Shattered Star #30: Into the Fetid Mire

At the end of the last session, our heroes arrived off the coast of the Lady’s Cape.

The Shattered Star

They rested over night and in the morning gathered their gear and set forth in a rowboat. In front of them stood a range of low, squat hills surrounded by a fetid mire.

Cape Map_final_tagged_exp

Several islands stood off shore and from one of these curled a faint smudge of smoke. Intrigued, the party decided to investigate the smoke and discovered a dilapidated hut standing under the boughs of several hoary willow trees. The hut was home to Maroux—a foul tempered half-orc who the party suspected of possessing considerable magical powers. She didn’t particularly welcome visitors, but when the PCs agreed to gather her some kelpie’s hair (a seaweed growing nearby over a shipwreck) she offered to cook them dinner.

Keen to get information about the local area, the party set out immediately. After an hour or so, they found the shipwreck just offshore from another island. Seaweed grew thickly upon it and several members of the party—Grooble, Zainnis, Narfu, Aq and Morden—doffed much of their equipment and dived down to harvest the seaweed. Doing so, however, awakened the skeletal remains of the ship’s crew who immediately moved to attack the interlopers. They were no match, though, for Grooble’s divine power and were quickly destroyed.

With the seaweed secured, the party returned to Maroux’s hut and as dusk crept across the fetid mire she cooked them a truly terrible meal. Several of the party were violently ill after eating, but nevertheless they gained much useful information about the surrounding area (including the location of three tunnels said to lead under the Lady’s Light).

Lady Light

The next morning, after much discussion, the party decided to row across the lagoon to inspect the Lady’s Light itself. This they did, but discovered nothing of interest in the vicinity. In an attempt to gain access to the passages and chambers rumoured to lie within, Nok cast detect secret doors and Grooble cast fly on him. Thus, Nok inspected the entire edifice, but found nothing.

As Nok returned to the group a glowing ball of light attacked him, giving him a tremendous electrical shock. The creature—swiftly identified as a will-o-wisp continued its attack but a well placed shot from Zainnis and a terrific sword blow from Morden drove the creature off.

In any event, there was clearly no way into the statue above ground. After a hurried discussion, the party decided to try the cave in which—according to Maroux—something big and terrible lived. With Zainnis leading the way, the party rowed around the southern part of the cape and then trudged through the swamp.

Eventually, they found the cave. Bones—chewed and splintered lay about the cave mouth. Disturbingly, many of them were also scorched and burnt. Concern was universal among the group—did a red dragon lair within? To find out Narfu bravely scouted ahead. He crept into the cave and found that it rose up and narrowed slightly before turning sharply to the left. Gouge marks in the floor showed where something huge and clawed had scrapped its feet against the rock. Of the creature, there was no sign.

Armed with this knowledge, Narfu returned to the group. After a brief discussion, the party decided to enter the cave—surely there was only one of whatever lay within and if there was but one they planned to swamp it with attacks (and targets)…

 

 

 

Published by

Creighton

Creighton is the publisher at Raging Swan Press and the designer of the award winning adventure Madness at Gardmore Abbey. He has designed many critically acclaimed modules such as Retribution and Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands and worked with Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Expeditious Retreat Press, Rite Publishing and Kobold Press.

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