Regardless of what she does or doesn't know, her blood is up and she needs to distract this creature from Cwm if she can, so she strikes!
As her allies prepare for the rush in, Penny taps herself with her Gravity Bow wand once again. "Always be prepared" she scoffs to her teammates.
Her attitude swiftly changes at the sight of the mighty beast. "Oh my Taylor. You weren't messing around" she mutters. She side steps to get a clear shot and fires a round from her crossbow.
Recognizing that his chiding words would only be ignored by the undead creature, Tykent instead focuses on his allies. He waves his hand and scatters golden light on his companions as Hope chirps encouragingly from her perch on his shoulder.
Cwm is nearly staggered by the crab's blow. He tries to drive his dagger into the beast one more time before jumping back and moving toward the group, "Draw it over here Yngvilda! One more hit like that and I'm toast!"
Everyone in the party lands their strike, piling heaps of damage onto the creature and it's beginning to show.
Cwm slashes the creature again with another wicked blow, the damage started to pile up. The creature lashes out Cwm in return however, not allowing the rogue to move away so easily as it bites his back badly and sends him crashing to the ground. It eyes Cwm's head, looking at it as it intends to do something with it in a moment.
With CwM out of the way, it turns its attention to the armored fighter. It easily chews through her defenses and bites her as well .
Penny remembers learning about this before, and shares her knowledge of the creature with her allies.
Some speculate that neh-thalggus encountered in this reality may merely be juveniles of their kind, perhaps exiled from their home worlds by greater kin until they can prove their worth on other worlds. Their brain collections may be a morbid form of currency in their home realm, or the thoughts in these brains may merely be fuel for a dark apotheosis into an even more sinister mature form.
Special Ability: Brain Collection...
"Do not underestimate this foe. We have weakened it, but its not over yet."
Penny lines up for a clear shot and blasts a ray of weakening energy towards the giant crablike creature.
"CWM!"
Yngvilda's concern for Cwm has to take a back seat as it's all she can do to hold on to her shield as the creature slams into her. She has a moment to wish that she'd actually put an alchemical weapon in her new trick shield-boss, as now would be a good time to use it.
For the first time in a while she doesn't hear her fathers voice telling her to keep her shield up. She knows how to fight, and all is calm as she smoothly moves though her practiced battle forms.
Finally she takes a five-foot step back.
Hope flaps her wings and trills. Tykent folds his hands in prayer, and a burst of light fills the cavern. "Steady on there, young ones," the shaman says easily, though anyone watching him closely might notice the old man is keeping a close eye on the fallen Cwm.
No sooner does Eldon finish his spell but Cwm falls beneath the creatures attacks. Barely taking a moment to recover he launches straight into another incantation, sending a couple of blue darts of energy from his open palm toward the creature.
Cwm dreams of an obstinate Black Knight.
The foe is nearly felled, but seems to press on relentlessly at Yngvilda despite its near-second death. One more the powerful creature slams into the Ulfen and nearly takes her to her feet, barely leaving her standing. The party knows they must finish this creature right now, or the Ulfen will join the rogue on the ground and it will turn its attention to them.
Seeing her spells are just not as effective as she would hope, Penny reloads her crossbow and takes another shot.
"Hang in there. This will all be over soon"
Tykent bows his head in prayer once more, and the glow surrounding Hope grows brighter. The dinosaur takes to the air, flying around the strange undead creature before alighting on the fallen Cwm. As she does, the air around the rogue glows for a second and his bruises and cuts fade dramatically.
Cwm's eyes snap open and he gasps for air. Hope looks at him expectantly as he takes in what happened. Gripping his dagger, Cwm kips up and turns to the sounds of the crab wailing on Yngvilda. Her arm shoots out and the dagger buries itself in the beast's shell.
Yngvilda takes a hit that nearly knocks her to her knees. She can hear the blood from multiple wounds spattering to the floor, hear the sound of her heart pumping in hear ears. She thinks back to when she told her father Asbjorn that she was leaving.
"Life isn't a song Yng. Fighting monsters isn't glorious, it's hard work. It's trudging through the mud on your way to the next stinking dungeon, it's leaving your friends when death is the only other choice, it's being cursed by a gremlin to taste ash at every meal. For every legendary hero there's a hundred who died in the dirt. You can't even keep your shield up Yng. Please"
There were tears in his eyes as he begged her to stay, but her blood was up then as it is now. Her mind turns to the potion vial at her belt but she spits out the idea along with a bloody tooth.
"I WON'T EVER LEAVE MY FRIENDS!"
She steps back toward the creature and strikes, sword and shield slick as grease with all the blood, but held high all the same.
With the creature showing signs of weakening Eldon keeps up his chanting and sends another couple of darts at the creature.
The Neh-thalggu zombie is no more. The creature is taken down with another strike from each of the party members, collapsing on the ground with its brain components slamming into Cwm as it falls, getting brain matter all over him.
Four locked iron chests rest on the eastern side of this cavern.
When the fight is done, Penny looks at the chaos then chats with her familiar. "Whoa that was a bit unexpected. Taylor, you will need to work on those communication skills of yours to give better warning."
Taylor circles around her a few times letting out minor flames before coming back to rest on her shoulder.
"Now Cym, come on, pick yourself up and lets get a move on. This is no time to dawdle."
Penny turns to continue on as she gets some looks of frustration from the rest of the party. As she approaches the chests, she retorts "Now now, you all did great. We just, we just need to keep moving.
No time to lose"
She approaches the chests, but keeps her distance and casts detect magic on them, focusing for some time to try to identify any magical traps.
"Come now Cym. Back to your feet. We need you here. What do you make of these chests. Why are there 4. Did the creature mention anything about 4 chests that i missed?"
Tykent claps Cwm heartily on the shoulder. ”That’s the spirit, lad! And you too, lass!” He grins merrily at Yngvilda as well. ”Just look at the size of this thing! Now, let’s see about those cuts - don’t want any infections...”
”And Cwm, do remind me next time, but I think I’ve got a trick to help toughen that hide of yours. Not that we’ll need it when Penny is through with us, eh?” He guffaws at his own joke, Hope bouncing wildly from the movement of his shoulders.
Cwm sits on the ground, slowly wiping the crab ichor off his clothes. He contemplates saving some to feed Penny later but it's too much bother. He perks up at Tykent's ministrations and begins to smile, "Thanks friend. That was a little rougher than I expected."
He walks around to examine the chests, careful not to touch anything and wary of pressure plates, triggers, and the like. He doesn't want to leave anything to chance, fully aware that any, all, or none of them could be trapped.
Yngvilda collapses on the floor after the monster falls, just taking a minute.
"I'm OK" she says without looking at anyone.
Perking up after Tykent's ministrations, she sits up.
"Wow that's a good wand!"
Slightly sheepishly, she gathers up her shield and short sword, and takes up a position guarding the others from any other threats, looking around the cave for dangers. It would be difficult to miss the grin that she's struggling to keep off her face.
Cwm calls over to the fighter while he's looking at the middle chests, "that shield work was impressive Yngvilda! Thought we had it trapped. Didn't expect the thing to be so strong."
"Wow, that was a bit close there for a minute."
Seeing that everyone is alright, Eldon goes over to take a look at the hopefully dead creature; poking tentatively at it.
While Cwm and Penny examine the chests, Eldon wonders around the cave taking a good look for anything interesting.
Of these four, three are relatively small chests that can be opened with the keys you found from Hunclay's estate. Within these chests is a total of 11,000 cp, 7,200 sp, 1,800 gp, and 60 pp, all in small cloth pouches of 100 coins each.
The fourth chest is twice the size of the others and is of very fine manufacture. The brass key found on Hunclay's body opens the chest.
Sitting atop an exquisite darkwood case are four packets of enhanced dust of darkness which you assume will extinguish the wall of light in the cellar of the manor. In addition, there is a scroll of permanency (CL 12th) in a mithral scroll tube. The darkwood case is worth 250 gp, and contains five books. Four of these are rare antique tomes on astronomy written in Ancient Osiriani; each is worth l,000 gp. The fifth tome is a tattered volume called Secrets of the Dreaming Dark.
Secrets of the Dreaming Dark is a very old and massive tome, several hundred pages long and bound in black leather. It claims to be a translation of a much older book, but the book's original author is unknown. The pages are scribed in Aklo in cramped handwriting, and include complex star charts and maps of strange, distant worlds. There are numerous breathtaking illustrations of eerie monsters and alien gods as well. Unfortunately, pages or even entire chunks of the ancient text are loose or missing here and there throughout. Successfully reading and understanding the book requires the ability to read Aklo, as well as years of intense study
"Look at this! Pages missing, scribbles, nonsense. How could such a recognized mage leave his belongings in such disarray."
She continues to search through the contents. "Ahhh yes. Dust of Darkness. How could I forget. This should certainly take care of that wall of light we ran into. Nice job everyone. Come on now, shall we take care of our unfinished business in Hunclay's Estate?"
Yngvilda eventually comes over after being healed up from near death to full, a little perked up.
"Wow so much gold! And some books. Books are good I suppose. But gold! That must be 400 lbs of coins alone. We're rich! I could fund an expedition to take down a linnorm with this"
"Yes let's head back to the estate. I was thinking about that actually, Eldon didn't you say you had two scrolls of something for revisibling things?"
"Yes, though the magic is unfamiliar to me. I'm sure I can get it to work though."
Cwm smiles at Yngvilda, "And no traps!"
So once we get back there, how do we want to proceed? Are we letting those two go? I have a feeling banishing them will not be quite as easy as we'd like to think."
"Maffei seemed OK, but the devil, well it's a devil. Devils are evil. They corrupt. It will be a service to the world for us to remove it. If Eldon hits it with the revisibling spell then we can smash it"
"I think we should let Maffei out though, because they are not a devil"
She looks at the rest of you like this is the most perfectly obvious distinction in the world.
"Sounds like a plan, though let's see if we can make the devil visible before we commit to ridding the world of it's presence."
With the treasure from the cave looted, the group makes their way back into town and returns to the Wizard's estate. People are still busily cataloging the upper floors and the basement is still deserted.
"I agree with your plans mostly. I feel we should free Maffei first. As Maffei is also an outsider, but not inherently evil, we could ask for their assistance in taking out the devil, as a thank you for freeing them from the light prison. He gets free, we get help, everyone wins. Do you all agree? "
Taylor flies a lap as a sign of agreement, in which Penny chirps in "I was not asking you...Now, if we are going to do this SAFELY, i must insist we ask the feeble townsfolk to leave the premises, less any innocent bystanders get hurt. We mustn't be negligent in our efforts. "
”Well, we already told the baroness that we didn’t finish clearing those areas,” Tykent answers easily. ”Should be simple enough to continue keeping them away.”
Cwm grumbles to himself, "this is going to end poorly".
Before the go anywhere near Maffei, he holds up a hand, "just so we're all on the same page. This being, this shae, was summoned here by Hunclay to aid his research in a connection between the Plane of Shadow and the Dark Tapestry. Maffei was less than helpful so Hunclay imprisoned it here. Then Penny went and pissed it off by mocking it. So it's surely in a mood to assist us willingly" he finishes with an eye-roll. "Meanwhile, we never got a chance to talk to Mathezic so who knows if he'd have any more useful intel - if he's even in town."
Cwm, looks around at the others, "did I miss anything?"
"Yeah, let's leave the devil for last, If Maffei will help great. If not we are no worse off."
You return to the lower floor and bypass the devil, heading straight for Maffei's cell. When you approach, the shae again manifests into the vague outline of a humanoid female from the nebulous cloud of shadow that seems to be her natural state. "You return," she comments, her tone even. "I did not expect for mortals to keep their word."
"We are no ordinary mortals Maffei, I will one day be a Linnorm Queen as soon as I've gathered enough resources, and falsity is beneath proud Ulfen warrior-maidens. We are here to release you as we promised."
She indicates to Penny to throw the magic dust, and strikes a pose with her sword and shield.
"Will you honour your word and assist us?"
Maffei nods, waiting for Penny to do the honors. "I will. Should you free me and not just tease me, I will aid you where I can."
Cwm slides off toward the side, daggers held low by his legs, ready in case the outsider is lying.
"Alright then. Please stand back, this might be an interesting interaction."
Penny pulls out 1 of the packets of enhanced dust of darkness and throws the dust at the wall of light. She then studies the reaction, and jots down the notes for what happens.
"Freedom!" she shouts, quickly moving out of the light for fear of you closing it back up again.
Once free, she looks to the table where her gear once was and turns to you asking for it back. "I would have my possessions returned, if you please. I will let you keep them in exchange for my freedom, if you wish. Otherwise, return them and I shall owe you a favor to be named in the future. The choice is yours, my word is true."
"Of course you can have your things back," Tykent chuckles. "You would impinge on the honor of our future Linnorm Queen by suggesting she is a thief?" He laughs heartily, no trace of malice on his face. "Now then, do you require healing after your imprisonment?"
Yngvilda reluctantly hands over the short sword and scimitar, but does her best to look like she's not utterly crestfallen.
"Yes yes, of course. Your things. Petty thievery is beneath us. We stand for much higher honors. Oh, and yes, you are welcome. Now we have held up our end of the bargain. What can you tell us of the devil that Hunclay has bound in this place?"
"She reclaims her items without further comment. After equipping her armor and weapons she answers Penny's question. [b]"The devil's name is Chirit."
"The devil was being obstinate against Hunclay's requests for information on how to magically and permanently disguise a book so as it would look like something else, and so Hunclay left the thing bound here, alone, to ponder the wisdom of its actions."
"Shall I kill it for you to fulfill our bargain or do you have another task in mind for me?"
"You could certainly help to slay this devil, I'd rather you help us unravel the mystery of Hunclay's death. Could you tell us anything of his plans? We're a bit in the dark, so to speak. He seems to have been mixed up with very dark forces, and had had a zombie lobster guarding some books about blackness or some such. Could he have left unfinished plans that might put the town at risk? What did he want from you again?"