One perk - allegedly - of being raised in a noble family was that you were taught etiquette, in the exceedingly unlikely (for Vesi) case that you might be in the presence of royalty, at some point. So the undine does their very best attempt at a respectful bow to try and convey how very sorry they were for the intrusion.
"Might want to consider a crown to make mistaken identity problems less common. Just a thought." Blaze clears her throat and starts again. "We heard that your people were here, and we wanted to come and meet you. We're drawing artisans and artists to Safehaven, and you might want some of their stuff, but mostly we wanted to meet you because this is a pretty rough place. A lot of kingdoms have collapsed around here, and I don't want either of ours to be next. We help each other out? Or even just give a warning shout when things seem weird, then I figure we both benefit. Sound good?"
"Hrmm," King Vesket says. "It may be a good thing to have an alliance with you. We shall see. For now, I shall remain open to your entreaties." He thumps his tail against the ground in a sign of respect. "In the meantime, I am grateful for your help in exposing the false ancestor. We made offerings to it to keep it appeased, but they are no longer needed, so you may take them with our blessings."
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"Harrim it's come to our attention that we'll be needing someone of your expertise likely going forward to deal with an issue that's been discovered on the islet in the lake. It seems that there are some dangerous spirits who haven't quite learned to let go of this crumbling world and who best to show them the futility of their struggles than you sending them packing alongside us?"
While Russ is buttering up the grouchy dwarf, Vesi goes to talk to the local fishermen about hiring one of their boats to take them across the lake to the island.
Harrim grunts as Russ approaches him with the proposition. "Yes, of course. Better to end their existence now that they need not linger until Groetus brings annihilation to the entire world. A merciful fate compared to what awaits the rest of us." The dwarf gathers his gear as he joins your group.
***
Candlemere Island is a forbidding heap of land choked with stinging nettles and covered with a thin mist regardless of the ambient weather. The 40-foot-all ruined tower at the island’s summit is visible from quite a distance away, as well as the strange darting lights that swirl around it.
Vesi is able to convince one of the locals to ferry you across the lake to the island, despite her superstitions. The gruff woman makes the sign of the evil eye as you approach. It’s difficult to tell where the lake ends and the island begins, as the island is surrounded by dense tangles of reeds and greenish scum that floats on the still water. A dilapidated pier extends from the island’s southern shore.
As you draw near the pier, though, what first appeared to be a heaping mound of loose vegetation on the overgrown bank near the pier suddenly rises up into a hulking, shambling shape!
The creature moves closer and lashes out at all of you with its vines!
"Ow ow owww!" Vesi wails as the vines slice through their clothing and deep into the druid's flesh. They scoop some of the scummy green water that is abundantly present around them, flinging it at the creature.
"Get back! We weren't going to hurt you! Just let us pass."
Ankra moves forward, slashing out with an icy halberd to give the party room to maneuver.
Blaze shrieks fire in the heap of vegetation's... face? Then without checking to see if it's dead, she runs away!
"Oof! Not today, Groetus! Not today!" Harrim shouts, gritting his teeth as he channels a bit of healing energy to everybody.
Vesi is unable to identify the plant creature.
Blaze breathes flames onto it before falling back. The creature takes the brunt of the blast, though it is somewhat resistant to fire. Russ slices it with his flaming sword, and while the sword is effective, the fire does nothing. Ankra's halberd pushes the plant back a few feet, then Vesi's hydraulic push shoves it even further away.
Not to be deterred, the creature lumbers forward again and lashes out at Ankra and Russ. It smashes Ankra with a critical hit, knocking out the kineticist, while Russ takes a heavy hit as well!
Harrim casts another healing spell on the party, restoring Ankra to consciousness.
From the ground, Ankra takes a moment to put his hand on his chest, then resummons his water and lets loose a blast. He finally summons more healing water.
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Russ'ruk strikes at the creature as it approaches the vessel again, raising his shield this time after the deadly chop aimed at one of the flailing limbs.
"Ankra, fall back, use your range to your advantage. I can hold the line."
He bashes his steel shield taunting the creature, "Have at me you overgrown hedge!"
"Ankra!"
Seeing their friend badly wounded, Vesi likewise releases some healing energy, then calls a blessing upon the kineticist.
"Unnnnnh!" Blaze groans. "Plants are supposed to burn! Everyone knows that!"
Gathering flame about herself she heats the air, shivering it til lightning is waiting to strike down on the heap of vines.
Harrim channels healing power into Russ.
Ankra blasts the plant and Russ delivers a powerful slice! Blaze calls down a bolt of lightning that strikes the plant, but that proves to be a mistake. The electrical energy bolsters the creature instead of harming it, and it surges with speed and vigor as it attacks Russ!
"Uh oh!" vesi exclaims as they see the effects of Blaze's lightning attack. The undine had been planning to use a similar tactic, but this was clearly the wrong approach.
Think! What threatens all plants, other than fire? Ahhhh, that's right. Fungal infections.
With a few whispered words and a light touch, the little leshy that has been accompanying Vesi dashes forward to reach the vegetal spaghetti monster.
Blaze twirls a fiery finger as she ponders. "Okay... okay... so you're a plant who doesn't mind fire, and likes lightning... Well I bet you won't like a DINOSAURTOTHEFACE!"
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The fiery portal that Blaze's twirling had opened yawns, and a feather-maned dinosaur screeches its way out with a ferocity that belies it's foot-and-a-half tall stature.
"It can't be resistant to everything!" he says as he tries to freeze the plant.
Vesi infects the plant creature with fungus. Ankra freezes portions of the thing from behind while Russ'ruk delivers another powerful slice. Blaze summons a dinosaur, and as she predicted, the plant monster does not like when the dinosaur bites its face off. Well, technically it doesn't have a face, but the beast still rips out a huge chunk of its body. Finally overwhelmed, the creature collapses into a hump of loose vegetation.
On the shore near the dilapidated pier lie the shattered remains of three wooden crates. Their contents have all been rotted or picked apart by scavenging animals, save for a glass vial containing a potion of swimming and a tattered leather pouch containing 15 gp and a garnet worth 20 gp.
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As the beast finally lays still, Russ'ruk breaths uneasily. But aids in docking mooring the boat for their stay.
"Best tend to our wounds now. As I don't believe we'll see much time to do so once we go inland if this was our greeting."
He tries his best not to eye the tiny raptor creature and how it feels like a mockery of his own people in some form.
Ankra will provide the Waters of Life.
"Okay, I do NOT want anymore of those in my Queendom. All plant creatures should hereby be excellently flammable."
After recovering from the fight, you continue on. Nettles and brambles cover the island except for a narrow, weedy path leading from the pier at the island’s south end to the collapsed tower rising from the island’s summit. In addition to the thorny plants, a thin mist makes it difficult to see the ground.
It doesn't take long to reach the tower. The crumbling ruin must have once been a large tower, but only a jagged stone cylinder about forty feet tall remains. Rubble litters the ground outside the tower. The structure itself has only two entrances at ground level: a wide opening to the southeast and a narrow window facing west. Both lead to an interior choked with tumbled stones and weeds. A dark gap in the floor hints at a stone staircase leading down.
As you draw near the twoer, you get the disturbing sensation of being watched, of having attracted the unwanted attention of something unimaginably powerful...
"Uhhh..... should we be here? We could maybe just leave a flag or something? Or... I mean should we at least see what's in here?"
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Russ looks the structure over a few times before they approach further.
"I suppose that depends on your will my queen. We could attempt to see to whatever problems might be stemming from here ourselves nor or later, or we might see about recruiting adventures from beyond to help. Though with our small coffers and meager reputation I don't know if we'll draw those more powerful than ourselves."
"But sometimes it's like the guy who scares everybody at the port. Everybody backs down. But once one person smacks him in the nose, he folds." He says optimistically.
The stones of this ruin seen to be far older than ruins elsewhere in the Stolen Lands. Faint carvings of strange symbols are barely visible on some of the tower’s walls. With his knowledge of the Aklo language, Russ'ruk identifies them as fragments of a series of blasphemous prayers to ancient gods of the Old Cults. He spots the name “Yog-Sothoth” as the entity to whom the prayers are directed.
A rubble-choked staircase inside the tower leads down into a dark basement room constructed of solid stone blocks. This low chamber has stairs leading down to both the east and the west. A small pile of dead leaves and dried nettles has drifted against the south wall.
The leaves and nettles have blown in to fill a shallow basin beneath an inscription in Aklo that translates literally to “we are those who stand at the threshold,” or, more properly, “we are the Thresholders.” Six large silver coins of ancient make still sit in the bottom of the basin, along with a crimson-bladed kukri. This is a bloodletting kukri. A name in Aklo is engraved on the handle: Thirst.
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Russ'ruk doesn't grab for the coins nor the weapon but he does translate for everyone.
"The Thresholders? I'm not sure what to make of that, but I do have a dreadful sense of foreboding creeping up my spine about this place."
He gives a worried look along both pathways for a moment, "We should at the very least look into this place, given these scrawlings here we would be worse off if we let a cult work their foulness from the island."
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"Yeah, let's go give this Young Soggytooth what he deserves." he says, not quite covering up that this place has him a bit spooked. "That looks like something we shouldn't touch, but should we really leave a knife out in the open like that? Somebody might take it and do nasty things with it."
"Perhaps we can get a few stoneworkers to seal this tower until we're ready to properly explore it," suggests Vesi. "That way, no-one can come in here and touch forbidden daggers or do mischief."
"I mean..." Blaze's eyes stay fixed on the coins & kukri. "We could always just grab the loot, and then we could always wall it up back home if we ended up not liking it?"
"If it were normal coins, I'd say yes. But those coins aren't right." he says, still a bit weirded out.
The coins are not magical.
Ankra summons up his watery aura and steps behind Russ.
Blaze whistles to herself in faux nonchalance as she strolls along distinctly behind Ankra and Russ, before cutting herself off the first time they echo.
"Hey Blue, you went to fancy-pants school for this kind of thing, right?" Blaze glances down at Vesi, making sure that they're following along. "What do you figure a Thresholder is? I have guesses about flammability, but that's about it"
Several stone benches line the walls of this room. The east wall contains another opening leading to stairs that continue downward. The stone blocks of the ceiling have been badly scorched in strange circular patterns. Blaze recognizes the blast patterns as being indicative of a high-level spell that occurred millennia ago.
The stairs down continue to another room. A burning metal rod is stuck into the ceiling of this room, providing the space with fitful illumination. The north and south walls of this room each have three enormous arches surrounded by tiny runes. The central arch to the south, and each of the side arches to the north, lead to staircases; the other three arches surround only blank stone.
As you are looking around, Blaze calls out a warning, noticing three humanoid shadows detaching from the walls and moving menacingly towards you!
Ankra picks one of the shadows and steps up to it, Stabbing deeply with a spear of water.
Vesi makes a face. "I didn't pay much attention in school, to be honest. So unless it's a plant, animal, or fungus, I don't know much about it."
As they descend into the room with the many arches and the menacing shadows surround them, the druid decides to blast first and ask questions later; after all, this seemed to be the ruins of a place dedicated to eldritch gods, so whatever was still lurking around couldn't be up to any good!
Blaze joins Vesi's attack, blasting away with bolts of sizzling lightning while she hurls an extra ball of fire at the most dispersed one.
"Shadows gotta hate light-ning, right?"
The shadows quickly scatter and evade Russ'ruk's cold blast, save for one who is slightly affected by it. Blaze and Vesi try to zap them with lightning but they prove quite nimble and aren't very badly hurt. Blaze has more luck with a direct blast of fire, and Ankra's water spear proves effective.
The shadows converge on Ankra, draining his life force and tugging on his shadow, weakening him as they work to pull it free completely!
Ankra shakes his head as he suddenly feels woozy. He stabs at the one he's flanking with Russ.
He also takes a moment to splash a little cold water on his face.
Vesi moves behind Ankra to bolster their friend and patch up the worst of their hurt.