250212 Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
General Summary
As I further search through my memory to gather the facts and perhaps some fiction, for I am not always sure my source tells me everything, I am reminded how lucky I am to have such fine, upstanding people reading my prose. I do not take it for granted that you take the time to keep up with the adventures of the Band of Tomb Robbing Assassins. Of course, rumours of a charm spell cast on every copy of The Bugle are vastly exaggerated.
“Bugger!” said Drogon as he watched the Deep Gnome guide leave them and make his way back to the Svirfneblin and their eternal quest to collect more wealth and gems. The team wondered if they’d see those diminutive, grumpy-arsed fellows again. They hoped not. The group turned and faced the corridor before them, their faces bathed in the green light giving them all a sickly demeanour. With nothing more to do, they proceeded forwards into what could only be yet another test thrown at them from the eternal gloom of the Underdark.
The team eventually reached an opening in the corridor that led to, what could only be described as, a massive complex. In front of them they could see a cross roads, with paths leading left and right and in front was an archway to an enormous open space. They could make out an escarpment of platforms leading down towards a huge pool of water. In the centre of the pool was a stone ziggurat made of some greenish material, rearing up towards the ceiling topped by a huge statue of a naked human female, but the head was that of a lobster, and the hands were claws. Blibdoolpoolp, the goddess of the Kuo Tua.
Luthiel made a tutting sound and commented to Sentinel as to why it was always a naked female figure, never a clothed one. “It’s almost like there are no women in this world to complain about the blatant sexism of sculptors”, she said. Sentinel looked at Thorg and Kurog, and had a very good idea as to why this was always the case. She could already see Kurog mentally sizing up the statue to see if it would fit in his throne room. She really didn’t want to know why Thorg was drooling slightly.
The team got dressed up in a Seeming as cast by Sentinel and as far as the world was concerned, they were now a collection of Kuo Toa. With their new disguises they decided to go left first. They instantly saw a series of doors, perhaps nine or ten in total, on both the north and south walls of the corridor. Sentinel and Drogon proceeded to listen at the doors. They could hear a few Kuo Tua behind some, talking in that water filled mouth language of theirs. They could detect chanting behind some others, where the fish people were in rapture to their goddess.
One of the southern doors further down the corridor burst open and two Kuo Tua left the room andcrossed the corridor to enter a door on the north. One of the fishmen glanced at the group but didn’t seem to take much notice as it followed its colleague through the door. Sentinel breathed a sigh of relief; her illusion was holding. As the Kuo Tua had seen through their invisibility back at the pool, she hadn’t been one hundred percentage confident. She turned to face Griff “Bard illusions are by far the most superior”, she asserted. Griff wasn’t really listening, as he was still thinking of boobs and lobster ladies.
The team continued searching along the corridor and entered the room recently vacated by the two Kuo Tua. It was very basic, with two beds and little else. Jude was reminded more and more of the novice cells back in her temple, where she grew up. It was becoming clear that these rooms were in fact places for supplicants of Blibdoolpoolp to stay. With nothing more to see, they returned to the corridor, heading back towards the crossroads and then they snuck into the huge, pool filled room.
The ziggurat was made of three tiers and on each tier, they could make out various bowls. There was a ramp leading to the first tier on the south side and ramp leading to the top tier of the far, northern side. No one was in the room, and they could see a large number of doors on all the walls. It was eerily quiet and the statue was disturbing to look at, even at the distance the party were at. They decided to head back to the corridor and move east, down the right passageway. They were soon faced with a stairway going down and beside it a huge double door. The doors it was, after a quick conversation Team Sneak did the listen, search and sniff thing. All clear!
Through the doors, they were faced with a long corridor leading off into the distance. As the team carefully walked forwards, safe in their Kuo Tuan illusion, they came to an archway leading north, glancing that way, they spied more rooms, so they investigated. As they reached the first one, two huge Kuo Tua turned to them and said “Pilgrims are not allowed in here, leave immediately!”. Jude remembered this type all too well, these were the ones that wielded the pincer staves that had grabbed her, back at the pool. The party quickly backed up and out of the room and heading back to the south passage way. So, they were pilgrims!
The team carried on east and found themselves at another set of archways in the north wall. This time they could see a huge pool and large number of Kua Tua standing around, with a number of the huge types watching on, like guards. Sentinel strode out into the room and looked at what everyone was doing. The Kuo Tua pilgrims were throwing lobsters into the pool – a sacrifice or dedication to the strange, alien goddess. The guards started to take an interest in Sentinel and told her to either make her offering or leave. She left and rejoined the others. No one wanted to mess with the guards and they continued to the end of the corridor and found a diamond shaped pool in the floor.
The pool was teeming with small fry, possibly young Kuo Tua. Luthiel reached into the water and found it to be slightly oily and commented on such to Jude. Jude stared at the normally astute elf. “When a mummy Kuo Tua and a daddy Kuo Tua love each other very much”, she said, “the daddy Kuo Tua fertilises a batch of mummy’s eggs in a pool like this.”. Luthiel’s eyes widen and a small squeak escaped her mouth, as she furiously wiped her hands on her cloak.
As the group moved north, they found further pools of varying sizes, all containing fry at various stages of their new life. The only way was to go back, unless they wanted to enter the sacrifice pool to the west again. Not with those guards watching!
Tracing their way back, they went up a corridor that ran the other side of the large sacrifice pool, they came across a series of rooms with desks and the walls were lined with cases of scrolls. The damp, sea-like air had taken its toll on the parchments and papers and they were mostly in a terrible state of repair. The band could see that most were written in Kuo Tuan but a few were also in the language of the Drow.
Griff put his mind to the task of seeing if he could make any sense of the writings. Most were about the rituals of the Sea Mother or prayers and had no value intellectually or monetarily. They did eventually stumble over one scroll, written in the medieval elvish of the Drow that outlined some interesting interactions the Drow had had. Some of the key words were missing but the note was squirreled away with the other maps and letters of note.
Further north the band found a huge communal pool with many frolicking Kuo Tua in it. Some of the surrounding doorways were guarded. The team hatched a plan. They’d Gaes one of the guards and quiz him on what the castes were and about the Kuo Tua and shrine. Luthiel refused to get into the pool, muttering “No, no, no, no”, under her breath constantly. Jude waded in so that she was close enough to start the spell, as it would take some time to cast and the rest of the band used diversionary tactics by lounging around and drinking drinks.
With the spell cast, the guard was theirs and would behave as if Jude was its best friend. The guard spilled its guts and they found out a wealth of information. The major thing they found was that the guard could not see their illusion at all and they looked like the merry band of humanoids they were. It turns out Kuo Tua are wired differently and so no illusions work on them at all, but they treated the group like any other band of pilgrims as all sorts came to worship the Sea Mother. Sentinel looked sheepish and was glad Griff had been distracted.
The huge Kuo Tua were called Monitors and were higher up the food chain than the guards, who pipped the pilgrims. They also discovered that the high priest was called Vaguulgh and was surrounded by a caste called Whips, a bunch of Cleric Assassins. He also told them that they were free to worship at the ziggurat and no one would stop them. In fact, it was expected.
The last piece of information they gleaned was that there were two Drow here, one was a merchant and was being held in the dungeon level, one below where they were. The other was a Drow Noble; location was unspecified. The guard began to worry that he needed to be back at his post, so the team wished him well and assured him that they’d be back. The Gaes would last thirty days so there was no rush.
The team decided they’d explore the ziggurat and the statue of Blibdoolpoolp now that they knew all would be ok. They retraced their steps avoiding further interaction with the monitors or guards and entered the colossal pool room. It was quickly seen that Jude had quite the fascination with the religion of the Kuo Tua and so they all took a step back to allow her to walk down the ramp into the green water that surrounded the statue.
As she entered the water, she discovered that it was only waist deep and not too cold. “Come on in, its lovely”, she called to the band. It was then that she discovered she wasn’t alone in the water. She felt a nibble at her skin, then another and another. She caught sight of some sort of eel or giant leech swimming past her. She soldiered on, losing a significant amount of blood, before reaching the ramp to the first tier of the ziggurat.
The bowls contained sea shells and coins, so she deposited shells into one bowl and coins in the other and moved up to the second tier. She found two more bowls, one with lobsters and the other had gems. Again, Jude deposited an offering and decided to go to the top tier where the statue was. This meant that she had to go all the way down, back into the water, be eaten by more leaches and then up the back ramp. All of which she stoically did. She noticed two Monitors to the north were watching her, but proceeded and found two more bowls. She made more offerings but nothing happened.
She was turning back to the team to ask what she should do next, when she felt a power emanating from the statue, a dark malevolent force pulsing at her brain. Jude wondered if she should touch it and without thinking she reached out and as her fingers brushed the stone of the statue, she disappeared.
Oh readers, what had befallen the hapless Jude? Where had she gone? Find out next week in the “You just cannot put it down, no you really cannot put it down.” copy of the Bugle.
Report Date
12 Feb 2025
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