Naught frowns about the lack of chuckles from his joke.
With the basilisks defeated it's easy enough to to to the spiral stairs where moaning echoes up from below.
The wide spiral staircase continues downward, becoming separated from the central Gauntlight shaft by a narrow iron handrail. It levels out long enough to pass a hallway leading west to a double door, and across the shaft is a single door going to the east. The stairs continue to spiral down towards a dim orange glow with a sulfurous stench.
Transparent stone along the nort hwall overlooks a large chamber with a seemingly natural lake or large pool of some sort.
In the northern hallway there's a Grothlut, one of those human/slug fleshwarps you saw a statue of and even defeated one back with the Morlocks. It's got a metal collar attached to a chain, although it's length is unclear from here. It moans, half horribly, half pitifully but seems to have it's eyes down the shaft and stairs, rather than up and hasn't noticed your presence
Oorgatch looks at the creature with pity. "Should we put it out of its misery? Such as life cannot be pleasant."
Perhaps we can lure it over this way and see who holds the leash…
Scarred One looks at the creature with pity. "There is plenty that I hate about this place..." he checks if magic is present then if there are any traps.
No traps, there is magic present... and another creature who greets you with a strange, almost alien voice that echoes inside your own minds instead of through the aid.
Don't be scared pink and green ones, We guard from the dangers below. You're not below, not below.
Sendoski and Scarred One recognize the creature as a Seugathi, a worm-like servitor to aliens from the outer planes. They are usually obsessed with some alien task and have no care for humanoid life.
Is this Grothlut your servant? What dangers lie below?
Yes
echoes in your mind
The infernal stench
Yan introduces the party. Do you have a same? What is your take, if I may ask?
Scarred One tries to recall what he knows about the creature
So many questions. Too many questions. You will be silenced.
Initiative:
Scarred One
Sendoski
Yan
Grothlut
Seugathi
Oorgatch
Scarred One, Sendoski and Yan are up, the strange alien Seugathi seems to have decided that talky time is over.
Scarred One looks at the creature "Suit yourself!" he waves his hands and commands the forces of nature, water explodes from his person and crushes both creatures
Then the old one moves to block the stairs.
"We won't be bullied by mean creatures from the beyond!"
=> Stance is a 10' aura.
Yan looks at the wretched Grolthgut. He will not kill any such creature that did not attack them first.
Its keeper is another matter.
He strides forward then Quick Jumps across the chasm.
Scared One's wave crashes over them.
The Seguthi worm dodges some of the wave, and between their wormy exterior and strange alien protections they seem barely effected. The Grolthut is not so lucky and is nearly washed off the stairs from the crashing wave.
Yan inspires his allies and leaps across, easily clearing the far railing.
Initiative:
Scarred One
Sendoski
Yan
Grothlut -46
Seugathi -6
Oorgatch
Sendoski is up!
Sendoski can't connect with his debris. Yan can see from where he is the Grolthut's chain, connected to a ring in the corner between the floor and wall behind him. Yan estimates about 15 feet of chain.
The Grothlut's piteous moans grow in volume to an unpleasant level as it moves into a flank with the Seugathi's surprisingly long tail.
The claw finds a weakspot as the Grothlut acts with surprising intelligence in its combat tactics given the near mindless nature of the one you encountered before.
Yan easily dodges the second attack.
The Seugathi concentrates for a moment and Yan starts getting a splitting headache.
It then runs the longsword in it's prehensile tail on the inside of its fangs before reaching out and attacking Yan at a distance.
But it misses!
Initiative:
Scarred One DC 17 Will
Sendoski DC 17 Will
Yan (71/86) DC 17 Will, DC 21 Will
Grothlut -46
Seugathi -6
Oorgatch DC 17 Will
Party is up! Will save for all, second save for Yan!
Success: Immune to further moans.
Failure: Sickened 1
Critical Failure: Sickened 2
(Can end Sickened normally)
Failure: You are not in control of your turn.
Oorgatch moves in and tries to tumbles past, but fails. "Once more, my friend?"
So, he just stabs at the Seugathi.
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Scarred One throws a ball of flame at the wounded abomination
He smacks his hand in the handrail which almost disrupts his spell, but he is able to save it.
Then he walks behind it.
The blades in Yan's scarf glow with moonlight as he prays to Ashava. He ignores the Grolthgut, focusing wholly on the more dangerous foe:
Nobody seems effected by the piteous moaning. Scarred One digs deep and incinerates the horrible blob of flesh causing its remaining digestive organs to go pop and a particurally large and disgusting way.
Oorgatch gets up to the worm but is ineffective.
Yan focuses through his headache as the power of Ashava works against the evil alien worm when he can manage to connect.
Initiative:
Scarred One
Sendoski DC 17 Will
Yan (71/86)
Seugathi -26
Oorgatch
Sendoski is still up!
Sendoski avoids any lasting effects from the piteous moan before missing with more debris.
The bizarre 3 sided jaw chomps down on Oorgatch.
It bites down on Oorgatch, the worm considers if any of this is really important to its goals.
Trying a different approach the strange alien worm makes some sort of hissing? noise as blood begins to drip from Oorgatch's ear.
Initiative:
Scarred One DC 21 Will
Sendoski
Yan (71/86)
Seugathi -26
Oorgatch Basic DC 24vs 5 damage (Stunned 1 on CG), DC 21 Will
Party is up!
On a fail you will not control your turn.
Some how Oorgatch is able to resist the mental powers of the creature.
He then tries to dance around the creature, tumbling through and back
Yan doesn't understand what the worm is doing to his friends, but he doesn't;t like it. He didn;t like that it tried doing to HIM.
He continues to smite, focusing on his enemy
He then raises his arcane shield.
Choose:
- The ally is unharmed by the triggering damage.
- The ally gains resistance to all damage against the triggering damage equal to 8.
- Yan will make it stupefied 2 for the same duration
Failing to get past the thing, Oorgatch then attempts a feint.
He then stabs at the thing, trying to finish it.
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Scarred One is not easily swayed by monsters.
He chants and sands a Ray of Frost at the creature
Than he raises his shield.
Oorgatch gets in a scratch while Scarred One hits with a ray. Nobody seems to be affected by the horrible brain effects fortunatly.
Sendoski still up!
Sendoski's debris doesn't hit this time but Yan crits with his first attack and Scarred One hits with a frosty ray.
Despite its massive wounds and lack of effectiveness the worm doesn't seem bothered by any of this and continues its assault.
Yan prevents some of the damage, but not all this time.
It follows up with another bite
And another.
Connecting once more.
Surely this strange alien worm must be close to dead?
Initiative:
Scarred One DC 21
Sendoski
Yan (71/86) Smiting
Seugathi -71 Stupefied 2
Oorgatch (59/76) Fort 21, 21 vs Poison.
Party is up!
Reminder that "Multiple exposures to the same curse or disease currently affecting you have no effect. For a poison, however, failing the initial saving throw against a new exposure increases the stage by 1 (or by 2 if you critically fail) without affecting the maximum duration."
Yan lays on hands Oorgatch. Moonlight washes over the young orc.
Yan's smite carries over, continuing to empower his bladed spirit:
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Yan lays hands on Oorgatch and slays the vile alien worm!
What a terrible creature. I wonder what its mission was?
”Thanks, Yan. I am not sure our minds are meant to understand what drives such a creature. I am sure I don’t want to know. Feel kind of bad for the grothlut, I am sure they never had the choice to be in that form. ”
Nothing else seems to be coming to get you right this minute so you may want to heal up before pressing on. After that from here you could go through doors to the east or west, continue down the spiral staircase, go back up the way you came or even jump down over the iron railing.
”Let’s heal up, Yan, you look like you could use a bandage. Elder, can you do it, while I try and fix another pick?”
After 20 mins of healing Scarred One patched everyone.
"How about we go down this corridor?" he says walking to a double door and checking it for traps
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”The wounds from that thing must be particularly difficult to treat?”
While the elder patches up Yan, with some difficulty, Oorgatch tries to fix another set of picks, and is successful.
With the party healed up, and the hallways safe from traps Scarred One and friends discover a rust and grime filled octagonal chamber with the remains of a rusted grate and winch in the center of the room. Rusty blood splatter still nearly oozes from underneath the debris.
A shaft goes up about 25 feet to another chamber.
Scarred One looks up "Worddancer, Is it here where you have fallen like a squirrel that slipped on a branch?"
Then he looks around
"Maybe the small door in front of us?"
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"Huh... should we backtrack and check out those doors on the spiral staircase? Seems a more thorough way of approaching our explorations?"
Ugh. Go back up there!? Yan groans just thinking about the spore room and blade traps.
He makes his way to the Western door..
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The grate and winch are in a ruinous pile of pieces on the floor, as if they fell from above. Neither are in working condition and there's just an empty hole in the 25 ft ceiling shaft. There's no way down from here. Naught helps make sure there's a good chalk outline around where Yan fell.
The western door opens into a narrow uneven corridor with stairs cut into the sloping curved passageway. Following the curve around leads to a mossy walled, pebble-strewn cavern who's ceiling extends upward to a ceiling 30 feet high. A wide, rounded window 15 feet above the floor peers back into the spiral staircase.
Oorgatch chuckles and follows Yan. "Looks like a pretty big cave. We should check out the water and all, right?"
Yan nods. "Things always hide in the water" Yan searches, carefully approaching the shore.
Scarred One moves to look around for any signs of traps "I always liked water..."