Rai shoves a frost bomb into it's mouth imbuing it with acid
Dc 15 fort or be staggered
The bomb blows in it's mouth, and acid spews out! But the creature is not slowed down.
Sigurd, Brokk'r should go
"What the?!" Brokk'r cries out as Rai is suddenly swallowed by a very large fish. He approaches their piscine opponent and bashes it in the head with his shield .
Sigurd steps up and his his earth hammer to the mix!
Because of Ike's grapple/and/or/Arlen's evil eye... fumble not confirmed!
ROUND SUMMARY
Ike wraps the fish in an ooze hug, while Arlen gives it an evil eye! The monster can barely move...(its AC greatly reduced!)
As a result, when the party steps up to do damage, it is a flurry of blows! Fish chunks fly everywhere. Diceros, Pygmy, Brokk'r deal great damage, and from inside the fish, you hear one of Rai's bombs explode! Looks like Rai is still conscious! Sigurd whiffs badly, but doesn't hurt any of his friends, thankfully.
The fish, though, is still alive, and attacking!
It attempts to bite through the ooze holding him! Ike is bit badly for 11. Then the pike attempts to turn the tables on the ooze and get it in his mouth. He fails! Ike is still the grappler.
fail by 1
Rai takes of digestion juices at the beginning of his turn! He fall unconscious, and is dying!
ROUND 2- EVERYONE GO!- RAI FALLS UNCONSICOUS.
Ike felt a large chunk of his consciousness split away as he felt the fish's maw bite down on him. Luckily, the part of him that demanded the fish release its prize was still very much intact! He could feel less wriggling from the fish's gut, and every moment he wasted was another moment this fish could get away with Rai! Some primal element of him awoke, the part that said this was a fight or flight moment, and he had to fight with every fiber of his gelatinous being!
Tendrils of slime suddenly shoot towards dry ground - trees, rocks, hard earth, any part that gave him a grip! They harden into fibrous ropes as the rest of him wraps as tightly onto the fish as possible, and with a heave, Ike contracted!
Whether it liked it or not, this giant pike was coming out of the water, flailing and squirming if need be!
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Rai's last thought as the bomb explodes and his hope of rendering the beast immobile and getting out evaporates is that in the cycle of life sometimes one is the hunter and sometimes the hunted.
"Stay with us, elf!" Brokk'r shouts and keeps swinging his shield.
Sigurd deals a nasty blow, almost killing it, and Ike heaves the fish onto dry land. Brokk'r tries to get in the finishing blow, but he slips in the wet grass and misses. Diceros stabs it through the head, and it dies.
Combat is over, but we will still act in initiative! Rai is still being digested! Give me a survival check to slice open the body without hurting Rai, or a strength check to pry open the pike's jaws and pull Rai out.
Arlen can still go! After that, Rai will take another d4 acid if he is still in there.
Arlen rushes over to the fish and slides on her knees as she slashes at the fish with her dagger, desperately attempting to free Rai quickly.
"Ahem!" Brokk'r coughs from behind Arlen. "If ye don't mind, lad—err lass," he stammers, trying to avoid eye contact with their gender bending friend, "I could help..."
Arlen cuts the fish's belly open, spewing acid and an unconscious Rai out! Unfortunately, she nicks Rai with her dagger in the process. Fortunately, Arlen is incredibly weak and if anyone was going to do this, she is the best one.
Rai is at -4 now and dying.
Rai continues to bleed out. He is down to -5.
Arlen throws fortune on Diceros to stabilize Rai and resumes cackling.
Help him!!!"
Brokk'r pulls out his remaining curative potion and administers it to Rai forcibly.
sorry...
Rai stabilizes thanks to his strength of body, and Brokk'r helps a bit with his last healing potion, but he can't help but think it didn't do much.
The party decides to camp here at the river bank, with an unconscious but stable elf alchemist. At least the evening meal is delicious, with as much pike as can be eaten. It is a little bony, however.
Everyone's' night watch is just a little bit longer, but when morning comes,Diceros prepares his spells and wakes Rai up.
13 healing for Rai, plus everyone gets 2+con modifier.
Gozran 5
Arlen talks to Rasputin for a while, particularly preparing CLW!
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Sigurd, who stood by mostly helpless as the group tried to rescue Rai, put his abilities towards chronicling it all in a song.
"Surprised by a fish! He ate our friend Rai.
Thankfully no one just stood there to cry.
We killed that great beast
Arlen sliced us a feast
And our friend did not even die."
About midday, following the river, you come to an unusual sight: a sign of civilization!
A thick, sagging rope still hangs across the river, all that remains of a bridge that once spanned it. A signpost at either end of the ruined
bridge reads “Nettles’ Crossing—5 coppers—ring bell for service.” A rusty bell hangs by each sign. On the south bank of the river, opposite from where you are now, the crumbled remains of a burnt-down wooden building are slowly being overgrown by encroaching vegetation.
Rai smokes the pike until it falls from the bone and then wraps it in leaves and brings it along for breakfast thanking the party for saving him.
Arlen stares at the burnt out building. "What do you think happened here? How long ago was this fire?"
She offers to cast guidance on anyone else trying to investigate.
The burned down building is on the other side of the river, so it is really hard to make out details from here.
"I say we cross this river and investigate the building. But as we've just learned, the waters in these parts can hold dangerous predators. Any thoughts on how we cross?"
Certain that it won't accomplish anything, Arlen strolls over to the bell, rusty with disuse, and rings it with her dagger.
"Ha!" Brokk'r laughs. He watches as Arlen approaches the bell "Don't suppose it'll do any harm... or anythin' at all."
I can get a climb and swim speed and carry rope across and we can fortify the bridge so we can all cross.
Before Rai can mix up a new batch of extracts to turn himself in a fish, Arlen rings the bell. Though rusty, it makes a clear "Ding!" sound that echoes over the water.
The water on the far sides ripples... and a rotting head emerges... A zombie body follows... The zombie takes note of you, and begins to walk on the water toward you.
You hear a voice... "All who follow the Stag Lord must die!"
And he lifts a rusty, though impressive looking polearm up in front of him. He is halfway across the river.
Arlen calls out "We are no friends of the Stag Lord! We have killed his men and aim to kill him! We carry his symbols only for the possibility of subterfuge." Arlen smiles happily to herself at the thought of such a deadly deception to end the horrible threat.
She turns to her allies. "Isn't that so?"
"Aye, lass, but why're we chattin' with a zombie?" Brokk'r says while getting into a defensive position.
Ike, for his part, is a little surprised that a zombie can talk! Though he doesn't sound too friendly... but he's no friend of the Stag Lord, clearly! And as the old saying went, the enemy of my enemy is not my enemy at the moment!
...or something along those lines.
Ike studied the zombie a moment. Perhaps... perhaps it could be reasoned with! He took on a humanoid shape, than slowly started to shift and change it to try and match the zombie... or, at least, what Ike thought he might have looked like when he was alive.
"Is the Stag Lord across the river? If so, can we cross? We're going to kick his butt! If not... if we brought, like... something of his to show we beat him, can we cross? Like, an antler or something?"
He does not respond, but does stop in the middle of the river, making no more threatening movements.
All of you start seeing flashes in your mind. Flashes of something that happened not long ago.
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You see flashes of a man named Davik Nettles, running a simple but profitable toll bridge across a narrow reach of a river. He makes no judgments on those who chose to use his bridge—as long as they had the coin, be they bandit or trapper, he allows them to cross.
You see flashes of a strongly built man, wearing a fearsome helmet with towering antlers. The Stag Lord informs Davik that not only would the men bearing his badge be granted free passage over the bridge, but that Davik would pay the Stag Lord two-thirds of his monthly take in return for the Stag Lord’s “protection.”
You see Davik refusing. He pushes the Stag Lord away, and sets his three slavering hounds on him and his men. The men run.
You see Davik, proud and self congratulating, chuckling, rewarding himself with a meal of fresh fish and going to bed early.
Not surprisingly, the Stag Lord does not stay away for long. Later, in the dead of night, the bandits return.
You see men surrounding Davik’s house and lighting the building on fire with flaming arrows. Davik wakes in terror as his dogs’ frantic barking alert him, but as he stumbles out of his burning home and flees for his bridge, the bandits await him. More flaming arrows rain down, killing his hounds and wounding Davik. With his nightshirt aflame, the doomed bridge keeper tumbles down the path toward the river. After dousing himself with water, he clambers up to the bridge and tries to escape to the north shore. Unfortunately, the bandits follow, and as Davik passes the midpoint on his bridge, the Stag Lord cuts one of the ropes that held the bridge intact. The bridge immediately collapses, plunging the shrieking Davik into the deep, icy water.
You see his body lodged downriver in the debris of his ruined bridge. Dead.
Onshore, the bandits watch, gleefully chuckling, their leering shadows dancing before the hovel’s flames as it collapes into cinders. The Stag Lord returns to his fort, leaving behind several bandits with the task of rebuilding the bridge and taking up the positions of toll takers.
You see several nights later, as the remaining bandits argue over which of them would get to be the “boss” of the new bridge, Davik rises from the river, an undead spirit of vengeance. The undead stalks out of the water and into the bandit camp, swiftly murders them all and drags their bodies into the river.
The Stag Lord sends more bandits to investigate, and Davik rises again and kills several of them. Three of the bandits escape and flee back to report to their lord. The Stag Lord wisely decides to abandon his plans to rebuild the bridge, and in the months since, decides to stay well away from the place.
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The flashes end. Davik Nettles is still standing on the river, in front of you. He says, "Throw the Stag Lords body into the river and grant me my peace." He sinks beneath the water surface and is gone.
Arlen agrees. "That sounds fine to me. In the meantime, how do we want to cross? Rai's plan sounds good to me."
"Huh?" Brokk'r cries out startled by the sudden vision. "What the!?"
The dwarf hops about a bit taking various defensive positions as the Stag Lord and his men approach before realizing it is some sort of magically induced hallucination.
"Well there's somethin' ye don't see every day..." Brokk'r looks around at his companions who seem to be taking the assault on their senses, this hijacking of their perceptions, very mildly. "Or maybe ye do..."
Arlen cackles a little. "Oh it was different all right. But I seem some pretty strange things... Especially through my furry little friend's eyes."
She strokes Rasputin lovingly but the rabbit growls deeply and snaps at her fingers, which she jerks back just in time. Arlen shrugs and goes back to looking for a means to cross.
There is one sagging rope that crosses the river here... all that is left from the destroyed bridge.
Rai can use his magic to get across pretty easily, but what about everyone else? And your mounts? You may want to search for a shallow ford where you can simply ride across.
Brokk'r awkwardly acknowledges Arlen's comment, still a bit unnerved by his/her transformation.
"Anyway," he continues more clearly to everyone, "It doesn't look like we can all cross here. Sure, Rai could do... whatever it is he does to get himself over, but we'd have ta rebuild the bridge ta get everyone else across and I don't think we want to spend that kind o' time."
He grabs Gefjun's reigns and begins to walk southwest along the bank looking for a shallow place to ford.
It doesn't take too long. Sigurd goes about 300 yards upstream, and finds a point where the creek gets wider, but also significantly shallower. It is a hidden location, around and bend and behind several large trees. He finds the others and brings them back together.
Thankfully, the crossing is accomplished smoothly.
You inspect the burned down house by the broken bridge. The bandits didn't leave much here besides ash. Disturbed by the images you had witnessed, of a man burning and then drowning, you decide to leave this place.
Over the next day you map and explore these hills, eventually completing your work in the afternoon of Gozran 6th. [map value= 195 gold]
As you study your map and ponder your next direction, you all feel slightly stronger, slightly more powerful, as if you had really achieved something special by not dying in your recent difficult battles.
Gozran 7
Terrain: Hill ; max PC speed: 20 ; days to explore: 3
Rain: Muddy footing prevents melee attackers from properly attacking (20% miss chance in melee)
Feeling better than they have for quite some time, the intrepid band of heroes sets out again, toward the hills to the southeast. It is raining, but it is hard to quench the fire of high spirits and camaraderie.
That is... until Pygmy starts to cough and hork... over everything, on each step. The poor little rhino seems really sick. He soldiers on, but looks miserable.
1. Ike
2. Arlen
3. Sigurd
4. Pyg
5. Brokk'r
6. Diceros
rai intentionally excluded.
Rai makes his way along trying to first see what is wrong with Pygmy.
Nope, well Rai will look around to see if he finds anything else to eat.
and while trapsing around he will look for any regents to use in alchemy.
"Yer rhino's sick."
Brokk'r tracks the landmarks to make sure they're not wandering in circles and keeping a keen eye out for caves or signs of mine-able ore. In a few places, he thinks he spots something valuable, but nature makes him work to find out, forcing him to climb into and out of crevasses.
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Sigurd knows almost nothing about rhino biology. However that doesn't stop him from trying to figure things out.
His dreams of being a vet now shattered, he moves on to looking around the area they're mapping.
He also continues to practice his wildlife tracking and survival skills, trying to put into practice what he's learned from his friends.
I've got to start taking better notes...