”Your...your sure? For real?” she asks, her voice cracking.
She wraps her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. He can feel warm tears dampening his clothes as she mumbles into his shoulder ”Thank you.”
She rolls her head over on Cator’s shoulder to look at Shae. She offers her a weak smile and a nod of thanks for her support.
Shae returns the smile, relieved that Hollie didn't seem to take her words the wrong way. In truth, she wasn't sure that Hollie felt that Shae had been 'fine' since that fight.
Even baby steps will eventually lead to a reconciliation.
Lunal turns away from the smoldering corpse, shaking their head. They suddenly look...tired.
Lunal shakes their head to Hollie. "A worshipper of the Mother of Monster is obsessed with wombs and birthing, no wonder she would focus on such kinds of wounds. You have nothing to worry about."
Krovek breaks out his trusty sketch pad as the party recovers and begins to sketch out the recent events--a battle with a fearsome barghest, and the depiction of Runelord Karzoug.
He does a reasonable job, though it's hard to capture all of the right details when the barghest's head is exploded in front of them.
"So, pretty sure that was the hard part. Wanna finish up the rest? All sorts of good stuff in this place."
”Yeah,” Hollie says as she raises up from Cator’s shoulder. ”Lets check the cave out and load this beast up to take it back as proof it is dead.”
Shaedeen gives the others a quick nod to let them know she's up for checking out the cave, if that's the consensus.
The party searches in the thistle area above the sea cave and finds what appears to be another entrance to the cave, one that isn't completely submerged. This entrance is still about 80' down.
Krovek channels 10 hp of life force into his cloak once again, then heals himself.
The party prepares, and then gathers themselves up and rappels down the broken cliff, making their way through the half-filled tunnel into a cavern under the thistly-maze.
A glittering grotto sparkles here, its walls dripping with moisture and alive with sea urchins, anemones, and other tidal life. The cave’s roof rises to a natural dome ten feet above the water. The waters here are less choppy, but they are far from still. A five-foot-wide, fifteen-foot-long ledge sits just above the water level to the south.
Krovek, Jessa, and Shaedeen spot a large creature swimming around on the far side of the cavern.
Shaedeen points out the aquatic monster and moves a bit east to open things up for more of her friends to be able to attack the beastie.
Jessa moves up a bit, swimming.
The creature creeps forward and out of the water slightly, and becomes visible. The creature's eyes shine with intelligence as it growls, and then roars furiously!
This is a Bunyip, a strange combination of seal and shark. They have no special vulnerabilities nor resistances (normally).
You know DC 12, and: The bunyip's attack is razor-sharp, and causes foes to bleed. They also get enraged if they smell blood in the water, like a shark. And (as we see now) they can do a terrifying roar. This bunyip also has cold resistance, electricity resistance, and damage reduction against all physical attacks other than cold iron. It's not clear how.
You know DC 12 and 17 and: Engorged on refuse from the goblins above, and somehow imbued with a magical detrius that the druid dropped, this bunyip seems to be much larger and stronger than a typical Bunyip. In addition, it seems to have some strange powers, imbued to it by the fey.
You know DC 12, 17, and 22, and also that it specifically has the: fey creature template, the giant template, and the advanced template. It also looks like it has spell resistance and can teleport short distances.
The roar is frightening, but Hollie's calming presence helps almost everyone resist the effects of the fear.
When the creature roars, Krovek clutches his ears and drops his weapon, Shaedeen does the same. Jessa and Drax aren't holding weapons, but all are stricken with a terrible fear of the monstrous thing which has risen from the water. They try to flee the cavern through the entrance that they came.
Krovek feels the fear coming on, but roars in anger and pushes it aside!
He immediately charges the strange beast before him with his cold iron shortspear!
;
"A bunyip! A weird one...a giant fey one! Don't use electricity or ice, and use cold iron weapons if you have them! It can teleport too!"
Then the others all start fleeing.
Lunal's nose curls in distaste. No no it's fine, I can take it. They think sarcastically, knowing the creature would tear them to shreds when it got close. Especially since it could freaking teleport. "Uvelucal kaden!" A modified version of Lunal's normal spell, a cloud of noxious acidic vapors appears on the bunyip!
Unfortunately the creature's innate spell resistance is too much, and Lunal is unable to power through it.
The creature blinks out of existence and reappears next to Krovek, away from the thundercloud, and tries to bite him.
When the creature gets a taste of blood, it seems to go into a frenzy, hungering for more blood!
Shae isn't able to move further, and treads water. Jessa, unfortunately, in her panic, seems to forget how to swim, and takes a big breath and then drops under the choppy waves. Drax keeps moving away from the source of his fear.
Cator strikes his singing steel and begins his raging song, and then casts mirror image on himself.
"Stand still you overgrown seal!" Surprised as the damned creature teleports behind him, Krovek spins around and stabs the thing!
; .
"Who's afraid now?" says Krovek, challenging the beast.
.
Apparently the Bunyip is not afraid.
Hollie swims up and thrusts her rapier at the thing, but is clearly not used to stabbing in the water, much less on land!
Lunal wastes another spell, and another arcane reservoir point, harmlessly battering the creature's spell resistance.
The creature doesn't appear to be able to blink around again, so it just tries to gnaw on Krovek in a frenzy.
Shae and Jessa manage to right themselves and swim away
Hollie tries to get her balance and thrusts her blade again.
Cator swims to the creature and, mindful of the fact that he is in water, attempts to pierce the monster
Krovek continues to bleed and continues to attack!
;
Lunal is running on fumes, and their spells barely make the outline of the creature shimmer anymore.
It realizes it's whittling the person with the most dangerous weapon down, and it keeps trying to bite them
Krovek briefly looks like he is to go unconscious, but his shawl of lifegiving keeps him awake and in the fight.
Shae and Drax get onto a sandbar where they cower, avoiding the water, but Jessa flounders near the exit to the tunnel.
Krovek is on his last legs, but keeps on fighting with the healing magic from his shawl! His bleeding stops and he continues to press the attack.
;
Cator steps into flanking with Krovek and strikes.
Lunal is running on fumes, but digs deep and manages to push through the spell resistance!
Hollie, desperately trying to fell the thing before it drops Krovek, plunges her blade into the thing as hard as she can.
__________
And again, though her blade is mostly deflected by its thick hide.
The thing boggles but remains upright, eyes lolling in its head.
Realizing the creature is on its last legs Cator attacks rather than resuming his raging song
Krovek tries to finish the bunyip before it finishes him!
;
Lunal tries a cantrip to finish the enhanced bunyip off, but again can't penetrate its defenses.
With a wet noise, the shortspear pierces the hide of the powerful bunyip and the seal/shark hybrid sinks beneath the waves to trouble the waters around sandpoint no more.
After a few more seconds, the panicked members of the crew come rushing back into the cave.
A search of the cave pool’s bed quickly turns up an incredible tangle of bones, all that remains of the bunyip’s meals. Many of the bones are from goblins, but a fair amount are larger and human-sized.
To prepare for the search Cator casts heightened awareness on himself. Cator then searches the area, attempting to locate any items of value, and uses his detect magic cantrip to find any possible magical items.
Shaedeen slinks back to the folks who actually fought the bunyip, looking utterly ashamed of herself. Muttering what might be an apology, the teen wanders off, looking for anything of value in the watery cave.
Using the cantrip, Cator finds a rotted quiver containing three magical arrows in one pile. In a separate search, he finds a magical bone wand.
Cator attempts to discover more about the magical objects he found
"Got to practice some underwater fightin' there!" says the wounded but clearly proud half-orc.
.
He spends a few minutes searching around for valuables.
Shaedeen finds a rusted kukri with an intact violet garnet in its hilt.
Hollie searches through the bones and fines a green spinel.
Cator continues to search as long as the slipstream spell will permit.
Cator spends some time searching, and scrounges up 48 gold from the remains from his latter searches.
Krovek has some fun swimming and scrounging.
Hollie and Drax also join in the search when it is obvious everyone intends to keep at it a while. However, she also seems to relish in the comparative peace of a swim.
__________
Drax struggles a little amount with swimming, not having any training in the subject, and has to be rescued a few times by those with spells active. The water in the cave is calmer than the passageways, but it is by no means calm. He is able to assist with the search, though.
The simultaneous searching leads to scrounging up another 43 gold pieces from the various investigators.
The return trip to Sandpoint is uneventful. The party decamps to their various inns and/or homes. The death of the greater barghest Malfeshnekor brought a sense of calm to Thistletop, as if an evil pall was lifted from the environs. Whos to say what the consequences of this heroic act will be, though, when all is said and done?
Hollie was quiet on the trip back, and with Drax dismissed to get some rest, she seemed quite alone in her thoughts.
Once back, she makes sure to take the barghest’s body to the sheriff to report its defeat. Afterwards, she pulls the sheriff aside and whispers to him ”I would like to make a statement, to you, the mayor, and whoever else of authority in town would like to be present. Is that okay?”