"Oooooooh." Lil reaches for the hoard.
Seth quickly reaches out and takes her hand. "Be cautious little one. Remember that we are allies with him, and if he discovers his hoard missing he may resent it."
Vlad stops her.. "Indeed.. There is no reason to take the Shaman's belongings. Especially if he is helping us.. Now whats up with that potion?"
It's a strong hallucinogen, highly addictive drug. It induces fatigue, to gain powerful visions as the augury spell.
It last of one hour, to a point where the user drop unconscious for another hour.
Vision Juice
Type drug (ingested); Addiction moderate, Fortitude DC 20
Effects 2 hours; 1 hour of fatigue and powerful visions as the augury spell, 1 hour unconsciousness.
Damage 1d3 Wis damage
Price 150 gp
While Vlad is busy controlling the little devil Argan moves ahead and stores the hoard in their own bag. "His hoard? You mean my hoard, right?"
With no regards for the opinion of the possible ally, Argan stashes away the secret stash of the frog shaman. Lil’s knows that, from the drug effect, the shaman will be out for some more time.
"Take the vuhdo potion and we'll try it out later. We need to find an entrance into the Horn.."
Argan seems sad that no one would want to try the potion. If Calla was here things would be different... "So, what does that potion do? Shouldn't we drink it to understand what did Bob Marley there said?"
Collecting the voodoo potion and the secret stash, the group heads back, to find kharn playing with his new helm.
Once the events are told, Kharn and Grumblejack join again the party, as the set to explore the place once more.
You vote to explore the right side to the cave complex.
There are several empty, fetid caves, with nothing of interest.
There are only two things of interest in this place: One of the caves has a pool of acid and a mud pit, which irradiates a magic aura.
"What do you mean it is magical? Is the pit magical or is there something in it?" Finding the existence of a pool of acid here intriguing, Argan approaches to take a better look at it and check the power of the acid by putting a stick inside it. Then he tries one of the useless weapons from the boggards, to see if it would melt and if it's deep or not.
"That mudpit is prob dangerous.. if anyone is gonna search it prob should tie a rope around them.. Any volunteer's?"
"I mean it's magical, duhhh." As for what kind of magic, that's yet to be discovered.
"Nah, sorry. I've gotta keep my scarf in the best conditions, and it doesn't really like mud."
Geothermal activity below the Horn of Abaddon has created a natural cauldron of boiling mud here. The hot mud is obvious and not particularly dangerous (though anyone who wades in does take 1d6 fire damage per round). If anyone casts detect magic here, the mud is actually faintly magical. The slow erosion of the magically created Horn of Abaddon has made this pool so, but it does not seems to have any other effect.
The other small wet cave, through a bizarre natural process, sweats acid from its northern wall. The acid has pooled and anyone touching the seemingly clear water takes 1d6 acid damage. Double this damage if anyone foolishly drinks from pool. This pool is surprisingly deep and contains roughly 100 vials worth of acid (1000 gp worth). Better, the pool replenishes completely every month. That means that every week you control the horn, you can harvest 250 gp worth of potent acid from this pool.
Kharn seems impressed by the two pools.
"That's extremely useful to say the least."
Kharn will do a quick once over of the room to see if he missed anything, but otherwise he is ready to move on.
"Wow, alchemy is going to be easy in here." She takes note of where the two pools are. "We could make a good trap out of the boiling mud if we hid it."
"If we're expecting visitors, and we're not." Argan is not the type that set traps, but ambushes, of course. "This would make a nice hideout once we clean the place. Let's take a second look, and keep your eyes open, to see if we missed any secret entrance, then we move into the obvious spots."
"Keep the walls to your right and keep moving guys."
"There's got to be an actual entrance to something man made here.."
Searching the places gives result in no other actual findings, except fora broken and useless iron chest on the other side of the mud pit.
Past the shaman temple, The boggards have constructed a crude holding pen. This is where victims captured in the swamp are dragged and held until the proper moment for them to be sacrificed to Dagon and then eaten. Currently it is empty save for a few scattered bones from an unlucky Iraen trapper the boggards captured weeks ago.
Another fungus cave, just like the one found before.
Then a treasure cavern. Beautiful diamonds sparkle along the far wall.
Near the cavern with the diamonds, This wet cavern is full of bones of both animals and sentients. This collection was largely cobbled together from everyone the boggards have ever murdered plus dozens of bodies found scattered about dating from the destruction of the Sons of the Pale Horseman eighty years ago.
Finally, you stop at what appear to be breeding pool.
The next generation of boggards swims about and grows in this murky pool. The little boggard tadpoles are noncombatant and confined to the water. They actually look like strange little fish at this stage. Most of these tadpoles are the descendants of Kumanda Slays-Nine-Men and his consorts.
A crude stone statue of a great bloated tentacle boggard watches the pool. This is of course a statue of Father as the bane-wogs perceive him.
Dagon is the demon prince of sea creatures. He is worshiped as a deity by legions of sahuagin, locathah, skum, lizardfolk, tritons (those that have accepted the ways of evil), and some merfolk, and for the purpose of this adventure, boggards! :D
Consult the map for reference.
Vlad looks closer at the "diamonds" to see if there actually real..
"Let's gather our treasure first, just to make sure. We don't actually need to kill the frogs, do we?"
Lil looks around at all of the bodies, a smile slowly coming to her face. Oh, I will have many friends soon.
Vlad walks closer to inspect the Diamonds...
… when the ground suddenly breaks, and he falls into a 30ft deep hole, with several stalagmites at the base, from which tree of them pierces his body, hurting the almost undead warrior.
Deep down into the trap, Vald notices some boggard bodies as well.
"Hey, un'. What are you doing down there?" the ogre asks, being late to arrive, he did not saw soon-to-be-undead-fall.
Vlad stands up and brushes himself off.. "Motherfuker the hurt!"
He pulls a wand and start healing himself along with swift action ToC..
Now that he;s down here he'll have a look..
Lil skips over. "My thoughts exactly Jackie." She peers down. "Find any diamonds?"
"Dunno yet, still looking.. How bout you look for magic aura's from up there.."
"Good idea!" Lil does just that.
Deep down the role, you start to think it’s more than just a simple trap. It looks like something home’s.
With that idea in mind, you start to carefully search the place, but you find nothing or no one.
Taking a time to explore the bodies, they have different ‘ages’. As if from time to time, some boggard ventured in the cave, died, and it took some years until the tribe forgets and heads inside once more, but there no treasure or anything of value.
The diamonds by the way are simply translucent calcite crystals. Though they are quite lovely and remarkably delicate, they are also worthless.
And as Lil looks for magic, there are indeed magic auras in the place, two to be more precise, a faint transmutation and Illusion aura. The transmutation seems to cover the whole pit, while the illusion is fixed at a small point.
"It appears we might have some sorta nasty's hideout down here.. How bout yall toss me a rope.." While he waits..
He pulls his sword after healing..
"Illusion magic, I would try to disbelieve it if I were you." She gets somebody stronger with some rope.
Kharn tosses down a rope and holds it so the vampire can come out.
Argan readies his bow, just in case. "There could be a door hidden by an illusion, you know. Look properly, Vlad. We got your back."
Vlad will attempt to disbelieve..
Taking Lil advice, Vlad tries to Interact with the said illusion, and after some time, nothing changes, everything is exact the same as before.
The source of the moved, always staying away of vlad. Easy to notice is a creature under invisibility effect.
"Ahhh, something is invisible down there. Whatever it is doesn't like Vlad, it's avoiding him."
"You are probably not warm enough to serve the purpose Vlad." He puts his hand ion his forehead. "You're so useless. Let's move, then. Of course that, if we got him to talk it would be probably worth it, since it should know some secret passages."
Vlad climbs out from the hole.. "No one's got any way to remove invisibility?"
"Sorry. I've got a spell to prevent you from taking falling damage, tough."
Argan admits he let the soon-to-be-undead fall on the trap just to see him bleed, as the party decides to explore further the place, giving up on the invisible monster living in a natural trap pit.
Continue the set of caves, you emerge on a large wet cavern dominated by two murky pools on either side of a comparatively wet walkway. The muck and slime that coats the floor makes the entire chamber count as difficult terrain (boggard swamp stride ignores this difficult terrain). This room also has strategic importance. It is a bottleneck that leads to the back entrance of the boggard village.
There, a particularly large and beautiful cave formation that emerges from the pool. Delicate crystals stud its exterior.
You pass for some more empty caves until you arrive at This is seemingly yet another wet empty cavern notable only for its very distinctive blue slime mold that covers the western wall. The vibrant blue slime is neither poisonous nor dangerous but is visually striking.
"Blue slime.... That's different..." Argan approaches to see if he recognizes it from somewhere, or if maybe is just an illusion.
"Must be what the shaman was talking about.. Lets have a good look here.."
Kharn is going to examine the blue moss since he hasn't seen anything like it before.
Kharn notices, in room with the blue slime, there is a tiny crack in the wall, leading to what appears to be a hidden corridor.
No one medium or small sized is able to enter the crack in the wall.
"Isn't there some spell that moves rock? Can one of your magic types cast it?"
"Well yes, while that magic does exist, it doesn't mean that one of "us magic types" can cast it. I don't expect you to be able to shoot down a dragon with a bow because you're one of "those martial types."" Lil turns her nose up at the insensitive vampire.
"It was a simple question.. A simple response would have sufficed.." He grumbles.. "SHoulda bought that adamantine sword Kharn.. Coulda went through this like butter.."
"I could move it, but it would need to wait until tomorrow."
"I don't think that's a real entrance, but perhaps that is the backdoor we're looking for. Why don't you send the invisible weight on your shoulder Vladamir?"