"Hrrrrrm. It might be more than a few minutes," Wan says after wincing and squawking to himself. "I'm sure that Wrin will be pleased to know about 'magical pixie mud' and all that. We can return to her now, yes?"
Mazul stares at the fallen slurk for a second, then stabs it twice more for good measure. "That was rather more dangerous than I expected an overgrown frog to be. Wan, are you okay?" When no response comes, she curses and drops to her knees beside the fallen tengu.
"Ohshitohshitohshit..." Mazul doesn't normally have companions on her adventures. She's not used to having to worry about anyone other than herself, and doesn't think she likes the feeling. "Um, please tell me someone has bandages or something? And knows how to use them?" While she waits for someone who hopefully knows what they're doing to step up, she starts trying to figure out how to get Wan out of the armor.
Zin rushes to Wans side as he applies heavy pressure to the wound. "We have to stop the bleeding. Get that piece of armor off and Toska put your hands here. Push hard!" He panics, not wanting to lose someone so soon.
Zin is able to patch up most of Wan’s wounds and bring the tengu back to consciousness.
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Wan appears shocked and - more notably - embarrassed at how easily the slurk sliced through Proto's armoured plates. "Yes, well, OBVIOUSLY, it was but a pyrrhic and pointless assail on Proto and my person after our well-fought blow. It felled the creature eventually, no?" Wan struggles to stand up and pop off Proto's head-piece. "Right. I think I will need to make some adjustments to my abjurative indices. A moment please, lords and ladies." Wan then opens the breastplate of his armoured suit, revealing his tengu form underneath, along with his patched-up wounds.
Wan takes a tool from his belt and tightens something within the front panel. It appears that he's winding up a clockwork gear. Once satisfied, the tengu slides the tool back into his belt, closes the door to the breastplate, and pops the helmet back down.
"Right as raisin bread and twice as tasty," Wan quips.
Ready to strike the corpse a few more times out of impulse Toska snaps out of when Vin calls out to him. Scurrying over to the dying bird he does as instructed with morbid fascination. ”Don’t forget to clean the wounds,” he offers while looking at all the Slurk slime and guts. He didn’t know, well, anything about this style of cutting and sewing. But he knew there was no way any of that stuff getting inside would be good.
Once Wan is up and squawking again the Kobold rolls his eyes as he wants to give up after one near death experience so soon. ”We still need to find out what’s making the bad light that’s giving Gumdrop nightmares.”
Turning around and giving, in his assumption, a reassuring shoulder squeeze to the panicked rogue he then scampers over to the Slurk and the area it was guarding. Finding the dead Kobold he turns to the Slurk and says reverently ”You defended your master until the end. Or was saving some for food.”
He then promptly goes through the Kobold’s things, prompting a happy squeak. ”More treasure! Oh, and a spike trap, decent grade too.”
Akkaboo shrieks again as her friend Wan falls down! She tries to help the nice elf put cloth and salves and other stuff in the tengu’s new holes and she offers some of they mystical pixie mud to help but the elf doesn’t that was a good idea and Akkaboo trusts him because Wan is already starting to move around inside his big hard friend! The little goblin wraps her arms firmly around his spindly leg as Wan rises to his feet. ”Don’t do that again!” she chides worriedly.
"Yes, well, I think that --- OOOH. A SPIKE trap. I have heard of these contraptions!" Suddenly excited about the find, Proto-Wan clonks over to Toska. "How are they made, my darling dragon? Do tell, do tell!"
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Toska holds up the backpack. "Eh, I'm not good with traps-not all kobolds are-but this one is pretty simple, a bunch of sharpened wood pieces and slag collected for easy deployment. Just lay it out somewhere and hope for someone to run into it. Their own momentum does most of the work."
Wan cocks open the headpiece of Proto once more to get a closer look.
"Vicious little beauty, aren't you?" he says to the sack of spikes. He then abruptly snaps his headpiece back down. "I say! How do people feel about getting off of this death-trap of a drawbridge and..." Proto-Wan notices Akkaboo hanging off of his leg.
"Such an unflattering position to be in, dear gobbo-o'-mine. Come, sweetness," he tries to pry the goblin off of his lower extremity and place her on the drawbridge, "do let's move forward. I shan't fall in battle again today; I promise you that much, and if I do so, then I will be very sorry and give you all my cherries come next repast."
Wan cocks their head to the side and looks around. "I daresay..."
The sack of spikes, being a sack of spikes, do not respond to Wan's affectionate praise. They simply remain a sack of spikes.
Toska gives the bridge a few exploratory taps with a talon. "Seems pretty safe despite the age and neglect. It held you and the Slurk after all."
The drawbridge appears sturdy enough, despite the decrepit condition. Once you are ready, you proceed across it and through the doors on the other side. Piles of rotting timbers and loose stones lie in heaps throughout this large, L‐shaped hall. Clumps of moss and tangled vines spill down from gaps in the wooden ceiling above each pile of rubble. Several doors lead out to all sides, most barely clinging to their hinges and frames. Debris completely blocks a wooden stairwell that leads up to a large hole in the ceiling. Here and there, the stone walls bear the scars of fire or damage from an ancient battle.
As you head deeper into the room, you spot three mitflits among the debris, along with an enormous maggot! The gremlins shriek and point at you, and the overgrown larva begins to undulate your way!
Zin sighs as he bounds through the cleared gap. "They are intent on causing trouble it seems." Sticking low Zin rushes around the side of the rubble pile where he lays low, hoping to not be seen.
AC 16
HP 14/14 | +0 Temp HP
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 2/2
Curse Stage:
Spells (1) 2/2 |
Akkaboo stumbles forward past Toska to where she can see the source of the wriggly-wroggly noise. "Grub!" she shouts helpfully. "So much grub! But you gotta pickle it before you can eat it!" A ball of green fluid coalesces above her hand, and the goblin throws it at the maggot with great enthusiasm. "Like that!"
The maggot thrashes as Akkaboo lands a critical hit, scouring it with acid! It undulates forward, but it is too slow to reach the goblin. It settles for attacking Wan. The mites hurl darts at the tengu, not noticing Zin hiding nearby.
"Excellent!" Akkaboo rubs her hands together excitedly. "Now you cook it!" Flames dance in her eyes, reflected in the fire dancing around her hands that she gleefully hurls at the maggot.
As the heat dies down, the goblin cocks her head. "Wait, was that right?" she asks rhetorically. "Or was it cook first, pickle second..."
"Aren't you a disgusting glob of wriggling protoplasm and horror?" Wan quips as the maggot grub lumbers, slobbering at him. "Now that's just unconscionably rude," he retorts as a dart finds a home in between an armour gap in his arm. "Lessons will need to be taught, it would seem."
Proto-Wan clanks to a spot on the right of the grub, swinging down twice in rapid succession with his strange, jangly club.
Wan slices and dices, cutting the maggot into large, fleshy chunks! Akkaboo completely incinerates a mitflit, leaving just two left!
Zin comes out of hiding, he cups his hands and releases a brilliant spray of miniature stars. These are similar to the four orbs he illuminated just moments ago, but much more intense as it only lasts a second.
As the spell ends Zin's light clothing flows around him as it a wind whips through the still room, He seems unnaturally light in his footing and seems a little off balance.
AC 16 (Enfeebled 1; -2 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
HP 14/14 | +0 Temp HP
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 1/2
Curse Stage: Minor
Spells (1) 2/2 |
Slightly embarrassed by her reaction, Mazul pushes herself back up to her feet and brushes the muck off her pants. "Well, good to see you back on your armored feet." She doesn't visibly react to Toska's shoulder squeeze, but he can probably feel her muscles relax as it becomes clear that Wan will be okay.
Mazul pauses before acting, wondering if she can talk these mites down too. The choice is made for her when the others immediately attack.
"Oh well. They're disgusting little things anyway. Who keeps a giant maggot as a pet?"
Said maggot is diced to bits before she can react, so she moves towards the mites instead. Got to be careful here. The wound on her side still throbs and serves as a reminder of how easily she could be the one on the floor.
She keeps her buckler raised as she circles around behind the mites, waiting for an opportunity to strike at their backs.
Toska blinks as the giant grub attempts to engage the group... and it promptly slashed and blasted into gooey chunks. Sending it's efforts off with a shrug he then rushes the Mitflit engaged with Mazul.
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Toska cuts down another mite with a slice of his sword, while Zin scorched the last gremlin with a spray of stars. Mazul cautiously approaches with her shield raised, but the last mite simply shrieks and flees! He runs past the half-orc to a nearby door and pulls it open, shrieking for help!
"Shit!" Toska lets out before running down the Mitflit with his greatsword.
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Zin gives chase, a little sparkle of stardust still on his hands. The moon's light glows across his hand as a beam strikes into the fleeing miflit.
Zin nearly begins floating off the floor as he is pulled skyward. "Whoa!"
AC 16 (Enfeebled 2; -3 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
HP 14/14 | +0 Temp HP
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 2/2
Curse Stage: Moderate
Spells (1) 2/2 |
Toska cuts down the mite before it can get very far!
Each of the three mites has 10 darts and a short sword.
Looking through the door the mite opened, you can see that almost the entire ceiling of this room has collapsed ,while below, the floor has crumbled into a 10‐foot‐deep sinkhole filled with rubble, mud, and glistening patches of fungus. Evidence of ancient damage—burn scars and acid scorch marks—decorate the walls and much of the rubble. Another door exits the room on the far side of the sinkhole.
Zin kneels down beside the mite, laying a hand on the dead. "Where do you suppose it was running to? Is everyone alright?" He looks around for signs of fresh bleeding.
"Amongst us small-and-not-welcome-in-all-places folk that was a universal call for backup," Toska guesses.
"I think that we're not likely to need to mercilessly slay all those that live in this less-than-habitable place in order to answer Wrin's questions about the phos-fluorescence," Wan scoffs as the team scrambles to cut down the last fleeing mitflit. He disdainfully pulls the tiny dart from his upper wing.
"I've been darted. Thankfully, it's not nearly as a grievous injury as that from the - what did you refer to them as, dear Toska? Slurds?"
"Intriguing," surmises Wan after looking at the scorch marks. "I posit we will discover all too soon the source of the caustic compound that has damaged the walls in this manner, especially if we continue to run into unflinching hostility as we've done."
”Slurks,” Toska promptly replies, before blinking. ”Wait, did you say ‘darted’? It wasn’t poisoned was it?”
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"What? NO! Well, I don't think so...I mean, now that you mention it," Wan says, scratching at the divide between Proto's headpiece and his gorget, "my throat is a tad bit raw." The tengu begins coughing, then drops to one knee...
...
...
...
"No, I am vivacious and vigorous, sweet-scales!" * You should have seen your face, Toska! I had you hooked like a greedy trout to a fat worm!
The tengu looks around at the disapproving looks from the others.
*ahem* "Yes, well time for mirth shall ensue, I'm sure."
Toska stares intently at the drama king even after he has given up his charade. ”... sweet-scales?”
As Wan drops to one knee, Akkaboo rushes over. "Oh no!" she cries, trying to find the tengu's face. "Wan, are you alright! Speak to me! Don't go away too!"
When the tengu begins laughing, Akkaboo's face freezes for a second before she joins in. "Oh, you're alright!" She hugs his leg tightly. "I'm so glad - I was so worried!"
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Mazul lowers her buckler sheepishly. "No further injuries here." The mites hadn't even had time to swat at her before Toska killed them all.
Which was a good thing of course, but leaves her feeling a little inadequate.
You're the disarm death traps person, not the kill everything person. Nothing wrong with that.
Cheered by the reminder, (and half-hoping that there is a death trap soon so she can show off utilize her skills), she joins in the search of the room. Wan's performance nearly sends her into another panic, but fortunately he ends it before she embarrasses herself too much. "For the sake of my nerves, could you promise not to do that again?" Her face is indeed full of disapproval. "Because otherwise if you actually get poisoned we might think it's another prank and that would be bad. It's like the story my mom used to read to me, 'The Girl Who Cried Gob-'" She cuts herself off with a quick look at Akkaboo. "Um, 'Golem'. " Wait, was that also offensive? She still didn't understand exactly what Proto was...
"Anyway! Just...just don't do that. Hey, these shortswords are still in pretty good condition!"
Smooth, Mazul. Real smooth.
”Yes, dear Mazul, tarry not another moment on it. The iron of Proto’s form is nothing for the iron of my brain, and but a single request would be needed for me to shift actions to that which would be more acceptable. I am sorry to have worried you all thusly.”
Wan stands up and dusts off Proto’s greaves. ”Where to next, chums?”
"Should we try to get to the doors past this sinkhole?" Zin points across the gap. "The mephlit seemed intent on going that way." He frowns shaking his head at Wan but Mazul already beat him to the chastising.
”Lead on, lead elf!” Wan cheerfully agrees after taking a brief glance about the capacious space.
"Probably because all its friends are on the other side." Mazul is initially unenthusiastic about the prospect of deliberately going towards a likely fight. However the way things are going they'll end up running into trouble no matter where they go. At least this way they'll expect it?
"Hey Wan. In case we run into the mites we talked down earlier, mind practicing with me how to say 'Sorry we killed your friends and pet maggot, but they totally started it' in Undercommon?"
As they talk she starts carefully picking her way around the sinkhole towards the southwestern doors.
The sinkhole seems to be the result of a devastating magical battle that occurred here long ago. Wan doesn’t see anything else unusual in this room.
Beyond the far doors, a 15‐foot stone walkway spans a narrow stretch of swamp water, connecting the ruined keep to a large stone outbuilding. Double doors block each end of the walkway. Standing before the southeast door is a seven‐foot‐tall skeleton dressed in armor made of gnarled roots, bones, and rusted metal. The skeleton clenches a morningstar in one weathered hand with the weapon’s heavy, spiked tip resting on the walkway at the skeleton’s feet.
Peering closer, both Mazul and Wan can see the wooden struts and crude lashings that keep the skeleton together. Though it looks imposing, it is little more than a statue.
Akkaboo detects a magical aura nearby, and searching the morningstar reveals a rune inscribed upon it. It is a +1 morningstar.
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"That's an attempt, I'll give it that," Wan critiques from across the room at the skeletal sculpture. "I would have, perhaps, used some of that so-called magical pixie mud as a crude paste within those articulated areas there and there." Wan points pedantically from across the room at two spots on the statue that only he can reference.
"Still, it does perhaps highlight the importance of those double-doors. If it were to deter us, it is an abject failure. But as a signal as to where we should venture forth next, I deem this a blue-ribbon effort!"
Wan cautiously pads up to the double doors, wary of danger from the statue. He stops just short of it, giving it a good look.
Nothing about the statue appears to be dangerous. It is shoddily built. Indeed, jostling it roughly or removing the morningstar will likely cause the whole thing to collapse.
"Great find Akkaboo" Zin smiles down at the beaming goblin. "The miflits likely didn't know it was here." He watches Wan look for traps on the door. "If these miflits are brave enough to go past the statue maybe they knw what lit the light?"
Wan turns around. "Verily I am no trap-smith, but if Toska, you've got an eye for it, then I think it might be wise to took a look, if you would. This statue appears to be built in order to collapse into rubble. And you know what rhymes with rubble, eh?"
Wan retreats from the statue.
Looking over the statue, Toska doesn't discover any traps. The kobold is able to prop up the statue so that he can retrieve the morningstar without causing it to collapse.
With your new prize in hand, you head through the next set of double doors. Splintered framing in the ceiling and floor hint that thin wooden walls once divided this stone building’s interior. With those walls demolished, only a single, large chamber remains. Rubble, swamp vegetation, and mud pile in heaps like foul nests, while a larger stack of rubble, sticks, and bones looks almost, but not quite, like a throne. A flattened mound of sand with a few dozen bits of wood and stone stuck into it covers the floor before the throne. It seems to represent a crude map of Otari.
A pudgy mitflit sits at attention on the throne. Three other mitflits are nearby--the same ones you encountered in the keep's entryway. By the side of the throne stands a giant solifugid.
The mitflit boss taps the haft of his trident on the floor before addressing you in Common. "I am Boss Skrawng! I demand to know why you have come to bother me before I have attacked Otari!"
Wan's eyes go wide inside his headpiece at the appearance of a throne room. I wasn't expecting that.
"'Sorry we killed your friends and their pet maggot but they totally started it.'" Proto-Wan recites in Common in a rote fashion, then turns to Mazul. "See? It's not like all of these mitflits are uneducated. Just the ones that aren't grotesquely rotund."
Proto-Wan turns back and eyes the three non-Boss Skrawng mitflits. "If your welcoming committee wasn't a sign of our pending inability to work with you to an end that leaves you with four working limbs, then incriminating yourself to a dispatch of Otari residents, both voluntary and other-wise, about your mighty ---" the tengu takes a breath and jabs an elbow at Akkaboo --- "did you notice what I did there, Gobby-kins? --- pending pillaging attempt isn't likely to move you further in that direction. Let us talk, Boss " The tengu lets out an involuntary bird call using the seated mitflit's name. He then *ahems* daintily.
"We have a bosom companion in by the name of Wrin. She has this ability to see things - maybe she inhales too deeply from the font of Fourtwentyus or whatever but regardless, we all believe her when she tells us that the Gauntlight --- that is this place, is it not?" Proto-Wan looks around for confirmation for a heartbeat before plowing ahead. "Yes, that the Gauntlight is aglow with ghoulish green light. And so here we are, predicting and predating your savant strategic move of invading our town so that we might ask you if you know what Wrin is on about, hmmm? Or is there someone else we should kill in order to find this out?"
Wan doesn't know much about solifugids, but those big jaws and claws look dangerous!
Boss Skrawng startles at Wan's confrontational manner and loud shriek. The other mitflits wince as the boss pathetically backpedals. "Did I say attack? No, no, no! I have no plans to attack Otari! I am harmless! Friendly! Let's talk!" He punctuates this reversal by using his trident to scatter the map of Otari at his feet.
The gremlin's eyes widen when Wan mentions Gauntlight's eerie glow. He shakes his head. "We have nothing to do with that! There are many bogeys in the keep. Hauntings and glowing ghosts, but the light is the creepiest haunt of them all! Every night, the light glows. I am too afraid to look, but I bet there is a really big ghost up there!"
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Mazul's eyebrows climb higher and higher as Wan talks to the chieftain. As she listens she unconsciously grips her sword tighter. Sure, she'd suggested 'apologizing' for attacking the other group of mitflits, but that had been meant as a joke! She hadn't expected Wan to actually say it!
It seems that Wan does not understand sarcasm. Avoid using in future, if we survive long enough.
Her jaw drops when Wan's speech works and 'Boss Skrawng' backs down. A quick pinch of her arm confirms that she's not dreaming, not that she thinks she could come up with something this bizarre.
What was that technique Hedja talked about when she needed to calm down a group of rowdy drunks? 'Nice Bouncer Mean Bouncer?'
"Yes, it's hard talking in a language you weren't born to. I'm sure the word 'attack' was just a mistranslation." She smiles, trying her best to appear friendly. "As my friend here said, we're just trying to find out what that strange glowing light is. If you could, perhaps, give us directions to it, we can conclude our investigation and be on our way."
Mazul gets the sense that Boss Skrawng is legitimately scared of both you and what he believes to be the ghost causing Gauntlight to glow.
The mitflit leader sketches a crude, partial map of the keep on the floor where the map of Otari was just a few moments ago. "This door leads to stairs up to the light. We keep our prize fly, Buzzybuzz, here. But watch out for kobold bogeys in here! We keep a giant scorpion here to protect us from the glowing ghosts in the temple, there!
"There's a swamp dragon that lives under the boathouse behind the keep. There is another big building there too, but I have never been there. A boat full of people came to visit a week ago. They went into the swamp dragon’s cave while the dragon was out, but the dragon came back a little bit later. I assume it ate the people."
The mitflit looks back to you, nervously sizing you up. "We Mudlickers used to live in the dungeons beneath this keep, but a bunch of mushroom-eyed people chased us up here many nights ago. If you go downstairs and kill all of them, I will give you a big pile of shiny gems! Their king is a magic priest mushroom-eyed guy who can hurt your brain just by looking at you!"
Mazul can tell that the boss is bluffing, and that he likely doesn't have the gems he's promising you.
Zin is surprised when the miflit king speaks common to them and even more surprised when he backs down so quickly. "We will do what we can for the dungeon below but we are only here for the light in the lighthouse."
Zin looks over the map, trying to memorize what he can. "Do you have anyway around your prized fly and scorpion so we don't have to kill them?" He looks back at the unnaturally quiet goblins to see if they have anything or have already stolen the promised gems.
"Fie and damnation on bogeys and swamp dragons!" Wan exhales as he takes in the map. "We are here to assuage our dear Wrin's worries so that her furrowed brow may unfurrow...oh, GEMS, you say? Are they REALLY shiny? I know shiny things - I'm a tengu, don't you know, after all - and what I wouldn't do for an especially shiny thing is an especially tiny list."
”We mitflits can calm big bugs, but not you guys! Your best bet is to stay out of those rooms. Nothing in them that will help you learn more about the ghosts here!” Boss Skrawng insists.