Five adventurers arrayed themselves on the SINKING TOWER's third floor, ready to descend to the penultimate layer of the dungeoncrawl.
- Dewyd the Pious, Friar 2 of Beer & Bread.
- Godwin the Green, Fighter 3.
- Heiwae Mann, Thief 4.
- Robin, Cleric 2 of Phantom Limb.
- Burned Leaves, Elf 1 (retainer of Godwin).
Having hired Perry the Homunculus, the gang quizzed him for information. The mutant said the second level was a flooded library. It was where the skinkmen fled to after he tortured them in self-defence. The party used the monotreme's alchemy skills and Dewyd's brewing expertise to bottle some clerical miracles, distilling monster organs into draughts of wound closure and liquid courage.
With the Black Pudding still blocking the stairwell, they used an dumbwaiter to descend further. The elevator connected the laboratory to a reading room, used for ferrying samples and textbooks between floors. Heiwae went first, confirming the level was flooded with chest-high water the colour of sewage. The thief spotted a corpse beneath the surface, but didn't disturb it for fear of undead.
Unwilling to risk drowning, the party doffed their armour and followed the thief down. They could hear jabbering in Neutral from somewhere nearby. Being co-aligned, Godwin translated a discussion between skinkmen about cutting their losses and fleeing the tower.Hailing the lizards in trade pidgin, the adventurers struck up a conversation. The tribals were in the adjoining room, hiding on top of bookcases. They said the floor was lousy with electric eels, the critters having already killed four of their number. As if on cue, a 9' monstrosity swum through the brackish water to begin nibbling at the dead body.
The party decided to help the stranded skinks. Heiwae scrambled up the walls and hammered in a rope with pitons, letting the nimble reptiles climb to safety. They held bags full of sodden spell scrolls the party eyed avariciously. After some back and forth, the party discovered the lizards served the dragon that had kidnapped the Prince of House Attis. The dragoness Cloudkiss, intending to marry Lord Aeson, had dispatched the skinks to gather loot for a dowry. Mostly as an apology to her future in-laws for eating their peasants and trashing their castle.
The knight was fast, but the eel was faster. It struck out with bioelectricity, filling the brackish water with unavoidable damage. The current coursing through the fighter would've killed three men, lancing through his nerves and trying to stop his heart. He laughed and swung his sword, feeling nothing but the rush of potion sickness and the slight resistance as the blade decapitated the fish.
The risk had been worth it, the lizards supplying the party with an arsenal of overpowered spells. Upon Godwin's request, their leader Yabbie promised to put in a good word with his mistress. Once the skinks had paddled away from the tower, they ignited a flare of spluttering alchemical fire and threw inflated bladders overboard. Beyond the sight of greedy adventurers and drug-addled wizards, Cloudkiss swooped down like a draconic Fulton system, scooping up her followers and their loot.
The party rested and recovered spells, ready to clear the final floor. Avoiding the Black Puddling slumbering above them, they waded to the stairwell. Expecting the bottom floor to be entirely flooded, they burned their scroll of Continual Light to enchant Robin's holy symbol. The cleric and knight dove into the black water, sans their heavy armour. The pair made it 10' before they fell *through* the water onto a bone dry landing.
Looking up, they saw the water's surface above them. Something was preventing bottom floor from flooding, creating a layer of water suspended in the stairwell. Writing it off as wizardly nonsense, the party arrayed themselves and plunged into the gravity-defying depths, arriving in a lead-lined basement covered in arcane wards.
The floor was a single huge room filled with silver plinths holding Orbs of Scrying. They surrounded a central dais upon which sat an Orb of ESP. Eager to see what secrets the crystal balls held, the party moved to search the room. The central orb suddenly came online, projecting a baleful eye that stared down at the adventurers. A burst of anti-magic crashed over them, disabling Robin's phantom limb and immobilizing Godwin's gauntlet-clad hands.
Heiwae Mann scanned the surrounding orbs. They'd begun to pulse with ominous energies, winding up for a bevy of ray attacks. He screamed a warning and the party scattered. Most ran for cover, but Friar Dewyd charged the central eye and began walloping it with his staff, trying to abjure the demonic presence possessing the scrying chamber. A blast of energy from one of the peripheral orbs caught the holyman in the torso, sending him crashing to the ground.
Robin grabbed the fallen priest under the arms, intending to drag him to cover. He was strangely light. Looking down, the cleric realised his burlap habit was completely empty. All that remained was the smell of freshly brewed hops. The friar was gone.
A different orb blasted Godwin with a ray of Disintegrate, threatening to take another life. But the knight caught it on his magic shield and reflected it into the central orb, destroying both. The death of the anti-magic eye didn't stop the anomaly, seeming to only encourage the remaining orbs to keep indiscriminately firing. Godwin soon caught a Charm Person spell to the face, tossing aside his overpowered magic sword before the mind control took hold.
Heiwae Mann kicked the knight awake, just in time for him to be struck down by another Sleep spell, this time from an eye ray. The thief and elf managed to remain conscious, rousing the party and smashing the remaining orbs before they blasted anyone else.
The surviving adventurers dragged their injured shells back to the surface and brought the Cement Elemental into the basement. The golem seeped into the walls and suffused itself into the surrounding marsh, anchoring the tower in both the Material and Elemental Plane of Earth.
And that was that. The job was done. Chacolith barely stuck around long enough to pay them before flying away, his contract finally complete. The party loaded their payment into the Brood Snatcher along with Dewyd's empty habit, intent on returning what remained of the holyman to his church.
...
As the ray of Cause Serious Wounds burned into him and devoured his pneuma, Dewyd felt a calloused hand grasp him and carry his soul to safety. Beer & Bread bid him to sit at his table, to eat and drink and make merry. As the priest's spirit was laid to eternal rest, the god's face darkened. The Filler of Bellies would not allow his disciple's death to go unpunished.
 |
| Morr |
His drinking buddy, the sunsoft vintner, stood before him. He'd been good company when the pair travelled the Underhomes; generous and kind, liberally doling out surface grown beers and wines. Varg blinked. The vision was real, real as a ghost could be. Dewyd's apparition spoke in the voice of Beer and Bread. The god held no power over the Dwarves, he was only here for a favour - a foul daimones had struck down his loyal servant. The axeman's old friend.
The Harvest King asked that he be avenged.
The halfman stood, doffing a tattered cloak to reveal a body of iron. Wiping the bile from his beard, he grasped his axe and pushed through the tavern's door, squinting his eyes at the sun's rays and muttering an epithet to Tankard Basher, Dwarven culture hero of drunken heroism.
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