Grelda maneuvers to line up the xulgaths before unleashing another of her powerful new spells, drawing in the blood and life force of the xulgaths through her outstretched arms!
Counting on the others to deal with the newcomers, like Ashlion, Tasha keeps her attention focused on the real threat.
Ash pummels Thessekka as she stands up then follows her and smashes her two more times. Tasha also strikes the xulgath twice, leaving her with a bleeding wound.
Thesekka resists Grelda's exsanguination. One of the skirmishers completely ignores it, but a second one takes the full force and the third one dies outright as all of its blood flows into the witch, fortifying her! Ruine's fireball takes down another skirmisher, leaving only one standing.
Abandoning her alchemical tools, Thesekka tears into Ashlion with tooth and claw. She misses completely! The last skirmisher hurls another javelin, not having much effect.
Hopped up on xulgath blood, Grelda cackles as she flings rocks around with reckless abandon!
Ruinë wants to end this battle and so raising her hands to the sky, she calls out for divine assistance. [b]"Everflame! It is time to bring an end to these evil creatures! Rain your burning judgment down upon them!"[b]
Not sure who's winning this battle of attrition, Tasha attempts to roll past their foe to flank her with Ashlion.
Her sickness is getting the better of her, though, and the attempt fails.
Tasha stabs Thessekka again, then Ruine’s fireball engulfs the xulgath. She falls to the vine-choked ground, her body smoldering from the flames. The last skirmisher quickly falls to your fury!
Without missing a beat, Ruinë lowers her hands as soon as the flames bring down the xulgath. Spinning towards Tasha, she says "Are you okay? Hold on. Let me se."
She casts healing spells and treats her injuries fully before moving on to the others, healing herself last.
”I am nothing without you, Ashlion,” Grelda says, wrapping her arms around her husband’s neck and pressing her lips against his.
Between Grelda’s hexes and Ruine’s medicine, Everybody is healed up after 20 minutes or so. The interior of this chamber inside the tower is almost entirely obscured by a profusion of vines growing inward from the exterior terrace. The floor is a virtual maze of tangled roots, vines, and foliage. Corridors exit to the east and west.
Tasha finally sits down and lets Ruinë administer to her.
"That was a tough fight," she says, finally wrestling her wayward stomach under control. She reaches out and pulls the half-elf in for a soft kiss on her forehead. "Thank you for taking care of me. We would have never been successful without you. And I would be much lonelier. Remind me to give you an extra reward once we get back to camp."
~~~~~
Once inside, the tiefling looks between the two choices and, seeing nothing to differentiate them, chooses east.
The east corridor turns north, but a small branch continues east. This isolated chamber is dark and dirty. A pair of iron manacles has been attached to a piton driven into the wall.
This cell contains a single prisoner, a human woman with a strange, reptilian look to her features and skin that resembles scales.
”Please, let me go! My name is Alika. I’m from Turpin Rowe. I was captured by a white-eyed dwarf and brought to this place. Someone named Thessekka is supposed to examine me—something I am certain won’t be pleasant—and then the white-eyed dwarf gets to take my brain!”
Alika sighs with relief as she stands on sore legs. Grelda works for a bit to get her manacles unlocked.
"Thank you! The dwarf's chambers are just ahead. I don't know what other horrors might be lurking about!"
”That is quite the unique appearance you have,” Grelda remarks.
”The people of Turpin Rowe always have made fun of me for it. But it’s more than just my appearance,” Alika admits. ”I have always had the ability to speak with snakes
and even the ability to transform herself into a snake for a few minutes at a time. I couldn’t do it while my hands were bound, though.”
”Ah, it sounds like you have nagaji ancestry,” Grelda says. ”Rare outside the Dragon Kingdoms.” The witch turns to the rest of you with the look that says this person might be a good fit for the Family.
"If you're not happy in Turpin Rowe, we know a place where you're judged by your character, rather than your appearance," she says with a knowing glance at Grelda. "The work is hard, but everyone does an equal share and gets an equal reward. And we take care of each other." She gestures towards the exit. "In either case, no one will keep you here. You're destiny is yours to choose."
”That sounds wonderful! I’m in!” Alika says happily.
Once Alika has left, Tasha leads the group back out and to the north.
The smell of decomposition is strong in this low-ceilinged chamber, and though it’s sparsely furnished, it has the despoiled look of a ransacked home. Ratty, flea-bitten furs form a makeshift bed while a number of warped, salvaged planks are placed between stacked bricks to form shelving. Rows of glass jars line these shelves, each holding a fleshy-looking lump. Near the shelves is the poorly cleaned skull of a bull rests of the floor and appears to serve as a stool for another bit of planking on stacked bricks that serves as a crude writing desk.
Each of the 47 jars on the shelves is filled with brine in which floats a small, whitish-pink scrap of tissue. Each jar bears a label in Undercommon with the type or description of a creature. Ruine realizes that these are bits of surgically removed brain—specifically, the pituitary gland. Most of them belong to dero, xulgaths, duergar, and other Darklands species, but the dozen most recent ones are labelled as humans, shoonies, and surface animals (including one cow); another recent specimen is labelled “Squirmy Goat-Fey.” One of the jars is labelled “Snake-Human Hybrid?” but contains only brine.
The desk bears an inkwell and quill and is covered in scraps of parchment covered in haphazard notes, also written in Undercommon. These are primarily notes on various species and the “brain source of the messages.” A careful reading indicates that author, who gives her name as Ginjana Mindkeeper, is fixated on overcoming the inborn dero aversion to the surface world’s sun, and she believes that survival in sunlight may be somehow tied to this “source” gland. The notes also reveal her great excitement about her relocation to the surface in recent months to collect specimens from a variety of “uplanders.”
Searching among Ginjana’s notes reveals a set of recent pages that discuss several unexplained deaths among the xulgaths. Each of these deaths occurred while they xulgaths were asleep. The xulgaths haven’t been alarmed by the deaths, considering it a hazard of relocating to the strange surface world, but Ginjana believes something more is at work. After studying the corpses of several afflicted xulgaths and finding no physical damage upon them, she’s concluded that the culprit may be a planar fiend called a night hag.
Ginjana spends several pages rhapsodizing about how fascinating it would be to obtain the “brain source of the messages” from a night hag, and traces the beginnings of a plan to locate and ensnare her. Ginjana’s planning doesn’t get much farther than trying to identify the hag’s base of operations by locating where she keeps a special gem called a heartstone. Ginjana has ascertained that the heartstone hasn’t been secreted anywhere in the aeon towers. She postulates that the fiend might be working from one of the uplander settlements where there are more victims available for her, and that she might have hidden the gem in the home of some key victim—someone whose soul she is patiently corrupting before claiming it.
Scattered among Ginjana’s possessions are 866 sp, 4,837 cp, a set of pan pipes worth 50 gp, and a gold ring inset with a ruby in the shape of a coiled worm worth 200 gp. Mixed in with the specimen jars is one vial of mnemonic acid, two vials of lich dust, and a stoppered gourd containing oil of animation.
Stairs lead down from this room.
Seeing words in a language she'd long thought left behind, leaves the tiefling looking a little pale. She reads off the labels clumsily at first as the words come back to her. By the time she reaches the notes, the guttural tongue is flowing naturally from her lips.
"So she was searching for the night hag as well," she says with a nod. "Where is Ginjana, though? In one of the western rooms? Let's go check those before descending."
A stairway rises through the floor of this 20-foot-high chamber. The stairway has no railing and descends around a central shaft. Two xulgath skeletons mired in thick goop sprawl near the stairs, and a nest of dried bark fills the room’s northeast corner. A faint, acrid stench fills the room.
Two mutated xulgaths stand guard here. These creatures exude a gummy paste from their pores and are perpetually coated with this noxious, resin-like crust.
The xulgaths flex their pores and fire sprays of resin at Ashlion and Tasha!
Tasha easily dodges the flung resin and closes in to engage with her razer sharp wit ... er ... rapier. "Catch me! Catch me! Can't catch me!" she shouts at as she closes
Running low on spells, Ruinë fires a lance of divine energy at a xulgath.
Grelda hits one of the xulgaths with phantasmal killer, leaving it frightened. Ruine blasts it with divine energy, Ash bashes it, then Tasha moves around to flank it and stabs it twice. The wounded one bites and claws at Ash, missing him, while the other fires more resin at him!
Starting to become inured to the foul stench, Tasha continues to stab away.
Deciding Ash can deal with his wound for a little bit longer, she fires another lance of divine energy at the xulgath.
Grelda batters the wounded xulgath and Ruine blasts it, then Ash finishes it with a crushing blow. He and Tasha move to flank the second xulgath, the tiefling landing a strike. She nimbly dodges ire attempt to retaliate.
Grelda's next projectile is off the mark.
Since no one is worse for wear, the cleric repeats the same process and shoots another lance of divine energy!
Stabity-stab-stab.
Tasha scores two hits, then Ashlion finishes off the xulgath with three powerful blows!
Ruinë watches the xulgath drop and then turns to move to Ashlion. "Hold still for a moment, please." She takes a knee at his side and begins to patch him.
After a short rest, you head downstairs into the main section of the tower. The center of the tower is occupied by a massive domed chamber, 60 feet high and with four large alcoves. Each alcove houses a defaced statue of Aroden. Corridors lead out of this room in each of the north alcoves and one between the two south alcoves. In addition, a 10-foot diameter shaft pierces the apex of the dome. Dozens of silvery mirrors float in the air in a series of concentric rings, slowly rotating in opposite directions. A pedestal in the center of the room supports a large, multifaceted crystal. A beam of bright light extends through the shaft in the dome above and strikes the crystal, where it is refracted into hundreds of rays that bounce across the room, creating a kaleidoscope of colors on every surface.
As you enter the room, the light interacts with your resonant reflections, and you feel yourselves floating an inch or two off the floor.
Standing guard here a four-armed xulgath swollen so grotesquely that its head and neck have been swallowed by its muscular pair of upper arms. The result looks like a monstrous, headless xulgath!
The creature rushes at Ashlion, slicing him with a claw!
Because she's low on healing, Ruinë doesn't waste her focus on attacking with her fire ray and continues striking with her divine lance.
Grelda gives Ashlion a life boost and casts haste on him!
Tasha dances across the air, thoroughly enjoying the sensation of flight and giving a wild cry in the process. Moving to a position to flank the twisted hulk with Ashlion, she stabs at it.
Rune zaps the xulgath with divine light. Tasha dodges its attack of opportunity before stabbing thr cresture twice, landing a critical hit. Ash hits once as well. The creature remains focused on the barbarian, missing with its initial strike but then grabbing Ash!
Suddenly, a balding female dero pops out from her hiding spot among the floating mirrors! She is flying as well. This must be Ginjana Mindkeeper. She fires a poisoned bolt from her heavy crossbow into Tasha’s back, scoring a critical hit! She then reloads.
"Do you need me or are you okay, Tasha?!" Ruinë calls out, knowing she is extremely low on spells and doesn't want to waste a healing just yet if she doesn't need to. She fires another divine lance while she waits on an answer.
"I've got her," Grelda says, boosting Tasha's vitality before hurling another projectile at the xulgath. It stabs the creature right through the chest!
"I'm a little ..." Tasha begins to reply, but then Grelda's magic kicks in. "Nevermind, I'm good."
She then rolls to a different position to attempt to take the huge creature's attention of Ashlion.
The xulgath falls to your attacks! The dero shoots the floor and reloads.
"Okay... call if you need me?" she says, unsure of herself. She continues with her divine blasting for now, though keeps one eye on Tasha.
The image of the derro strikes a deep chord within the tiefling, but she ignores the fear and moves easily from the fallen xulgath to the new foe.