The World of Telvar

Kain, who had moved forward with his Flame Blade, was grabbed and eaten as well. Finally the front of the party became aware of the growing disaster and turned to fight. Quentin dropped a Faerie Fire which actually caught the bodies inside rather than the creature, but still helped. Morgan stabbed it, as did Albee, who began wasting it. The other creature was suddenly fleeing.

Cassian moved to stop it but was bowled over and partly crushed. Felix leaped in front and with his incredible strength, braced himself against the floor, his shield pressed against the monster. Felix’s feet slowly slid back, but he held firm.

Meanwhile, Albee and Bogomel were ripping the first one to pieces (we won’t talk about Quentin’s attack rolls). It collapsed into a mass of moss, but the bodies were buried somewhere within. The other one tried to push past Felix again, who held firm despite incredible pressure. Finally, the combined attacks of Albee, Bogomel, Morgan, and Donald (with Magic Missiles) brought the creature down. We recovered the fallen, who were slowly suffocating but otherwise not in bad shape, although Nakumanu had been trashed between the Fireball and the stabbing by other party members.

We continued to explore after healing up, and eventually uncovered what was probably the lair of the things, a pile of “hard bits.” We found a scroll with Forget on it, among other things! Donald’s collection of illegal spells is nearly complete.

We Magic Mouthed the room we camped in (the basilisk’s lair) in an attempt to both be productive and encourage the page of the Book of Infinite Spells to flip, which it did after a mere 3 spells. The next spell up: Rainbow! It was handed to Cassian.

We discovered an exit off a sheer cliff about 300 feet up, which did two things: first, we have a way to leave here without passing Chossos, the many-headed monster that had blackmailed us before to let us down to the lower level, and second, we were able to determine which way was west as we found the setting sun. This made it much easier to map, enabling us to use Quentin’s direction sense to complement Chiaro’s cartography and land navigation skills.

We discovered a room with massive numbers of bones, mostly crushed, strewn about the room. A check from Felix revealed no evil nearby, and so we went into the room. Whereupon utter disaster occurred. Ranore may groan when he hears this.

Just as we entered the room, complete darkness fell upon the party, overwhelming the dozen Continual Light pouches. At this point, no one could see anything, and couldn’t hear anything either over a sudden unearthly wail. Events become difficult to reconstruct, but here’s roughly what happened.

The party began to flee out of the room. Quentin dropped a Slow Poison on himself. Felix moved to cover the front of the party. Chiaro cast Wraithform and vanished.

Cassian, Bogomel, Chiaro, and Nakumanu collapsed in a heap on the ground. Something very bad happened to Felix.

Balinor activated his Ring of Protection from Evil and nearly made it out of the room. Before he could reach the exit he was suddenly grabbed by some horrible insectoid monster and dragged upward. He missed it and before the Ring could finish activating, he felt supernatural panic rising up within him and began flailing wildly, uselessly.

Morgan was also caught in pincers, and found himself staring into his worst nightmare, a giant bug of some sort. He was lifted off the ground. Morgan stabbed with all his might, and smashed the creature with Thunderstruck, inflicting a mighty blow on the creature.

Alduin began to search the room using his sound analysis abilities. Albee found the bodies on the ground, and discovered that at least Cassian was still breathing. She could not be shaken awake. So he kicked her, and she began to stir.

Kain made it all the way out of the room, and turned to face the inky darkness, beginning a Dispel Magic.

Quentin dropped a Faerie Fire in the area, but it had no noticeable effect. He then brought up a Flame Blade.

Then suddenly Kain and Albee dropped to the ground.

Alduin discovered a huge rock under which lay the pinned Felix, bleeding slowly from four internal crushing wounds. His imbued vulnerability to rock hadn’t helped either.

Quentin and Cassian stuffed their ears with wax to cover from further sound effects. Quentin began a Dispel Magic, as did Cassian. Donald’s Dispel had no effect on the darkness.

Both Dispels failed on the darkness. There was screaming overhead as Morgan continued to stab his grisly bug opponent over and over, taking tremendous damage. Finally there was a loud thump as Morgan landed near Cassian, bleeding to death rapidly.

Alduin realized he couldn’t get Felix out from under the rock and moved to find other party members. Quentin found Cassian, but she was casting a second Dispel, and they couldn’t communicate.

Alduin was grabbed by a creature and hoisted into the air, screaming in panic. He could do nothing as the creature continued to pound him. Donald launched a Fireball, spraying the upper section of the room with fire, roaring over Quentin.

Alduin dropped to the ground, smushed and in extremely bad shape. A monster approached Cassian; Quentin had no choice but to stop it, and stepped in front, Flame Blade ready. He swung and missed, and was grabbed in the creature’s claws, but did not panic.

At that moment, the party was just about finished. An unknown number of beings were attacking with Fear and sleep effects, and no one could hurt them significantly. Of those remaining only Quentin, Cassian, and Donald were at fighting strength. Several people were bleeding to death. Several party members were missing entirely.

Cassian’s Dispel went off, and the darkness and Quentin’s Flame Blade collapsed!

The situation: there were two bugs, with hellfire burning in their eyes—some sort of giant demon mosquitoes. One of them was down with burns and lots of stab marks—Morgan’s buddy. Felix was pinned under a rock. Alduin and Morgan were bleeding to death. Kain, Albee, Bogomel, and Nakumanu were down. Chiaro and Balinor were nowhere to be found.

Realizing the creature had him in a pincer grip, Quentin shifted form to a crow, and squirmed free. He dove out of the creature’s grasp and dive-bombed… at Kain.

Donald was down attempting to heal Alduin, and needed relief, but there was no one to help him. The creature had two reasonable targets, and it chose Cassian. Before it could do so, Cassian had dumped a Healing potion down Morgan’s throat, easing much of the wounding. It descended on her and grabbed her, though she did not panic.

Quentin bounced off of Kain, waking him up. Kain filled his ears with wax, and moved to help the fallen comrades.

Quentin flew over to Alduin and dropped a Cure Serious on him, finally freeing Donald for action. Donald whirled and launched a bank of Magic Missiles at the creature. Then a second. It resisted one but took damage from the other. Donald pulled out his Wand of Magic Missiles.

The creature was rising with Cassian, but she had a trick up her sleeve. Cassian pulled out her Bead of Force and hurled it at the creature. The bubble missed, but launched the creature into a wall, smashing it and forcing it to drop Cassian, who floated safely down with her Featherfall ring. Cassian hurled a vial of Holy Water at it, damaging the creature further.

The third bank of Magic Missiles forced it to attach to a wall to avoid falling. The fourth bank finished it. It crashed to the ground in a heap.

Quentin dropped a Cure Serious on Morgan, but it wasn’t sufficient, so Cassian Death’s Doored him. Quentin Transmuted the huge boulder on Felix to mud, and Felix escaped death. Chiaro was nearly invisible but sleeping peacefully as were the other fallen party members. Finally, where was Balinor?

There had been a niche/alcove about 15 feet up, and Quentin flew up there to discover Balinor, nearly but not dead, slowly bleeding from a wound throughout the entire combat.

Morgan sustained a minor permanent damage, the loss of a comeliness point to a big white mark on the back of his neck where the demon mosquito had bit him repeatedly.

We healed for about four days.

Having sustained no losses ultimately, we felt good about the encounter. We continued our exploration.

Apparently those were the monsters that convinced Ranore’s party to leave, long ago. We can see why.

We discovered a weird room with crystal growing everywhere, and weren’t sure what to do with it, so we left it alone for now.

There was another room with a gigantic beetle in it, sleeping. We didn’t go past the beetle, though our map makes it clear that there isn’t a whole lot of space back there, probably just a lair of “something.”

We encountered a ravenous and beaten lizard that Quentin healed and talked to, discovering useful tidbits of information. Apparently there were several creatures that sounded like the demon orangutan of Castle of Diamond (see Summary #51). There were also bipedal lizard creatures with metal equipment around somewhere (lizardmen or troglodytes?). We came to a passage with a mushroom forest that housed large white things that vanished from the edges of our vision when we turned. We ignored them, and they didn’t bother us.

At the end of a passage was a sheer cliff, and we could see lights ahead, perfectly illuminating a 15 foot tall pile of gold, gems, platinum, weapons, armor, everything you could imagine. We thought it was the lizardman lair.

Then we heard a sarcastic deep voice from above. We looked up. It was Lludd.

Lludd, the behir.

We handed Lludd about 1200 gp worth of coins and thanked him for not killing us and warning us about his territory (we rarely have the luxury of being informed). We left, and of course were obligated to pay a second toll out in the wilderness.

Whatever. We were annoyed, but didn’t let it show.

The last thing of note was the umber hulk that jumped Alduin in another passage. It had dug a hole out of what appeared to be low-grade diamond earth. Weird stuff.

We beat it down just in the nick of time—it nearly slew Alduin, but we inflicted 115 damage to it in 9 segments, and it went down.

We have completed perhaps three-fourths of the lower level. Hopefully we can finish up next time, or at least discover another level!

Joel/Balinor