Finding her rythm, Bella moved her feet and rapier in tandem.
◆Skirmish Strike
◆Skirmish Strike
◆Skirmish Strike
Eyenia concentrates for a moment before conjuring a beam of healing light that she directs at Bertolt.
Zetty's projectile causes the sod hound to collapse into inert stone. Eyenia heals Bertolt as the dwarf moves forward and strikes the large elemental. Bella is unable to find a chink in its armor, and Vengis manages to only temporarily slow the thing down.
Kragga steps up to the elemental and delivers a critical hit, destroying it!
The elemental swings its fists at the orc in retaliation.
The fleeing sod hound returns to the cave, moving up beside Bella.
Bertolt moves to a position to make it easier to defend his allies and swings again!
Bella continued to harry the elemental.
Zetty scurries into the room to get a better angle on the two remaining foes. She telekinetically gathers another sphere of water and propels it at the more injured of the remaining elementals. "We've got them, just a bit more!"
Though Vengis's projectile misses, Zetty strikes true. Between that and solid strikes from Bella and Bertolt, the remaining elementals crumble to dust!
Searching the cavern in the aftermath of the fight, you discover six gemstones, each worth 15 gp.
"Return to mud from whence you came!" Bertolt roars, banging his shield. "Ah, we are fighting more and more true. Kragga you are wounded! Alas I should be more aware of my positioning, I should be able to bear the brunt of such an attack. I was too focused on offensive positioning for Bella's sake. Although perhaps it had kept her from attacks...hmm, difficult to assess with a higher number of threats."
"It's just a scratch," Kragga attests, though she sports some pretty nasty-looking bruises. "Definitely had worse. We should rest a bit, then keep going."
"That definitely went better than most! Let's hope the other creatures here are scaredy cats too." She takes a moment to refocus while the wounds are tended to.
After healing up, you continue up a set of natural stone stairs to a door. Rust and grime fill this octagonal chamber. A wide hallway leads to the south, while double doors head east.
Bella examined the eastern door, and then opened it.
Zetty whispers "Earlier we saw that one creature observing us from up on a balcony. We've gone around now, but maybe we've climbed high enough with those stairs to get up to the balcony level. So that means... we could meet seugathi at any moment. Be careful!"
She thinks again about seugathi, trying to recall if she knows much about their powers and defenses.
When the party is about to open the eastern door, she casts a magic weapon spell on Bella's dagger to give it a bit more oomph for a minute.
Unfortunately, Zetty cannot quite recall much about seugathi.
The doors open up onto a landing between spiral staircases leading both up and down. A single door leads east across the room. The space between them has a rounded, cloudy window overlooking the large pool in the northern cavern. A dim orange glow emanates from the stairs leading down, and, with it, a sulfurous stench.
A single creature stands guard here—a bizarre, wormlike aberration gripping a wand in its tendrils. A seugathi! It is keeping a close watch on the level below, though, and seems startled when you come through the doors.
”Oh! Well, hello there,” it says, using telepathy to speak directly into your minds. ”Do not let my appearance inspire fear. I intend you no harm. Who are you?”
Despite its reassuring words, something about the way it is looking at you with its alien eyes does not inspire confidence in its intentions...
"Hello. I wouldn't count on tricking us! We've been thoroughly warned that the seugathi down here are in league with Belcorra's ghost. Are you going to claim you're not siding with her? Or that you didn't watch and take notes as a horrible monster attacked us?" Zetty isn't sure about that last part - she's not familiar enough with seugathi to tell them apart from one another. But she thinks its a fairly good guess.
She watches for the creature's response, but hopes that the others in the party are currently preparing for a strike upon it while she keeps it talking for a moment.
Bella greeted the creature, "Hello, my name is Bella. What's you name?"
She tried to recall if she knew anything about the strange creature.
The creature ignores Bella as it glares at Zetty. "Yes, well, it seems my ruse was not as cunning as I had hoped! We shall have to do this the hard way, then!" the aberration screeches, opening its maw wide!
Eyenia raises her hand and says, "The hard way brings naught but your doom!"
The seugathi skitters closer to you and lashes out with the sword gripped in its tail! An aura of mental static envelops you all, threatening to disrupt your thoughts.
Bella started lashing out wildly, unstable to distinguish friend from foe.
Zetty holds her slate up defensively as Bella suddenly starts behaving QUITE oddly. She spends a moment to turn ink into a menacing figure of Belcorra to frighten the seugathi, then telekinetically tossing a dagger out of her sheath and into the worm-creature.
Bertolt's body was ready for the assault, but his mind was not. His flailing begins!
Eyenia expands the radius of courage around her before blasting a ray of holy energy at the seugathi.
Kragga resists the confusion aura.
Bella stabs at those around her, hurting Bertolt and Zetty.
Bertolt lashes out as well, bashing Kragga and scoring a critical hit on Bella!
Kragga grits her teeth as she steps up to attack the seugathi. It avoids her blow, but both Zetty and Vengis wound the creature with hurled projectiles! Eyenia zaps it with divine energy.
Though wounded, the creature stands its ground, biting at Kragga!
Bella finally came to her senses, and paused to assess the situation and offer advice.
Bella wasn't sure what to suggest, so she lunged forward to stab at the enemy, then nimbly danced back out of it's reach.
"Sorry, momentary confusion!"
Bertolt's mind is still shrouded and he angrily lashes in all directions!
With her menacing inky figure of Belcorra seemingly having no effect on the seugathi, Zetty switches gears toward protecting the group. She rapidly sketches out a calming sunrise, which rises off her page to bolster her allies. She follows up with another telekinetic projectile. "Bertolt, the horrible worm monster is THAT way!"
Eyenia focuses once more, increasing the range of her holy emanation. She then steps forward and places a hand on Bella's shoulder, [b]"The threads of fate protect you from the final threshold,
Bella steps up and attacks, but the seugathi's rubbery hide turns aside her blade.
Bertolt lashes out wildly again, bashing Zetty and Bella with his hammer. Zetty's projectile misses the monster, but Vengis's magic missiles unerringly find their mark.
Kragga's first attack goes wide, but her follow-up swing is a critical hit! Though not the most powerful of blows, it proves to be enough to finish off the badly wounded seugahti! It falls to the floor, and Bertolt snaps out of his confusion.
Zetty sways a little, battered by Bertolt's hammer, but still offers a twirl of her pen. "I'd heard a few nasty stories about these things, but this one wasn't as bad as some other monsters we've fought. And this wand is going to be really useful." She picks up and slots the wand into her bandolier.
"Let's take a break and then see if we can go south." She listens for any encroaching backup, then settles to refocus if there aren't any issues.
Bertolt's hammer rises again, but he freezes as the monster falls. He drops his hammer on the ground and tears come to his eyes. He falls to his knees. "My new friends...I could see, but my limbs were not mine own...please forgive my weak spirit."
Bella told Bertolt, "I too was overcome with momentary confusion."
Ahespelnt a few minutes healing everyones' wounds.
"It's nonsense to blame yourselves when it's the seugathi that did it to you! Plus, nobody got beaten so bad that Bella couldn't patch them up."
Zetty, thanking Bella, takes a moment to peer down the stairs after circling around the curving hallway. "More trouble, probably, right? Let's see if we can sort things out for Chafkhem first before going down this way, which means finding the seugathi that wronged him." If there's nothing too alarming wafting from below, she heads to the eastern door and helps Bella inspect it for any trouble. "This way then?"
The door opens onto a hall with a T-junction. To the north, it opens up onto an observation walkway over the flooded cavern where you fought the drowning devil. To the south, it leads into a chamber, the east and west walls of which feature sharply angled alcoves bearing stone carvings too defaced to indicate what they originally depicted. A door leads south, which thanks to your mapping efforts, you surmise it would lead into the gallery overlooking the large chamber where you fought the destrachan earlier.
Zetty takes a cautious peek around the observation walkway to the north, wary about any additional seugathi, but less so now the the group has proved they can win against them. When she doesn't spot anything she starts into the angled chamber. The weird shape leaves her a little concerned so she detects magic and looks at the alcoves from a distance before moving across the room.
There doesn't seem to be anything magical in this area.
"Nothing. Seems safe enough." Zetty pauses for a moment "Do you think that seugathi that we fought was the one observing us before? When we fought the weird noisy lizard below." She thinks back, trying to remember if either of the seugathi were wearing anything identifying or had any identifying traits that might suggest they're the same individual. If it doesn't look like they are, she'll warn the rest of the group to prepare.
She casts an illusory creature herself, spinning a glob of ink until it forms into a golden wyrmling that floats above her shoulder. She then opens the southern door
Bertolt gets all his preparations made:
He raises his shield.
Once the others are ready he leads the way, prepared to take on the brunt of what they will move into.
Bella moved down the hallway with Zetty, looking for traps,