"Hmm. It has been an interesting experience," Archa says. "Your kind is a diverse lot. Some humans I have met are kind and compassionate and care about preserving nature. But others seem to be selfish, cruel, and callous. I am still learning how to separate the good from the bad.
"I cannot deny a fascination with this town, though, and the overall pleasant life the humans have made for themselves on the edge of the swamp. The people here are worth preserving, as much as the snakes and other creatures of the Fogfen. So I will continue to fight by your side, for the good of all, as is the Mother's will."
"I see." She says, once more impressed and somewhat intimidated by the devotion and zealousness of Archa.
"Archa, if you don't mind answering this, but how much free will do you have in your mission for the Mother?" She asks, with care. "I mean, do you have dreams of your own and is this gift you received permanent or just until the Mother needs you to fulfill her mission?"
You are thanked endlessly for saving the town from death by zombie numerous times. Proclamations of being sent by the Gods are made more than once and you keep finding ales and delicious foods shoved in front of you.
Eventually the crowds begin to thin and you all depart, remembering you had originally intended to visit the Gauntlight while it was still dark out. Word gets to Wrin and she ensures she will have you each roused an hour before sunrise to give you enough time to take a quick peek at the ruins while it is still dark out.
Banging on your door rouses you far to early. Groaning as you rise, you try to remember what in the world made you consume so much alcohol and why are you rising with what seems like no rest???
Regrouping at Wrin's, she takes a moment to study the stars in an attempt to read them for what lay ahead.
"May the stars guide your path." she says as you move on from Otari and head into the Fogfen.
The journey through the swamp is only slightly slower than in the dog, but the sounds of nature definitely have you on edge as you half expect more zombies or skeletons to climb out of the ground. As you close the distance to the ruins, you see the Lighthouse glowing a familiar pale blue light. You make your way to the base of the lighthouse, intending to climb the many steps to its top.
At night the place is especially creepy, and the week light atop the tower doesn't help. Thankfully it's a short trip to the tower proper, so the party hustles in. Stepping inside, you find the pool of seemingly fresh blood is still there, but something is different this time.
It's bubbling.
It's moving.
A translucent, bloody image of a woman arises from the pool of blood. She looks familiar to you. Her eyes emit a soul draining light. She opens her mouth as if to scream, but then begins a sharp inhale.
You feel the pressure first in your eyes and ears. It grows into pain. Your faces feel wet. Your mouths taste like copper. The first you see of it is the blood which comes from your tear ducts. You look around at the others, the ghostly Lady of the Light is inhaling your very blood!
Critical Success: You resist the awful horror!
Success: It's painful, but not awful. Take 1d8 negative damage.
Failure: It's painfully awful. Take 1d8+8 negative damage. You are dazzled for 1 round.
Critical Failure:
Gods above! It's agony! Take 2d8+8 negative damage and are blinded for 1 round then dazzled for 1 round.
You think you can likely stop her with an exorcism (Religion) or disrupt the pool itself enough to stop the haunt (Thievery).
[oob]Oh utter poop[/ooc]
The gentle giant SCREAMS as the pain tears out of her, drop by drop until slim rivers of blood pour from her to the ghostly lady. Dropping her hammer, clawing at her eyes, and dropping to her knees, the scream broke into a series of sobbing gobbled inherit sounds.
"I am a fully sentient being now. Nalinivati has given me this gift," Archa explains. "She is not the kind of goddess who would revoke such a blessing when my task is complete. I have my own thoughts, my own dreams, my own desires. I serve the First Mother out of love and loyalty, but that is my choice as well."
***
The pressure inside Archa's head makes her groan in pain. Blood drips from her eyes as she raises her holy symbol. "In the name of Nalinivati, be gone!" she commands, but the prayer does not seem to be very effective.
"Oh, that is great." She says with honesty. "I've always gave the Gods a wide berth... they keep to their own business and I keep to my own."
"So, when you gained consciousness, did you just learn everything you needed? Like, that should have been a lot... we take so many years to learn."
***
Dal grits her teeth as the haunt manifests and soon she feels Zaburb's consciousness taking over and empowering her axe with his anger. "Begone, haunt! Go f$@% arround in the afterrlife!"
Nelus presses a handkerchief between his lips, the taste of copper and bile flooding his mouth until the first wave of pain finally broke.
Frantically he wracks his mind for the proper rites of propitiation, but his thoughts are scattered, clouded, useless.
Daleranna's words seem to do something, but perhaps it's not what she expects. The blood on the floor sprays upward in a spiral, dousing the trap door that leads to the cupola above before disappearing up and through the keyhole, out of sight.
"My mind was filled with basic knowledge on how to get along in my new body. I understood your language and the basics of my purpose. But everything else, I have had to learn along the way. Wrin has been instrumental in teaching me, but there is still much that I have yet to learn."
***
Archa coughs up a bit of blood as the haunt dissipates. "We should pursue the blood to be sure whatever fell spirit haunts this lighthouse is put to rest. But let us heal our wounds before continuing on."
Gretta rises her bulk off the ground, with Archa's help, looking shamed and miserable. For once she's rather quiet.
Lennor stands there, stunned into inaction by the sight even as her body resists the worst of it.
"I...I agree," she says, shaking her head to clear the vision from her mind. She joins Archa in administering aid to her friends.
Gretta nods as well. The big warrior leans down to pull her heavy hammer off the ground where she had dropped it. Then she starts up the stairs.
Once everyone has recovered, Gretta leads the party upwards through the trap door. Once there, you find that the blood has slithered and flowed over Gauntlight’s lantern. As the heroes enter the chamber, it slides off the lantern and transforms into a ravenous blood-drinking vampiric mist which attacks at once! The cloud of crimson vapor reeking of fresh blood hangs in the air, reaching out with lashing claws.
Before you can react, the misty tendrils lash out at Gretta several times, but all come up short!
Lennor focuses her mind on identifying the nature of the creature, telling the others what she knows before launching her own counterattack.
"That's..." Gretta grimaced as she started about the horror of fighting blood, Her own blood mixed in with it, but then it is attacking her. Tendrils glance off her armor, thankfully, giving her enought time to send magic into her hammer, making it burst into flames.
The flaming weapon cleaves into the mist. Her eyes glance toward Lennor, as her mind wonders if her weapon or Lennor's rock can even hurt this thing.
Dal swiftly moves around the bloody mist as Zaburb takes hold of herself and they flank with Gretta.
Nelus's forehead creases in shock and concern, but for once that fear doesn't cause his fingers to tremble as he looses an arrow into the mist.
He calls up a shield to keep himself safe from any vaporous vengeance.
"It is a vampiric mist!" Archa calls. "It will siphon your blood if it gets its tendrils around you. Physical attacks are not very effective, but it is weak to fire!"
The nagaji raises her shield and tries to disrupt the creature with positive energy.
Lennor concurs with Archa's call, it is a vampiric mist! Her projectile injures the mist, but it seems to her that the attack is partially resisted. Nelus's arrow hits its target, but finds himself in a similiar situation as Lennor and only does minor damage to the enemy.
Dal misses but sets up flanking for Gretta who would have otherwise missed with her powerful flaming strike. The fire from her spell seems to be more effective than usual!
The mist continues it's failure at attacking, missing three more times!
Archa disrupts the mist again.
Lennor's eyes flare with eldritch energies as she focuses her psyche into a blade, and she repeatedly hammers the mist's strange mind.
Gretta lets out a grunt as her hammer goes through the mist and slams into the stone. Fighting Mist came with its downfalls, but she recovers quickly. "Fire? Um, that's good then." she wills more fire into the weapon and swings up back through it again.
Annoyed, Dal strikes again and again. "It is like fighting a bleeding farrt forr f+@&s sake!"
"Ohhhh!" Nelus frets, hunkering down behind his tattoo-shield, [smaller]"If only I'd studied more explosives I could do something much more useful against this mist than- Oh!"
He turns as something else odd catches his eye. A salamander, swamp water still glistening on its broad, flat head had padded into the room after him. A light shone in its small eyes, flickering along the edges of the strange bushy ruff behind its head, and precisely matching Nelus's shield in color and fluctuation. And strangest of all, written along its body in runes that he almost recognized, but easily understood, was his name.
"So you're here for me? Why are you- Err, what do you do?"
The energy around the salamanders bushy growths sharpens, crackles, and arcs into the mist in a sizzling crash of lightning.
"Oh! Thank you!"
The vampiric mist doesn't prove to be too much of a challenge as the heroes quickly end its existence. The creature's form collapses and blood falls to the floor, formless and unmoving.
With the threat eliminated, everyone catches their breath while they are left looking at the electric-emitting salamander near Nelus.
Panting heavily from the violent exercise, it takes a moment for Gretta to ask. "Um, What's that, Nelus?" but she does ask, before noticing the pooled blood of the dead mist she is standing in and frowns Deeply.
Then remembers the question and looks back up, her frown lessening.
Lennor tries to resettle herself, breathing hard after the short but brutal combat. "Is everyone all right?" she asks, looking around.
"We appear to have made it through this challenge unharmed," Archa says, blinking slowly. "If there are no further clues here, then we should proceed elsewhere."
"Do you think the mist might have been causing the blue lights?" since it was coating the lantern when they got up here "The coloration is off though..." she adds evidence against her own question.
She doesn't have any other clues to offer up though, and is happy to move on.
Dal steps on the now inert blood, just to test its consistence, and then looks around. "Considering everything, not bad so far." She says without the dwarven accent, back in control of herself.
"I don't think so," Lennor says, shaking her head. "Where did Nelus's new...friend come from?"
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"Oh!" Nelus shakes himself out of his reverie to reply to Gretta and Lennor. "I'm not sure. I think- I feel like it wants to come with us. Oh! And look, the writing-" he points towards where the runes that evoke the name Nelus are shifting. "Now it wants to tell me... Radish? Oh! No, now it's... Flong."
He reddens. "I might not know how to read these runes as well as I thought, but if we see a printing press or any root vegetables, let's show the little guy just in case? I'm sure the feeling means he wants to come with us."
Once the group is ready, you descend the long spiral staircase back to the ground floor and head out of the main building, across the bridge and back into the out-building where you previously encountered Tangletop. Just past where the brownie once was, you descend down a short set of tightly spiraling stairs to a basement in the workshop. The steps are dusty and it's clear no one has passed through here in some time.
The stairs at a set of closed doors to the east and west, and the party devices to push west. Opening the door reveals a room that shares features of both a bedroom and a study, although the decor is devoid of any personal items or items of sentimental value.
A search of the room turns up a scrap of paper listing the book titles What The Worm Knows, Grave Feasts, and Secrets of the Skull, along with a note at the bottom indicating that “Transcription will take months, but I’ll try to have these books back to you as soon as possible, my love!”
Closed doors lead north and south. Checking north first, you find another smaller room. This small room has a long-abandoned straw bed, a dresser with open drawers revealing a jumble of out-of-date servant’s clothing, and a large barrel with a ladle atop it.
A quick search finds a loose brick concealing a stash: a jade shard worth 15 gp, a silver statuette of two succubi worth 35 gp, and an oily-looking slick armor rune.
Search complete, you head south back into the other living quarters and continue south once more. You find a large metal table fitted with leather straps and iron bands sits in the center of this room. A strange contraption that seems to be part spyglass and part mechanical drill sits near the head of the table. A sparkling black gemstone glitters in a metal framework built into this machine’s side. A corpse of a strange worm-like creature lay upon the table.
As you move into the room to inspect the device the worm-like creature rises up from the table and faces you. It's "face" is a large open mouth full of teeth that makes a sucking sound while dripping some green fluid all over the table. Turning to Dal, it lunges out at her and sinks its teeth onto her. As it does so, it grabs a hold of her and refuses to let go. Firmly secured, it begins to drain her blood, siphoning it into its own body. As it does so, the creature's body becomes extra moist and slimy.
+8
Archa quickly pours healing magic into Dal. She tries to patch her up further, but is unable to apply the appropriate salves as the barbarian thrashes in the worm's maw.
Nelus watches the fray with frantic concentration, letting his arrow loose in the brief moment that a gap presents itself!
Lennor, heedless of the danger, pushes through the melee to Daleranna's aid, applying a healing poultice of her own to the bite marks left by the horrid worm thing.
Gretta thought the fat pale worm looked gross when it was lying still on the table. Thrashing around as it drank in Dal's blood, made the thing horrifically gross.
Not wanting to hurt any of her companions, Gretta doesn't do the full over the head smashing swing she is normally doing (power over precision!), instead she grabs the thing butt to pin it against the table, and hammers the flaming head of her hammer into it steadily swelling belly.
Dal grabs the worm-thing and pulls it away from her. A bit dizzy from the sudden blood loss and then the healing of her companions, she raises her shield but as she was about to step back, Zaburb takes hold of her.
Nelus isn't able to pinpoint this creature's origins, but he is able to land his attack!
Gretta's flaming strike smashes and burns the worm, but leaves you realizing this creature is quite tough and will take several more of those before it falls.
With Lennor's guidance, Daleranna is just barely able to separate herself from the creature. Both Lennor and Archa are able to restore a fair bit of the damage the creature did to the barbarian.
The worm repeats the same process as before, lashing out and binding itself to the warrior. As dozens of teeth sink in all around her body, her blood pours out into the mouth of the creature which seems to heal some of its wounds that were jusk inflicted upon it! Once more Dal finds herself immobilized by numerous teeth stuck in her body.
[ooc]Party is up![ooc]
Archa recovers her wand and uses it to heal Dal.
"Stop biting herr, ye s&@~ty sucking dick!" Zaburb explains as he raises Dal's shield, then kicks the worm away before bringing his axe down!
No space for a second shot...
He turns to his new slimy friend and asks, "Do you think you can help? Oh! But don't hit my friends!"
Gretta lets go of the writhing worm with a stunned yelp as electricity courses through the critter. Not really hurt, just surprised, she ignores her fingers since Dal is still being eaten in front of her.
The creature was TOUGH, so taking a cue from Nelus's lizard, she poured lightning into her hammer and then swung it like some blonde thundergod.
Lennor's psychich energies flare to life around her, and she begins hurling all manner of detritus at the creature in an attempt to finish the thing off.
The party puts up an amazing display of their combat power, nearly destroying the worm with a maelstrom of offensive power. Somehow the creature holds on to live, continuing its attack against Daleranna. Once more it latches a hold of her and begins to siphon her blood, healing itself in the process.
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"Oh! Dal, I don't mean to suggest that I know any better than you do about fighting things like this, but have you considered not being eaten?"
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Dal blocks again, even if her shield is left in shambles again. She then strikes again and again with her axe, figuring that the sooner the thing dies the better. As she does so, Zaburb gives Nelus a proper retort. "Ye haven't seen herr naked ass, have ye pal? I'd eat herr too if I was possessing a differrent body... this f&+$ing worrm has a good taste..."
Archa switches to her urumi and lashes the worm!
The group can see that the though the worm is healing, they are putting on far more damage than it can heal. As you continue to pile on more damage, the creature's body begins to shake, rattling the table. The worm collapses on the table a split second before something inside of it ruptures, exploding outward with a blast of necromantic blood!
Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature takes 2d6 negative damage.
Failure The creature takes 4d6 negative damage.
Critical Failure The creature takes 6d6 negative damage and is enfeebled 2 for 1 hour.
The black onyx gemstone in the machine can be pried out easily enough. Doing so renders the device useless, but the gem is worth 25 gp.
There is a closed door to the south.