Abyss Modified Session 14: Snakes For Nothing

The party returned to the Foaming mug after collecting their rewards for completing a few of their missions. They met up with a few other surface folk travelers and set out on the next leg of quests. Dinak the drow gloomstalker ranger, Orion the tiefling monk of the long death, Xanaphia the human bard/wild mage sorcerer, Godric the half elf swords college/hexblade warlock, Alcione the tiefling undying warlock/cleric of death, Church Mouse the halfling druid of the moon, Syre the yuanti bard, and Thelrum the turtle abjuration wizard made their way back out into the broken areas of Blingdenstone to bring justice to a medusa that had been killing gnomish scouts. They traveled quickly through the tunnels of Rockblight, trying to avoid any other entanglements, following a map they had been given by Henchie, who chose to stay home. 

They passed two huge statues roughly hewn from stone and entered what they new to be the district the medusa called home. They found dozens of broken drow and gnome statues in a courtyard and snake arrow was shot at them, the medusa was using live snakes as arrows! The party leapt into action, Dinak returned fire, Syre turned invisible, Alcione cast bless on the allies closest to her, Xanaphia launched chill touch the medusa’s way, Godric cast hex on her, Orion got closer, as Church Mouse turned into a dinosaur and charged up to her. the medusa struck out at Church Mouse, biting him with her snake hair. Poison coursed into his veins and his form dropped out of dinosaur and into a halfling again. Thelrum make his way closer to the conflict. The next few rounds went quick, even with Church Mouse conjuring large spiders to help combat the medusa. The party was able to knock the medusa out of the conflict quickly, Dinak scoring the final blow, but not before the medusa called for help, whistling to her unseen children, and calling for them to avenge her. 

The two statues the party had seen while entering the area made their way to the battle ground, as the medusa bled out. The group noticed the medusa had a holy symbol of Ogremoch on her belt, the same symbol that was glowing on the statue’s foreheads. Alcione cackled as she flew into the air and launched a shatter spell at the now identified oversized stone golems. The group worked on blasting away at the golems, Orion getting pummeled into unconsciousness by one of them. Xanaphia used her ice knife spells to great effect and ended up with two different wild surge events, one granted a feathered beard that fell off when sneezed, the other stole hit points from Syre and granted them to Xanaphia. As the party felled the constructs and pulled Orion free from the rubble, Thelrum pulled the symbols from the golem’s foreheads. The magical auras on them detected as conjuration and transmutation and while he studied them the air around them grew cloudy, the essence of Ogremoch possessing them was free. Xanaphia used a gust spell to drive the angry cloud away and into another chamber. Dinak tore apart the home of the medusa, finding some simple gems and five drow dresses that might be worth something. Alcione traded Dinak some coin to keep one of the dresses for herself. They took their findings, consisting of both the drow clothing and the medusa’s severed head back to the gnomes and gained a hefty reward. Syre also befriended the snakes the medusa had been using for ammunition. 

The next morning the group decided to head out and investigate why ooze monsters were attacking more often as well as where they were going. As the group enjoyed their early morning café drinks in tiny cups, they noticed a small gelatinous cube about the size of basketball slithering and rolling very slowly deeper into the city. They decided to follow it, which was not difficult, it only moved about half the parties speed per minute. They followed it for about seven hours, only walking a few miles as it led them deep into upper Rockblight area. Eventually they came to an area with a larger basin, that seemed teeming with oozes of all shapes and colors, and in the center of the cluster was a deep gnome. The deep gnome was lost in conversation with his oozy subjects and took no notice of the party. Church Mouse made the decision to approach the gnome in is court of ooze and ask him a few questions. They had a conversation about goals, life, loss, and Church Mouse tried to talk some common sense into this Pudding King, but the voice of Juiblex rang out across the chamber, reminding the Pudding King of his goal. The Pudding King let Churchmouse go back to his friends and the group ran back to the city to talk to the elder about what had transpired here. 

As they were approaching the tunnel that led to the main gate Dinak spotted something. He stopped the party and pointed out a halfling or gnome sized rat creature on the cavern ceiling. He looked around seeing close to fifty other wererats approaching with crossbows drawn. Goldwhisker, the leader of the wererats asked the party why they were in the tunnels, more out of curiosity than anger. Godrick took point, telling Goldwhisker about the ooze problem and how they were hired to solve this. Goldwhisker told the group the non-wererat gnomes did not trust them because of the blessing/curse of lycanthropy, and the wererats had been fighting off the oozes for a much longer time. The party acted as intermediaries for the two groups, the non-wererat gnomes and wererat gnomes, and managed to get the two groups to work together. Having a momentary stable peace, the groups plan their assault on the oozes, where will the party fit into this? Find out next week in the Battle for Blingdenstone!