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As Marula retreats from the snarling wolf, Cai Fen attempts to staunch the geysers of sap flowing from their wounds.
Cai Fen's rushes ministrations almost put Marula into an early grave, but he manages to salvage his mistakes. Do no harm and all that.
He strides forward to the remaining wolf, standing shoulder to shoulder with Kyrie and walling it off from the two casters. He swings his war flail at its legs once more, hoping to send it to the ground and limit its ability to retaliate.
The wolf falls prone!
Blighted Den: Round 3-4!
Cai
Marula
Pup 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Bombs at the last wolf!
+1 splash, + 1 persistent fire
+1 splash, + 1 persistent fire
+1 splash, + 1 persistent fire
G'nak just can't seem to hit.
The wolf stands and attacks this horrible shiny person who keeps smacking it down (Kyrie).
The wolf rips open a large chunk of the Champion's flesh, and shatters her shield in the process.
Blighted Den: Round 4!
Cai
Marula
Pup 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
"Sagas will be sung:
The champion sustains gails.
No storm shall stop her!"
Sprouts spring up from the ground, entwining Kyrie's feet. They flash in green radiance as she heals.
Marula raises their shield, more to encourage the battle maiden than in their own defense.
Cai hits once; Marula heals Kyrie. The beast still stands!
Blighted Den: Round 4!
Cai
Marula
Pup 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Guyzer can't even seem to hit a blind dog. Can his either of his allies, the hobgoblin detective or the champion of Iomedae, finish this?
Blighted Den: Round 4!
Cai
Marula
Pup 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Kyrie discards her broken shield, and pulls out her backup, steeling herself for the inevitable opportunistic attack. "I have had ENOUGH OF YOU." She smacks into the wolf with her shield.
Kyrie takes down the last wolf!
You may investigate the glowing pool with an occultism, nature, or crafting check. The water gives off an acrid smell, and anyone who touches it notices it has an odd, oily texture. You might also want to drink it.
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You know, I am having great satisfaction with this healer's kit I purchased at Reliable Wu's. It always seems to be having everything I need.
After the combined efforts of Cai Fen, Kyrie, and Marula restore Marula, Kyrie, and Cai Fen back to health, Cai Fen will investigate the glowing pool.
I am thinking it may be better not to use your "empirical" method here Detective G'nak. I am standing by with the pink chalk just in case, though.
Marula sets to work repairing Kyrie's shield.
And keeps on working on it...
They also examine the pool to see what's up with it.
Cai and Marula know this pool of glowing, oily water is tainted by something unnatural.
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G'nak looks closly at the glowing, oily water and shrugs.
"Seems like there's nothing else to do but taste it."
G'nak dips in an empty vial and takes a drink.
Make a fort save, G’nak.
Marula gazes at G'nak with bemusement before turning their attention back to the true question: How to cleanse this blight.
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Marula can't quite turn their attention back, as G'nak's skull elongates into a large, flat shape; his ears elongate; his grey-green skin takes on a distinctly… goblinesque hue of green. Phinick would be proud of his boss's new look.
G'nak can feel the poison working in his body — it's manufactured alchemy — much like the mutagenic stuff Hallod was addicted to, only stronger. It may even cause those who drink it to change… often in terrible ways, and at a terrible price.
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Kyrie rears back as G'nak transforms. "I do not think it is a good idea to drink it."
Kyrie is especially wary as this scenario calls to mind a number of populist entertainment comics she has read about heroes and villains with supernatural powers.
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G’nak grabs his face and howls in horror!
Marula shakes their foliage.
"That was quite stupid.
There's nothing more to be said.
Idiotic. Unwise."
You make your way back to your ranger friend.
It looks like not only has Noala caught some blighted creatures in her snares, but she has dispatched two of the mutant wolves herself. She strokes her chin, appraising you:
Well well. Looks like you’re a bit worse for the wear, but victorious. A good, hard day’s work! Something to take pride in, that. She grins; you notice that she, too, had a difficult time with the wolves, but bears the cuts and bruises with proud indifference.
Have you eradicated the blight here? What did you find... and WHY does G’nak look like a goblin? Please tell me he won’t start singing songs about fire safety or friendship (or whatever it is they like these days).
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We have made a discovery, or rather all the credit should go to Great Detective Smokeworker G’nak. You see, after we had dispatched some mutated wolves, we came upon a pool of foul smelling liquid tainted with some unnatural substance.
Seeing the state of the wolves we had just defeated, their diseased condition, their blindness, their sores, the painful way with which they moved, Great Detective Smokeworker G’nak, in a fit of brilliance, decided to drink from the same water that they had been drinking.
Upon drinking the water, he too began to transform into this horrid monstrosity you see before you. Truly, without his ingenious idea, we would have never had any way to know or even surmise that the water held some form of vile, transformative property. This was impossible to know, even to guess. There was absolutely NO OTHER WAY we could have figured this out. Observation, inference, educated guesswork, alchemical testing – none of these methods, or a slew of others, could have possibly sufficed. Drinking the tainted water was the only way.
Truly, when Great Detective Smokeworker G’nak succumbs to this horrific transformation, suffering through terrible agony throughout the process from the disarrangement of his internal organs and the many boils and pustules that will likely appear all over his body, the world will have lost a great mind.
What a brave hobgoblingoblin. At least now we know for sure the nature of this blight, beyond mere conjecture. Perhaps something is poisoning the groundwater? Did ypu get a sample?
Water must be the source of the pollution, but how is it being contaminated? I know of no caves nearby that contain access to any significant source of water.
We should travel to the oldest, largest blight. We'll have to travel for a full day through the wilderness. We should set out immediately! Are you ready to go?
"Knowledge comes with risks." G'nak pulls on his ears and his wide, toothy mouth frowns. "But thankfully, I can already feel the effects fading."
You travel through the evening and camp that night. Noala unstrings her longbow and rests it across the branches of a young tree. She unbuckles a complex series of straps on her gauntlet and gingerly removes it, revealing a hand that has been burnt to a blackened, ungainly claw.
She places the gauntlet on her lap and holds it down with her clumsy hand, and then produces out a small canister of wax with her good hand. She uncurls the fingers of the gauntlet, revealing a delicate skeleton made of yew and sinew. It resembles the bones of a human hand. Some of the fingers are bent, as if drawing a bowstring. She begins waxing the wooden fingerbones where the wolves' acidic spray has eaten into them.
The skeleton-gauntlet slips out from underneath her burnt limb and falls to the ground. She quickly picks it up and resumes her work.
Marula gravitates to Noala, pleased to have met a kindred spirit. They watch as the half-elf tends to her gauntlet.
"A marvelous work.
To join your hand to plant life.
Wood and flesh together.
"But I am sorry.
Your injury looks painful.
Loss but also gain."
She keeps working on the hand, in time to rhythmic syllables:
Loss can snap like twig.
The will must bend like yew-wood.
Land where true hearts dwell.
You embark at dawn. Almost immediately you begin noticing signs of the blight: rotting vegetation, mutated plant life, and that smell of something faintly unnatural.
Noala opts to protect the borders of the blight while you move in. She gives Cai and Kyrie on lesser healing potion each, and one barkskin potion each: This blight is worse than the other. Be careful.
Indeed it is: the blight is both stronger and stranger than what you saw before. Here, the corruption manifests in distinct bands. The outer band is much like the area around the wolf den, with rotting trees and dying plants.
Deeper in, all the plants have died; they are limp and rotten, and the air stinks with sweet decay. There are no birds or insects here, only the remains of creatures desperate enough to eat the poisonous plants.
Twenty minutes later you enter what may be the final zone. Here, the air is perfectly still. Smaller trees and plants have returned to twisted life. Their leaves drip with an oily sap, their branches are gnarled yet strangely pliable, and their bark looks like lizard scales. Many of these plants are covered in odd pustules that emit a faintly glowing light, and biting gnats swarm around them. Swatting these gnats causes them to burst into tiny flames that emit a terrible smell.
The branches seem to shudder and quake at the sensation of something passing. Up ahead is a wall of thick brambles with some sort of thorny iris in the center.
As you approach this entrance, four viny plants begin to quiver — it looks like your presence has riled up the local fauna once again! Cai, Marula, and Guyzer also notice some new and strange-looking plants nearby, with large, bulbous pods that seem ready to burst.
Two of the plants begin to quiver, as if in an unseen windstorm. But they don't do anything else. Unfortunately, they block the way forward.
More of Our Favorite Enemy Type, Round 1!
Fauna 1
Fauna 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Fauna 4
Fauna 3
Cai
Marula
Kyrie takes the lead, read for battle and whatever nasty surprises are coming her way. Hopefully.
Kyrie moves closer, but nothing happens.
Fauna 1
Fauna 2
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Fauna 4
Fauna 3
Cai
Marula
Guyzer isn’t really sure what these weird plants are; the bright pods on the stationary plants look like they’re meant to advertise danger from a distance.
"I can create a smoke cover. Perhaps we can pass though without them seeing us?"
+1 splash, + 1 persistent fire
G'nak throws a smoke bomb at the ground and moves in.
Now that a creature is near, plant one decides to make its move: G'nak, hidden in the smoke, can feel root systems tremble underfoot the plants use tremorsense to try and locate him.
The smoke keeps the hobgoblin safe… for now…
The other plants move in closer, exploring with their roots to feel for creatures hidden in the smoke. There is no breeze here; the smoke hangs in the still air.
More of Our Favorite Enemy Type, Round 1-2!
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Fauna 1
Fauna 2
Fauna 4
Fauna 3
Cai
Marula
Marula raises their shield, speaking clearly what wisdom they learn.
The moving plants are vine lashers. They can grab and drag you.
The pods burst in a 20’ radius with stupefying spores, when non-plants get within ten feet of them.
"The vines, they'll drag you.
The flowers shall quiet you.
Go no further, 'Nak!"
Cai manages to target the plants inside the smoke, but they move out of the way. Likewise, all but one of the plants slides past the worst of the arc, but the last one is caught full force. The seed pod withers in the gravelly onslaught!
More of Our Favorite Enemy Type, Round 2!
G'nak
Guyzer
Kyrie
Fauna 1
Fauna 2
Fauna 4
Fauna 3
Cai
Marula