S27: What Remains of Huther Linds

Four stand knee deep in rotting flesh and bone, one stands high above in a strange laboratory, all with a determination to leave this horrible place of pain. No longer high from battle, Nom and Mokon and not quite to the same extent Fey, begin to heave and gag -- it’s really disturbingly disgusting down here. A small cavern with thick flowing liquid lies to the north, a pillar stands high in the center of the room, and dim light pokes in from three grates in the ceiling to the south. Time and time the group find failure to escape, with ceiling too high, walls too slick, and ropes too short there is little success in leaving their wretched prison.

Glug decides that his higher vantage point is of little advantage (as is searching the multiple rooms he has access to… apparently) so he yells to his compatriots and jumps. Mokon is ready, catching the falling Glug easily. Nom attempts to do the same, but instead receives a boot to the face when her depth perception fails.

Butterbrew is chosen as the best bet to investigate the blood and bile cave to the north. She has little success, coming to a dead end a mere twenty feet into the cavern. As the group looks for alternate options they notice many large four foot wide, heavily armored, multiple pincered, extremely healthy bugs performing their daily rituals while meandering in and out of small holes in the rock walls, completely ignoring their new guests. Glug decides to put a stop to the infestation quick as he battering rams the weakest of all the strong stone walls with his staff. Nothing happens except that many more of the aforementioned high constitution, dangerous, carnivorous agents of death pour from the walls. Glug tries, once again, to close the entry points and blasts one with a dagger of ice. The carrion stalker (as it is lovingly named) is slightly annoyed (and barely damaged) that its attempt to live its life with minimal outside interference has been violated… hard. So, as the rock music plays, he sings to his brethren. As more and more of these hearty and menacing insects come forth. 

A little rant on the importance of scale. Let’s say you see a newborn kitten, mewing and waddling along. Cute right. Now, hit it with a stick… not too dangerous right… dead kitten. Now, scale that little bitch up so she is four feet wide. Now, go ahead… hit it with your stick now. And… kitten paw “thwack”… your intestines are spilling on the floor… but I digress.

A few in the group have the good sense to get to hell out of harms way, noticing how threatening these beasts appear to be, but two of the party members decide to fight… forty… FORTY of these huge skittering angry life altering critters. The fight goes pretty well at first. Nope, it doesn’t… that was a lie… it starts right off horribly. Alora and Glug almost die even though the super gracious DM gave them a whole turn to RUN AWAY. Nom throws herself into the ring with powers that she ain’t got. Mokon stands with his thumb up his ass looking at the cavern ceiling. And Fey is complaining about how much the DM talked about the god-damned bugs too much. (Story purposes Fey… story purposes.) Anywho… the battle is super-sideways right now. Alora has the idea to create a net… apparently a net that stops all life… but it doesn’t… because it’s a net, not a tank. And Glug makes the bugs chilly… and abruptly fall unconscious… because these GIANT bugs are dangerous as hells! Nom decides to help Glug so he doesn’t go belly up… and it kinda worked, except she fell flat on her green face… right blood, guts, and bile. Luckily (and only due to a DM who couldn’t take this “battle” (and I use the term loosely) anymore) and throws the group a bone, letting Nom superhumanly throw Glug into some roots that didn’t exist until this very instant. Glug still loses two of his fingers… not because he had to, but because the DM needed to feel… like he didn’t cheat the D&D gods. (Now where it gets good and honestly the DM checked out a little at this point because… well… you know.) Something along the lines of Alora trying to blind already blind creatures. Fey throwing a rope to old eight-fingers who just went invisible… for some reason… I guess to prove the blind bugs were actually blind. Mokon pulls his thumb out of his butt and then pulls Fey into the sludge which somehow… SOMEHOW hauls Glug to the top of the stone pillar out of harm's way. Nom is blowing bubbles in some pretty repugnant waste before she “remembers” she can just teleport to the top of the mound… poof… good job Nom. Alora wants to join the group… but falls just slightly short… unconscious to many… many… many bites… oh and a whole mouthful of maggots, puss, and whatever that crawler was eating on earlier in the day. Gross Alora… just gross. So Glug then, what any good wizard would do in the case of an enemy that can’t see anything (as I thought we had sussed out early… apparently I was mistaken)… turns Alora invisible. So now Mokon just has to feel around touching Alora in all her no-no zones before tossing her to safety. Of course now he’s stuck. BUT he has a pretty cool spell that actually does a great job at avoiding attack… and it works GREAT! Good job Mokon. Now enjoy getting pulled up onto the pillar by your stupid head. Alora now goes unconscious over and over because the DM doesn’t like to read so he missed the whole part where she should be a dead breeding ground for their gross larva offspring. So, instead, he gives the D&D gods the proverbial bird again and lets her live after an adequate amount of heaving petting by Fey and the 34th medicine check by the group. Glug drops invisibility… thanks Glug. The party is now safe. Just kidding, Alora goes unconscious again with an abundant amount of larvae infesting her body. The group takes a little time to stare slack-jawed at one another before Mokon remembers his LITERAL god given gift to take on the diseases of others. He does… Alora’s fine… 

Until… UNTIL… Glug notices his fog ring is gone… but somebody has it because FOG JUST APPEARED AND IT WASN’T HIM!!! So Glug walks back into the cluster of which they had just escaped. I guess to prove a point that he can die easily… or that it will teach the party a lesson… I don’t know. Anyway… down goes Glug and Mokon saves him. At this point the DM is DONE with the battle so all the bugs, just walk away… they just leave… 40 bugs… just give up… probably not super realistic… oh well… screw it.

A blanket is lowered… Nom climbs it… she kicks open a grate… almost kills some skinny prisoner that just tried to help by dragging her down through the hole… throws her scrawny butt back up… and realizes her bracer of pain-in-the-ass is loose and hurts like hells, but she can’t get it off by herself. The group follows her upward into a really crappy prison… even for a prison. Mokon tries to climb, but his chonky ass breaks the makeshift rope. So he tries again… yay… he did it… whatever. The group doesn’t bother to wake up the temper-tantruming-to-the-point-of-suicide Glug so they just tie him to the rope shimmy him up to the top. Nom asks a few questions; learning magic doesn’t work here and this place probably doesn’t come with a dental plan. Then she faints due to crazy amounts of tentacle recoiling bracer detaching pain. Mokon fixes that problem right quick after a dizzy spell by ripping off the bracer, seeing there is nothing but a picked clean white bone underneath, and chopping off Nom’s stupid arm. 

THE END… Holy Crap