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Bellicus smiles smugly as the sword strikes the mephit, proud that his plan to draw the monster from its hole has succeeded. He straightens and looks down his nose at the dripping creature, and sniffs derisively at it. He immediately regrets this decision, as he gets a noseful of the horrid gas, and he begins to retch at the putrescence that had affected the rest of the group. "Gods, it reeks!", he coughs out between gags on the pervasive stench. He swipes his blade in the creature's direction, but he begins a full retreat away from the creature, pulling back to join with the rest of the group.
Heading back east out of the stinking cloud. After I'm out, I'm nauseated for rounds. Get it, guys!
Fort: 14
Between retches, Teral wheezes out a string of rustic profanity, his village upbringing showing through in an ear-blistering blue streak, but here and there, he spits something out in the hissing tongue of great reptiles as well, making for a truly strange combination of sounds.
Suddenly, the green fog dissipates as quickly as it had arrived. The mephit, Meepo, and much of the party are still retching from having breathed in too much of the foul cloud. The mephit is still trying desperately to heal itself with the water on the floor, but it is not deep enough.
"You dare pervert water, source of all?"
Anton finds that the creature is still quite quick despite being sick to its stomach, and he is unable to land a blow.
Despite the dissipation of the noxious vapors, Val continues to retch.
Leynus, becalmed and emboldened by his own performance and the disappearance of the very noxious cloud, moves forward to take his own slice at the mephit.
Elion will move to B2 (provokes AoO) and attack
(flanking and courage)
Elion moves cautiously towards the mephit, then realizes that it is far too nauseated to retaliate in any way. His dagger bites deep into the creature's spongy flesh, causing water to pour out of it. The mephit looks very dry somehow, and cries out in despair.
Teral shakes his head, trying in vain to get his guts under his own control again, but to his chagrin, fails miserably and sags against the wall once again.
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Realizing that the dry heaving has stopped, Akshara lets out a low, yowling growl as the fur on the back of her neck begins to bristle. She turns to look over her shoulder, eyes wide and pupils like large, dark saucers. Her grossly dirtied maw is slick with mucus and bile. Her lips pull back revealing those jagged teeth and a roar escapes the tiefling as she curls her hands into fists, scaled lizard tail smacking against the wall beside her.
Akshara's pupils narrow to slits and her muscles tense, a second later she leaps through the air at the mephit with a howling growl, jaws open and a feral savagery having come over her.
But, the moment Akshara enters that noxious green cloud she collapses into a heap instead of pouncing on the mephit, falling onto her side and gagging uncontrollably as her body goes into wild spasms, all the while a frustrated series of animal like howls echo from within the billowing green fog.
__________
Meepo seems to have mostly recovered from the sickening cloud, but the mephit itself is still coughing up muck and pathetically slumping about in the water on the ground, trying heal itself. Realizing the futility of its efforts, it lurches back into the room with the keg to try to find more water... and escape from the raving demon cat creature and all her angry friends!
"FALL!"
Elion will attempt to acrobatic to C4 and attack...
Suddenly the little demon-creature's spluttering is cut off. As it dies, water seeps out of its body, creating a puddle and leaving little trace but a paper-thin leathery skin.
The keg has stopped gushing water, but it stands filled to the brim in the small antechamber.
Eventually, Val stops dry-heaving, and straightens up. "Well, that was thoroughly unpleasant. Is it dead?"
Anton will coup de grace with his scythe ...just in case.
Elion is holding very still looking warily at Akshara, "Careful, she has that look in her eyes again."
Leynus winces as Anton brings the scythe down. "Well, if it wasn't, it is now." He looks around at his heaving, groaning, thoroughly sick-covered companions and gives a stained grin.
"It's understandable. I wanted to bite the little horror myself. Never in my life have I experienced something such as that. But at least we won the day, yes?"
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When the mephit is slain by the combined assault of Anton and Elion, Akshara seethes where she crouches on all fours like some sort of beast. Her dark hair hangs in her face, light reflecting off of her eyes, making them seem like two gold discs. After a moment her ears perk forward and she tilts her chin up, revealing her sick-spattered face and a much softer expression than she'd worn a moment prior. Her now calm eyes flick towards the mephit's corpse and she slinks over, giving it a cursory sniff before looking up at Anton with one ear quirked to the side.
"Smell nasty," Akshara notes plainly.
"Indeed, child. What use did the thing have trapped in the barrel? Strange."
Val tentatively approaches the barrel. "Is that water safe to wash up with?"
"That ...thing has been living in it. However ..." Anton clasps his hands together, and they shimmer a bit. He dips them into the water and it clears instantly. "It is pure now."
"That thing was living in there. For a quite a while I think, and I don't see an attached outhouse. I wouldn't think the water would be clean. He might have had some stuff though..."
Elion starts as the water magically clears, "Cool."
The water seems perfectly normal, and after Anton's blessing it is clear as spring water. As you take water from the keg, it instantly refills, without overflowing.
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"Now there's an understatement," Bellicus mutters under his breath at Ashkara's summation. He begins cleaning the sick off his armor, and takes a look at the keg's purified water. "Interesting, a endless supply of clean water. Don't mind if I do." He begins scooping some of the water out of the basin and washing the sick stains off his clothes and armor, taking a mouthful of the clean stuff and rinsing the acrid taste from his mouth.
"Well, that was thoroughly unpleasant. Let's hope we don't run into more of those...what did you call them, mephits?"
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Wiping at her face with the back and side of her hands, Akshara grumbles frustratedly in trying to get herself clean. Seeing the others taking water from the barrell, Aksara perks her ears forward and waits with her tail swishing from side to side for the area to be clear. Once it is, the tiefling crawls over to the barrell and eases up to peer over the edge.
Then, without so much as a word, Akshara just tips the keg forward and pours it all over herself. Ears fold back, eyes shut, and the tiefling douses herself with the keg before letting it clunk back into place. Now sopping wet, Akshara reaches back and wrings out her hair a few times before shaking off like a dog and spraying water everywhere.
Once finished, she looks around at the others, smiling and wide-eyed. "We go?"
Standing a bit too near Akshara, Teral, long-suffering look on his face, drips and sighs. "In a minute."
Closing his eyes for a moment, Teral concentrates and mutters a quick cantrip, then opens them again and they shimmer with the faint light of magic. "Let's just see if our wet friend had any toys..."
After Akshara upends the keg of water onto herself, it immediately fills back up to the brim again.
Teral detects that the keg and pipes have a faint conjuration aura. It seems likely that the mephit was bound to this water supply as some sort of guardian or servant, but it had been trapped here for countless years.
Other than that, your search is fruitless.
Meepo hiccups, then chimes in, "Yusdrayl be very happy this door open. We no need drink filthy dirt water now! We drink Magic Dragon Water! She be happy Meepo finds this!" He cringes in the direction of Bellicus. "Er, happy that brave knight finds this, Meepo means."
While the others tend to their needs with the water, Leynus drinks as much as he can out of his waterskin. He bears Akshara's spattering stoically, and refills the skin at the keg.
Then, to Bellicus, "Yes, a mephit. Elemental creatures from the varying planes. They're not the most powerful, so typically they find themselves bound to some stronger creature."
And to Meepo, "Elion is really the one that deserves the credit. He opened the door, after all. But I'm glad Yusdrayl will find this to her liking; hopefully it will smooth negotiations. Does anyone else have any business with the keg? If not, shall we go?"
Elion will fill his water skin and nod his agreement to carry on. "There are four doors out of the room we found you in Meepo, where do they go?"
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Hearing the water barrel slosh back to fullness, Akshara creeps back over and peers over the edge of the rim. Ears perked forward, the tiefling looks baffled by her discovery. This time she carefully grips the cask by the rim and tips some of it over, spilling a gallon or so of water on the floor, then straightens the keg back up. Quite like magic, the water swirls and bubbles and the keg refills.
Wide-eyed, Akshara watches the water-line rise until it is full once more. "Keep?" The tiefling looks over her shoulder to Anton, brows raised and hopeful. She doesn't seem to consider the difficulty in lugging it around, but she does recognize its value as a source of fresh water.
"One door goes to kobold guard room. They stay in unless goblins come. Probably they hear us fighting but not want to fight - you not sound like goblins! One door goes to nasty goblins, other door to mighty kobold lair. Last door goes to rat room. There we keep rats for eating!" Meepo chomps excitedly at the thought of a nice, tasty rodent dinner.
"So what's your pleasure?" Elion asks the party. "We have a bunch of dead rats we can offer as a housewarming present if you want to visit the grand poobah kobald."
"We can't take it ...not now at least. But perhaps later, my child."
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Grumbling, Akshara squints at the barrel and then exhales a sigh that blows an errant lock of hair from her face. Standing up slowly, she ambles over to Meepo and looks down at him with one ear perked up and th eother out to the side, head crooked in an inquisitive stare. Then, looking back to the others there's an expectant expression on the tiefling's face. It looks like she's ready to go, she just isn't sure where to.
Meepo backs away from Akshara, obviously trying to keep his distance without making it seem too much like he's trying to keep his distance. "This way, follow Meepo!" He walks over to the door in the southwest corner of the large "dragon room," opens it, and takes you through a corridor...
"Should we gather up the rats?"
Teral thoughtfully taps his spear a few times on the ground, then nods at Elion. "That might be a good plan. These little guys can be vicious, sometimes, and if they think they're the heirs or whatnot to a dragon, they'd probably be happy with something like tribute."
He shrugs, and continues, "We don't have to, but it shouldn't be too much of a trick to pull off, and it might get us an easy in with Yusdrayl that we might have to work pretty hard for elsewise."
"Were you hanging on to those rat carcases for something special?"
Fearing Bellicus might take his comment the wrong way, Elion hastens to add, "I just meant, well, I'm a merchant. There's an opportunity here to sell something we have no need for to someone who wants it. How can I pass that up?"