Wednesday, November 1, 2017
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Right away, the helmet-laden crab scuttles towards our heroes and grabs Krask in its giant pincers, constricting him. Theo hexes from distance while Krask stabs with his dagger, trying to escape. Fobias and Barnaby stand on the edge of the tidepool and try to get through the crab’s chitin with their blades. It isn’t long before Krask is squeezed, almost to the point of unconsciousness, requiring healing from Theo. Luckily, the crab is unable to pull the kobold into the swirling water before Theo hits him with charge from their healing wand.
The blades prove to be more than capable of cutting through the chitin, and the crab’s lifeless body gets pulled from the helmet, skewered on Barnaby’s scimitar.
Fobias notices the intriguing glitter of gold at the bottom of the pool, and braves the currents to collect a massive haul of coins and a magical amulet. While underwater, he also notices that the pool is connected to the Varisian Gulf via an underground tunnel. A possible escape route for Nualia?
Before leaving the room, Theo recognizes the carving on the wall as being a depiction of the legendary (read: fantastical?) city of Xin-Shalast, famous for its near-infinite wealth. They press onwards, back upstairs, to try and gather more clues to the increasing-muddled situation that they find themselves in.
Back upstairs, the party opens a set of disturbing stone doors to find a chapel of Lamashtu. Underneath a statue of a pregnant woman, a black marble altar is covered in remnants of ash and bone. Apart from two glowing kukris on the statue, the party doesn’t find anything exceptionally interesting here.
They quickly continue on into a multi-purpose room serving as a Torture Chamber and a makeshift prison. The cells are mostly empty, save a pair that house the dead corpses of a goblin and two dogs. Finally, they return to the living quarters and investigate the last room that they had passed over on their initial investigation of the area.
It is Nualia’s room. Or…it was. Under the bed sheets they retrieve an assortment of poorly-hidden wands and scrolls that had been taken off Niko’s body. But, perhaps more intriguing, they also find a heavily damaged journal with only a handful of pages remaining. The only passage legible is from a week ago, stating that Nualia had been unsuccessful in the search for ‘the Mother’s Child’ and that she hoped to use the Child and the bones of her ancestors to excel in Lamashtu’s favor once more.
The party decides to investigate the natural caves that Orik had warned them about, first stopping to check a small closet filled with tiny, ramshackle cages lined with hay. A bird-skull rattle rests among the straw.
Just beyond a pile of refuse and junk, Krask and Barnaby squeeze through a narrow crevice into a larger cave whose eastern wall is covered by thick vines and vegetation. They spot a curious, tentacled creature hiding among the stalactites. Krask lures it back towards the way they came and strikes it with a crossbow bolt. While Barnaby stays back to draw the tentamort’s attention, the rest of the party rushes around to the other path and flanks the creature from its rear. It is quickly overwhelmed, and dies.
In the neighboring cave, the party finds a pile of skin and bones that had been the tentamort’s previous meals. They uncover a magical set of hide armor made of dog pelts, from among the bodies.
And as the echo of lapping waves echoes through the cavern, the party realizes that they have exhausted their search of Thistletop. Nualia is gone. Sandpoint beckons. Book one closes.
Oh, and they reach level five.
How are Xin-Shalast, Nualia, Roken, and Karzoug intertwined? How will Sandpoint react to the news that Nualia remains at-large? Will someone please tell me what’s going on?!