1 Norstan 1120

The Long Way Home

Still riled over the mind flayer's escape (Blood In The Water), the party loaded up the Torchwood with what they'd gained from the fight and made way for Marhaven. The sooner word got out about the half-illithids and their genocidal actions the better.

It would not be a peaceful trip.

The first sign of trouble came on the first night, during Loki's watch. The ship was anchored for the night and all seemed calm until Loki heard and felt a series of hard thumps against the ship's hull ending in the sound of splintering wood. He looked down at the water but could make out only a vague shadow.

The sound woke Vondran from his rest in time to see the bulkhead of his cabin cave in and water begin to rush inside. A huge green tentacle poked through and Vondran stabbed it with the Arm of Telomir. Across the deck Ash also woke to the sound of the hull breaking and water entering her cabin. She quickly put on her gills of Hamachi and headed topside.

Within a few seconds of the first impact the entire party was topside. The four seamen they retained as crew were huddled at the bow looking into the dark water and speaking in frightened whispers about kraken. Sure enough, a huge barbed tentacle swept across the port side and slammed Tika into the sterncastle before plunging back into the sea -- a kraken indeed.

Vondran, Loki and Karu dropped over the side to defend the ship while Ash threw a volley of magic missiles at the creature. Tika cast spell flower on herself and hastily quizzed the sailors for what they knew of kraken. It boiled down to their being huge, evil, intelligent, hardy, and capable of dealing massive damage in an alarmingly short time.

The Torchwood took on a decided list to the stern as the lower decks filled with water from three gaping holes in the hull. The fighters engaged the kraken's tentacles and the spellcasters brought out desperate tactics for a grim situation. Ash cast a rare evil spell, blackwater tentacle, that caused a member made of evilly-charged black water to flail at the kraken and Tika charged one hand with the touch spell slay living and prepared to dive.

In the water, the tentacle and the fighters were having success. Karu made himself ethereal and then attacked with a ghost strike against the main body of the kraken and Loki landed a psychic strike. Vondran got in a couple of good hits while the kraken fought off the magic tentacle. Then Tika hit the water and delivered her slay living spell to kill the beast.

The kraken was dead, but the danger was not over. The Torchwood was taking on water quickly and no magic on hand could stop it from going under. Tika whipped out the party's wand of water breathing and used charges to keep the crew from drowning.

The heroes followed the ship to the bottom, grabbed the necessities, and considered their options. East to the Tumari coast or west to Marhaven? Either way it was a long swim, but there would be far more help on hand in Marhaven than on the coast. They headed west.

Even with the danger of drowning negated by the water breathing wand swimming in the open sea was an ardruous task. The group spent much of the time underwater, which took less effort than surface swimming. So it was that they were some 100 feet down when Loki spotted a trio of humanoid figures speeding toward them from below. They came closer and Loki recognized them as three of the half-illithid sahuagin.

The party sent the crewmen to the surface and prepared to engage if necessary. As the half-illithids approached, however, it became clear that they were paying very little attention to the swimming heroes. In fact, the half-illithids seemed to be running from something as fast as they could. The party waited and the creatures passed them right by without even pausing.

Something that could send these aberrant warriors fleeing for their lives was something to be investigated. Keeping the crew at a safe distance, the party headed in the direction the fighters had been coming from, which was close to their original bearing anyway. A short time later Loki spotted the likely point of origin: next to a coral-ringed crater at the sea bottom, he saw three more half-illithid sahuagin lying in the muck, apparently dead.

Loki related this to the rest of the party and they opted to go investigate. By the time they reached the crater, the sahuagin bodies were gone and the coral seemed to have shifted into individual masses. Vondran noted a trail of some sort in the muddy bottom of the crater and moved in for a closer look.

As the party approached the crater rim the coral moved. It formed two huge masses, roughly quadripedal in shape, and seemed to inspect them. Ash recognized these as coral golems and prepared for combat, but the constructs seemed uninterested in engaging the party. They looked the group over and returned to a resting position, allowing them to pass by unmolested.

A closer look at the tracks in the mud told Vondran that multiple creatures with sahuagin-like feet had dragged bodies through the crater and toward a sunken ship at the back side. The ship was a colossal warship, ancient and broken. It lay on its side, dismasted and derelict. The tracks led to a hole in the hull behind which the party could see a thick, silvery fog filling the inside of the wreck.

As they approached the carcass the water on either side of the hole swirled and darkened. A pair of vaguely humanoid shapes coalesced around the hole and faced the party: water elementals, and huge ones at that.

Vondran and Loki ran forward to engage the new threat. The lead elemental lashed out at each of them with club-like fists and delivered not only damage but a nasty surprise -- each of the heroes felt the blows drain some energy from them and strengthen their enemy.

Ask kept well back and provided support in the form of a sonic scorching ray. The negative energy attack told her that these could be necromentals, a form of undead elemental. Tika stepped forward brandishing the holy symbol of Pelor but the enemy was too powerful to be impressed with the attempt.

Hits from Vondran and Loki prodded the lead enemy into assuming vortex form. It swirled and sucked Loki into its crushing grip as the second necromental advanced on Ash and Tika. Tika called down deific vengeance, which is especially devastating against undead, while Karu fought the vortex that held Loki. Then, with no apparent reason or warning, the necromentals vanished back into the water.

Never inclined to object to a bit of good luck, the party healed up and examined the derelict ship. Karu used his ghost step ability to become ethereal and enter the wreck but saw nothing other than rotting and smashed wood. Eventually the group simple walked through the hole, as the makers of the tracks apparently had, and into the silvery fog.

After walk that felt like 20 feet the heroes emerged from the fog and found themselves on a dry, rocky beach. A cliff stood before them and carved into it was an ominous-looking tower of black stone. The fog stretched behind them like a wall, outlining an area maybe 500 feet in diameter that inexplicably included a sky and atmosphere.

And then a lone humanoid figure appeared on the beach and greeted them. He was tall and gaunt, dressed in fine black and purple robes, but the party quickly recognized him for what he was: a lich.

The lich introduced himself as Hakran Vatheer. The beach and tower were his domain, a small demiplane he had created using the genesis spell. The lich seemed more inclined to talk than to fight and soon enough the party learned why. Hakran, too, had been harrassed by the half-illithid sahuagin troops and their illithid masters. Being undead himself, he had quickly realized the weakness in the enemy's methods and constructed his defenses accordingly with constructs, the necromentals, and ultimately by reanimating the corpses of the aberrant dead to fight against the next waves. The amusement in Hakran's voice was clear as he relayed how facing zombie ex-comrades seemed to be especially demoralizing for the half-illithid fighters. Necromancy was not his preferred practice, he was careful to emphasize, but it was a necessary tool against this enemy.

As the conversation went on Hakran revealed that he knew not only the name of the mind flayer that party had faced earlier -- Thedris -- but also where Thedris was currently holed up, waiting for new bodyguards to arrive to replace the ones the party had killed. He offered to reveal the location to the party in exchange for one item of the spoils of their combat: a magic item worn by Thedris around its neck called a brainmate. With this, the lich explained, he hoped to gain access to information about the undersea war from the mind flayer elder brain itself. As a further enticement, he offered the party his magical aide in raising their ship from the depths in exchange for the brainmate.

Another crack at the mind flayer was really all the incentive the heroes needed. They took the offer, pausing only to restore the energy drain from Vondran and Loki and rest up enough to recover spells. After that Hakran provided them with directions and a pair of zombie half-illithids to guide them and serve as additional swords if needed.

The party swam north for several hours with the zombies leading the way until they found themselves nearing a deep trench in the ocean floor. Partway down that trench, the lich had said, was a hidden cave where Thedris would be hiding. As the group descended into the trench they spotted the cave opening and two beings standing guard on a ledge. Vondran could barely contain his glee when he saw four-armed sahuagin bodies but no tentacles -- the guards were pure-blooded mutant sahuagin. He rushed forward and positioned himself for battle.

Vondran's joy was dashed, however, when his opponent sprouted a bright green tentacle from a hole in its skull and tried to entangle him. He remembered the voidmind skrags (The Enemy of My Enemy) and realized these were not truly sahuagin anymore. Still, they needed to be dispatched quickly before Thedris had time to escape.

The voidmind guards proved difficult to kill. Vondran, Karu, and Loki landed multiple hits but the creatures' damage reduction and resistance to critical hits protected them from the party's best attacks. Ash had multiple spells fail to overcome the enemy's magical resistance. Tika fell back on the spiritual weapon spell and conjured two of them, one to attack each opponent. These were highly effective, bypassing all of the voidmind's resistances.

The guards seemed to have little difficulty damaging the party. Trident hits were fast and telling, and Vondran's original opponent also seemed to be manifesting destructive psionic powers. The heroes realized that Thedris must be channeling his powers through the slave, joining the battle by proxy in effect.

By the time the spiritual weapons brought down the guards the party was so wounded they dared not take on Thedris immediately. Tika pulled out the cure critical wounds wand and used it on all of the fighters and Ash, knowing that Thedris would be using the time gift to either fortify his position or abandon it but having no real choice in the matter.

The party entered the cave with the zombies in the lead. Thedris was there, stationed in a corner and clearly waiting for them. They entered the chamber to engage and just as the last hero stepped into view Thedris let loose a burst of electrical energy in their midst. The zombies were destroyed instantly and Ash badly wounded. She flung a fireball at Thedris across the air-filled chamber but it fizzled in the face of the illithid's spell resistance. A more effective tactic was Tika's spell vulnerability spell, which caught Thedris by surprise and reduced its formidable spell resistance by a great deal.

Thedris responded with a mind blast but the party was prepared for it and only Karu was stunned. Ash got a scorching ray past the creature's lowered resistance and Loki closed in with his mind blade charged and ready. Thedris responded with a major psionic power, breath of the black dragon, which scorched the entire party in acid. They ducked and covered but still took damage.

Sensing that Thedris would be looking for an exit soon, Tika cast a dimensional anchor to prevent the illithid from using any extradimensional powers. That, followed by another scorching ray from Ash, had Thedris telepathically screaming. He lined up the group and let loose another mind blast that proved devastating to the heroes when Tika, Vondran, and Loki all succumbed to the stunning effect.

That left Ash to face Thedris alone. She could see that the illithid was physically weak but still had a plentiful reserve of psionic power -- if she gave it an opportunity to use that power the party may not survive. She needed a high-damage spell immediately and chose fireball, knowing that Vondran and Loki would also be in the blast radius but figuring that a little scorching would be preferable to having one's brain extracted.

The gamble paid off. Thedris took the full force of the blast and was nearly incinerated. Vondran and Loki got a little singed but survived.

After the smoke cleared and her stunned teammates recovered to find Thedris reduced to a smoldering pile of debris, Ash and her friends found the brainmate. It had survived the fireball and appeared undamaged. The same could not be said for Thedris's bracers of armor or most of his mundane gear, but the party did recover some coin and fine gems from the remains.

Also in the cave were two metallic jars bearing inscriptions in Quality, the written form of illithid language. Each jar radiated powerful magic and, upon opening, proved to hold an apparently living brain. The party resealed the jars and took them along.

The lich Hakran was not put out by the loss of the two zombies and seemed very happy to receive the news of Thedris's demise. The party handed over the brainmate, and in return Hakran gave Tika a scroll of raise ship, a specialized clerical spell that would raise the Torchwood from the depths and render it seaworthy again. They talked a little of the rise in violence under the sea, which Hakran said had been slowly escalating for several decades. Tika got a feeling that the lich knew more than he said, but couldn't pin him down. They parted company on civil terms, with Hakran promising to send a message with any information he managed to gain from the brainmate.

The heroes returned to the Torchwood and used the scroll to float her again. With their crew already back in Marhaven it would be a slow trip, but at least they had their home back.

<MR>
1/9/08