Monday, October 8, 2018

Lurking Shadows in Under Sea

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night. After hearing the party's story, the lovely Randa decides to take them to her father, the wizard Phosphoro, who she is sure will help them, though he tends to disintegrate most visitors. They travel the the innermost sphere of the sanctum to meet him.


To their surprise, the stern and imperious wizard does offer to remove the curse of wandering laid on them by the Sea King, point them in direction of Under Sea, and allow them to keep the magic items they have stolen, but they must do something for him in return. He wants a particular page from the Book of Doors (which they took from Mortzengersturm). After some debate, the party agrees to give him the page he wants, but Phosphoro explains he cannot take the page now, because he can't identify it. He needs them to bring him the page from the future. He also suggests that there Kully can get his wish to find out more about Princess Viola.

Not really understanding how this will work, the party nevertheless agrees since Phosphoro is allowing them to complete their quest to Under Sea first. With his magic staff, Phosphoro transports them back to the submarine and sets them on the path.

Within hours they descend into the depths, then come up in Under Sea, which is a land of a lazy river and Spanish moss in live oaks, that happens to have the shimmering sea forming a dome above it. The one frogling town in Under Sea is now under the thumb of the Toads and their Toad temple, which just appeared one day in a blinding flash. Frogling are taken to the temple for sacrifice.


Old Freedy, the ambassador, goes off to find out when the next sacrifice is likely to be, while the party hides out to formulate a plan. Shade and Waylon do some invisible scouting and see a toad priest and some acolytes going to a tavern. They seem less like toad people and more like people in toad masks. Before they can investigate further, Old Freedy comear tearing down street chased by an actual toad monster than seems to move in shadows.

They manage to pull Freedy into an alley and try to trick the creature with an illusion, but it doesn't work. Somehow, the thing moves through the shadows to end up behind them and uses its toxic tongue to yank Waylon into its mouth. Shade puts several arrows in the monster, but it only lets a near death Waylon go when Freedy escapes.

They return to the stable where the the party is hiding out. The monster attacks there too, somehow mystically tracking Freedy. Pummelled by spell and arrow, the thing eventually disolves into goo and a wispy shadow, but only after Kairon shrank it too small to swallow anyone.


2 comments:

Anne said...

Phosphoro is a great name. Have we met him before? Does he have two servants and a daughter?

I hadn't really thought about it, but it makes sense that in a fantasy world that has both frog-people and toad-people, they might be enemies. Other possibilities: turtle-people vs tortoise-people, mouse-goblins vs rat-orcs, tengus vs aarakocras.

'gina said...

Why, yes, he does have two servants and a daughter.

One of the servants is currently being punished for being aggressive and inappropriate with the daughter.

The other is kind of...airish. ;-)

-Shade