STARDAY, 2 ROVA, 4711 A.R. (Continued)
Four costumed corbies drop their prop weapons and lunge at the party. One, dressed in a fine (if filthy) pink gown with a conicle, veiled hat is decapitated by Molido almost immediately. A horrified shriek emerges from the beak of a corby dressed like a young noble man: "My fiance! NO!"Zaphkael quickly realizes that the odd man on the throne is using some sort of magic to project his voice through the oddly silent corbies. As they attack, shrieking, theatrical lines emerge from their throats. "I shall avenge the princess!" "How dare you filthy ruffians harm my daughter!" "I shall slay thee in my beloved's name!"
Before long, another of the corbies are dead, and two more--the princess' father and husband-to-be--are unconscious. The red-faced man shrieks in annoyance, and, as Hanzo looses an arrow at him, he casts a spell and disappears. The adventurers are left alone in the throne room.
Amidst the combat, their bound trogdolyte prisoner was murdered by one of the corbies, but the two unconscious "actors" are quickly bound, gagged, and dragged out to the courtyard to be locked in one of the empty guard towers. The heroes consider their options--pursuing the red-faced man or focusing on finding the "hidden vault" referred to in the letter to Ameiko's father--and decide to focus on the latter. Reasoning that vaults are most likely to be underground, they return to where they first encountered the trogdolytes and head down the stairs.
They encounter a group of trogdolytes at the far end of a long room, and the lizard-like creatures quickly retreat down a side hallway. The adventurers sense a trap, but pursue them regardless. Molido, leading the charge, walks right into the center of a pillared chamber and is immediately surrounded by trogdolyte attackers, including their apparent leader, an albino trogdolyte wielding a nasty-looking morningstar.
Molido throws himself into a rage and tears into his foes while his companions fight to reach him. The battle takes a toll on the half-orc, but he stands strong through it all. Eventually, all of the trogdolytes lay dead at the adventurers' feet.
Battered but still restless, the heroes decide to press on. In one room, they find a large and abandoned kitchen, though a nearby side room reveals an ambulatory lump of mold that begins creeping towards them as soon as they open the door. Deciding that sapient fungi is too great a threat to face directly, the group throws all of their carried vials of alchemist fire into a bag, whips them around like a sling, opens the door, chucks the sack of combustibles into the room, and slams the door shut. After a few minutes of waiting for the acrid, foul-smelling smoke to clear, they open the door to find the room charred, blackened, and utterly devoid of life.
A passage to the north leads to a natural cavern system blocked by a large, iron door. After failing to pick the lock, the group remembers the rusted iron key they found, and, using great care and delicacy, they manage to unlock and open the door without breaking the fragile key. They follow the passage to another locked door--this time, despite their best efforts, the key crumbles as it unlocks the way--and beyond that to a small smuggler's cove, barely accessible from the sea and completely concealed when the tide rises. Molido and Hanzo realize that this must be the secret passage they had been looking for--and that, if they'd been able to survive the frigid water a little longer, they would have found it.
Slightly embarrassed, the group doubles back to the kitchen and presses on. They next find a large, subterranean cistern fed by a thin trickle of water seeping through the stone above. They also find that the cistern chamber adjoins a prison area, and that prison area seems to be guarded by an especially large and foul-looking ogre. Knowing the vile nature of such creatures, even Brixton has no reservations about enacting a plan to dispatch the unwary ogre quickly and ruthlessly.
After placing a tripwire across the doorway, Molido calls out to the ogre to get its attention. It stares at him in surprise for several moments before the half-orc's taunts fully register, and then it howls in fury and charges. It completely fails to observe the tripwire, and further fails to keep its balance, sprawling on the floor right between the other, hidden adventurers. It takes each member of the group a couple of stabs to keep the ogre down, but it never has a chance to retaliate before it dies.
The ogre turned out to be guarding a single prisoner: a human woman, blonde of hair and sturdy of build, named Kelda Oxgutter. The viking woman was the sole survivor of the small crew of scavengers who landed at Brinewall two weeks prior, and was the one who finally slew the sea drake that attacked her ship. Kelda stubbornly decided to press further into the keep, hoping to find enough treasure to make the loss of her companions worthwhile, but she was swiftly overwhelmed by the creatures there and captured. She explains that the red-faced master of the castle is named Kikonu, but something even worse dwells in the depths nearby.
Riding high after their success thus far, the adventurers free Kelda, restore her property, and decide to press on further. The eastern wall of the prison block is broken, revealing a natural cavern extending into darkness behind it. It continues on for only ten feet or so before dropping precipitously to another ledge fifteen feet below, which then drops again. The passage ultimately opens into a large cavern, dappled with odd,glowing motes of light, and dominated by a crude stone statue of a bird-like creature with four wings. As the group enters the chamber, a low chanting, as if from dozens of voices, begins in a strange, foul language. They scan the room, weapons drawn, looking for the source of the noise. And then a pillar of negative energy slams into them, disorienting Brixton, Zaphkael, and Molido. (And mildly inconveniencing Hanzo.)
A hideous abomination descends from the stalactites above on crimson, bat-like wings. It looks something like an octopus, but with ten tentacles, two yellow eyes, and a wide, fanged mouth. It cackles in glee as the ominous voices reach a crescendo, and in one of its tentacles appears a wand which it points at Molido. Two lances of flame shoot out, striking the half-orc squarely and burning through his armor.
Hanzo fires an arrow and misses, while everyone else hurries to produce their own ranged weapons. More fire and cackling rain from above. Finally realizing that they may be overmatched, the adventurers call a retreat and scramble back towards the series of ledges that brought them here.
The thing follows, closing in to use its savagely barbed tentacles as well as its wand. It strikes Molido with a venomous spell, weakening the half-orc, but it turns its attention to Zaphkael as the others manage to scale the cliffs to safety while the cleric, weighed down by his armor and lack of training, struggles to follow.
The creature's tentacles wrap around Zaphkael, slicing him open as they constrict, as they pull him closer to the thing's wide, grinning maw...
Molido leaps back down to save his friend, hacking away at the creature to distract it. With healing from Brixton and assistance from Hanzo and Kelda, Zaphkael manages to escape to safety. Molido himself takes further damage and nearly succumbs, but manages to break the tentacles' grasp on him and make a run for it.
To their relief, the monster does not pursue. Instead, the caverns ring with a triumphant, mad chorus of laughter.
The heroes retreat to a safer area and prepare to rest and recuperate, humbled by the first challenge thus far that they could not easily dispatch.
No comments:
Post a Comment