“Blurbble … Help! Blorp … Splutter… thing!” Jax cried. His relaxing swim along the face of the forgotten jungle pyramid known as the Sunken Queen had been interrupted when an enormous creature surfaced beside him. It looked like a frog – except it was the size of a house. And had an eyestalk with three eyes. And four lashing tentacles. And a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. One of those tentacles wrapped around Jax’s chest and began to squeeze, cutting off his cries. Nat rushed forward, and cast Charm Monster, but the thing didn’t appear to get any friendlier. Erin wrapped the rope she had tied to Jax around her wrist, and pulled with all her might, but she might as well have been pulling on an oak tree. Then the thing whipped its tentacle up, Jax still held in it. It waved him overhead for a moment, then opened its maw and shoved the rogue inside. It chewed for a moment, swallowed, and let out a satisfied burp.
Erin was still holding the limp rope in
her hands, its far end severed by the beast’s teeth. Activating her Celestial
Armor, she flew out to the sinking corpse, tying the rope around one tentacle
in a desperate attempt to try to haul it to shore. Nat cast Levitate on the blubbery body; the spell
wasn’t nearly powerful enough to raise the multi-ton creature, but combined with the
water’s buoyancy, it helped to slow its descent into the muck. Wren still had
her Wind Walk spell active, and she
flew to Erin’s side, grabbed the rope, and flew it back to the shore, where the
others all grabbed on and began to pull with all their might. The thing might
have moved a few feet nearer to shore, but it continued to sink, threatening to
pull them in after it.
Inside the belly of the beast, Jax
struggled to get his bearings, a task made no easier when the whole thing went
belly-up. Thankfully, its digestive peristalsis ceased when the creature died,
so its digestive tract wasn’t trying to crush him. But its belly was full of
water and other, more disgusting fluids, and Jax had to hold his breath to
avoid drowning. He could barely move, but he managed to pull his rapier and stab.
He stabbed again, with a sawing motion, then a third time, and there was a rush
of cooler water as he cut an opening. He wriggled through the narrow slit, then
swam to the surface, gasping and sputtering. His friends cheered as he emerged,
and let go of the rope. Nat released his spell, and the Froghemoth’s corpse
settled into the depths, carrying their rope with it.
Everyone expected Jax to swim straight
for shore, but he didn’t. “I’m sure this place has a door,” he called to them,
treading water, “and I’m convinced it’s along here somewhere.” He cast Water Breathing on himself, swam back to
the statue of Shorshen that adorned the face of the pyramid, then dove below the surface.
The statue was submerged to mid-thigh,
he followed it down to the knees, then on to its feet. The water was muddy,
limiting visibility to a few feet, and that grew even less as the depth
increased, and the light dimmed. The image of Sorshen seemed to be standing on
an area that extended out from the face of the pyramid; encouraged, Jax
followed it even deeper. At last, some forty feet down, he found a broad
opening that led into even deeper darkness, into the heart of the pyramid.
Jax surfaced, and swam to shore. “Yep –
there’s an opening, all right,” he reported as he pulled leeches off his skin. “But
it’s really dark down there, and of course it’s all under water – you’ll need a
way to breathe.”
Jax was good for a day or more with the Water Breathing he'd cast, but that left the rest
of them, well, high and dry. “No problem,” Tomas piped up. “I’ve got Life Bubble!” He cast the spell, and
everyone felt themselves surrounded by a cocoon of cool, fresh air. Nat cast Message, to ensure they could stay in
contact, and everyone cast some form of Light
spell on something they were carrying, then waded into the pool surrounding the
Sunken Queen.
Except for Erin. Erin was many things,
but a swimmer was not one of them. She was very good at sinking – excellent, in
fact – but that was about the extent of her expertise in the water. Her usual thrashing
attempts to swim were probably better described as attempts not to drown. The
fact that she should be able to breathe (or so Tomas claimed) did little to reassure
her as she gingerly waded into the muck and followed the others’ fading lights
into the depths.
Jax led the way, as they picked their
way along the bottom. Sure enough, a portico of sorts extended out from the
pyramid’s base, with a trapezoidal opening outlined with a frieze of carved
images of Shorshen. A broad set of stairs led down into darkness. The entire
pyramid was sunken on one side, so the stairs slanted down from left to right at
a sharp angle. Erin moved forward to take the lead, but slipped and fell
several times on the silt-covered slanted staircase. As they entered the
structure, the water around them abruptly changed from murky to crystal clear.
At its base, the staircase opened into a
vast hall, its floor covered with a horizontal layer of silt. The ceiling rose
some fifty feet above them, all still submerged and supported by four huge
stone pillars, each decorated with hundreds of stylized images of the same
beautiful woman carved into the pyramid’s face.
Erin was still in the lead, biting down
her ongoing fear of drowning as she slogged forward, stirring up a cloud of
silt in her wake. She moved past the first pair of pillars to stand in the
center of the room. She could see three more broad passages leading out of the
entrance chamber on the right, left, and straight ahead, all cloaked in inky
darkness beyond the reach of her feeble light. But something seemed to move at
the edge of her light, to her right. She squinted, and could just make out an
enormous eye, squinting back. “Something’s here!” she hissed to Nat over their
magical intercom.
Nat forwarded the message as he moved
right around the back of the pillar; Jax cast Haste even as Nat moved. Shadow quickly summoned a quartet of Ball Lightning to provide a protective
cordon in front of Erin. Nat readied a spell, and waited for something to come
into view. He didn’t wait long – a gigantic Devilfish suddenly jetted out of
the passage to the right. Nat cast Charm
Monster as it rushed past him; he was sure
the spell should have worked, but it seemed to have no effect, and his Arcane Sight revealed that there was
already an aura of Enchantment magic surrounding the creature.
Tomas was waiting at the front corner of
the pillar, and as soon as the Devilfish was close enough for his arrows to
have some chance of hitting through the water, he began firing. Three arrows
sank into its flesh. Erin was taunting it: “C’mon, you big fishstick!”, but the
creature pulled up short, then jetted out a cloud of jet-black Unholy Blood into the water. It filled
the center of the chamber, blotting out all vision. Thankfully, the Life Bubble spell protected most of them
from having to inhale it, but Jax could barely keep down his breakfast as the
foul fluid filled his mouth and lungs.
Blind within the inky cloud of blood, no
one could see three smaller Devilfish swim into the chamber. Two of the spawn converged
on Erin from two directions, but missed the unsuspecting paladin. The third spawn
swam around the left hand pillar to lash its tentacles at Wren from behind; she
felt the rush of water as the rubbery appendage narrowly missed, but had no
idea what had just tried to strike her, or from where. She knew she was in
danger, though, and needed to act. She considered trying to Summon an ally, but knew that the spell
would take a long time to complete, and that she was likely to have it
disrupted by another attack. Not knowing if she was moving into or away from
danger, she floated a few feet north, then cast Holy Aura to protect herself and those around her (lucky for her,
the spawn was still behind the pillar, and couldn’t reach around it to attack
as she cast).
Shadow had seen the huge Devilfish
coming in from the right before everything went black. Hoping it was still
around there somewhere, he sent two of his Ball
Lightnings in that direction, hoping they’d encounter the enemy, but he
didn’t hear any popping or cracking that would indicate success. Jax had seen
the huge thing come to a stop right in front of him; he swung blindly at where
it recalled it being, but hit nothing but water. Erin, just as blind as
everyone else, moved back away from the creature she’d seen. As she backed out
of the cloud of blood, she spotted the spawn behind her; Serithtial flashed,
and more blood clouded the water, this from the dead spawn’s severed tentacles.
Tomas kept shooting into the same place where he’d seen the Devilfish before, counting
on his Seeking bow to overcome the
concealment its inky cloud provided.
Nat was outside the cloud of blood, but
everything and everyone else was inside
it, so he was just as blind to the action as everyone else. But he’d seen
enough to know that this thing was big,
so he conjured an Elemental Wall of
electricity diagonally across the chamber, hoping none of his friends had moved
much since he’d last seen them. The sparking wall stretched directly across the
Devilfish’s body, sizzling it. It jetted forward, desperate to get away from
the pain, and collided with Erin, sending her sliding back across the slippery
floor. It lashed out a tentacle, slashing her with spiked suckers, then pulling
her close for a Savage Bite from its
horny beak. Now Erin’s blood
clouded the water of the chamber.
Unbeknownst to Nat, one of the spawn was
also caught in his wall. It darted forward, swimming between its mother’s
tentacles, then lashed out at Jax, but missed. The spawn who’d come up behind
Wren swam around the pillar, to have a clear shot at an array of targets, but
missed the cleric again (the devilfish seemed to have no difficulty seeing
through the cloud of blood, for all the good it did them). Wren still couldn’t
see anything around her, but she knew that the last she'd seen, her friends had
all been at floor level, while the giant Devilfish was so large that it filled
much more of the chamber. “Tell everyone to stay low!” she ordered Nat, then
summoned a Blade Barrier ten feet
directly over her head, extending north-south the length of the chamber.
Unfortunately, the unseen spawn attacking her was also below it, but its
enormous mother was not, and the blades of force slashed and diced its rubbery
skin.
It jetted forward yet again, over Erin’s
head. Erin found herself surrounded by a writhing mass of tentacles, and she lashed
out with Serithtial. The blade struck again and again, severing a pair of
tentacles. The next thrust drove into one of its saucer-sized eyes, and then
she drove the holy blade deep into the creature’s bloated head, slicing through
its evil brain.
Tomas continued firing blindly into the
same spot. He didn’t realize that the giant Devilfish had left – or that one of
its spawn had now swum into that space. The arrows didn’t care; they struck
mother or child with equal force, and the spawn died as its mother did. Jax had
felt it attack from the front, so he swam away from it; as he emerged from the
cloud, he spied the third spawn lurking at its back side. It lashed
ineffectually at him as he swam forward and stabbed it with his rapier. Shadow
felt Jax leave his side, and swam after him; he hammered the spawn with a
volley of Magic Missiles. It lashed
out one more time, and this time succeeded in wrapping a tentacle around Jax,
although it missed with its Savage Bite.
Jax’s arms were immobilized by the tentacle’s grip, but he used his ability to
cast Tricky Spells, and hit the thing
with Magic Missiles without even
having to move his hands. Its grip loosened as the final devilfish floated dead
in the water.
As they waited for the cloud of blood to
dissipate, they explored the perimeter of the room. To the east, from where the
huge Devilfish had emerged, the passage was almost completely clogged with
sediment but a narrow tunnel led through the mud into the lower reaches of the
pyramid. Nat peered down it, but wasn’t keen to explore on his own, so he waited
for reinforcements. Jax finally arrived to lead the way. The tunnel wound
through the mud for several yards, before opening into a spherical chamber
hollowed out of centuries of sediment. Its walls were lined with glittering treasures:
coins, gems, statuettes, and jewelry. Nat sorted out a handful of magical
items, but they left the rest behind for later collection.
There were two other passages out of the
entry chamber: one leading straight ahead towards the center of the building
and one leading up and to the west. “I say we go that way,” Shadow said,
pointing west. “It should lead us out of the water.”
But it didn’t. They found another large
room that was apparently where the devilfish family kept their lair, but even
at the highest point the water still reached the ceiling. A long hallway led on
north out of that room, and they followed it. At its end was an ancient square
room, littered with pottery shards and rusted bits of unrecognizable metal. The
left-hand wall was decorated with a large mosaic of a lynx on a dark
background, surrounded by floating globes of light. “That mosaic’s magical,”
Nat warned, and everyone gave it wide berth.
Another passage led back to the east,
and they followed it into another high-ceilinged chamber supported by another
pair of square pillars. Despite the huge supporting pillars, the walls and
ceiling were criss-crossed with hairline cracks and fractures. Ahead, the passage continued east, but was quickly completely blocked by sediment. But to the
south, the ceiling opened to a shaft leading upwards into darkness.
“Looks like we go up,” Jax said, eyeing
the shaft.
“But there’s a passage back there we didn’t
explore,” Nat pointed out. They’d never gone down the hall leading north from
the entrance hall.
“Forget that – we’ve got a Queen to
kill,” Tomas growled impatiently. “Is she still up there?” he asked Wren.
She nodded. “At least the Crown is.”
Ignoring whatever mystery they’d left at
their backs, the moved on. Jax went first, easily swimming up the flooded
shaft. At the top, he emerged into another dark room, similar to the one he'd swum up from. But this one was only partially
flooded. In the center of the room, the water was only about six feet deep, although
it dropped off quickly where the floor slanted to the right. He swam back down
to tell the others, and they began to follow him up.
Again, except for Erin. While the others
easily made the swim up the shaft, Erin continued to thrash her arms uselessly,
never getting more than a few feet off the floor before sinking back down into
the mud. At last Shadow carried a rope up the shaft, and the others used it to
haul Erin up like a fresh-caught fish.
There were two exits from the new room.
The one to the left followed the slope of the pyramid down, the water growing
deeper with every step, although from what they could see it never managed to
reach the height of the ceiling. To their left, the floor sloped upwards, and
they soon found themselves sloshing out of the water and onto dry(er) land. The
hall led to some sort of storeroom; a horizontal wooden platform had been built
into the wall in front of them, holding a large barrel, a heavy chest, and
several hanging fillets of smoked fish.
“Is that fresh fish?” Jax whispered with
astonishment.
“No, it looks like it’s smoked,” Nat
responded.
Jax rolled his eyes. “I mean, it’s not
thousands of years old. That means somebody’s living here!” There was a clatter
from behind him as Erin shook the water off her weapons and armor. “Shhh!” he
hissed, but he feared the damage was already done. He quietly cast Greater Invisibility on himself, and
acting on his warning, Nat cast Haste,
and Wren Bless. Jax listened, and he
was sure he could hear furtive noises from the room ahead of them. Jax crept
invisibly forward, Tomas moving silently behind him. As the corridor opened
into the next room, Jax paused, then poked his head inside, hoping whatever was
there couldn’t see past his invisibility. The room held another crude
horizontal platform, this one littered with several filthy straw mats, leather
bags, and fishing poles. But more importantly, several large,
amphibious-looking humanoids crouched in the corners or under the platform,
ready to pounce.
The PCs earned 13,600 XP, putting them
at 641,718 XP with 850,000 required for Level 17.
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