Session 15: Weird Lizard Lady

General Summary

7th - 9th Myrkule 234 4E

The party lay up in camp for two nights, recharging after their journey through the caves and fight in the mine. They rested and prepared for their next step.
Early in the morning, the dim light of dusk yet to break through, Tawny heard movement while on watch. Shortly after, a figure approached from behind a clump of trees. The figure was wrapped in a thick winter cloak, the hood drawn over their head and obscuring their face, and unhurriedly trudged through the snow towards the camp. Tawny quietly awoke the others. As the figure reached the edge of the campfire's light it stopped and pulled back its hood, revealing the scaled snout and face of a dragonborn. The woman was very short for a dragonborn, just under five and a half feet, and her copper scales looked worn and faded. Her pale-grey eyes shifted as she took in the group and their camp.
Tawny greeted her, asking what she was doing so far out in the woods at this time of the night. The dragonborn smiled as she replied, still standing at the light's edge hunched and enveloped by her cloak. She claimed to be a hunter from a nearby village and that she had got lost from her fellows as they headed towards their hunting grounds, hoping to catch some elk as they started moving at dawn. It was strange to find a dragonborn living in these parts but not unheard of, though Willum, the party's resident hunter, thought her story sounded off. That hunting practice was common enough, but only during the spring and maybe summer. Not in deep winter. The party continued the conversation with the dragonborn, questions floating back and forth across the camp. Tawny and Meridas both noticed that she was probing, more intent on asking about their own plans and stories rather than on answering the questions they asked her.
Following a hunch, Tawny reached out with his magic. It was a new spell he was using, one he had created after the encounter with the rift-beasts that had hung little Greysen's family up in the trees, and so he wasn't quite sure what exactly he was looking for with it. That uncertainty didn't last long. He knew what it was as soon as his senses reached the dragonborn. The thing inside her - her soul, flame, essence, whatever the various religious folk wanted to call it - was different. It felt twisted and awry, like a bone that had been snapped and then grown back all wrong and malformed. It might have been normal once, yes, but it wasn't anymore. Now it was corrupted, in conflict with everything around it.
As his senses continued to push further, he realised she wasn't the only one. Out in the darkness, there were at least a dozen more. Two of them were just like her, gnarled and contorted, but the others were different - simpler, muted, cracked. Broken bones that had never grown back at all. A brief look to his side confirmed his senses. In the shadows, he could make out several lurking silhouettes amongst the trees, hidden from the limited eyes of his companions. They were surrounded. He thought to warn the others but didn't want to notify the dragonborn of his discovery. When he turned back to look at her, he realised it was too late anyway. He had managed to hide the tiny rifts caused by his magic well enough and his mask hid any expression that might be on his face, but his body language and sudden glance sideways must have given him away. The dragonborn now stood straight, a few inches taller than she had originally appeared, and the thick winter cloak had slid off her shoulders to reveal a well-worn arming doublet along with a heavy arming sword that hung at her side. Her once dulled grey eyes now glowed in the fire's light as she drew the blade from the scabbard.
"Oh well, I guess we'll do it this way."
Tawny shouted his warning to his companions at the same moment as the silhouettes converged on the camp. The figures that had just moments before stood completely silent, frozen in place, now threw themselves at the party. They looked like local townsfolk and villagers and wore simple clothes, a few amongst them in richer garb, that were all torn and in various levels of wear. Each of them brandished weapons in their hands, mostly knives, axes, or other tools. Several had open wounds on their bodies, though no blood could be seen. All of their faces were contorted in rage. They hurtled across the camp, crashing through tents and trees alike, and slammed into the group. They had no sense of self-preservation or desire to defend themselves. They simply attacked, striking at their targets with all the frenzy and wrath one can imagine. Their singular goal was to stick their blades deep into their victims' flesh.
Odhran caught a hatchet on his shield, shoving its wielder tumbling backwards into another of the assailants, and set his own axe to bite into necks, chests, and legs. Tawny darted two paces to the right and narrowly avoided a butcher's cleaver that was sent to claw into his waist, then sidestepped another slash and jabbed his dagger between one set of ribs and under the chin of another one of them. Meridas' cane-sword whipped through the air, parrying blades and arms and thrusting into exposed flesh. Avina ripped her hands across each other and launched a cord of lightning through the torsos of three of the figures. Each wound should have dropped any man or woman they were delivered upon, but several of the figures bore the damage and continued their onslaught.
Willum erupted from the clash and bounded towards the dragonborn. His spear crossed with her sword, the two of them lurching in all directions as they sought out breaches in each other's defence. Spotting a lull in her sword's motion, Willum dropped his long hunting spear and slipped past the dragonborn's guard to grasp her sword arm with one hand and slammed the other into her jaw, his heavy brass ring crackling with lightning. The two were soon locked in a tussle, hurling and dragging each other around as they tried to dominate the brawl.
Meanwhile, the dragonborn's two likenesses prowled around the engagement. One pulled at the string of a bow and sent a cluster of arrows cutting through the fray whenever an opening appeared. The other continued to circle out in the shadows, flicking bolts of arcane energy at the party before shifting out of sight behind the trees, only to appear again elsewhere and launch another attack. Meridas caught sight of the caster as he prepared to discharge a spell into the crowd, a mass of dark vines growing between his hands, and immediately they reached out and drained the magic building around the figure. The caster snarled as the rifts vanished and dark mass dissolved to nothing.
The party fought tooth and nail against their feral opponents, hacking and stabbing as the figures refused to fall. One of the tents had been lit on fire by Avina's lightning and was now ablaze, dousing the entire clearing in bright orange light. The tide turned and the party started to take control of the fight. Several of the figures lay still on the ground. The bow-wielding likeness had dropped that weapon and charged into the melee, a longsword in hand. He was now locked in a fierce duel with Odhran, the sword and axe gnashing at each other like starving wolves. Willum had managed to pin the dragonborn's sword arm and was cracking his brass ring into every bone and joint he could find. Without a sound, three of the figures broke off from the main engagement and sprinted towards Willum and the dragonborn. It was as though someone had barked a command at them but no one else could hear it over the clamour. Tawny spotted them leaving and dashed in pursuit, catching two of them before they reached the writhing pair. His dagger flashed once, twice, three times, and the two figures dropped to the ground motionless. The last figure reached Willum and smashed into the firbolg's side, knocking the wind out of him. He had no time to recover as the figure was immediately on him again, a long-knife thrust at his belly. He batted the blade away and smacked his fist straight into his foe's temple. The force of the blow drove the weighted ring into the bone and Willum could feel it crack as the skull caved in. The body dropped.
Willum had managed to quickly dispatch his new attacker, but those few seconds of distraction were all the dragonborn had needed to break free from his grip. She twisted, snatching her arm from his grasping hand, and staggered back three paces. She brought her arming sword up between them and settled into a defensive guard. Willum watched in disbelief as her wounds started to close. The deep gashes in her arms and across her cheek knitted back together, her pale copper scales flowing over the now restored grey flesh and covering any sign of the previous damage. Her broken jaw shifted and snapped back into place. She stared back at Willum and smiled, then launched at him.
She was caught midair. The dragonborn writhed as she tried to break free. She was held aloft in the pincers of an enormous scorpion. Meridas had seen her break from Willum's grip and prepare to attack him, and they had also seen Tawny rushing to aid. Whipping their hands over the heads of their remaining foes, Meridas had reached out and morphed Tawny's body as he ran. Now he was a four-foot-tall Hocian rock scorpion. Tawny wheeled around, slamming the dragonborn into the ground face-first. He plunged his stinger into her back twice and slammed her again, this time into the trunk of a massive tree. The others had dealt with the rest of them, thrusting blades into the motionless bodies just to make sure. Only the caster had escaped. They all rushed to help with the dragonborn, grabbing her arms and immobilising her. Odhran hefted his axe down into her neck twice, the second blow cutting into the bone of her spine. The dragonborn went limp. The party took a moment to breathe, the scorpion still holding onto the drooping body. Then her wound began to move.

Session Log - Willum

We rested in the camp for a couple of days to recover from our journey into the weird underground. But during the early morning we were surprised by a group a weird monstrous people who attacked us, and they were led by a weird scaly lizard lady.
We tried to talk to her at first but there was something off about her and her compatriots. After talking for a bit, we ended up in a fight with these weird people who seemed gaunt and unresponsive. I ended up going for the lizard lady as she seemed the most dangerous and sentient, so I went for her and grappled her so that she could not engage with anybody else, and I used my new ring to punch her while she was grappled.
I couldn’t keep holding on to her as she attacked me continuously while we had each other grappled, but finally her compatriots came to help her and attacked me. The lizard lady broke free, but Meridas used some of her magic to turn Tawny into a large insect creature which finally tried to take her out. But the lizard lady was much tougher than she seemed, so Odhran had to cut off her head to finally stop her from moving about.
We are now just sitting here recovering from our unexpected fight.
May these words be carried to my kin on the northward winds…

— Willum

Campaign

Tales of the Fallen

Protagonists

Willum

Tawny

Meridas Starlight

Avina Marwick

Report Date

12 Jun 2021