the hill, and Barouk and Kifla descend. The two elves are named Skaal (the male) and Tempe (the female). The party tells them about the goblins menacing Grom’s homeland, but the elves decline to join them, stating that they already have a mission of their own. “We’re going to somewhere called Vraath Keep,” Tempe tells the party.“That’s right near my home town!” Grom declares. “Right outside of it!””Well, maybe we can join forces after all, then,” Skaal replies quietly. “At least for a time.”“Well met, then!” Kifla cries. “Hurray, new friends!” Then she turns sober. “After all, we just lost a friend.” She relates the tale of the tragedy of the toad to the elves, and they commiserate with her. The elves finish their breakfast, and the party helps them break camp; and then, the newly-expanded party of five continues on.As they move on, the grass grows higher, and in thicker, hedge-like clumps. Often these are impenetrable. The party breaks for lunch. Soon after, they come to a long hedge, with a single break leading into it. More thick grass is visible on the other side. It is a veritable maze of the deadgrass.“I wonder if anything lives in there,” Grom mutters. He moves up and cocks his head to listen; after a moment, he says, “All I hear is rustling grass.”The party moves in, Grom in the lead, his head still cocked. He pads forward about 20’. The path through the maze splits into a T, with one passage heading to the right and the other to the left. As he creeps forward into the intersection, Grom suddenly feels the floor go out from under him.A pit opens. He flails for the edge, but he is not quite fast enough. As he comes down, he manages to roll with the fall. Fortunately, his tumbling skill is sufficient to prevent any damage from such a short fall. But- “That was a trap!” he exclaims.“Oh no!” Kifla cries.Skaal moves up and peers down into the pit. “Here,” he calls, throwing down one end of a rope. “I’ll help you- AAHHH!!”A stone pings off of Skaal’s head. The elf stumbles, shakes his head and glares up. Poking through the wall of grass, through a tiny opening, is the head and forebody of a kobold. Then, suddenly, there is a great tug at the rope that Skaal is not prepared for, and he is pulled into the pit as well! He lands much more poorly than did Grom, and to add insult to injury, he smashes into the half-orc as well! Skaal groans into unconsciousness, while Grom is wounded fairly badly but still in fighting shape.Tempe cracks her whip at the kobold, but misses; and it withdraws back through the hedge.“Damn it!” curses Tempe.The party stays quite wary for a few minutes, but the kobold does not reappear, so they get back to the whole ‘rescue people from the pit’ business. Soon both Skaal and Grom are back up above, and the application of a potion that the party had previously obtained brings Skaal back to consciousness, and in fact to full health. He in turn demonstrates the ability to heal and restores Grom’s lost vitality.They withdraw from the maze to camp, restore their resources and reconsider. “A maze full of kobolds can’t be good,” Skaal opines. “I wonder how long it would take to go around it,” Tempe murmurs.Our heroes look over the hedge maze. It seems to extend for a considerable distance, and there is no guarantee that they will find a direct path around it at all. After much discussion, they decide that they must take the maze.“At least the beetle will fit in there,” Barouk points out.Next Time: Into the Deadgrass Maze in earnest!</blockquote>

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