Crummock makes short work of the whole thing, then Einar joins in the fun and pulverises what remains. Einar then disables the trap for good, finding a beaten cauldron which Mr Whiskers identifies as a cauldron of plenty
The party starts breaking off pieces of the walls and tables, revealing only rotten maggot-ridden filth beneath the sugary glaze. Nonetheless, they manage to break off quite the pile of candy, and start purifying it.
They bring the load of candy to Little Otik, who is delighted on seeing the pile and starts making a happy pig of himself. He looks slightly sheepish, then mutters, "Right. You've been feeding me, so I guess I owe you one." He hands over a javelin that he has been using as a toothpick and also the platter he's been using as a table to the party. "Bring me more food next time, you geddit?" He demands of the party, sounding more like his old self.
Mr Whiskers identifies the javelin as a javelin of lightning, and the platter as a lion shield.
The vines are impenetrable, and Crummock finally gets irritated and sets them on fire.
Bright sunlight filtered by a forest canopy streams into this derelict cottage room from a single large window to the northwest. Trees jut up from the dirt floor, bursting through the thatch ceiling above, and dead leaves cover a rusted iron stove and an old straw mattress. No doors exit the cottage, only a rotten doorframe to the east(the way the party came from), with all the vines burnt away. A large stone fireplace leads to the south. Einar, Crummmock and Seraphine can see something peeking out from the stove but has no idea what it is.
Mr Whiskers recognizes the large window as a mirror of life trapping.
Crummock then systematically tries going through all of the other 'doors', to make sure there are no missing areas...
Crummock puts on a blindfold, and fumbles his way into the room, around the periphery.
When he gets to the stove, he carefully retrieves whatever is inside, then fumbles his way back.
As Crummock begins to grope for the sack, the party sees large cracks appear in the mirror and swarms of centipedes start pouring out of it. Something indistinctly spidery shaped is also breaking its way out of the mirror!
Mr Whiskers recognizes those centipede swarms as a result of the creeping doom spell.
Mr. Whiskers strides forth and casts Copper Dragon's Breath over the swarm.
3 swarms are badly damaged despite dodging the acid blast and one of them is wiped out completely.
Then the mirror shatters and a horrid, three-legged, multi-eyed beast with a deadly and vicious bouquet of insectile claws steps out, as the swarms begin to swarm over the party. It seems totally unaffected by the acid blast.
He recognizes the creature as a derghodaemon.
It has DR 10/good, Spell resistance, and feeblemind aura.
By grinding and clicking its mandibles and chitinous plates together (a free action), a derghodaemon can affect all creatures within 30 feet as if by a feeblemind spell. Daemons are immune to this effect, but all other creatures must make a Will save to resist the effects. A creature that makes this save is immune to the effect for 24 hours. A creature that fails remains affected as long as the derghodaemon continues to maintain the aura and the subject remains within 30 feet of the derghodaemon. Once either condition ends, the victim of this effect can attempt a new Will save once per minute to recover from the effect; otherwise, it can be cured by a heal, limited wish, miracle, or wish spell. A derghodaemon cannot use its spell-like abilities or rend attack in any round in which it uses its feeblemind aura. This is a sonic mind-affecting effect.
It begins to click its mandibles and chitinous plates together.
Seraphine is distracted from the centipedes crawling all over her, while Crummock is poisoned by the biting centipedes, but other then that, the party is fine. Except for being bitten of course. Crummock doesn't find that the chittering bothers him any.
Little Otik and his "court" make a scramble for the wardrobe. The assasin vines, being skinny, make it fine, but Little Otik is stuck! "Pozhaluysta, pomogite mne. Ne day etim nasekomym menya!" He squeals like a stuck pig.
Please help push me through. Don't let those insects get me!
Seraphine's ice silvers cut deeply into the Derghodaemon but it manages to dodge the worst of the fireball. The Derghodaemon seems to resist part of the ice and fire damage. The fireball eradicates the swarm on Crummock's square totally.
Crummock is not dazed by the fireball.
Einar turns the creature into a popsicle!
Mr. Whiskers steps out of the swarm and spends a full round casting Copper Dragon's Breath against the swarm again. In spite of being in the middle of the centipede swarm, none of his friends are hurt.
The swarms dissipate, unsummoned, just as Greta shifts into winterwolf form. The item Crummock pulled out from the stove turns out to be a sooty tan bag of tricks.
Crummock eventually manages to fight off the poison.
The swarms dealt with, Little Otik pulls his head out of the wardrobe, and looks at the popsicle daemon nervously, "Umm ... razve ty ne dolzhen chto-to delat'? Eto nemnogo zhutko ..." He asks the party.
Urm...shouldn't you be doing something about that? It's kinda creepy...
Mr. Whiskers gives a small burp. "I need to watch how often I cast that spell!"
Stepping back into the other room, he tells Otik "Ob oshibkakh pozabotilis'. Nadeyus', vy prostite kislotnyy ushcherb v etom rayone."
Looking towards the frozen demon, he comments "I think we need to get Crummock fixed up first, but after that Otik is right. We need to destroy that thing."
"Net, net, vse v poryadke, prosto ubedites', chto oshibki ne priblizhayutsya ko mne. YA NENAVIZHU OSHIBKI! Little Otik reassures Mr Whiskers."Konechno, yesli oni mertvy. No, chert voz'mi. Eti zhuki dazhe ne ostavlyali tela kushat'!" He looks irritated as if he was cheated of something.
No no, it's ok, just make sure the bugs don't get near me. I HATE BUGS! Except when they are dead, of course. But geez. Those bugs didn't even leave behind bodies to eat!
With a sigh, Mr. Whiskers says "Let's get everyone healed."
Looking towards the demon on ice, he adds "That thing is dangerous. It should be sent back to it's own plane of existence. Still, if none of you wants to do that I suppose there is little I can do."
Crummock, drunkenly, nods.
"Aye, resting sounds like a grand idea."
Still, before resting, he tries all of the doors/passages/fireplaces/crates, to confirm that the party hasn't missed anything.
Crummock finds the party has not missed anything.
Greta tries a bit of the stew. She then makes a face. "I've had old boots that taste better." She then goes to dig out trail rations. "Never thought there'd be a day I'd appreciate dry rations."
The doll sniffs the smell of the unapetizing stew, then covers her eyes with her hands.
Greta accepts the offer. "Mmmph, not bad, not bad. That gourd is useful to have around,"she answers, taking a swig.
The doll on the other hand, looks aghast. "You shouldn't be drinking! Alcohol is a poison and dulls your wits and senses!" She nags Einar.
As the others leave, Mr. Whiskers gives one last long look at the demon on ice. "This is a mistake, leaving it like this." he mutters to himself as he leaves. He does tell Otik on the way out "Ne pytaytes' s"yest' yego. Dazhe yesli u vas yest' nekotoryye v vashem zhivote, ono ischeznet, iz-za chego vy pochuvstvuyete toshnotu i dazhe golod!"
That night at dinner, after smelling the stew Mr. Whiskers says "I sort of wanted to try out that cauldron Einar found. The quality of food from it is supposed to be much better than some other magic items."
Over dinner he discusses the plans for the next day.
"Khorosho, khorosho." Little Otik grumbles."No ya progolodalsya, znayete li ..." He gives Mr Whiskers a mournful look.
All right, all right. But I get hungry, you know...
Below the hill, a rutted muddy road winds between the snow-covered skeleton of some building structures and the party can see deep depressions, now filled with snow, on the snow covered landscape. Crows squawk from perches atop a strange pile of snow with mired among the snow covered ruins. The party smells the faint smell of smoke and soot in the air.
Einar, Seraphine and Crummock also find that the snow next to the hut seems uneven, and realize that buried under the snow are explosive devices. Stepping on one of them will cause an explosion of which would send shrapnel flying in a 20ft radius blast.
The weather is cold, but a cold weather outfit will be sufficient protection. Night, though would be an entirely different story.
After dinner, Mr. Whiskers decides to see just how fussy Little Otik is. He brings a bowl of Einar's stew to him. Seeing him start on the stew, he cautions Otik "Ne yesh'te derevyannuyu misku, yesli vy eto sdelayete, vam budet trudneye prinesti vam yedu."
Leaving that bowl with the creature, he goes back and gets a second bowl for it. He exchanges bowls until Einar's stew is gone. Then he takes both of the bowls back and cleans them.
After that is done, he spends some time in the library trying to find out what sort of creature Little Otik is.
---
The next day, Mr. Whiskers messes with the cauldron and cookbook as he is preparing spells.
Once he has finished spell preparation, he casts several spells on people.
Mage Armor (himself using a Runestone)
Mage Armor (Greta using a Runestone)
Share Language (Greta: Russian, Triaxian, Terran)
Share Language (Seraphine: Russian, Terran, Skald)
He then shifts his Ioun stone to enhancing his disguise skill and goes to work on disguising himself as a human child. Nivean is squeaking and gesturing all the while Mr. Whiskers is putting it on.
He will help anyone else who wants to put on a disguise.
Before they go out, he uses the rod to cast the following spells:
Heightened Awareness (Self, Extended)
Heroism (Self, Extended)
Heroism (Greta, Extended)
---
Being told of the devices, Mr. Whiskers says "So someone already knows we are here? That is not good."
Scratching his chin, he looks out over the snow. "So Einar, do you think you could reset the devices so that they become our protection? Make it so we can bypass them but intruders would set them off? If not, I would say just deactivate them."
"O, eto vkusno!" Little Otik happily gobbles up every bowl of stew given to him, but leaves the bowl intact so he can get more. "YA obeshchayu, chto ne budu yest' ledyanogo chuvaka."
Oh that is delicious. I promise I won't eat iced up guy.
Then he starts defacating in front of Mr Whiskers. Mr Whisker's arcane sight picks up a stead-fast gutstone among all the poop.
The library reveals Little Otik as an overgrown Mandragora.
Mr. Whiskers uses prestidigitate for several minutes, thoroughly cleaning the gutstone. Eew! Could this creature get more gross?
He then hesitantly picks the gutstone up and brings it to the group.
Looking at Einar, Mr. Whiskers gets a kit out of his pack and allows Einar to use some of the supplies from it. He does some of the fine touchup near the eyes himself.
The traps can't tell the difference? Seems rather dangerous to me! I'll stick with magical triggers then, at least those can be made to accept passwords and Key off basic creature type.
"Sorry, I don't know much about such things. I was hoping you could just change the runes somehow so they took a different pass phrase or something." With a shrug, he says "There doesn't tend to be a lot written up about how some people circumvent traps."
He watches patiently as Einar disables them.
Einar disables a way thorough the minefields, no problem.
Einar, Crummock and Geist are about halfway through the field, when the whole world explodes into chaos.
The metal wagon begins to swivel, then fires a large canonball between Einar, Crummock and Mr Whiskers, which explodes, showering everyone with fragments.
Then they see a horde of humans in strange suits and gasmasks some of them fire on the party from behind the snow covered skeletons of the building, while the rest throw small motars at Mr Whiskers, Crummock and Geist.
Seeing Einar go down, the last set of the first battalion gun for Geist and Crummock.
The second battalion opens fire.
The wagon open fires on the ground between Geist and Mr Whiskers.
Then it turns its machine gun onto Geist.
Mr. Whiskers takes out his scroll of dimension door and reads it. With a *BAMF* he disappears.
He pops into existence behind the full cover of the hut, out of sight of all the nasty weapons and as close to the entrance as possible.
"I heard gunshots. So what happened?" The Coffin Man raises an eyebrow.
Zorka(invisible) is staring intently a battered and lacerated Mr Whiskers. "Sorry about it, we were stuck in some extra dimensional place in the Hut. We just managed to find our way out, and then the stairway down dissappeared."
"I don't think it's good news if you're in this state - what happened to the rest?"
In a near panic, Mr. Whiskers says "I've got to get to the bowl and egg! Einar, Crummock and Geist are all down! I don't know if any of them are still alive!" Gunshot? Wish I had time to ask what that was!