16 Mostan 1120

The Enemy of My Enemy

Following their defeat of the vampire Tarus and his hunting party, the heroes took a well deserved breather. They spent much of their time in training, learning more advanced skills and abilities.

Vondran took lessons from Gilliam Corgan in the ways of the justiciar. Tika spent time at the Temple of Pelor studying new spells and dealing with the evil-tainted weapons they had taken from the vampires. She also saw to the purchase of several pouches of well-crafted diamonds, which were necessary for the casting of raise dead and revivify. Karu picked up a few exotic adventuring supplies -- poisons, mostly -- to add to his bag of tricks while Ash added some new spells to hers. And Loki learned how to make use of the silver touch ring he'd taken from the vampire soulknife Amanda. The group also invested in three more gills of Hamachi, giving them sufficient items on hand for the entire party to adventure in the sea without using up valuable spells or depending on potions to breathe.

There was also a thorough reshuffling of equipment. Vondran received his new dragonhide armor and passed the +2 mithral chain shirt he had been wearing to Loki, who in turn passed his +1 shadow chain shirt to Tika. Ash laid claim to the impervious vestment taken from the soulknife Amanda and gave her now-redundant bracers of armor +3 to Karu.

The group was preparing to leave Marhaven again to visit their friend Athesto, whom they suspected had been in town recently looking for them. A letter arriving from the Tumari village of Newkeep hastened their visit:

My friends,

I hope that this finds you well. Unfortunately, I write with distressing news.

If I remember correctly, you mentioned when you first came to Newkeep that you had spent time in the village of Stearns. Recently a small party who had gone to Stearns to purchase grain and tobacco came back and reported that the village was deserted. Malwick (you may remember the constable) took a posse to investigate and confirms that everyone is gone and there are signs of violent struggle all over the place.

Malwick believes the village fell victim to a sahuagin raid, but I have my doubts. The sahuagin have been conspicuously silent for several weeks now, and even at their most aggressive were always more interested in livestock than people. But I have no better explanation to put forward.

You've done so much for the coastal people already that I dare not ask for more. I simply thought you might want to know that the people of Stearns are missing and probably dead.

May Heironeous guide and protect you,

Kiernan

The group remembered Kiernan as well as the people of Stearns, the first town they visited on their initial trip to the Tumari coast (No Good Deed). They finished stocking the Torchwood and set out for the coast.

Their first stop was the former darfellan settlement now occupied by Athesto. The group noted that the underwater entrance to the lair was much more effectively hidden than before and approached cautiously. Athesto was there, unharmed pleased to see the party again.

Athesto confirmed that he had passed through Marhaven a few weeks before in the guise of a darfellan, looking for the party in order to report on the sahuagin. He had spent the intervening weeks hanging around sahuagin settlements, using his alternate form ability to disguise himself as one of them, and quietly observing as much as possible.

In recent years, Athesto discovered, the normally monotheistic sahuagin have begun paying heed to a new god. They still revere Sekolah, the shark-like god who is their ancestral deity, but many in the sahuagin leadership now sport medals or tattoos bearing the yellow eye symbol of a power spoken of in reverent tones as the Deep Master. Though not officially said, it is widely believed by the sahuagin people that this Deep Master inspired the increase in violence against the coastal human villages.

Another recent development in sahuagin society, Athesto learned, was the crowning of a new local prince. Early this past summer a stranger -- a powerful mutant warrior -- had deposed the existing prince for the eastern region and taken his place. Several of the deposed prince's stronger rivals tried to unseat the newcomer but were easily beaten down by the brutal new prince. Moreover, when word reached the new prince that a party of adventurers had slain two successive barons from the same village (The Hunted, Remembrance of the Fallen) and included a darfellan wielding the Arm of Telomir, the prince responded by sending a force to that village to kill every male, female, and child in residence.

While the sahuagin are bred to admire strength and despise weakness, this unprecedented show of brutality against his own people by the new prince was enough to open cracks in the normally solid foundations of sahuagin society. Villages began quietly forming alliances with each other for protection, and some whispered of joining forces to depose the new prince. Villages that have been too open about this have been raided and destroyed by the prince's forces.

For the people of the coastal villages, the internal struggles of the sahuagin brought one benefit: for several weeks, while the sahuagin fought amongst themselves, raids on the coastal villages came to a complete halt. Based on Kiernan's letter, though, it appeared to the party that the respite was over. They thanked Athesto for his information and continued by rowboat up river to Newkeep.

A warm and hearty welcome greeted the party in Newkeep. Even the normally dour Constable Malwick smiled when he saw the party arrive. Their old friend Kiernan happily received them at his newly-built Temple of Heironeous and told them what he knew of the situation in Stearns.

The last contact anyone in Newkeep had had with Stearns had been three weeks before, when Farmer Ludden had come to town to trade for farming tools. At that time there had been nothing to indicate that there was any problem in Stearns; Ludden was his normal self. In fact, there hadn't been a sahuagin attack that anyone knew of since late Eidos.

When a group from Newkeep had come back from a buying trip to Stearns to report the town demolished, Malwick had gone to investigate. He told the party he had seen clear signs of struggle all over the village: doors knocked in, fences broken, equipment smashed. The people were gone and some livestock was dead while other animals had been found wandering around loose. He had nobody with tracking skills and therefore no way to identify the attackers, but Stearns had always been near the coast and had been a frequent sahuagin target in the past.

The party borrowed an ox and wagon and took a road trip to the remains of Stearns. They found things much as Malwick had described except for the livestock (which had been taken to Newkeep).

Vondran put his tracking skills to use and examined the minute traces remaining of the two-week-old attack. Overlaying all to an annoying degree were the fresh boot tracks of Malwick and his posse, which Vondran disregarded. Underneath those he was able to identify several distinct sets of footprints. Some were clearly sahuagin -- webbed feet, medium sized, with talons -- and some were of a much larger, heavier creature. These tracks entered the village from the coastal road, moved all around it, and then headed back. The returning tracks, however, included scuff marks and indications of heavy weights being dragged or carried by the retreating figures. There were clear signs that at least some of the villagers had been taken alive.

Tika was the first to express what everyone was thinking: this was nothing like any of the earlier sahuagin raids. Normally sahuagin came ashore to take livestock and only killed people who resisted them, leaving the bodies wherever they fell. These raiders had left the livestock and taken all the people. Sahuagin may have been involved, based on the tracks left, but the party felt sure that this was not a typical sahuagin raid.

They followed the trail out of Stearns and down to the coast, where the tracks went straight into the water. Vondran noticed that a short way into the water the depth of the tracks changed, as though the creatures no longer bore the weight of captives. Where were the people?

Once into deeper water the trail all but petered out. Sahuagin, after all, are natural swimmers. The minute traces remaining were from the large creature, which left sufficient signs in the form of broken shells or torn vegetation to guide the party to a cluster of stone huts set into a valley in the coastal shelf. Vondran recognized it as a sahuagin village, though the Arm of Telomir told him that there were no sahuagin in the immediate area.

Sure enough, the village bore an eerie resemblance to Stearns: broken-down doors on buildings, broken weapons and equipment lying around everywhere, and signs all over of a violent battle. The huts had been stripped of valuables.

The group moved toward the largest of the stone buildings and recognized it as a temple to Sekolah. Vondran went inside and toyed with the idea of desecrating the altar but had no time to follow through on the thought because two large, humanoid figures suddenly materialized in the village center.

The creatures looked mostly like trolls, though their webbed claws and feet indicated they were more likely scrags, an aquatic troll variant. Their pale skin and sunken, glowing green eyes suggested that there was something unnatural about these, even by troll standards.

Vondran swam forward at full speed and charged into the lead scrag with his harpoon. A bright green tentacle emerged from the creature's head and wrapped itself around Vondran, holding him fast, while another advanced on Ash and grabbed onto her with a similar glowing tentacle.

Ash responded by casting bale transposition on herself and the lead troll. She immediately found herself next to Vondran while the troll that had been holding Vondran ended up in the grip of its partner. That freed up Vondran for a swim-by attack while Tika cast freedom of movement on herself and Karu and Loki engaged the enemy in melee.

The scrags provided another surprise when the one Vondran attacked turned on him and breathed out a cone of vile acid. His black dragonhide armor provided some protection and allowed him to counterattack. Meanwhile, Loki was grabbed by the tentacle of the first troll but freed himself and ducked away to allow Ash to send a sonic fireball into the space behind them. The creatures were heavily wounded but, to nobody's surprise, showed immediate signs of their trademark regeneration ability.

They also showed more signs of other non-troll-like abilities. The second scrag fixed its empty gaze on Ash and the young sorcerer felt a sudden onslaught of mental energy attacking her mind -- the scrag, it appeared, had some degree of psionic power. Ash shook off the assault and returned fire with a scorching ray, which produced a jet of scalding steam that worked as well on the scrag body as fire, before seeking healing from Tika.

Vondran found himself again gripped by a glowing green tentacle. Unable to use his harpoon, he resorted to biting the tentacle while Loki backed him up with psychic strikes. Ash's opponent fixed its gaze on her again and this time Ash lost the mental battle and found herself compelled by the creature's will. She aimed a scorching ray at Karu, who was battling with the other scrag, but fortunately missed the mark and expended the spell without doing any harm. Tika recognized what had happened and cast a magic circle against evil to counter the mind control, which left Ash angry enough to lob another fireball at the enemy.

Ash's fireball and Loki's psychic strikes were enough to put the first scrag down, though it was clearly regenerating. The second scrag backed away and vanished from sight with an effect that reminded Ash of a teleport spell. She finished off the downed scrag with a final scorching ray to make sure it would never get up again and the battle was done.

A close examination of the dead scrag turned up some oddities. The creature had four round holes in its skull. Three of the holes had been plugged with a thick mucous; the fourth had been the opening from which the tentacle had extruded itself. The heroes removed a plug with a dagger and released a flow of bright green, viscous fluid. The creature's braincase was largely empty; only a basic stem of brain matter remained. There was no sign of the tentacle, leading the party to conclude that it had been formed from the green fluid. But what kind of troll was this? They had no good answer for that.

A clear trail led out of the village to a horrifying sight. A few hundred feet away, a roughly dug trench held dozens of sahuagin bodies. They were all males, and while they showed varying degrees of battle wounds all had four neat, circular holes in their heads and no brain matter left inside the skulls. They speculated on the meaning of this, but none of the heroes had the expertise to determine anything for certain.

Then Loki spotted a hidden figure lurking on the edge of his vision: a sahuagin warrior. Since Loki was in manta ray form thanks to his cloak of the manta ray, he casually swam closer to check out the apparent spy. It was an older sahuagin male, and on approach Loki noted three younger warriors nearby as well. They all watched him closely but made no moves.

Loki turned to rejoin his group and the sahuagin followed. As they approached the heroes the older warrior took the lead and held out his trident with the handle toward the party, a gesture Vondran recognized as a sahuagin signal for parley. The group responded in kind and the sahuagin approached to confer. Immediately the party noticed that the warriors were wounded and clearly nowhere near full strength.

The leader introduced himself in Common as Nepthak, an elder of the village in which they now stood. Some weeks before his village had been attacked and overrun by monsters -- creatures like sahuagin, but not sahuagin -- a new sahuagin mutation, perhaps, born of vile magic. Nepthak described them as humanoid, similar in physique to sahuagin, but with squid-like heads. They were led by the two scrags the party had just fought. In a frighteningly short time, Nepthak said, the creatures had killed nearly all of the village's warriors and taken captive the females and children. Nepthak and a few young warriors had escaped the initial carnage and spent the last weeks trying to thin the enemy's numbers in quick strikes against small groups, but the monsters were freakishly resilient and possessed formidable mental powers.

The sahuagin offered one more piece of information: these creatures, he said, were the same that had attacked the human village after leveling his. They were, therefore, the party's enemies as well as his own. Since the heroes had shown that they could destroy the scrags, Nepthak proposed that the two parties join forces. He knew the location of the monsters' lair, and that the captives taken from his village were held there; the combined groups, he suggested, could be sufficient to destroy the monsters and free the prisoners.

Even without Vondran's presence to remind them, the heroes knew that sahuagin are inherently and unapologetically evil. However, in light of this new enemy, Nepthak's proposal seemed like the right thing to do. They accepted his offer and used some of their magic to heal Nepthak and his warriors back to full strength. The combined party rested to regain resources and then set off for the monsters' camp.

Nepthak believed that there were as many as 15 of the mutant sahuagin encamped in this place, another dead sahuagin village, along with the two scrags. As the group approached and scouted the area, however, they saw only three creatures. One was clearly guarding a stone building while the other two sat idly in the middle of a clearing sharpening wicked-looking short swords that looked to be carved from the bones of a huge animal. Nepthak frowned and said that the bulk of the creatures must be out on another surface raid. This was perhaps good news for the party, but ultimately bad news for another small village.

Nepthak and his warriors charged full speed at the targets in the center clearing. Ash provided some cover in the form of magic missiles and sensed that her targets had spell resistance. She had no difficulty overcoming that resistance, but it marked these creatures as different from sahuagin in more than just anatomy. Vondran, Karu and Loki moved in from the sides while Nepthak's charge held the creatures' attention.

The charge proved ill-advised. The first monster raised its squid-like head and squinted, and all four sahuagin suddenly stopped in their tracks, stunned. So was Loki, who had come around and assist in the central melee. One monster wrapped its tentacles around Nepthak's head while the second embraced Loki the same way.

Tika saw the tentacles close around Loki and made the connection to the four holes in all of those sahuagin skulls. Sensing that Loki was in immediate danger of having his brains sucked out of his head she cast a searing light at the mutant but the spell fizzled in the face of its magic resistance. Tika, sensing a lopsided melee in progress, called out a desperate prayer to Pelor for aid.

Pelor answered. Tika felt her body grow larger and more powerful as a righteous might spell transformed her into a potent warrior. She stepped forward to menace the monster into releasing Loki.

Ash found herself under attack from a fourth sahuagin mutant. She defended herself with a new spell, vortex of teeth, that enveloped the creature in a swirling mass of pirhana-like manifestations that tore at its flesh and forced it to retreat.

Karu landed a vicious cut against his enemy with his luck blade that left the creature limping through battle, but Loki was still in the grip of those deadly tentacles. Vondran lunged forward, using his full swim speed to back the charge, and plunged the Arm of Telomir into the mutant's body. The creature staggered and fell dead, releasing Loki just in time with his brains intact.

Vondran's heroic blow saved Loki but there was nobody in range to save Nepthak. The mutant's tentacles flexed and Nepthak screamed out in pain. His body convulsed for a brief second and then went completely still as he died. The tentacles let go, revealing four neat round holes in Nepthak's skull. Tika cast deific vengeance on Nepthak's killer and moved in to join the melee.

Ash used the vortex of teeth as a safe bunker from which she could launch magic missiles and scorching rays at the enemy. While Vondran and Karu and Tika engaged the monsters in close combat her spells chipped away at their strength. Despite their best efforts, though, another of their sahuagin allies was killed before they could recover their wits from the initial mental attack. The two remaining warriors ran the mutant through with their spears and avenged their leader.

The door to a building opened and out stepped a new horror: a four-armed body like the common sahuagin mutant, but also sporting the squid-like head that marked this new variant. It stood there as if daring someone to attack it. Vondran obliged -- he charged the mutant with abandon only to find himself impaled on two tridents, both set to receive his charge. The damage he did to the mutant paled in comparison to the wounds he took.

With their physical attacks beginning to fail, the mutants took to mind games. One tried a suggestion to Karu that he really wanted to attack Ash, but Karu was not moved. Another tried a mind blast on Tika but also failed to slow her down. Reinforcements in the form of two more mutants arrived and again Nepthak's warriors found themselves stunned and unable to fight.

Then Loki recovered from the second mind blast and was able to join the melee. He charged a psychic strike and quickly felled one of the new mutants. Tika used more deific vengeance and blows from her enlarged mace kill another mutant while Ash helped Vondran with the four-armed leader. The mutant got a tentacle on Vondran's skull but the darfellan broke free and landed another hit before Tika killed the creature with a sound lance to end the battle.

The good news, such as it was, came from one of the stone huts where the party found a dozen sahuagin young and three adult females still alive and reasonably healthy. The bad news was that Nepthak and one of his warriors were dead, and with their brains removed it was beyond Tika's power to revive them. A pit outside of the village area held more ugliness: a mound of sahuagin bodies, this time females and older children, bearing the same cranian holes and emptied skulls as the other victims of the mutant strain.

The scrag and the remaining mutants were nowhere to be found. If Nepthak was right, they would be back and may have more captives with them. In the meantime, however, the party's resources were depleted and the surviving sahuagin had to be taken to safety. Vondran surprised everyone by offering the two last warriors the masterwork tridents used so effectively on him by the four-armed leader. They accepted the gift and pledged to conduct the freed females and children to a village where they would be safe.

The party found themselves a camping site where they could monitor the mutant camp from a safe distance and settled down to wait.

<MR>
6/23/07