13 Praedus 1120

A Cry for Help

By now the heroes of the Torchwood were accustomed to strangers appearing at the dock seeking their help. On this particular winter morning, however, the stranger in question was something quite different and unexpected: a young darfellan woman.

The girl introduced herself as Ketti!luila, or Ketti for short. She had come to seek the hero Vladamir Vondran and his party to beg their help in defending her colony from an unknown danger.

Several months before, Ketti explained, the remnants of a few families from destroyed darfellan settlements banded together to form a new colony. They chose a small coastal cave system in the colder, northern waters figuring that it would be safe from sahuagin, who prefer warmer environs. For several months the colony flourished, even attracted more member families and grew.

Then, Ketti said, the trouble started. They had begun to run tight on space, so some of the men had sought to expand the cave system by digging more chambers. In the process they accidentally unearthed a much older tunnel that led deep down into the ground below. At first this was deemed a lucky find, as darfellans are not known for their tunneling skills, but it proved to be a curse.

A few nights later several darfellans -- a woman and two pre-teen boys -- were abducted and taken by creatures that apparently entered the colony through the new opening and escaped the same way. A search party sent after them came back bloodied and dragging some of its members behind, telling tales of ambush in the darkness by unseen enemies with sharp claws. The creatures were not sahuagin, the darfellans were sure, but could not even guess what they were.

An attempt was made to close the hole, but a few nights later the repair was breached and two more darfellans disappeared into the darkness. A better seal was put in place which held until a week later, when a new hole appeared in a different part of the cave system and more darfellans were taken.

Ketti dropped to her knees and begged Vondran to save her colony. He looked to his companions for agreement and got it, to the party set sail that day for the shores of Corusk, Tika's homeland, where the settlement was.

The party was greeted by a throng of excited, hero-worshipping darfellans. Their exploits had won them acclaim in many quarters, and among the darfellans Vondran was viewed as a major celebrity.

The heroes asked for more details of the attacks. Ketti had relayed accurately what was known, but during her absence another attack had taken place. This time the colony's headman, Asheliu, and his daughter Lilika had been taken by the creatures through a new breach in the same back border of the settlement.

The party examined the breach but none of them had any particular skill in tunneling so they were unable to gain any information from it. The attack had just happened the previous night; with haste there was a chance they might rescue the captives alive. They headed down the passage with weapons and light sources at the ready.

A dank smell grew stronger as the party made their way down the long, damp, sloping tunnel. Several hundred yards from the colony, the passage dipped down and became filled with filthy, murky water. The sediment and muck in the water made it impossible to see anything more than a few feet away. The heroes formed up closely to remain in contact and waded in.

Movement was slow in the filthy water. The party worked their way through, keeping in contact as best they could. Then, out of nowhere, sharp claws raked at Loki and Vondran in the lead. The creatures were vaguely humanoid with bulbous eyes and vicious claws: not sahuagin, as the darfellans had noted, but in the murky tunnel it was hard to say what they might be.

More claws slashed at the lead heroes as the initial pair was joined by another. Loki and Vondran defended themselves, which drew the attention of their teammates. That attention sharpened when another pair of the thin, gaunt, yet surprisingly strong and wiry creatures swam into the party's midst and began attacking anything that moved.

Tika, Sagan, and Karu joined the melee in support. Sagan quickly found himself surrounded by the foul creatures and heard Loki advise him to step aside. The swashbuckler moved off and allowed Loki to take his spot, with enemies on all sides. Loki then used an ability none in the party had seen before: he fragmented his mindblade into pieces and attacked every one of the surrounding creatures simulaneously, again and again. Glowing blades slashed in all directions and one by one the creatures fell.

While Loki put on his display of power the rest of the party took on individual opponents. The creatures were strong and quick but almost feral, attacking with no apparent thought or purpose other than to attack and no form of strategy. Thus while they initially outnumbered the heroes, in single combat (or in multiple combat versus Loki) they were not so very formidable and quickly fell. Vondran also noted, to his great pleasure, that while these creatures may not be sahuagin they were monstrous aquatic humanoids -- the full powers of the Arm of Telomir worked against them.

Blood -- mostly the attackers' blood -- mixed with the muck did not help visibility, but with careful examination the party determined that they were facing kuo-toa, a race of amphibious creatures who perfer to dwell in dark, subterranean spaces and worship a monstrous goddess known as Blibdoolpoolp. Insanity is common among the kuo-toa, and these creatures appeared to have been among the crazed outcasts commonly found near a kuo-toa settlement.

With a better idea what lay ahead now, the party pushed on. The passage continued to descend until, perhaps a mile deeper than the battle site, it took a sharp turn upward and opened out into an air-filled chamber.

The heroes broke the plane of the water and found themselves looking into a vast open space filled with kuo-toa. Scores of them stood around in rapt attention as an important-looking one stood on a high platform, speaking in a sing-song tone a language none of the party understood. They did, however, understand the shining daggers the kuo-toan held aloft over two dark-colored bodies. A sacrifice was in progress.

Tika was first out of the passage. She immediately cast righteous might on herself and moved toward the platform, which rose out of a pond of water and stood 20 feet in the air. Ash followed and cast magic missile at the cleric on the platform while Vondran and Sagan charged for the pond at full speed. The figure on the dais withstood the attack and cast a moonbolt at Tika, then, seeing the fighters racing in his direction, shattered the ladder that would have given them access to the raised platform. Ash responded with a fireball deliberately placed to avoid injuring the innocents on the platform.

This display of martial might and magical power sent the vast majority of the kuo-toa fleeing through another water-filled tunnel in the floor. The heroes let them run, focusing their attention on the priest and any who stood to defend him. A total of nine kuo-toa did that: three strong, confident-looking specimens with no armor or weapons and six warriors clad in shell breastplate and wielding harpoons.

One of the unarmed kuo-toa moved aggressively, and with surprising speed, to intercept Tika. It delivered a sharp Stunning Fist attack that stopped her advance as another tripped Tika and dropped her on the ground. The third advanced on Loki and delivered a flurry of damaging blows. Clearly these were kuo-toa monitors, a serious martial threat.

With the ladder in pieces Sagan pulled up short of the water and found himself surrounded by kuo-toa harpooners. He engaged them in melee, using his Spring Attack ability to keep on the move and avoid attacks. Karu used his ki power to turn invisible and was irritated to note that the kuo toa still watched him, apparently able to see him despite his invisibility. He shot at the distant cleric with a poisoned crossbow bolt but missed and was set upon by a harpooner.

Kuo-toa are known for using an adhesive on their shields. Tika and Loki learned, however, that the adhesive was also a handy tool for the monitors. Each saw an opponent quickly coat his fist with the sticky goop, land a blow, and use the adhesive to land a guaranteed second hit. Tika fought back with crawling dark, a spell that wrapped her in black shadow tentacles that struck back every time an enemy attacked her. Loki used his psychic strike to deliver more telling blows.

On the dais, the cleric attacked Ash with a flame strike and then protected himself further with a shield of faith. Ash used false life to gain some strength and sent a message to Vondran to position him for a baleful transposition. Vondran touched the pillar supporting the dais and Ash attempted to switch his position with the cleric's, but the spell failed and Ash then found herself pursued doggedly by one of the harpooners.

Vondran continued to look for a way to get to the cleric above while engaging the kuo-toa harpooners in and near the water. He traded blows with one, killed it, and engaged another to back up Sagan. The swashbuckler traded blows with two harpooners, delivering a couple of vicious wounds and taking some as well. After his first kill he used his spider climb slippers to climb the cavern wall, but the cleric saw him and attacked with a sound lance and then a searing light that left Sagan too weak to continue. He sought out Tika for healing and engaged one of the monitors near her instead.

Ash continued to dodge her attacker, sometimes with a harpoon stuck in her body, while throwing spells back at the enemy. She used false life again to stay on her feet, and was rewarded when she managed to fell a harpooner with an empowered scorching ray and find two healing potions on his body.

Meanwhile Loki won his one-on-one battle with the monitor with a psychic strike and turned on a harpooner before he was forced to seek healing from Tika. The cleric send another flame strike, this time at Tika and Loki, and survived Tika's retaliatory sound lance and deific vengeance by casting a healing spell on himself.

On the main floor, however, the kuo-toa were losing. Almost simultaneously Ash's magic missile attack killed a harpooner, Vondran's dealt a death blow to a second, and a third harpooner collapsed and died from a bleeding wound inflicted by Sagan several rounds before. When the last surviving monitor cut and ran, leaving the cleric alone against the seven heroes, the cleric dove off the platform into the water below and vanished.

The heroes reached the dais and found two darfellans, an older man and a young girl. Both had bled to death during the battle. Tika performed raise dead on them both and brought them back to life and health. A grateful Asheliu told the party what he could based on overheard words in Common.

The sudden appearance of a new mutant race of warrior sahuagin, and their obvious aggression and ties with the mind flayers, had frightened the kuo-toa, Asheliu said. They were convinced that they had somehow displeased Blibdoolpoolp and, as a result, she was raising her servant Azazel to punish the kuo-toa for their faithlessness. When they became aware of the darfellan settlement their exalted whip -- the cleric from the dais -- had ordered ritual sacrifices to appease Blibdoolpoolp and, the kuo-toa hoped, save them from certain destruction.

Tika used stone shape to seal off the tunnel where the kuo-toa had fled and to repair the holes made by attacking kuo-toa in the settlement. Though the whip had escaped, it seemed likely that the kuo-toa would think twice before acting against the darfellans again.

After receiving effusive praise and thanks from the darfellans, the heroes headed back to Marhaven. The other group had been out of contact for nearly three weeks, and there was much still to do.

<MR>
7/20/08