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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7324558" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 38, Part Three - The Lair of the Deep OnesOnce again, I refer readers to the session soundtrack. (See previous post.)A few nights later, after they had sailed into the region where Rumdoom last encountered the Deep One’s ‘envoy’, an intruder alarm was raised on deck. The ‘intruder’ turned out to be a Deep One vassal that took the form of Krazy Krauss, just like the last one had. Only where the last one was almost a perfect simulacrum, this one had a strange, chitinous growth over its left eye. It stood impassively on deck, coated in a sheen of slime. It wasn’t wearing any trousers.Rumdoom explained that he had come to access the Stone of Not, as the Deep Ones had promised he might. ‘Krauss’ told him simply to ‘follow’, then stepped off the deck. A transparent, fleshy limb awaited him and lowered him into the sea. The task force hastily clambered into the Lamprey and followed the glowing, translucent craft that the aboleth had sent to intercept them.  Oolsholeel stayed outside and took the form of a squid, capable of withstanding the depths.Outside they saw a ‘border’ formed by knots of kelp, buoyed by limbless thralls that were entangled in their fronds – half-dead, mindless sentries, keeping a thousand eyes on the deep.After a few hours (during which it was discovered that they had forgotten the sandwiches) a mental message echoed through their minds.  It told them that they were about to be ‘consumed’ but reassured them that they would come to no harm: the Deep Ones merely sought to ensure that they could not navigate their way back here and this was their version of a blindfold.  Oolsholeel realised that the dark shape in the water behind them was a two-hundred foot behemoth, a mindless creature engineered by the aboleth in their image.  He hastily took his place inside the submersible - worried about saliva and digestive juices – as the behemoth engulfed the craft.  They came to rest upon its tongue.Now their bellies really began to rumble: this next leg of their journey went on for many hours.  Bored, Uru explored the belly of the beast with his ghostly entourage.  He discovered a large, solid lump of unpleasant material, something like ambergris, from which he discovered he might distil a deadly mind-poison. Despite his best attempts to smother it with a tarpaulin, the others objected that it stank out the cabin.Eventually, after maybe half a day, they were disgorged. There were lights all around them: natural luminescence clung to the underwater city that stretched out around them. It occupied the bottom of an oceanic cavern and was home to the Deep Ones’ sahuagin servitors. (Where the aboleth were was not clear. Perhaps they dwelled in the walls of the trench?)After the behemoth withdrew, they began to follow the smaller, luminous craft once again. Their submersible passed over carefully tended egg fields and strange, sharp, twisted totems devoted to the fey exarch Sekolah.  Glowing limbs or roots joined everything together, all leading in the same direction: their direction of travel.A few failed sendings revealed that they were within the aura of the Stone of Not, which the aboleth used to power their city and defend it from scrying. No magical divinations could penetrate. Uru was now glad he and the-artist-formerly-known-as-the-Clockwork-Count had developed a short-range radio.  The task force had a non-magical means to communicate with the Impossible if need be.  They also had one in each of the parts of the sub, which came in handy when they were forced to separate:Word came that the Deep Ones would not allow them to go any further en masse.  Only Rumdoom and one other would be allowed to approach the Stone. Hildegard was the obvious choice, as Uru would be able to follow along unnoticed (or so he hoped; he switched to his tin-foil hat just in case).  They decoupled Sunfish from the Lamprey and followed the translucent craft deeper into the underwater city.About half-a-mile later, they came to a place where the glowing roots all coalesced, twisted together to form a gnarled trunk, upon which sat a spherical, organic structure about twice the size of their craft. Many sahuagin warriors guarded this place. The mind-voice told them to disembark.  Keeping their re-breathers at their belts, they relied on water breathing potions for now.  Rumdoom and Hildegard swam outside, with Uru a fleeting shadow in their wake.Two copies of Krauss floated in front of the structure, before a portal that was moulded like a lobeless ear.  One had a crab-like arm, the other articulated legs and a single antennae where its left ear should have been. There was a long pause and then space itself seemed to twist and spiral, heralding the arrival of a Deep One: frighteningly large and disturbingly alien.“Why are you here?” it asked, telepathically.“I am Rumdoom,” thought Rumdoom, in response.“You seek access to the Stone, but we know your deepest desire is to take it.  Do not attempt to do so, or all of you will perish.”“I will not. But first, can I return here, and use the stone again?”“No. You are fortunate to have been allowed this far. We now know that you do not command the colossus.  But you have served us in the past and proved yourself worthy, thus we agree to this trespass. Tell us again why we should let you see the Stone.”“The question I am asking will be of benefit to all of us,” said Rumdoom.  There was a pause.  Uru had his ghosts add, in terrible voices that were not hindered by the water, “The ones you flee will find your scent when the seals of the world are broken!”They could feel a palpable change of mood at this, a sense of fear in the water, accompanied by a low, melancholy ‘noise’ (that may have been in their minds).The aboleth at once responded, “Enter, then. But be warned. Do not touch the Stone.”They went inside, accompanied by the two Krauss-thralls. The aboleths admonition seemed redundant: the Stone – a jet-black object no larger than a water-melon, but of irregular shape – was held within a multi-layered, blue-green, crystalline lattice.Hildegard stepped up to the lattice alongside Rumdoom, while Uru slipped unseen to the far side.Rumdoom reached out tentatively and thought, “If there was a moment when I was going to steal this thing, I suppose this would be it.” But he dismissed the idea, placed his hand on the lattice and hoped this method worked.Feeling somewhat clumsy, he asked for whatever memories had been stored in the stone by Kasvarina Varal.  His eyes rolled back in his head and he floated, lifeless for a moment, as he bore witness to them:The tower in Trekhom, where the Stone was stored. Nicodemus, Kasvarina and a high-ranking tiefling man all place their hands on the Stone in unison. Rumdoom hears an echo of these words, although they do not say them now: “At Methia, in the Lance of Triegenes, we were founded in secrecy”.  As they walk away from the Stone, Kasvarina glances at the dwarves who have accompanied them to this place. “I do not trust them. How do we know they will not grant others access to the Stone.”  Nicodemus smiles and says that he has already taken care of that. (Just a few months later a tidal wave hit Trekhom, and the Stone of Not vanished during a sahuagin invasion. ...)At the same time, Uru had a sudden desire to make use of the Stone too.  He was tired of hankering after his memories of being truly alive. He was half-shadow now, thanks to Tokoloshe, and often wished to be restored to normality. This was distracting. So he placed his hand on the lattice and sought to commit his memories of life into the stone. It worked! His eyes rolled back and he floated lifeless for a moment too.And so neither of them saw the icicle that formed in the water next to Hildegard – or noticed that Hildegard was floating lifeless too – or saw the icicle as it grew rapidly, took on a form, shaped itself into the icy simulacrum of robed female dwarf.The thralls saw it, but found themselves suddenly encased in ice with a gesture from the interloper.  She turned back to the Stone, raised a fist and brought it down on the lattice with enormous force, shattering it instantly. When she laid hands on the stone, Uru and Rumdoom’s eyes snapped open, but they couldn’t get their limbs to move yet.The woman turned to Rumdoom and said, “I am Grandis Kamanov, Avatar of the End.  You have given me the greatest weapon I could ever have.” She laughed. “I followed you to Knutpara. Learned the same trick you learned from the lich-giant. Thank you, my dear,” she said to Hildegard. “You were a gracious host.”Then she took the Cracked Cauldron handle from Hildegard’s belt and vanished![The mad idea of having Grandis steal the stone, instead of appearing on Odiem, occurred to me in the middle of the session. I had to fake a toilet break to give myself a chance to figure out if it worked or not. Ran with it because it intensifies the rivalry between Grandis and Rumdoom and the players might not even let Serafina accompany them into the vault. Decided it would only happen if Rumdoom took Hildegard on with him and came up with a back-up plan which explains what Kamanov planned to do if she hadn’t been able to obtain the cauldron handle. Enjoyed a rush of adrenalin as it played out at the table.  Who needs extreme sports, man?]</blockquote>

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