SESSION 251: The Eater of Seas
The final push to Arid was not a cake walk and upon setting sight on the target reality hit home with some weight.
Day 182 Continued Further (12.20/0605 Underground Sea): Down the steps they went for 60’ before opening into a massive sandy-floor chamber. A huge crater dominated the centre of the chamber filled with pale white and blue speckled mushrooms and 30’ to 40’ high pock-marked mesas surrounded it. To the west waterfalls could be heard beyond a giant sized staircase.
A sinister voice suddenly echoed through the cavern from atop one of the mesas.
First voice -“Please tell me you have good tales to tell, I’ve been completely bored. If it’s good I promise I won’t eat you...”
Second voice- “Oh, I do delight when you use that tone of voice. Raises my hairs don’t ya know! Giddyup!”
Third voice -‘rumbled laughter’.
Ding-We shot a glance to Bunny, she knew what it meant. Find where those voices are coming from. Carla attempted to take control of the dialogue and drag the entities into the light.
Nope.
They were comfortably wherever in the chamber they were.
First – “Tell me a tale of your adventures little people. Entertain me! I have a good four hours available. But make it good or I will eat one of you.”
Second – “Ha ha time to save your bacon treasure hunters.”
Third – “For me make it short….”
Second – “Oh Sionned you sly cat you, ha ha.”
The tale started in a rickety shack bound by a ‘B’ grade apprentice playing with powers way beyond his hardly nascent competency. This lead to a corn field and wicked little dwarves slaughtering folks only inches removed from being librarians, fishermen and candlemakers. Then came aimless wandering and finally a village and then stories of a mountain containing lost relics of a time long since lost and for the brave and lucky few the first steps towards a new life in a bizarre and wacky world dominated by insane wizards and the unspeakable. A city great, glorious and packed full of danger. Into ancient sewers only to be transported perhaps thousands of miles away to a maze. A great forest that finished with spiders, so many spiders in skinny jeans to highlight their mental powers. Then a bridge that lead to a town that unearthed rumours of a great and vast tomb ripe with evil and wealth undreamed of… on and on went the yarn until the time had past. Ding-We made sure to track this. He had things to do. Bunny had figured where the trio were but they could not be seen.
“Alright. There ya go. That is the story of our lives as murderhobos. A deal is a deal. We got things to do”, Ding-We was feeling extra impatient.
Second – “The stairs are behind you – whoop whoop!”
First – “You have avoided a random eating. But you cannot pass.. unless”.
“Gah spit it out man! What is it?”, a wizard spinning on his peg-leg.
Third – “This conversation is getting boring”.
First – “We could let you pass if we were not bound to guard what we all know lays beyond. Do the following for us to free us from this place and then do as you will. Slay a storm giant shamaness found to the north and break the spell that keeps us here”.
Second – “Don’t worry little ones you will die against her, so no worries”.
First – “ I will even provide you a magical whistle. If you succeed of course. That will summon me in your time of need”.
Third – “Yes, do it. Free ussss”.
Ding-We had really had enough of this by this point and just wanted to get the fight rolling. He signalled to Saff and Bunny to light up the mesa from where they believed that the voices came. For the briefest of moments they caught sight of the Three-That-Are-One before it took wing and disappeared into the darkness. It was an ancient chimera a most wicked abomination. It erupted from the darkness to rain fire upon the frontliners.
The beast was sly and kept to the air. Strafing out from the darkness. Potions of flight were quaffed to bring the fight to the beast and break its control of the rules of engagement. This resulted in Ding-We coming face to faces at the wrong time leading to a beating prior to his timely escape. Saffron learned that she isn’t always the fastest bug in the air and received a good ramming from Magara’s (Second) great goat horns. The fight was long and challenging leaving a number of hobos once more looking down the barrel, so to speak. The chimera, Ildeven/ Magara/ Sionned, were but three-in-one versus our eight remaining well-trained hobos. It was realized, too late, that the chimera could have been a wealth of neat components but the really did make a mess of the beast. Steve the steady hand that he is was able to harvest its wingtips and goat horns so better than nothing. During this time Bunny and Saff collected the healthy stash of treasure atop the beast’s mesa, “Check this out goobers! We just got paid”. Bunny then spilled thousands of golden and platinum coins onto the ground. There was more to make payment for the murder to be completely worth it. Bimbles and Carla took keen note of six blocks of incense that glowed brightly when detection magicks passed over. They each took three recognizing the find.
After not limited amount of bandaging and healing they pressed on to the final destination the vault of Arid. It was impressive, most impressive.
Demonic fish faces spewing forth water into basins surrounds the walls of this intricately carved chamber. Near the centre was a gigantic bowl (10’ tall) filled with smoking sand and in the middle was a titan-sized blackened sword sticking out of it (that's even bigger than giant-sized- wow). Silver chains were wrapped around the hilt and connect it to the bowl. As they approached the sword the volume of water from the fish-demon faces increased by the second. The chamber was notably filling with water. By the time they reached the bottom and conducted their initial investigations the water was approaching four feet in depth. And then the water took form, that of a massive angry wave 8’ high by 32’ wide. This was the final guardian of Arid the Drinker of Seas a colossal water elemental.
Water is bad m’kay. It climbed up their hobo legs and began to constrict their hobo guts as a ginormous watery first swung about giving the gang the business. OOF!
They were not ‘ready’ for another epic boss fight but the wave seemed completely disinterested in parlay. Fight. Fight. Fight.
The water closed like a noose around the gang and just kept squeezing and punching. Alas, even water can only take so many pokes, pops and poorly chosen spells. The water broke like a wave on a bulkhead. The wet began to recede and the gang stood before the 10’ high sandy bowl containing Arid.
“That is one big galdarned sword and it don’t look none too nice”
“Nope”
“Well Shee-it. What do we do now?”
Ding-We pulled out the golden skull of Cormandyr and had Steve push him up into the bowl. So the skull could "see" the chained sword.
“Wow! That is a nasty piece of work. I guess a couple of you could carry it and run after any damn dirty orc that shows up” the skull was once again blathering.
Ding-We largely ignored the head and plunked it down on Arid, “Identify this, chatty skull”. “Sure partner sure. Here we go…. Wow. Yikes. This thing is not nice”. Contact awoke the sword from its musings of destruction and it began shouting a lot of unfriendly stuff. They tried to ignore it as Cormandyr (the chatty skull previously retrieved at some other god forsaken isle on the Zotanni Sea - ed.) told some of its story. “Arid: A legendary titan sword, once wielded by the titan Grumver the Arid Walker. It was wrested away during a giant war, with Marhduun the Dehydrator obtaining the sword and becoming a servant to the sword’s will. Arid is a sentient bastard sword made for giants. A human may not wield it unless magically enhanced in size. Triple damage against creatures of water or ice only. Sensory Power: Detect Water within a half mile. Special Purpose: Dehydrate Water—its purpose is to drink the seas and make the planet a desert. Its Dehydrate power can disintegrate 50 gallons of water per round. If plunged into a sea, its rate of water disintegration is doubled per day, every day until it's removed, destroyed, or the sea is dry…Talk about destroying the world. Nice sword hope y’all survive finding it”.
“Evil!”, exclaimed the green girl.
“Nope. Totally neutral even though its end game would result in mass extinction. Well probably total extinction of all life once it turned the world into a waterless husk. Funny that. It does sound totally evil from a living perspective”, was the golden skull’s clarification.
The two holy-rollers began to confer and they did it quickly before the wizard came up with a half-baked plan that would likely result in Armageddon. “It must be destroyed. We have a plan”, with that the two clerics laid out a ritual of sacrifice and destruction that would even require the other two petrified holy warriors.
To destroy Arid it would take some umph.
They chalked out an octagram around Arid then placing a ‘holy one’ in each of the cruxes between two vertices. They fired up the incense and petitioned TMB, Spinning Stars & Moons, Yrrrg and Oceana to accept their sacrifices to sunder Arid.
The ritual took awhile longer than ideal due to Mason and Lester being petrified so proxies had to do their petitioning. Hours later the ritual did reach its peak and the two clerics and two proxies stepped towards Arid with their sacrifices raised on high. Simultaneously the offerings were laid into Arid with sundering force. Next came a blinding light and concussive blast that sent even the observers off their feet.
Arid was no more and the gods were a bit more than satisfied. Mason and Lester were flesh once more but all four of the holy rollers appeared to be in sort of comatose state.
Steve recognized the situation quicker than expected, “Get the cooking supplies out. We is not leavin this place yet”.
ROLECALL
Carla the Green High Priestess of TMB (C10) 339203 xp +10% <400001> CRT 1d12/III
Scars: permanent loss left index finger and scarring on arm
Bimbles the High Priest of GSS (C9) 301725 xp +5% <300001> CRT 1d12/III
+2 save to poison and internal body things; Double eat (gotta feed my baybay)
Hobo Steve the Lord (F9) 314678 xp +5% <360,001> CRT 1d24/V
Brain Damaged: reduced mental capacity (tough night on the town)
Rahgnar the Dwarven Superhero (D8) 233287 xp <280001> CRT 1d20/IV
Serious wound: permanent loss of an eye (-1 to missile fire)
Critical Wound: disembowelled less able to process poison (-1 penalty)
Missing thirteen teeth
Ding-We the Peg-Legged Wizard (W10) 503926 xp +10% <620001> CRT 1d10/I
Critical Wound: Left leg obliterated, runs at ½ rate (peg required)
Bunny the Thief! (T9) 282710 xp <280001> +10% CRT 1d20/II
Light wound: permanent loss of pinky finger, off hand
The Henchmen
Saffron the Mad Fairy Queen of Ribbits (FY7) 189378 xp <200001> CRT 1d10/III
Moderate wound: Scar on abdomen
Lasting injury: -1 STR, mashed guts
Mason the Lama of Yrrrg. (C7) 72857 <100001> CRT 1d10/III
Charles in Charge the Myrmidon (F6) 77674 <64000> +10% CRT 1d16/IV
Franz the Grave Return (Lawful; XXXX) Sword
Critical Wound: Punctured lung (-2 CON)
Mostly DEAD. (-1 CON)
Dolec Da the Hero (F5) 56494 xp +10% <64000> CRT 1d20/IV
Missing five teeth
Captain Alamend Strender the Swashbuckler (F5) 37745 <32000> +5% CRT 1d16/IV
Lester Flanders the Warder of Oceana (P5) 37504 xp <45000> +5% CRT XXXX
RESERVES
BoB is the lone lawn ornament for the Basilisk Knights.
Chung Li needs 12 weeks (74 days) and a stack of coin to rewrite his lost spell book.
Elapsed: 41 days (from A-Team calendar)
Elapsed Campaign Time
623 (630) days at beginning of session (also applies to recuperation)
Join us for session Two-Hundred-and-Fifty-Two when we ask the questions:
When you do something big you make both allies and enemies right?
Was it too easy to sunder Arid?
Now what are we going to do?
Tale of the Tape
Rhags and Alamend are still rocks
Lester and Mason brought back from petrification through divine ritual.
Exploration Below the Blighted Sub-Hex
Location hex: 12.20
KILLS
Chimera
Greater Water Elemental
LOOT
5,700gp
2,100pp,
platinum and emerald rimmed goblet (900 gp)
two silver armbands with diamond clips (400 gp)
three golden necklaces (200 gp each)
velvet sack of 12 rubies (50 gp each)
diamond whistle (300 gp)
Incense of meditation (6)
Potion of Speed,
scroll with Wall of Ice
Ring of X-ray Vision.
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