Rodrigo cowers, trusting his friends to finish the beast.
The tiger shreds into the phase spider with wild abandon, ultimately rending one of its arm-like front legs clean from its body. It unleashes an agonized scream, collapsing to the ground. Its eyes blaze for one second, then go dark.
For a moment, the adventurers think that the creature is dead.
Slowly, though, its eyes open. It looks over them, its posture that of a cornered bast.
~no...~ it wails. ~must live must LIVE...thought i'd be safe...no escape, not FAIR not FAIR ~
It whirls on Rodrigo. ~I will show you!~ the spider-creature shrieks in his mind. ~His kiss is on all creatures, even you and yours!~
Rodrigo hears a strange crunching sound. Then a faint buzzing. Finally, a cracking sound, seeming to come from within the phase spider's monstrous head.
Then, without warning, the Festering One's head splits open and a swarm of white wasps blasts out. The Festering One falls to the ground, dead, as the wasps swarm Rodrigo and lay into his flesh, burrowing under his breastplate without any trouble at all.
Astraden, Eben and Carina all hear distant shouts from elsewhere in the Muddle—it sounds like they've been overheard.
They also hear Forwell chanting a spell.
Eben draws up next to Carina, and gives an unseen smirk at her almost-blown door. "Sometimes the old fashioned way is best..." he says. Then, once again juggling his gear, a longbow appears out of thin air to drop to the ground and the sound of hurried spellcasting can be heard. Then the glass rod of quickened spells appears and hits the ground (now with two buttons depressed) and the shortbow floats up off the ground again before re-vanishing. "I really have to figure out a better way to do this all at the same time..." he says, reappearing as an arrow leaves his bow, aimed at one of the hinges barely keeping the charred pieces of wood off the ground and together in a vaguely door-like shape.
Eben's arrow slices through the hinge, bending the metal and snapping it away from the burnt wood. The door falls inward, crunching into the grassy floor inside and breaking into three pieces.
Forwell's bedroom door lies opposite.
Astraden winces when she hears the shouting. Running through the newly cleared exit, she grumbles, "Wasn't Rodrigo supposed to come back and bring us down or something?"
"Maybe they found a secret brothel down there. Rodrigo could be busy for hours."
Aaand that's 81 damage. I think the dice can take some of the blame there, but...tigers are scary.
Rodrigo runs out of the wasps, screaming, into the center of the gore-smeared shrine. "F!!~, f##$, f~!#, f%#%, f+!+, f~%*, GUYS COME HERE!" The nobleman momentarily forgets that his friends presumably can't see him. "We've got to 'port out of here!"
Tanith grunts in surprise when his hulking frames suddenly swells to even greater proportions.
Hearing Rodrigo's warning the big Kordite feels around for him. "Sounds good to me!"
Farrukh runs over there.
Carina's eyes widen as she hears the shouting from elsewhere in the Muddle. "Uh oh--guys, we need to work fast. We may or may not have just kicked a hornet's nest."
She races to keep up with Astraden.
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Carina sees an eye staring through the keyhole for a moment. She hears a spell at work.
Without warning, a storm of horseflies surges out of the very ground. The swarm rips into all caught within, even the pleasant-looking greenery and wildflowers that grew on the false shrine's floor, leaving the interior of the building as ugly as the secrets it hid.
From behind the door there comes a hissing murmur. "Fools. All of you. When the Festering One found me, I was like you. Misguided. I thought the blight could be harnessed, controlled. But entropy, nature's truest agent, will not be belated." As Forwell speaks, his voice seems to...multiply. Getting screechier and screechier as it does so, it soon sounds like thousands, or even millions of Forwells are speaking. "We will survive the coming darkness. We will fester as the dead roam the earth. Tremble, mortals, for that which once walked has learnt to crawl!"
A split-second later, Tanith, Farrukh and Rodrigo appear aboveground right outside the chaotic scene.
Farrukh drops his bow and uses his second move action to move closer, drawing his sword and shield as he does so.
:(
Rodrigo feels himself growing weaker by the second. "I've been poisoned!" he declares. "What are we doing here guys?" Nobody can see Rodrigo, but he sounds scared.
Eben blinks in surprise as the three trapdoor-delvers re-appear. "Oh, hi guys. We've got bugs." He snatches his rod up again and bolts into the shrine. He avoid the bug swarms as he goes, finding a place where he can keep an eye on Forwell's door. Then, resignedly, he again drops his bow and activates the rod one last time, summoning up a swarm of his own- a snapdragon swarm. Buzzing little blue and gold fireworks whirl around him, as he shoots one off at the nearest swarm of flies.
Farrukh drops his bow and uses his second move action to move closer, drawing his sword and shield as he does so.
Eben blinks in surprise as the three trapdoor-delvers re-appear. "Oh, hi guys. We've got bugs." He snatches his rod up again and bolts into the shrine. He avoid the bug swarms as he goes, finding a place where he can keep an eye on Forwell's door. Then, resignedly, he again drops his bow and activates the rod one last time, summoning up a swarm of his own- a snapdragon swarm. Buzzing little blue and gold fireworks whirl around him, as he shoots one off at the nearest swarm of flies.
A few dozen horseflies are burned to a crisp as they do battle with the fiery forces.
Fortitude save: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (13) + 6 = 19
"And that which walks is going to learn to--" Carina starts, but is forced to shut her mouth and eyes as the horseflies swarm her face. She sputters and swats at them, Eben's magic somehow bolstering her enough to keep her stomach from churning.
Carina has no idea how the hell all these bugs got in here, but she does recognize the spell Forwell is casting. "Bear's Endurance, huh? Fine."
Feeling quite vengeful, the undine staggers out of the flies, yanks a bomb from her belt and throws it at the bugs! "Just what these were designed for!"
The mosquitoes are incinerated as the smell of alchemical flames fills the evening air.
A few flies get in Astraden's mouth, but she chews them up and spits them at the keyhole. "The blight can't be controlled, Pig. We really aren't alike." Holding her mask to the floor, she calls, "Olidammara, bless my friends! We fight one whose sense of chaos is pain and warp, not freedom and laughter."
Drawing her rapier, she steps forward.
After getting his bearings Tanith grimaces at the cloud of insects. ”Seriously? More damned bugs?”
Unable to do much to impede the swarm, mega-Tanith darts around the building and comes barreling down on the false priest. ”It’s over Forwell. The phase spider’s dead and you’re going down!”
Tanith rushes around to block off Forwell's escape.
"The blight can't be controlled, Pig. We really aren't alike."
"Oh, we will be. we will be."
Forwell turns to look at Tanith, but something seems...off about his gaze. His eyes are a dull, solid black.
Rodrigo finds himself feeling useless against all these swarming critters. Useless, and grossed out. He resorts to simple helping his friends move a little more quickly, as they seem to have some idea what to do here.
"Tanith, wrestle him."
You must have a clear line of effect to any target that you cast a spell on or to any space in which you wish to create an effect. You must have a clear line of effect to the point of origin of any spell you cast.
Forwell's dark eyes bore into Tanith. The many-voiced deceiver begins to laugh—a long, slow, nasal titter that seems to go on forever. "Fools. Fools." His skin starts to bulge and wrinkle. It's like something is crawling beneath. "I am not some madman, not some depraved puppet. I am not the wretched druid, so far from his home, tortured into obedience by a monstrous master. No...no..."
The skin around his eyes tears back, clawed open by two large, black spiders, chittering madly at Tanith. And what once was Forwell Hog's face peels back and falls to the floor.
His entire face—entire body—is composed of tiny black-carapaced spiders. His robes fall away as his whole spidery mass collapses to the ground, then surges through the window towards the brawler, a tsunami of skittering legs and clicking mandibles.
"Not even that..."
The swarm covers Tanith in moments.
Hearing the sound of Forwell leaving the shack, Astraden frowns. "I think you're losing, Tanith." She runs back outside, erecting a barrier against evil with a bit of Slaadi pidgin.
”I’ll get hi-“ Tanith begins to reply but his words turn into curses when Forwell melts away into a carpet of biting spiders. The big man swats and stomps on them with a vengeance.