Session 19 – Mostly People

Campaign II, session 19. Previous: Session 18.

Or, Are We Food Yet?

The party debates over what to do with Lirra. A poultice made from horsetail is able to stabilize her condition, extending her ~1 day prognosis out to ~1 week, giving them some breathing room. They decide to seek out aid from the gnomes, to see if they will allow Lirra to rest with them. The gnomes are eager – “You’ve done us a great service!”

The party gets suspicious of their eagerness, and Cresilde uses her built-in discern humanity ability to try to assess if they are people.

• “Yeah, these gnomes are mostly people.”
• “What does THAT mean?”
• “It means they’re mostly people.”
• “I’m going to look at my party to compare.”
• “Oh, your party are mostly people. The gnomes are mostly people.”
• “AAAAAAAH!”

It goes on like this for a bit. The party insists on staying the night with Lirra now, some of them want to only eat their own food, etc. The gnomes are all super hospitable, and grateful for the great service the party has done.

• Their leader, Grimm, has a magic chainmail (all jet black) and a magic shield
• His wife, Gribbl, seems to be their priestess
• Moblim is quite obese
• Krob, a little boy, burps a lot
• Lob sleeps with knives under her pillow
• Horridle, a little girl, is vicious and nasty in all the ways a little girl can be
• Grobe, another little boy, is crying all the time

Vezhka decides to isolate Grobe and find out what’s wrong. Grobe says that Horridle is always mean to him. An invisible voice (‘Rath) asks him to open his hand, and gives him a handful of caltrops to get back at her with. “Gosh, thanks Mr. Ghost!” he sniffles, wiping his tears.

The next day, the party asks the gnomes if there’s anything else they can do; the gnomes mention that sometimes some big lizards bother them when they go fishing, and it’s really annoying.

They show the group north to the underground river, where one such lizard (as big as a man) is waiting for them. They charge in and, slowly, chop it to pieces. Vierath, invisibly, scouts out into the next room and sees three more such lizards (along with two more skeletons) and calls out a warning.

‘Rath pours some oil on the ground to try to trap the lizards, but Vezhka and Grath are too angry to wait for the trap. They charge forward at the next lizard and deal it some wounds.

The two black skeletons are quickly dispatched by Fenmyra. The lizards start chomping down on Vezhka, and drop her, cleaving into Grath and dropping him as well. Cresilde rushes forward to help Vezhka back up, and Zydell charges forward to continue the fight.

Mireya invokes the fiery terror of Kothar, spooking the lizards slightly. Unfortunately, it is not enough to stop them from chomping down again on Vezhka, dropping her again. The second lizard drops Zydell and cleaves into Cresilde and Mireya. The third begins feasting on Grath.

Mireya invokes her training as a savior of Eberron to stabilize herself and flee. With no apparent survivors on the wrong side, ‘Rath lights the oil, which spooks the lizards into retreating. After ten minutes of burning, he sneaks forward (still invisible), and sets another patch of burning oil opposite. He checks the bodies of the four left behind; Zydell was uneaten, and miraculously survives with minimal damage (his stiff and sore scarring gives him -1 to initiative). Sadly, Cresilde, Grath, and Vezhka are slain.

After this debacle, the party requests that the gnomes once again escort them back to the entrance, which they obligingly do. When they pass through the bat lair, a loud voice suddenly begins cackling.

• “What was that!”
• “Shh!”
• “Aaaaah, it woke up the bats!”

The bats immediately swarm the group. While they are not particularly inclined to fight, in their panic they do some serious damage – one of the gnome escorts is chewed beyond repair, and (still invisible!) Vierath has his own face chewed off (his lips and tongue are so mangled he can no longer speak). Fenmyra is able to feel around and find him, barely staunching his bleeding.

The party staggers back out of the hole to find their cart, mule, and horse still waiting for them, a bit spooked but unharmed.

They get lost on their way back through the woods, stumbling on the corpses of some soldiers (they would later identify as brigands by bringing back their insignia to Teryk). The brigands’ insides had been eaten by some kind of large rodent.

In attempting to find their bearings, they also stumble onto a band of gnolls. Fortunately, the gnolls are distracted and the party makes an easy escape.

Once on the road, they have no further encounters until they reach the Ravenholt Monastery (just south of Teryk). The abbot is unable to heal Vierath’s wounds – such magic is available in Vedycaer, the capital of the borderlands. The party hears whispers among the nurses about boar attacks, bloody corpses, and missing peasants.

They spend one night at Ravenholt, then return to Teryk for a month of rest and recovery, planning to visit Vedycaer.