The room, already full of fish, grew even tighter as Molly conjured up a rare freshwater shark. The beast was to surprised at its new environment to be effective when it bit at the gar, but it did provide some confusion. Storn called upon Gorum to free himself, then jabbed his spear repeatedly into the gar. It seemed the spear was as good at killing fish as it was giants! Chwaer got in another good hack with her axe before Quill swam up and drove his dagger into the gar's eye, piercing its brain. The shark went into a frenzy with all the blood clouding the water and began shredding the gar's body. Storn looked down at his leaking belly and hurriedly moved back away from the shark.
Swimming up to the doorway, Chwaer can see the hallway goes in both directions.
"That wasn't too bad!" Sander burbles.
He joins Quill.
Chwaer keeps glancing back at the shark, worried it's still hungry. She peers out into the hallways looking for any disturbed silt or more gars.
The shark disappeared after a few moments, even as the others skirted around it to snoop out ahead. To the west is a large open chamber with some kind of circular opening in the floor. To the east the walls had crumbled, making an entrance into another room.
Chwaer moves toward the east (L25), attempting to dog paddle and not dredge up any more silt.
Chwaer couldn't see anything merely drawing even with her companions, so she swam a little farther forward. The hole in the wall revealed a decent sized room the held the shattered remains of many stone vessels resembling huge amphora or vases.
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Quill, probably slowly, swims over to where Chwaer is.
”What did you find? Amphorae?” Quill looks on. ”Did you know that the plural of amphora is amphorae? I totally knew that though I was raised in a backwater trade village in the middle of orc country,” Quill offers. ”Strange what one picks up.”
Having no ability to cover anyone underwater, he casts Detect Magic and begins to examine the vases and amphorae.
Perception
Storn groans and yanks out a wand of cure light wounds before jamming it in his sucking chest wound.
He then continues stomping along the group, letting the people with better senses figure out where they're going. He keeps his mega-spear at the ready.
Sander follows behind Quill and Chwaer.
"Look for clay," Sander says, watching air bubbles float upward.
When the rest of the party moves up, Chwaer will join Quill (O28) looking at the area south of them.
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"BAH!" Storn realizes he's been hanging out in the romo while Quill has just sent him passive-aggressive looks for him to get his big hairy butt in the lead.
He stomp-swims through the water up to Chwaer and unless she goes 'no you fool' he just pushes on into the next room.
From the corner, you couldn't see any danger, but Chwaer and Quill pointed out the flash of metal buried in the silt near the center of the room.
"Wimps! Cowards!" mutters Storn, loudly, as he stalks for the metal thing. Surely it is great treasure he can beat people to death with.
Nothing explodes when Storn tromps into the room, other than the clouds of silt that the big man's feet stir up. He reached down and picked up a giant-sized dagger that shone silver, despite the time it must have spent underwater here. Seeing no immediate danger, the rest of you moved in and began poking around and looking through the doorway in the southern wall.
That's when Storn started coughing. Coughing underwater is an unusual experience, and everyone got to experience it as the silt invaded your mouth and lungs. It wasn't the same as the silt in the previous area. Maybe something from the busted amphorae? Whatever it was, it made it hard to breathe, and you could feel your lungs straining.
Through the gap in the southern wall you see an enormous room that doesn't seem to have much in it other than small fish and broken stone blocks. On the eastern wall is a set of steps leading up to a dais, which held a chair or throne.
Well used to working with plants and their sometimes dangerous pollen, Sander doesn't really worry about the silt all that much, though he's not a little nervous that some sea giant is just leaving daggers around.
He waits to see if any of his companions need help.
He waits for Chwaer to indicate the way forward is clear and then follows her and Storn in, as usual.
Chwaer feels fine for the most part until she bends over and starts hacking up a lung. She looks toward the next area as she struggles to breathe.
Storn starts loudly hacking into the water, his beefy faces screwed up in disbelief as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on.
Throwing up underwater is no fun, as Storn and a few others found out when the toxic silt they stirred up ravaged their lungs and stomachs. Still, it was only for a minute or so, then you felt much better. You might not smell too good once you exited the lake, but you felt better.
Once Chwaer's stomach settles a bit, she lets the others get a little closer to her and then starts to move over to the stairs. (v22)
This central chamber is the largest room in the temple ruins. The western wall has completely collapsed and now consists of a pile of great stone blocks. Lake fish dart around the rubble and through the fallen stones. In the center of the room to the east, a short f light of stone stairs rises to a small stone dais. On the throne, slumped so that it was hard to see from a distance, was a giant's skeleton. It's clothing was in tatters, but the golden torcs on its arms were in great condition.
To the south, there are doors leading into two more chambers, and an opening in the northwest leading back to the chamber with the circular opening in the floor.
Quill sees that the corridor tot he northwest does in deed lead to the room with the circular opening in the floor. He does not see any signs of danger.
"Stop stomping around like a troll and at least try to swim!" Molly growls at Storn as she puts action to words -- once the nausea has passed, anyway.
The Witch swims forward and peers into the south passages.
Chwaer is finally able to jump out of the silt and swim forward a bit (AA21)
Storn wiggles his fingers excitedly as he grabs the torcs before trying one on for a moment before smirking and shoving it in the ludicrous oversize bag on his shoulder.
He glances over to Molly and sighs for a moment before he kicks off from the ground and starts swimming.
Swimming further to the south, Quill sees a room to the east that appears to be set up as a shrine of sorts, though the murky water makes it hard to see any details. To the south, the nearest room as some kind of berm across the doorway, limiting access to only the top 10 feet of the nearly 30 foot height of the main chamber.
"This place is huge," Sander burbles as he tries to keep up with the others, despite his marked inability to swim. There just wasn't a lot of chance to practice that in Trunau.
He gestures toward the top of the doorway, trying to kick his way up there as he continues to look around.
Storn paddles along awkwardly, the ludicrous spear attached to his back acting as the world's most violent rudder.
Chwaer admires Storn's grace as she trudges along the floor toward the blocked doorway.
Assuming she ever makes it there, she tries to climb to the gap.
Chwaer
Molly
Quill
Sander
Storn
lobster
Swimming up to the top of the berm, Chwaer and Sander looked in...and nearly dropped back down as fast as they could. Parts of the ceiling of this room have collapsed, and large blocks have crashed through in several places. At the far end of the room lie the remains of a crumbled fountain. Immediately on the other side of the berm was a large creature that looked like a lobster with tentacles growing from its mouth. It rushed the berm, clearing the top and swinging at Chwaer with a heavy claw. The claw pincered the dwarf's torso and squeezed, cracking ribs and bruising flesh.
This is a chuul, a lobster-like creature with paralytic tentacles.
Chwaer is hit for 14 damage and grappled.
Chwaer is constricted for another 17 damage
R1: lobster thing, quill, sander, storn, chwaer, molly
status:
chwaer 38/69
molly 55/55
quill 57/57
sander 62/62
storn 67/67
lobster -0
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Round 1
Quill double swims closer to the immediate danger like a chump as this lobster will surely devour the party.
vs. DC 10
vs. DC 10
He recognizes Chwaer’s danger and prays to the Elf That Hugs the World to free the party’s new victim friend.
AC 21 (23 vs. giants)
HP 57/57
Bless: 0/7 used
Ferves: 1/7 used (3d6)
SacWeap: 1/9 rounds used (swift,+2/shock/flaming/frost)
PoP 1: 0/1 used
To Hit: +6 BAB, +5 Dex, +1 WF, +1 Magic +1 PBS -2 DA =+12
Damage: 1d8 + 1 Str +1 magic + 2 weap spec +1 PBS +4 DA = +9
[ dice]1d20+12-2[/dice] to hit; (-rapid,+PBS)
[ dice]1d8+9[/dice] cold iron damage.
[ dice]1d8+9[/dice] cold iron damage. (manyshot)
[ dice]1d20+12-2[/dice] to hit; (-rapid,+PBS)
[ dice]1d8+10[/dice] cold iron damage.
[ dice]1d20+7-2[/dice] to hit; (-rapid,+PBS)
[ dice]1d8+10[/dice] cold iron damage.
"Don't let the tentacles touch you," Molly warns. "That's a chuul; it'll paralyze ya!"
Molly whips out her wand, points it at the chuul and activates its magic.
Chwaer grimaces, "little late for that!" She tries to cut away at the claw with her axe.
for
for
HP 62/62(+18 for extract)
AC 27, touch 18, flat-footed 24
Fort +9 (+6 vs. poison), Ref +10, Will +5 (+2 vs. fear)
CMD 18
Bombs: 0/13; Mutagen: 0/1; Spontaneous healing: 0/20; Blast 0/1
Sipping jacket: displacement 1/9
Effects: +4 Con (+2 Fort saves), +2 AC, -2 Cha; barkskin (+4 AC); clayskin (DR 5/adamantine; 45 pts); shield (+4 AC)
Extracts; Blast Finesse ritual: []
1st (5/day): expeditious retreat [], enlarge person [], shield [][], stone fist []
2nd (4/day): alchemical allocation [][], barkskin [x], perceive cues []
3rd (4/day) fly [], invisibility [], clayskin [x], displacement [x]
Activating his potion jacket, Sander manages to swim up to the thing to try to help. Much to his surprise, he finds a weak point as he swings his morningstar.
With the aid of Quill's spell, Chwaer wriggled free of the chuul and launched a flurry of axe blows at it. Two connected, and the monster's chitinous shell shattered under the hits. Sander swam up and cracked one of the monster's forelegs with him little morningstar.