ALERT: May Contain Spoilers for the Adventure: “Against the Cult of the Reptile God”
Far above where the sun shone, dawn broke. Lancell and Nori the spider were moving again, and seemed none the worse for spending the night paralyzed. Even Ezekiel had color in his face again, so we headed out in our usual battle formation.
Down the hall, about the turn where Ezekiel was attacked before, the lizardmen (trogs) suddenly melted out of the shadows and fell upon us.
We must have startled them as much as they surprised us – that, or they were consumed with hatred to hit us – because two of them cut down their companions in front of them before we could even engage.
Nori pounced and sank her fangs into one of the stinking creatures, while Mikael leaned against the wall of the passage, clearly trying not to hurl.
I launched my arrow while Raven darted forward and did one of his Monk-ish palm-punches, stunning the trog.
The luck didn’t stay on our side, though. Nori was felled to the ground with a stone ax, and I…sort of…grazed Mikael’s arm with an arrow.
Lancell was dropping trogs left and right, while Ezekiel soaked up punishment until he was leveled to the ground.
I tell you it was my bow, but somehow it slipped from my hand and came back to whack me in the eye. My next shot finally flew true, though, and nailed a trog through the throat… The enemy was defeated.
We bound up out our fallen companions (Raven had also gotten a bad hit on the head – maybe he should let his hair grow out for a cushion…) and Ezekiel quaffed a potion. He also read one of his healing scrolls over Nori, and she popped up, fighting fit again…but then she ran up to the ceiling and sulked there for a bit.
The large room where the trogs had hung out (I counted seven while Lancell was searching them) had a couple doorways along one wall.
Ezekiel investigated the first doorway, and gulped.
When he called over the druid and me, we both stared. The whole of the small sideroom was coated with eggs – eggs as long as both my hands held side-by-side. Through their translucent sides, we could see tiny troglings, curled up and waiting to hatch.
Ezekiel and Lancell talked it over briefly. Lancell said he had no problem destroying the eggs, and I see his point. The surrounding countryside couldn’t handle a thousand vicious, carnivorous lizardlings…that also have a racial hatred of humans.
So we spent a few tiresome hours smashing eggs.
Finally done, we poked our noses into the second side room – and almost screamed.
These eggs were much smaller – only the size of one hand – but there were at least twice as many. Some of them were close to hatching, and we could see the coils of the baby snakes inside.
We decided to search for an easier way to destroy them, and continued on.
For some inexplicable reason, Ezekiel started digging at the end of the large chamber – but good for us he did. He dug out several large leather sacks, and on examining them turned up a mass of platinum, gems, gold, and silver!
We loaded it up in the bag of holding and Raven’s pockets (since he’s not exactly combat fit right now) and continued on.
We chose a branch of the further passageway, and as we made our way down it we could hear a…”barking” noise.
Did not like the idea of a giant, poisonous dog dropping down on our heads…
Around a turn of the passage, we could see some kind of bipedal lizard, about the size of a large dog. He growled and barked and snapped his huge teeth and us, but he was chained to the north wall and couldn’t quite reach us.
Although Mikael obviously wanted to try making friends with it, we slipped past – hugging the south wall where it couldn’t reach us.
Beyond that was a boat on the shore of a lake – just as the prisoners we rescued had described to us. We got in the boat and paddled off, pretty sure what we would find.
Sure enough, when our lights fell on the opposite shore, it was Explictika Defilas’ official seat of power…complete with her rotting, headless corpse.
We landed and dug around under her. Apparently all we had left behind was the silver pieces, so we loaded that up and decided to return to the VIP quarters on the floor above to unburden ourselves. Treasure ain’t easy to lug around, after all.
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