"Have I said before how hot my girlfriend is?" Tasha calls out with a grin as Ruine sends fire and flames at the creatures.
Ashlion smashes one of the monsters to a pulp while Ruine incinerates the one Tasha is fighting, the tiefling stabbing it twice to finish it off. The last monster manages to bite Ashlion once.
Grelda hefts a rock and smashes the last monster in the face!
The monster is badly wounded after Grelda's and Ashlion's attacks, enough so that Tasha is able to easily finish it off, skewering it with her rapier.
Inside one of the monsters' nests, you find a tattered sack with a +3 greater striking hand crossbow loaded with a ghost bolt, and a book called Orvian Mushrooms. This rare book is filled with lore and illustrations about a few dozen different types of Darklands fungi and is worth 500 gp.
***
Leaving the fungal garden behind, you head into a long, broad tunnel that travels generally southward. You walk for several days in the lightless depths, though luckily you don't encounter any dangerous creatures.
Eventually, you approach the end of the tunnel. Ancient stone ruins stand where the tunnel opens into a vast vault of black sand. Many broken sections of defensive walls and the remains of a gate hanging ajar mark an outpost from a bygone era. Far above, glimmering lights twinkle like stars in a subterranean parody of a moonless night sky.
Though the outpost’s northern wall has crumbled to rubble in many places, a lonely gate still hangs inside a mostly intact stone doorway. Two statues flank the gate, each fifteen feet tall. The heads of both statues are missing, but their bodies resemble xulgath warriors holding spiked clubs and standing at attention.
Tasha's skin tingle with anticipation as they approach the ruined fortification. Hesitant to approach she gives both Ruine and Grelda a questioning look, unable to to sense magic herself.
Neither spellcaster detects magic in the area. You cautiously approach, but you don't notice the stone rod hidden just beneath the black sand between the two statues until it is too late. The rod shifts as you step on it, causing the stone doors of the gate to fall outward!
Before she's even consciously aware of what's happening, Tasha has already dodged away from the falling stone doors.
Seeing her husband has only minor injuries, Grelda suggests the group continue on.
The foundations of the old outpost are still visible on the ground, and broken walls outline where the buildings and rooms once stood. The ruins are full of rubble and broken stone. Various markings—some carved into the stone and some painted upon it—adorn what is left of the walls.
Most of the graffiti are crude depictions of Darklands creatures, such as snake-headed humanoids and gaunt humanoids with long, lolling tongues. Some graffiti hints at past tragedy, such as “Pravvi, if you see this, we had to go on without you” written in Dwarven and “The blightburn makes me so weak; must rest” written in Undercommon.
As you explore, two strange creatures leap out from the shadows. These monsters resemble titanic spiders or crabs, but with cephalopod-like tendrils erupting from the tips of their chitin-armored legs. Their jagged gray shells allow them to blend into the rocky walls of the outpost.
Tasha shouts out a challenge as well as she dances towards the creatures.
Tasha's shout doesn't seem to faze the creatures, but she scores a critical hit with her blade. Ash moves to flank and lands a solid blow with his own hammer. The bludgeoning weapon seems particularly effective at cracking the aberration's stony shell! Grelda further weakens the thing with a curse of death.
The wounded monster attacks Ash with its jaws while the second one regurgitates a melon-sized clot of brittle stone supernaturally infused with digestive enzymes. The stone and acid explode, showering Grelda and Ruine!
Unable to move out of the way, the cleric takes full damage from the attack. She tries to retaliate and fire a divine lance in return, but fails.
... while the second one regurgitates a melon-sized clot of brittle stone supernaturally infused with digestive enzymes. The stone and acid explode, showering Grelda and Ruine!
With a renewed fervor Tasha continues to stab at the injured creature and when it's dead, she moves to the other.
Grelda curses the other monster, both critically failing to resist as their deaths swiftly approach. Ashlion annihilates the most wounded foe before he and Tasha move on to the next one, landing hits. The monster retaliates, striking Ash once.
Ruinë observes Ash's wound is nothing more than a scrape and tries her spell again.
Between the death curse and Ash’s powerful blows, the second monster falls in short order.
Piles of stone tablets still remain half-buried in the sand, written in Draconic. The records describe ancient battles, troop strengths, and provisions. A relatively intact set of stone tablets relates the story of 50 xulgaths who defended the outpost against an assault of nearly a thousand morlocks. The morlocks had been commanded by their serpentfolk masters to take the outpost no matter the cost. When xulgath reinforcements arrived a week later, they found no sign of the morlocks. A handful of xulgaths were still positioned on the walls, clad in their battle gear, but when the new troops inspected them more closely, they found the remaining defenders had died of starvation and exhaustion.
Searching the area, you discover a diamond pendant bearing the crystal skull symbol of the daemon harbinger Aesdurath (worth 880 gp), a greater staff of the black desert, and a wand of blightburn blast.
After taking an hour or so to heal and refocus, you continue on through the ruined outpost. As you exit the structure, you can see a gruesome heap of corpses—both skeletal and partially decomposed—has accumulated in the sands just to the south of the ruined outpost.
A portion of the corpses shudders and suddenly lurches out of the pile to attack! The gruesome monstrosity towers over you as it animates the weapons held in the hands of the dead bodies.
Grelda and Ruine unleash powerful magic, using a spirit song and spirit blast against the monstrosity.
In response, the monster surges forward in a wave, attempting to trample and crush all of you!
The tiefling is caught flat-footed, staring at the hulk of corpses, but she manages to still avoid the worst of the effects. She begins stabbing at the thing, her rapier arcing electricity as she does so.
Tasha stabs the monster once, then Ashlion tears into it, flensing it and setting it ablaze as he critically strikes with his third hit. The mass of corpses convulses before crumbling into an inert pile of bodies!
While most of the equipment worn by the bodies is broken beyond repair, you can salvage an ivory-handled ceremonial rapier worth 1,400 gp, a buckler adorned with emeralds worth 750 gp, a high-grade cold iron shield, two identical suits of +2 greater resilient splint mail with carvings of four-fingered fists, and an anchor spear with a viper’s fang affixed to it.
"Don't fret, my friend," Tasha says with a smile, noting Ashlion's mood. "I'm sure there will be foes worthy of your hammer yet."
You rest a bit while Ruine tends to your wounds, then you press on. After passing through the ruined outpost, you officially find yourselves entering the Vault of the Black Desert. The terrain is largely featureless desert covered in black sand, but seismic waves within the vault’s walls, ceiling, and floor cause air currents that form dunes and other features typical of aboveground deserts. The ceiling is 3,000 feet high. Like stars in the sky, thousands of blightburn crystals glow a virulent green, twinkling in the vault’s ceiling.
You have only a rough indication of a direction to travel to reach the Cradle of Worms; the nature priests of the Empty Circle described its location as about 150 miles southwest of the entrance passage. So you begin to journey southwest across the black sands.
You haven't traveled very far when the ground tremble slightly and three enormous purple worms burst forth from the sand! They open their fanged maws wide as they prepare to attack!
Tasha shouts out a challenge as she charges forward, drawing her weapon and invoking her reflection of stone.
Grelda targets one of the three worms, banishing it to an extradimensional maze! Ruine blasts one with a critical fire ray, and while Tasha takes time to activate her stoneskin, Ashlion rushes in and lands a critical hit on the worm Ruine burned!
The wounded worm opens its maw wide and chomps down on Ashlion. It struggles a bit before managing to swallow him whole!
The second worm slithers up to Tasha but she dodges its attacks.
The worm in the maze makes progress on escaping.
Ruinë gasps when Ashlion disappears and sets to burning a hole for him to climb out of through the creatures midsection.
Grelda rips a hole across the gullet of the worm that swallowed Ash. It does, allowing Ash to emerge!
Ruine incinerates the second worm as Ash rushes up and smashes it with two heavy blows. With a few stabs from Tasha, it falls as well.
You notice strange tremors, as if something significantly larger were burrowing beneath the desert. As the third worm escapes the maze and reappears, a horrendously huge monstrosity emerges from the sand! The slithering horror is a mass of tentacles, eyes, and mouths, and it engulfs the worm, swallowing it up in a single gulp! You can see the engulfed worm through the abomination's form and hear its shrieks of terror as it dies.
The monster simply glares at you, psuedopods writhing around it...
"I think... I think we should go!" Grelda says unsteadily.
Ruinë doesn't hesitate and shouts "Run?! Great idea!" and takes off running.
Tasha doesn't run quite as fast as she could, staying just behind Ruine to cover her retreat.
The monster watches you for a moment from afar, then burrows into the ground, choosing not to pursue. You make a clean getaway and press on for a few more hours until it is time to rest.
The monster was the thing of nightmares—literally. Your sleep is plagued with horrible images of the thing. You feel lucky, indeed, that you did not have to face it in battle.
The next day, with all of your abilities restored, you continue across the subterranean desert. As you pass by a low ridge of black stone, there is a shriek, and a horrid fiend flies out from behind the ridge! Vaguely humanoid in shape, this gaunt fiend has the face of a hideous fish and a body of lanky limbs and writhing tendrils.
The fiend swiftly flies up to Tasha and snaps at her, but its jaws close on empty air as the tiefling dodges back!
"May your aim be true! Slay this fiend, swiftly!" Grelda declares as she casts a powerful spell. She follows up with a hurled rock.
Ruinë has trouble targeting the daemon with her ray of fire, but thanks to Grelda's spell she is able to pinpoint its location.
Tasha rallies and counters with her thin blade, stabbing this way and that.
Ruine and Ashlion land solid strikes, but Tasha can't quite pierce the fiend's flesh. The daemon bites Tasha, grabbing a hold and draining her essence, but it misses with its tail.
Grelda grants Tasha some fast healing before hasting the entire party!
The tiefling struggles to escape the otherworldly creature while at the same time striking at it with her blade.
Ruinë casts a spell to remove the detrimental effects afflicting her love.
Ashlion lands a powerful blow, but Tasha can't seem to find a gap in the fiend's defenses. She struggles in vain to escape its clutches. Ruine restores the tiefling's drained energy.
However, the daemon draws on its innate power to try to devour Tasha's soul completely!
With cries of battle, two strange humanoids crest the ridge that the daemon emerged from. Their pale skin is translucent, allowing you to see the bones and organs within. Both creatures cast spells, sending beams of disintegration at Ashlion!