Feverborne
We spent the next day hunting and recuperating. Nifty and Pish hunted up a nice fat deer, which was roasted over a fire. We kept watch over the entrance to the grotto, hoping to get some warning if the strange ooze creature left. It did not, at least not that we saw. We spent a second night, and Closea’s grace healed my wounds. The platinum ring turned out to not be magical. We went back down the next day, finding that most of the frog corpses had been dragged off, or perhaps consumed. There were drag marks leading east, and an awful stench. I suspected the trogolodytes, but the drag marks led in the wrong direction. We checked the remaining corpses for treasure but found nothing.
The ooze monster found us, however. We weren’t expecting it so far north of its territory, and in fact had hoped to avoid it completely. However, encountering the monster far to the north presented an opportunity as well as a risk. We ducked back through the doors to the south and slammed them shut behind us. I told the faster party members – Pish, Morin, and Nifty – to make a run for the slime circle room where the slime creature was obviously not guarding his magic-filled cabinet. The plan was simple: I would delay it as long as possible, leading it away from the treasure room, and keep its attention; the rest of the party would loot the room and run. Even those of us in armor should be able to stay ahead of an ooze, though it’s magical abilities were a bit of a wild card.
I kept the hirelings on task and delayed by closing doors, but it was able to ooze under them. I took a swing with Verminbane, but the blow bounced off the creature’s hide. Apparently oozes are not vermin. I tried to get the torchbearer to hit the thing with hia torch to see if fire would work, but he refused and ran. I retreated slowly, taking a swing occasionally, but mostly trying to stay out of reach while keeping its attention. Right up to the moment when it cast some kind of spell, and my armor started heating up like a surgeon’s scapel. We had gotten to the mushroom room with some light by then, so I sent the torchbearer to help Morin and Pish, then dumped a waterskin on myself to keep the armor cool. It worked, sending clouds of steam throughout the room, though I still took painful burns.
Somehow, from out of nowhere, u-Heury appeared and dumped a bucket of water on my head. That man has the strangest sense of timing sometimes. Between that and another waterskin, my armor was starting to cool off, but the ooze was close behind me. I explained the situation to u-Heury in as few words as possible (“You let the ooze out, it’s chasing us, we’re distracting it”). He got hit with the next Heat Metal spell, and I returned the favor with my last full waterskin. We led the henchmen out of the grotto’s depths, which was very tense as we had to pass carefully through the corridor of crystals without looking at them.
That was when I realized u-Heury had probably never ever had a bath, making him repulsive to Cloacea the Clenser and thus to me. I screamed at him to take a bath right away so he could be clensed of his sins and filth, and chased him into the grotto pool waving Verminbane at him to scare off any fleas. It was very satisfying.
After a few minutes, we realized the ooze had not followed us out, and cautiously crept back in to help the others if they needed it.
As luck would have it, the ooze had chased them instead, but they managed to get away. Morin looted the locked drawers in the ooze’s magic cabinet like a pro, according to her telling, and she had the loot to show for it. Pish managed to decipher the magical runes in one of the more distant rooms, each of which appeared to be the name of a specific location. The runes are on the wall next to strange metal disks; perhaps they teleport people who stand on them? The names suggested destinations either deeper down or out to the surface. We’ll try to figure out how to activate them later.
Morin’s take from the cabinet included a jar of pink slime, a clay potion bottle, a scroll with a melted wax seal, a disk-shaped obsidian amulet, and a ritual dagger (which she seemed to be rather possessive of).
Pish
Licking our wounds decided to rest for two nights before going back into the death caverns. The first day, I go out with Nifty to hunt and give an elf flex- we were able to take down a deer and get 8 rations from it which sustained us while we receded and decided what to do next. During that first evening I also had cast detect magic on the ring to see if it was worth more than the metal, but it wasn’t magical. It was interesting to see however that Feverborne has magical ring and sword that detects vermin and gives off a pale green glow.
After healing we decided to go back in to see if there was more treasure in the frog room. What we found was a very unsettling sound- of ooze! The non servant of barbie was lying in wait and cast some sort of mind control on me. I felt compelled to take the torch from Corton and snuff it out, but fortunately my low strength thwarted that action. It lasted for maybe 30 seconds, but the feeling left me feeling shaken. How dare that ooze try to mess with my elf mind!
During the battle we decided to split the party- U-Heury and Feverborne went with the hiringings towards the monkeys and the entrances to lure the ooze out. Nifty, Morin and I were the fastest so we went for the loot from the cabinet from the room where we found the ooze. The cabinets were locked, so I walked around reading magic while Morin got to work on the locks. I looked at the cloak I was wearing and it read “Dominion of the Faceless Lord”- charming. I went in the room with the levers and read each lever and what they go (4 locations) and started to ponder who this faceless lord was and what the worship must be like when I came around the corner- and saw ooze! It was ….time to pull a U ie! I ran around the u bend and snuck across the room to start hassling out. Our torch bearer took the brunt of the ooze attack, but the rest of us were able to gtfo.
While regrouping we were able to escape with the main party members’ lives, our best hireling, and - jar of slime , a dagger , a sealed clay jar, and a pendant. I was thrilled we made it out with some magical items to show for our trouble, but I was also pretty shaken by the power, cleverness, and menace of the ooze and whomever was able to trap it in the first place. I think I need some more magical knowledge and retorts to shield myself before going into any more dungeons. So instead of going with the group back to racist town, I elfed off into the woods to find a nice city with a friendly library in which to study.
