KC's Age of Worms

Game Master Kobold Catgirl

"You could even try it without buffs next time!"

Krathanos's belt weighs 120 pounds, by the way. You can tighten it to be relatively wearable, but it is bulky and, as near as you can tell, nonmagical.

Feeling his opponent's body hit the ground and the titanic impact that follows, Tanith's heart nearly beats out of his chest. Flush with glory, he flexes his enormous biceps in victory. If Krathanos had somehow bested Kord in the past he had redeemed his patron's honor with this win.

The moment of glory is just that and passes a few seconds later. He joins his friends in brief celebration and then air-steps down to retrieve the belt. Tanith dusts it off and slings it over his shoulder before air-stepping up again midway Krathanos's form to offer a hand.

"Well played Krathanos. Once this business with the world ending prophecy is wrapped up, what would you say to another round?"

Krathanos's eyes narrow, but he takes the hand between two fingers and allows the comparatively tiny wrestler to 'help him up'. "You wrestle like a polecat," he spits. It might be an acceptance of Tanith's challenge. It might not.

I assumed Tanith wasn't wearing it. He's got it slung over his shoulder like a child carrying his favorite blanket.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

As the party makes to leave, Krekie approaches Eben. "What do you plan to do with Sinfire?" she asks quietly. "Our deal is done, and we owe each other nothing more." She pats the bag at her side, where the hand of Vecna rests safely secured. "But I can't leave this island without your help, and I still have interest in her fate. Black Fire may return for her in time. He may not. So what comes next?"

"Do? I dunno, maybe it would have been easier if she had taken a powder alongside Rin. As far as getting off the island... I know Captain Seabeard is back on the beach, and he's just waiting for the hurricane to end so he can sail off. Like you said, you don't owe us any further support, if you want to go there and wait with him, that'd be fine. It would probably also be appreciated if you could disincentivize him from sailing away until after we return, just in case that matters. Maybe Sabir could wait with you? I don't know what Carina has planned. I mean, I don't think she had a plan, just made a last minute decision to save her birth mom..."

"I..."

Carina sighs, her eyes starting to sting with tears. "...I don't know what to do next."

She looks at Sabir. "Mo--" She starts, the word catching in her throat and causing her to choke a little. "...Sabir..."

"...I know that I don't really know you. I never had a chance to. I know you fought against us--maybe even tried to kill one or two of us. You're here on the same mission we are, but you came here for different reasons... ones that are at cross-purposes with ours."

She takes a shuddering breath. "The thing is, I know you're a better person than this. You could have handed me over to the Ebon Triad when I was born--and Fharlanghn only knows what kind of person I'd have grown up to be, then. But you..." She swallows. A tear runs down her cheek. "...you didn't."

"I don't want you dead. I want to know you better--and... hells, I don't want Rin--" She winces at the name. "--to be without her mother."

"We can work this out... can't we?"

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 22 ⇒ (15) + 22 = 37

Astraden nudges Krekie. "Why did the Sinfires ally with the Hierophant, anyway? Were they really Vecnans?"

Sabir stares at Carina for a long time, her expression dull and lifeless. Some spark, though, appears in those crimson eyes. She seems to hesitate.

"We couldn't have given you to the Vecnans," she crackles, not meeting Carina's gaze. Her voice struggles as if from little use. "Because she told us you were dead."

She gives a laugh dryer than kindling. "Can't fault us--me--for believing her, can you? Her face doesn't wear lies well. They slide off in such perfect innocence. I suppose I can't blame her for lying, either." A shrug. "It turned out well, clearly. You've obviously done well for yourself." The Vecnan spits the words, then at last looks up to brazenly meet Carina's gaze. "Now, we've kept our bargain with her. For eighteen years I've let her be, and whether she lives or dies, I know not. Do you know what it means for a Vecnan to let a secret like that escape her?" She scoffs. "What a thing for my life to be undone by the one secret she kept from me.

"You want to spare us? Then fine. Spare us. I'm not putting up a fuss, as I know when I'm beat. But Lessi and I have a reckoning due between us. And you have due your own reckoning with Rin, don't you? You see that now."

She is quiet again, but her eyes don't leave Carina's this time. After a moment, one last murmur slips out. "You have so much more of her in your eyes than of me. Even like this."

Krekie Chat:
Krekie looks at Eben and gives a small nod. "Some of the noblest choices we make are made on reckless impulse. Not wise choices. But noble ones. Helping you, for example." She sighs, looking back towards the Hierophant's sodden body. "Your group makes many of them. Maybe that is why you are destined for great things and Krekie... Krekie is destined for this." Again, she raises the bag. "I will watch the captain. It would be a shame for your story to end for want of a boat, yes?"

To Astraden, Krekie's response is quiet. "A true believer in the power of secrets, she. She's served the Hierophant longer than I. I believe she shares blood with the Faceless One, but I do not know the fine details, and she will not share them."

Carina blinks.

Her mind spins as she tries to process what Sabir just told her.

Sense Motive?: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (9) + 17 = 26

"Well, technically, once the storm is gone we could just use Astaden's cloud spell to fly off, so if Seabeard really wants to get going, he can..." Eben admits. "We could also shadow walk back across the Nyr Dyv... that's how we got here... but the rest of them have problems with the possibility of encountering armies of shades or meeting shadow leviathans again. They're kinda wimps like that." He looks down at Krekie's handbag. "I don't know if you have plans for that, either... personally, I think your talons look perfectly nice the way they are... but I can only wish you the best with it. And, y'know, hope you don't go on some kind of 'overthrow all the other gods' crusade. But, your choice, now."

"That assumes you and your priest are alive when it is time to leave, though." Krekie looks down at the handbag and makes a clucking sound with her tongue. "The Hand will not be denied. I can hear it even now, I think. It must be looked after." She looks back at Eben. "I do not think the gods have anything to fear from me."

"...okay."

Carina lets out a breath.

"That's... um... thank you for sharing that. That's clearly something that's been bothering you for a long time." She replies, her tone shaking with restrained... emotion? Well, emotions. It's a tangle trying to spill out and being held back with mostly willpower and a prayer.

"You and... you know Mom? How do you know her?"

"Gotcha. Better than a triadist."

Astraden observes Carina's exchange with her mother without making any critical comments. She briefly reflects on how strange it must be to have a mom who is an actor in the events of one's life and not just a collection of memories.

"We met on the road, and traveled together for a ways." Sabir is silent a moment. "Whatever we shared together beyond the road, and beyond you, is our own business. We parted ways nearly twenty years ago after an... incident with my other half." She shifts.

"...an incident...?" Carina tilts her head.

"Did it involve a horse dying, by any chance?"

Sabir is silent.

Sense Motive: Is that a Yes or a No?: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (17) + 17 = 34

Carina sits next to Sabir.

"...the reason I asked... it's because I think I had something similar happen to me."

"I know." Sabir shoots Carina a narrowed glance. "Rin told me."

"I figured." Carina sighs.

"I'm... I'm sorry that happened to you."

"Why should you be? I am not the one it happened to." The embers burn hot in her eyes.

Carina pauses, trying to get a better read and decide how to best continue.

Sense Motive?: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (9) + 17 = 26

Carina folds her hands in her lap. "Even if that was the case, it's fairly clear that whatever happened is... unpleasant for you to remember. I didn't mean to dredge up bad memories, ma'am."

"I was just trying to offer some sympathy. And since you don't want to talk about it, I understand."

"If you must know," she snaps, "ask Lessi. We are not the two to tell you. Ask her."

Carina holds up her hands. "Alright."

"Regardless, thank you for talking with me. It's... it's been enlightening." She stands up.

While the conversation between long-lost mother and daughter is proceeding every bit as awkwardly as might be imagined, Eben suddenly remembers that he had a little task for himself to take care of. He picks up the late minotaur's axe, grunting a little from the ungainly wait, and walks over to the charred remains of Zyrxog. He hefts the axe overhead, and then lets it fall onto the illithid's rubbery neck. It's not as dramatic as he might have hoped... it takes two or three swings of his underdeveloped arms to get all the way through the gristle and bone, but finally, he bends down and hoists up the severed head of their longstanding enemy. "Souvenir for Lowri." he says by way of explanation as he wraps it up in some cloth cut from Zyrxog's own robes.

Astraden nods understandingly. She goes and picks up a charred, misshapen bone that might have once belonged to Darl Qethos or Zerces the Packlord. "This if for Lowri too. She would love this."

She puts the rapidly disintegrating bone into her backpack.

"Honestly, it feels kinda weird for him to finally be gone. I half-expected him to find some way to wriggle out of death again. No more cryptic half-threats from our "friend", I guess."

Eben stares. "Astraden, that's gross!" he says, adding another layer of wrapping around his current bundle to keep excess ichor from dripping out as he then stuffs it into his backpack. "Why would Lowri want bone chunks from some rando she's never met? Zyrxog she still has nightmares about, so I want to give her solid evidence that he's dead. She works with metal, maybe she'll want to cast it in bronze or something." He grabs the bottoms of Zyrxog's feet and begins dragging the corpse down the beach, to just below the high tide line. The work is surprisingly easy, illithids are apparently less dense than people, plus the body has lost about eight pounds or so of weight in the past minute. "And I intend to make sure this is final. For him and Darl both. Just in case the nightmare can get the genie brought back to life and he gets someone..." he looks up the beach to where Carina is chatting with Sabir, "...to wish his buddy back into existence..." he continues, somewhat more laboriously hauling Darl down to the same spot before unceremoniously dumping him off on Zyrxog's corpse. "We've got everything useful these two had, right? Good." he asks, then looks back up the beach to where the minotaur lies, then shakes his head as though determining the effort isn't worth the payoff. He then takes a few steps back, casts arcane concordance on himself again, and then, his back to the sun, raises his hands in the air and wiggles his fingers in a shaft of light, causing shadows to trickle down the beach, which after a few seconds begin to look like dark, crackling flames on the sand. And then they are flames, 1d3 ⇒ 2 of them, in fact. He points to the corpse pile, smirks, and parrots Darl Qethos' own words. "Burn the evidence." The shadow conjured elementals crackle their way to the heaped bodies and begin to finish the process of incineration that Krathanos' obscene meteor swarm began.

Extended shadow conjuration, summoning 2 small fire elementals. Each doing 1d4 bludgeoning plus 1d4 burn damage each round, I think 28 rounds of that will be enough to insure only a few chunky bits remain. And I have plans for those, too.

Clunk has been quiet during these proceedings, watching Sabir's and Carina's reunion with a neutral expression. It doesn't seem like he's really seeing them. Krathanos is already gone.

"We have the same path for a way," Krekie says. "Our path parts at the forest." She pauses, leaning in to say more quietly to Eben, "If...Rin... comes for Sinfire, I won't die to keep a prisoner, but I will send word if I can. Only fair." She raises a claw, and her faithful sea crow flaps down and perches upon her arm. "One streak of blood on the wing means I will meet you where we met on the island. Two means I will meet you at the roc's nest. None means I will not be meeting you at all."

An extremely awkward two hours of walking--Sabir bound, disarmed and unable to fly--comes to an end at the forest's edge.

The Doomshroud Forest is a lonesome, alien landscape. Its black, monolithic trees appear to shift unnaturally without the aid of wind. The canopy blocks out the dim light provided by the overcast skies, and the forest is dark as night as a result. The drooping trees constantly drip a thick black ichor that glitters in the perpetual rainy twilight like oil.

Isle map updated, by the way.

Can we hear anything unusual this time?

"I heard funeral singing last time we passed here. Do we have any, like, brain shield magic we can use before we go in?"

Back on the beach: After the fire elementals have faded away, and little is left but charred bone lumps, Eben casts his spells again, this time making a shadow puppet of something with big, snapping teeth. What comes to his summons this time is more horrible than anything he's spawned from shadows to date: Nothing but a ball of teeth and hate, floating in the air. "Eben, this is not a proper use for the lessons on planar denizens I have been teaching you..." Forzaamle says, reproachfully, but Eben ignores the chiding. "Eat everything that's left there..." Eben says, pointing to the makeshift pyre. "All of it, gobble it right down. When you're done, start flying away across the ocean as fast as you can until the spell holding you hear ends." e crosses his arms and nods as the little horror gets down to business. "Burned up, eaten up, and then regurgitated over the Shadow Nyr Dyv by a shadow daemon returning to the essence of the plane. Come back from that, Darl."

Again casting arcane concordance, and then extended shadow conjuration to emulate cacodaemon. 28 rounds for it to join the clean plate club and then fly away.

Now: Eben nods to Krekie. "We'll keep an eye out." Turning away from the tengu, he answers Cuetzpalli, "I heard something like that too. It's definitely a creepy place. And, I dunno about you guys, but I'm pretty tapped magically after the big fight. Another night of rest might be in order before we tackle this thing."

At the very least, everyone should mark themselves at full hp, unless you really had a moral stance against making use of Eben's path of glory spell and were too polite to say anything about it.

"They are properly called yugoloths," Clunk says disdainfully. "'Daemon' is a modern expression. It will not linger, I am certain."

Farrukh frowns, and tries to muster what little social grace he has as he speaks to Clunk. "Hey man, just wondering, are you doing okay? Seems like you've been in a bad mood the last few days. Meeting that Azata really doesn't seem to have helped. I'm pretty sure she was just trying to get a rise out of you, y'know?"

Despite being a metal man, it's getting easier to read Clunk's surprise over time. "This unit appreciates your concern, and. Extends an apology. I am preoccupied. Errors and malfunctions impair my presentation." He looks up toward the clouds. "Our time is drawing to a close, and this unit will have to go back soon. It is not something those of the Material could truly understand, and this unit does not look forward to explaining it. This malfunction of emotion itself marks why Mechanus calls to me."

The party is making camp once more. Krekie has made the offer to cook, having packed herbs and spices as well as poisons. Clunk stands vigil between the campsite and the forest, and Sabir sits sullenly off to the side.

Aside from the possibly-ongoing Clunk Conversation, any particular nighttime activities or preparations anyone wants to make?

Sounds like a no. I'll move things along soon.

Now: Eben nods to Krekie. "We'll keep an eye out." Turning away from the tengu, he answers Cuetzpalli, "I heard something like that too. It's definitely a creepy place. And, I dunno about you guys, but I'm pretty tapped magically after the big fight. Another night of rest might be in order before we tackle this thing."

At the very least, everyone should mark themselves at full hp, unless you really had a moral stance against making use of Eben's path of glory spell and were too polite to say anything about it.

"I'm doing okay." Cuetzpalli looks to the other spellcasters. "What about you guys, does anyone else need to recharge?"

If we don't need to rest first, I think some long-term buffs and then cautious exploration would be the way to go here.

Carina checks her bombs.

"...I don't have a full complement..."

Back on the beach:

"Well that's between me and Lowri then," Astraden says, making a face at Eben. "I think a bone is way cooler than a rotting head."

At camp:

"It's been a while since I paid my respects to Olidammara," Astraden replies to Cuetzpalli. "I could stand to eat and rest some, now that we're not racing against the Vecnans."

"Hey, who put this weird greasy powder in my backpack?" She looks around suspiciously.

Eben peeks into his wrapped bundle. "Maybe you're right about that. A skull would be easier to bronze than a rubbery head anyway. You got any spells that will take the meat off?"

Cuetzpalli nods. "Alright, let's make a camp then."

After camp has been established, Eben strews the piles of identified loot from the past few days on the ground. "This is actually an upgrade from the one I have... and it's a trophy, too!" he says, plucking out the ring that formerly graced one of Zyrxog's fingers.

Trading off Eben's current +1 ring for a +2 one. We can do the formalt 'buy-in' lootlist later, but for now no need to let this stuff go to waste as long as there's more fights ahead. There's several more +2 rings of protection to go around, spellcasters should take a long look at those metamagic rods, etc.

Back on the beach: After the fire elementals have faded away, and little is left but charred bone lumps, Eben casts his spells again, this time making a shadow puppet of something with big, snapping teeth. What comes to his summons this time is more horrible than anything he's spawned from shadows to date: Nothing but a ball of teeth and hate, floating in the air. [smaller]

"Eben, do things like that live in the shadow plane? The place you're always trying to get us to hike through?"

"'Live'? No, not exactly..." Eben says cryptically while staring out at the waters with a satisfied smirk on his face.

Tanith watches the grisly display and Eben's satisfied response with an appropriate amount of alarm.

"This unit will go to find firewood," Clunk says. He looks up at the omnipresent drizzle. "And perhaps the supplies for shelter."

As he departs, Krekie's black eyes are bright with innocence, watching Tanith's and Eben's exchange. She takes out a pipe and lights it with a tindertwig. "You should know where they come from, Creed. That's the family you would wed into."