11 Mostan 1120

Seeking the Source

The heroes returned to the Chimera soggy, tired, and encumbered by all the Harmony they had retrieved from the now-flooded drug lab (Harmony). They found their captive, the drug dealer Pan'phar Thrissek, still bound and sedated.

The implications of their activities for the city of Survale and its hundreds if not thousands of Harmony-addicted residents who now be forced into withdrawal began to hit home for the party. They recognized the danger of having probably the lion's share of all remaining Harmony in the area aboard their ship, but knowing the effects of the stuff they were loathe to dump it into the sea lest a horrific sea creature be formed. Ultimately they emptied the vials into a larger vessel and had Quinn cast purify food and drink to render the substance harmless, then dumped it overboard in safety.

After a well-earned rest, they returned to the question of what to do with Pan'phar. The group agreed that it was not safe for them to release him just yet because they still had business in Survale, specifically with the local Temple of the Beast. The more they considered the consequences for Pan'phar of being unable to produce any additional Harmony, though, the more it seemed that he would soon be persona non grata in the city himself.

Strontium informed their captive that the drug lab, and therefore the means for creating more supply of Harmony, had been destroyed. He then left the old man alone to consider the ramifications for himself while the group prepared for a visit to the temple.

From their earlier research the party knew that the head of the local chapter of the Servants of the Beast Below was a lizardfolk cleric named Somok. Such was Somok's dedication to his deity, locals said, that Somok could actually perform acts of divine magic -- something of which no other cleric of the Beast was believed capable.

The temple stood in a clearing on the south side of town. The party approached it in two groups and paced the perimeter, looking for signs of trouble. The evening stayed quiet and there seemed to be no particular defenses in place, so they rejoined and approached the only door. The door was barred from the inside with a heavy wooden bar but the party's knock wand moved that aside easily.

Caenus led the way inside, where a lone figure stood before the altar with his back to the door and arms raised, chanting in a language the party did not recognize. At the sound of their entry he turned to face them and spoke in a commanding voice. The words meant nothing to the group but the lizardfolk's body language made it clear he was not issuing a welcome.

Aria stepped forward and spoke to the priest in Aquan, stating the party's desire to ask him some questions. The priest responded in Aquan that he had no desire to answer questions from unbelievers and thugs, and repeated his command that they leave his temple. The priest rapped on the floor with his staff and three lizardfolk acolytes, armed with spears, came in from a side room and took defensive positions before the altar.

Strontium ended the parley by casting Isaac's Lesser Missile Storm and peppering all of the lizardfolk with energy missiles. Caenus charged forward with his spiked chain in hand to engage and was shot in the back by a small arrow from the balcony above.

Mrs. Wilkins made an attempt to use glibness to persuade Somok that she and her cohorts were there for the glory of the Beast, but given her comrades' hostile actions there was no way even her magically-enhanced words would hold any weight.

Quinn followed Caenus down the center aisle and also took an arrow in the back for her trouble. Somok cried angrily in Aquan that "we have done nothing to you people" and then shot an angry look at Strontium. A sudden blast of force threw the dwarf against the temple wall, which brought Aria charging in to join the melee.

As the party traded blows with the acolytes more arrows rained down from the balcony, catching Aria and Caenus with precise effect. Melian came far enough out to look for the snipers and spotted one but failed to hit it with a throw of his trident.

Mrs. Wilkins tried a phantasmal strangler on Somok, but the cleric saw through the illusion easily. Quinn's arc of lightning was no illusion, however, and it put an immediate and messy end to Somok. Quinn celebrated by making defiant hand gestures at the enemy.

Nobody in the party was surprised, however, when a tsochar emerged from Somok's smoldering remains. The aberration produced an explosion of razor-sharp crystals that seriously wounded several in the group, and while Quinn managed to duck the worst of it she found herself momentarily stunned by a ranged sneak attack from the balcony.

Strontium reacted to the appearance of a tsochar in his customary manner: with magic missile fire. The tsochar took the full impact of the missiles and joined Somok in death. The acolytes continued to fight for a few more seconds but fell to Caenus and Quinn and another set of missiles.

Seeing that things were under control on the floor, Mrs. Wilkins used spider climb to ascend to the balcony. She was pincushioned by a pair of seakith rogues wielding shortbows and took a sickening wound. Derek came to her defense with his teeth and bit one seakith on the foot. Quinn spotted the pair and, in a truly memorable display of overkill, sent an arc of lightning between them that fried their bodies to near oblivion.

The party had done such a thorough job of killing the enemy that there was nobody to interrogate about the temple's activities. Fortunately a search of the office area turned up paperwork indicating that Somok had been receiving both orders and funding from a larger temple located a day's sail south of town in the Swamps of Tierthas.

Pan'phar went along willingly enough and even suggested that the party might just put him off anywhere along the coast outside of town. Strontium was reluctant to let an ally of the Servants of the Beast go wandering loose until the group's mission was complete, though, so the drug dealer remained a captive on the Chimera for the time being.

The Chimera was too big to negotiate the inner byways of the swamps, so the party took to rowboats. Using the directions taken from the temple in Survale they came upon a patch of high ground that contained a circle of old, sickly-looking trees. There was a crude stone altar inside the circle and a rough clay hut just outside.

Quinn approached the circle to examine the trees with Caenus and Audas at her side. Aside from being malnourished they seemed perfectly normal. The party's presence was noted, however, by an elderly lizard man in tattered robes who shuffled out of the hut, leaning heavily on a wooden tree limb. His name, he announced in Common, was Noktilo, and he was caretaker of the circle.

The heroes tried a less direct approach with Noktilo than they had with Somok. They asked about the Servants of the Beast Below's beliefs and how one might go about joining. Noktilo directed them to Survale and Somok, and the party did not disclose what had become of that cleric. Instead they asked leave to explore the circle. Noktilo bid them walk around as they liked but do not enter the circle, as it was sacred ground.

Naturally, this only made the group more eager to enter the circle. Mrs. Wilkins performed a surprise casting of charm monster on the old man. Instead of affecting Noktilo, however, the spell was reflected back at Mrs. Wilkins and caused her to feel immediate sympathy and respect for Noktilo's position.

Aria, Quinn, Caenus, and Strontium entered the circle. The caretaker asked Mrs. Wilkins to please prevent her friends from desecrating the site, so she attempted to charm Strontium into leading the group back out. The charm failed and Strontium admonished her not to try that again.

She didn't. Instead, Mrs. Wilkins cast charm person on Caenus, who proved much more susceptible to her spell than the dwarf had. Quinn rushed over to Mrs. Wilkins and grappled her to prevent any further spellcasting, and Aria joined her to try subduing Mrs. Wilkins with nonlethal blows. Caenus was highly disturbed by this and sought to help Mrs. Wilkins by tripping up Quinn and then Aria.

Meanwhile, Audas and Melian prepared themselves for conflict. Audas invoked the Dark One's own luck to enhance his mental resistance against charms and Melian used cat's grace to pump up his reflexes. Noktilo expressed his disgust with the group, returned to his shack, and slammed the door.

Strontium saw his party fighting among themselves and decided that what they needed was a common enemy. Quinn had already tried desecrating the altar with fast healing water to no apparent avail, so Strontium deliberately walked up and touched the stone dais. Immediately two of the circle's trees revealed themselves to be treants and moved in to defend the stone circle.

Audas reacted first with an eldritch chain attack against both enemies. Aria, still on the ground thanks to a trip attack from Caenus, noticed a small lizard with a leather collar approaching her. Before she could rise or tumble away the lizard nipped her on the shoulder. It should have been nothing but an annoyance, but the lizard's bite delivered a brutal electric shock. Aria twitched in pain and the distraction allowed Mrs. Wilkins to escape Quinn's grasp and retreat, offering up another verbal plea to her friends to leave the circle alone.

Quinn, now with her hands free, used them to cast call lightning storm. She called down a mighty bolt of lightning against the nearest treant and called out a fast suggestion to the group: "Slash and burn!" Strontium followed that advice with a volley of fire-based magic missiles and saw that the treant lit up quite nicely. Aria tried using her Dragon Breath ability to flame broil the annoying lizard, but it proved amazingly quick and scuttled back into the hut with nary a blister. Caenus also heard Quinn's advice and switched to his bastard sword, a slashing weapon, to engage the nearest one.

Strontium found himself doggedly pursued by a treant, which chased him around the dais and attacked with its huge wooden fists while Strontium peppered its comrade with magic missiles. When the first treant fell the second animated two more trees to join the battle.

Mrs. Wilkins protected herself with greater invisibility and beseeched the party to abandon the circle even as the treant and animated trees pounded heavily on her allies. The lizard made another quiet appearance and nipped at the heel of Melian, who immediately fell to the ground paralyzed and began to emit a gut-wrenching odor reminiscent of rotting corpses. Noktilo reappeared, but was now twice his original size and apparently unaffected by Melan's sickening smell. He leveled a finger at Quinn and the druid was struck by a powerful lightning bolt.

Mrs. Wilkins ran toward Noktilo and was immediately overcome by Melian's stench. She retreated back to safety, wretching and heaving the entire way but at last free from the charm spell. Strontium felled the second treant with more fire-based magic missiles, which caused the animated trees to go still, but it was now very clear to the group who the greatest threat was.

Aria turned her dragon breath against Noktilo and was surprised to feel the flames fizzle in her mouth. The same thing happened to Audas with an eldritch blast and to Quinn when she tried to call a lightning bolt on the caretaker. Caenus charged and swung, but the huge old lizard man proved extremely difficult to hit. Noktilo shot a ray at Strontium, who recognized the casting of a feeblemind spell and managed to avoid a direct hit. He responded by attacking the lizard with magic missiles. The little creature took the blow and again scrambled to the safety of the hut.

With the party now closing in around him, Noktilo cast another spell: Evard's black tentacles. The mass of cold, deadly tentacles grabbed all of his encircling attacks as well as the still-paralyzed form of Melian. Strontium fired off Isaac's lesser missile storm and broke through the enemy's spell resistance while the fighting crew worked their way free of the clutching tentacles. Aria landed a blow and then Caenus did. Noktilo looked hatefully at the party and then cast one more spell, which caused his body to shimmer and vanish. The more sharp-eyed in the group caught a quick glimpse of the lizard hopping into a pocket in the old man's robe before he disappeared.

The party took stock of their resources and decided to keep pressing. Melian recovered from his ghoul touch paralysis and searched the altar for secrets. He found that the altar could be pivoted to reveal a perfectly round 5-foot-radius chute below it fitted with a rope ladder. The group healed up as much as possible and took turns descending the ladder, with Caenus going first.

About 20 feet down from the opening the chute let into a huge, barely-lit chamber. Dominating the scene was a central pit with raised sides, almost like a stone basin. Within that was a horror such as none in the party had seen before: a huge, amorphous mass of slimy yellow flesh dotted all over with gaping mouths and long, fibrous tentacles. Before anyone had time to truly take in this disgusting sight they also noticed two familiar, and possibly more threatening, shapes: the tall, plant-like humanoid monsters created by Harmony.

Audas fired an eldritch blast at the nearest monster while Aria charged and tried unsuccessfully to trip it. Caenus and Melian took positions opposite the other to give Melian flanking advantage after Mrs. Wilkins cast a quick invisibility sphere. Her idea was to help the group move unseen, but the monsters had no trouble perceiving the group because of their blindsight ability. She followed that up by casting haste on the whole party.

Meanwhile, an ominous-looking many-eyed sphere floated over toward the party. Strontium's first thought was "Beholder!" but then his darkvision picked up that there were only six eyestalks and a large central eye. This was clearly beholderkin, but not a fully equipped eye tyrant. The creature shot a ray at Quinn that hurt her as an inflict moderate wounds spell and then shot a scorching ray at Strontium. The ray struck and burned, and Strontium began to feel that the group may be outmatched.

Things got worse when Melian strayed too close to the center pit. A long yellow tentacle flailed out, grabbed Melian, and yanked him into one of the creature's maws. It swallowed him whole in an instant.

Strontium trotted out a pair of lesser missile storms against the floating sphere and destroyed it while also doing damage to the monstrosity in the center of the room. His relief was quickly dispelled, however, when he was struck from behind by two more eye rays from another creature of the same type. Mrs. Wilkins ran over and cast greater invisibility on Strontium and then on herself. With those two targets now hidden from the beholderkin it turned on Quinn and Caenus, but Strontium was able to target it with some sonic magic missiles. A hasted Caenus took down the first Harmony monster then drew his longbow to help Strontium with the beholderkin. Between is bow and Strontium's missiles the creature didn't stand a chance. Caenus then turned his bow on the other Harmony creature, which had been weakened enough by hits from Aria and Quinn that his arrow felled it.

The party turned the last of their spells and eldritch blasts on the abomination in the pit. It shrieked out of a thousand mouths at once in a deafening wail before finally falling silent.

A search of the cave turned up two smaller chambers adjoining. In one the party found an assortment of humanoids -- two sahaugin, a human, a sea kin, and a merfolk man -- all rendered docile by, from the looks of it, Harmony. They knew nothing of their location, only that they had been selected to serve the Beast and that they were happy to obey.

The second chamber held the secrets the party had been seeking. A locked chest contained, among other valuables, the formula for making Harmony. The recipe turned the heroes' stomachs: the thing from the pit, described as 'an emissary of the Beast' of 'otherworldly origins', was fed a steady diet of humanoid captives; the slime secreted by the creature was then captured in steel vats, combined with standard alcohol potion base, and cooked down by the machine in the drug lab to create Harmony.

The notes also revealed other relevant facts. The Servants of the Beast believed they had received this formula, along with the creature, from the Beast itself and were doing Its will by distributing the drug as widely as possible. The proceeds from sales of Harmony were disbursed to chapters of the cult all over the world, but the majority of the funds had been secured in a Nessenese bank.

The party took samples of the now-dead thing and the raw secretions from it, destroyed the remaining Harmony in the cave, and returned to the Chimera with what valuables they could salvage. They would drop Pan'phar at the nearest coastal town and hurry back to Marhaven, where Grimaldi would doubtless want to examine what they'd found.

<MR>
6/5/07