Heartsieved: Trecherous Tunnels, Vital Vehemence, and Wild Wardens

Discovery, Exploration

Myska's Menagerie plunge into the caves beneath the Shrieking Flats to find a Temperance Shard cluster long ago placed their to vitalize the wilds.

The next morning, the companions readied themselves to delve down into the the probable caves beneath the Heartsieve Waste. Before they did so, they did have a brief conversation of a possible quick jaunt up to Bactran for supplies. Quick jaunt? Well, yeah. With the party's new helm of teleportation incorporated into Virtuosa's Mindmask, that trip could be a quick jaunt. Maybe swing by Shook's Nook to see if he had any useful, grab some spell components, be back before brunch. The party decided to not do it but that would be a revolving conversation re-approached a few times they ever left the wastes.
  Right before the companions left the airship, Millie realized one last thing on the to-do list. While he would be bringing Barry and the two dwarven skeletons with him, the aarakocran ghoul had probably outlived its use. As his skills got better, the onyx in it's skull could probably be used for a better creation that was less suspicious in civil environments (both the mutated aarakocra base as well as the hunched ghoul form were not that subtle). Asking for Astrid's assistance, she obliterate the creatures head with two heavy swings. Millie finished the job with a stone projectiles skewering through the chest. Millie then made polite conversation with Astrid while digging out the Onyx with his fillet knife before dumping the corpse over the side of the ship.
  With all else taken care of, the companions final started their long day of adventure. Finding a cave in the mesa's east of the Shrieking Flats, they slowly wound their way into the grounds beneath the awful terrain. Having landed the Airship about one-third the way along the Mesa-edge of the Shrieking Flats, the plan was to wind their way toward the center of the flats and then extend through it at a northeastward angle. The overall tactic, whether it lead towards the divined Temperance Shard Cluster, was overall feasible. The heavy network of tunnels beneath the flats would allow consistent choices of of splits and junctions to allow a fair degree of course correction. During the journey, Astrid and Millie would alternate castings of Locate Object every hour. Millie would mark the floor with his mold earth cantrip along the way.
  The first note of interest in their journey began about 30-45 minutes into their journey. They quickly realized when they had crossed from the caves beneath mesa to the cave beneath the Shrieking Flats because of the intense increase in noise. Loud enough to painfully deafen, the party learned that there were sections of cross currents where wind dove into the tunnels from above and wailed on its way to find the exit. Chupta tried summoning Jafi to see if even he could hear in the crosscurrents but the sensitive ears of the echo-locating bat blinded him entirely.
  The party wisely decided that they did not want to deal with these crosscurrents that would likely continue to crop up during their journey. When available at the next series of intersections they would delve down to attempt to get beneath the top layers of caves. From there, it would be a fight to stay beneath the top layers of cave but to not accidentally delve into the deep underdark. Controlling single direction of travel in the caves was tricky but doable with Crush's skill. The double directional control would complicated and require them to accept setbacks occasionally
  The next three hours of travel would pass in the darkness before the next item of note. As the companions where deep in the earth, they approached a small cavern with an upward slope. Near their entrance to it, they found a scattering of bones in the area. The bones were blackened and rubbery with long gnawed sections on them smoothed over. Whatever had killed the creature had been abnormal. Looking around the area, Millie found something else odd.
  Around Millie's head height on the wall the gnome found a small patch of rock with many dimpled impacts on it in close proximity. Nearby, he found a rock worn down on one side with a shared haggard side. It looked as if someone had been smacking the wall with it over and over again. Millie reasoned that someone had escaped the Shrieking Flats above by finding a cave but had delved too deep in the dark and had gotten lost. In the dark and silence, they had sought out any sensation to fight the insanity of sensory deprivation and begun smacking the wall with the rock. (This is something that really happens to cave explorers and workers)
  With the break in their walk, Millie thought it now a good opportunity spend a few moments to establish the telepathic bond on the party. With the bones, there might be monsters in the region. Millie's understanding of the complete situation was stupendous minus one thing. The monsters that had killed this individual were nearby and the act of ritual casting the spell lured the creatures to the party. Like the individual with the rock, a person's own actions drew them here.
  Millie's ritual was interrupted as Astrid saw the three creatures coming in the gloom. The fiendish creatures were quadrupedal with bulk limbs and thin tail. Cartilaginous spines bobbed from their backs black and red eyes peered from over top an over-sized mouth. Thin teeth bordered a disjoint jaw and large sack of muscled flesh hung beneath that like an inflated frog's throat. Creatures bounded in.
  Chupta took a moment to conjure a great sphere of purple sand over his head prepare for the combat but left the first strike for Astrid. Astrid met the enemy with a thrown bead from her Necklace of Fireballs. As the blossoming fire rose around two of them, their limited response to it queued the woman in to the fiendish nature of these creatures. Hexing the nearer of the damaged creatures, she prepared for the coming assault.
  Millie, interrupted from his ritual and slamming his book away, decided to remove one of the variables from the equation immediately by elimination. Did I say elimination? I meant Disintegration. Targeting the one hurt more by the fireball, the gnome incanted out and sent a beam of grey pulses to obliterate the creature. Millie also had his troop of archers firing away
  The one of the two remaining creatures bounded forward, swelled its throat pouch, and emitted a mind-breaking how... that really only effected the two dwarven skeletons. The other flung itself at Astrid. As it attempted to bite down at her from the air, Astrid conjured a magical shield to prevent the initial hit from getting to her. The jaw distended and the creature began to engulf the shield to wrap the teeth around her arm anyway. Savagely reaction, Astrid shattering her shield of force sending the beast flying back off of her.
  Chupta above began a different plan of his own. He wanted one of these. Conjuring a pair of curtains to open up and reveal a shadowy door, the portal led to a new private space Myska allowed him to create. Not wanting to ignore his friends, he would send bolts, arrows and other creations of sand out at the more wounded creature that Astrid was fighting while attempting to get the other in his new home. His first plan was to just teleport it into the home with a Scatter incantation. The problem was there was no fast way to close the door.
  The creature squeezed it's way back out as Astrid finished off the other creature with a relentless hex teleport, uppercutting it backward and then moving to execute. This combat would then turn into a group effort to catch Chupta his prize.
  Astrid and Chupta could blast it back with flail and sand slashes Millie incanted a telekinesis spell to attempt to pick it up. The fiends cartilaginous back sprouts flexed outward resisting the magic momentarily before the gnome persevered to pick it up. The gnome moved it to the small door but got it stuck on the way through. It would then take a chunk of force from others to pop it in. The door was slammed and then more panic as everyone had to decide what to do. Millie held the door with his telekinesis but that was not a long term solution.
  It would take a dispel magic from both Astrid and Millie to shut down the shadow door. More specifically, Millie drew the curtains back closed around the door into nonexistence Chupta looked to Millie, “ If you ever need anything, I will owe you one” Millie was puzzled, not following. Chupta then referenced the help on the capture and expounded on the offer of “Maybe a wish or something.”
  In the aftermath, the party saw the one howling creature actually killed to be degenerating into grey ooze that Astrid identified to by demon ichor. Rooting around the den area, Millie found enough bones to piece together a skeleton. Chupta brought everyone inside his ring for a 10 minute break to recuperate before they continued on their day.
  It would be another three hours and another three castings of Locate Object before the party would finally get a register. What could have taken days or weeks had taken them the majority of a single adventuring day with some good voyage planning and some good old fashioned dumb luck. In this case, the ping registered for Astrid and it was from a high angle above the party. More so, the divination registration only lasted for a bout 15 steps down the tunnel so it was WAY above them.   The party immediately turned around to head back to the last intersection to take them upward on onward. Corkscrewing and hair pinning their way back up, the companions got even more lucky in that the short time they were in the upper layers of tunnels, there were relatively none of those ear-shredding crosscurrents. Another divination spell helped them stay centered on the approach. One final hazard interrupted their approach to the Temperance Shard cluster.
A light breached the tunnel ahead as the cave opened to a blurry outside. The wind wailed. Despite the light, the temperature was dropping. They were still well below the surface yet it seemed like their were coming out to a mountain side. The closer they got to the haze, the more the temperature dropped. Within fifteen feet of the opening was freezing and all they could see was a dust storm.
  Millie and Astrid approached the edge of the cave to get a better view but were instantly assaulted by a dreaded could. From below the ledge, a fuzz of short tendrils reach out like a growing shag carpet. Before them on the wind, more specks of filaments grew as they whizzed by.
  The pair lurched back into the cave with their body temperature drained. Crush chimed in recognized the stuff. The stuff was called brown mold because it was a brown colored mold. Also, it fed greedily on heat and grew aggressively to get to it. While Crush was explaining this, Millie set about creating his arcane eye to explore the storm. Astrid Pulled out the Shade Crystal to find it glowing. They were close.
  It took time but Millie began to build a mental image of what was outside this cave. There was a crater in the ground that cut through the surface level tunnels under the shrieking flats. It went down maybe another 15-20 ft and was on average 90 ft across. The crater walls and base where filled with a layer of subterranean brown mold. It was thriving with exposure to sunlight and an air current to move the colder temperatures away. The wind buckled down into this crater and mixed the shrieking flat's sand storm with the spores of the brown mold All-in-all, this was a really sucky spot. The arcane eye scanned the walls of the crater to find other tunnels interrupted by the crater.
  Slowly, a plan formed. First up, a telepathic bond was enacted. Next, they were close enough to register the Temperance Shard Cluster with the divination. Using that, Millie located the appropriate tunnel to continue down. He then traced a line back and forth between that tunnel and theirs multiple times to estimate a direction and distance for Chupta to dimension door him and Astrid safely through the sand and spore blizzard. It was close, but with Chupta's encouragement to, “Don't-Screw-Up”, Millie gave the man good directions.
  When it came to the rest of the party, some sacrifices and a decent amount of magic would be needed. Millie stripped his dwarven skeletons of gear and put it in the cart. He then had Barry climb into the cart and curl up. Millie conjured a wall of stone to extend from the crater wall to provide some over from the cyclone of mold-sand-frost clouding the air. Crush would then tank the rest of this. The tortle polymorphed Millie into a giant owl. Crush then Conjured a Cone of cold to freeze as many spores in the are and region as possible. It' Wouldn't be enough to kill everything between them and the opposite tunnel but it would reduce the pain that was to come. As Millie flew across with his taloned cart, Crush followed after in a wild shape. The two came barreling in to the other tunnel still in their bird forms, the plan having worked.
  Re-situating themselves, the companions Had not more than 200 feet to walk close in on the Temperance Shard cluster's holding area. They wheeled through a round-about intersection of caverns. On the opposite side, a pale purple glow announced their presence before they could be seen. Approaching the end of the short hall, the cavern beyond was enormous stretching into the shadowed distance even for Astrid.
  In the center of this cavern glowed a cluster of shards trapped 8 ft up in a pillar of a clear, organic, glass-like substance. The substance was layered off of it and stretched away from the base of the pillar. It seemed to be some form of mucous. Looking around the massive cavern and the maze of tunnels around, Astrid made a guess as to what had excreted the substance and Astrid chose chaos. Pulling out the geodic prism, the woman hurled it out into the cave to impact the floor and slide along.
    The ground began to rumble and a squeal was heard from the south east beyond where Astrid had thrown the vibrating geodic prism they had gained from Virtuosa. A moment later, Astrid watched as a gargantuan worm appeared at the edge off her enhanced darkvision and slammed into the ground to attack the area that was the epicenter of all the vibrations. The woman began to run out to where that giant worm was when the ground continued to rumble from the southwest as well.... and the north.... there are more of these things.
  The companions moved in to the south as Millie told Barrie to guard a northern tunnel. Things were about to get bad. As the party charged at the one that they could see, Astrid lit it up with faerie fire for Chupta to then bog it down with his slowing mire. Chupta continued to set up the battlefield by his his smuggler's gambit to pull a host tools from his ring. In a gush of sand, the slime gun was in his hand, this massive worm-catching apparatus he had made and a quick-rivet wet to the bogged down worm, and his final large trap and another quick-rivet went to intercept the beast coming from the south west. Chupta sent two sand slashes to attempt to activate the southwest quick-rivet to anchor the trap in place but couldn't manage to do so. His one shot towards the mega contraption did anchor that though.
    From the north, a giant worm came round the bend to completely ignore one of Barry's arrows. Astrid threw another fireball bead to the southwest to attempt to scare it away but the blast did not divert it from swarming with its family to the intruder. The light was enough to give Crush a target. The tortle continued in that direction while conjuring an incendiary cloud to eat across the creature. That giant worm then continued out of the cloud to get snapped by that large trap. While not out, it did slow it down in its undulations onward.
  The glowing, slowed worm moved forward to get wrecked by Chupta's worm-catching device that was anchored in place. It slammed and thrashed for release and while it did break through the contraption it also tore itself apart in the process.
  And then the Burrowing Worm came into view. Each of these previous worms were gargantuan, yes. Each of them were the size of a purple worm, yes. But then there came a behemoth from the south nearly twice the size of those before. It took the ground between it's children. Astrid rushed in, warped behind her glowing prey and smited out. She then attempted to wrap counterclockwise around the creature to not be flanked between it and it's parent. What Astrid hadn't expected was that the mother had 15ft reach. The mother instinctive lash out, chomped Astrid up, and gobbled her down into muscularly restraining darkness and Acid.
  The burning worm would then gobble Chupta up all the same. In panic, the man fell apart into sand to leak out of the creature's mouth miraculously with a blessing to move freely. Despite this, Chupta would be gobbled up, burn with acid, and the slink his way out a few times in the coming moments to his own horror.
  Crushed conjured a massive thundercloud in the cavern to call down lightning between the two creatures eating his friends but he two would get eaten. While Astrid struggled between flail and eldritch blasts trying to enough damage for maybe trigger a reflexive up chuck, Crush continued to call lighting to him to fry the beast from the outside-in.... an inverse of the phrase that somehow needs this context to make sense. It was only as his body was slowly eaten by the acid and his concentration on the lightning cloud fall did he eventually call upon his symbiosis and hydramorph
  While all that chaos went on, Millie was having quite the time of it. He had not prepared the right spells for adventuring today. In addition to watching Astrid and Chupta and Crush and Chupta get eaten, Barry too got chomped and gobbled. As Chupta cycled in and out, Millie realized the party needed all of the help they could get. More feet on the ground, get the shard, get everyone out.
  First things first, he too called on a mighty magic to conjure a demiplane... the same one he saw Chupta summon. With the howler having time to rest hopefully it would provide some aid. In time, it did come out but knew exactly where it was and whose territory it was in. In flight, it managed to give a shriek that incapacitated Chupta's repeat eater. That worm would then focus its fight on the howler and be adequately distracted.
  Who wasn't distracted was the glowing and slowed worm now slogging it's way to Millie.
  Next, Millie Attracted a slamming tail attack from the mother (mostly on accident) that actually shattered the outer layer of the shard-cluster's slime column. Millie's true plan was to then get up to it, and pump a disintegrate into the column which shatter it to dust. Casting Telekinesis on himself, he lifted himself up into the air to claim the floating Shard Cluster. Telepathically, he screamed to everyone that it was time to go and to group up.
  The slow worm got to the gnome and almost chomped him if not a shield. Barry's murder flanked in and chomped around the shield but the gnome barely managed to slide from it's mouth. Oh, also, about this time three more itty bitty baby worms began to crawl into the battle field for food from their parents. They were only the size horses.
  Astrid tried to warn Millie away from his plan. It was too difficult to see in the worm's stomach to see. She wouldn't be able to locate everyone to use the helm. Millie didn't care, that wasn't the plan. He called for Chupta but the floating man was haggard and planning on fleeing into the tunnels himself. Millie's notions of going back in were crazy. As Millie floated up and offered himself to the mother, the children held back... as Millie came tearing through the toothy maw he telepathically screamed to get the Shade Crystal out. The helmet wasn't the play, the Myska's ability to recall them home was. As Millie tore through teeth, he barely stayed conscious. As the acid ate at him, a purple sand armor around him shattered leaving him barely conscious at all.
  Outside, Chupta refused to put himself in danger again. Flying and far-stepping in short teleports away, he went to flee on his own... before being tail smacked by a leviathan down to the ground. Facing his fear, he drifted like sand into the things nose, down the throat, and close enough to Astrid to be near Myska. As Astrid called for Myska to take them all home, her light penetrated through the layers of muscle and sinew to blind everyone from black to white and white to red as a dusk sky revealed itself. The companions where gently strewn about the deck in the open air once more.