Session 12/7/07

                Tenanyé 7 (?) – date unknown:  After taking a moment to assess their surroundings, the companions form up their marching ranks and begin to explore the grotesque tunnels that stretch out before them.  The walls and ground are made of a soft, spongy material that festers with weeping sores and pustules, but beneath the outer layer is a membrane of gray flesh that re-grows at a startling rate.  Essedar lights up a fat roll of green buds, sharing generously among his friends to keep their spirits up.  As they leave the relative safety of the alcove, Nathaniel spots some skittering movement down one of the adjacent tunnels.  Just as he calls out a warning to the others, a swarm of leech-like pods or larvae slide down the walls towards them.

                Zara and Londario stand firm against the squirming mass of pods, which pop and boil with diseased pus and black spores as the warriors lay into them.  Londario cries out, “I am the Shield!” as he violently slashes through the swarm and causes it to disperse back into the dark recesses of the walls.  However, the short combat has definitely attracted the attention of other creatures, and the five friends hear a rhythmic stomping noise and a series of burbling, gasping wet inhalations from a tunnel to their left.  Rather than leave foes behind them in a hostile environment, they move into the tunnel to explore the threat.

                As they come around the corner in battle formation, the party spots the source of the horrid sounds: a huge, fleshy and bloated creature covered in mucus and slime with a terrible wide maw of sharp teeth – a vaporighu.  As Nathaniel takes a closer look at the monster, he sees that its face disturbingly resembles Londario’s, though it is twisted and misshapen. Nate cries out a challenge to the creature, which turns to observe the companions as they charge into battle.  Zara and Londario move towards the vaporighu, but it summons forth a corrupted and diseased night hag to aid it in battle.  The two warriors note that her body and skin are covered with tiny green worms that fall from her flesh onto theirs as she fights.  The fearless cackling hag’s teeth and talons cut Zara and her shieldmate Londario a bit, but they soon dispatch her, avoiding infection. 

Meanwhile, Essedar keeps the others on their feet with his healing magic while Nathaniel blasts the vaporighu with bolts of holy fire.  Telenvor seems nervous and hesitant, but he moves into flanking position along the walls.  Zara impales the monster on her spear, which flashes with the fires of Arinna, and Nathaniel finishes it off with a final blast of holy fire from his newly crafted staff.  With a final, wet death rattle the vaporighu collapses into a rotting pile of flesh and bones.  It seems to have a pile of detritus and filth that serves as its nest, but before Tel can search the nest more foes arrive at the party’s back.

A pair of nightmarish, segmented worm monsters advances down the tunnel towards Nathaniel and Essedar.  Their pinkish grey flesh resembles that of an earthworm, and two other segmented limbs seem to function as arms while the main body ends in a circular mouth filled with shark-like teeth. One of the worm beings hangs back, seemingly directing the other to attack.  Tel quickly moves to intercept them, but one of the beings touches his mind with psionic power.  Tel stops his approach and stares blankly back at his friends, but his sword remains in his hand.

The others catch up to Tel in the corridor and Essedar races past him to pierce the first worm creature with his arrows.  Tel unexpected lashes out at his friend and cuts into him thigh with his longsword, betraying the fact that he has been dominated by the worm-things.  Essedar calls for assistance, and Zara rushes down the tunnel to help destroy their foes.  Between Zara’s spear, Essedar’s bow and Nathaniel’s spells, they manage to end the life of the first worm creature and break the mental domination it held over Telenvor.  The other worm, which seemed to be directing the first one’s actions, retreats away from the party down another tunnel.

With the battle over for the moment and no sound of foes approaching, the group moves back into the dead vaporighu’s lair to search its disgusting nest.  While Tel finds nothing but offal and unmentionable filth in the nest itself, he spots a glittering cyst of quartz-like crystal beneath the filth.  The cyst seems to have hardened and risen to the surface of the fleshy cavern, and six sparkling multicolored lights gleam inside it.  Tel uses his crowbar to attempt to pry the cyst loose, but it won’t budge.  He and Zara both try to shatter the crystal cyst with their weapons, and Nathaniel immolates the spot with holy fire from his staff, but nothing will cause it to break open.

Zara thinks hard, digging into her memories for a clue that might help them succeed.  Then she recalls the small gnomish hammer that she found in Caladan Hollows many months ago.  As her heart races with excitement she draws out the hammer, which seems impossibly light in her hands, and brings its head down with full force upon the crystal cyst.  Her single blow shatters the hardened spot into countless shards, and the six motes of twinkling light float up and out of their prison, coalescing before the party.

Six incorporeal gnomes now stand facing the five interlopers in Chaal-Nathra, and each gnome beams expressions of disbelief and gratitude and wonder at them.  One of the gnomes, an artificer type with too-large goggles on his insubstantial brow, addresses them: “Oh!  You blessed fools, you have freed us!  How and why are you here?  From where did you come?  Oh, dear, how long has it been?  Trapped here, we are all trapped here… oh how they have used us, taken what is ours… oh, the suffering!”  Once he stops speaking, Zara and Nathaniel inform the gnome spirit that it has been twenty-two years since the Convergence and the Vanishing of the gnomes.  “No, no!  So long, so long!  We must be free, with your help.  They have stolen our magic, used our mastery of illusions to strengthen themselves, made us watch while they infiltrated your cities… oh the shame!” the gnome artificer rants.  Another of the gnomes, a lady baker who still wears her tall baker’s hat even as a ghostly spirit, begins to weep openly.  “We must escape this awful place and return with the news of what has happened to us!  We are not dead, merely lost and vanished.”  The five friends agree to do all they can to help the gnomes.  It seems their enemies may have finally made a grievous error: allowing Zara into their home plane with a relic of Merin Jewelshine, the small silvery hammer, perhaps left by the god of the gnomes in a hidden place for someone to find and use at the opportune moment…

The gnomes’ spirits are still bound to the Far Realm of Chaal-Nathra, but they agree to watch over the companions and assist however they can.  Exhausted from their battles, the party returns to their quiet alcove for some rest, but the enemy has prepared an ambush for them there.  The elder worm creature bursts from a shadowy corner just as two spidery insects drop from the ceiling and a swarm of unidentifiable arthropods boils out of the wall.  Zara’s spear makes quick work of the elder worm-thing, and though the spiders drain some of Londario’s essence with vampiric touch, he and Telenvor cut the fragile arachnids down with their blades.  As always, Essedar provides his battle blessings and a hail of arrows from the rear position, while Nathaniel uses his area spells to disperse the arthropod swarm.  After a fast but tense battle, all grows quiet.  The party is at the edge of their available resources, so Nathaniel summons forth a secure shelter in the relative safety of the vaporighu’s now abandoned lair.  The six gnome spirits watch over the shelter as the exhausted humans try to get some sleep in the hostile alien environment of Chaal-Nathra.

Falling Stars, Rising Hope