The knight Gabby shouts at takes a nervous step back, shaken by her dire pronouncement. Allie blesses the party as Elka and Elly rush forward. The changeling rips into the nearest knight with her claw, while Elly trips him and smashes him with her holy flail, leaving him badly wounded! Ulrich's ray weakens the knight in the back of the group, though he resists some of its effects.
The enfeebled knight takes another step back and uses his magic to attempt to paralyze Elly. The other two call upon dark powers to smite the fighter, the prone one risking standing up to attack! One blow gets through her armor.
Keeping up her defensive efforts, Elká swipes at all of the plate-clad bastards within reach.
Ellie has grown in might considerably in the short few weeks since she woke up confused and helpless in the coffers of the Boneyard. Dark curses that would once have rooted her powerless to the spot are now something she shrugs off with ease. She grits her teeth as the evil ones strike her with more mundane means, and retaliates with a vengeance.
She then focuses on tripping both her foes.
If either of them falls, she uses the opening to strike hard.
Gabriella targets the knight in the rear with her arrows as she lets them fly.
Ulrich takes out the wand of magic missiles and uses it to blast the knight in the rear.
Allie clenches a fist and rattles one knight's skeleton inside his armor.
Ellie smashes the helmet and skull of the man who tried to rise, making sure he stays down for the count. Gabby's arrows miss the knight in the rear, but Ulrich blasts him with magic missiles. Allie shakes the skeleton of the other knight in melee, moments before Ellie trips him and bashes him with her flail. Elka pounces upon the fallen man, her claws rending armor and flesh as she disembowels him!
The final knight cries with fury as he rushes forward, negative energy crackling on his blade.
His sword cleaves only through empty air.
Ellie effortlessly knocks the man's legs out from under him, bringing her flail up menacingly as she does so. "Surrender!"
If he doesn't, she hits him with her flail.
The man refuses to surrender! Elly smashes his chest as he falls, but he manages to get his shield up in time to block her follow-up strike.
Since the man refuses to surrender, Gabbi intends to follow through with her threat of Pharasma's judgement via mystically created arrows.
Now unconcerned about the fight, Ulrich casts False Life on himself.
Allie simply waits, the girls have it well in hand.
Gabby manages to score one hit against the knight, then Elka finishes him off with a savage claw strike to the neck.
Whilst inspecting their fallen foes, Elká stumbles upon something that causes her to turn around to the group. The half-elf is holding a silver symbol and frowns. "Now, what's this symbol they all got on them? A grinning skull? Or is it a moon? I've never seen it before."
"Groetus," Gabbi says distractedly as she looks over the wooden symbol in her hand. "God of the end. A nutter, really. This one, however ..." She holds up the wooden symbol showing a rapier over a flower. "This is Arazni's. Why would followers of the Harlot Queen be here? This just gets stranger and stranger."
She shakes her head in puzzlement.
"Let's keep moving."
You continue on through the sewers for just a few more minutes. Ahead, the walkway ends at a ramshackle wooden bridge spanning the sluggish wastewater. At the far end is a partially collapsed wall revealing a large, refuse-filled cave. A brutally savaged humanoid corpse wearing black armor sprawls atop the rubble of the collapsed wall. The corpse’s arms and legs have been twisted nearly out of their sockets.
After a few moments, the refuse shifts and a reeking otyugh emerges with its three tentacles held high in the air. "Talk, talk!" it gasps in Common.
An arrow is almost instantly in Gabriella's hand and ready to fire.
"So talk," she calls out. "What would you like to talk about?" Her eyes begin scanning the surrounding area in case this is a distraction.
The otyugh steps aside, and an even larger one emerges from its hiding spot. "Well met," it burbles. "I am Grimetongue. My cluster and I have lived in these sewers peacefully for many years, but for the past few years, the people in black armor have been passing through between their lair deeper below and the city above. We have learned to stay out of their way, but they recently captured two of our soothsayers and drove them to the surface. We have not seen our kin since and assume that they are dead.
"We desire vengeance for our brethren. If you are enemies of the black-armors, we will tell you where to find them."
Remembering the two otyugh they saw at the dye warehouse, Gabbi frowns. "We've recently seen two of your kind up above ground. Although I wouldn't know if they're the two that were captured. We are enemies of the black-armors - as should be any rational being."
Grimetongue burbles happily, and the sound is echoed from several spots within the cave--likely from more otyughs lurking about. "They live! This is good. They will find their way back here."
The otyugh coats one of its tentacles with raw sewage and paints a rough map of the sewers on the wall of the cave. "You are passing through the Undercity. It is a long-forgotten series of ruins deep below the bluff the human city is built upon. The path to the black-armors' lair leads through the territory of Old Leatherback, a reptilian beast known to swim in the waters of the sewer, and ends at a place called the Deep Door. We have not been down there in several years, so unfortunately we cannot give you more details."
Elká snorts - is she laughing? - when the abomination mentions whose territory they'll have to move through. "Leatherback? Sounds like a gator. Orcs love telling stories of how one day they'll wrestle one. Odd, I never met an orc who actually wrestled one. There might be wisdom to be found in that, heh. Also, we took out a couple of them black plated bastards. We don't mind if you accelerate their transition into the afterlife."
Ulrich replaces some of the lavender in his doctor's beak to help deal with the foul stench. "I was actually considering letting Kamosh speak with one of those knights, but yes afterwards we have no use for them. Consuming their bodies would be very efficient, a trait that reminds me of the intelligent mimic from what feels like ages past."
"Do you care to try interrogating the knight?"
Allie leaves others to do the interrogation. Her particular brand of charm doesn't seem to be necessary here, and it smells bad...
Ulrich thinks the most likely creature Old Leatherback could be is an alligator or crocodile. It might even be a deinosuchus, a primeval crocodile of prodigious size.
"If we're going to be questioning the dead, then let's find a quiet place to do this," Gabbi says in annoyance. "They're never very cooperative."
"I am skeptical this will work. Religious folk are always very headstrong. However, I think this is worth an attempt." Ulrich says as he leads them back to the knight's bodies.
Kamosh hops onto the chest of one of them and uses Speak with Dead.
The corpse refuses to answer Kamosh’s call.
Kamosh shakes his head to Ulrich, who frowns and says
"Bugger. Well I suppose our only option is to meet this reptilian creature...... Hang on, I have a query."
He sits down slowly next to the corpse of the knight and takes out his dagger. With expert scalpel skills, he slices through some of the meat to extract. "If this creature is a crocodylinae, and not some other form of monstrosity, perhaps a tribute of flesh could save us from unnecessary conflict."
Then he casts Mage Hand to hold onto the hunk of meat for him.
"Thank you for your patience. Let us continue."
Ellie wrinkles her nose as the Doctor carves up the dead man like so much steak. "Yuck."
"Good thinking, though. But, still. Yuck."
"Do you think that little bit of meat will be enough to satisfy something that big?" Gabbi questions with a raised eyebrow. "If you say so." She shakes her head. "Let's get moving."
"Distractions help." Allie offers with a shrug, before grabbing Rascal by the scruff of his neck as the wolf attempts to go after the floating morsel. "Down Rascal!"
Wrestling her wolf leaves Allie at the back of the group as they move forwards.
After another 20 minutes or so, you come to Old Leatherback’s domain. The flow of waste cascades from four different directions into this partially filled circular cistern. A walkway forms a quarter arc, connecting the west passage to another that runs north. Opposite this passage, a separate walkway joins the east and south passages. Heaps of discarded wood lie upon both walkways, piling up against the sewer walls. The roar of falling fluids echoes loudly throughout the cistern.
Gabbi looks around for any signs of the purported beast.
Gabby spots the well-hidden form of a crocodile of monstrous size lurking just beneath the surface of the sludge in the cistern with only its eyes and nostrils exposed. The reptilian behemoth, a crocodile of monstrous proportions, appears large enough to swallow a horse in one tremendous bite!
Gabbi's eyes pass over the lurking creature, but don't stop there. She makes a show of looking over the rest of the large chamber.
"Not sure if it speaks any known languages or not, but it's watching us right now," she says in a casual voice. She continues to scan over the rest of the room as she verbally describes its location in the water. "Please don't look right at it. I don't think it knows we've seen it. How should we handle this?"
Ellie very carefully doesn't look at the spot Gabbi has described. "I'd hate to fight something we don't have to. But I've no idea how we'd negotiate with it."
Gabbi gives her sister a knowing smile and a questioning eyebrow.
Allie's face cracks a smile and a sly grin.
Gabbi turns to Ulrich. "Maybe you should try throwing it your offering?" she suggests.
Elká experiences what it feels like to be the hunted when the ancient behemoth comes into sight. The creature, majestic in its savagery, inspires awe in the changeling. "Maybe we ought to go back and bring two or three corpses with us. No, I mean it."
When Ulrich tosses the corpse down into the cistern, Old Leatherback swallows it in one huge gulp. The massive gator settles down to digest its meal, seeming much less ornery than before. It should be safe to use the planks of wood to cross.
Gabbi grimaces at the gruesome display of brutal feeding, but grips her bow tightly and attempts to cross the water using the wooden planks.
It's a bit tricky to get the wood into place to serve as a sturdy bridge, but with Ulrich directing your efforts, you are successful.
After crossing the cistern, the tunnels turn for several more minutes before you reach the Deep Door. A black iron door sits recessed in the sewer wall, breaking up the monotony of brick and mortar. Above the portal, an ancient bust of a proud woman with her mouth agape glares down into the tunnel.
As you look upon the imposing entryway, you reflect on your recent experiences, feeling stronger and better prepared.
"May we take a short break? I feel confident that I can prepare a few more spells for our journey into these tunnels of filth."
After everyone's had a chance to rest, Gabbi's rouses everyone with a snapping of her fingers. "Break's over folks; We've got a disaster to avert."
She then steps up to examine the stone bust. "Elká? Could you come and check this out. This looks like it was just made to be trapped."
While the changeling looks over the stonework, Gabbi senses for evil behind the door.
The iron door is too thick to detect any auras beyond it.
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Spells Prepared
Bold Spells are the newly prepared slots
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0th (at will) Detect Magic, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Read Magic
1st cause fear, dancing lantern, expedious excavation, ray of enfeeblement, shield x2
2nd blindness/deafness, blood transcription, chill touch (reach close),
3rd dispel magic, haste, nondetection (50gp), magic weapon (greater), ray of exhaustion
4th bestow curse, boneshatter, phantasmal killer, positive pulse greater
5th hungry earth, slough, suffocation
Ulrich takes out his rod of extend spell, and casts a few in preparation.
Elka indeed discovers a trap on the door. A pressure plate in front of it would trigger a mechanisms that would unleash a torrent of sewage from the carving's mouth to batter and potentially drown anybody unfortunate enough to be in its path. The changeling works swiftly to disable it, and she is also able to lift the bar keeping the door locked using her tools.
"All right then," Gabbi says once Elká disables the trap. "Let's open the door and find out what we're dealing with." She readies her bow and takes a step back.
Allie taps people on the shoulder, distributing divine power where needed.