Finally rising up to the mouth of the cavern, Syuviel peers inside, catching sight of their adversary. Without a second thought he draws his wand from his belt and points it at the creature. Thankfully, any obstruction his allies created would not matter. Muttering the wand's command word, he fires a bolt of force.
Dan moves in to attack in earnest. "Get away from her, you... monster!"
"This thing will not die." the archer states as he draws another arrow and continues his assault on the creature.
There must be a vulnerable spot on this thing somewhere!
The man winces as he watches the arrows sail wide, both failing to find their mark.
Ioxeia struggles to get free but has no luck as the tentacle continues to tighten around her, feeling as though it will squeeze the life out of her. Dan and Matsuno make valiant attempts to put the creature down, but it manages to avoid the attacks. However, Syuviel blasts it with a ball of arcane magic, which does some damage but does not loosen the creatures grasp. Below Thorfinn continues to try and get up the rock face but he can't find solid grips in the slick rock to make any progress.
The creature strikes out once again at Ioxeia.
Stinging her again it injuries her but it does not go very deep and whatever posion it injects doesn't appear as effective.
Thorfinn makes more headway after he gets the rope out of the way.
Syuviel furrows his brow as he fires another weak bolt of arcane energy at the monster. It was only a small consolation that it could not miss.
Determined to improve his accuracy, Matsuno takes aim once more and fires into the beast, careful not to his the mage in its grasp.
Dan takes another whack at the monster.
Before anyone else has a chance to act Syuviel unleashes more of his arcane power. The ball of translucent force slams into the creature, obviously further opening an existing wound as the creature stops moving. Finally, Ioxeia is able to untangle herself from its grasp, just in time for Thorfinn to get up into the mouth of the cave.
Matsuno takes a moment to retrieve his arrows, making it a point to twist the ones in the creature at least once for good measure before pulling them out. Glancing at the welt on Ioaxeia he asks, "You ok? That looked like a nasty sting." Once the party gathers he returns the arrows to his side quiver and says, [b]"I can do a little scouting ahead if no one objects, and glances around, getting his bearings.
Syuviel turns to wave at Turch, before looking back to the cave, and back down to his own feet.
"Would one of you mind pulling me in? The spell should last for a few more minutes, but well..."
Looking back towards the opening Matsuno says, "Lower yourself down, grab the rope, and toss it into the hole and we can reel you in. If that's even possible."
"Thanks! Toss the rope up here, longshanks!"
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Ioxeia gingerly explores her wound and shakes her head in answer to Matsuno's question. "The sting itself could have been worse, but what it's doing inside is ... shall we leave it at something awful? I doubt I'll be winning any races in the next few days, and it might be best if I resort to my bow for a while..."
She pauses to rummage in her pack for a bit, before extracting the potion the group took from the goblin caster just the day before. "I had hoped this would keep longer," she says, "but we're likely to run encounter more danger in short order in this place. May I recommend we take the first stairs up we find, so there's less of a chance that we run into something nasty if we get pushed that way after bandying spells about?"
"I am afraid our ride is sailing off with it," Syuviel observes, glancing again at the departing boatman.
"Someone just reach out and pull me in." He glances down at the water below before adding, "Preferably before this spell expires."
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Seeing that she almost seems to have most of her gear spread out around her from finding the potion, Ioxeia grabs her spear just below the head and holds out the blunt end toward the wizard so he can grab hold, and hauls him in. She repacks her belongings as compactly as she can for exploring, and when she straightens up again, she has her bow in her hand, making what adjustment she can to her tactics while her body fights off the effects of the poison injected into her.
After stowing his wand, Syuviel grabs onto the haft of Ioxeia's spear, allowing himself to be pulled into the cave. As his feet touch solid ground once more, he nods to her in thanks, before hastily stepping away from the opening. The wizard turns his attention to the cave around them, not at all interested in the abomination they had just killed.
"Some sort of natural formation? A tidal cave, perhaps, as Matsuno suggested," he says aloud, speaking more to himself than anyone, "But if we are fortunate, it should connect to the more... manufactured parts of the island. Such as that pile of tinder up top that the goblins call a home."
Once up, Thorfinn murmurs an apology for not getting there sooner before looking at the corpse.
Dan kicks the corpse once as he passes it to look for a way out of the cave. "I hope this was worth it."
Heading further into the cavern Matsuno sees that there is a tunnel that splits to the south and to the north. Directly to the west is a closed door.
Thorfinn looks around at the others. "Any of you get stung by that thing? They're bad news--that poison'll melt you from the inside out, if you get enough of it."
Matsuno waits for the group to regain their composure, and deal with their wounds, before offering "Hate to remind everyone, but we've a troop of goblins above our heads. We best get moving quickly." He prepares to move north, into the tunnel, once the group is ready. Obvious that whatever down here likely had better vision than most of the group, he will stuff the end of his torch through his belt to help provide light while keeping his hands free to work.
"Let me go first--I can see in this better than the rest of you."
Hearing what Thorfinn said, Syuviel glances back at Ioxeia, as though he were expecting her to melt on the spot.
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Ioxeia falls in, and noticing Syuviel's glance, she smiles weakly behind her mask, "It was fortunate, then, that I didn't get too much of that sting. I'm in no hurry to get a better acquaintance with the dissolution of the mortal coil, from within or otherwise."
Behind the bravado she assumes to encourage - herself, as much as everyone else, she thinks, Goddesses save us all. What have we gotten ourselves into?
Matsuno leads the way downt he northern passage that opens into another room. Dozens of strange dead bodies lie scattered about this room. Most are sea birds and ospreys, but there are six dead goblins here as well. Each body is literally skin and bones, as if all of the interior organs and muscles have somehow been drained away, leaving behind skeletons draped with leathery, slowly rotting skin.
Seeing the corpses, Matsuno will give them a quick inspection before moving back to the room where they made their entrance into the lair, examining the tunnel leading south and waiting for the dwarf to take the lead.
Thorfinn nods."This is that thing's lair."
-Posted with Wayfinder
Checking the bodies, 5 of the goblins have standard small sized armor and dogslicers. One of the goblins however has a much nicer quality hide armor and shortbow, though also small sized.
Thorfinn leads the way down the southern passage which opens into another room. Crates, barrels, and mounds of miscellaneous refuse lie heaped against the walls here. A closed door sits on the western wall.
The dwarf grins. "Looks like we found the back door!"
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"That is rather nice, I'll admit," Ioxeia says, assessing the strength of the doors. "I wonder how long ago those goblins came through here and found that - thing. If we move quickly enough, could we fall back here if necessary, and barricade these doors and rest safely? If there's still that goblin chief and Bruthazmus, and a couple of others, to deal with before we ever get to Nualia, we'll have to strike very hard and with good luck to get through them in one go."
"Hm. Maybe we should rest now. We could do that back in the tentamort's lair--those rateaters don't know we're here yet. Once we start moving, though, it's going to be harder to hole up."
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Ioxeia is grateful for the offer, but reluctantly shakes her head. "It will take me at least a whole night's rest to start to shake off the worst of that thing's poison, and in the meantime, something else might creep up on us and call its friends, losing us any advantage we have now."
"If Nualia is lurking deeper inside, as that witch doctor insinuated, if we can catch a few goblins in the fort up top, we might be able to thin them out like we did the first time and still avoid attention, at least enough to secure the bridge. We still have all our spells, and I have a quiver of arrows, so if you and Dan can hold things off Matsuno, Syuviel, and me, we should be able to do some damage. Only- if I do fall again, I'm less likely to pull through on my own with this stuff in my body, so anything quick to staunch my wounds in such a case would be welcome."
Dan shrugs. "Hopefully this is already deep enough that we don't have to fight through a bunch of crazy goblins. If Cayden's smiling on us that door opens up on Bruthazmus's bedroom, positioned right next to Nualia's chamber-pot."
Matsuno gives a slight chuckle at the cleric's comment, "If only we could be so lucky. I think for now our best path would be to proceed expecting the worst, and count our blessings if things actually go our way."
The man tests his bow once, and takes comfort in the resistance of the draw. He makes himself ready to face whatever is behind the door and prepares for the worst.
"Ah yes, this Nualia you mentioned," Syuviel remarks, coughing into his hand slightly as though to dispel the mental image Dan put forth. "Do we know what to expect from her?"
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"She's won enough favour from her goddess to begin some sort of physical transformation, so her connection to the divine must be strong," Ioxeia starts, "but I'm not sure how trained she is in magic. She did steal her father's remains for desecration, and her plan is to burn Sandpoint to the ground, so I think it's safe to expect ruthless desperation."
"Then she must be at home with the goblins," Syuviel remarks bluntly, his force shield shimmering in the light. He did not seem prepared for battle, but his hands were in fact ready to perform any number of obscure gestures needed for his spells.
Thorfinn listens at the door.
Dan follows along behind Matsuno. "Ruthless, I can see. I don't know about desperation. She's been winning, so far. I never feel all that desperate when I'm on a winning streak."
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Ioxeia shrugs imperceptibly. "I don't know quite what happened in her youth in the town, true, except that she was terribly unhappy and people took advantage of it, but burning it all to the ground with all its people seems ... disproportionate? I would think a normal person would curse, shake her head and the mud from her boots, and leave it behind her."
"As for winning, she hasn't pressed her advantage yet, though I admit her friends and her pets are troublesome," she adds, thinking of the - tentamort, was it? - with a shudder. "But we cut a swathe through her rank and file, sparing the militia the trouble. And for the rest... well, that's why we're here."
Dan nods. "She doesn't sound like the kind of person who would care about losing a bunch of her rank and file." He glances back at the tentamort's corpse. "Hopefully that was her pet or something else that she would notice is dead."