Lost Trails Chapter 17 The Great Befoulment

[ewancummins]

Travelling through the windy, cold and wet evening of the day after the fight at The Mound of the Lizardmen, the party makes its nighttime camp on a hummock topped by dead oaks and blighted willows. The firelight of the campsite makes an island of ruddy light in the endless sea of dark fog. Low clouds in the night sky strangle the glow of the moon and stars, and blend into the rising fingers of fog, completing the encirclement of mists. The cold wind that had blown all day hardly stirs and none of the typical night sounds of a wild region reach the camp, except occasional small, unseen splashes. No birds cry.

The watches of the night pass without incident. Quiet. Still.

Sunrise brings a slight thinning of the fog, but not much added warmth.

Meela and Rowan, following Klokulf’s hints and Karathos’s nose, find a black lake, half-hidden by brown screens of reeds and a veil of warm, stinking vapors, in the late afternoon of the second day out on the wyrm’s trail. In spots, the water bubbles like a cookpot.


Rowan stabs a sharp stick into the murky waters and brings up an oily fist-sized lump of black slime, which clings to the end of the wooden probe like glue.
“Naf, it’s called. You can get a fair bit of coin for a basket of this, selling it to the torch-makers in Elmwood. My father and I collect it when it floats into the river from such pools as this. I’ve heard stories about great big lakes of the stuff under Anauroch.” The wiry, freckle-faced river girl shrugs. “It’s hard to credit anyplace that dry could exist, much less have people living in it. A sea of sand!”


Katrin, poking about the dead reeds, discovers a scooped-out trough along the lakeshore, where the mud bears the blurred imprint of big scales and a huge, clawed foot. This trail disappears under the oily surface of the lake.
Lights held out over the surface do not shine far deep into the waters, but still, the dragon hunters make out the outline of some sort of wide underwater tunnel or cavern, within wading distance from the shore.
The unicorn snorts, rolling his eyes every time the stinking, warm vapors drift his way with a slight change in the sluggish airflow. The trough, he won’t look at or approach without a whinny, ears flattened to his skull.

[ewancummins]

Hojah sniffs the air near the lake.
''Phewgh! "
The man winds a tattered scarf around his acid-scarred lower face and neck.
He backs away, mumbling ''....Mulmaster...pay wasn't bad...''.
Hefting the spear he took from the lizardman lair, Hojah takes up a guard position near the group's vessels and supplies.

[kintire]

Katrin grins at Hojah and examines the pool thoughtfully.

"If this thing can stay underwater forever I think we have a problem. How do we get it to come out? I don't fancy swimming down there to fight it in the water.... or whatever this stuff is"

She eyes the black stuff with casual interest.

"Maybe we could set fire to this stuff and burn it out? or is it too wet?"

[ewancummins]

Rowan says, "It will burn, or smolder at least, but I don't think there is enough to set the lake aflame. I don't see any other chunks of naf bobbing here..."
Warily, the river guide crouches at the edge of the water and peers in.

She stirs it with her stick, then moves back and examines the wet bark.

"The water isn't as oily as it looks. That darkness is.....I am not sure. Too stagnant to be silt. Some dead leaves, decay....but this lake, even more than the rest of this dead stretch, does not seem natural to me."

She looks over at Meela, but says nothing more.

[ewancummins]

Mist, fumes, and the overcast sky make for poor visibility past about thirty or forty feet.

Scouting about, the party can get a general sense of the area: shallow and sluggish channels, the big foul pool, mud pits, and stretches of soggy ground.

Dead tree and fallen trunks screen a low gray hummock rising in the midst of the pool. The swirling vapors make it hard to discern details from the edge of the stinking, steaming pool. Lanterns help, but patience, waiting for the occasional lazy breeze to clear away some fog, helps more.

Peering closer at that mound out in the foul water a careful scout will spot the right angles of old building stones sticking out of the mud and brush.
Broken oars, tattered sails, and other scraps of destroyed watercrafts hang in the sagging limbs of the tallest dead tree, which overhangs and partly conceals a gap in the little island's north side, an opening just big enough for a man to squeeze inside.





https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/a4/bc ... 97f942.png

[kintire]

Kat looks down into the water.

"I can see a passage down there. That must be the lair. Raen can you do magic things so we can go through water? Failing that, we might be best advised digging down from above. It can't be that far down. water's too high here.

She looks dubiously down again

"Or i suppose we could just swim..."

[alhoon]

"Not today, I cannot. I have a different spell, one that brings up tentacles to grab and hold a target - or targets so don't get too close - in place and constrict them. It wouldn't be deadly for the dragon, but it would be bad for you if you get grabbed."

[kintire]

Kat looks thoughtful

"So if we can lure it out you could ensnare it in tentacles and we could easily kill it? I could dive in to the water out in front of the cave...but I'd need to be sure the snaring would work!"

[Adam]

"I don't know how confident I would be that anything would work for certain," Bennedict mutters. "If we do rest I can relearn my Aquatic Escape spell, if that would be useful to scout things out."

[alhoon]

"I have reasons to believe that the beast is somewhat resistant to magic. My spell may well not work." Raen answered Katherine

[kintire]

Kat glances at them both.

"Well, I may have the arcane ability of a plank, but being grabbed by tentacles doesn't sound resistant to me, and Aquatic Escape sounds like exactly what we need."

[kintire]

After a short pause she adds "Oh, and bait. But I'll take care of that."

[ewancummins]

After a short pause she adds "Oh, and bait. But I'll take care of that."

AT HIGHSUN
Klokulf prays when the orange blur beyond the fog stands high overhead, hands lifted to Bane.
Alwina crouches near the priest, wrapped in her muddy blue cloak.


SEVERAL HOURS OF REST
curled up in the boats or huddled under cloaks along such low hummocks and sandbars can be found within sight of one another.
(This is a lousy place to camp, but finding anyplace better means leaving the site entirely)




AFTER THE REST

The cloudy sky darkens as the afternoon slides into evening.
Still no contact with the enemy.
…


Benn transforms himself into a wee fish and slips into the water.

It is so dark within the submerged tunnel mouth that the most he can determine without risking a light spell, which could easily alert the dragon if it is down there, is that the passage leads into a much larger and deeper chamber.
A blind survey by bumping round the walls becomes trickier as the opening widens.
The adventurers could easily fit down this sunken passage and the dragon could slither through, too.

Although it might only be fear twisting his subtlest perceptions, Benn does not feel alone down there in the flooded darkness.

Back at the water margin, he regains man-shape and splashes up the bank to tell his comrades what he has found.
...


After Benn scouts it out, Katrin wades cautiously out and does her 'worm on a hook' act near the underwater cave mouth,standing up to her chin in warm , oily water.

Her boots don't slide much in the muck. It's thin underfoot in a path directly before the cave, as if scraped away.

After a few minutes, she feels something brush against her lower left thigh. Then it's gone.
If a little fish, not Benn in changed shape, as he transformed back before reporting and is right now up on the shore, spitting the taste of foul water from his lips.

RAEN looks ready to hurl his tentacles spell at any second. Sweat drips down his pale face.
The other adventurers look ready, too, tense and girded for battle.



...


The others notice small, furtive moments in the mists and the deadwood beyond the steaming, polluted lake. Could be birds. Not that they have heard birdsong since entering the misty zone. North, south, east. West, too, if that wasn't just the wind in the dead reeds.But there is no wind here by the black waters' edge. Without a breeze, the tarry reek of the mere grows more oppressive by the minute.



The unicorn whinnies, rolling its eyes.

[kintire]

Kat pauses for a moment, then glances about, briefly ducking her head underwater if that will help, trying to work out what brushed her. Her attention is close, however, on the cave at all times for the slightest sign of emergence...

[ewancummins]

Kat pauses for a moment, then glances about, briefly ducking her head underwater if that will help, trying to work out what brushed her. Her attention is close, however, on the cave at all times for the slightest sign of emergence...

It's too murky down there. She can't tell...