S1 E58: Into the Veins of the World
General Summary
In which the Scale Squad takes a breather then dives right in to a dragon fight - which it wins handily - but finds itself in a strange new place...
- While relaxing and recuperating from recent adventures, some shopping gets done, and Zalock does some recreational arena-fighting, nearly besting a massive Dire Troll that on paper he should have no business overcoming. A little money is lost but there was great honor in the close defeat, and the people of the city continue to marvel at their local heroes.
- While poking around town for some better gear, the gang is approached by the Abbess of the Temple of Danildee, goddess of Joy and Fortune, a thin and cheerful monk with the weight of decades in her eyes and steel in her narrow muscles. She introduces herself as Arden and asks the party to come check out a strange fissure that has opened in the rear of the temple grounds, potentially threatening the structure with collapse should the crack continue to grow and spread. The issue seems to also align with Zalock's sword that can detect the dragon hoard where it originated, though it seems to point more vertically than horizontally. Arden is so thankful, she kisses Blizzard on the cheek.
- They go to the rear of the grounds, thankfully away from its great sacred dome but still on the campus, where the novitiates' and acolyte housing is maintained. The lower floor of a common study and practice space has been rendered unusable, and a retired Cleric Tortle named Molo explains that this happened fairly suddenly, starting about a week ago - nine days to be exact; that was before the party dropped the Aot World Anchor which, according to Sylvanwroth, will do much more than just protect Tergaith - he suggested it could cause volcanoes and lava and presumably, natural steam vents. But the timing isn't quite right. Molo does say that it started fairly innocently, a large crack in the tile that began on the north side of the floor and made its way across the room, widening and filling with groundwater, but it only became dangerously hot and steamy in the past three days. It now cycles from steam to silence every 44 minutes, according to his timekeeping.
- Various methods are considered and employed before the team eventually makes their way down into a wider fissure, a split through stone wide enough for a Dragonborn but hard to navigate with no flat floor. A portion of it goes over a deeper opening below, from which extremely hot air and noxious gases are issuing. The north to south tunnel leads, strangely but perhaps not surprisingly, to a sub-basement of the Kannet Colonial Mining headquarters. A large mechanical drill similar to the one used in Oscura is set up in a cradle, with an obvious hole fitting the size of that drill at the origin of the fissure on this side; clearly Kannet was drilling - perhaps innocently enlarging this underground space, perhaps drilling for something specific below. A dozen or so large barrels of the pink goop that they were excavating from Oscura are here in storage as well, though it is impossible to say whether they came here from Oscura before the gang closed that operation down, or if they were drilled out right here under the streets of Marleven.
- They follow the sword's indicator back to the gap they crossed in the fissure, down below to a deep tunnel and cavern; momentarily assaulted by noisy, annoying stirges, they attract the attention of a green dragon they had long suspected the presence of. But they find it has been altered, or perhaps diseased - or has altered itself. Rather than the usual configuration, it's elongated and thin, with small thrashing tentacles emerging from its sail and wings shredded down to floppy stumps. Black poison drips from its mouth, the source of the noxious gas - but not the heat. It monologues about Borem having been there but the speeches are brief as it gets its ass handed to it fairly quickly. Feeling survival matters more then proselytizing, it slithers wetly at the last moment down a narrow fissure-hole in the floor, reluctantly leaving its poison-coated hoard behind - for now.
Missions/Quests Completed
- Galenboldox Below
Character(s) interacted with
- Arden, Human Abbess of the Temple of Danildee
- Molo, Tortle curator of the Temple of Danildee
- Hulgloak, Dire Troll
- Galenboldox, contaminated Adult Green Dragon
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