Yrax doesn't get out of the way in time, and now looks scorched by the blast.
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Crummock grimaces when he sees Seraphine go down, and Einar taken to within an inch of his life.
His lips pursed into an expression of grim determination, he casts Grace, and strides forward purposefully.
When adjacent to Yrax, he looks up, and smiles.
At which point, the world explodes in a white-hot blast of flame.
Even down in his hole, Mr. Whiskers feels the sudden temperature change. What in the world was that?
Crummock flies fearlessly over to the dragon, his claws pulling out some seemingly harmless holly berries that glow with a strange shimmer. As he activates the command word, a spark appears from each of the berries, seemingly insubstantial. Yet time begins to slow as the spark begins to glow, and expand. Then they burst into flame, engulfing both a surprised Yrax, who yelps, ”What the-“ before conflagration sweeps over him. There is a sudden burst of light, too bright for mortal eyes to see, consuming both Crummock and Yrax. When the spots go out of their eyes, they see a crater, with Yrax’s burnt body in it, the surrounding walls having melted, and covered with pits and charred. Crummock flies triumphantly over Yrax’s charred body, completely unscathed.
On Yrax, the party finds 4 huge soot covered ruby-studded bracers (each worth 2000 gp), a soot covered gold serpentine draconic armband (worth 1000gp), 2 soot gold draconic torcs (worth 1500 gp each), and two blackened metal keys.
Near his throne is a chest which Einar opens with one of the blackened metal key. There is a potion of cure serious wounds, two potions of lesser restoration, a potion of remove blindness/deafness, and two applications of restorative ointment.
After Einar checks the vault door for traps, and finds none, he opens the vault using the other blackened metal key. There is a massive hoard of 75,604 cp, 8,773 sp. 6,111 gp and 165 pp in a variety of coins, bars and ingots, a black pearl worth 500 gp, two emeralds worth 1000 gp each, a fire opal worth 650gp, a sapphire worth 1,100 gp and exotic hides furs and pelts worth 5,000 gp. There is also a Gloom blade, dragon bone divination sticks, drinking horn of bottomless valour, manual of war, ring of x-ray vision, a suzerain scepter,an oil of magic vestment, a potion of good hope, a scroll of hallucinatory terrain. They also find a rainbow coloured bearskin, which when they hold it, they have a vision of them dumping it into the Dancing Hut’s cauldron.
Crummock is grimly satisfied with all of the carnage.
He then severs the head , before lightly touching the corpse, casting another spell as he does so, which causes all of the flesh to wither away, leaving clean bones.
"Anyone be wantin' a souvenir?"
He then moves to heal the injured.
Once everything has been crated up, Crummock moves to explore the southern exit from the elemental's room.
It curves downwards, to another passage. Greta joins you a minute and a half later, still looking rather shaken, but relieved that Yrax is dead.
Crummock heads down to the T-intersection, and looks both ways.
He then moves right, peering down the branching corridor, before heading to the double doors.
Worktables lining the walls of these golemworks contain a variety of magical and alchemical crafting gear, while a large circular stone table in the center of the room holds several bodies preserved in the cold air of the palace, including the cadavers of three Triaxians as well as other, less easily identified corpses of native Triaxian creatures. The carrion golem appears to be incomplete . However searching among the chamber, the party finds a scroll of contagion, two scrolls of false life, a scroll of gentle repose, a scroll of lesser geas, and special reagents worth 500 gp.
The party goes down the corridor to find 3 plain cells containing simple sleeping pallets and little else. They look like prison cells.
Training dummies, ropes and weights and other martial exercise equipment fill this room, the floor of which is covered in padded woven mats. A weapon rack stands against the north west wall, and iron manacles hang from the walls.
Crummock wrinkles his nose in distaste, but collects the scrolls and reagents, before moving on down the corridor.
Crummock gives the weapons room a cursory glance, before continuing on down the corridor to the next area.
There is a stairway down from D14. Following it leads up to an elevated walkway overlooking a sunken fighting pit in the circular chamber. The floor of the pit is covered with sand and a single passage exits the pit beneath an iron portcullis. Following the walkway up results into the party running into a creature made out of fossil like the party had previously fought before.
Crummock casts Divine Favor on Geist...
...and then Geist attacks!
Geist's attacks do not seem to be fully effective, but the acid and fire get through fine.
Einar calls up his demonic heritage; his body tranforms: His ankles and feet shift becoming more animal like, his hands also grew larger with talons, now appearing as claws, his maw extended and his eyes grew red, his small black horns became more prominent as his skin went from pale to shiny, emphasizing and enlarging the scales. Causing his Cambion ancestry to become very prominent. As he lets out a roar, ”Aaauuurrrggghhh.” he takes a step back, and starts hammering.
He shatters the creature into a pile of bones.
Crummock pats Einar on the back.
"Good job!"
Happy that no-one took any damage, He then continues to meander down the corridor.
The party continues down the passage and peeks through the door, using the ring. They see a row of large ovens line one wall of this long, well-stocked kitchen. Oversized plates, some several feet wide, sit in heat stacks on shelves beside utensils, crockery and culinary tools. They also see a beautiful woman has pearlescent skin and long, dark hair, busy chopping some greens up.
The beautiful woman hails Crummock, "Oh hi, what are you doing here? I've never seen likes like you before. Are you hungry? Would you be interested in having a light snack?" She brings up a tray of baked gastropods, that seem to be coated in some kind of green sauce. "Try some! They're good!" She cheerfully encourages the party.
She *seems* inoffensive... Let's test that...
Crummock nods politely.
"Whom are ye, and what be ye doin' here? Ye should know, we be clearin' this place oot - We have already dealt with Yrax," he says, hefting his new quarterstaff. "What be thine thoughts on the matter...?"
"My name is Vivieka, and I'm the cook!" She proclaims.
"Yrax is dead? Whoooopie!" She sets down the baked gastropods and jumps up and down for joy. "Did you happen to see a white shawl among his hoard? It's my shawl, and I'd be really grateful if you could get it back."
Mr Whiskers recognizes Viveka as a nereid. They have DR 10/cold iron, Spell Resistance, are immune to cold and poison and...need their shawl badly.
Shawl (Ex) A nereid’s shawl (hardness 2, hp 6) contains a portion of her life force. If the shawl is ever destroyed, the nereid takes 1d6 points of Constitution drain per hour until she dies. A nereid can craft a new shawl from water by making a Will save, but each attempt takes 1d4 hours to complete. Attempts to destroy or steal a nereid’s shawl require the sunder or disarm attempts.
"Just a second, let me check..."
Crummock goes through the loot pile.
Crummock shrugs helplessly.
"I be afraid that we didnae claim it, but ye are welcome to come back to the hoard chamber with us, and search for it..."
He then moves to escort her to find it.
The party escorts Vivieka to the hoard chamber.
Viveka looks at the hoard chamber and starts frantically digging through the pile and throwing odd shaped objects left, right and centre, some of them nearly hitting Geist. "I can't find it! There's too much clutter here!" She wails helplessly. "What am I going to do?"
Mr. Whiskers looks around until he finds a masterwork dagger small enough for him to wield correctly.
Frowning, he says "There were several exotic furs, but I don't recall a shawl. Any idea where it may have been kept? I am willing to return it if we find it."
"I don't know. I haven't seen it ever since Yrax took it! He claimed that he would keep it in his hoard forever!"She yells back.
Pulling out a scroll, Mr. Whiskers says "Calm your self. We will find it, just be patient."
Looking to her, he asks "Do you know how to use the spell locate object?"
Crummock pinches the bridge of his nose, and sighs.
"Come now, no need to lose thine temper. How aboot this - the rest o' us will finish clearin' this place out, whilst ye search. Then, we can come back an' help ye, once the buildin' is secured."
Crummock then goes down the *other* branch of the hallway, to see what lies on the other side of the building.
Hearing what Mr Whiskers has to say, he looks thoughtful.
"If she described what it looked like, would that enable ye to use the scroll instead o' her?"
"What is locate object? No I'm sorry I only know how to use my innate magic." She answers Mr Whiskers. "It's blue, diaphanous, and always wet." She says as she describes the shawl.
Mr Whiskers detects the shawl pinned under what looks like a pile of meteor fragments. He gets Einar to do the heavy lifting, and 10 mins, and a sweaty Einar later, a rather battered, wet, diaphanous blue shawl is extracted from under the pile of meteor fragments.
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you so much!" She gives Mr Whiskers a hug and a kiss on his cheek as she takes her shawl back."You can have this as your reward," and she hands Mr Whiskers a decanter of endless water. "I'll be off now, now that I've got my shawl back and Yrax is dead!" Then she prances happily out of Ivoryglass.
"It will find the nearest object that I would picture as a shawl. I can restrict it based on a description, but never having handled it I can not restrict it to her exact shawl."
Looking to Viveka, he adds "Since you created your shawl, you should be able to locate that exact one if you can use the scroll."
Crummock nods to Mr Whiskers.
"That was well done. Clearly, havin' a pile o' scrolls around is useful!"
He then moves to explore the other corridor.
The party finds a similar downward turning and following it, they eventually end up at a Y shaped junction as like the other side.
Smiling, Mr. Whiskers gives her a friendly hug. "I'm glad to have been able to return your stolen shawl, miss Viveka!"
He accepts the decanter and thanks her again, wishing her well.
In reply to Crummock, he says "I try to be prepared, and the scrolls help with that! Please remind me to replace that one."
"I'm glad to find my shawl too! I wouldn't be able to have done it without your help!" She thanks Mr Whiskers.
A long rectangular pool of dark water fills the center of this large chamber, which is slightly warmer then the rest of the palace.
As the party looks at the pool, they see a black and white whale shaped thing leap out of the pool, grow wolf like legs and chomp down onto...Crummock!
Then it grabs Crummock into its mouth. The party can see frost coming out of its jaws, but Crummock is unaffected.
Mr Whiskers has no clue what the heck the thing is...
Crummock calmly starts stabbing the beast...
...whilst Geist hisses, and pounces!
To Crummocks horror, his starknife and Geist's attacks(except for the flame and acid), do minimal damage to the beastie. The fire seems particularly effective, though. Geist does not manage to get through its tough blubber to get anything vital.
How can I best save Crummock? If I grease him, he still will not have an opportunity to get away from the creature! Weapons don't seem to take full effect either...guess I'll have to go for a long shot!
If this works, I can depend on Einar to attack the creature. That will cause it to focus on him, thus giving Crummock a chance to get out.
After a brief pause, Mr. Whiskers cast confusion on the creature, pumping additional reservoir into the spell to make it harder to resist.
Crummock's first attack cut through the creatures defences.. the second attack hits the floor instead.
Its Super Effective! The weird whale-wolf thing is confused!
"Be careful, it will attack whomever attacks it last! It should drop Crummock though!"
"Really?" She looks at Einar, genuinely happy. "Here! Try some of this!" She then hands over another plate, this time containing something that looks like suspiciously like a tongue of some large animal, smothered in some yellow sauce.
Vivieka gives the sweaty Einar an exuberant hug and a kiss too. "Thanks for helping me find my shawl, big guy! I mean I don't find people who appreciate my cooking much. The dragons ask for their food raw, without ANY sauce. That's an affront to culinary arts!" She stomps her foot on her ground, pouting."I used to live in the Lake of the Eye north of Ivoryglass...but I guess I could use a change of pace."
Einar shows how application of loads of blunt force can solve problems. Such as the little one of Crummock being grappled. He hammers the confused whale-wolf thing over on its head twice, crushing its skull and sending blobs of blood and gore all over the place, staining the pool waters and walls red. It gives a resounding moan, then flops over, limp in death and releases Crummock.
Searching the swimming pool room yields nothing.
A five foot high column with a stone plug a foot sits in the center of the small chamber The ceiling is only 10 feet high in this room.
A richly woven curtain divides these luxurious living quarters. The room holds magnificent furnishings and is sumptuously decorated.
A large pile of furs lies in the center of this plain circular stone cell. Einar can see something glittery beneath the furs.
Einar sees nothing but a white fog in the room. In fact he is so distracted by the white fog that.... He doesn't notice a walking fossilized thing approaching the party.