Party 16

[Baba Luga]

Darting around the fungi, the four of you are able to squeeze forward before the mushrooms close in and choke the row behind you with a pulpy mass of writhing tendrils. Faria and Varius are struck by several of the long appendages as they go by. These buffets leave aching sores where they touch exposed flesh. In his final effort to circumvent the fungi, Varius has to push through the vines into an adjacent row, where even more fungi are congregating.

At last, ahead of the mob, everyone is free to sprint forward. Astryos is in the lead, with Faria about thirty feet behind him, and Varius trailing another thirty behind her. With the dense fog all around, there's still about a half mile to go before you expect to see the winery.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

Looking back, the monk finds himself far ahead of his companions. He slows down a moment, throwing a sling bullet at a vine creature, allowing time for the rest to catch up, "Cassandra! Stop following us! Go to an adjacent row! You'll get us all killed!" Astryos says pleadingly as he turns to continue leading the party.

 

[Baba Luga]

Astryos' sling stone punches into the nearest purple mushroom cap with a web thunk. The thing's tendrils flail then fall limp, and it stops moving. The tendrils of the several fungi behind it spasm. Still running forward, Cassandra staggers briefly and cries out. Recovering, she calls ahead to Astryos, "No, you're wrong! The voice speaks of all four of us. We have to stay together and keep moving!"

 

[Baba Luga]

When the others catch up to Astryos, the four of you take off together, running ahead at Varius' slower pace. About a half minute later, the fungi behind you have all but vanished in the fog. But up ahead, something rustles through the vines and into your row. It's a wolf that has clearly been affected by the blight. It shambles awkwardly. Its fur is patchy, interspersed with swathes of bright fungi. Its eyes are missing and its jaw hangs lazily open. The infected wolf entered your row thirty feet ahead and begins charging at Astryos with a stumbling gait.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

The monk sighs Can we get a reprieve? moved to meet the Wolf with his spear ready. When the distance is closed, he attacks the Wolf.

 

[Baba Luga]

The infected wolf's reactions are slowed and it makes little effort to avoid the spear, which tears into its side, releasing a cloud of spores. Cassandra winces and gasps. Astryos' follow-up kick breaks through the creature's brittle skin, revealing a mesh of plantlike fibers holding the bones together. As the wolf collapses, Faria, Cassandra and Varius are able to run by. Pulling back his spear, Astryos rejoins at the rear of the group.

 

[Baba Luga]

Slowing down to pace yourselves, now that the fungal horde has vanished into the fog behind you, you've gone just a half minute more when another infested wolf press into the row thirty feet ahead of Faria and Varius, who are now in the lead. This beast is farther gone than the one that Astryos just destroyed. Large, shelf-like mushrooms sprout from its shoulder and extend down to cover half of its face and muzzle. The flesh is stripped from one of its legs, revealing the bone underneath.

A rustling announces the arrival of another of these corrupted wolves at your rear. It wander through the vines fifty feet behind Cassandra and Astryos.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

Astryos turns to face the wolf in the rear, plunging his spear into its head. His eyes narrow and his nose snarls in disgust as the creature not only remains standing but seems undisturbed by the weapon penetrating its skull.

 

[Baba Luga]

Among the three of them, Astryos, Faria and Varius make quick work of the two new wolves, though not before one of them gives Varius a nasty bite. Everyone is soon moving forward again, with weapons in hand. It seems like you must have covered about half the distance to the winery when there's a rustling noise from ahead and to the right, and a jumbled flock of ravens erupts from the adjacent row, flutters up and the descends into the row you're traversing. These creatures flap dizzily, colliding with one another as they go, much like the bats you encountered last night. And like those bats, and the wolves, the birds make no vocalizations but move aggressively at Faria and Varius, who are in the front rank.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

"Keep moving!" calls the monk with urgency, "We have to push through them!" He throws a bullet into the bats before he runs past them.

 

[Baba Luga]

The swarming creatures turn out not to be bats, as Astryos first thought, but an unkindness of ravens that cluster around the monk, pecking away with their dusty beaks. Most are missing their eyes. Several have broken wings but somehow manage to keep themselves aloft in the press of other birds. Shooting with her crossbow as she goes by, Faria manages to down several of the twisted creatures, and Varius finally catches up with his axes and clears the mob so that you can press forward again.

"It's all so strange," Cassandra confides in Faria, as they walk briskly forward at the head of the party. "I can feel it when you hurt them. It's not pain, but something different ... just, feeling?"

This time you're able to advance uninterrupted for longer, maybe a couple of minutes. It grows even quieter. You come upon a growth of massive fungi blocking the row, a sedentary variation of the purple ones that attacked earlier. It takes extra time pushing through to nearby rows to make your way around. Just another minute past that obstacle and the row start to thin out. You can see its end ahead, where everything opens out into dirt and grass, with the now-expected clusters of fungi sprouting everywhere.

Once you're at the very end of the row, the dark silhouette of the winery building is just visible in the fog three hundred feet ahead. Also visible, now that the endless rows of grapevines have ceased, is an enormous dire wolf, easily the size of a bear, about fifty feet diagonally ahead and to your right. The flesh of its left flank is entirely stripped away, revealing bone, muscle and knots of plantlike fiber. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes grow everywhere on the expanse of its body. It pads slowly and deliberately towards Faria and Cassandra, who are still in the lead.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

"Get inside!" the wood elf calls out running to exit the grape vine rows. He throws a sling bullet at the monstrosity before stowing the sling in his belt

 

[Baba Luga]

Nindrol Blakwyrm
The Fallen Priory

The place was much as the Unicorn had described it: old, overgrown, deserted, but hallowed still. "To be a hunter of the undead, follow the example of those who came before; learn from their tragedies. Go to Kryptgarden Forest. I will show you the way. There you will find the last home of the Lost Legion of Aurica Markovia, Beloved of Lathander."

The Unicorn's attitude towards Lathander, and all gods for that matter, is hard to discern. She can be quite reserved when it comes to such things. Sometimes she seems to present herself as a fellow worshiper of these higher beings, sometimes they are her honored siblings, and sometimes they are quarreling children and she is above the fray.

The Unicorn did not mention that others had been to the place recently—kobolds, goblins or some other small humanoids had camped out here and made a mess of the place before, perhaps discomfited by the lingering power of the Morninglord, they moved on. Nindrol spent a couple of days tidying the ancient stone building of the creatures' mess, during which time he uncovered a very old scroll case containing a dry, brittle parchment with a map. It showed the way to a nearby place in the forest, using rock formation and other natural features as markers. Lathander's sunrise symbol was inked at one corner, and a line in the common tongue at the bottom read, "Drafted for Aurica Markovia by Moire Cassiel."

"Why not go there?" suggested the Unicorn. "The mystery of the Legion's disappearance was never solved. Maybe you will learn something?" As with many of the Unicorn's gentle suggestions, it seemed difficult in the moment to come up with a convincing reason not to do what was proposed. So, the next day, Nindrol took a day pack and hiked out to the place in the forest shown on the map. The cartography indicated a particular order in which the area was to be walked, markers to touch, places to stand still for a time. Having followed these directions, Nindrol found, a bit too late, that an insidious mist was gradually worming its way into the area, so that by the time he'd completed the map's circuit, it was really quite difficult to see which way was which in the dense fog.

Struggling to reorient himself, Nindrol only became more and more lost, and found himself in a very different part of the wood, where the mighty trees grew stunted and shorter, narrowing down to mere sapling growing close together. In fact, they were tied to each other, stretching out in a long row now on either side of him, not really trees anymore now but sickly looking grape vines.

And now it has been some time, perhaps a half hour, that he has walked along this row, when the way opens up ahead into a large, grassy area with a dark shape, perhaps a building, looming far off in the fog. The ground shakes as an enormous wolf, as large as a brown bear, walks by twenty feet ahead. The creature is horribly injured, but still moves steadily forward. Even more troubling, motley patches of mushrooms and shelf fungi grow all over its body. Toadstools sprout from the holes where its eyes should be.

And then a stone zips through the air and strikes the grotesque dire wolf on the snout. The creature barely reacts. Someone runs by fifty feet ahead and to Nindrol's left. It's the elf who threw the sling stone and he's traveling away from Nindrol and the twisted wolf, towards the shadowy building in the distance. "Get inside!" the elf hollers to some unseen person back where he came from.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

Astryos squints and shies away from the blast of force energy. He searches the area for the source to see Nindrol. His gaze pauses but seeing the Wolf felled, continues towards the winery to get inside, trusting that this stranger was at least, for now, on their side.

 

[Theseiroth]

"Poor thing, those mushroom look rough. Hurry please, I can't do that again" Wyrm could feel the drain of magic from his system as he followed it up with an Eldritch blast to the creature, trying to help the group running from...something. "First the unicorn says take a walk and now I find others in need of help. This is gonna be longer then I hope isn't it?" he says thinking out loud. Seeing the direction they are heading he takes up the run with them hoping today he's made more new friends

 

[Baba Luga]

With the infested dire wolf destroyed, everyone continues towards the shadowy form of the building in the fog ahead. A bit closer and a few details come into focus: The building is stone and two stories tall. The side you are approaching has some sort of protruding entryway, flanked by turrets a short distance to either side. There's movement on top of the entryway's peaked roof. A human-sized figure is a dark cowled robe is standing up there, holding a long, twisted staff. Wings appear at the hooded figure's other arm; the outline of a hawk takes flight while the staff in the other hand traces spirals in the air.

 

[EyeOfSkadi]

Astryos runs towards the figure pausing a moment to aim a careful sling bullet at the cloaked man. The monk winces in pain as the figure wields some kind of magic against him but continues towards the building.

Seeing the cloaked man vanish in a puff of smoke, the monk tries the door but finds it locked. He takes a step back weighing his options before approaching the door and knocking.

 

[Zilfer]

"I'm not sure... knocking is going to work," says Faria who is fidgetting at the slightest noise. The sight of wolves even dead ones had unnerved her to the point where she was gripping the crossbow in her hands tightly. If the mushroom's weirdness hadn't been enough, the wolves had pushed her to the edge of having a panic attack. The only thing keeping her together at the moment was the urge to push forward and get the hell out of their current place. Thoughts of the past swirled around her mind and she pushed them down, not wanting the trauma to incapacitate her. Hesitation meant death, and she couldn't afford that right now. 'Just don't think about it.... don't think just do.' She continued to repeat this mantra in her head over and over to distract her mind.

 

[Baba Luga]

When there is no immediate answer to his knock, Astryos takes the crowbar from his pack and forces the door open. The jamb cracks and the door swings inward, releasing a cloud of dust as if the building had been sealed up for ages.

A long, narrow room fills this protruding section of the winery. It looks like a glassblowing workshop. The wall to Astryos' left is full of empty bottles and there's a hearth and tools in the far corner. To the right, a staircase leads down below ground and there's a closed door near the middle of the north wall. While Astryos is at the doorway, everyone else is still over fifty feet to the south, moving towards the winery.

A deep, resonant voice fills Astryos' mind. "The infection has breached this place. One comes near that does not yet belong to us. It must be removed."

A different voice, in Astryos' mind but not heard by his ears, says, "Yes, we will do it. They will join us."

 

[Baba Luga]

As the others cross the final distance to the winery, Astryos steps inside and begins tying one end of his rope to the door handle, intending to bind it to a nearby wall fixture once everyone is safely inside. Before that happens however, a gigantic mushroom-infested burrowing insect, something like a monstrous mantis, erupts from the earth outside the winery and takes a vicious swipe at Varius. Everyone fights back desperately. Astryos drops the rope to sling a stone at the creature, and Faria pierces its chiton with her sword before slipping inside past the monk.

Drunken-looking green and black flies are rapidly massing below the door that connects the glass workshop to the rest of the winery. They don't properly fly, but bob and hover just a foot or so above the rammed earth floor, also blocking the way to the descending staircase.

With the back door open, the dust-like mist is spreading to the area just outside. Astryos, Faria and Varius, but not Wyrm, perceive the deep voice once more. "Send the word. All must rise and defend us. Awaken my creatures."

Other voices follow. "I protect the roots." "To the core." "Convert all of them."

 

[Baba Luga]

Varius hews at the huge insect with both of his axes before Astryos rushes back out of the building to knock its massive head nearly off with a ki-empowered punch. With that the beast collapses to the ground, the lower part of its body still submerged in the earth.

With the towering insect no longer obstructing their view, Astryos, Varius and Wyrm see a man in outdoor workclothes stagger around the nearest turret. From his blank gaze, ashy skin and the dark fuzzy patches growing on his flesh, it's clear he's yet another victim of this blight. Meanwhile, about two hundred feet to the south where the low-lying mist obscures the view, several birds appear, heading this way. They could very well be the same species as the one the cowled figure released before vanishing. Wyrm takes this cue to retreat inside the glass workshop, where the carpet of sluggish flies just inside the closed inner door seem to be working themselves into an agitated state, buzzing and darting more chaotically. The long rope that Astryos tied to the inside handle of the outer door still hangs there.

 

[Baba Luga]

It's only once everyone is packed in the workshop, near the inner door, that the swarm of insects decide to surge up and attack Wyrm. It's a small matter to crush and dispel the flies, but Wyrm is left weakened and covered in painful bites.

The patch of pounded earth floor where the flies were seems to be stained by something dark and sticky, trails of which have also run down the staircase. With the flies gone, it's easy for those with darkvision to see all the way down that staircase, to where there's a closed door at the bottom, on the left side.

With the buzzing of the flies removed, you can now hear voices, at least two of them, chanting from beyond the closed inner door. There's a soft thud, as if someone just pushed against that door from the other side, then bits of loose earth trickle beneath it.

Outside, the infested vinyard worker sumbles around the destroyed giant insect and reaches the open door where Astryos has just readied his spear. Without expression, the man flails at Astryos with his bare fists. From somewhere else outside, the monk hears the sound of clopping hooves.