Episodes 30 & 31 - The Mushroom Experiment & Flight from Nidlhammer

General Summary

Sword of Air

Episodes XXX & XXXI

Recounting the Fellowship’s perilous journey from Hvela to the Sunless Sea

The Mushroom Experiment

EPISODE XXX: Look into my eye!

The Fifteenth Day of Eleint, in the Season of Loende, 2020 N.E.

1. FLAILING AROUND BLINDLY
Five shadowy figures, hunched upon the deck of a small magical craft, drift upon an inky, sluggish river that carves a winding path through the vaulted caverns of the Underdark. At the helm of the boat, Kla’rota Xi-Huitl sucks thoughtfully upon the juicy carcass of a fist-sized woodlouse.
Lightstrike explores his newfound healing powers by tending to the wounds he endured in his desperate fight against the Grell. A comfortable warmth passes from his chest, through his arms and out of his palms, closing broken skin, fading bruises, and soothing inflammation. Moreover, while his friends rest, he stays awake and retains the strength granted him by the unquenchable thirst of the Flaming Tongue of Idu Maagog.
Zimlok snores loudly in a flatulent heap upon the stern, while Haji Baba, stirring from slumber, wonders at the eerie luminescent aura of soft blues, greens and pinks that is emerging in the distance.
Viper clambers over Mherren’s chest, causing him to snort and blearily peel one eye open. Then he starts as he sees the Quasit’s demonic eyes flash like glowing embers. Its lips move and a deep and familiar voice resonates in his mind. The Demogorgon!
“I am watching you, my Champion of the Sibilant Beast. And I fear you are becoming soft. In the Sanctum of Hvela you left behind the Tome of Uzdak, a sorcerous work of great power. It could have benefitted our dark cause greatly. And the cephalopod idol in the Devastated Halls; you shied away from its evil countenance. Are you truly a Warlock of the Pact of the Chain? Or have you been spending too much time with your…” (he snarls the word like it’s poison) “friends?”
“I… er… um…” Mherren stammers, confused and still half asleep.
“They are making you weak, Halfblood. Do not forget who you are. Who you could be. Who I am. Find the Shaghaspondium! Speak its glorious words and bring about a new Age of Demons! The foretold reign of the Demogorgon! Mwahahahaha! Mwahahahahahahahahahaha!”
The Quasit’s eyes grow black and cold. A single bead of sweat trickles down Mherren’s brow.
“Paddle! To the shore! To the shore!” rasps Kla’rota. “This is the way to the Melds!”
Splashing to the rocky shore, the companions find a long, high tunnel that glows vividly with the bioluminescence of hundreds of subterranean mushrooms. After days crawling and fumbling through the gloom, this soothing, soft bath of multicoloured light fills them with wonder and awe.
As they progress onward, they begin to notice that some of the fungi have been chewed and torn. Indeed, on closer examination whole swathes of mushrooms are lying limp and destroyed. A network of slimy trails crisscrosses the floor and walls.
“Look! There!” Lightstrike whispers. Up ahead is an enormous snail, each antenna as thick as a tree trunk and capped with a deadly-looking flail-like appendage. Its shell shimmers with an iridescent azure sheen, and it munches happily on a crop of mushrooms upon a low ledge.
“What is that?” gawps Mherren, and, swaggering up to it, gives it a firm prod with his great sword, Pyron.
The unsuspecting beast recoils, and then swings its massive head around to identify its assailant. Three of the flails connect with a sickening crunch.
“It’s not friendly!” gasps Mherren.
“Well, not now it isn’t,” says Haji Baba.
“Never fear,” says Zimlok. “I have just the thing!” And, chanting a series of esoteric squawks and whistles, he unleashes a gout of colour spray… which rebounds from the shimmering shell and blinds him. “My eyes!” Zimlok wails in a less-than-heroic fashion as he collapses to his knees.
Kla’rota gathers a ball of crackling electricity in his palm and sends a jagged bolt of lightning towards the giant snail, but that too is reflected and fries the Illithid where he stands. “Ow,” he grunts, his metal cap smoking.
Lightstrike peppers the creature with arrows as Zimlok protects the others within Leomund’s tiny hut. Eventually, the beast falls, and Haji Baba immediately sets about butchering it. She gathers two vials of slime (one, when thrown or shattered, acts as a grease spell; the other as a web spell – DM) and then starts hacking away at the shell. She manages to break off three shield-sized fragments, which peel away along with a film of sticky pus, and Mherren hews off a larger piece for himself. (See stats [posted on Discord] for your Flail Snail Shell Shields of Antimagic. Until you get a blacksmith to work them into proper shields they stand a 50% chance of breaking should they take damage – DM.)
Before the others can stop him, Mherren tests out an eldritch blast against his piece of shell. Again, the force is deflected and all are stricken by the resonance of the blast.
“Okay, okay! No more spells!” screams Haji Baba.
Lightstrike creeps forward and taps a piece of shell with the hilt of his dagger. Dink. No reflection of damage. It would seem that only magical energies are rebounded.
As healing potions are swigged, Zimlok’s curiosity gets the better of him and he plucks and eats a bioluminescent mushroom. And promptly throws up. Never one to learn lessons quickly, he scoffs another handful of mushroom, and this time keeps it down. Haji Baba notices his belly feathers glowing faintly from under his robe for the next hour or so, but tactfully chooses not to say anything and waits with anticipation to witness the inevitable bout of bioluminescent farts.
2. FUNGAL FEVER
As they continue on, they find more devastation of the mushroom caves, and have to pick their way carefully through trails of alternately sticky and slippery slime, but they are relieved to see no more flail snails. What mushrooms are left grow far taller here, towering like trees overhead as the stalactite-needled ceiling rises high, barely illuminated by the fungi below.
Passing under a natural archway into a smaller, adjoining cavern, the Fellowship notice the mushroom crops are untouched… and come face to face with four Duergar that stagger towards them from the shadows with stiff, jerking steps. Their mouths hang open drily as they lurch forwards with unseeing eyes. Mherren draws Pyron and Lightstrike grips Flame Tongue’s hilt, on the verge of uttering the fateful command…
“Gla-Shar!” comes a booming voice that seems to emanate from within the companions’ own minds. And the zombies halt in their tracks. From out of the darkness steps – or rather, glides – a bizarre creature that resembles a nine-foot tall, living mushroom. It has arms, and something that might pass for a face, but its expression is undiscernible, as are its intentions.
“Who walks my realm?” comes the same internally-experienced voice, but this time speaking in heavily accented Elvish.
“A-hem.” Zimlok steps forward with worryingly self-assured confidence. “I am Zimlok the Lightbringer, Friend of the Underdark, Ally of the Illithids. I and my good friend Kla’rota here are on our way to meet with the Elder Brain. These…” (gesturing dismissively to Lightstrike, Mherren and Haji-Baba) “… are my own mindless servants.” The three do their best to appear mindless. Mherren does rather better than the others, but the mushroom-creature is obviously unimpressed.
“They look like surface-dwellers to me. And that one looks like she has Elven blood. Xargraata would not be pleased. We are not to feed Elves any more, neither Dark nor Light. Nor Gnomes for that matter. Only Duergar may feast upon our crops. And Grimlocks. Elves… we kill! Myesh-N’or!”
And the Duergar zombies lurch forwards again. As they get closer their bloodless skin is noticeably discoloured and pocked with fungal growths, similar to the affliction of Longroot Oakroot, whom Lightstrike both fought and cured at the ravine in the Galentaur.
“Wait! Wait!” yells Zimlok, blurting out the first words that pop into his head. “Okay, okay. They are not my mindless slaves. I was merely testing your acuity. We are working with this Illithid to hunt down a nasty Elf whom we think may have passed this way.”
“And we just killed a big snail!” pipes up Lightstrike, proudly displaying his chunk of glimmering shell.
“Gla-Shar’zhad!” The zombies halt, and slowly retract into the shadows. The mushroom man slides forward, looming over the party. For a moment, an ominous pause. Then…
“I am Meld-Sovereign Hgranathodh, King of the Myconids. Welcome to the Melds.”
He beckons them to follow him, and a strange humming begins to grow in volume as they move deeper into the bioluminescent cavern. Here the mushrooms sprout in great abundance, and their wondrous glow seems to swirl and condense into a shifting cloud of fine, floating spores.
The humming gets louder and louder, and as they turn a corner, they see a group of more vaguely humanoid mushrooms, of smaller stature than the sovereign, gathered in a circle, their hands linked. Although the humming is apparently sourceless, arising independently in the mind of each adventurer, it would appear that this circle is in fact its origin. As they listen, the humming seems to develop new qualities, with fugal lines developing and diverging and merging into one another to form an intricate and beautiful harmony of entrancing music.
“You have done a great service to our kind by killing that beast,” elucidates Hgranathodh, his voice now deeply reassuring and kind, yet still somehow unnervingly detached, and other. “Those overgrown snails are the bane of our Myconid farmers, for they wanton devouring our lovingly-tended crops. And without our crops, many species within the fragile ecosystem of the Underdark would surely perish.”
“Whom do you feed?” asks Haji Baba.
“Once, we fed all equally. The Elves of Qualimor, the Drow of Arach-Lluth, the Duergar of Nidlhammer, the Svirfneblin of the Neblinhala, the Grimlocks of Garzh-Nesh, even the insane Derro of the Cyclopean Deeps. Ours was a life of service. That was our purpose. But now our masters have shown us our error. Now we feed only the servants of the Mind Flayers.
“And, in return, the Illithids supply us with surplus Duergar to make into our own Spore Servants, who reap our crops and defend our fields. Thus we are released from our burden of duty. The Spore Servants toil, and we can spend our time in higher and more worthy pursuits, exploring mystic realms of cosmic consciousness in the communal meditation of the Meld Circles. We are freed from the yoke of reality, freed to realise ourselves as enlightened spiritual beings, far superior to all else that is bonded to dull materiality. Come, let me show you…”
And two of the Myconids in the circle release their hands and separate to make room for Lightstrike to join them. Nervously, he clasps their cold, fibrous palms and is immediately hit by a vertiginous feeling of falling through a vortex of swirling colours, of sinking through infinite radiant layers of his own mind, until he finally settles in a space-like pool of darkness.
Vaguely, he has a sense of the peculiar fungal entities holding him on either side, of being drawn into their unfathomable shared consciousness, but then he is struck by a series of vivid images that flash through his mind’s eye in rapid succession.
He sees enormous flail snails sliding through dimming caverns in dazzling herds, leaving them lifeless and lightless.
Next he sees a pale-faced Dwarf, scowling and slumped upon his darkened throne. The Dwarf’s eyes are glazed and devoid of lustre, and he absently fingers a faintly glowing mace whose head is sculpted to resemble unfurling petals. Before the Dwarf, and seen from behind, a Mind Flayer hovers, bigger in stature than Kla’rota.
The vision darkens. Then Lightstrike sees more Mind Flayers. Far more. Thousands of them, tending to great hives filled with Grimlock cadavers and pulsing brains in row upon row of formaldehyde jars.
Now he sees a calm, dark lake, overshadowed by huge, suspended hives, beyond which is a bridge stretching over a vertiginous canyon, and beyond that, gigantic doors to an abandoned citadel, carved like the open mouth of a helmed Dwarf.
Now, a huge bronze statue of a Dwarven warrior. A portcullis beyond. And there, curled in the corner of a lightless cell… Elovyn!
Emaciated, dirty, fearful – but alive!
And, what is this? Another figure, in the same cell. A young man, head in hands, his bald scalp marked with a tattoo of a cross over a stylised flaming sun. His once rich, red robes, now dirty and torn ragged.
Again, darkness. Void. Then, laughter. Growing louder and louder. Filling Lightstrike’s ears with deranged mirth, and filling his heart with creeping, choking fear. Out of the void, a single huge eye blinks open. Alien. Monstrous. Its brow scaled, bluish-pink. Its black pupil staring with an unfathomable, unknowable intelligence.
A voice, guttural and terrible: “I – see – you! I – see – you!”
The eye blinks shut.
The fungal hands fall away. Lightstrike turns, and Haji Baba instinctively rushes forward to hold him up as his knees buckle. The rune upon his forehead is glowing brightly. But his face is pallid and coated in a sheen of cold sweat. He smiles weakly. “She’s alive. Elovyn! Beyond a sunless sea. Beneath a silent citadel. She’s alive!” (The unsettling and alien nature of your experience has placed you at the first tier of Corruption, Lightstrike. Sorry-not-sorry – DM.)
Hgranathodh shows them a secret way out of the Meld-cavern. “Hard as it may seem, whatever he saw, it was his destiny to see it. The visions of the Meld do not appear through accident or imagination. They reveal only truth.” And he gestures to the rock, which seems to shimmer and darken before them. Kla’rota floats through the revealed portal and, unwilling to lose their dubious guide, the others follow.
A twisting, low tunnel lit by luminous fungi leads them ever-downward and away from the Melds. As Lightstrike weakly explains his visions, Kla’rota growls. “Yesss. Surely, it was Xargraata you saw, with Moradin, the Duergar King, at Nidlhammer. But your Elf-friend, she is held at Runor, the deepest Dwarven citadel of old, which overlooks the Sunless Sea. That isss where K’Varn has made his lair. And that isss where he has imprisoned and poisoned the Elder Brain. We must hurry. We stand a better chance while the Ulitharid traitor is away. When Xargraata returns, surely her life will be forfeit. If we can defeat K’Varn, and release the Elder Brain from his poisonous grip, I shall rally the Illithids to turn on Xargraata and annihilate him as the betrayer he isss.”
The tunnel splits at several junctures, but Kla’rota leads the way with confidence. “Not that way. That leads to the main tunnels that connect Hvela, Nidlhammer and Runor. Too many patrols. We must pass through Nidlhammer undetected. Neither Moradin nor Xargraata would show usss mercy.”
Eventually they reach a cave strewn with thick webs and filled with the sound of bestial snoring. After finding the corpse of a giant spider (whose limp legs Zimlok cranks in a ludicrous effort to locate a secret passage), and edging past two sleeping hellhound guardians, they detect a tell-tale breeze through a curtain of webs. As quietly as they can, they slice their way through, snick-snick, with Haji Baba, in spider form, meticulously knitting the webs back together behind them.
Cutting through the final strands, Mherren steps through and immediately checks himself with a gasp, for he finds himself standing precariously close to the edge of small ledge which drops away nearly two hundred feet to a glowing field of mushrooms below. His companions join him, and look out across a magnificent sight, such as they would not have believed could exist so deep in the bowels of the earth.
Before them, a vast cavern, almost as big as the Morgrod of Qualimor, lit from below by the psychedelic glow of fungal luminescence, and from above by a pale white disc that sheds eerie light like a pale, false moon. A river winds slowly through the cavern, beyond which hulks a vast Dwarven fortress, high-walled and tiered to dizzying heights.
The architecture is dour and forbidding, constructed of huge, smooth grey blocks of buttressed granite, and the unmistakable ringing of forges fills the hot, oppressive air, along with occasional gruff shouts and barking dogs. Open mine shafts of varying sizes puncture the floor of the cavern amongst the terraced mushroom fields, and a wide road leads away from the fortress and through a vast, exquisitely-engineered opening at the far left side. Various other, smaller tunnels lead out, and here and there are dotted squat, square watch towers of morose and ill demeanour.
A few carts, insect-sized from up here on the ledge, and pulled by gigantic maggots, trundle along the road to and from the city, and a few jerky-limbed farmers and sullen mining parties can be seen here and there. But for the most part, except for a couple of small hamlets in the distance that lie outside of the fortifications, the outskirts of the city seem relatively deserted.
“There!” wheezes Kla’rota. “That isss where we must passss.” The Fellowship follow his slender, long-nailed pointing finger. Just visible beyond the high, outer wall of Nidlhammer, on the far opposite side of the cavern, they spy a passage leading away, away and down to the Sunless Sea…
Items & treasure:
4 Flail Snail Shell Shields of Antimagic (unworked raw materials)
1 vial of web
1 vial of grease
Experience:
Flail Snail (monster) 700
Joining the Meld (story award) 300
Hellhound Guardians (avoided encounter) 1,400
= 600 XP each
Inspiration: One point to Lightstrike for showing the Flail Snail Shield to Hgranathodh. (Max. 3 IP)
Will our heroes safely find a way down from their perch and manage to cross the cavern and infiltrate the city unnoticed? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it…?
Find out in the next jaw-dropping episode of…

Ye Sworde of Ayre!

Flight from Nidlhammer

EPISODE XXXI: Sometimes you just gotta hoof it

1. THOSE DWARFS DON’T SMELL RIGHT
Mherren gulps loudly as he looks down from a narrow ledge overlooking the enormous cavern. In the distance, the imposing fortress of Nidlhammer looms. At first, it would appear there is no safe way down, but our intrepid foursome is a resourceful bunch, and soon(ish) they have formulated a cunning plan.
“I am not leaping out into the void in the hope that your blasted malfunctional magic will save me!” whispers Haji Baba hoarsely, her arms folded in defiance. “Do you think I’m mad?”
Nobody answers that, which makes her fume even more.
“Do what you like, but I’m scuttling!” And with that, she morphs into a cockroach and sets off down the near-vertical, crumbling cliff.
The others exchange nervous glances as Zimlok forthrightly begins the incantation for feather fall, his intricately elaborate and decidedly improvised-looking gestures filling nobody with confidence.
“Let’s go!” he squawks when he is finally done, and takes a running leap off the edge, immediately plummeting out of view. The others peer nervously over… and are relieved to see him floating gently down, flapping his arms for no reason at all other than to pretend he can fly.
Now convinced, Lightstrike the Epic performs a double salto with twist as he launches himself off the ledge, while Mherren nonchalantly keels into thin air and drifts down in a reclining position, fingers clasped behind his head. Kla’rota, never one for showboating, simply floats off the ledge and sinks down vertically upright.
Half-hidden among the softly-glowing mushroom fields, Kla-rota and Mherren turn invisible, along with Viper. Haji Baba-Beetle, who has scuttled up on to Mherren’s bony head, also vanishes from sight. Zimlok dons the hat of disguise and invokes a resemblance to an oversized Duergar. Lightstrike casts disguise self and acquires the form of a subservient Deep Dwarf. Confident in their dastardly ruse, they set off for the citadel.
Zimlok studies Grendelf’s map along the way.
“I can’t see any Sunless Seas marked here,” he muses.
“Maybe that’s because it’s underground,” suggests Mherren, nearly falling over with shock at his own powers of induction. That headband of intellect really does its stuff.
“You’re a lot more perceptive than you look,” congratulates Lightstrike sincerely, unaware of the backhanded nature of his compliment. Fortunately, Mherren is oblivious also.
“Yesss, yesss,” interjects the wheezing voice of Kla’rota. “I already told you. Runor lies at the deepest layer of the ancient Dwarven kingdom, and looks out over the Sunless Sea. Don’t you people listen to anything?”
“Shhh!” hushes Haji Baba-Beetle. “We’re supposed to be stealthing.”
Eventually they join the road, and pass a few giant maggot-pulled carts filled with harvested mushrooms, a trudging mining party of grimy-looking glum Duergar, and a patrol of guards going to man one of the outer forts. If the companions had studied them closely (and if the DM had remembered to ask for a Perception check – DM), they might have noticed the captain was familiar: Grol, the Duergar who unleashed the Intellect Devourer-dog that ravaged Corazon’s and Mherren’s minds during the battle on the Dead Calm upon the Laureduin. Would Mherren have been able to contain his desire for vengeance? We’ll never know…
Two slightly nervous-looking Duergar, one significantly larger than most, join the short queue of trading traffic waiting to be waved into the city. Mherren, invisible and gripping Kla’rota by the forearm to ensure there’s no funny business, steals a sack of iron ore from the back of the cart in front. There is a clank as he hefts the sack over his shoulder, and the cartman looks around in puzzlement, before shrugging and turning his attention to the gates.
But the sack is too heavy for Lightstrike to lift, so before anybody joins the queue behind them, Kla’rota uses his telekinesis to guide some of the ore over the bridge and silently into the river below. Lightstrike heaves the sack on to his back; now they look like bona fide traders!
They pass beneath the forbidding watch tower without event, suspiciously eyeing the darkened arrow slits out of the corners of their eyes, and soon arrive at the imposing iron gates of Nidlhammer. Four city guards, flanked by huge, savage-looking dogs like those sleeping guardians in the webbed cavern above, are waving the traders through after a few brief questions, astute glances, or gruff acknowledgements.
Zimlok, employing his imitative Kenku wiles, attempts to mimic the greeting of those who pass before them… and succeeds, or so he thinks. For as they pass through the city wall, the Duergar’s eyes narrow as his hellhound sniffs at them and growls. They look and sound like Duergar, but no Duergar is that big unless they enlarge magically for fighting – and anyway, those Dwarfs don’t smell right.
As Zimlok saunters casually along with a jaunty spring in his step, Lightstrike peers tentatively over his shoulder.
And immediately stiffens and looks straight ahead.
They are being followed. A few yards back, in amongst the crowd, two of the guards are trailing them, with two snarling hellhounds in tow. The companions quicken their pace. The guards quicken too.
Lightstrike drops the sack of ore and he and Zimlok dive into a deserted alleyway between ramshackle dwellings. They stand their ground as one of the hellhounds races around the corner and charges towards them, stopping just short of pouncing to gather a greenish fire in its belly and breathe a gout of searing flame that scorches them both.
Zimlok, charred and singed, and once more beaked and feathered, drops to the floor in a posey three-point battle-ready stance, simultaneously striking the ground with his staff of blinding smite. There is a flash of intense white light and the beast recoils. (DM ruling: once per day the staff can be used in this way, as an Action, to blind any creatures, including unwary allies, within a 15 foot radius, with creatures rolling to save against Zimlok’s spell DC to avoid the effect. To deal the radiant & bludgeoning damage as well, this requires a successful mêlée attack on a specific creature. Hope that’s a reasonable compromise – DM.)
Meanwhile, Mherren channels the wrath of Demogorgon and sends a purple blast of eldritch energy towards the Duergar guards, who look around bewildered for the source of this assault. Zimlok blinds one Duergar with a colour spray, and Kla’rota stuns another with his psionic mind blast. As Mherren (now visible) and Lightstrike move in to engage, Zimlok casts Maximillian’s earthen grasp and attempts to throttle one of the hellhounds. Unfortunately, he succeeds in little more than giving it a tickle.
“Oh dear,” sighs Haji Baba, shedding cockroach form and plunging into the foray to dispatch one of the guards with a sound bop on the nose with her staff of thunder and lightning.
The other Duergar falls to Kla’rota’s psionics, and Mherren cleaves through one of the hellhounds with Pyron. Lightstrike yells his now-trademark battle cry of Aithinndé! and fells the other in a swathe of demonic flame.
For a moment, silence.
And then comes the clanging of bells, and the pounding beat of rushing footsteps, as more Duergar round the corner into the alley…
But the Fellowship has already scarpered.
2. A MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR
We meet our heroes rushing headlong through a maze of trash-ridden alleyways, blindly turning this way and that in the desperate hope of finding their way back to the main thoroughfare that will lead them out of the city and down towards Runor.
And, whether by luck or judgement (mostly luck, let’s be honest – DM), they find it. They hurtle into the tunnel, a platoon of heavily armoured guardsmen pursuing them not a couple of hundred yards behind. The passage splits, the sound of swift-running water down one route, and silence down the other. Mherren creates a mirror image of himself and leaves it at the fork that leads to the river. (Not quite how that spell works in hindsight, but we’ll let it go this time – DM.) They continue down the other fork, and Zimlok moulds earth, creating a wall of rubble to slow their pursuers. (This might be what gave away your chosen route. Duergar are expert miners and can easily tell a real rockfall from a magical one. Just to explain why Mherren’s ploy didn’t seem to work. And to be suitably annoyingly smug – DM.)
The sounds of relentless pursuit still resounding behind them, the companions begin to tire, and pause for a moment to catch their breath. Mherren leans heavily on a rocky outcrop, panting hard, and then holds his breath as he catches a breathy whisper emanating from the solid wall of the tunnel.
“This way! This way!”
Mherren shakes his head in disbelief, and rummages in his ears to clear out any lumps of wax that might be adversely affecting his hearing. But there it is again: “This way! Come!”
He pushes his nose up to the rock, and is surprised to find that it passes straight through, as though the cool rock were somehow liquefied. He finds himself looking into a dank, low-roofed cave, and signals to the others, who follow him through the strange door of liquid granite.
Listening hard, they hear the footsteps of their pursuers passing by a few seconds later, and, after checking first that the walls are really solid, lean back against the rock, puffing and exhausted.
Just as they are basking in breathless relief, a shadowy form emerges from the recesses of the cavern. The figure is vaguely humanoid, and clad in a long, heavy robe, its hood pulled low to obscure its face. Disconcertingly, from beneath the hood a solitary glowing eye emerges on a sinuous stalk and inspects them each in turn. Then another eye emerges. And another, until seven weird, staring eyes are poking out and writhing from under the cowl.
Lightstrike, from his limited knowledge of Beholders, smells a rat, and readies to attack.
But then the figure speaks:
“Do not worry. I am but a humble fortune teller; a benefactor, no less, who wishes thee well on thy quest. They call me Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. Long have I lived and much have I seen.” Here he pauses for dramatic effect. The Fellowship looks nonplussed. (You rather get the impression this is a much over-used introduction by ol’ Ningauble – DM.)
The figure continues: “I have been speaking with the Witchmother, the one they call Baba Yaga, and she bade me give thee these.” He proffers four scuffed leather flasks which, upon inspection, contain a foul-smelling half-congealed black slime. Zimlok nearly faints as he inhales deeply. Then he goes to take a swig, but Haji Baba clamps his beak shut at the last second.
“These are potions of resilience,” says Ningauble, fidgeting with a card deck that he has more-or-less unconsciously pulled out from a pocket. “They should help thee greatly should thee use them wisely, and stomach them well.” Seven snaking eyes converge a pointed gaze upon Zimlok. “Do not squander them, I bid thee, for their effects are powerful but fleeting. I urge thee to save them for when thou needst them most.” (See Discord for Ningauble’s Repulsive Potions of Resilience [8 doses total; one Action to consume one dose] – DM.)
“One last thing,” Ningauble continues. “Once thy quarry is found, thou shalt be seeking a way back to thy surface world. The way your instincts might assume is fraught with danger. The Svirfneblin have been overrun by Grimlocks. The Duergar will hunt you down without relent. There is no easy way back. Drow, Derro, and worse things, inhabit the conjoining tunnels that lead further into the labyrinthine Cyclopean Deeps. You will not find your sun again that way, either. No, you must head down, down, always down. Down into the belly of the earth. Down where the beast doth sleep. There thou shalt findeth ye heart of things…”
He pronounces this last with a distinct air of deliberate mystique, as though enticing the companions to ask more, but Zimlok has got his eye on the pack of cards that Ningauble is habitually shuffling and flipping.
“You say you’re a fortune teller,” the Wizard preens. “Pray then, show me my fortune.”
Ningauble’s eyes once more inspect the diminutive Kenku. “Very well,” he rasps. And he lays twelve cards on the ground before Zimlok. Just as he is about to divulge their meaning, Zimlok butts in with his own decidedly self-centred interpretation.
“Well, the raven in the first card obviously refers to me…” And so it goes for the next several minutes, Lightstrike yawning, Mherren picking his toes, Haji Baba filing her nails, and Kla’rota absently smoothing his tentacles, as Zimlok pontificates upon his own fate foretold.
“Meaning – is found in the eye of the beholder,” whispers Ningauble mysteriously as Zimlok finally closes his beak. And, gathering his cards, he withdraws back into the shadows.
Mherren holds up a torch to the place where the seven-eyed fortune teller disappeared, but there is nothing there now but dancing shadows.
3. FLYING ON FLUMPHS
Meanwhile, Lightstrike has found a crawl space at the back of the cavern, and Mherren sends Viper through in bat form to see if there is a way through. Seeing through Viper’s eyes, the Half-Orc relates to the others that the passage opens up into another cavern, only sixty feet or so beyond. And there he is met by a most peculiar sight.
A monstrous, three-legged, three-armed beast, as heavy as a rhinoceros, with a single slitted eye and a wide mouth filled with serrated teeth across the top of its shapeless, headless torso, is being harassed by a dozen floating jellyfish with eyes on stalks. They are taking turns to douse the gnashing monster with clouds of coloured gas, until finally it relents and glides down straight into the rock below its feet, as though diving through water, and leaving no trace except for a slight swirl to the grain of the rock.
“Flumphs!” shouts Lightstrike as Mherren tells them what he sees. “I’ve heard of these things before!”
“I hate Flumphs,” sneers Kla’rota. “They are nuisance parasites, who feed upon our psionic energies.”
Speaking through the Quasit, Mherren initiates contact. At first, they are surprised to see a bat so deep underground, and even more so when it starts talking to them, but they are high on driving away the Xorn and confirm that the heroes are indeed close to the Sunless Sea. A nearby well, they explain, leads down to a dried-up freshwater drinking hole, which lies adjacent to the vast, underground lake. It is through this well that they set out on their raids to drain the psychic energy of the Mind Flayers.
“Oh, I’m friends with a Mind Flayer,” says Mherren cheerily through Viper.
The Flumphs’ jelly-like flesh instantly flushes from green to a deep maroon, and they close in aggressively on the demonic bat.
Mherren backtracks hastily: “I mean, er, I blimmin’ hate Mind Flayers. They captured one of my friends. Have you seen her?”
The Flumphs shimmer to a pastel turquoise. “Perhaps. The Mind Flayers are always taking prisoners. Mostly Grimlocks, who get taken into the Illactite hives to get slurped.”
“Have you seen anyone get taken to the citadel?”
“Just one. A human, bald-headed, and dressed in a red cloak. They took him beneath the fortress of Runor.”
“No Elves?”
“No. Not that we have seen.”
“What lives there?”
“Big Floater. And a smaller one, too. We don’t go near. Magic, you see. No psionics. No good. We need the Illithids’ hivemind to thrive. And of late that has been… weak. Dysfunctional. Like it’s sick – or dying. Why do you ask?”
“I’m… I’m not alone,” says Mherren through Viper, as the party emerges one by one from the narrow crawl space. A Kenku in a pointy hat, a pale Tabaxi, a scarred Half-Orc, a flame-haired Halfling, and… a scowling Half-Elf with a big nose.
The Half-Elf has a most peculiar gait, as though he’s never walked before in his life. He glares at the Flumphs with an expression of open animosity. “Do excuse him,” says Lightstrike. “He’s new.”
“We’re on a rescue mission,” Mherren explains. “We think the Illithids captured our friend because she had discovered information on the whereabouts of a powerful artifact. They read her mind and brought her down here to be interrogated by… er… the Big Floater. But we believe she’s still alive… just.”
“Will you help us?” asks Lightstrike, hopefully.
The Flumphs convene for a private discussion, before one, who introduces himself as Blobloblipobb, floats forward and suggests they might help them down the well. “The dry watering hole below is deserted, for it lies away from the route between Runor and Nidlhammer. You should be able to rest there safely and gather yourselves for whatever is to pass. Come.”
And the Flumphs float lower so the friends can climb on to their backs, before descending through the shaft of the dried-up well. One descends significantly quicker than the rest, crashlanding awkwardly at the bottom and sending Mherren sprawling across the rocky ground. “Too fat,” gasps the Flumph, turning a pale crimson and rippling in shock.
The Flumphs take their leave, and the Fellowship make their camp ready and prepare to rest, recuperate and prepare their spells for the excursion into Runor. Viper goes to investigate the surrounding area, and, rounding a corner, is met with an incredible sight.
A huge lake, stretching almost as far as the eye can see, its waters still and black. On the far shore, the hunched silhouette of a Dwarfish citadel can just be glimpsed. And above the cold waters, clinging to the high ceiling of the enormous cavern, huge hives hang down, dappled with eerie green light. Spiralling ramps wind around these suspended hives, and upon some can just be discerned black-robed Mind Flayers going about their dark business. Silently, the Quasit skulks back into the shadows.
Is this the end of the road for our Fellowship of Nerdventurers?
How will they traverse the Sunless Sea undetected?
Will they find Elovyn alive? And what evil will be there to stop them?
Find out in the next enthralling episode of…

Ye Sworde of Ayre!

Items & treasure: 4 flasks of Ningauble’s Repulsive Potion of Resilience (2 doses per vial)
Experience: Hellhounds 1,400; Duergar 400; Ningauble & Flumph/Xorn encounters 200
= 500 XP each

Report Date

17 Jul 2021