The Secret Room and More Excitement
General Summary
And once that secret door opened up quite a stench burst forth. I guess that’s what happens when your room is locked up for who knows how long. So we sit there and wait for a few hours for it to air out, which is just fine with me because I’m feeling a little woozy. We finally climb the stairs and find an office. It looks just like any other office I’ve seen.
There’s a desk in the middle of the room with a journal on it, and a cloth bundle with rocks in it. We open up the bundle and drop the stones on it. Most of the stones pushed themselves to the edge, but form up like some kind of map.
[Journal is a long bit of world lore that I don’t have a copy of, the gist of it is there were warring kingdoms, and this kingdom figured out how to farm the squogs for their eggshells. They also figured out if you drink the blood of a squog you can mind-control those who have been bitten by a squog, there’s more but I don’t remember all of it, this is what allowed us to figure out the map shows where squogs are]
When we examine the wardrobe it has several vials in it. There are six labeled as broken chain. We each agree to take one, and I drink one because after that poisonous bite I’m still feeling a bit weird. We also find several vials of some kind of Greek fire, Cap’n does his best to shove as many as he can into his bag.
Looking up at the wall, there’s a map on it, studying it a little bit I realize it’s the Great Forest next to us, and there are several fortresses labeled on there, including one at Blackbird Point. I wonder if that’s what we’re in right now?
Going back downstairs, when we get back into the column room, the rock figures immediately form up again. I see the girl over in the corner, and Cap’n immediately attacks her throwing a jar of the Greek fire at her. Then a squog appears in front of us screaming in pain. What did the creature do to the girl? Before going into battle with the creature I cast guidance and Owl’s wisdom on myself. I feel the need for a little extra guidance during this fight since the last one had me nearly eaten by a squog queen. I pull out the Greek fire I have and realize I’m a terrible shot, so I turn into a chimp and start chunking jars at the creature.
Which was all well and good until the queen grabs me while she’s on fire, and suddenly I’m a chimpanzee on fire. That is not so cool. I have no clue what everyone else is up to, but I turn into a giant bear, and I’m still on fire. This darn stuff just won’t get off of me. Finally, I run into the room next door and bury myself in the green dust and smother the misbegotten fire. That really hurt.
However we have killed the squog queen, and we open up the stone map again and see that one of the rocks that previously had been there moved to the side this time. We deduce the black rocks are the mother squogs, and the white rocks are the smaller squogs.
THE NEXT DAY
After resting we head South trying to find the squogs. We track them for a while after a little bit Milli notices wolf tracks. Cap’n finds a juvenile squog body with a thick black arrow in the tree behind it and several bodies. I take one look at that mess and loudly announce, “This is squog burial practices. Now since I don’t care one whit about their burial practices I say burn the body to make sure it doesn’t contaminate anything else.” [OOC, I think this is the first dice that ended up in dice jail that night] “Sounds good to me,” says Cap’n. After our nice impressive funeral pyre has burned for a bit we hear a crashing in the forest behind us. “Stop where you are pale skins,” as we turn we see two creatures with green skin and protruding tusks sitting on wolves. The one who spoke looks like a warrior, and the second one looks like some kind of shaman. “Orcs,” I mutter under my breath, “just what we need.” “We don’t want to deal with you either pale skin,” said the warrior, “But circumstances force it. You have unleashed a great evil, and you must fix it.” “What evil?” I ask. I have a rather large inkling of what evil he’s talking about, but why not play dumb? Besides both of my companions who usually do better with these conversations seem to be quite ill and not up to talking today. “The [name from the world lore that I can’t find, so we’ll say squogs]. They had been contained, but have now been unleashed upon this land again.” “Oh that, yes we currently hunt some that escaped from a mine.” “Yes, there are two among the diggers, and there are more heading swiftly towards your stone city,” the warrior pointed down towards Blackbird Point. “You will take care of this, if you do not, we will solve the problem by razing the town. We cannot have these creatures running loose again.” “We will deal with it,” I promise. “We hold you to that. If you do not we will raze the town and will kill you.” And with that threat, they left. Well, that’s an exciting bit of news.GOBLIN CAVES
After some bit of tracking less than successfully, Cap’n finds a path heading towards two leaning rocks. We climb up it only to be attacked by goblins. I would never have thought goblins would be difficult, but these creatures were actually intelligent and worked together and they got the drop on us. Usually, goblins die quickly, but these lived far beyond what I would expect. [OOC it may have to do with my amazing ability to roll that night and the three more dice I put into dice jail] I don’t know how these cursed creatures did it, but they nearly kill me! I threw a quick heal spell on myself, and then aid Cap’n and Milli. Finally, we kill the last of them. Just as we are about to take a breath and calm down we hear movement in the caves. I rush in to see three cocoons, and untold numbers of eggs. I head to the first cocoon and cast a flaming sphere on it. Milli thrusts her torch into the next cocoon. Behind us, a mother squog charges towards us and knocks Cap’n out with one hit. I hurry over to help him, only to take a stunning blow. As I stagger back, Milli runs in hitting him with the polearm the Cap’n had dropped. I heal myself again to keep from going down and run in again. It swings on Milli, while I throw a heal on Cap’n. He staggers up, but as that happens Milli is knocked down with the squog’s claws wrapped about her. “Fall back Cap’n, I can finish it!” I shout and cast my spell praying it doesn’t kill Milli. It staggers her, and the Cap’n throws one last hit at her summoning spirit guardians. She throws one last blow at Cap’n knocking him down yet again. I drag him back throwing a heal on him yet again. “Get Milli up,” I yell as I shift prepared to deal with whatever is still in the cave. “I’m too late,” he says. “What? No, she was okay just a moment ago, stabilize her. We can heal her in a few minutes.” “I can’t! She’s dead! I don’t have the spell to save her. If this had happened a few minutes earlier I could have, but I don’t have the spell.” I may have said a few words I would normally not say in the presence of a cleric. We take her body over to our sick companions to “guard” as we prepare the queen's bodies and the goblins to burn. As we move the goblin bodies, and the various other disgusting debris in that cave we discover 12 uncut gemstones and a gold nugget.
Report Date
21 Dec 2021
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