Week 57 - The two that got away.

A brief discussion ensues: loot, or leave and rest? Loot wins out. The casters are down on spells, but not their most powerful. They decide to assay the south door of the statue workshop room.


Jericho finds no traps or other unpleasantness - the door is simply a door. He enters the room, beginning his search. But after half a minute or so, the strange shifting patterns of the coloured lights disorient him. He sees outside the door a dangerous menace - a tall, rocklike two-legged being. A dryskin! A fully armed and dangerous dryskin! He moves swiftly to kill the creature before it can attack. Gauthakan is unprepared for this, and Jericho’s shortsword catches him in the vitals. Jericho then begins to babble in a strange alien language. Gauthakan deals with the matter by smacking him - carefully but firmly, in the side of the head. He collapses, and when the healer brings everyone to, Jericho is recovered from his momentary disorientation.

Hmm. So Jericho is a bit weak on the old will save, eh? I’ll keep it in mind. Note how quickly confusion effects can change the situation. If Jericho had won initiative and done a full-round attack after the surprise round - both quite possible and even likely BTW - Gauthakan would be dead.


The party decide to try the west door. Behind it is an obvious trap/puzzle room. Flash determines that the entire room reeks of evocation and necromantic magic. Jericho (and Mend assisting) investigate, while the rest of the party helpfully stand well out of the way.

The end of the mosaic worm on the floor of the room, just in front of the door, is trapped, and Jericho disarms it. However, it seems that there is a separate magic trap every few feet - disarming one sets another one off. A bolt of something nasty fires at Jericho, but he dodges it. And, to finish off the fun, the bit of floor that just fired makes a “rearming” kind of noise.

Bummer.

Gauthkan elects to try flying in bat form with his Cloak of The Bat (which they looted from Moreto), but nope - he too is narrowly missed by a bolt of necromantic energy.

They take another look at the Indiana-Jones style clue on the wall. Hey! Slime! I know where we can get some slime! But the slime is in the confusion room. No matter! Flash retreives his wand of Unseen Servant, which the party recovered from the toolbench of the architect of the Whispering Cairn, back when when they very first started adventuring. The statue-manufacture room, of course, is filled with tools and useful objects, so finding a container is no problem. They have the Unseen Servant retrieve slime from the break room, and liberally coat the mosaic of the worm as they walk across. No worries! Of course: the slime will swiftly dry out, so getting back may be a problem. But it’s a problem for another day.

Door, listen, check for traps, nothing, open the door.

Mend checks the niche and finds a hidden compartment. Some loot, nothing fascinating. Jericho checks the doors for traps. Nothing. Frith arrives, and comments - “Wow, man. Looks like a private shrine to Kyuss”. They use their wand of shatter on the statue, just out of principle.

They decide to head south.

Well. One look at this place convinces everyone that this room is bad news. Someone spots evidence of dragon clawmarks on the floor - this room is big enough to be comfortable for Lashonna in her true form. There are two hot-tub sized thingos: one before each door. Frith Air Walks to get a better angle of view, and sees that the near tub is more or less full of Kuss worms. There’s no telling as to whether the tub stops at floor level or whether it’s merely the mouth of a pit.

But nothing happens.

I went to a bit of effort on the night to make better notes for the webpage. Well, here’s the result:

The party moves cautiously into the room. As the first person starts to approach the halfway point, both hottubs start to vomit up a fountain of Kyuss worms. The the worms start to coalesce (a la T2), each forming into a colossal sized Kyuss worms. And still more worms are coming out of the tubs!

Flash puts a ring-shaped Wall of Fire around the near tub: the worm rising up out of it being so enormous that it cannot help but lie in the flames. And Frith drops a Flame Strike into it. But Guthakan, who is standing right next to it, lays into it with his Goliath Hammer, killing it with a furious barrage of strikes.

According to the stat block, the advanced overworms are magical beasts - there is nothing there about them not being subject to critical hits.

Seeing that even more worms are coming up through the pedestal, Mend plugs it with a Wall of Stone. The other worm, however, moves forward and lunges at Frith. It bites him and grabs him. The bite horribly injures him, reducing him to helplessness. Oh Noes! Frith is going to get eaten!

Frith, unable to cast any spell that might save him, takes the only option he has: he activates his Word of Recall which teleports him back to his sanctuary in Diamond Lake. The effort reduces him to unconsciousness, but this causes his Contingency spell to activate: automatically firing a Cure spell.

Frith was reduced to exactly zero. One more point, and he’d have been wormfood.

Gauthakan charges forward to engage the worm that struck Frith. The worm snaps at him as he runs forward, and grabs him. Gauthakan gets one good shot in, smacking it a mighty blow, but now it’s his turn to become wormfood.

Meanwhile, the fountain of worms from the second pedestal ceases to gush forth more worms and a second colossal worm forms. Mend casts Wall of Force to block it. Trapped, it retreats back down into the opening on top of the pedestal.

As the worm trapped beneath the Wall of Stone blocking the near pedestal starts battering though, Jericho steps forward to strike the worm that has grabbed Gauthakan in its jaws - but one hit is not enough. Flash also attempts to aid, dropping a Maximised Bolt of Glory into it, plenty of damage, but not enough. Frith, miles away in Diamond Lake, Cures himself - also not a lot of help for poor Gauthakan at this satge. Gauthakan, then, does the only thing he can think of - activating his Cloak of the Bat he transforms into a tiny flying insectivore, and escapes the jaws of the beast.

Then Jericho does a full-round attack, his Ring of Blinking making each one a sneak attack. With all the other hurt it has taken, this is enough to turn the beast into worm goo.

Meanwhile, Frith back in Diamond Lake beseeches the gods of natural goodness for a Miracle - a Greater Teleport back into the fray. The Gods agree with aclarity, and it a moment Frith is back, the strength and skill of his casting enough to defeat an interesting diversion that affects teleportation into the dungeon.

They have less than a minute before the Colossal worm batters its way through the Wall of Stone plugging the hot-tub. Since the great danger is being grappled and swallowed, Flash casts Freedom of Movement all around. They are ready when the two worms emerge from the ruins of the floor.

The first worm attacks Mend, but the Freedom of Movement serves its purpose and Mend slips from its jaws. Mend hits it in return, a fine blow. Frith, meanwhile, drops a Blade Barrier over the top of the opening, joining the Wall of Flame that is still there. The second worm emerges (yeah, it’s a tight fit, but they are worms), and stuns Jericho with visions of Kyuss-y doom. But its follow-up strike utterly misses him.

Flash, then, the recaster, uses Slime Wave. These worms are not actually undead, and the wave of green slime kills one of them outright. Gauthakan steps in and does an enormous amount of damage on the one remaining, but not quite enough to drop it.

So it’s up to Mend to kill-steal the last überworm.

The worms are carrying no loot. So the party venture south. The passage is a dead-end, blocked by a wall of silver. Jericho searches it, and discovers that it does not go all the way to the top: there is a crack between the top of the wall and the ceiling, large enough (Frith observes) for a creature in Gaseous Form - like, for instance, a vampire - to get through. Gauthkan deals with the wall while the rest of the party go hide. It’s magical, and repairs itself, but not anywhere near fast enough. Gauthakan destroys it swiftly.

In the chamber beyond are two bearded devils with spiked chains. They attack Gauthakan, but come nowhere near hitting him. A Meteor Storm is cast by something invisible, but Gauthakan is still resistant to fire from a spell cast during the fight with the liches. He steps forward and deals with the two bearded devils in a single round.

Baldumech, the Pit Fiend tasked with guarding this room, fires another spell, but the party swarm into the room and stomp him.

CR 18? Feh. Word of Chaos from Frith stuns him, Slime Wave from Flash eats him away.

And this, finally, is the room of teh loot. There is something like half a million GP worth of gems and magical gear (including a Ring of Three Wishes), and two items of some interest.

First, a container of earth. Lashonna’s grave dirt, no doubt. The party waste no time purifying it with holy water, blessings, and the Urine of a Stalwart Warrior (which apparently is sacred to Kord, or something).

Second - a curious vial: a unique item beyond even Mend’s ability to immediately identify.

An engraved platinum vial with a ruby-topped stopper. Delicate etchings on the vial depict numerous erinyes devils chained together and to the walls and floor of a dungeon.

There is some sort of liquid in it.

Well! A very fine fight. Is there anything left to do? Is anyone going to drink from the vial? And: what a pity there’s no time to spend any of the loot. It will not be long, now, before Kyuss gets what’s coming to him.

Or the party do.