Nasar takes out rope and starts tying off to part of the cage and knotting the rope to make it easier for the Genesis to climb down.
”Go for it, if we can estimate how deep it goes we’ll know if we ha e enough rope.” Nasar looks to Lily. ”Wanna give me a hand, I imagine you have some experience with ropes.”
Deract giggles a bit as Lily snatches up part of it to tie knots in the other end. Deract chicks the rock down and waits a second before it echoes back up. He nods, Mhm... yea,
Marissa stands next to him, So how deep is it then?
Deract stands up and shrugs while walking away, I have no idea haha I was hoping someone else knew how to do that whole thing.
Genesis moves him to the side pulling out a paper and pen, Then why... never mind gimme a rock. And she tosses it down and waits for it to hit the ground. She writes a few numbers down before looking at Nasar, A little under 60 feet.
Lily continues tying as she asks, Do we have enough?
Nasar nods and takes out the second line of 50 ft rope and starts tying the ropes together while putting knots into the second rope. He hands Lily some more rope to knot ”Yea we’ll have enough rope to make it work, with 40 ft to spare. After finishing this rope we’ll head down, dont want anyone slipping and falling off the rope down 60 ft. I hear that hurts.”
Lily finishes her side and then they toss the rope down and begin heading down.
As they descend about 30 feet down they enter a whole new scene as deep blue crystals and ice lays around this pit. A giant area looks to be opened up and a giant hole to the far left stands with a small run of what can only be seen as ice cold water running down into a deeper pit. A giant lump of ice sits on the far right, the wyverns nest made up of rocks and ice sit there unguarded currently.
Everyone gets down to the ground as Genesis runs her hands down her robe to help against the rope burn since she’s not much of a climber.
Lily looks at the waterfall and marvels at it, How that isn’t frozen is beyond me. This place looks nice albeit too cold for you guys.
Nasar smiles at that comment and speaks quietly ”I actually like temperatures like this, usually keeps away unwanted guests. I’m sure that wyvern feels the same way. Unfortunately for it, we are as easily dissuaded by minor inconveniences like this. Speaking of which, where is said wyvern? The nest is over there with no parent watching over it.”
Marissa points over by the waterfall, I see a cavern over that way, maybe the beast decided to make a new hole since that one got covered up?
Deract nods, Sounds about right...
Lily mumbles, Anything sounds right to you dumba&$.
Genesis looks at the nest from afar, Well do we just... take the eggs?
”If the eggs are there then yes let’s grab them, who know the wyvern maybe someone else beat us to the punch. Or worse...they already hatched.” Nasar readies his blades while starting to approach the nest ”If the eggs already have hatched this mission gets a lot harder so ready yourselves for the worst. If the eggs are still here i’ll start loading them into the bag of holding as fast as I can while everyone else keeps guard.”
They all walk up to the 10 foot circular nest comprised of stones, ice, and a few pieces of rotted wood. Deract and Marissa pick up a hefty egg and bring it to Nasar as he funnels it into his bag. As soon as they drop the first one in a loud crash can be heard from another part of the cavern, bats fly out from the waterfalls pit as the serpent claws itself up with its handless wings and feet. A buffalo hangs from its maw as it spies the team and it drops the meal to hiss at the intrusion on its territory.
Nasar puts the bag away and readies his weapons ”Alright, Lily and Gen provide ranged support and Lily heal us when you can. Marissa, time to get pissed and box that wyvern to oblivion, Deract either get up close and personal with Marissa and me or join Lily and Gen with ranged attacks.” Nasar glares up at the wyvern and speaks to it in draconic ”Welcome to your last stand you beast!” Nasar readies himself to charge into the wyvern once Marissa approaches so they can flank together.
The wyvern immediately darts towards the group crashing into the front liners as it lands. A full maw of teeth gnash at Marissa.
The wyvern crashes down immediately gripping a hold of Marissa and planting her against the ground. She struggles to get free breifly before she grunts, Well that took NO F$&CKING TIME AT ALL!?
Her arms go grey as her eyes tint purple once more, I’m really sick and tired of s+~@ gripping me up! And she slams her fist down onto the beast.
The dragons skin starts to grey but the scales fall right off stopping the petrification.
Deract runs under the dragon evading a stomp as he stabs the beasts underside.
Lily and Genesis back up as Genesis casts a barrage of magic missles.
Note to self, Marissa hates being grabbed. Good to know.
Nasar laughs now that the beast has gotten into such close range.
”I love when an enemy just gets into our reach, makes everything so much easier!” Nasar gives his blades a twirling flourish and starts hacking away at the beast now that he has friends to party with.
.
.
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The beast flies up allowing an attack from Nasar as it flies back over to the waterfall pit it came out of clutching Marissa. It flaps its wings as it releases her from its clutches as she begins falling down into the pit.
Her hands grasp the icy wall before quickly slipping as she screams and falls into the unknown for now. The dragon hisses as it brandishes its stingers.
Genesis casts sheild on herself as Lily casts Cats Grace on herself.
Deract looks as me flings a Chaos bolt that unfortunately goes too far left since they are about 60 feet away now, He really just did that huh. Now we got a puddle of Marissa to clean up.
Damn Marissa really just got dropped like a sack of hammers, hopefully she isn’t completely dead and is just mostly dead.
Nasar readies a full attack for when the wyvern gets into his slashing range as it seems itching to try and stab someone with its stinger.
”Note to self, need a way to fly or bring fly potions to these hunts. Well this looks more like a job for our ranged attackers until it gets back into my cutting range, Lily and Gen, ground that lizard.”
Genesis strikes out with her color spray as the wyvern swoops down at them.
The wyvern is unaffected as it gets too close flying by and Nasar’s attacks go off as it stabs with its stingers at Nasar and Deract.
After Nasar’s flurry he is met in the arm with one of the stingers. He turns to the side to avoid too much venom being injected but his body starts to tense up as if it’s muscles were constricting.
Lily raises a magic filled hand and taps Nasar, Jeez. Losing Marissa really dented this plan. Where the heck is my dominated orc?! She forgot to bring him down... he begins scaling the rope downward and will be down next turn.
The wyvern flies past the crew once again after Nasar’s flurry and its attacks. Ending about 20 feet away in the air.
Nasar throws out a flurry of slashes as the wyvern’s stinger meets Nasar and Deract.
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.
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Nasar recoils from the stinger as he can feel the fresh batch of venom get injecting into him. After Lily heals him ”Tell me about it, Marissa was a pretty big part of bringing that wyvern down. Even if she is still alive down there, we don’t have much free time to heal her back to a fighting state. Gen if you got any more big spells to bring this wyvern down, now is the time. If we could at least ground it then Deract and I could do way more damage.” While still somewhat staggered from the wyvern’s attack, Nasar goes into full defense until he can manage another flurry of blades.
2 of Nasar attacks miss save for the critical hit and his first swipe.
flips hastily through her spell book, Uhh uhh, I don’t have anything that can ground a monster besides that color spray. Go get him! And with that she slings a fireball at the beast.
The beast is engulfed in an explosion as it does in fact almost ground the beast.
Lily mixes a batch of bomb and hurls it at the beast. At this point the beast is not looking good as he’s drenched in fiery juices.
Deract bends down as his tail shakes violently, Lets see if I can’t get off a Chaos Eruption on him while he’s far away. If he gets too close it’d be dangerous for you guys so be warned if he gets in close quarters.
The beast flies around the perimeter of the cavern knowing if it gets too close it’ll get sliced. It now flies atop the waterfall it dropped Marissa down.
”Gen, Deract, you both have soul gems at your disposal. If you think you can pull this off then go for it but possibly those gems could be used as a catalyst in your spells to empower them. Might be able to empower your spells to do even more damage to this thing.” Nasar seems to grow visibly frustrated at his inability to fight the wyvern while its in the air and channels that anger into a hopefully conscious Marissa. ”WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE, TAKING A DAMN NAP!? A FALL LIKE THAT BETTER HAVE ACTUALLY HAVE DONE YOU IN, WE STILL HAVE TO FIGHT IN THE ARENA! NOW GET OFF YOUR ASS AND BRING THIS OVERGROWN BIRD DOWN ALREADY!” Nasar readies a full attack to try and protect his spellcasters Heavens I hope she is still alive and that i pissed her off enough to get back into the fight.
The poison circulates deeper within Nasar as his muscles spasm and lock up.
The wyvern cackles as it exhales its icey breath. It speaks in draconic as it watches Nasar slowly melt from the inside.
The ground can be felt shaking briefly as a cloud of ice shards fly out of the waterfall pit. The wyverns wings become tattered as it is pierced in a flash. Marissa can be heard from the pit as her shadow voices out through her. You dropped me down into this pool because you don’t want me to kick your A$&!! You stupid lizard! I’ll fill you with holes if I can’t turn you to stone!
The dragon looks down as it hisses and drops down low to the girl below. Lily looks at Genesis and Nasar confusingly, Uhh... ok! And she picks up one of the last two eggs and prepares to put it in the bag. Deract also picks one up.
With the wyvern out of sight, Nasar sheathes his cutlass and opens the bob of holding back up so the eggs can be loaded in. As he does so. Nasar staggers a bit and grabs at his chest while the eggs are being loaded. ”Hey Lily, got anything for this venom thats currently killing me? I think i got like...minutes at best before Im going to keel over.”
Genesis rushes to grab an antitoxin from her bag, Here this is for emergencies.
Nasar manages to shake it off briefly as his body dosent seize up more.
Nasar manages to down the antitoxin and not continue melting. His hands feel like they’ve been sitting in an oven however as his whole body’s tempurature has raised to combat the poison in his body. Sweat is visible on his head as they continue heaving the two other eggs in the bag.
The dragon can be heard climbing back up to attack the team. Half of the wyvern is covered in stonish grey on his scales. It rushes the team for its final stand.
HP after con pain:55
Nasar uses his free hand and removes his face coverings, to deal with the amount he’a been sweating from the fever and so he can have a face to face with the wyvern. He then communicates with Lily in aklo to hopefully avoid the wyvern understanding him. ”I need you to cover me, if it likes cold so much then I’ll burn the wyvern.”
Nasar then starts forming a club bomb in his free hand to try and finish the wyvern next turn.
A thought probes Nasar’s mind as Lily speaks through telepathy, Cover Nasar guys he might have a plan.
The team all jumps in front and distracts the wyvern as it slams its stingers to attack Nasar and Deract.
But both its stingers hit the ground as the commotion strays the shot.
Nasar winds up and delivers the fireball like an ace closer trying to close out a baseball game. ”IM GOING TO TURN YOU TO ASH AND SCATTER YOU INTO THE WIND!”
Deract manages to jump out the way of the incoming fireball as it engulfs the wyvern in fire. The scales of the dragon fly like ice shards as the beats let’s out one last screech in pain. It hits the ground as it is defeated, its body turning to grey faster now that its been killed.
Deract looks at the wyvern and smiles, All yours bucko!
Nasar marches over to the wyvern’s corpse and readies his talisman to try and get a soul gem out of it. ”Lily, get down there to Marissa and make sure she hasn’t died yet. After you have her stabilized or healed we can focus on getting out of here.”
Lily nods as she runs over to the edge of the pit and flaps her wings as she floats down the cavern.
Nasar focuses his talisman as it sucks the fleeting life force of the beast. A crystal pops out the talismans mouth like a piece of candy from a quarter machine.
Genesis nods, Thats a nifty little trick you’ve done a few times now. You just learned that one or what?
As he puts the new soul gem away Nasar explains ”While you three were off in the arena I spent some time studying myself and learned how to use Club to make a fireball. Now we have two people that can sling fire. Now hopefully Lily can patch up Marissa and we can try and get her out of that pit. Getting her dead body out and back home to try and find someone capable AND willing to bring her back would be difficult with all of us giving off a clear ‘evil’ vibe.”
Deract squints his eyes and gains an accusatory demeanor, Hmm... studying huh? Studying my BLACK TOME probably?!? Do you still have it!?
Lily flies back up and walks over to the gang. She places an empty vial back in her bandolier, Well she’s alive albeit almost unalive. Her body internally is a wreck she must’ve suffered way worse than you did from that poison. But she managed to wait it out her system and she can walk now with some healing. We’re gonna need a way to get her out that pit though. She takes rope out Deracts pack. We can pull her out but I’m not sure if that’s what we want to do.
”Well its good that she’s survived the poison as well. Does she not have the strength to climb out if we just pass her down the rope? We could even knot it like the other rope and tie it off onto the wyvern statue.”
Lily nods, Yea she can hold on but barely, let’s lower her the rope and pull her up. The team lowers the rope and heaves out a very sickly looking Marissa with a whopping 2 Con and 4HP to her name.
She coughs as she looks at the team and then the statue. Very out of breath she starts, Thank god the bastard is dead. He got me with that needle and I dropped man, managed to get him with my stoning fist though, She looks over his greyish statue appearance he’s taken on. As you can obviously tell. I need to take a nap.
A bubbling sound escapes wherever Nasar has placed the Planar Battery. And garbled noises come from his pack. The team looks at Nasar skeptically at what the heck is making that sound.
Nasar laughs a bit at Marissa’s last comment. ”Yea you and me both, I got caught with the stinger too but you look like you got it worse than me. Now that the wyvern is dead we can-“ Nasar stops talking as he’s cut off by the battery making weird noises. He opens up his pack and goes to take out the planer battery. ”Uhhh ok thats a new sound. I think thats the battery thing making that sound? Maybe its making that noise because it was partially charged with those elementals?”
Nasar understands the bubbling sounds as a generic Aklo dialect. And due to the popping sounds being higher pitched he can infer it would be a female resident of the Plane of Water where most Aklo speaking beings hail from. Repeat, hello and welcome to the Planar Battery startup boot sector. Please insert Planar Battery into appropriate receptacle for further boot processing or system memory transfer.
Deract scratches his head. Damn... I know that has something to do with the ships personality but I never understood it. I just slotted it into the ship and it worked.
”That’s impressive Deract since you managed to do exactly what the orb says to do. It needs to be placed into an “appropriate receptacle”. Guess we have to get back to the ship at some point after this then. But let’s get out of here first.” Before making way back to the rope he looks back towards Marissa ”While you were dying down that pit, did you see anything of interest? Maybe there’s some more eggs, or other loot for us to take down there potentially.”
Marissa shakes her head, No... just a giant pool of water and a small spot of ice I managed to climb out onto. I’m freezing.
Lily orders the half orc, Give Deract all your belongings. To which the barbarian undresses down to his commoner clothes. She points to the rope and the barbarian climbs up as does the rest of the party. Lily carved out the wyverns stone eye from the statue and breaks off one of the tail stinger. These will make better trophies than any. Let’s get the hell outta here. She sucks the essence from the barbarian and knocks him out before he realizes the fate he’s fallen to.
The party makes it out the cave as quickly as they can as the sun is now high in the sky. Marissa looks up, Well we were only there for a few hours at most. To town we go, ughhh. She slumps as she and the gang walk back to town.
They end up back in Riddleport and head to the location given to drop the eggs off. They walk into a small shop and the merchant welcomes them. You must be the party sent to retrieve those eggs. Enzo told me you would be coming. He places bags of gold on the table as he waits for Nasar to pull out the stuff. And how many eggs did you manage to find?
Nasar gets the bob of holding out and looks at the team ”Uhhh be ready in case more weird animals come put of here, dont need another gator getting my leg. There should be 3 eggs. Right here” nasar goes to take out all three eggs.
Nasar grabs out the 3 bowling ball sized eggs and placed them on the table. Lily also places the trophies on the table as well. The merchant smiles as he looks over the haul, His death immortalized in stone. A little Stone to Flesh and some taxidermy and these will make nice additions to his collections. So here you all go, 400 to each in gold for the job as contracted. Any thing you care to spend that gold on in my shop? I have wares fit for explorers such as yourselves!
”I don’t need to purchase anything today, more so in need of rest.” Nasar gestures for the group to go ahead if they want to buy anything. ”I’m going to head back to the inn we stayed at last night. We can rest here today and head home tomorrow.”
The rest and ride home are uneventful.
The party walks through Magnimar back to their abode and as they walk in they feel a very odd feeling as the door is loose on its hinges. Obvious signs of intrusion including a broken vase and several chairs look broken as if someone had been tossed into them. Claw marks riddle the dining room table and the steps leading to upstairs.
Genesis looks around worriedly, Did... Bean do all this? She calls for Bean but he seems nowhere to be found. The party begins searching the house and Nasar finds a note in his room. Fancy writing scripts what seems to be a hostage situation and the ink seems to be still drying.
You will deliver yourselves peacefully back to the hags hut within the next 5 days or else your Griffin will suffer dearly. And we will find you if you do not present yourselves,
Told you you couldn’t beat me.
Nasar makes his way out of his room to assemble the team . ”It was that group from the witch’s hut. They must have just been here recently, and they took Bean. They want us to hand ourselves over within 5 days.”
Lily's eyes open wide, Such trash. Targeting the things that are close to us but not us directly. How many more of our companions lives will be put on the line at our behalf. Well considering if they were here after we left yesterday that could give us 4 days we wouldn't wanna cut it too close. It takes a few hours walk to get there, so we have 3 days approximately to get there.
Deract sweeps all the metal mugs and plates that were left on the table from the break in and throws a fat sheet of parchment on the table. He begins drawing the perimeter of the witches hut and the underground several inches away from that, I've always wanted to do that. Anyway! So lets plot this real quick. If they took bean they could be in any of these rooms and such, what would be our course of action for extracting the target.
Marissa looks over the paper, What are we war tacticians now?
Gensis places a hand on Marissa's shoulder with a bit of malicious interest, Well the way they see it Marissa, She picks up a small vase that's been cracked and places varying colors of glass on the map. When the deed gets dirty on one side, the whole operation gets dirty. She places a red glass in the deepest reach of the underground area where the fight broke out. She takes 3 blue glass pieces and places them in that same room. They probably put themselves in the farthest part of the pathway. They aren't stupid they probably had their Drow set up traps and such to make it easy on themselves before we even get there. She looks to Nasar to see if he wants to add or take over the briefing.
Nasar folds up the note and pockets it before focusing onto the makeshift war room table. ”Dont forget that Deract and I are their end goal. So their traps will probably lean more towards debilitating or incapacitating instead of killing us. With a drow and a witch to worry about, that means anything between poisons and magic will be an area of concern. Not only that but they’ll have the hut laid out to funnel us through as many traps and bottlenecks as possible. We need to be as efficient with the short time we have to gear up and plan out our assault before we leave.”
A thought pops into Gensis’ head as she rifles through her bag for her old mirror she bought to Scry, I just remembered I still had this. Let’s see where Bean actually is! And she casts Scrying on her mirror. An image of Bean forms as he stands there with fetters around each of his legs and bindings in his wings. However, Bean seems to look larger and more mature then his previous young self.
The group watches for a moment as something plays out. The rat folk walks over with the witch as she casts a spell onto the parties friend. Bean scowls as he looks over the ratfolk and turns away. Bean speaks with a deep and regal demeanor like Deetrium’s ignorant but entitled tone. For the last time you insignificant rat thing. I will not be sharing anything regarding my associates. You cannot bribe nor intimidate me into divulging anything, I will stay in this restraint until they come to recover me.
The hag chuckles, Then you might as well make amends with your shortly lived life. Every day you will get older until you eventually reach the end of your natural life. At which point you will die like any old Griffin does. But you will have no life to share as it will pass you faster than you can think.
The gnoll growls from across the room, Yup so I can’t wait to have us some Griffin stew in a few days!!
Genesis looks at Nasar, Oh my... I think they’ve cursed Bean.
Nasar looks both saddened to see his Bean cursed but is a bit excited that he’s all grown up now. ”Looks like we have even less time then we thought. Marissa and I need to heal up from the venom as soon as we can so we can get his cursed removed before it’s too late. There’s the rat, that gnoll, the hag, the drow.” With a thought Nasar smiles whilst remembering how he choked someone with Club and how they could make great use of that for interrogating the Griffon-nappers. ”Once I get my hands on them...I’ll make sure they tell us everything we need to know. My biggest concern is that hag herself. Her magic could prove to be problematic. Gen if you are able to bring her down quickly with a spell it should make the fight plenty easier. But we cant get caught off guard by that drow again. We cant fight grouped up as much or else she could bring us all down with a fireball again.”
Genesis shrugs, A fireball for a fireball hehe I’ll make sure that’s in my arsenal for the fight.
Marissa plants a fist in her other palm as her eyes turn her signature fiery purple, And I want that Gnoll, he won’t out force me when he’s a brick.
Lily looks at her shadow behind her and nods in commendation, Well that’s new, you just popping it outta nowhere now.
Marissa looks towards Lily with a smirk just oozing of evil and confidence, Took a while but I’m getting better at controlling my shadow. Every time I manifest it I get that much better.
Deract looks at Nasar, Well since we’re picking fights we can take that rouge again since Genesis is going to fry the next most problem.
Lily spins a bottle. I can break Bean out lickety split with my Demo Bomb. Those shackles won’t last long and then Bean can join the fight too.
The team muddles about their plan before seeing if they need any supplies and if Nasar has anything else to add.
”You have come a long way with not only your shadow but fighting ability in general. Gone are the days of trying to make a magic weapon magicaller.” Nasar chuckles a bit while he counts on his hand now that the team has picked who they want to take on ”Guess that would leave that ratfolk for Bean. That’ll work, I’m sure he’s a little hungry anyways. Now I know we are all excited to turn those four into a pile of chunky salsa, but we should keep at least one alive so we can get as much information about Caprise as we can. After that we can turn them into a soul gem.”
Deract devilishly giggles when Nasar mentions a soul gem. Yes sir that is what we like to hear. So when do you guys wanna leave then?
Marissa shrugs, Well we have what we need to break Bean out right?
Lily nods, Just my bombs yup. All we gotta do is travel there but you need to heal up some of your ailments Marissa. She looks at Nasar, Aren't you also still hurting from that fight?
Genesis flips through her spell book, I don't have lesser restoration spells.
Nasar lets out a long sigh ”Yes I’m also somewhat weakened from the venom. Neither of us have enough time to let this heal naturally. Marissa, you and I could try the guild, see if we can get healed up there. And then head out soon after.”
The group nods as they ready to leave. Nasar and Marissa stop at the guild and manage to be pointed in the direction of someone to cast Restoration at 300gp a pop. Marissa hands over the loot as he whips out a gem and casts the spell. Marissa breaths a sigh of relief as she no longer feels like walking death. She looks to Nasar to hand the cash over as well to get the spell casted.
”Oh good that isn’t so much”Nasar forks over the 300 gold, happy to soon be back to full strength.
The caster lays hands on Nasar as he is brought back to tip top shape. The caster nods as he takes his money and leaves. Nasar and Marissa meet the rest of the team in the guild hall as Lily and Genesis sit and talk at a table. Genesis runs a finger across a table and inspects the dust she has picked up, Like seriously... who do they have cleaning this now? It’s horribly cleaned!?
Lily laughs as she sees the two approach, All better now?
Marissa nods and gives a thumbs up before looking around and asking, Where is Deract?
Genesis rubs her finger dust on her robe, He went to grab something from the merchant and he said he wanted to stop by Gethembror’s dorm for something. He should be back soon.
Marissa asks Nasar before she puts some gold change in her pocket, Got any preparations to make or buy before we head out? I actually need to stop by that merchant lady so I’m going to head over quick.