100. Spoils and Toils

* Having slain the eldritch balhannoth, Pyt, Wilfred, Zadimus, Ingvild, and Molly regroup in the midst of the dread forest they've found themselves in on the Third Hell. With the witch totem Clwyd had given Wilfred having lost its magic, they know the goblin died in the fighting, while she was separated from the group by the balhannoth's powers. Wilfred and Pyt both have spellwrought tattoos containing the magic of Aerendyl's reincarnate spell on their bodies, but in Hell, the soul travels down the Styx quickly and can even be fished out before reaching its final destination. If Clwyd has not made a deal with the Lord of the Third -- who she would likely have met in the moment she transitioned to death in Minauros -- and they don't find her body before her soul has emerged from the Styx, they won't be able to bring her back to life, and they'll be stuck in the middle of an unmappable, maddening swamp the size of a world without a guide. 
** The group scatter, using what resources and cunning they have left to try and find the balhannoth's lair or the place that Clwyd fell. 
** After 40 minutes of honing in on it, they at last find the tree the horrible creature used as a nest. Peering in from the small opening at the crown of its branches, Ingvild sees Clwyd and Ilphas in the hollow of the tree, atop a pile of bones, clothing scraps, and rotten muck.
** Pyt uses a Passwall key from the Umbral Market to open a path from the ground up diagonally to where Clwyd and Ilphas are. Unfortunately, the tree was not solid, and rather than making a tunnel that they just slid down, Pyt instead made an opening that let the remnants of the balhannoth's prey -- decades worth of slain mages and the like that had decomposed in its nest -- pour out onto the ground, completely covering him. 
** Ingvild digs Pyt out from under the mountain of skeletons, stinking mould, and gelatinous, liquidy flesh. She also grabs Clwyd and Ilphas from inside the tree, now much closer to the ground level. 
** They quickly discover that Ilphas is unconscious but alive and that Clwyd hasn't faired so lucky. Their goblin guide is dead.
** Pyt begins the process of casting Reincarnate. He feels the tattoo of the Mountain and the River bleed down from his chest to his fingertips, then sees it stretch out and wrap Clwyd's body in an inky black cocoon, leaving him as it does so. He can feel Aerendyl's magic, so different to his own, pulling on the ambient power of their surroundings to not only find Clwyd's soul and call it back to the body, but to help in reshaping and healing her physical form into something liveable once more. 
Clwyd tried to flee from the balhannoth and it caught her, even while she was invisible. It left her bleeding out in its grip as it deposited her in its lair and went back to its hunt, apparently keen to stock up on this magically rich prey while it had the chance. And it was there, in the dark atop a mountain of rotten bones, that Clwyd died. Again. As the life faded from her, she closed her eyes. Then she heard dripping water. And a low rumble in the distance, like water falling from a great height. She opened her eyes again and saw that she now stood in a mausoleum flooded to her chest height. All around were beautiful white marble columns, picturesque mosaics, and a breath-taking ceiling mural depicting warring devils and demons. Before her was an off-white wall. No, not a wall. For it moved rhythmically. Breathing. Some sort of enormous creature then. And slowly, as she acknowledged that, it rolled over, so that she came face to face with the hideous form of Beelzebub -- cursed to the form of an enormous slug. Clwyd was no bigger than one of the thing's questing eyestalks that now scanned the room for the source of whatever disturbance had alerted the Lord of the Third. Five separate mouths worked independently of one another near the top of the slug's form, each rowed with teeth and a different size from the others, some breathing, others chittering softly. Beelzebub's eyes alighted on Clwyd one at a time and he studied her. Then a rasping, gasping voice let out but a few words: 'YOU DIE...' Beelzebub said first. Then, 'WANT LIFE?' Understandably, Clwyd asked for some more details. 'COME HERE,' was all Beelzebub said when asked what the cost would be. The goblin tried to press him for more specifics, but he just said it louder. 'YOU COME HERE!' Clwyd told him that in that case it was going to be a no, and the Lord of the Third cried out in five different piercing voices from each of his mouths. And Clwyd was gone, in pain, bumping among untold others, drowning and swimming and souring and screaming and rushing to the end. And then something, somewhere and somehow, bid her back. 
* As the reincarnation cocoon peeled back, the others saw with some horror that where Aerendyl's spell had drawn in the power of the environment around them to fuel it, it had changed Clwyd's body. Her skin, once green, was now a deep purple. Horns protruded from her forehead, and as she went to rub her face with her hands, they all saw that the left hand was now a copy of her right -- such that she rubbed her face with the palm of one hand and the back of the new one. She got to her feet, still the same height as she'd always been, but suddenly aware that a tail also hung down behind her legs. She'd been made tiefling. 
** With Clwyd recovered, Wilfred and Zadimus went on a hunt to find their missing nightmares. It took a few hours but they were able to find both beasts. Once they'd returned, Ingvild went out and found her mount too.
* From there, Pyt and Wilfred spent about an hour diving through the rotten remains of the balhannoth's victims looking for loot. Meanwhile, the others made dinner from their ever-dwindling supply of nutritious frogs. After that, Pyt set up his hut in the crown of the tree that had been the balhannoth's nest and they all retired inside. Wilfred identified the magical loot he'd fished out from amidst the bones and muck:
** A Staff of the War Mage - a very powerful quarterstaff and magical focus for mages who favoured physical combat. Wilfred keeps it on him, but can't spare the attunement slot at the moment.
** A Ring of Invisibility - a smooth silvery band of metal, somewhat innocuous, but capable of turning the wearer invisible without limit. A truly powerful item. Pyt claims it for himself.
** A Statuette of Sustenance - a jade figure of a bald, fat man with a wide grin, hands resting on his stomach as he sits. While attuned and carrying it on their person, one does not need to eat or drink.
** A Pearl of Power - capable of restoring a spell slot of up to 3rd level.
** And a Ring of Fire Resistance
* The Ninth Day in the Swamp:
** Wilfred and Pyt wake up with some of their wounds pussy and stinking after their long search through a mountain of swamp-rotten corpses. They each suffer further reductions to their max hit points. 
** Before they mount up and ride on, Wilfred uses Detect Magic and senses that there's still more magic items to be claimed amidst the corpses. He uses Pliable Summons to dig out a coil of magical rope without touching the corpse pile. Then after consulting with the others, the gnome reluctantly agrees to give up the quest for more magic items amidst the pile. 
** They ride all day, out beyond the far edge of the dread forest and beyond, keeping up a clipped pace. After nine hours, they're forced to stop only by Wilfred picking up a level of exhaustion. 
** But then things start going bad. Ingvild can't find a suitable place for them to rest after an hour of looking, and the extra time in the saddle lands her with a level of exhaustion too. After another hour of looking, she still doesn't see anywhere suitable to put the tiny hut down. That hour lands Molly with a level of exhaustion and Wilfred with his second. 
** Eventually, the fire giant does find them somewhere to rest and they're all too eager to stop for the day. 
** They feed the horses two of the four lemures from Ingvild's saddle sack and eat some more frogs for themselves -- though Ingvild, now attuned to the little Statuette of Sustenance, didn't require a frog for herself.
** 108 miles progress made on the ninth day.
* The Tenth Day:
** Wilfred can't get his mount under control and they're forced to a slow pace. 
** After two hours in the saddle, the caustic clouds of Minauros are hanging low. They ride through poisonous fog for three hours, coughing and spluttering but reluctant to lose any more time by stopping. Even after passing that, the clouds are still no higher than 30 feet off the swampy ground. 
** After seven hours in the saddle, they see another ruined shell of a city in the distance. They opt to try and go around it this time and start riding lateral to the ruins for one hour before stopping for the day. 
** Ingvild quickly finds a place for them to put down. 
** Pyt, Clwyd, and Zadimus ride out, looking for lemures for the horses and 'prey' that the group might eat themselves -- their frog supply was running very, very low. They search for two hours, and eventually find two newly emerged lemures. No 'prey' though.
** Meanwhile, about 90 will-o-wisps rise up all around Wilfred, Ingvild, Molly, and the incapacitated Ilphas back at their camp site. Wilfred messages the others, telling them something bad is happening, but for the most part, they're too far away. Clwyd is able to tap into the magic of the newly fashioned witch totem she'd again left in Wilfred's care to instant transport beside the gnome -- and so sees the dire situation as it's still unfolding. 
** They bundle Ilphas into the portable hole then mount up in a hurry and ride into the low-hanging clouds to escape the eerily bobbing wisps -- they hadn't yet attacked, but the group knew all too well how dangerous they could be if they did. 
** The noxious fumes poison Wilfred and Ingvild, and they duck back out quite quickly, then take their leave of the area. The wisps, for whatever reason, hadn't moved after initially rising up, and they continued to hang still in the air where they'd all risen as the group rode away. 
** Wilfred uses some Sending spells to inform Pyt and Zadimus of their location and the two groups meet up. 
** Ingvild then goes about trying to find another campsite for them. The process takes two hours and leaves Wilfred, Pyt, Molly, and the horses all with a level of exhaustion. 
** They feed the horses the last of the lemures from Ingvild's saddle sack, meaning they're sated until the end of the 14th day in the swamp now. 
** Before putting the two new lemures in the sack, Pyt hacks a bit of flesh off one. He cooks it up while the others are readying some more frog. He doses it with a bunch of Prestidigitation spice flavour. Then, knowing their supplies are running low and they need to find an alternative sooner or later, he eats the meat that is a hardened piece of pure soul. It's a weird, awful combo of too soft and gritty in places. And it sits in his stomach poorly. But he keeps it down. Soon after he starts seeing people from his past all around him and rationalises their presence, even having conversations with many of them. 
** The others get Pyt to set up his hut even as he raves. Then they all get inside and begin to rest.
** 42 miles progress made on the tenth day before they started detouring to go around the ruined city.
Category:Part Six