DM Elanmorin's Hell' Rebels

Game Master Nathan Hartshorn

"Hopefully it can't get out of there, and can't reach us here.." bubbles Valrani.

She steps forward next to Oren, ready to strike at it if it closes on the team.

Readied partial charge if it looks like it it getting within 10' of us
charge: 1d20 + 8 + 2 ⇒ (8) + 8 + 2 = 18
damage: 1d6 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11

"I suggest we leave it be.."

Elurius takes a long second to recognize the giant blob is there much less a threat, before she starts in a startled chant. ♫"Shelyn's Seven-Colored-Tail Feathers! What the hell is that thing?"♫

She starts to prepare a spell of Shield of Faith to put on anyone near her who might get attacked.

That's a bit big'n'scary! Glad it didn't beat Oren's AC. That thing could knock Elurius and Oren out pretty quick.

Knowledge(Dungeoneering): 1d20 + 20 ⇒ (14) + 20 = 34

The proferssor's disembodied voice speaks to the mind of those linked by Lirotha's spell:"Ah! My unfortunate friends! The foul smelling (although I don't think you can smell anything down in the water... can you?) creature in front of you is nothing less than a fully grown Globostridus Putridissimus commonly known as a Globster! Here's the most rudimentary knowledge I can convey to you here and now, feel free to ask for an in depth dissertation on the creatures... should any of you survive the encounter! In case you die try to avoid being eaten! They reproduce that way!

"I think we definitely want to avoid that room... at least for the moment. " suggests Valrani.

"I don't think we have a choice! Defend yourselves!"

This thing is tough guys. It's immune to bludgeoning and piercing damage! That's most of our attacks from our fighters! I'm almost out of damaging spells, and we can't really do fire damage under water!! Since it is an ooze, it can follow us almost anywhere and I don't think we can outrun it! Anybody have any good ideas here? Both my wands are iffy at best. I have to roll for the Magic Missile wand, and the new Lightning Bolt wand will work fine, except it might resist most of the attack! Can anybody do sonic damage or fire underwater? Please tell me everyone brought daggers with them since they do both piercing AND slashing damage?I hate the fact that I FINALLY got access to the Fireball spell at this level, and I can't even cast it down here!(Nor did I bother to memorize it!) Valrani, you may want to shift to a water/swimming animal form you can do some massive damage with: I recommend a Shark, Giant Octopus, or Hippopotamus!

O.O I’ve got nothing guys. I mean, I have a kukri and a dagger, but they’re both small sized and I’m no frontliner! Only damaging spell I have is chill touch, which is useless here. I’m definitely down with running if we think we can get away!

I can attack with the magical klar I usually hold just for the AC bonus, but I’m not sure it’s going to do enough to have much of an effect. A fighting withdrawal might be in order.

Look...I'm pretty sure it can swim faster than any of us! Most of our swim speed is 5ft with a move action and 15 with a full move...and that's assuming we make our swim rolls! We need to fight and kill it ASAP. We cannot all escape without help or magic somehow. Some of us could retreat, but then the others would be left behind to die horribly. Dig deep. Check your magic items and such. We need to figure this out.

Val does her best to rip rations from her backpack and float them toward the thing. As she does so the tension of the moment gets the better of her. Maybe it is the extended time underwater. Maybe the exotic cells of the ooze, maybe the fear of the situation, or maybe just some combination of all three. Whatever the case, Valrani starts to change

"Get away..." she shrieks, even as her jaw shortens and teeth extend...

And wildshape time, but not into a bird this time... Ms Shark has your back.

Seeing the situation as desperate Val does the only sensible things she can think of: first she throws (or floats...) her rations toward the globster then she changes into one of the denizens of the depths... a shark, which gives her considerable swimming prowess...

Fortunately for the Silver Ravens, Valrani's gambit pays off as the Globster seems more interested in eating anything at all than "focusing" on something specific like living prey. That way the rebellion leaders are capable of leaving the depths unschated, getting back to professor Borhausen, who greets them with his usual sarcasm:"Well, well... Color me impressed! All of you managed to avoid being eaten alive by that slimy ball of digestive acids! Quick thinking and running legs... or fins I guess"

Then all of a sudden he assumes a pensive pose and his voice turns serious:"I must warn you though: leaving that thing alive for long is not a good idea. Your rations might satisfy it for half a day and they are lazy so it won't immediately start searching for a new meal, but sooner than later it will feel hunger again... and then it will find the corpses of the Skum you massacred... That could turn really ugly really quickly. One globster is a thing. A dozen or more of them are a completely different matter in terms of magnitude of the threat..."

After finishing his speech Borhausen gets back to normal:"Well then, I believe you've got something that belongs to me..." he says extending his right arm and motioning with the hand for you to deliever something...

I had given the professor the scrolls/books we found with the backpack earlier from the treasure room so he could hold them for us until we returned. I had also cast an Air Bubble spell on the pack to make sure to get it back all dry. He can take any of what we promised him, but we need to keep the pack itself and everything else we stuffed in it. Does he want the wizard spellbook made o shells? Pretty standard spells there I think. He should already have most of them.

"Oh, don't try to play me for a fool young lady! Yes indeed... I mean the shells you are hiding there. They are quite rare and precious after all. Do you think I didn't notice you grabbing them? Any wizard worth his cape knows how to scry... and I'm certainly not "any wizard"! So, are you going to give me what's mine as per our agreement or not. In case you were thinking of keeping what's rightfully mine for yourselves know that I would consider that oathbreaking... and act accordingly." asks the professor in a venomous tone.

He's a greedy dwarf... what did you expect? :P

”Now you need to calm down. We risked our neck down there, and there might even be more treasure in the areas we didn’t get a chance to explore. I’d think you’d want to cooperate with us while we figure a way to finish find out out everything down there. We need to take a day and rest up, then we can give it yet another try.”

Lirotha nods and hands over the spellbook of shells without complaint.

"I simply assumed you did not need yet another spellbook professor. Although I guess it is possible there could be spells in it you do not yet possess."

Waving the air with her hand, as if to clear it, Lirotha tries another tack on the greedy Professor.

"Professor? We seem to keep finding ourselves in more and more situations that require a heavy knowledge base and skills we either lack or we are just not as proficient in that we would like. You have proven yourself quite the bookish sort and I was wondering and hoping we could continue our successful partnership? The fact that we keep finding more and more links to the history of Kintargo and the original Silver Ravens leads me to think your services would be most invaluable as we continue in our...endeavors to improve life in this city. Would you be willing to help us on a regular basis for a continued exchange of information and possibly other items of historical significance? I found some pictograms down there tonight that my magic translated for me that I think you would find quite interesting. If you scryed us as you claim, then maybe you saw a glimpse of them? This is just the tip of the iceberg! You should see the hidden tomb we had to fight in a few weeks back! Pretty old Kintargan architecture as far as I could tell. Not to mention...we have found some remaining links to the Sacred Order of the Archivists too. Would you be interested in helping us? I promise you would not be placed in direct danger if possible, and you will have full leave to peruse anything we find of historical or magical significance. We would even be able to gift you some significant items that are unnecessary to our endeavors too as we continue to find them."

"Yeah yeah yeah, he's a big egg-head, so obviously that all sounds interesting. Let's get onto talking payment, though, since that seems to be almost as important to him," Rocco says grumpily, clearly annoyed at how long it's going to take him to dry out after their prolonged underwater escapades. And to think they have to go down there again to deal with that globster!

Valrani just glares at the grasping man.

"We made an agreement, and we will stick to it. I would prefer you didn't cast aspersions against us while we do so."

"Oh? I'm perfectly fine... calm and controlled, but since you rise the point, let's make something clear. You risked your skin for your own purposes and I aided you for mine, which, given the nature of what you found down there might interject with each other... or not. It depens on your behaviour" the professor answers Oren then adresses Lirotha.

"Never assume, especially with precious stuff" Borhausen states as he grabs the shell-book. "This stuff is rare. How many of these do you own? None? I thought so. It's not the spells by themselves... common stuff, but the nature of the magical container... yes, that's precious! Precious indeed! As for continued partnership... we'll see. I still expect you to bring me whatever books or written sources you find in the depths. That done, and if you survive... I might have work for you. As I mentioned, the stuff you found is of some concern to me and it seems like you could be useful to me after all..."

Then Borhausen raises an eyebrow at Rocco's speech:"You already know my terms for "payment" books or other written sources you find down there belong to me. The rest, including the considerable amount of gold you recovered, you may keep. If I wanted to become richer than I am I'd have specialized in alchemy!"

Then he scoffs:"Very well. Away with you! Get some rest and remember, the globster will be sluggish for a few hours, a day at most, then it will start hunting for a meal again, and if it finds all those corpses you'be facing a veritable army of globsters, not just one..."

I day rest and recover? I feel that is doable. I want to leave Talon behind this time to help 'protect' the professor since botting him underwater is kind of a pain. I'm assuming the Professor is willing to cast the same spells again tomorrow then? GM can we get the rest of what we found identified now? We can all make a bunch of spellcraft and similar knowledge rolls, or can we convince the professor to look quickly at everything...

"Could you help us sort through some of our discoveries Professor? They could have historical significance. Like this Big Ring-thing? What could this be for?"

"I'm wondering if I should return down there to remove the corpses now..." muses Valrani.

"The thought of facing more than one of those things... disturbs me."

Lirotha nods.

"If you can do it fast enough to not get caught by it, I don't mind Val. Can you shape-shift again so soon?"

"No, but my water breathing and free swimming will last a while yet. And the bodies are not that heavy."

Are you sure they are not heavy?

Valrani heads down the submerged well again and quickly finds the first mangled bunch of corpses left from the Silver Ravens' last visit...

each one weights 125 lbs. What do you do?

I've got a strength of 19, which I can boost to 23 if required with bulls strength. Even without the Bulls strength I have a medium load of 223lb, that should be heaps unless I have to drop and run.

Let's say you can do that it still takes you 10 minutes to swim down, reach a corpse, lift it and swim back up. I believe you killed 8 skums. That's 80 minutes of non stop swimming (let's say the average 10 minutes include a little rest). Can you stay underwater for that long?

The water breathing is no issue, but my free swimming is only good for fifty minutes, and doing all that swimming without it is probably not a good idea. At the very leastcan I grab four of them - including the caster?

Looking at Valrani, she waves a hand in dismissal.

"You are a Druid correct Val? Summon some bottom feeders to feed or drag the bodies away. They should reduce the other bodies quickly while you work on the rest."

Sorry. I have nothing to help us with this now. You can change any spell you have memorized into a Summon Nature's Ally spell right? If you have a 3rd level spell available you can summon a giant crab. Or 1d3 octopuses or small water elementals.

Yep, but summon natures ally is only a few rounds, and the ability to communicate with the animals is ... limited.

@Valrani: in that amount of time you can get 5 out of the water

@everyone else: how do you plan to deal with the blob down there? Let me know if you make purchases and then what you buy and the time you spend in Kintargo before you get back underwater

Lirotha notices the Professor's hesitation once he views the odd rings we found.

"Professor? Those rings you were looking at for us? You seemed...disturbed by them? Or was it awed? I can't tell which. What are they exactly?"

Elurius gathers up all the things that Lirotha and company said were magical but had no idea what they were and plops them down in front of the Professor. ♫"So you're going to check these for us, right? I do love a smart man..."♫

She pops out a notebook and takes memos of the things as he lists them off. ♫"Thank-you darling! That will help immensely. Kinda glad I didn't try that cloak on like I was tempted to. It'd ruin my beautiful face! You seemed to pause over those rings though. Something up with them?"♫

"The rings? OR the RING?" the professor chuckles dryly.

"The rings' true nature is easy enough to discern... these are prisoner’s dungeon rings. Which means they were used to keep people under control. Not surprising, considering the Grey Spiders inclinations as kidnappers. That cloak was probably used for a similar purpose. Anyway... the fact is those rings are useless without their jailer’s ring. And there's no trace of it among the stuff you asked me to identify for you"

Borhausen then keeps talking but his tone changes and he almosts sounds... excited?

"The RING is a different matter. I cannot tell you what it's for... which, frankly put, fashinates me. I can tell you it's made of alchemically treated steel and it radiates faint transmutation magic. I suppose it's a component for something larger. I suggest you check your surroundings closely when you get back down in the waters..."

Elurius frowns a bit at the mention of dungeon rings and the cloak's intended purpose. ♫"That's rather loathesome! Kidnapping people and then holding them prisoner with these items. We should definitely make sure they don't leave our sights."♫

She then glances at the bigger ring and gingerly picks it up before trying it on slowly. ♫"It's almost too big to be a ring finger for anyone smaller than an Orc. But, dear professor, I'll have you know that I am well known for how aloof and inattentive I can be!"♫

"Do you think it could be a component for some sort of machine? We found something down in the tunnels. It wasn't entirely clear what it was s'posed to do, but it didn't seem to be working when we were down there. Maybe this thing is a missing piece that would let it operate again?"

Nodding at Rocco's idea, Lirotha points at it speculating.

"One of the holes in the wall for the machine had a missing piece of metal from around it. I wonder if it fits that?"

"Good memory Lirotha!" smiles Valrani.

"In all the excitement I completely overlooked that."

Lirotha shrugs.

"I like puzzles Val. Just not life or death ones. Now...let's kill that swimming pile of blubber."

"Oh, my dear, you don't need to convince me of your inattentive nature... it's rather blatant!" Borhausen tells Elurius, then his attention switches to Rocco, Lirotha and Valrani.

"... good thinking" he begrudgingly admits "Perhaps I misjudged you... a little. Yes, that might be exactly what the ring was made for. Here. Take it and remember, any written sources you find belong to me!"

Has Rocco updated the gold and magic items lists? And more importantly, are you ready to go?

Haven't yet updated the magic items after we got everything identified, nor the wealth page after our loot and subsequent shopping spree. I may be able to do some of that this weekend.

"Oh, my dear, you don't need to convince me of your inattentive nature... it's rather blatant!" Borhausen tells Elurius, then his attention switches to Rocco, Lirotha and Valrani.

I haven't had something make me laugh like that in a while!

Elurius, enamored with the giant ring looks up at the professor for a second with a blank look. ♫"Hm?"♫

After a second or two she recalls what he might have said and gives a brilliant gleaming smile. ♫"I'm glad to hear my reputation proceeds me! I hadn't known my exploits had reached the academic levels. Would you like a signature of the great and melodic Elurius Parthreon?"♫

Haven't yet updated the magic items after we got everything identified, nor the wealth page after our loot and subsequent shopping spree. I may be able to do some of that this weekend.

I did a lot of updating on loot sheet based on what I did with what, but I'm unsure how accurate it is now with my meddling. Feel free to clean up my mess.

"... your reputation... right..." the professor scowls and adds:"Now, unless you want to keep indulging in this idle chit-chat, I suggest you be on your way before we get invaded by and aremy of globsters..."

Anything else you want to ask the professor? Otherwise let's move on

Elurius's smile ratchets up two levels of luminosity. ♫"No need to be shy! I can tell you want my signature! Just give me a moment. Who should I make it out to? Oh, what am I asking, you clearly want one for yourself!"♫ She pulls out a pad of nice paper and a pen with a stylized silver wing on it. She jots down a very short note in a sparkly silver ink.

She finishes up with a grandiose, sprawling signature that takes up as much space as the rest of the note combined. ♫"Here you go dear! I'm so glad I had those with me so I could give on to such an adoring fan!"♫
Out of the actual resting to reset spells and buying of supplies Eurius is good!

How many spell levels can the professor cast for us today again?

The professor looks at the note, apparently nonplussed after a while he comments:"...a fashinating case of pathological Narcissism... I guess. If you survive I'll be glad to direct you to a good specialist and personal friend of mine... he supervises an... institution versed in studying and curing mental illness up in Ustalav, he could help you"

@Lirotha: Same as before

With multiple spells cast and re-cast, and Talon staying with the Professor above water this time, the intrepid Silver Ravens begin to head down into the murky water...

Enshrouding herself with Magical force(Mage Armor) just before diving down, Lirotha looks at Talon and the Professor.

"Stay frosty my Pretties. If this thing gets past us, you may have to deal with it or its progeny up here."

So the basics...each person has Water Breathing, Telepathic Bond, and Monkeyfish to speed us to our destination. I believe others have individual spells cast on themselves and others like my Mage Armor spell. Please list the spells you are casting, each of you, and let's continue so we can get this area over with.

Order of descent: Oren, Val, Lirotha, Elurious, and Rocco. Agreed?

Oren chugs her mutagen to start this party, and slips into the water.

What combat buffs are being applied to Oren? I need to get all of them calculated.

Shield Other, Bull's strength, Shield of Faith, Protection from Evil, and Heroism for right now. I will be casting Haste and Prayer later though, granting another +2 to attacks.

Elurius pulls out a leather scroll and tries to get it to work for her.

UMD, Emulate Int score DC 28: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (7) + 16 = 23
UMD, Emulate Int score DC 28: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (15) + 16 = 31
UMD activate Scroll DC 25: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (2) + 16 = 18
UMD activate Scroll DC 25: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (15) + 16 = 31
She gets the spell cast, Tapping Oren on the shoulder and giving a silver glowing air to the brawler making the woman seem some how even more heroic than before.

The singer then starts casting spells as people drop into the water, adding a bull's strength to the two fighters, a shield other, a Shield of faith and then finally a protection from Evil to everyone. She keeps a rod in one hand and a leather scroll in her other hand. She thinks in her melodic voice to everyone she can "If you run into the ooze, don't engage right away, there is one thing I want to do before that!"

Right before combat starts, if we aren't ambushed that is, Elurius wants to cast an extended prayer... Assuming she can get within 40 feet of everyone and the ooze.

So a +1 to hit and damage from Bull’s Strength (as I already have a +2 enhancement bonus), +1 deflection bonus to AC from Shield of Faith (as I already have a +2 deflection bonus), +1 resistance bonus to saves (as I have a cloak +1), and +2 to basically everything from Heroism. And half damage from physical attacks from Shield Other. I like it!

After carefully applying several spells on themselves the Silver Ravens dive deep into the waters of the Yolubilis river submerging the dilapidated complex once used by the Grey Spiders as base for their criminal activities.

Place themselves on the map, right under the well and please tell me where you want to go