Episode 14: The Goo, The Bad and The Ugly

LittleOne contemplates the best strategy for killing the monsters at Hengal

## Episode summary

Following their battle with Warforged Daggerface, The Party, aching from bruises and down 1100 gold, return to Bankton to rest up. The next day, they head to the village of Hengal in southern Laric, where WDF told them they could find Matthew Patel, the man who placed the bounty on their heads. The village is a week's ride from Bankton, and only two days from the border of the Peacebond. It is also home to a Warbond faction that Coren Dahl described as "just weird".

There are few people in the streets, but Black approaches a woman and politely asks if she can direct him to the Patel residence. However, as soon as he does, three men approach from one of the houses and attempt to intimidate The Party into leaving. They fail (these guys have beaten two Orcs, a few dozen Deluvians and a legendary assassin, after all), and the heroes continue on their way, but soon realise that the streets have become oddly empty.

Even without directions, it doesn't take long to find which of the handful of two-storey buildings bears a "Patel" nameplate. Angel finds that the door isn't locked (in any serious way) and they enter to find the house cold and dark, and Matthew Patel's corpse slumped in an armchair. The corpse is cold, but has not yet had time to decay, and there is no obvious cause of death.

Having recently levelled up, Angel had taken a level of swordsage and using the scent ability that this has given her, she determines that Patel has been dead for only a few days she also finds a small piece of rotting flesh in the centre of a small stain on the carpet a dozen or so feet from the body, although it has no obvious source and Angel can find no trail, nor can any of them find an exit wound.

They stand around debating the meaning of Patel's death, before Black casts *Augury* to ask Sirius what will happen if they stay in the house, with Sirius able to answer *Weal* (positive outcome), *Woe* (negative outcome, *Both* or *Neither*, seeing up to 30 minutes into the future. The answer is *Woe*, but Little One chooses to interpret this as their enemies coming to them, as opposed to fighting them in the open streets, and decides to stay put. Twenty minutes later, Angel begins to smell burning and They Party rush out of the house to find that the men who accosted them standing across the road, one of them holding a flaming torch.

Two figures reveal themselves on a nearby rooftop. One is a large almost-humanoid man made of goo and the other is a giant bipedal ant. The goo man mentions that it's "been so long since [they] were allowed to kill anyone" and fires hardened goo spikes at The Party, while the Formian fires laser beams that bend around the target to hit them in the back (reflex for half). Angel runs up the wall (having purchased slippers of spider climb in Bankton) and attacks the Formian, while Little One runs for one of the ladders that had been being used to clear snow from gutters.

Angel hits the Formian hard enough to break his concentration on his beam shooting spell-like ability and in response he triggers mutations in the thugs, the large men becomming larger still à la The Incredible Hulk, while the smaller man stretches out. They also develop glowing red eyes and crystals protrude from their foreheads. This transformation is clearly painful and does not appear consensual either.

Black engages the mutants to keep them off Draven, while Little One jumps across to the monsters' roof and attacks the goo man. In response, the goo man grows goo wings and flies down the street, firing spikes behind him. While Draven fires scorching rays at the goo man, Angel injures the Formian badly enough that the ant man attempts to flee, but he is killed by Little One. The goo man hops from roof to roof in an attempt to escape, but Black chases him down with a *Lesser Holy Transformation* (which allows him to fly) and, together with Draven, finishes him off, taking his single giant eyeball to use as an eldritch eye. The mutants are also soon dispatched.

The Party stand around for a minute wondering what to do now when a woman approaches them and, worried that her husband might transform like the three men The Party fought, tells them that one of the houses is in fact a disguised entrance to an underground cavern. She accompanies them to the cavern, where the local Warbond cell is hiding out, and convinces the Warbonders not to start a fight, as aggression may trigger the transformation.

The men tell The Party to follow the tunnel to the place they underwent the ritual that causes the transformations and, on Draven's inquiry, reveal that their power comes from "the tiger lord". Draven quickly realises out-of-character that they're referring to a Rakshasa, but the only member of The Party with any in-character knowledge of them is Angel, who recalls that they're cat-like humanoids who live in the Feywild and have a bad reputation for ... some reason.

The Party begin to travel down the tunnel which is almost 20 feet in diameter and so long that horses are kept in it and rest sites with water access are built in every 30 miles or so (about a full day's ride). As they ride, they periodically hear a "resonating, repetitive, noise" from the western end of the tunnel (they are travelling east, at the advice of the villagers). After four days of riding, they reach the eastern end of the tunnel, which had sloped down enough in the last stretch that they are now several miles underground. Coming across some rough wooden doors, they perform some cartographical calculations and determing that they are somewhere under Eloyah, having travelled under the lake.

As well as the doors, there is a collapsed branch of the tunnel to the left and a crack in the wall to their right (see map, right). The crack is large enough for them to fit through, and leads to another room, with a 15-feet lower floor. The room contains a chest and a quartz golem, as well as another door out. The Party plan to bypass the golem and use this room to sneak up on whatever's behind the wooden doors from the main tunnel, but as soon as they set foot on the floor of the room, the golem attacks them.

The golem casts *dispel magic* as a swift action every round and has full immunity to magic, as opposed to the spell resistance that most TDDC golems get. Despite this, The Party are victorious and examine the contents of the chest: a scroll of restoration, two shards (the psionic equivalent of scrolls) of dimensional anchor, two daggers of dimensional anchor (single-use daggers that apply dimensional anchor when they hit with a melee or ranged attack), two blank masks (single-use magic items that apply complete immunity to mind-affecting spells for 12 hours,à la *mind blank*) and a +1 banishing longsword (3/day banishing attempts, DC 20 will save).

Angel scouts ahead and hears a strange chanting coming from down the corridor. While she cannot understand the language, it is clearly some Fey dialect: "Zagato vimtimro kagga magga rey-fo dro! Uldo-re amagano, vista-re abatro!".

In an after-credits scene, a mysterious tigric outline tells a group of other outlines that "the outside group" will be upon him any moment. A female voice tells him that his "fate matrix" suggests that in a direct confrontation, he would almost certainly be destroyed. A deeper voice adds that he would inflict "a mere 1.5 casualties in return", which a third voice declares to be unacceptable.

## Trivia

* This is the first mention of Angel's slippers of spider climb.
* This is the last episode to use generic clipart images, providing backgrounds for the tunnel system.