97. Bog of the Damned

* Clwyd, Pyt, and Wilfred were forced to leave Aerendyl behind in the Umbral Market. Together with Zadimus the vampire, Ingvild the fire giant -- who has been magically shrunk down to the size of a tall human -- Ilphas the infirmed eladrin, and Molly the gnomish beekeeper, all mounted in ones or twos atop a total of four nightmare horses, the group have made it up the Cocytian Falls and into Minauros, the Third Hell.
* The hellish swamp that stretches out before the group is an awful thing. The crumbled ruins of once great cities poke out from the bubbling muck and swirling, stagnant pools of Styx water. Massive bone whelks cling to the rubble, with the bones of long dead humanoids clinging to their sticky, slug-like bodies in turn, and silently watch on as the party ride past. The sky is a roiling mass of brown clouds, overcast in every direction. At one point, the group see a fresh soul leave the Styx: the incorporeal, vaguely humanoid form crawled out the water and began solidifying as soon as it came into contact with the hellish air, growing fleshy and pink as it pulled itself further out the water, until eventually it was a fully emerged and hardened into a lemure. Immediately, the thing was accosted by stinging, biting flies that it haplessly attempted to fend off. More often, the group saw what lemures inevitably become in the swamp when the poison and fly bites ruin them further; here and there, the massive, bulbous, swollen forms of nuperiboes gracelessly wade their way through the swamp.
* The party ride on!
	+ Clwyd recognises that something has intercepted her genie-granted location sense. She deduces what it means: somewhere far in the distance, there is a location that the party *must* go to before they can travel to their actual destination, that being a route up to the next hell.
	+ And so, the party set their course for that distant, mysterious location. Concluding that their journey through the swamp would be a marathon rather than a sprint, they kept the nightmares to a steady pace.
	+ After a few hours riding through the swamp, it starts raining. Where the rain lands, their clothes begin to sizzle and smoke a little. The party think it a bad sign and find cover in an ancient, sunken temple of some sort. Pyt sends Jackson out into the rain for a while and learns that its acidic.
	+ While stopped, Wilfred sends a message to Alric for the first time since the party entered the market. Though ever stoic, Alric seems relieved to hear from the gnome again.
	+ They wait out the rain for three hours. When it eventually stops, they mount up again and set off.
	+ After a few more hours riding, a writhing wall of apparently solid black suddenly rushes towards them from the horizon: an enormous mass of swarming insects.
		- With barely any time to react, Wilfred seals himself and Zadimus -- the both of them not yet in full control of their mounts -- along with Ilphas and Molly and the horses in a spherical Wall of Force.
		- This leaves Pyt and Clwyd astride one nightmare and Ingvild on another outside to face the enormous swarm on their own. Clwyd casts an Earthen Armour spell on Pyt then fully seals herself in her malleable bronze armour -- though she can't breath with it like this and can only hold her breath for four minutes. Ingvild gives a roar before the wall of flies hits and bolsters their resolve. Then the flies are on them, biting and stinging with reckless abandon as they fly past.
		- In all, the swamp takes an enormous *nine* minutes to pass over the party. Halfway through, Clwyd had to retract herself from her armour in order to breath. All things considered, the trio managed to make it through the biting wave without too much difficulty. In large part this was thanks to them being under the effects of a Heroes' Feast spell from their last meal in the Umbral Market. Their horses, however, were hurt quite badly from the affair.
	+ After this, having covered about 72 miles in the swamp this day, the group decide it's time to try and find rest. Ingvild spots them a place suitable for Pyt to set up his Tiny Hut.
	+ Pyt tries to ritual cast his hut. Meanwhile, Wilfred tries to ritual cast some alarm spells around the area. Both efforts fail. Combined with earlier instances of Pyt's spells running out early -- both his habitual casting of Death Ward and his Tiny Servant ended after approximately only half their usual duration -- they concluded that this swamp hell leeches magic. No ritual casting would ever finish.
	+ Pyt is forced to cast Tiny Hut with a spell slot.
	+ Since the nightmares can't fit in the hut, they need to sleep in shifts with one of them outside at all times to look after the horses. Pyt's and Ingvild's mounts are well behaved, but Wilfred's and Zadimus's haven't yet been mastered. Under Clwyd's watch, Zadimus's mount runs away and she is forced to wake up the vampire and send him chasing after it.
	+ What's more, Tiny Hut runs out halfway through their rest and Pyt needs to recast it.
	+ The oppressive atmosphere of Minauros combined with the difficult conditions under which they are travelling and sleeping mean that getting a good night's rest is not guaranteed. The chance of their long rest not sticking will only grow as the time they spend in the swamp increases.
* The Second Day:
	+ As they wake up, those that are carrying disease cultures from the Plagueman have their max hp reduced. Ilphas, carrying four such disease cultures, as well as having been shrunk and still suffering from the Longing, is Incapacitated by the development of the diseases.
	+ The group sigh, dust themselves off, mount up, and then ride on, again sticking to a modest pace.
	+ They ride in the air above the swamp for eight hours without much incident.
	+ But then a roiling, snake-like mass of smokey, screaming souls pierces the brown cloud cover and flies past them. Three banshees break off the mass of this fog of the damned and attack the group. The party, and Ingvild in particular, make very quick work of these foes.
	+ Soon after, Ingvild again finds a place for them to set up the hut.
	+ Clwyd, Zadimus, and Molly (and the incapacitated Ilphas) stay by the camp site and cook up five of Clwyd's frogs -- enough for everyone save Zadimus and Ilphas, neither of whom need to eat for the time being.
	+ Pyt takes Wilfred up onto his nightmare and together with Ingvild on her own horse, the three go looking for newly emerged lemures that they can feed to the nightmares; the more common nupperiboes are no good for the horses to eat. They manage to find one lemure and they have the four horses split it.
	+ Wilfred gives a frog each to the pseudodragons he rescued, reasoning that eating one each should last them a week.
	+ At the end of their second day, they've covered another 72 miles in the swamp.
* The Third Day:
	+ Soon after they set off, the acid rain starts up again. Clwyd convinces the group to try riding though it, saying that the damage Jackson took before was fairly negligible and that they don't want to be in this swamp forever. Each hour that they ride through the rain causes them a fair amount of acid damage. After three hours and 22 acid damage, they try looking for some cover but find nothing. They ride for another hour, take 2 more acid damage, and eventually come out the other side of the rain.
	+ They get in three more hours in the saddle that day, but lost an hour of progress when they looked for cover while in the rain.
	+ They split up again into the frog cooking team and the lemure hunting team. Once more the scouting group are able to find a newly emerged lemure that they can feed to the horses.
	+ They covered 63 miles this day.
* The Fourth Day:
	+ Wilfred is unable to fully control his mount, forcing the group to a slow speed of travel for the day.
	+ For three hours, the swamp is uneventful.
	+ Then they see the broken ruins of an long uninhabited city.
	+ Presented with three options, to either go around, through, or over the city ruins, they opt to fly over the top.
	+ As they go, they see that the place must have been amazing once. All manner of granite, marble, stained glass, and metal that were once fashioned into incredible feats of art and architecture now sit in ruins.
	+ As they ride over the city, Pyt is suddenly hit by a massive stone column that something had *hurled* up at the party. It smashes into Pyt's mount, dealing a huge amount of damage and knocking both him and Clwyd off. Wilfred quickly casts Feather Fall on them.
	+ As they float down, they catch sight of the *enormous,* bipedal, bull-like demon stood atop ruined buildings, glaring up at them furiously, and gearing up to throw more massive pieces of rubble at the group: a goristro!
	+ Pyt Dimension Doors himself and Clwyd back into the saddle.
	+ Wilfred gets the side of a wall thrown at him and his horse. Between Pyt's Cutting Words and his own Shield spell, they're able to ward off the piece of building, which crashes down to the ground far below.
	+ The group try to flee straight upwards to get out the range of the goristro's projectiles, but the clouds of Minauros rush down to meet them, almost as if the Third Hell itself was conspiring to work against them.
	+ They continue to flee, not plunging deep into the low hanging clouds, but having to ride through caustic, fog-like atmosphere even as they stay low.
	+ The goristro throws a broken, headless statue and hits Pyt again, knocking the bard off his horse. Left alone in the saddle, Clwyd immediately loses her balance and falls too. Since neither of them had yet to touch the ground, Wilfred's earlier Feather Fall spell happened to still be in effect! Once more, the pair teleport back into the saddle, with Clwyd showcasing that she too can now cast Dimension Door.
	+ With a continued effort to flee, and with Clwyd manifesting the strongest of her new magics to (very) briefly surround the goristro with large stone pillars, they are able to get out of its throwing range.
	+ The goristro demon thrashes and screams at their escape, the force of its stomping feet breaking the whole of the building that its stood on, sending it crashing down in a cloud of dust even as the goristro remains stood atop it.
	+ They ride away, keeping a clipped pace. It's two hours before the brown fog abets, with it having dealt poison damage to them all the while. The pseudodragons in particular are badly hurt by this.
	+ Wilfred uses Life Transference to give Pyt's nightmare a good amount of healing and in turn Pyt uses two Healing Words to help out the pseudodragons.
	+ The group decide to push on for four more hours, but even then don't reach the end of the ruined city. They decide to ride the horses hard, pushing on for another hour. Even then, the city just stretches on.
	+ They decide to stop in the city for the night.
	+ Wilfred deduces the most defensible place for them to rest.
	+ When Clwyd goes for the frogs in her sack that night, she sees that they've all been killed by the low-hanging, poisonous clouds. Wilfred is able to preserve them all with a concerted effort to ritual cast Gentle Repose while inside Pyt's Tiny Hut.
	+ At the end of the day, they've only managed 48 miles progress.
* Before they rest for the night, Wilfred tries to use Sending to contact Dispater. As he does so, even though he'd used Sendings already while in Minauros to speak to Alric, Wilfred suddenly senses a large, clammy presence rushing up close, as if it was behind him. He hears faint-yet-heavy breathing from that clingy presence. Wilfred ends the spell immediately.