Author: Blameless

The hunger of Hadar chills Humble the Red Wizard, Hisssss the wight, and the two remaining grey oozes. The ochre jelly makes a run for Tatters. Creep’s shadow slips off him and into a shadow hound that hounds Hisssss while Creep’s eldritch blast jams the jelly. Hisssss gets a longbow shot on Tatters. In a dazed state, Tatters wonders how an ooze used a longbow. Tatters firebolts Hisssss and Knit, Tricksy’s suture fly, sews his eyes shut. Tricksy slays him with a couple of arrows. Slick evades the wall tentacles to assist Bizzle, slashing her magic great axe wildly into the hunger at the hiding ooze and killing it with a splat. The cold hunger claims the final ooze leaving Humble to wander through the whispering, milky tentacles all alone.

Tatters eldritch blasts into the hunger, amazingly hitting Humble just as Creep releases the spell. Humble’s momentary relief of freedom from the hunger dissipates as Creep strides purposely towards her, his hex a mere prelude of the fiercest witch bolt he can evoke. The air around Creep’s hands distorts from the gathering electrical energy that streaks neatly past Humble and into the wall. The wall shrieks in exploding pain behind her. Bizzle sidles up with a fatal triple scimitar move. Slick helps herself to Humble’s 26 gold, a glyph key for the temples of extraction, and a skeleton key.

The drow chosen of Ghaunadaur, suspended in the shrine by golden light, moans in undercommon, too sickly to wake. Creep laments his arcane shortcomings, hinting for Tatters to examine the shrine comprising a three step dais with runes on the highest step and four jet black pillars that don’t reach the ceiling.

Creep suggests that Bizzle enters the shrine. Bizzle has no particular objection, but the shrine disagrees and a force throws Bizzle back violently to the floor. Tatters repeats this experiment and lands on his back next to Bizzle.

Tricksy, thinking to learn a new trick, examines the shrine’s defense but discerns it isn’t mechanical. Having therefore lost interest, Tricksy sets about precariously stringing razor wire around the black gate.

Creep can read any language if he tries. He tries to read the runes: Magic Force Field. That explains it perfectly. Creep walks right into the shrine with only the very faintest of tugs. He reaches out to stir the drow but gets a slight shock. The drow is unstirrable.

Creep, having perfected the art of speaking with dead, preemptively gouges out Humble’s eyes, jams his fingers deep into her ears, and conversates. You have done well! Just real quick, before we install your soul into the vault, how far along did you get with the chosen? Very far. And the next step in your good works? Make a phylactery. Stop being selfish, think of Ghaunadaur! As if! Ghaunadaur is an anti-reverse-misogynist deity for male drow wishing to escape the oppressive matriarchy. He is malignant and unknowable in the sense he gets his jollies from destroying things with oozes. Creep drops her head with a crunchity smack.

Slick, Creep, and Tatters enter the shrine without difficulty. Inspiration strikes Slick: the shrine, drawing life force from the drow, can be interrupted by defacement or destruction. Creep levitates up a column and critically chips off a big hunk. The thrumming power becomes unstable by about two thirds. Tatters focuses his intellect, emitting profound contemplation upon the shrine. The golden glow fades, releasing the drow.

Therzt, the free drow, laments falling short of the glory of Ghaunadaur, and he Melfs himself with an acid arrow. Three grey oozes emerge from the walls. Slick and Tricksy dispatch the nearest ooze menacing the group still gathered on the dais. Tatters spreads his arms and sends a trio of magic missiles to each of the remaining oozes. Creep eldritch blasts one, leaving it barely alive. Bizzle stomps it to death. The last ooze attacks Tatters but is stopped by Slick’s crossbow and Tricksy’s shortbow.

Tricksy looks around for arrows to reclaim, but the ones stuck in the oozes have all but disintegrated. She collects the oozy splinters into a specimen jar.

Creep leads the group south to an adjacent, darkened room with another shrine draining a female drow. The room is apparently otherwise unoccupied. Slick and Tatters hurry into the shrine, intent on its prompt destruction but are forcefully ejected out to the floor when they attempt to disrupt it.

It becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the shadows moving ominously around in the darkness. Bizzle stomps in clanging his lady blades to draw out the lurking shadows. His plan works as the shadows converge on the party. Bizzle is blinded, weakened, and injured. Creep evades the attack as does Tricksy, who dashes up the wall with Knit. The shadows vanish. Creep quickly conjures a sword burst before the shadows have time to move away, but they all avoid the spinning blades. Blind Bizzle is not so nimble.

Bizzle lurches blindly, clearing his path with swinging scimitars. He finds a wall and backs up to it. His lashing scimitar makes contact with something. Five shadows swarm Bizzle, reducing his strength and vitality to near death. Creep yells for everyone to retreat to the previous room, takes a stab at a retreating shadow, grabs Bizzle’s arm, and dimension doors to rejoin the party. Tatters arcane locks the door.

Bizzle chomps one of Creep’s salvage bars and the group discusses alternate avenues of exploration for a short while.

The search is on for Szass Tam at the suggestion of recently deceased One Arm Andy. With any luck, Szass Tam will know the entrance to the phylactery vault and be completely unguarded, if not asleep.

Creep chains together cantrips to slip into his persona of a levitating, red glowing eyed, red wizard lich. Tricksy, his “newly enjoined demon” and means of propulsion, takes up residence hidden in Creep’s robes. Together they form Crycks.

Bizzle dons his rumpled stiltskins and a purloined Thayan warrior uniform. Listening at the door at the short hallway to the north, he hears voices talking loudly, but not in anger. He recognizes a couple of the voices and peeks in to see Slick and Tatters disguised as red wizard apprentices. Several off-duty denizens of the Doomvault chat in this sleeping quarters.

Slick and Tatters, reunited in the Doomvault and infiltrating the locals, learn two important facts. First, a method of restoring life with necromancy has been pioneered in this part of the Doomvault. Second, the temples of despair are used to torture the enemies of Szass Tam.

Tricksy propels Creep into the sleeping quarters, and the room’s occupants prostrate themselves in fear of the dreadful Crycks. Crycks orders everyone to pursue escaped beholder Thaxalia and they all leave except Tatters and Slick.

Tricksy fashions a trap of bells and boulders around the door, colloquially known as a Ding Dong Death. The room is searched and Tricksy pockets the only valuable item, a jar of eyeballs labeled Morgz Ybalz Jar.

Tatters warns that some stairs down into a rough cavern leads to a heavily guarded black gate, where he and Slick entered. Instead, Tatters opens the door north.

Three Thayan apprentices kneel at a central stepped monument of grey marble that thrums with blue power. Looming Crycks explains to the puny mortals that he has recently joined with a demon, and the apprentices must answer a few questions before Crycks eats their faces. They answer that they serve some red wizards in the surrounding rooms, that they don’t know where Szass Tam is, and that they’ve been meditating here for months and don’t get out much. Crycks threatens the apprentices with a good soul draining and head explosion if they mention his name. The nearest apprentice micturates involuntarily. The party exits the north door.

The next room, a mausoleum, has walls of black marble lined with ivory urns decorated in precious metals and gems. Across the room is a black gate. A red wizard works at marble tables drawing the soul from an unfortunately screaming, yet unconscious, half-elf. The corpse of another red wizard waits on another table for the soul to transform it into a wight, like the two lurking at the edge of the room.

The red wizard’s name is Phaia, and she can converse while she works. Who are you? We are Crycks! Crycks offers to take that yummy half-elf soul off her hands. Tatters arcane locks the door behind them with the password FROYO.

Phaia doesn’t buy this Crycks nonsense and is so unconcerned that she doesn’t even stop working when she orders Todd The Wight and Dougg The Wight to attack. At this imminent indication of violence, Tricksy double shortbows Todd The Wight from Crycks’s robe. Dougg The Wight hucks an urn at Bizzle which shatters harmlessly, and non-preciously, on the floor.

Creep counterspells Phaia’s transfer spell and the half-elf’s soul returns to him. Creep dimension doors behind Phaia and offers to augury her entrails. Phaia asserts her entrails will never spill their guts. Bizzle scimitars her entrails and Tatters blinds her eyes.

Tricksy smacks another two arrows into the forehead of her mark, Todd The Wight, and he crumples. Slick’s magic greataxe engages Dougg the Wight.

Vastly outclassed, Phaia bargains for her life. She offers to teach them how to return life with necromancy, but no one finds her lifestyle all that appealing. Tatters accepts her glyph key to the temples of extraction, one of only seven worthful keys of its kind. No one in the party is compelled to vouch for Phaia so she is executed quickly as possible, yet disturbingly not very quickly.

Bizzle feeds a potion of healing to the unconscious half-elf. He is Kelson Darktreader and he can’t remember how he got here. He does happen to know that disrupting the flow of soul energy into the phylactery vault will break Szass Tam’s phylactery. That’s probably because Szass is using the temples of extraction to pump up his phylactery with abundant chosen souls in order to reach god status. Interrupting power during a soul update is the surest way to brick one’s phylactery. The party allows Kelson Darktreader to depart with a Blood Pens glyph key.

Slick finds a +1 dagger, a scroll of darkvision, and a scroll of water breathing on Phaia. A search of the urns ends when Slick is temporarily paralyzed after touching one. She feels much better after a short rest.

Creep and Tricksy reassemble Crycks. Tatters opens the black gate to the temples of oppression zone in the temples of extraction area.

Golden light suspends a male drow on the other side of this hexagonal room of shuddering white marble walls. A couple of grey oozes and ochre jellies and a wight guard the presiding red wizard. The red wizard requires a business statement. Crycks eagerly supplies that they have an urgent dispatch for Szass Tam; is he around? Also, FEAR DEMON INFUSED CRYCKS!

The humble red wizard, Humble, must stay with this chosen of Ghaunadaur and has no time for the likes of Crycks. They briefly debate who is deafer and who is stupider before Slick fires a crossbow bolt into the wight. Tricksy and Tatters open up on Humble. Creep encourages the party to not clump up, but when Tricksy and Tatters move away, the walls attempt to tentacle-slap them.

Creep drops a Hunger of Hadar on Humble. He and Bizzle head for a door to the south, but the oozes and jellies engage them from the edge of the Hunger. As the jellies emerge, unblinded by the Hunger, Slick, Tricksy, and Tatters engage them at range. Creep sprays his jelly assailant  with poison and creeps away. Bizzle finishes the first jelly.

Bizzle demands the passphrase from the deathlock wight. Phelth the deathlock wight insists this room has no passphrase. Furthermore, why aren’t Bizzle, Tricksy, and Slick wearing correct Thayan garb? Only an infiltrating interloper could be so confused.

Slick excuses herself back to the cage room.

Phelth’s assistant observes a dwarf appear on the black gate in the corner. The dwarf listens to the palaver for a moment before revealing his true form: Thayan armor, glowing red eyes, feet not quite touching the offal pool covering the floor. This visiting lich lord chastises Phelth in a booming basso for arguing with his personal slaves. Phelth and his assistant must now stand in the corner. The otyugh whimpers. The twelve skeletons mill around, disengaged from the power struggle.

Tricksy suggests to her new lich overlord that he test Phelth’s knowledge on the phylactery vault. Who’s on guard at the phylactery vault? Phelth doesn’t know, that’s not his job as room boss, but he suggests the filth prison via the black gate as a starting place to find the phylactery vault entrance. The visiting lich lord and his slaves use Phelth’s glyph key to take the black gate to filth prison.

Skeletons carrying buckets of offal from the black gate to a room beyond are entirely unfazed when the party arrives. Their ambivalence allows the opportunity for introductions. The dwarven warlock impersonating a lich lord is R&S operative Creep. He was dispatched as backup for ill-fated PTATA Two’s entire crew. He’s that good.

The exit from the skeleton bucket room unfortunately leads to an open room of overpowering filth. Four otyugh standing on mounds of filth demand food. Tricksy and Bizzle hand up buckets of offal and that seems to satisfy them. Tricksy wonders why they are so picky, eating from buckets but not the floor. The group exits as quickly as possibly.

The room to the east is covered by a layer of glowing, viscous, green slime [1d8 poison] which Tricksy collects into a sample bottle. Three Thayan warriors and a couple of wights lie dead in the room. Bizzle digs out his rumpled stiltskins to stay above the slime poison. He carries Tricksy and tows levitating Creep to the bodies. They take a glyph key off one of the wights. Creep speaks with the dead by putting his fingers into the wight’s ears, gently lifting his head.

Who are you? Are you not brave? How do you get to the phylactery vault? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

One of the wights suggests trying the masters’ domain to access the phylactery vault. Best he can do having never been there himself. Then Creep thinks to ask, How did you die? Beholder sniper. Creep drops the dead’s head back with a crack. Creeps queries the others: How did you die? Each one: Beholder sniper. Creep peers ahead through the green glow at the ceiling and warns his team they might have a problem.

Creep begins desecrating the Thayan bodies to impress the beholder. He tosses severed body parts into the slime while loudly disparaging the vile Thayans’ unfair imprisonment of such wonderful aberrations like beholders. Beholder Thaxalia agrees from the ceiling. Creep casts tongues and explains they are vanquishing all Thayans and freeing all prisoners. Creep offers a salvage bar, but Thaxalia’s injuries are beyond repair. Thaxalia eye-rays holes in the map to indicate her secret sinkholes which would otherwise immerse them in poison. Creep activates the white gate allowing Thaxalia to depart to the garbage room of otyugh. Fighting and cries of betrayal can be heard from that direction.

Thaxalia’s lair opens to a room of eight ambling zombies and a couple of ogre zombies. Invisible Creep scouts the room and finds both a white gate and a black gate. Tricksy assembles a goblin-in-the-box with a ten second fuse which Thaxalia sneaks to the far end of the room. The tune plays and out pops a goblin, drawing the attention of all zombies. Tricksy and Bizzle meet up with invisible Creep and they slip through the white gate unnoticed. The sounds of a mechanical goblin being smashed can be heard.

The next room features a large blue pool with globes of liquid hovering around the sides. The pool ripples from movement. Creep, deep speech spell still in effect, gets interrogated by the aboleth. Creep repeats his narrative that the group is enemies of the red wizards and here to liberate prisoners. That sounds good to the abeloth who accepts Bizzle’s blood pens glyph key, summons and boards a liquid globe, and hastily departs through a black gate in the room.

Skirting around the pool, the group sees shimmering lights from the next room. Two wights, two dread warriors, and six zombies stare at the ceiling, mesmerized. Bizzle ties a rope around his waist and passes it to Tricksy and Creep to do the same in case one of them needs to be dragged out. They look only at the floor and make their way around the other occupants to the exit. Tricksy uses locate object to score a glyph key for the forest of death from the belt of a wight.

Up next is a forest, presumably of death. The only obvious danger is a large monster, a behir, lazily sprawled in the center of the forest room. The group stealths around the edge, ducking behind trees and bushes. If the behir notices them it seems to not care.

Creep checks the map from Syranna and realizes they’ve gone off course to get to the master’s domain. They double back through the forest room, shimmering lights room, and aboleth pool to the white gate isolating the zombies and ogre zombies. Creep checks the room and an ogre zombie blocks the white gate into the room.

Tricksy assembles a vial of alchemist’s fire, gates into the zombie room, and critically hucks it at the ogre zombie. She doesn’t stay to watch the ogre zombie go berserk, igniting all the flammable zombies.

The party attempts a short rest while the zombies burn down on the other side of the white gate. They are soon interrupted by a noisy patrol of Thayan warriors approaching. The party slips unnoticed through the white gate just in time to see the last zombie succumb to flames. Tricksy leaves a basket of centipedes right where the patrol will step blindly through the white gate. As the party hurries toward the door to the master’s domain, anguished yelling of warriors attacked by centipedes can be heard.

The party makes the quick decision to turn and fight this centipede-weakened patrol for the possibility of getting some better direction to the phylactery vault. They find the patrol already dead and being consumed by gricks. Creep selects a red wizard, One Arm Andy, to speak with dead.

One Arm Andy hasn’t been dead very long and has a lot of sass left in him. Creep offers to induct Andy into the phylactery if One Arm Andy will tell him how to get there. Suspicious One Arm Andy wonders where Creep’s red robe is. Creep drops Andy’s head with a smack, gouges out his dead eyes, and re-establishes speak with dead. Andy wonders why it’s so dark in here.

If it’s information on the phylactery vault they want, One Arm Andy suggests finding Szass Tam. If anyone knows the phylactery vault, it’s Szass Tam.

Creep tries a couple of the warriors but they have nothing to add. The party loots a couple of healing potions and a potion of climbing.

Creep disguises himself as a red wizard. Bizzle dons his rumpled stiltskins and a looted uniform to look somewhat like a Thayan warrior. Creep levitates Tricksy, also draped in a Thayan warrior uniform. They are ready as they’ll ever be for the master’s domain.

Rooster barges into the common room with a priority one mission. Bizzle, Tricksy, and Slick board PTATA One with Rooster. Tatters boards PTATA Two with several obscure R&S employees all wearing red shirts. As the One PTATA, Two PTATA lift off, there is a popping sound and PTATA Two goes down with apparent engine failure.

There is no time to turn back for PTATA Two. A rebellion within the red wizards of Thay grants R&S limited time use of the Bloodgate Nexus, and the Gatehouse beyond, to access the Doomvault. Details will be available directly from the rebel leader at the Gatehouse. The mission is so dangerous that bottom-line-conscious Rooster passes around extra healing potions and salvage bars, along with a release of liability.

PTATA One reaches the drop zone. Rooster returns to base to check on the souls who fortunately perished in a fiery crash rather than survive delivery to the Doomvault.

Slick, Tricksy, and Bizzle find themselves in a shadowy hall lined with teleport pads. Syranna, rebellious red wizard and procurer of R&S’s services, appears and welcomes them. She explains that there is a lich lord by the name of Tarul Vaul inhabiting the phylactery vault beneath the Doomvault. This lich lord is a real problem for civilization and must be terminated. All they have to do is use a dense map to wend their way through rooms upon rooms with names like Temples of Extinction, filled with traps, monsters, and all manner of other terrors, figure out how to get to the phylactery vault, and then destroy it and the lich lord it contains. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Syranna hands Tricksy a magic crystal pendant on a bronze chain and ushers them to a randomly selected teleport pad labeled Blood Pens. The adventurers enter the teleporter and find themselves standing on a black gate in the corner of a room with ambling zombies and a couple of wights.

Tricksy sees no obvious staircase down so she begins to cross the room toward a door. Vines emerge from holes around the room and threaten to entangle all un-undead creatures. Tricksy gets grabbed crossing the room. She stabs the offending vine in its base and it falls away. This commotion does not escape the attention of the undead. The zombies waste no time attacking while the wight hissingly requests the passphrase.

Despite Bizzle’s insistence that they are guests expected by Tarul Vaul, the zombies and wights do not yield. Tricksy’s suture fly companion, Knit, zips over the zombie wave and sews a purple zombie’s eye closed. The zombie botches a lunge at Bizzle’s spleen and its arm falls off. Slick snicks off an ear with her greataxe of finesse, and Bizzle’s scimitars finish the job. One down.

Too many undead in such a small room prevent Tricksy from using her preferred shortbow, so she relies on her rapier while Knit diligently closes zombie eyes, fully blinding a few who make easy targets or wander around ineffectively.

Slick maneuvers around the undead mass to keep the doors at her back, just in case she needs to escape to the next room. Her greataxe makes good progress thinning out her assailants, cleaving down a zombie by dividing it neatly in two. Troublesome zombie Chester clubs Slick repeatedly with his own putrid chest.

Bizzle fights his way over to draw pressure off Tricksy who isn’t as stout as her teammates. They combine attacks against the encircling undead who have a nasty tendency to hinge right back up to continue fighting when struck down.

The wights drain Bizzle’s and Tricksy’s lives with lifedrain and longswords. Zombie Arman improvises his own detached arm to club Tricksy. She slays him and quaffs a healing potion.

Knit blinds Chester and he shatters his chest into the wall, sending some rotted teeth flying out. Confused about the source of the teeth, Knit sews Chester’s mouth shut. Slick’s greataxe finishes Chester for just a moment but he stands up again. Slick’s greataxe finishes Chester for just a moment but he stands up again. Slick’s greataxe finishes Chester for just a moment but he stands up again. Slick’s greataxe finishes Chester for just a moment but he stands up again. Knit gets bored and sews Chester’s nose shut killing Chester for good, not because zombies need to breath but because the suture stings a little. Irritated Slick moves to kill the last zombie, but he blindly knocks himself out smacking into the wall just as she winds up a swing of her greataxe.

Tricksy and Bizzle battle with the two wights non-lethally. The first dies accidentally but the second is knocked unconsciously undead. Tricksy binds the wight with razor wire and Bizzle revives it, asking for the passphrase. The wight couldn’t possibly care less about its predicament or whether Bizzle learns the passphrase and it slays itself by thrashing about.

Slick searches the room and the wights where she finds two more Blood Pen glyph keys on bronze chains. Bizzle borrows some chalk from Tricksy and writes numbers on the keys to identify them uniquely. Badly beaten Tricksy eats a salvage bar and she’s good as new, ready to see the next room, or so she thinks.

Bizzle takes the lead opening the doors. A sign suggests this room is The Pale Garden. The sign is not contradicted by the dozen skeletons tending a vast hedge of plants stretching as far as they can see across the enormous room. Great pillars extend to the ceiling. The skeletons seem prepared to ignore Bizzle as he cautiously advances down a clear pathway. Large shambling mounds of vegetation shamble up to him and Bizzle demands to hear the passphrase. A shambling mound slams, grapples, and eats Bizzle whole.

Slick and Tricksy, observing Bizzle’s demise from the doorway, frantically search their knowledge of large shambling mounds. Tricksy is reluctant to put arrows into the Bizzle-stuffed mound, not that she can even see it well enough in all the vegetation. While they panic, Bizzle uses his helm of teleportation to pop back into the room and closes the doors on The Pale Garden. Whatever is behind door number two of the Blood Pens couldn’t be worse than that.

Beyond the other door is a short hallway blocked by a white gate. Tricksy investigates the blockage and reckons it’s potentially dangerous. As she’s pointing out the danger, her gesticulating arm brushes through the white glow and is unharmed. Maybe the glyph key, number 0, around her neck kept her safe. Bizzle tastes the glyph key; it tastes like metamorphic igneous rock. Bizzle, wearing glyph key number 2 around his neck, experimentally extends his pinky finger into the white light. His finger is unharmed and tastes like magic. Bizzle concludes that it is entirely safe for Slick to walk through the white gate as long as she’s wearing glyph key number 1 around her neck. When this surprisingly proves to be true, Tricksy and Bizzle follow her.

The short hallway leads to a room of caged critters. There are definitely some hooked horrors in a cage to the left, but no time is lost making a further zoological assessment. Apparent curator and red wizard Myrja is a bit surprised at the intrusion. Bizzle quickly demands the passphrase from her before she has the opportunity to demand it from him. The tactic gets nothing, but the party leans into the confusion and reveal they are on a mission from red wizard Syranna. That concerns Myrja because Syranna is a filthy rebel. Bizzle, normally less charismatic, implores Myrja to lead them all to the phylactery vault immediately because rebel Syranna has infiltrated there and has tricked them into thinking she works for the lich lord, and obviously everyone here wants to protect the lich lord from harm. Myrja is willing to believe him, but has no access to the phylactery vault. The adventurers excuse themselves to the next room, leaving a puzzled Myrja with her caged horrors behind.

The next room shows signs of once being an art gallery, but now gore covers the floor. There is a black gate in the corner, like the first room, and a glyph on the wall. A deathlock wight and a regular wight oversee a dozen skeletons feeding an otyugh garbage. Bizzle demands the passphrase.

Rooster, short by one Nanny, uses a rigorous selection process to secure Nanny’s replacement. Eeny, meeny, uhhmmm, you! He points vaguely at Tricksy, the newly hired kobold trap master. Tricksy, Bizzle, Slick, Tatters, in my office!

The client in Rooster’s office is Leshanar Dragonspark, a personable elf who is cautious, if not worried, about an aggressive dragon hunting outfit operating near her homeland. She wants to know who these dragon hunters are and what methods are they using to capture the dragons.

Epi Glottis has become unreliable since his unfortunate demise and reconstitution, so Rooster himself will be today’s transport director. He directs them to the unfinished transport DRAGON (Drastic Reconnaissance Aerial Gunship Of New-Design) and hands out the operator manuals.

When eventually completed, DRAGON will magnificently impersonate a bronze dragon. But for now, the untested airship requires a signed waiver to board through the unfortunately located butt hatch. For obvious life preserving reasons, neither Rooster nor Leshanar will be accompanying them on this dubious flight. Brash new hire Tricksy wonders whether everyone else is chicken. Rooster’s eyes narrow at her.

DRAGON has dedicated task stations. Tricksy takes the flapping and propulsion position. Charismatic Slick takes the head position, responsible for the forward lightning cannon and for providing the dragon’s speech and interactive personality. Bizzle operates the tail attack and steerage. Tatters sets up at a hatch through which he may cast spells in the unexpected circumstance violence becomes necessary.

It suddenly occurs to Bizzle that flying at a dragon hunting airship in a conveyance exactly resembling a dragon might cause some confusion, making him the last person to realize that this is the point of the mission.

Before they leave, Rooster emphasizes what this mission is all about: Communication. Communicado. Avocado. Shevacado. Rooster might be losing it.

After some traveling, Slick sees a great bronze dragon hovering next to an even larger airship imprinted Predator. She can see that the dragon is double grappled by lines from two of several mounted crossbows mounted around Predator’s deck, a dragon hunting ship if ever she saw one. The crossbows swivel for aiming but mount out on the edge such that their field of fire is limited, and none of them are mounted forward, probably to allow room for the enormous dragon skull adorning the prow.

The captured dragon calls out to DRAGON in draconic, Help me! I’m being attacked by these…. Translating Tricksy deletes the finishing expletive.

The party, capitalizing upon Predator’s unprotected bow, pilots DRAGON in front of Predator just within range of the lightning cannon. Slick aims a shot down Predator’s long deck and ignites a bolt through a line of seven bandits, immediately killing six of them and merely injuring the unlucky seventh. The wooden deck ignites and flames quickly engulf Predator. She breaks in half releasing two more dragons from below deck. The flaming wreckage and all aboard plunge to a swampy demise below.

The party braces itself for the pecuniary adulations of the three liberated dragons, but when Slick asks the bronze dragon’s name through DRAGON’s audio system, Draxle gets extremely indignant at Slick’s non-draconic common language choice. Slick explains that she doesn’t know draconic because she is dumb, but at least she knows a mechanical contraption from a real dragon. Offended Draxle and his friends no longer wish to interact with DRAGON, except possibly for the opportunity to destroy it. The momentary allies part ways.

The party lands DRAGON in the swamp below, hoping to find a little more information among Predator’s wreckage. After obliterating a bandit hunting ship in one shot, confidence is high that negotiating a swamp will be a walk in the park by comparison.

As Tatters and Slick wade into the mud toward the pieces of Predator, giant sucking leeches attach themselves and begin syphoning off their blood. Tatters, who prefered his blood where it was, defends himself with magic missiles and turns his skin to stone, but even with a supporting stream of arrows from Tricksy the leech only grows larger.

Bizzle dashes to help Slick and together they slay the growing leech feeding on her, then to the leech swallowing Tatters and attracts a leech of his own along the way.

A hissing flower sends tentacles to grapple Slick. Tricksy deploys her suture fly companion, Knit, to intervene, but the flower drags Slick into its mouth before Knit can sew it shut. Tatters casts mass cure wounds, an especially clever trick for a wizard, and the party is whole again.

The largest leech decides gorging on Tatters’ blood isn’t enough, swallows him whole, and submerges into the swamp. Tatters expires his stoneskin to instead dominate the offending leech. He commands it to spit him out and then kill itself. The leech complies with the first command and Tatters spews to the surface. The leech suspiciously bungles killing itself somehow and instead goes with what it knows, swallowing Tatters again, this time knocking him out.

Tricksy slays Bizzle’s leech leaving him available to go beat on the flower with Slick inside. Bizzle gets fed into the flower by tentacles and helps Slick attack the flower from the inside until it regurgitates them. Bizzle kills it, from the outside as one prefers.

A couple more arrows from Tricksy finishes the leech digesting Tatters and she cuts him out with her rapier. Pouring a healing potion into his acid burned gob brings him back around. Tatters has the satisfaction of killing the last leech with magic missiles. By this time, the party realizes the leeches will avoid them if they avoid wading in the swamp goo.

Bizzle takes a look at a crossbow near the Predator wreckage. The bolts are enormous and, of course, designed for grappling, but a detailed analysis can be made later by an R&S specialist if Bizzle ever makes it back. The crossbow and bolt go into his bag of holding.

The commotion alerts a nearby plant. It stuffs Bizzle into its mouth. A fire bolt from Tatters quickly kills the flower, rendering it unable to spit Bizzle out. He thrusts one, then both, scimitars up through the flower to the surface.

Tricksy carries all manner of trap making tools and materials and has no problem producing a shovel. She and Slick take turns digging for Bizzle until Tricksy can leverage the shovel and pop Bizzle right out of the ground.

Slick and Tatters poke around one of the half sections of Predator. They find and collect strong turquoise rods from below deck, likely composing dragon cages. Bizzle eats a salvage bar to prepare for the next tussle and helps guide stealthy Tricksy toward a bandit body, apparently the only remaining body that hasn’t been dragged away by leeches, flowers, or some other dreadful swamp scavenger.

Tricksy finds a book detailing construction of the crossbows and cages and Predator. Most alarming is a diagram showing tiny Predator next to a much larger airship. Yikes.

Unwilling to chance the terrors of the swamp, Bizzle teleports the party an embarrassing fifty feet back to DRAGON and they safely return to R&S headquarters.

The looted book entirely satisfies Rooster for the mission, but the larger ship concerns everyone and will undoubtedly have to be dealt with later.

Rooster turns his attention to the crossbow. The design is new to him and nothing beats a practical demonstration. He aims it down a long hallway and, when an intern comes around the corner, Rooster looses the bolt. Magnetic pods deploy upon impact to grapple the intern, or would if his skin were metallic.

Tatters resets the sign: Safety begins here, 0 days with no accidents.

Rooster invites Catty Batty, Bizzle, and new hires Slick, greataxe rogue, and Tatters, storm wizard, into his office. No bellowed priority numeral or color. No urgency, just whenever that hand of Three Dragon Ante finishes, that’s fine.

Slick and Tatters rummage through the comprehensive store of R&S magical items to find mission gear suited to their talents. Once the team is outfitted, Rooster introduces the contract.

It seems long-retired R&S operative Dagna Bet has acquired a blood emerald shard and, pursuant to certain terms, has agreed to surrender said shard to R&S for safekeeping against evil shard collector Craig the Insidious Lich & Co., LLC. Dagna doesn’t deliver, so the mission is to retrieve the shard from him at Bet Tower and courier it back to R&S.

It’s the perfect milk run to orient the new guys and ease recently reanimated Epi Glottis back into field work piloting the TURTLE. Rooster distributes the standard mission load of healing potions, plans B, and salvage bars. Batty, hazing the new guys, pretends to eat her salvage bar right away.

Epi Glottis drops the team off at Dagna’s address after an uneventful ride. What Epi Glottis lost to his dying experience with Birt the Insidious has since been back filled with passive aggression. He personally thanks Bizzle SOOOO much for helping to reunite his essence with his corpus ifonlyyoucouldhavepreventedmedyinginthefirstplacethatwouldbegreat.

Batty counts the levels of Bet Tower as it pierces the blue sky: one. Round hut, cone roof, this won’t take long. She knocks and opens the unlocked door. Batty and Slick hear a thrum of power that typically signals the beginning of some non-trivial endeavor. Preparing for the worst, Bizzle picks up Rocky V from the ground.

Impossibly detailed stained glass windows, depicting epic battles of wizards and dragons, line the short entry hall. Batty breezes into the tower, yelling for Dagna Bet. A burp answers her and she quickly finds the source, a tiny dragon-like creature, wings where its ale mug-grasping front legs would normally be, locked in a wooden cage drinking a mug of ale held with its tail.

The rest of the team catches up to Batty’s long stride. They gather around to gawk. With ale-impeded speech, the tiny drake introduces himself as JoJo. Batty, proponent of temperance in drakelings, offers to relieve JoJo of his ale, but this course of action is not agreeable. JoJo flicks his tail into a special tile and the building shakes and rumbles as though the tile activated an earthquake.

Batty reckons that was no earthquake, and JoJo confirms he made the hut into a proper tower, as Bizzle can see out the window once he stands back up and dusts himself off.

JoJo offers a suspiciously apt warning that teleportation won’t work within the tower and then falls fast asleep. Slick entertains visiting vengeance on JoJo in his sleep, but suddenly worries that maybe he is actually a powerful, ancient red dragon. She demurs.

Bizzle pushes to the front to lead the search for Dagna, now that this simple courier mission has gone pear-shaped. But Batty can’t walk as slowly as Bizzle so she scoots past him down a spiral staircase that appears to descend through several levels of the tower.

Unrestrained burglary is one way to quickly meet a homeowner, and it’s the preferred way of Batty and Slick. They launch, looking for Dagna while looting his cupboards, cabinets, chests, and loose valuables.

Batty opens a small chest hidden under a bed. Dagna is a fastidious labeler, and this is his “sekret funding” stash which includes some small coinage and a regular size mummified elf finger. Now it’s Batty’s.

Batty finds a room featuring a large crystal ball. Slick touches it and it speed dials Rooster. Rooster’s irritated image appears and tells Slick to get back to work securing the blood emerald shard from Dagna. Rooster hangs up. No one wants to steal a crystal ball that calls Rooster.

Tatters commandeers a staff, labeled as a staff of knocking, from the corner of a bedroom. It’s entirely possible Dagna could be found behind a locked door in the tower, one never knows.

Bizzle checks a large cabinet that does not contain Dagna, but does contain an irresistible red potion with a happy frog label. He must drink it. He drinks it. The red grung poison gives Bizzle hyper munchies and he is compelled to eat and drink continuously, starting with this room full of potions.

Tatters steps into the doorway just in time to briefly watch Bizzle drink a quenching potion of invisibility. Tatters checks his spell book but finds nothing to help. He hoists his shield, Personal Space, and explores down more stairs.

Batty and Slick find a boring old library. They notice a book featured prominently: Paper Drakes by Dagna Bet. They open the book and three pages fly out. The refolding papers become drakes who begin opening other books to drain off the ink. Weird. Batty and Slick leave before finding out what happens next, closing the library doors behind them as they explore down another level.

Tatters follows the twin pillagers down. Bizzle, finding himself alone and hungry, gathers up an armful of potions that will hopefully see him through. He also follows the group down the staircase, continuously quaffing potions.

Slick takes up dragon chess, or at least the ebony and ivory dragon chess pieces Dagna used to possess.

Batty finds another chest. This one is labeled “other sekret funding” and contains much bigger coinage. It also has three mummified elf fingers instead of just one and a mummified eyeball. Payday.

The sound of clanking fills level four. Intruder Alert! declares the construct emerging from a side room. “Other sekret funding” has been compromised!

The large iron golem reaches through a doorway and fires a net, trapping Batty. She tries to explain that she is looking for Dagna Bet, one treasure chest at a time, but the golem computes that she is a liar and triggers a backslap. The golem hoists netted Batty and heads for a balcony to throw her off. Motivated Batty tries again to explain the situation with more keywords this time, that they are onsite for an appointment to retrieve a blood emerald shard. The golem checks his calendar app and confirms the appointment. Batty is released and the golem withdraws to his station.

Slick, undeterred by the security golem encounter, helps herself to an especially attractive bowl, once she dumps out the colorful capsules.

Tatters explores ahead and finds an alchemy lab on the next level down. He checks a large cabinet that does not contain Dagna, but does contain an irresistible purple potion with a happy frog label. He must drink it. He drinks it. He resists the sudden urge to bathe.

Batty catches up to Tatters and he explains the close call with the irresistible potion. She checks a large cabinet that does not contain Dagna, but does contain an irresistible purple potion with a happy frog label. She must drink it. She drinks it. Monk Batty is immune to purple grung poison and resists the sudden urge to bathe.

Slick, next to enter the alchemy lab, finds herself compelled to drink a golden grung poison. She becomes charmed to Batty and won’t attack her under any circumstances.

Invisible Bizzle, lagging behind, has potioned himself enlarged, hill giant strong, blessed, water breathing and briefly gaseous. If one must be poisoned, this is the way to do it.

The team finally collects at the bottom of the spiral staircase that has led them through so many infernal levels of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Still no Dagna, unless that’s him as a statue in the center of this open room spanning the entire width of the tower. The statue holds a blue orb aloft. Batty can see that this statue of a gnome is actually a statue of a dwarf. Tatters trusts none of it and casts greater invisibility on himself.

Slick advances toward the statue for closer investigation and is suddenly gone, zapped away by a shell of energy centered on the orb.

Tatters’ mage hand swoops over to grasp the orb without getting zapped, but the orb does not come loose.

Bizzle skirts around the edge of the room to a trapdoor in the floor on the opposite side of the statue. He drinks a potion of vitality which fortunately cures him of the munchies and protects him from the inevitable tummy ache. As he approaches the trapdoor he can see a label, but the writing is completely unintelligible.

Slick reappears as suddenly as she left and rolls out of orb range. She walks around the edge of the room, avoiding the statue this time, and stands on the other side of the trapdoor from Bizzle where she can plainly read the common label: Knock. She knocks. No answer.

Tatters, familiar with the knock spell and carrying Dagna’s own staff of knocking, runs right by the statue in all his epiphanic excitement. Hey guys! I– *ZAP*, and Tatters is gone.

Batty, always willing to learn from the repeated mistakes of others, skirts around the statue to Bizzle, who is stomping on the trapdoor with all his hill giant strength.

Tatters reappears, mid-sentence, and runs up. –have this staff of knocking! Everyone get off the trapdoor!

Tatters knocks open the trapdoor which unfastens and swings up, revealing Dagna reclining in a chair by a fireplace below.

Dagna doesn’t know who these whippersnappers are, but the R&S guy has already come and gone with the shard. Craig the Insidious, or something like that, he thinks it was. Got paid and everything, Dagna says, showing off an empty bank bag. The authentic R&S couriers try to convince Dagna what a colossal dupe he is, but he is immune to criticism.

Dagna excuses himself briefly to call Rooster. He claims everything has been sorted out with R&S, not to worry. He insists on having back all his purloined possessions, unwinding the mission profitability. But it’s not a total loss; Dagna offers Bizzle a Compass of the Blood Emerald that may point to Craig, and the chance to recover all the lost shards.

Dagna offers some final advice: get out of his house!

PROLOGUE

Rooster calls you into his office where an even smaller figure stands upon his desk.  “Let me introduce you to Opunt Honeydew”, states Rooster.

“Please, call me Opie” replies the small figure with a small bow.  Clearly the figure is a fairy, although what kind you do not quite know.

“Mr. Honeydew’s village is in the woods just beyond the Obsidian Pass, and his village is currently being harassed by a nearby Sorcerer, he’s hoping we can help him out.”

The fairy becomes quite animated and begins shouting while flitting about “The sorcerer has assembled a great engine of destruction and it seeks to destroy us all! You must help us!”

“Mr Honeydew has offered R&S rights to a unique ‘passageway’ that he and his fellow Fairies guard in their grove.  R&S is very interested in securing access to this passage, and will compensate you all quite fairly if you can find a way to stop the sorcerer.  What say you?”

“Guaranteed destruction! I’m in!” shouts Beard.

LOGUE

On any given day, there is an excellent chance that hanging around the warren playing cards will get you killed.

Bizzle, Nanny, and Beard report to Rooster’s office. There is a tiny figure on his desk who introduces himself as Opunt Honeydew, fairy of Moonwreathe village in the obsidian pass forest. Opunt, please call him Opie, has a job for R&S.

It seems an itinerant sorcerer has plans for the fairy forest for certain reasons that Opunt certainly knows about but seems reluctant to disclose with any certainty. The plans in question unfortunately require destruction of Moonwreathe by means of a nearly-complete, mysterious siege engine assembling at the mouth of the obsidian pass.

R&S’s responsibility, in exchange for desirable access to the obsidian pass on Moonwreathe’s border, is to stop the siege engine and prevent destruction of Moonwreathe. Beard locks on to the phrase “siege engine”. Rooster, perceiving the short-term motivational opportunity at the likely expense of long term regional safety, assures Beard that the siege engine qualifies as lootable spoil.

Opie summons today’s whimsical mode of transport with a loud whistle. Three dozen fairies fly out of Rooster’s desk drawer, ready to skim the team over the treetops to their line of departure. Because deployment of the siege engine is imminent, Rooster and Opie haven’t made time to contrive a clever acronym or pun for the fairy ferry so Bizzle spends the brief and terrifying time aloft, his 40 pounds of unsmashed internal organs at the mercy of two dozen tiny little grasps, trying to come up with one. He has all the words, but they disappointedly spell only nonsense: Load-bearing Ultralight Fairy Transport Hovering And Navigating Service Association

Moonwreathe nestles in dense forest at the foot of a mountain range where a naturally formed obsidian cleft hosts the obsidian pass. The fairies deposit the R&S team a short walk to where locally-crafted (make Sword Coast great again) hewn rock fortifications have been constructed around the mouth of the pass.

Nanny leads the team on a sneak to the edge of the forest on the right side of the formidable (for gnomes) four foot high barriers. Two alert henchmen occupy an arcane cannon emplacement atop the wall. Another pair of alert henchmen at the center entrance watch the path up to the pass. Clockwork myrmidons and even more henchmen patrol behind the barriers. At the mouth of the pass sits a bladed-looking contraption, likely the siege engine or a part thereof. Nanny hears the thunderous, ponderous footfalls of inevitability stomping down the pass like an enormous timer counting down the seconds to mission failure.

The henchmen are too alert, and the clearing between forest and barriers is too conspicuous, to risk dashing across. Control of that cannon, whatever it does, would sure be nice. What’s needed is a diversion, and no one has to tell Beard twice. He cycles through several possible dread elemental forms before settling on earth elemental. Earth Beard gesticulates vigorously at Bizzle and drops into the ground.

Moments later, Earth Beard terrifyingly steps out of the obsidian cleft onto the barrier behind the two cannoneers. He slams one before melding back into the mountainside. Nanny sends an arrow to Beard’s slammed victim who somehow compartmentalizes the fact he’s become the sole recipient of sudden, unsolicited injury and admirably concentrates on his duty.

The cannoneers unleash undisciplined spats of blue and white energy into the forest toward the arrow’s origin. Three clockworkers converge on the forest edge, defensively spewing fire and grease to discourage further incursions. The watchful henchmen retreat behind the barriers, content to let the arcane cannon and clockworkers confront the threat.

Earth Beard glides through the earth into the fresh grease and falls prone. This gives the grease-spewing clockworker a few rotations of his seldom-used satisfaction gear, but that’s poor consolation to the new widow of a cannoneer when large Earth Beard regains his feet, somehow scales the four foot barrier, and slams the henchman out of the cannon emplacement to his death. Between Earth Beard’s looming presence and an arrow from Nanny, the other cannoneer quits his post, improperly relieved.

Henchmen, safely distanced from Earth Beard, send over all their crossbow bolts. The clockworkers beat Earth Beard with picks. Earth Beard acknowledges the felicitousness of the picks, natural enemy of earth.

Bizzle dashes for the nearest clockworker and surges a scimitar attack while Nanny sneaks in an arrow that severely dents the construct. Not to be outdone by an arrow, Earth Beard dents his own clockworker with some slamming. The henchmen continue crossbowing Earth Beard while Bizzle works on two clockworkers. The third clockworker cuts Nanny off from the assault.

Bizzle makes it up to the cannon and puzzles over how to operate it. Absent any progress, he drops back down outside the barrier for cover against the crossbowing henchmen. Nanny jumps aside when her tormentor sweeps fire across her path. Earth Beard continues smashing the clockworkers. If they could understand his terran invectives, the last thing one would hear would be to, Die insignificant fool, before exploding all over the precious arcane cannon.

Earth Beard shuffles the grease off his feet and drops back into the ground. Nanny switches to her swords and goes on the offensive against the clockworkers. Bizzle returns to the cannon, but a couple of henchmen contend for the equipment. Bizzle reaches awkwardly across a gap in the wall to hit one of them, loses balance, and falls on the cushioning corpse of Earth Beard’s earlier victim.

Earth Beard glides beneath the compound and reemerges behind the crossbowing henchmen on the opposite side, sending them running with motivational slams.

Nanny takes advantage of a prone clockworker and sneaks some excellent hits on him but then finds herself the stunned target of the reenabled arcane cannon. Bizzle kills one of the replacement cannoneers, but the stun is done and Nanny’s fate is sealed tight, tight like the envelope of a controversial plan to salvage deceased operatives.

The clockworkers have the advantage on Nanny and pick her to an unconscious pulp. Nanny’s spirit struggles to find consciousness again but the unrelenting clockworkers do not relent and continue picking her pulp long after she is dead.

Bizzle tries to shove the last cannoneer off the barrier, but Bizzle’s diminutive size and a lifetime of skipped leg days fail him. It’s no problem for giant Earth Beard who plucks the cannoneer up and tosses him over his rocky shoulder along with a cutting terran insult.

Bizzle, momentarily freed from distraction, finally and perfectly groks the operation of the arcane cannon. All he needs is someone to help aim, someone without giant boulder hands, someone like Nanny.

When Nanny doesn’t answer Bizzle’s impatient calls, Beard spots her pulpy torso heap.

Why laying down on job, Nanny? Earth Beard’s question goes unanswered because even dead Nanny doesn’t understand terran.

Bizzle drops down from the barrier and rushes to Nanny with a bracing second wind, interrupting the clockworkers’ unescaped pickaxing loop. He fights them off, poorly with only one scimitar, while he digs around in his bag of holding for the controversial last resort, Plan B.

Earth Beard comes to Bizzle’s rescue and slams one of the clockworkers to death. The other somehow botches an easy hit on Bizzle and explodes his gears all over.

Bizzle brushes the gears off his salvage bar and jams the whole thing into his gob. He opens Plan B, skims the directions for pictures, and applies Plan B directly to Nanny’s forehead.

 

Bizzle surges to loot Nanny’s corpse for healing potions, her regrettably-unused salvage bar, her greycoat, and her Plan B. Shadow Nanny looks on disapprovingly, if silently.

Earth Beard returns to knocking around henchmen in the compound. Bizzle convinces Shadow Nanny to drag her corpse up to help him operate the arcane cannon.

The thunderous footfalls that have been the background soundtrack for the entire assault suddenly sound much less like they are in a tunnel. A large salt golem emerges next to the bladed siege engine.

Earth Beard, generally uncomfortable with allowing salt golems access to siege-style weapons, begins smashing the assembly, a specialty of his. Salt golem takes offense at the infringement and comes around the assembly to slam Earth Beard. The slam battle of two large things begins.

Shadow Nanny and Bizzle get the hang of firing the arcane cannon and, with Nanny aiming and Bizzle firing, work out how to increase damage and firing rate, chipping away the salt golem and sometimes stunning it. Shadow Nanny offers Bizzle a high-five and Bizzle falls for it as his filthy hand passes right through her shadow hand.

Earth Beard knocks the salt golem around pretty well, but the salt golem is fresh to the battle. A particularly vicious slam knocks the earth right out of Earth Beard, leaving him just plain old Beard again.

Beard backs away and launches his signature giant wasp fleet to surround the salt golem and deprive it of the siege engine. A pair of henchmen rush Beard. He defends himself with burning hands, but they overwhelm and knock him out. Beard’s giant wasps return to regular size wasps in the absence of his concentration and fly away to become heroes of their own stories, yet puzzled as to why the rest of the world sometimes suddenly changes sizes like that.

The unstunned salt golem joins to the siege engine, becoming juggernaut. Juggernaut restores the salt golem’s health and begins its bladed, inexorable march toward Moonwreathe.

Abandoning the arcane cannon, Bizzle slays a henchman to get to Beard, now unconscious in the path of the juggernaut, and feeds him a potion of healing. Beard eats his salvage bar and steps out of the juggernaut’s path.

Shadow Nanny uses her new shadow strength drain attack on a henchman. It’s not quite worth having to drag her own corpse around for eternity, but still pretty satisfying. Too bad the weakened henchman has the tenacity to fight back.

Bizzle resorts to beating on the siege engine with his scimitars. Evil scimitar Sinistra longs to decapitate someone good, and this time it turns out to be Shadow Nanny’s corpse. Beard watches closely, fascinated to learn whether Shadow Nanny’s head also pops off. It does not. Shadow Nanny jams her severed corpse head into her corpse abdomen for corpse safekeeping.

Beard reaches into his proverbial bag of tricks and, grabbing some loose obsidian, smashes his staff down to erupt earth around the salt golem siege engine, halting its progress. The detained siege golem pivots to fight Bizzle with an annihilating swath.

Beard calls in lightning on the metallic siege golem, exploding it into shards of salt. The shards blind the henchman Shadow Nanny has been draining. Bizzle ducks.

Shadow Nanny, already admitted through death’s door and given a tour of death’s humble abode, is now knocking on death’s basement door. Beard, barely able to take his eyes off the vacated siege engine, offhandedly throws a little lightning on the blind henchman, making him a footnote: the last casualty of the battle for obsidian pass.

Beard, now back in Earth Beard form, equips the salt golem’s vacated siege engine attachment. Bizzle lashes the arcane cannon to the top of the Earth Beard siege engine.

While Beard and Bizzle fool around with the appropriated siege equipment, the conflagration started by the flame-spewing clockwork myrmidons spreads through Moonwreathe forest. Since it would technically be counted a mission failure to allow Moonwreathe and the entire forest to burn down after going to all that trouble to save it, Arcane Cannon Bladed Siege Engine Earth Beard eats Shadow Nanny’s salvaged salvage bar and does some kind of water elemental thing to put the fire out, why not.

Shadow Nanny offers Bizzle a celebratory high five, but this time he just smiles at her.

EPILOGUE

There is solemn and contentious discussion of Nanny’s last will and testament, vis-a-vis her ham power of attorney and other considerations.

When Nanny returns to the Warren, her lifeless corpse and life-ful shadow are handed over to the “corps” and Rooster retrieves Nanny’s “final payment” regarding Resurrection vs. Burial vs. Option 3.  Rooster considers the newfound siege engine and cannon returned by the team, he then looks at Nanny’s current holdings line in the master ledger, and realizes that she has more than enough funds to afford any of the options available to an employee who has just suffered death “in good standing”, i.e. they died and accomplished the mission.

Without much fanfare, Rooster calls over a witness and opens the “final payment” to see what wishes Nanny expressed in her LLWT (Likely Last Will and Testament) and/or how she would like her holdings dispersed…..

PROLOGUE

Bizzle, Nanny, Beard, and Stitches had just returned from retrieving the recipe for “Venom”. They carried the instructions and a sample of the vile poison to Rooster. The warren seems uncharacteristically empty.

Before they got to Rooster’s office the door burst open. “Took you long enough! Hurry up, were shorthanded, and we’ve got a code Gray.”

“Who?” all four reply in unison.

“Epi Glottis”, replies Rooster. Al four respond with the loudest stunned silence you have never heard.

“Three other half shares were his escort, Larry, Moe, and Curly. They were due back last night, or at least I expected a message from Epi. The fine folk over in Baellart have a large clock tower that has not worked for quite some time. They contracted with us to get it fixed. Epi loves tinkering, and it wasn’t a dangerous mission so he went out in the field. They took a P.T.A.T.A. and I expected them back same day. I just have a bad feeling about this one.”

“Business is good as you can see, so good, we’ve got no one left to respond to this code Gray. Grab Wings from the infirmary, he should be all better after getting mauled by that gaggle of squirrels. Barbarians are good against most foes, but a sea of squirrels, just ain’t right. I need you all to get to Baellart and make sure everything is alright with Epi and the other three stooges.”

“Roger” responds Bizzle, looking around the empty hanger, Bizzle asks “How do we get there? I can P.H.A.R.T. if I haven’t been there?”

“All of our hardware is out, grab some horses, reload your coats, and get going, it’s a half day’s ride to Baellart. Bring back Epi and your comrades.” Rooster says in a dour tone.

…..

After a half day’s ride South, the town of Baellart comes into view. The clock tower is easy to spot, and a signature silver orb rests off to the east of the tower, the P.T.A.T.A.

Riding up next to the vessel, you dismount, and you tie off the horses inside the belly of the P.T.A.T.A.

Nothing seems particularly amiss. The clocktower is sixty feet tall, but calling it a tower is probably a misnomer. It’s a wide blocky building, with one wall that hosts a large clock face. Below and to the right of the clock face is a pair of closed double doors.

 

LOGUE

Business is booming at R&S so all the good operatives are deployed. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, Rooster calls on Nanny, Stitches, Beard, and Bizzle for a Code Grey: missing operative. Epi Glottis and his three reliable technicians, Larry, Moe, and Curly, were tasked with repairing the historic clock tower in Baellart and have not checked in.

The team grabs Wings, a barbarian in feathered headdress who has been convalescing from a mass squirrel ambush. The feisty five set off on the HORSES, which it turns out is not an acronym for an especially clever contraption, it’s literally just some horses.

After an uneventful half-day ride to Baellart, the team first checks out Epi Glottis’s P.T.A.T.A. parked nearby the sixty foot clock tower. Nothing is out of place and Wings even finds the repair contract with all i’s dotted and t’s crossed. The party continues on to the clock tower whose clock isn’t right twice a day.

Beard knocks on the clock tower doors a couple of times. Bizzle and Nanny hide in the bushes to see what Beard’s audacious fate will be while Wings scouts for another entrance, finding only a very high and grimy window. Stitches grows impatient and easily hammers the unlocked double doors open.

Wings enters the empty room which contains a desk and small chest. Nanny and Bizzle search the desk for documentation of mischief. Bizzle finds the log book of clock worker guild member Jenneline Gyer from three years prior in which she reports that after the inspector’s death the clock will never be right. Nanny finds a lined drawer partitioned to hold 30 specific tokens, now gone. Beard munches on his thinking ham.

Wings finds enormous moving clockworks in the next room, comprising gears five feet thick and suspended five feet off the floor by shafts through to the level above. Beard announces with his most penetrating Yoohoo! that they have arrived to help with the clock problem, but there is still no response.

Wings explores a ladder up to the mezzanine above the entry room where two waiting kenku attack him. One opens up with a semi-automatic assault-style crossbow that fires three bolts at Wings and the other kenku stabs him rogue-like. This predictably enrages Wings who gives the rogue a dose of his macuahuitl.

Kenku spring from all directions, several of them atop the room’s gears on level to fire their repeating crossbows at Wings and Bizzle. More kenku rush Nanny, Stitches, and Beard on the tower floor below. Nanny picks one off with her shortbow and Beard summons a flaming sword. Above, Bizzle takes out the rogue while Wings charges the crossbower. Many volleys of bolts fly at Wings and Bizzle from the safety of the geartops.

Epi Glottis’s voice rings out not to hurt the birds; they’re just a little panicked and don’t understand. Beard snuffs out his flame sword and explains patiently to the kenku that he and his friends are from a distant land: outside the clocktower. Nanny and Stitches pause hostilities but adjust their grip on their weapons, ready to react to any further aggression. They don’t wait long.

Another volley of bolts sails overhead to strike at Wings and Bizzle and five kenku surround and assail Nanny, Stitches, and Beard. Nanny and Stitches drop two of the five. Wings and Bizzle corner and knock out their crossbower.

Beard declares they come in peace as he transforms into a giant fire elemental with a split beard and he runs in a circle through the surrounding kenku burning them and fire punching one into flames. The wooden floor ignites in a perfect circle around Nanny and Stitches as they dispatch the last few up-close kenku.

Fire Beard yells primordially that none shall escape his wrath as he blazes a runway of fire toward the gear-perched crossbowers, dispersing them. It occurs to Beard that incinerating Baellart’s historic clocktower might earn a gig at his next performance review so he noshes his Ransom & Salvage brand Salvage Bar and reforms as a water elemental, retracing his steps to extinguish his own conflagration.

Wings observes the flame-engulfed ladder and drops off the edge of the mezzanine. As he runs at the kenku crossbowers now fleeing Beard’s flames, he swerves to knock out a wizardly kenku he finds attending a large electrified brass sphere evidently powering the clockworks. The rotating gears coast to a halt.

Bizzle watches Wings disappear into the gathering smoke and steam. He attempts to employ the nifty repeating crossbow dropped by the kenku to give them a taste of their own, but it snags on his scimitar and breaks. He drops off the side of the mezzanine following Wings and stops to ineffectually consider the purpose of the electric sphere. He offers Beard assistance, but Beard, beating down the fire with his heavy winter hermit blanket, waves him on. Everything under control here.

Stitches backs out of the fire and sees movement in a pile of rubble that had concealed the kenku ambush. A closer look reveals no further danger or movement so she fishes out a gear suitable as a hat, thus inventing steampunk fashion.

Nanny dashes around the back of the gears to pursue the fleeing kenku with sneaky shortbow shots as they surround Wings. She comes across a bloody greycoat abandoned under the gears which Stitches nabs on her way by.

Wings and Nanny clear away all but two remaining kenku who flee up a spiral stairs in the corner, pursued closely by Wings.

Wings emerges on the second level and finds himself in his usual position of strength: surrounded. He’s pressed into the corner by three repeating crossbowers and three fighters. Bizzle joins the fray, running past a fighter to tie up the crossbowers. Nanny dodges up the stairs and goes to work on the fighters harrowing Wings. Stitches follows and joins Bizzle against the crossbowers.

Downstairs, Beard extinguishes the last of the flames with a tidal wave. For his next trick he dumps five wasps out of a jar and then embiggens them to giant size, dispatching them up the stairs to mix it up with the second kenku wave.

Wings takes a significant beating but the kenku are no match for the operatives and quickly succumb. Wings freshens up with his salvage bar while the wasps form an escort around Beard as he rejoins the group. Stitches presses on to the next room.

The clockworks in this room, three feet off the floor, are driven by the shafts from below. It appears to be a workshop with tools and replacement gears at the ready. Stitches climbs the gears and has a great view across the room to the back of the clock face. Beard proclaims his motto, Go big or eat a ham, and is carried up the gears by his five wasps. Nanny follows in and can see legs under the gears on the opposite side of the room. She also hears the skittering of many small things and can make out two heaps of bloody greycoats.

Wings surveys the gear room, thankful the gears are stationary and not mashing everyone up. Which reminds him. He dashes back downstairs to finish off the electric sphere wizard, only knocked unconscious, so the wizard can’t restart the works.

Beard declares himself master of the wasps, as anyone could plainly see. A voice answers it also is a master. Stitches confesses she is not a master. With that formality settled, many clockwork critters scurry out of the gears and attack.

Nanny struggles up and positions herself in the rear on the gear to lob in arrows. Beard sends the wasps forward to meet the clockwork critters, personally ice knifing one that tripped attacking Stitches. Adjacent Stitches gets a little frostbit from the spell but that doesn’t keep her from smashing the frozen critter to bits.

While the party battles above, Wings scoots under the gears toward the legs standing next to a red drape. It turns out the legs are attached to a caster who polymorphs Wings into an orange tabby cat. As a cat, Wings can squeeze into a cage beneath the red drape and finds Epi Glottis, quite dead. Tubes connect Epi Glottis to a cylinder with blue glowing things on top.

The battle of Beard’s pretties versus the leg guy’s pretties is trending to the R&S team. The wasps hold the line freeing Nanny to choose her lethal shortbow sneak attacks unimpeded from the back. As the clockwork critters thin out, the wasps isolate the survivors allowing Stitches and Bizzle to press through to the leg guy. Bizzle fumbles an attack and his evil scimitar Sinistra flies into Stitches.

Cat Wings isn’t the mighty fighter that barbarian Wings is, but still has the same measure of courage. He launches at the leg guy and leaves a nasty scratch. The leg guy drops concentration on the polymorph to cast a different spell as Bizzle and Stitches rush at him. Wings rages and stands to beat on the leg guy, breaking his concentration on maintaining a concealed barrier. Wings gets accidentally smacked by Rocky IV when Bizzle botches a throw aimed at the leg guy. Stitches, recently lacerated by Bizzle’s errant scimitar, falls to the ground. Bizzle collects himself with a second wind and jumps down to the leg guy for some proper introductions.

The leg guy reveals that he is none other than Birt the Insidious, son and heir of Craig the Insidious (DBA The Insidious Lich & Co., LLC). While the R&S team gasps at that revelation, Birt flies into the air, snatches up the cylinder atop the red draped cage, and makes for the grimy window. Nanny takes careful aim and her shortbow arrow finds Birt, sending him crashing through a gear and to the floor as his concentration is broken.

Beard takes out the last clockwork critter and sends the giant wasps to surround Birt. Stitches, already on the ground, crawls over to Birt and smacks him with her warhammer. Wings joins her and plants his macuahuitl on Birt. Bizzle learns from Birt that Epi Glottis is in the draped cage.

Things look bad for Birt but he has another trick up his sleeve. He passwalls through the floor to the lower level, still clinging to the cylinder containing Epi Glottis’s essence. Beard’s wasps pursue through the passwall as do Stitches, Wings, and Nanny. Wings gets another piece of Birt who tries to blink himself away but writhes in pain when he botches the escape. Nanny puts one more arrow into Birt and he crumples unconscious right before Beard falls on her. Wings snatches the cylinder just before a ring of green lights surround Birt and arms pull him into the ground.

Upstairs, Bizzle breaks open the cage and pulls the essence hoses out of Epi Glottis. Bizzle teleports his lifeless body to Rooster’s office where Rooster has no time to wonder why Bizzle always picks his office as his destination. Epi Glottis is rushed to the infirmary and Bizzle returns for the cylinder of essence.

At the after action review, Nanny reports Larry, Moe, and Curly became victims of the crushing gears, hence the bloody greycoats found beneath them. Rooster wants to know why no one administered Plan B to Epi Glottis the moment he was found. But in the end Epi Glottis is reunited with his essence and released in good health, albeit with the experience of an adventurer of only ten seasons rather than twenty seasons.

Stitches pins Bjargle, a scale-skinned elfy looking peddler of poison, to the floor under her considerable dwarven carriage. His limbs are pinned by Beard’s mud mephits. The mud mephits filling Bjargle’s mouth move aside so he can refuse to answer the party’s questions concerning the source of Chartreuse Death-X, known mundanely as Venom to Bjargle’s organization.

Bjargle answers his interrogators with derision and suggests a direct lineage between Beard and his summoned mud mephits. Stitches offers Beard a sprig of aloe for that burn and Beard strikes Bjargle in retaliation.

Bjargle summons his strength and throws Stitches off. He yanks free of all but one one determined mephit to run for it, but is repinned by mud mephit breath and Stitches.

Nanny watches out the windows of the appropriated house for would-be rescuers or returning homeowners while surreptitiously dropping eaves on Bjargle’s thoughts with her helm of telepathy as he’s questioned. As usual, the helm mines the answers that a reticent captive almost never gives up verbally under questioning from Beard and Stitches. It’s a wonder more adventurers don’t invest in helms of telepathy.

Nanny sees a figure approaching the building. It walks right up to the door and begins knocking loudly. The figure announces itself loudly through the door as Catty Batty. Catty Batty from R&S! Ransom and Salvage, the semi-secret special operations located at 123 Hush Way in Waterdeep for whom we all work! Let me in!

The ambiance of their covert operation ruined, Bizzle lets Catty Batty in. She takes in the scene of Stitches sitting on Bjargle, Beard screaming threats as he forces Bjargle to drink Stitches’ precious supply of fermented cat liquor, Bizzle futily suggesting Bjargle think of his future, and Nanny pretending not to pay any attention while scraping Bjargle’s mind for any hints of the origin of CDX. Nanny cuts to the chase: what if we pay you? But his price, as Nanny overhears his mental calculations, works out to 200,000 gp. That’s a nonstarter.

Nanny excuses Bizzle and herself to quietly discuss the telepathic harvest from Bjargle:

* Merrshaulk, who will feast on Beard’s bones starting with the legs, is some kind of religious figure. Possibly very hungry.

* Bjargle refers to himself as “pure-blood”, soon to be a Malison, and others as “half-blood”. They are yuan-ti.

* Shiv was merely a low level pawn, unworthy of the Holy Guardians.

* Bjargle derived the calculation of 200k gp by multiplying the 20 “producers” by the 4 vials per day by the 50 gp unit cost by the length of time the production would run.

* Even if he escapes, Bjargle reckons his life is forfeit because some guy named Bdexle is surely going to kill Bjargle for his shortcomings, kill the party, kill everyone. Bdexle is coming, possibly from a warehouse.

* Bjargle’s revelation that CDX is actually just frappéed unicorns is definitely probably untrue, which will be good news for Stitches who sobs uncontrollably at his vile fiction.

Stitches searches Bjargle and retrieves four vials of CDX and a strong smelling sandwich, a scent familiar to Nanny from the streets of Undertown. Catty Batty and Stitches sample the sandwich and get strong smelling sandwich breath. No one samples the CDX.

The party agrees that no more hard-won information can be extracted from Bjargle so he is tied up with rope and mephits and the party adjourns to a tavern other than the Bjargle-friendly Frosted Unicorn.

Across town at the Sea Shanty tavern, a lowkey, blue collar, dock worker-friendly establishment, the party meets proprietor Mr. Phhhlearbe who shows them to a dark table suitable for the discussion of dark matters and they order a round of fish stew and ales. Hyper extrovert Beard immediately disrupts the calm environment so Catty Batty sends him outside to stand watch for fallout from the Bjargle matter.

Inside, Stitches explains that Merrshaulk is god of the yuan-ti people. When Mr. P brings the stew, Nanny tips him a gold piece and asks for some local information in the finest symbiotic tradition of adventurers and tavern keepers. Mr. P never heard of Bdexle, but certainly the yuan-ti have been moving to Undertown in droves. Bizzle mutters something about making them pay to build a wall around themselves but sensible people at the table politely ignore his outburst and Mr P continues. Rumor has it that the yuan-ti are frequently around the south part of town in the warehouse district. He emphasizes the direction with his pointing finger before excusing himself.

Outside, Beard perceives the twang of a bowstring plucked in anger. An arrow appears sticking into the tavern wall beside him. He starts pounding on the tavern door screaming the assassins are coming, but he’s ignored by the party all too familiar with his antics. Mr. P draws a brilliantly shining sword from an old, nondescript scabbard on the wall behind the bar and suggests Beard come back inside the tavern. Mr. P expertly eyes the trajectory of the arrow and declares the culprit has gone so there is no need for Beard to lay waste to those buildings. He is adamant that innocent civilians, especially those with as many problems as Undertown’s poor, should not be needlessly incinerated and inhumed. Beard reluctantly agrees just this once.

The party leaves the Sea Shanty to avail themselves of the concealment of the dark night, aided by Nanny’s efforts, to sneak the few blocks to the warehouse district. Nanny reads the nearby thieves’ cant to locate the most dangerous area and they navigate to a long continuous fence with no yuan-ti in sight. They walk down the fence looking for holes through which to peer, but no such flaw is found. The fence eventually abuts the outside wall of an ordinary building. They continue following the edifice until the it becomes a stone wall. They follow the stone wall until finally arriving at a corner to turn. Around the corner is the front of a temple-looking building, with broad steps leading up to a couple of reptilian-looking guards. The party pulls back to discuss the possibility whether this reptile-guarded, temple-looking, danger-rated building in the middle of the yuan-ti occupied warehouse district might be the source of CDX

In the back of the party, Beard is lost in thought contemplating whether to transform to a rat or a snake. A couple of snake men unironically, but surprisingly, drop from the stone wall above and savage him with poisoned scimitars knocking him unconscious. His teammates rally to his aid, surrounding the greener of the two yuan-ti abominations. Stitches gets Beard vertical again and the party works together on Green Abomination. Stout Bizzle makes himself a tempting target while Nanny and poison-immune Catty Batty pour on blade damage. Beard gets revenge for the surprise attack by conjuring a lightning storm, killing Green Abomination.

The fighting attracts the contribution of the two guards, running up behind the adventurers who next turn their attentions to Blue Abomination. Stitches has already begun softening him up and Beard caught him in some of the lightning storm, so he’s easy pickings when Catty Batty strikes stunningly and flurries blows upon him. He doesn’t last long.

The guards, Green Malison and Black Malison, gang up on vulnerable Beard and Black Malison’s poisoned longbow arrow collapses him again. Fortunately, neither of the guards arrive in perfect fighting condition so Bizzle’s scimitars drop one and Nanny and Catty Batty easily take out the other.

The noise has not yet attracted the attention of other assailants so there is a little time for Bizzle to knock back both his Ransom & Salvage brand Cure Lite Potions and for Beard to get back on his feet courtesy of his Ransom & Salvage brand Salvage Bar. The bodies are looted and stuffed into Ransom & Salvage brand Body Bags.

Good to continue, Catty Batty casts pass without a trace so they may infiltrate the building. Most of the party must use the stairs to ascend, but Catty Batty runs straight up the wall, her lithe form poised magnificently on the railing against the moonlight for the guards’ supervisor to see. Catty Batty is assailed by four fresh yuan-ti.

Catty Batty’s cohorts run to catch up, utilizing some rarer forms of attack like Nanny’s shortbow arrow, Bizzle’s weaponized pet rock Rocky IV, and a nice metal heating from Beard that disarms one yuan-ti. Beard erupts earth under the yuan-ti as the two sides clash into melee fighting.

Green Two is the first casualty from Catty Batty’s rapier and she pivots to throw an elbow into Green One. Stitches’ auto-return warhammer goes sailing past Green One and doesn’t return so Nanny gets that sneaky kill despite dropping a blade. Beard bonfires Blue One and Catty Batty joins the roast dropping him too. Archer Green Two, the last remaining in this wave who introduces himself as Thhhh, becomes the center of attention. He’s switches from longbowing Catty Batty to poison biting Bizzle. Nanny sneaks a lethal attack on Thhhh and he’s out.

Two more yuan-ti join the battle from a door opening from one of the many surrounding apartments. Beard encores erupting earth under them and they unsteadily converge on Bizzle after Rocky V conks Blue’s noggin. Blue must be concussed because he fails critically to hit Bizzle and instead kills his longtime friend Purple next to him. Nanny puts Blue out of his despair.

Catty Batty digs past the erupted earth to enter the open apartment. She discovers several bowls and hot cauldrons, hopefully related to the production of CDX because the party may not have the stamina to assault a second warehouse.

The poison trade must have a deep payroll because yet another green yuan-ti, lurking in the apartment, bites and constricts her. A blue yuan-ti waits for the next adventurer to run in for him to attack and poison. Nanny obliges. Nanny fights back, but there’s nothing sneaky about it. Beard keeps his distance by creating a thorn whip to lash at Blue. Bizzle adds his scimitars to the fray.

Green regrets ever grappling Catty Batty as she monks on him relentlessly, killing him with an assist from Stitches’ warhammering. Blue meets a similar fate as Nanny sneaks a fatal cut.

With the short time available before the next inevitable wave of yuan-ti arrives, Stitches quickly surmises that the bowls of weaker CDX are concentrated in two stages of cauldroning to reach the final lethal potency. All that remains to discover is the source of the poison to start with, and Fly Beard finds the answer to that puzzle down a ladder in the corner of the apartment.

In the basement workroom, a yuan-ti herpetologist, quickly slain by the battle weary party, maintains cages of mature venomous snakes, milked for the active ingredient of CDX. An adjacent room contains breeding pairs and incubated eggs for the future expansion of the enterprise.

Mindful of the mission, the party notes the design of the concentrator cauldrons. They carefully select and gather several breeding pairs based on Beard’s expert observations. They also take the extraction apparatus and collect a sampling of eggs.

Bizzle uses the last teleport charge in his helm to return everyone safely to R&S where they learn that Rooster hates snakes.

Rooster perpetually interrupts the perpetual card game in the warren, summoning Huck, Fin, Blameless, and Silly to his office.

This time it seems the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors took their watchful eyes off a shipment of unicorn horns on the recently-missing Golden Merchant cargo ship. The Order paid in advance, declining shipping insurance, so it’s up to R&S to recover the valuable horns. Any valuable extras that can be pilfered from the salvage shall be regarded as icing of profit on the cake of payment. Epi Glottis has all the details.

Down at the docks, the adventurers find Epi Glottis working on his brass barrel masterpiece, the Kowalish Apparatus Thingy (KAT). He re-familiarizes them with the multitude of levers used to operate the crustacean contraption and introduces the Basic Underwater EQuipment for Recon (BUEQR), a chemo-magical substance that provides breathing and barrier against water. Epi bronzes their weapons to mitigate corrosion from the underwater work and hands their elected leader, Blameless, the scroll of mission directives.

Blameless, exercising his authority as perfunctory leader, announces he will like to kill everyone with the KAT, specifically not excluding his teammates. He unrolls the scroll and reads the single word: Activate.

Levers hum and position themselves to automagically deliver, over the next several hours, the KAT and its R&S occupants to the last known location of the missing Golden Merchant. The disembodied voice of Epi announces over the audio system that they have arrived and the operatives spread BUEQRs all over their faces as well as the KAT rear hatch and shuttered portholes. Silly levers open the forward shutters and they behold the remains and cargo of the Golden Merchant scattered across the sea floor. Some fish men are looting nearby crates and barrels, rudely stealing what R&S has commandeered.

Several fish men riding sharks converge to ram the KAT. A much larger fish man with twice as many arms as the usual fish men arrives on an even larger shark to supervise the ramming. He yells motivationally in sahuagin, a language unknown to the party.

Huck and Fin go to work on the shark fish men with the KAT. Fin batters the sharks with the right claw and Huck grapples the big shark with the left claw. Blameless slings chill touch through the shutters. Silly finds clever ways of conducting shocking grasp through the KAT’s structure into the sharks and riders. The four-arm fish man, whose name seems to transliterate to common as Nhhhhrrrgh!! exchanges testy words with a regular fish man and Nhhhhrrrgh!!’s shark settles the disagreement by eating the other shark and rider whole.

Everyone hears a  rumbling over the sounds of underwater battle in the distance, and some boulders fall away revealing a cave in the exact same distance.

The fighting proceeds rhythmically until Nhhhhrrrgh!!’s four arm forearm wristband turns especially green, apparently signaling a quick withdraw because that’s what happens next.

The respite gives Silly the opportunity to tinker with the KAT which has been damaged to the point that lights are out and Epi can no longer coherently fuss at them over the audio system. Silly removes several shark teeth from the KAT’s hull as well as a magical trident [Trident of Fish Command, DMG 209] which she hands over to strong Fin.

There is more distant rumbling and tumbling from the cave, as though it earnestly summons their attention.

Once Silly has the KAT nominally operational, they guide it forward to collect the strewn cargo, hopefully to include the sought unicorn horns. Alas, a patch of algae the KAT walks over rears up and attaches itself to the starboard claw. Fin tries to beat away the algae with the trapped claw and Huck fires bronze tipped arrows into the beast, but martial damage seems only to cause bubble eruptions to detach into new baby algae.

One algae baby enters through the open shutters and attaches itself to Fin, restraining, blinding, and suffocating her. Huck rushes to stab at the algae without skewering Fin, and Fin eventually axes it to death from the inside.

Blameless tries several flavors of chromatic orb on the algae and settles on acid damage, but the algae blight spawn master, as everyone agrees to call the mother algae, absorbs the orbs until Blameless runs out of spells. Silly adds on a ray of sickness and wisely proposes to avoid the algae fields in the future. Blameless magically mends the KAT and they walk out of the algae family patch. The algae withdraws.

Silly, Fin, and Blameless exit the KAT to search through crates and barrels for valuables leaving Huck to unroll his tools and make repairs to the KAT’s furnace. Most of what can be found is ruined foodstuffs, but they do recover a meager collection of coins missed by the fish men and some oil flasks.

The unicorn horns are notably absent from the wreckage so Blameless proposes taking the KAT in to explore the rumbling cave. Being killed by a cave seems a better prospect than returning with a mission failure so everyone agrees.

The inside of the cave looks like an ancient palace. Across the back is a worked wall that Fin’s stonecunning informs her was made by neither man nor fish. A gate in the center is closed by an adamantine chain, allowing individuals to squeeze through but not the KAT. Beyond appears to be an enormous constructed pit with a chest set on the exact opposite side.

Huck locates a weak spot in the gate where time and sea have eroded the bars. Fin leans hard into the hydraulic levers and the one remaining good claw spreads the bars wide. Huck deftly pilots the KAT silently through the hole.

The chest creaks open revealing the unicorn horns. The chest is loaded onto the KAT successfully but the creaking noise has awakened a kraken in the pit. Abundant inky blackness drifts from the pit, challenging the party to escape a horrible death.

Fin leans hard into the forward lever, so hard that the mechanism breaks and the KAT is adrift. Kraken tentacles capture the vessel and pull them toward their inevitable watery demise.

Fin reminds everyone she has a helm of teleportation. As the mission always comes first at R&S, she teleports the chest of unicorn horns back to headquarters while Huck prepares an oil bomb using the oil flasks and oxygen-rich BUEQRs with a twenty second fuse. Blameless continually mends the KAT to slow down the kraken’s destructive crushing, buying Fin the time to teleport back in and out again with her cohorts, saving the day.

Epi reports observing a great explosion burst from the sea, filled with kraken guts. Although in some trouble for losing Epi’s KAT, the mission is hailed as a success.