Contact is made
Our merry band of adventurers rests in the room next to the entrance, where we found
Farrell Rosa.
Wren notices that she 'wakes up' in the middle of the night, obviously 'possessed' by the mind flayer. He urges us to explore the nautilus more, because he has 'pets' he wishes us to 'meet'. The next day we don the Helmet of Mind Shielding on Farrell, just to be sure. Then we proceed to the last part of the ship we haven't explored yet. We find neat piles of body parts, with piles of arms, heads and legs neatly stacked. At the end of the hallway is a blob of body parts that suddenly comes alive and attacks us! It is a muscle monster (because it is literally made of muscles). Harvey gets bashed around by the muscle monster a lot, but we manage to defeat it. In the next few rooms we find
Artso's armor in a smelter, and some sort of control room. We also find another prison room, this time with a human man with black hair (
Trife; he is the owner of an inn in town), a spidery dragon-worm monster (
Tabi, a
Neogi) and a
Goliath (
Gamul). We chat a bit; Gamul lost a tavern brawl and feels insecure. He does seem oddly relaxed though, and knows exactly how long he has been here (all other prisoners didn't know this, suspicious!). Tabi talks to us a bit; it wants to destroy Drussix so if we let if free it will help us. We are unsure if this is a good idea, and
Harvey Cecil remembers reading that Neogi are (like mind flayers) actually an evil race of slaver creatures. We discuss whether we should draft Tabi, but in the end decide not to. However, we concoct a plan: we will use an illusion of Tabi/a Neogi creature to distract Drussix, then attack him. We Alter Self Harvey to look like a mind flayer (since we have seen mind flayer illusions, we do a better job this time).
A lot of solid prep... and a lot of luck
We travel back to the underground town square. There are many dwarven guards and Quaggoths, but they seem not to mind us being there. We first explore an old apothecary building (which we are denied access to by the two dwarven guards) by sneaking in when they go to unload carts of ores and gemstones inside. After some running around we decide to hide in another building and lurk a bit, when Drussix arrives on the square!
Shynt creates the Tabi illusion, and Drussix commands his dwarven minions and the Quaggoths to attack it. When they realize it is an illusion, he orders the dwarves back around him, to use as some sort of dwarven shield. A wild magic surge occurs, and Shynt becomes supercharged! His shadow can also cast spells! Shynt and his shadow cast Fireballs, and unleashes hell. Many dwarves are burned to a crisp. It is very sad. Drussix is still alive however, and runs away while throwing fear psionics into our group. Several of us are either invisible or protected, so it doesn't do as much as Drussix needs. Then, Rael makes Shynt a Giant Ape, and Shynt throws a giant boulder on Drussix. Drussix gets squished! He dies! After he transformed into a giant pile of mind flayer goo, the last few dwarves come to their senses. We meet
Tjalvi, the only dwarf to survive the Fireball Express. He is badly burnt, however. A few healing spells make sure he doesn't die.
We mop up the last few Quaggoths, and rescue Trive from his cell. We leave Tabi and Gamul. After telling everyone to get out of the underground city, we head back ourselves. We want to flood the city again. On the way back to the entrance, Wren shoots one of the blue flying blobs, which promptly starts leaking water. Apparently these blobs hold all the water that flooded the city! We shoot a few more and rush back to the entrance.
The aftermath
Back in the city we head to the Raven Queen's temple. On the way there we meet several confused cultists. We take their robes and make sure they are not cultisty anymore. We also find
Chris in a cultist robe. He confesses that he took the head priests' lunch! Heretic! We make sure he repents for his sins. The high priest is happy we fixed the city, and cures Shynt of his retardation and
Eryn Valdorin X of his Owlbearyness. He is happy, until he learns that his father is dead. Then he is sad. We use the amulet of Alter Self to make sure Eryn doesn't look like Eryn. We also head by
Artso's Arcane Assemblage, where we trade the armor and some gems for a bag of holding. In two days, a trader (
Alessandro) will hit this town and he will have a BoH. We head to the inn we first stayed/partied with Chris, and sleep.
Next day we receive an invitation from the
Northfist. We head to Trife's inn (
The Brawlfist Inn) where we eat and meet Trife's family. We also meet up with Tjalvi there; he tells us the Northfist is an adventurer's guild. He wanted out, they didn't want him to leave, he is sort of on the run (but not really trying very hard). We meet
Garvell, a Northfist representative. He tells us what the deal is: 2 days of adventure (choice out of several options) that our Mentor will give us. We get to pick a Mentor. They are a respected guild but we are concerned by the 'retirement plan' (see Tjalvi). The benefits are training, connections, and standard guild perks.
Rael and Harvey are not sure they want to because we have to listen to someone else; the missions we get to choose are paid for, so there is no 'pro bono' work. We are all a little skeptical about the retirement plan (Garvell: "Nobody quits but we don't really keep tabs on the adventurers"). In the end, we are offered the chance to go to
Northcastle, meet mentors and choose then. There is also a branch of the Northfist in
Westfold.
Harvey, can we trust him? (grumble)
There are rumours of owlbear attacks in the city; Harvey and Rael want to hunt it, as we know for sure that Eryn didn't attack anyone. They talk to a survivor, who was mugging someone when he was attacked by an owlbear. Wren is skeptical an actual owlbear attacked anyone. During night-time, we join Tjalvi for some monster hunting. He leads us toward the place the first attacks happened. Eventually we find a creature, leaving the scene where a woman was just mugged. The muggers are still bleeding on the floor. We manage to capture the creature (Harvey: hold person, Shynt: rope). It is not a creature, but
John Bent, the kid that dropped the (now "mysteriously" missing, inventory management is hard) ruby when he saw Harvey and Owlbear Eryn. His parents were murdered (which we did, but totally self defenced there! We don't tell John this though) and he went all Batman. He has an owlbear outfit. Wren takes it from him. Harvey decides he deserves a second chance (he did murder some one, although he didn't know; turns out that if you beat up people, they might die!) and sends him to the Raven Queen's temple, where he will be drafted to do Raven Queen-y stuff until he has repented. Tjalvi will keep an eye on the kid and check in every once in a while to make sure he doesn't do more vigilante-business.
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