Thursday, September 12, 2024

Atoll of the Shark God: Session Two

Josian awoke to the deafening sound of a trumpet. When she ran up to the deck, assuming the worst, she found that it was just the sailors playing with the Shofar Ram. They were hazing each other, seeing who could last the longest in the cone of its sonic attack. The rest of the party was unable to get the sailors to hoist them back up to the ship for the night, so they sent Mr. Feathers to find Josian. 

Back on the ship, Aedric tried on the blue shark-tooth necklace. He was immediately overcome with hunger, but also a sense that feasting on fish would make him stronger. He also found himself unable to take it off. Aedric called upon the powers of the Grain Goddess to fill his belly so that he might discard the cursed item. The party briefly entertained the idea of cursing Portygul with the necklace, but realized a very hungry dragon was probably a bad idea.

The party set out for the undersea dungeon the next day. Carlata and Francesco declined to join the venture on the grounds that they weren't comfortable risking their lives without getting any treasure. However, Mateo and Theresa were confident Aedric would figure something out, and still went along.

Not much had changed in the dungeon, so the party kept exploring new rooms. Amalia felt herself drawn to a flooded alcove, as were her two hounds. Suddenly, a giant fish burst out of the water! It had used its psychic anglerfish lure to draw them in. Josian instinctively webbed the abyssal beast, allowing the rest of the party to stab it to death. 

They continued exploring the temple, occasionally prying precious and semi-precious gems out of the murals in the walls. Aedric found a pink coral ring on the body of a dead barbarian and pocketed it. The dead man had probably taken it off a statue the party had encountered earlier. As the party hypothesized as to what might've killed him, a pack of oversized remoras flopped around a corner. Josian squeezed her pearl of power and recast Web, immobilizing two. Aedric watched as the parasites lunged at Vraifigi, and then suddenly, he wasn't there anymore. He was standing in a field, cutting wheat. He abruptly returned to reality, standing over his cave elf friend after fending off a remora with a twirl of his scythe. The fight ended shortly thereafter as Amalia cut down the remoras with a flurry of sword-strokes.

Eventually the party came to a strange T-intersection of the dungeon. The wall was covered in algae except for a suspicious door-shaped patch across from an adjoining hallway. Vraifigi was the first to notice the aberration, and carefully prodded the wall with a ten-foot pole. It didn't budge, but it didn't trigger a trap either. She moved in to examine the possible secret door more carefully. As she stepped in front of the hallway, she felt her whole body start to burn. Aedric's and Josian's shouts shook her out of the shock and she tumbled down the hallway to safety. The cave elf extended a hand in front of offshoot hallway and watched in horror as the flesh melted off her bones.

The rest of the party told her to stay put. They'd circle around to rejoin her. Once everyone was safely out of the dungeon, Aedric would see if he could use his clerical powers to regenerate her hand. The exfiltration would have been uneventful, if the nightmare beast hadn't come charging in from the west side of the dungeon. The party opted to flee, rather than stand and fight.

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