In which we are officially halfway through...
So...at long last, the module is complete. When we left our heroes, they had just opened the uh, "orifice" into the evil ziggurat of doom. Finding themselves in a room composed mostly of fleshy bits, rolling milky eyeballs and heaving, breathing organs, they had no desire to linger. After Adamant cast See Invisibility on her, Jo noted that while invisible, Bliz looks just like the strangely transparent version of her that was walking around with them before they somehow merged together. Mysterious...
A ladder led down through the floor to another layer below. Bliz checked it first and saw a kopru lounging on a divan (made of horrible things, of course), holding a spear and with one hand in a puddle. The room had a lovely statue of Demogorgon for decor. She jumped down and threw her dagger and missed and he immediately did something in that puddle. Suddenly, the room was full of water, rendering the battle that much tougher for us and easier for the kopru.
We are one Constitution-heavy party, but Jo just changed into her Cloak of the Manta Ray and dove right in. Urol changed into a water elemental and dove right in. Adamant just climbed down the ladder a bit and probably gave a silent thanks for that rod that allows him to cast spells silently. Bliz held her breath. What followed was sloppy, tense and protracted. A spellcaster unhindered by the water, the kopru rendered most of us inactive for at least a few of the rounds of combat (luckily not all at once!), and we had some terrible luck actually landing any blows on the slippery little fucker. He managed to lay out some damage, and then also cast a spell on me that gave me only a 50/50 shot of acting in any given round...assuming that I also made the Will save every round to resist his Halt command. Eventually, we all ended up clustered around him, but on his next turn, he swam down to the floor in the opposite corner of the room, and pulled the trapdoor. Water flooded out of the room, and he disappeared into the level below. Hellfire.
We dropped into the room and there was no sign of him. Instead, we were surrounded on all four sides by large pools of something called the Black Bile of the World--putrid, oily, thick and utterly disgusting, several large black pearls float in the pools. Suddenly, an abominable cross between a squid and a centipede rears up out of the pool, an embodiment of the madness of the elder evils, intent on protecting the pools of bile it produces--not that we knew (or know) what the fuck it is. All I know is after one five foot step, I attack the shit out of it...and promptly get grappled by one of its many tentacles.
I don't think I can accurately describe the ensuing battle, given its complicated nature. Things were definitely tense. The party members had some difficulty with movement, especially after the kopru threw a wall of stone across the center of the room between the bile worm and them. Even after the wall was opened up by our resident druid, the worm kept diving under the surface of the pool (which connected to the other pools) and coming back up in unexpected places. Oh, and did I mention it vomited up a projectile stream of flaming acid? If you've played Mass Effect, it was like fighting a Thresher Maw...without a Mako and room to drive. Luckily, Urol gave me and Bliz resist acid 30. I spent almost the entire fight grappled by it, apart from a brief respite when it dropped me--at which point I charged it again. Cause that's what Jo does. Its tactics rendered poor Bliz rather helpless, as she just couldn't seem to get any sneak attacks in. The kopru, meanwhile, was making itself a huge nuisance, and eventually managed to Silence Adamant after taking several nasty hits from his spells.
I got down to the 20's on hp, when Urol managed to heal me up to full. Then I got hit and grappled by the tail...which had a constrict attack as well. Even with crits confirmed on my cutlass (which has Improved Crits anyway), I was not making much of a dent (the bastard's fast healing didn't help with that). Adamant was silenced and had very little he could do, even resorting to looting the body once the kopru went down, looking for anything useful. Bliz was doing the best she could, and Urol was running out of spells. He cast his stampede spell again, but when the worm dove back under the surface, there was precious little any of them could do. It came back up and Urol sent the stampede after it. Adamant was waiting for it and charged directly at it, got grappled by the tentacles, but oddly enough, seemed to have intended that all along...for some reason??
*flash*
Jo is standing in a featureless space, all signs of companions, battle, ziggurat gone. Across from her is Tezcatlipoca, beloved of the Xochiquetzal of previous mention. And just to really drive it home, cue the Aeris music from FFVII. He is holding a spear, *his* spear...the same one that the kopru had been holding at the start of the fight. He tells Jo that a thousand years must have passed, that it is time to return her to the sky. The waterfalls flowing into the cavern become visible somehow, and he says that her first husband is weeping again. It's time for her to resume her rightful place and restore Thanaclan. She asks what will happen to him, and he says that he belongs here, and he will stay here and watch over Golismorga, but that she must return to the surface and restore the Olman city that perished mysteriously centuries before.
****
Meanwhile, the stampede of dinosaurs that Urol has conjured instead manifests as a contingent of Olman warriors who swarm over the bileworm, dealing the final blow. It releases Adamant, who levitates himself back down to the ground. Jo is released, but all unawares, she seems to be set back down on the ground by some invisible force.
Tezcatlipoca brushes her lips with the briefest of kisses and then he seems to fade away as Adamant fades into view in the same place in front of her, holding the same spear. After a moment of dazedness, wherein Urol runs over to Bliz to make sure she's okay, Adamant waves a hand in front of her distant gaze and asks if she's alright. Not knowing how to answer, she pulls herself back into the situation. They make a quick scan for loot in this room and the one above, before exiting stage right via a teleport back to the now-abandoned village of the mongrelfolk to rest before returning to the Sea Wyvern.
All in all, the fights were rather evenly balanced, leading to some serious tension, but not overwhelming victory or defeat which isn't as fun. We were in definite danger and could easily have died (at the end, I was one bad crit away from dropping below 0), but we managed to scrape it out. We also had some killer music in form of two tracks from the Advent Children movie, which certainly captures the mood of EPIC BATTLE. I really did think that I might bite it in this one, but no one died, and now we have a bunch of shit to work out RP-wise between all these people. So, we return to Farshore to rest, recuperate, and try to make sense of everything we have learned.
And then...Thanaclan???
And now we have a portable hole! And a decanter of endless water! And a ring of nine lives with 8 lives left! And lots of other loot! Hooray! Not to mention Tezcatlipoca's spear, which poses a problem for Jo...what will she do with it? She won't use it herself, but she can't sell it. It holds a certain symbolic weight, so giving it away could also be fraught with meaning. This and many more questions will be asked in the ensuing days--here's hoping for at least a few answers.
A ladder led down through the floor to another layer below. Bliz checked it first and saw a kopru lounging on a divan (made of horrible things, of course), holding a spear and with one hand in a puddle. The room had a lovely statue of Demogorgon for decor. She jumped down and threw her dagger and missed and he immediately did something in that puddle. Suddenly, the room was full of water, rendering the battle that much tougher for us and easier for the kopru.
We are one Constitution-heavy party, but Jo just changed into her Cloak of the Manta Ray and dove right in. Urol changed into a water elemental and dove right in. Adamant just climbed down the ladder a bit and probably gave a silent thanks for that rod that allows him to cast spells silently. Bliz held her breath. What followed was sloppy, tense and protracted. A spellcaster unhindered by the water, the kopru rendered most of us inactive for at least a few of the rounds of combat (luckily not all at once!), and we had some terrible luck actually landing any blows on the slippery little fucker. He managed to lay out some damage, and then also cast a spell on me that gave me only a 50/50 shot of acting in any given round...assuming that I also made the Will save every round to resist his Halt command. Eventually, we all ended up clustered around him, but on his next turn, he swam down to the floor in the opposite corner of the room, and pulled the trapdoor. Water flooded out of the room, and he disappeared into the level below. Hellfire.
We dropped into the room and there was no sign of him. Instead, we were surrounded on all four sides by large pools of something called the Black Bile of the World--putrid, oily, thick and utterly disgusting, several large black pearls float in the pools. Suddenly, an abominable cross between a squid and a centipede rears up out of the pool, an embodiment of the madness of the elder evils, intent on protecting the pools of bile it produces--not that we knew (or know) what the fuck it is. All I know is after one five foot step, I attack the shit out of it...and promptly get grappled by one of its many tentacles.
I don't think I can accurately describe the ensuing battle, given its complicated nature. Things were definitely tense. The party members had some difficulty with movement, especially after the kopru threw a wall of stone across the center of the room between the bile worm and them. Even after the wall was opened up by our resident druid, the worm kept diving under the surface of the pool (which connected to the other pools) and coming back up in unexpected places. Oh, and did I mention it vomited up a projectile stream of flaming acid? If you've played Mass Effect, it was like fighting a Thresher Maw...without a Mako and room to drive. Luckily, Urol gave me and Bliz resist acid 30. I spent almost the entire fight grappled by it, apart from a brief respite when it dropped me--at which point I charged it again. Cause that's what Jo does. Its tactics rendered poor Bliz rather helpless, as she just couldn't seem to get any sneak attacks in. The kopru, meanwhile, was making itself a huge nuisance, and eventually managed to Silence Adamant after taking several nasty hits from his spells.
I got down to the 20's on hp, when Urol managed to heal me up to full. Then I got hit and grappled by the tail...which had a constrict attack as well. Even with crits confirmed on my cutlass (which has Improved Crits anyway), I was not making much of a dent (the bastard's fast healing didn't help with that). Adamant was silenced and had very little he could do, even resorting to looting the body once the kopru went down, looking for anything useful. Bliz was doing the best she could, and Urol was running out of spells. He cast his stampede spell again, but when the worm dove back under the surface, there was precious little any of them could do. It came back up and Urol sent the stampede after it. Adamant was waiting for it and charged directly at it, got grappled by the tentacles, but oddly enough, seemed to have intended that all along...for some reason??
*flash*
Jo is standing in a featureless space, all signs of companions, battle, ziggurat gone. Across from her is Tezcatlipoca, beloved of the Xochiquetzal of previous mention. And just to really drive it home, cue the Aeris music from FFVII. He is holding a spear, *his* spear...the same one that the kopru had been holding at the start of the fight. He tells Jo that a thousand years must have passed, that it is time to return her to the sky. The waterfalls flowing into the cavern become visible somehow, and he says that her first husband is weeping again. It's time for her to resume her rightful place and restore Thanaclan. She asks what will happen to him, and he says that he belongs here, and he will stay here and watch over Golismorga, but that she must return to the surface and restore the Olman city that perished mysteriously centuries before.
****
Meanwhile, the stampede of dinosaurs that Urol has conjured instead manifests as a contingent of Olman warriors who swarm over the bileworm, dealing the final blow. It releases Adamant, who levitates himself back down to the ground. Jo is released, but all unawares, she seems to be set back down on the ground by some invisible force.
Tezcatlipoca brushes her lips with the briefest of kisses and then he seems to fade away as Adamant fades into view in the same place in front of her, holding the same spear. After a moment of dazedness, wherein Urol runs over to Bliz to make sure she's okay, Adamant waves a hand in front of her distant gaze and asks if she's alright. Not knowing how to answer, she pulls herself back into the situation. They make a quick scan for loot in this room and the one above, before exiting stage right via a teleport back to the now-abandoned village of the mongrelfolk to rest before returning to the Sea Wyvern.
All in all, the fights were rather evenly balanced, leading to some serious tension, but not overwhelming victory or defeat which isn't as fun. We were in definite danger and could easily have died (at the end, I was one bad crit away from dropping below 0), but we managed to scrape it out. We also had some killer music in form of two tracks from the Advent Children movie, which certainly captures the mood of EPIC BATTLE. I really did think that I might bite it in this one, but no one died, and now we have a bunch of shit to work out RP-wise between all these people. So, we return to Farshore to rest, recuperate, and try to make sense of everything we have learned.
And then...Thanaclan???
And now we have a portable hole! And a decanter of endless water! And a ring of nine lives with 8 lives left! And lots of other loot! Hooray! Not to mention Tezcatlipoca's spear, which poses a problem for Jo...what will she do with it? She won't use it herself, but she can't sell it. It holds a certain symbolic weight, so giving it away could also be fraught with meaning. This and many more questions will be asked in the ensuing days--here's hoping for at least a few answers.