Session 62: Somebody's Been Here
General Summary
Within the cavern, the party found immediate evidence of intelligent creatures having been there beforehand. Several tunnels had been cut into a cliff face on the west side of the cavern, and a large heap of excess earth and stone built up in the northern corner. Boot prints and cart tracks made a muddy mess of the entire shoreline, and a broken ladder dangled from the cliff face.
The gang inspected the excavations and their new archaologist friend Trislee determined whoever conducted this excuse for a dig site to be absolute amateurs. No supports in the tunnels, no sorting or searching the excavated earth, no care taken in the dig itself; tunnels stopped as soon as the earth was too solid to dig with a pickaxe.
They decided to follow the cart tracks, and along the way to the cliff-top they observed the shuffling tracks of a huge creature not wearing boots.
At the top of the cliff, they found more broken and abandoned dig equipment, and more abandoned tunnels. Lins decided to look through them for clues, and with some help she excavated a small sand-filled cavern and found a sketched map in a lost hip-satchel. A bit of water was also running down the wall, but Trislee froze it up.
The map didn't scan to any of the caverns they'd been in so far, so they pressed on west, following the excavator's tracks, and peeked out into another huge cavern. They couldn't emerge without alerting the shriekers, but Nemara was prepared. She summoned an arcane eye and stealthily moved it in to scout for them.
They looked out once more over the top of a cliff; the clifftop had shriekers planted every 30 feet - overkill, given they could function at 60 - and a handful of miners/excavators bustling away at the cliff base below. At the northern extremity, given more distance from the shriekers, sat a vile beast.
It was nine feet tall if it was an inch, a putrid green color, and while its... main head had the appearance of a troll, it was disfigured and distorted from head to toe. It had other faces slaughing off its form in random places, toenails and hair sprouted from it like freckles, as well as ears, fingers, and more. The whole of it seemed to rot and fester even as it idly watched the workers below. It sat on a pile of rotting viscera, mostly chewed bones.
The party discussed a few options, and decided to backtrack, re-entering the big cavern nearer the troll and away from the shriekers. Along the way, they got into a startlingly-deadly fight with some shocking motes of light, but after surviving that fight, Trislee jumped out from cover to get eyes on her target, and disintegrated a good chunk of the troll's grotesque form.
It didn't die, however, and its howl of rage and pain shook the cavern walls as it leapt to battle!
Report Date
05 Dec 2022
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