STARRING
Pho (Sarah's human rogue/fighter)
Zeppo (Shaun's gnome druid)
Kedrin (Kelly's human cleric of Pelor/fighter)
Vig (Jeff's half-orc monk)
WITH
Badger (Zeppo's panther animal companion/mount)
AND INTRODUCING
Mojo (Chris' human sorceror)
===========================================
The search didn't take terribly long. A skirmish with a pool of pseudopod-extending ooze was disgusting but uneventful; Vig splashed the thing about with a two-fisted assault, shuddered off the effect of touching it, and that was that. Pho found recently-used stairs going down into darkness, and crept down to listen for company.
There are times when it's handy to have a genius polyglot as your scout; this was one of those times. Pho not only heard the two gnoll guards sufficently to make out their numbers, but she also could understand their tongue – meaning she got more.
“There's two guards in the room at the bottom of the stairs,” she said simply upon her return to the group. “They're part of a larger group. They wonder when the end of their shift is, when they can go back down. They're trapped by the dragon. They're all living down here.”
Pho's terse summary sharpened the tension – the cult was here, right here, with some of their gnoll muscle. “Let's do this!” Zeppo declared, climbing on Badger's back. Everyone loosened weapons and a general move toward the stairs began. “I have a plan,” Kedrin hissed sotto voce. “Wait!
“Perhaps we can encourage these guards to investigate, and then slay them before they raise the alarm,” Kedrin went on once the general bloodlust subsided a bit. “We surely don't want to fight all of them at once?” Pho agreed instantly with the plan, and shouted kar-artan down the stairwell, telling the two gnolls to “Come see this!” in their native tongue.
The gnolls came, but not incautiously, foiling the gambit. The first gnoll reached the landing at the mid-point of the stairs, turned the corner, and had just enough time to register a look of comic canine surprise before meeting a volley of projectiles. The second gnoll, surprised but not unmanned by the attack, simply stopped, drew his weapon, lifted his muzzle, and let out a piercing, haunting howl.
Time slowed down, or everyone sped up; the two states are similar. Vig led the way, his massive shoulders just avoiding the walls as he leapt down the stairs two at a time. Torches! “Room has light. Will help my friends,” he thought. The monk met the howling beast with a simple uppercut, hoping to befuddle the dog-man, but to no avail. Past Vig and into the space poured the rest of the party – this was one gnoll with a bleak future.
The room into which the party sallied was low-ceilinged – the gnoll fought while ducking his head a bit – and deeply unsavory. Black-stained manacles and broken cells spoke of imprisonment and torture in the not-too-distant past; the cells receded off into darkness. Little of this registered as the group administered a particularly vicious form of last rites to the dog-man – Badger's raking attack and Pho's final-shot backstab are a horrible way to meet one's end – but the focus swung toward the cells quickly enough.
Everyone has heard that creatures – at least creatures with bowels – produce massive bowel movements when slain. Gnolls have bowels, so it's not entirely surprising that everyone assumed the ghast's stench was merely the second gnoll confirming hearsay. The smell crescendoed well beyond the range of gnoll-crap, combining a sulfurous biting aroma with a evil, rotten funk; imagine slimy, black banana peels, days old in the sun, covered in the last unscavenged bits of extravagantly rotten lamb, accompanied by a burning pile of hair and cat dung – this gives some idea.
Vig and Pho, alight with the joy of kicking gnoll ass, were cast abruptly into darkness and fell to wretching, although the massive monk evaded the ghast's attack easily. From beyond the ghast came more of its type, their rancid, blackened flesh stringy over shambling bones, half-fleshed hands extended, faces slack but registering a greedy glee. Kedrin assumed a stance of power, raised his gilded sun-symbol, and flashed, strobing the room with a burst of purified sunlight.
All traces of glee vanished from the ghouls. The expressions were amended into fervid expressions of horror, their mouths now unjointed, the darkness in their eyes turning desperately away from the man who glowed like the sun. They fled into the furthest corner of an adjoining room, away from both the light and Kedrin, leaving the ghast alone between the gnome and his snarling, slashing mount.
Follow now the fight back a bit in time; consider who heard the howl. Two rooms away, a human woman in ochre robes contemplated some of the finds from the dig below. Touching some of the items gave her a tingling thrill, imagining the shock of the unbelievers when the Dread One rises; perhaps her stepfather would get a visit from her when in her power … her pleasant daydream was broken by a warning-howl from one of the idiot doglings who served as guards.
“Get out there and help them,” she snapped at the two gnolls lounging in the room, guarding her by napping. Changing her mind, she put a hand on a door. “Wait, no – wait for these bonemen here,” she said, then snapped the door open and murmured a word of dark command to the five skeletons trapped in the room. Barely 10 seconds after the howl, the gnolls escorted the skeletons through the intervening room and, hearing combat, burst the door open to allow the lifeless vanguard to pour in.
Zeppo whirled about to face the bony onslaught, his fists already aflame from an earlier spell, and changed, stretching in every direction at once, growing taller, heavier, and hairier, his lower face pushing forward into a snout, his hands (still flaming) losing fingers in favor of inches-long talons. Kedrin, not content to be outshone, shouted “FOR PELOR!” and strobed the room again, once, twice, leaving everyone there with flashing after-images of the skeletons exploding into flinders, shattered utterly by the touch of the sun-god's power.
For the once-confident gnolls, the response of Zeppo and Kedrin was a knee-trembler. Still, they understood that failing the skinny, pale human woman behind them meant not just death; no, she would enslave their corpses, walk them around like she and they were packmates. Never. Bound to her beyond death, they staggered forward to their doom.
It wasn't long in coming. Flaming bear, whirling half-orc, darting human, slashing panther; the ghast fell, and the gnolls, and the gore made the floor slick. The skinny, pale priestess tried one last time to aid her cannon fodder – the massive orc-man shook off her attempt to arrest him in place – then slipped out the back door to warn her superiors about this new threat.
No sooner were the gnolls dispatched than another door swung open, and into the charnel-house stench stepped an oddly-dressed human. His headgear seemed a snarl of leather strapping interrupted by two circular discs; on his wrists and across his shoulders he was similarly wrapped in odd bits of leather. His cloak was sumptuous, though, looking warm without seeming heavy. “Hey, thanks for that,” he said. “Been waiting for my chance to get out for a couple of days now.”
“I should introduce myself. Mojo. Mister Mojo Risen. Is that dragon still up there?”
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