Round 4 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Dragonfly-acted
Svarog
Haftor
Trianne
Seamus
Jarrek
Its wings a blur of motion, the dragonfly flits down and bites Svarog , then retreats.
Seamus swings awkwardly at the dragonfly, attempting to fend it off from Svarog with a futile attempt. [b]Get back you awful fey thing! Leave us alone ya filthy thing.
"Don't worry, Seamus, we'll kill it in a minute!" Jarrek fires another arrow at the giant bug.
Jarrek's arrow hits and leaves a small mark.
Seamus grumbles, and focuses, his eyes burning with an intense anger. Suddenly a burst of flame appears in front of the dragonfly, intensely white hot, and subsides a second later. Take that, ye flying beastie!
Despite its lack of eyelids or pupils, the great insect does not seem to be affected.
Haftor backs away from the giant bug, in order to ensure that his channeling doesn't heal it as well. Then he calls on Torag, and a wave of positive energy emanates from his upheld hammer.
Trianne shied away from the savage wound taken by Svarog, and as the giant insect retreated to relative safety, she hurled another energy bolt at it.
Round 5 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Dragonfly-acted
Svarog-acted
Haftor
Trianne
Seamus
Jarrek
The ranger waits until the dragonfly approaches him on its attack run before loosing two more arrows at it. The first serves as a ranging shot for the second, which hits and does a reasonable amount of damage. It closes and savages him again, though.
Seamus, seeing the bug clearly giving his friends a hard time, withdraws a bomb, and flings the flaming projectile at the dragonfly, Fine! There ya have it!
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Round 5 (ongoing):
Seamus returns to the tried and true alchemist attack, hurling a bomb at the distant dragonfly. The bomb looks like it's about to go over the creature's thorax when it drifts up a little bit. Flaming liquid covers it, inflicting considerable damage.
Getting across the floating lily pads is tricky. The party quickly realizes that anyone weighing over 200 pounds causes the pad they're on to sink--the more they weigh, the faster the pad sinks. There are no hazards besides the flies, though, and there are plenty of places to tie off ropes in the dense weave of branches that makes the structure of the Vault.
Past the lily pad room, the hall continues north down a flight of stairs before turning west, where another flight of stairs descends. The hall eventually ends at a set of double doors in the south wall.
Trianne continued to pick bugs out of her braids as they progressed deeper into the vault. She also unslung her crossbow and loaded it. She didn’t expect a pleasant reception from whatever waited behind the next set of doors. She looked at Svarog and motioned for him to keep a little distance between those in the vanguard.
“You alright?” she asked him. “How many arrows do you have left?”
The Kellid stared at her with challenge in his eyes and said, “Few, but my blade is sharp.”
Seamus cautiously approaches the double doors, inspecting them for traps laid by the ancient druids, or by the interloping fey. Ye know, when we started this, no-one said there'd be giant fey bugs AND giants AND orcs to deal with. Hopefully we get a few breaks coming up soon, its been a pretty close thing of late...
Seamus finds no traps.
Seamus looks back at the others, Are we ready fer this? upon receiving the nods in the affirmative, he swings open the double doors to the next chamber, quickly stepping back so as to not be the most obvious target again.
Jarrek frowns. "Are we... going back toward the front doors?"
Haftor loads his crossbow and holds it at the ready.
The doors swing open easily, revealing what appears to be the interior of a large, hollow tree. The floor is flat, polished wood, with a short flight of stairs leading down to the greenhouse that the party saw from the walkway above. Rustling in the undergrowth indicates the presence of small creatures in addition to the riotous profusion of plant life.
"We need to watch out for those invisible things," says Jarrek as he looks around suspiciously.
The half-orc thinks he can hear something large moving outside of the hollow tree.
Haftor shakes his head grimly. "By Torag's curly beard, where is the treasure we were promised?" He plods over to the stairs, trying to get a look out into the wooded area, pointing his crossbow ahead of him.
"Watch it, something big is moving around out there." Jarrek hefts his huge sword and looks at Haftor and Trianne. "Do we want to try it?"
“We weren’t promised anything,” Trianne said. “And we don’t know how long this vault has been infested.”
The gods couldn’t help her curiosity though, and she slipped forward a few feet to get a closer look. Her eyes widened as her senses confirmed where they were. She fished a smokestick from her pack as she talked.
“Haftor,” she warned. “If this is the hot room, we don’t have long before they come. We have another path we can try.”
It's not as oppressively hot at ground level, but it's more humid--in fact, a thick mist covers the ground. In most areas it's about three feet deep. There are enough trees to shade much of the ground, as well, which should keep the lurkers in light from staying invisible unless they make their own light.
Jarrek looks appraisingly at the trees. "If what you said about them is right, this is too shady for those lurkers to come at us invisibly. We can probably go out and fight whatever big thing is out there- if we can see it, we can kill it, right?" The big half-orc grins. "It can't be any bigger than that hydra, right? Or that ugly giant."
Seamus peers out across the chamber, and seeing nothing, nods. I'm a thinking I won't be going first this time! I'll hang back this time and see what happens, okay? Seamus shares with the others, patting an unready bomb on his chest.
"Maybe we won't have to kill it," Trianne said. "Maybe it's a big fluffy bunny."
She withstood the looks for a moment before she said, "Yeah, I know, but a girl can dream, right?"
She swung her crossbow around in another sweep, searching for trouble. Then she nodded toward the opening and said, "After Haftor."
That sounded close enough to a consensus to the dwarf. He stepped off the bottom stair and moved into the room, crab-walking sideways so he could keep his back to the curved wall and keep his crossbow aimed to the center of the room.
Jarrek follows Haftor, falchion held ready for whatever is making the noise.
The hothouse has gone quiet save for the sounds of countless smaller creatures--monkeys, birds, small reptiles--as the party advances carefully through the undergrowth.
Suddenly, something that had a moment ago been concealed in a denser patch of plant life rears up. A tentacle lashes out at Haftor, wrapping itself around him .
Round 1:
Initiative order
Haftor
Seamus
Svarog
Trianne
Enemy
Jarrek
Seamus jumps as the tentacle emerges, and takes a half step back from where Haftor is ensnared by it. Great! Tentacle things in the jungle! he exclaims, while tossing an explosive bomb at the creature.
Round 1 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Haftor
Seamus-acted
Svarog
Trianne
Enemy
Jarrek
Seamus' bomb is on target, and the plant creature writhes in apparent pain.
"Arr. Plant beastie! Let me be."
Haftor drops the useless crossbow, and begins to flail about, trying to extract himself from the big viny creature.
Successful or not, he slides one of his throwing axes from his belt, intending to do a bit of choppin'.
Round 1 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Haftor-acted
Seamus-acted
Svarog
Trianne
Enemy
Jarrek
Haftor struggles, but can't manage to break free of the creature's grip.
“That’s a tendriculos tentacle!” Trianne shouted. “Big and hard to kill! Who keeps putting these things in here?!"
She raised her crossbow and fired an arrow at what she thought was the core of the creature. Tilting her head to listen, she nodded in satisfaction as she thought she heard the bolt hit home.
Trianne knows that they regenerate quickly under most circumstances, but intense heat shuts down that ability. They can also swallow their prey whole, and their digestive tracts secrete a toxin that can paralyze creatures that they swallow.
Round 1 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Haftor-acted
Seamus-acted
Svarog
Trianne-acted
Tendriculos
Jarrek
Trianne does indeed manage to hit the plant creature.
Svarog fires his bow!
The tendriculos tries to pull Haftor to its mouth to swallow him, but completely messes up its timing. It drops the dwarf at what passes for its feet, and misses Jarrek with both tentacles.
Jarrek charges the tendriculos!
Jarrek rushes forward, blade high and crackling with arcane radiance. Before he can close the distance with the tendriculos, though, a tentacle lashes out and grabs him!