To have a little fun before, I asked the barbarian whether he'd prefer Eulalia, our guide, to leave him alone. He acquiesced. I had her join me in prayer, and finished the chanting off with an emotion redirecting spell. Yes, I made an inexperienced young maiden from a backwater village fall out of love with the muscle-bound barbarian, and instead feel the same towards a woman. Looking about in horror, she ran off. Great.
Not wanting to lose our guide, we gave chase, but she had familiarity with the marshy ground, and not even the fleet-footed half-elf Athosian managed to catch up to her. Cahir, bless his soul, recalled her with a telepathic summons. She did return after a while, all dazed and confused. And then she saw what happened next, going into shock. So we gave her PTSD. This is getting better by the moment.
Anyway, on to the fighty part: I melted the mound of copper by looking at it with an evil eye, and found myself encased in lava. The tremors attracted a nearby monster (as expected), and so I was left to scrolling through my Facebok feed and documenting the fight.
The fight was going well for a time, with everybody doing what they did best. Shamil hacked at the hydra with blazing shortswords. Biznard had a chunk of his chest ripped out, but paid back with interest, laying about with dual warhammers. Cahir absorbed damage, and Athosian did trick shots.
Then the hydra chomped on Shamil, lifting him into the air. Athosian shot dead the offending head, causing it to crash down and chomp again, leaving the assassin bruised and battered. Cahir tried to catch them, but the humongous head proved too much, and he was barely able to sidestep.
At this point, Biznard had killed 3 heads on his own, with everyone else accounting for the other two. The beast thrashed about and backed up slowly, leaving the adventurers with room to breathe. Literally, as Shamil was able to rip the teeth out of his own flesh, and extricate himself from the rather dangerous (and unpleasant) situation.
Finally, the one head that was chopped off divided into two, and the fresh heads attacked one of the smashed ones, ripping it off. A true hydra!
Luck turned against the party, as we witnessed 3 critical fails in a row. Athosian shot Cahir in the back by accident, one of Shamil's shortswords slipped and flew away, and another bounced off the thick armor and cut into Biznard's side. After this friendly-fire-type injury, a light swipe from the hydra was enough to knock the barbarian out.
Athosian's elemental slave was also ineffective, being swallowed whole.
The next highlight was us remembering that Biznard is pretty good at ignoring injury, and so he stood back up. Shamil tried to pass him a health potion, but messed it up due to being in a hurry, and passed on a lower grade one. Still, it was enough to put the barbarian back onto his feet.
By this time, the hydra had grown 6 heads in total, bringing it above its starting point. Luckily, its body had suffered enough damage by this point, and it gave way when Shamil chopped off its ballsack. Yes, we went there.
With the fight over, Cahir took his time to slap the elemental (instead of Athosian) and remind her to be more careful next time. Quite gently, for an avenger-type paladin.
As the party recovered, my ritual was complete, and I unlocked my own elemental servant.
Time to do adventurer-type stuff.
Shamil roasted the hydra's balls and ate them, to no effect.
Biznard roasted some of its meat and ate it, permanently losing some health due to it reacting weirdly with his body.
I sat down with Eulalia, trying to ascertain the damage inflicted to her mind. Looks like a solid month of psychotherapy for her. But I did manage to put her back unto her feet, and we moved on towards our original goal: some sort of graveyard, which the old fraudster pointed at as the source of the current troubles.
We tried some scrying before going in, to no real benefit. Cahir saw restless spirits, and my goddess confirmed the evil lurking within. The Athosian-tingle also went off[1].
We went in nevertheless, as the last reasonable camp site was an hour back. Even though it was getting dark. Into the cemetery. At least I had a lamp, and Cahir had a torch.
ZOMBIE AMBUSH!
IN THE DARK! IMMERSION!!![2]
Of course, we beat the crap out of them with barely any effort. There were some strange effects, like two ghouls bursting out lightning shields, but we found no warlock in the vicinity, and I am not skilled in warlock-type magic to have a say on the matter. The cemetery did not emanate any more magic either, leaving us in the dark about the true nature of our foe... for the moment!
[1] Spider-Man: Far from Home had just come out.
[2] Cahir's favorite warcry.
No comments:
Post a Comment