Kythorn 24: Deal with the Devils in the Cave

General Summary

A wise hero once said, “When Evil is afoot and you don't have any arms, you gotta use your head. And when Evil is ahead, and you're behind, you've gotta do the legwork! But, when you can't get a leg up, you gotta be hip! You gotta keep your chin up and kick some-”

... well you get the Idea

Ten days passed since Wissum fell in battle against the… blobs. The Lumberjacks were still missing and we knew whatever the cultists had released would be waiting for us in the mountain would be horrible. In spite of the mounting odds Taniel, Lore, Gilna, and myself answered the call early to face evil and stop the blob-cultists from…. Doing more evil stuff.
We left New Gambit and headed down the West road. Our route was clouded by fog but the fog stood no chance against Gilna’s navigation skills. We managed to stay our course and came to a bridge with a black knight.
We had heard of this knight from the others. Rumor told us that he would let no one cross, but the others found it was easy to jump across just south of the bridge and avoid him. I thought perhaps the knight could be reasoned with… if it was even alive. I walked into Its line of sight and introduced myself and was greeted with “You shall not pass.” I couldn't quite tell if it was a very restrained soldier or perhaps just an enchantment so I asked Lore to help out. Lore didn’t have much luck either. He did have a good point though that if the soldier was any creature of intelligence it would have stopped the others when they crossed next to him. Since we needed to keep going we fashioned a simple rope bridge, and crossed. After wer crossed we decided to see if the knight would react to us on the other side. Gilna walked right up behind him and he didn’t even notice. While standing behind the knight she asked if we could cross the bridge and the knight flipped out! It charged at us, and Gilna and I both were not interested in fighting this thing, I yelled “Hey look someone’s coming across the bridge” and bolted as far as I could. Lore and Taniel had other plans though, and began zipping arrows at it.

Somehow we managed to get the Knight to disengage and we began a plot to remove the knight from its post without fighting it. Taniel spoke of the merits of destroying the bridge. He believed doing so could neutralize the knight by dropping it in the ravine, or by removing its mission and therefore its motivation to harm others. Lore thought it would be better to instead create a lasso using our rope and simply pull the knight into the ravine. I gave them guidance and they settled on cutting the bridge ropes. They were successful, and while the knight didn’t fall it cried out “WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?!”. Which was good enough for us.
Shortly after we came to the mountain cave. I was looking around for signs of the lumberjacks when the spirit of Minder appeared before me and led me to a pile of discarded lumberjack gear at the entrance, drag marks appearing to lead in the cave, and blobby footprints. Lore was able to find some deeper tracks and we followed them to a brazier. We remembered someone talking about lighting something on fire so I cast sacred flame on the brazier and the door opened.
Inside were several wailing blobs, a cultist in robes, and a whole lot of blood. I quickly cast bless on the others and stepped forward to squash the evil, but two imps caught the others from behind and I found myself alone on one side of the door while the others fought the imps. I also may have panicked as the blobs closed in on me. I cast sacred flame and it worked a little but my leather armor was all too easy for them to get past. Gilna ran to my side and eliminated the cultist before he could run away. After the imps were dead Lore and Taniel helped us bash the blobs into dead blobby pulp.
After catching our breath I drank a healing potion and clutched my amulet of Eldath to Preserve the lives of my companions. We looked around and found the pit in the center was filled with blood. Taniel found a trip wire connected to the door and was able to disarm it. We braced ourselves and devised our plan. Whatever lay behind the door was likely to be worse than what we just faced and hopefully we wouldn’t be too late.
As we entered we saw a lumberjack in the clutches of an orange creature with a beard of tentacles, horns on its head, a tail, and what looked like spikes all over it. Before we could do anything the creature slit the lumberjacks throat and the blood triggered flames to erupt and a portal to open. Through the portal came this thing with the face of a pig if its face was chewed by something. It had triangular ears jutting out the sides of its head, claws, and for some reason I wanted to ask it if it was the Gatekeeper.
After blessing my companions I sprinted to the lumberjack as they fought. I cast Spare the Dying on the lumber jack and just as I was about to drag him to safety Gilna fell next to me. I also cast spare the dying on her as Lore and Taniel fought off the evil creatures. My leather armor was no match for the creature from the portal, but I refused to leave the injured lumberjack and Gilna. I almost lost consciousness when Lore and Taniel struck the final blows into the evil creatures.
The portal closed and we looked around at the blood stained room. It appeared that many sacrifices took place here, possibly bringing into our world many creatures like those what we just fought. There was a crude drawing on the wall that Gilna recognized as a map. She made a copy of it for us while Lore and Taniel decapitated the creatures we fought. It was pretty gross.
As we escorted the lumber jack back to New Gambit, we decided to check on the knight. The knight was still upset so Gilna told the knight that the rope bridge we made was his bridge now. To my amazement the knight moved over and stood on the rope bridge. We decided the knight was a danger to the people of the land, and also probably not alive so we split up. Taniel and Lore jumped to one side of the ravine and distracted the knight by attacking it. As soon as the knight turned to them I ran up, cut the rope, and the knight fell.
As we walked back bloody and bruised I asked Lore and Taniel about their armor. They seemed to get hit far less than I did. They suggested I get better armor and were pretty shocked I only had leather. In the past my faith kept me safe but maybe some chainmail would also help. Even if it is noisy sometimes.

Report Date

12 Nov 2020

Primary Location

Devil Cave