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24 Mostan 1120
Blood In The Water
The heroes made camp in a discreet spot where they could watch over the dead sahuagin village. Eventually, they knew, the creatures who had overrun the place would be back from their latest surface raid. On the second night of their vigil, they attracted the attention of a pair of giant squid. The huge invertebrates saw the party as potential food, it seemed, for they closed in directly even as most of the heroes slept. Vondran, on watch, woke Loki and Karu first and then the spellcasters Tika and Ash. Loki charged in to fight the nearest squid and scored an easy hit with his mind blade. But then the downside to his plan became apparent as ten tentacles lashed at him. Five tentacles caught and gripped Loki, crushing him in their coils. Vondran plunged his harpoon into the other squid and lodged it there but could do nothing to help Loki get free. Fortunately, Ash could. She cast baleful transposition and caused the nearer squid to switch places with Loki, leaving the two sea creatures tangled up in each other's tentacles while Loki was freed. He swam to Tika for healing. While the squid were disentangling from each other the party brought all their weapons to bear. Vondran, Loki, and Karu all landed blows against squid. Tika punished Loki's tormentor with a sound lance and Ash let fly with a sonic fireball. The show of strength put enough of a hurt on the squid that they jetted off to seek easier prey. The group resumed their rest and passed a quiet remainder of the night. When morning came they worked out their strategy for dealing with the expected return of 15 aberrant sahuagin warriors and possibly a skrag or worse leading. It was almost a relief when Loki, doing a lookout patrol around the dead village, spotted a much smaller group inbound. The party secreted themselves in the weeds along the sea bottom in the path of the returning group. They counted three of the illithid-like sahuagin mutants. One was mounted on a large fish with wicked-looking horns and a tough, scaled hide and a similar beast swam beside. A pair of ropes tied to the second beast were being used to tow a group of small humanoids roped into two clusters of four. Although the heroes did a reasonable job of hiding their bodies, the telepathic abilities of the enemy alerted them to the ambush. As they approached within about 80 feet one of the aberrants cut the hostages loose from the beast -- a ramfish, the part could now see -- and sent the fish charging down toward the group as the leader's mount did likewise. Ash and Loki were gored. The leader swam just far enough to line the group up for a mind blast and managed to stun Ash and Tika with it. Loki charged up a psychic strike while Vondran and Karu engaged the mutants. The leader grabbed Vondran around the head with its tentacles and prepared to extract his brain. Karu and Loki ignored the ramfish that bit at them and came to Vondran's aid. Karu landed a precise sudden strike and Loki hit with a fully charged psychic strike. The mutant leader fell dead before it could taste darfellan brain. Vondran used his reprieve to charge the next mutant and lodge the Arm of Telomir in its gut. The remaining mutant used its mind blast to stun Loki and made for one of the ramfish. Tika called down deific vengeance on the mutant just before it mounted a ramfish and sped away. The other fish ran in the opposite direction but alone, as Vondran happily ripped the guts out of the second aberrant fighter. Loki recovered his wits, saw his quarry fleeing, and was having none of that. He used the superior speed of his cloak of the manta ray augmented with his own psionic power to run down the slay the fleeing marauder. A search of the bodies turned up nothing but belt pouches with an odd mixture of low-value coin and precious stones. Much of it was shoal halfling coin, but there was also currency from aquatic elf, merfolk, and other aquatic peoples. Some variety could be explained by trade, but it seemed these fighters had been looting a number of different cultures in recent time. The captives proved to be shoal halflings. They were bound together by leather collars in groups of four, with one in the center and three tied to him by 10-foot ropes. Attached to the collars of the two center captives were stones that radiated despair -- anyone coming within 30 feet of those collars could feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. That made them well suited to keeping captives under control, of course. The heroes placed the stones in Tika's bag of holding so that they could be carried safely until a chance to destroy them came. From the captives, the party learned that the mutants -- half-illithid sahuagin -- had raided and destroyed a shoal halfling settlement on the coast two days before. Several dozen of the halflings had been taken as captives, with the majority being taken with a larger group separate from this small patrol the party had killed. The halflings did not know where the other sahuagin had gone, but they told the party that many coastal settlements had fallen recently and all races, even the true sahuagin, seemed to be targets. The party took the halflings back to the ruins of their settlement. It looked much like the ruins of Stearns, and of the sahuagin villages the party had seen. Vondran was unable to find any trail to follow, which left the group with no clear direction. Before even considering that, though, there was bitter work to be done. The party helped the halflings to bury their dead and repair the desecrated temple to Yondalla. Tika erected a small altar in honor of Pelor from some of the debris, gave thanks to her god for his divine assistance and asked his guidance in the form of a divination spell to point the party toward where they could most help. She was answered with a vision of an aquatic elf community under attack by the half-illithids. As Tika watched the battle concluded with the elves scattered and defeated. Here, she understood, was where the invaders' commander was lodged and where the majority of the captives were held. The party agreed to seek that site. Two days later the party came upon the remains of the settlement. As with the other ruined villages the temple had been desecrated. In the village square a statue of Deep Sashelas lay toppled and destroyed. The party spotted two half-illithids standing guard before what looked to be the town's meeting hall and surmised that the leader must be inside. Knowing the powers of the half-illithids, the group took some time to prepare themselves. Tika cast freedom of movement on Loki and Vondran so that they could avoid being grappled by tentacles. She cast protection from evil on herself, Ash and Karu to guard against mental control and provide a boost in their resistance to the creatures' mind blasts. Ash used false life on herself to gain some endurance. With their protections in place, Loki and Vondran charged the guards from what should have been a concealed approach. However, the telepathic abilities of the mutants again spoiled the surprise. One guard stepped forward with a mind blast that stopped Loki and Vondran in their tracks, allowing the illithids to close in at their leisure. Karu, lacking the freedom of movement, tried to skirt the battle by climbing to the roof of the meeting hall and coming on the guards from behind. Ash and Tika advanced together, with Ash trying to magic missile the first guard but failing to overcome the creature's spell resistance. Tika cast righteous might and placed herself in front of Ash in a defensive posture. Vondran found himself again facing four tentacles, but thanks to the freedom of movement spell the creature was unable to get a good hold on him. He recovered his wits and struck back with the Arm of Telomir only to discover that each time the enemy hit him Vondran would lose some strength and the enemy gained it. Vondran's melee ability grew increasingly shaky. At the same time, Karu found himself poorly suited to a battle in which he could neither turn invisible nor attack with his preferred thrown weapons. Strike after strike with his luck blade missed the target. With Loki stunned Tika took on the temporary role of melee fighter. She landed a brutal blow with her spear that severed an opponent's muscle and blocked another's charge with her body mass. Ash used her as cover while she cast magic missile and scorching ray spells at the enemy to wear them down and support the fighters. As the party began to prevail three more half-illithid sahuagin joined the battle. These were clearly a higher class of warrior than those the party had encountered before; they showed signs of psionic power in addition to the mind blast. In fact they had healing ability and the strength-draining power used on Vondran, and seemed abnormally difficult to hit or damage. The heroes realized they had to be dealing with psychic warriors. Tika made time to cast a lesser restoration on Vondran, which reversed the strength drain he had suffered and allowed him to execute a highly effective swim-by attack on one of the newcomers. Loki came to and charged up his psychic strike for some payback. Then the party was surprised when all five of their opponents, in perfect unison, swam straight up 30 feet. Before they could react to the sudden disengagement the reason became clear in the form of a massive burst of cold energy that exploded in the center of the space, doing damage to everyone within a 20-foot radius. The psychic warriors watched from a safe distance while the party got blasted by the cold. Something new had joined the battle, but what? Loki and Vondran charged upward to re-engage the enemy. Vondran took four tentacle hits and felt his strength draining away again. Ash got off another scorching ray but then felt an unseen force take hold of her body and immobilize it. She couldn't move or speak for a moment. Then her body moved of its own accord, walking over to the nearest enemy and kneeling. Vondran saw what was happening and charged the enemy before it could attach its tentacles to Ash's head. He sliced into it with his harpoon and put an end to the creature. Karu also landed a death blow to take out an opponent he had shared with Tika, and moments later Loki's psychic strike ended a third. Their momentum halted, though, when Vondran felt the Arm of Telomir being yanked out of his grip. He followed its path and saw it caught neatly by a floating humanoid figure with bulbous eyes and pale skin -- a full-blooded mind flayer. Vondran knew that illithids have psionic plane shifting ability, meaning his prized weapon could disappear in a second with the enemy. He charged the creature and wrested the harpoon from it, in the process putting himself in prime position to receive another mind blast. A mind blast was exactly what the illithid did, stunning Loki, Karu, and Ash more severely than any of its underlings had. That left Tika and Vondran to face the creature alone. Tika cast spiritual weapon and managed to overcome the illithid's formidable resistance with it. Vondran landed a telling blow and deliberately blunted it to cause non-lethal damage, wanting to take the enemy alive for questioning. The mind flayer countered with a psionic energy current of cold that nearly killed Vondran and seemed more than capable of finishing the job, but Vondran countered with a desperate harpoon blow that broke the creature's concentration and ended the power. Tika tried to cast hypothermia but the monster resisted the spell. Tika was down to her weakest spells now, and Vondran was near his physical limit. The mind flayer, however, seemed unaware of this. Or perhaps it was low on resources itself. The creature stared at them both for a moment and then vanished in a plane shift.
Inside the meeting hall the party found and freed over 20 captives, mostly aquatic elves and a few of the missing shoal halflings. The story these hostages told was similar to what they'd already heard: that an army of half-illithid, half-sahuagin warriors was systematically flattening every village and colony under the water. The warriors were led by mind flayers, but the mind flayers in turn took direction from a pair of humanoids on horrific, other-worldly mounts. There was a war going on and nobody above the surface seemed to know a thing about it. The party realized there was no way they could take on this army themselves. The best plan seemed to be a return to Marhaven to get the word out about the attacks and see what resources they could muster.
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