Dude! I'm Like, Stoned!

“I am so sick of these frickin’ hobgoblins!” Nicki groaned as he pointed his finger at the charging Sisters of the Broken Path. Ever since the group had descended beneath the House of Withered Blossoms in a quest to rid it of the oni still inhabiting their former prison, it seemed that they couldn’t swing a traipsing cat without hitting some more of the smelly, hairy, snarling army of hobgoblin minions that served their oni overlords. This latest level of the underground complex had proved to be no exception; no sooner had they crossed the underground lake to reach a small landing on the far side than they were accosted by three more of the fanatical female hobgoblin monks.

Nicki’s Scorching Rays blasted the leading Sister full in the chest, but didn’t even slow her down. The three came leaping down the series of terraces ahead of the party and began punching and kicking at Zhustin, Sandoval, and Shinjiro. Shinjiro responded with a Flurry of Blows of his own, and Marie Teleported behind his assailant and tried to bash it with her mace, but the creature’s Blurry form caused her swing to go wide. Sawyer pushed Sandoval aside and swung Suishen in a furious arc that sent the hobgoblin’s head tumbling across the floor.

With no immediate enemy trying to disembowel him, Sandoval climbed up the terraces to check for any new threats. The upper level was a flat cobbled courtyard. Ahead, he could see a broad passage opening to his left, and while he didn’t see anything, he could hear a loud clattering coming from down that passage.

Zhustin was backed up against the dark waters of the underground lake, with an angry hobgoblin monk in his face. Bella sank an arrow into its neck, but it didn’t even seem to notice. With nowhere to retreat to, Zhustin decided to give his adamantine staff one last try. Whipping it off his back, he scrunched his eyes closed and swung it in a two-handed arc. To his surprise, he felt it rebound off the hobgoblin’s thick skull, and he released the Shocking Grasp spell stored in the staff. When he opened his eyes, every hair on the hobgoblin’s body was standing straight out and she was convulsing slightly. Then she disappeared in flash of flame and smoke, as Nicki fried it with another blast of Scorching Rays.

Ryosanjin

The clattering sound Sandoval heard was growing louder, and a fearsome pair of figures suddenly came galloping out of the passage. One was another ogre mage, waving a huge katana, and it was mounted on an enormous armored bull – a Giant Gorgon! The bull slid to a stop, head lowered and eyes burning while its rider surveyed the attacking force. He spotted Sawyer carrying Suishen, and his eyes burned with fury. “I am Ryosanjin, Munasukaru’s Chosen,” he bellowed in Tien, pointing his sword at Sawyer, “and you have desecrated her sacred domain. Face me in honorable combat, or be labeled forever a coward!”

Once again, Sawyer didn’t speak Tien, so he didn’t know that he’d been challenged. Neither, apparently, did the gorgon, because it didn’t wait for Sawyer to demonstrate his honor. Instead, it snorted out a jet of green gas that enveloped the entire party. They felt their muscles and joints begin to stiffen, and their skin began to go numb, but they shook off the petrifying effects of the gorgon’s breath. All, that is, except Shinjiro and the surviving Sister of the Broken Path. When the gas dissipated, there were a pair of monk-shaped statues facing each other in frozen combat.

Sawyer didn’t have time to worry about Shinjiro. He charged up the terraces, and rushed Ryosanjin, stopping just out of his reach and lunging forward to stab the ogre mage. Marie Teleported to the far side of the gorgon mount, hoping to distract it. Bella charged forward, counting on her nimbleness to let her get inside the big ogre mage’s reach without getting hurt. But the samurai was too well-trained, and he saw through her feint. As she tried to duck under his blow, he suddenly reversed his swing, and the six-foot long katana sliced through Bella’s armor like butter, leaving her gasping with pain.

The party’s spellcasters let out a collective groan of frustration as they saw their targets quickly surrounded by allies; so much for any of their big-blast spells. Sandoval cast Slow on both the ogre mage and his mount, but the spell had no effect. Zhustin looked at Shinjiro’s stony form, and shuddered to think what another round of gorgon breath might do to the party. He summoned up knowledge he’d never used before, and cast a Disintegrate on the giant bull. Its form seemed to shimmer for a moment as the atomic bonds holding it together loosened, but it managed to maintain its solidity, although its outer layers did seem to slough off. Nicki considered staying behind the two statues and using them for cover, but he was down too low to really see the action, so he reluctantly moved farther uphill and hit Ryosanjin with a Ray of Exhaustion.

The ogre mage might have been marginally more fatigued following Nicki’s spell, but you couldn’t tell from the fury of his attacks. He ignored Bella, keeping his focus on the subject of his challenge, and slashed Sawyer with his huge blade. The gorgon tried to gore Bella, but she slipped past its horns, but its hooves caught Marie, behind it, with a nasty kick.

Sandoval cast Grease on the ogre mage’s sword, but he kept a tight grip on its hilt. Sawyer might not have understood the nature of the oni samurai’s challenge, but Suishen certainly did. The sword’s blade burned more intensely as it bit into the oni again and again, finally slicing through its armor and into its vitals. Bella, all but forgotten beneath the gorgon’s hooves, lunged upward and sank her dagger into the gorgon’s throat and her rapier into the oni’s groin, and both collapsed with a resounding crash.

The party members began to drag themselves towards Marie for healing, but she’d already rushed back to examine Shinjiro. “Oh, I’m sure it’s no big thing,” Bella said, trying to get Marie to focus instead on closing the gaping wound in her side. “It’ll pass if we just give it some time.” Marie wasn’t convinced. She’d never actually dealt with anyone who was petrified, but she didn’t think it was a temporary condition. Offering a prayer to Desna that this would work, she cast Break Enchantment on Shinjiro, and to her relief, his flesh softened and regained its natural coloring, and his chest heaved as he drew his first breath in several minutes. “See – told you it would clear up,” Bella said, as she began breaking the limbs off the hobgoblin statue with her mace and cheerfully pitching them into the water.

With Shinjiro restored, Marie shifted her attention to staunching everyone’s bleeding, and soon they felt well enough to continue on. There was a closed door a short distance down the passage that Ryosanjin had emerged from, and Bella listened carefully before pulling it open. Inside was a cluttered bedroom. The floor appeared to be covered with an odd, shiny shag carpeting – until she noticed that what appeared to be carpet was actually a layer of thousands of beetles, crawling over one another. The group let out a collective “Ewwww!”, and slammed the door shut. However, there had been some interesting looking artwork and artifacts among the room’s furnishings, so Marie re-opened the door a crack and cast a Detect Magic inside. Sure enough, something magical glowed from within a dresser on the far side of the room. Unwilling to crunch her way across the living floor to search the room, Marie unfurled her wings and flew through the room to perch atop the dresser. She located a magical headband inside, collected anything else that looked like it might have resale value, then quickly exited and slammed the door behind her.

The passage led to a magnificent stone bridge carved with scenes of enraged kirin devouring a bridal feast. The bridge arched gracefully over a watercourse, with swift dark waters rushing past below, presumably from the lake outside. Some twenty feet beyond the bridge, the passage opened into a large room, but no features could be made out from a distance, so Sawyer and Bella cautiously advanced.

As they reached the mouth of the passage, they could see that they were looking down into a vast chamber. A narrow walkway stretched the length of the room on their side, but the floor of the chamber itself was 20 feet below them. A vaulted ceiling soared 40 feet above them, supported by stone columns, some of which had collapsed. It looked like a broad stone bridge had once spanned the room directly ahead of them, leading into some unknown part of the seemingly endless underground complex, but a cave-in had completely blocked the opposite passage, and the bridge itself had collapsed into a pile of rubble on the floor below.

They took all this in in their peripheral vision. What drew their attention were the pair of Stone Giants in the room below them, and the trio of veteran Withered Blossom Warriors charging at them from the walkway on either side of them. Oh, and there was another hobgoblin with a staff on the floor down below – another of those annoying Hobgoblin Warcasters.

With a shouted warning to the others, Sawyer charged the nearest warrior, and stabbed it with Suishen. Bella deftly Pounced to come up behind the same target, but her blow went wide. Then the hobgoblin warrirors converged on Sawyer and Bella, surrounding them on the narrow walkway, and began to pummel them with their morningstars.

Marie heard something about “spellcaster” before Sawyer got too distracted with parrying blows, and scurried back the way she’d come, not wanting to stay too close to anyone else. Zhustin fired off a volley of Magic Missiles  at the warrior harrying Sawyer from behind, but Nicki rushed forward so that he could see down into the sunken room. Sure enough, he spotted the warcaster, standing near one of the giants, so he let them have it with a Fireball. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to do the warcaster in, and he rushed forward to get a better angle before firing an Empowered Fireball of his own into the passage behind Nicki. He was firing blind, but the spell’s blast radius was enough to scorch not only Nicki, but Sandoval, Shinjiro, and even Marie, who hadn’t backed up quite far enough.

Even more unfortunately, Nicki’s spell attracted the attention of the other stone giant. With a snarl, he rushed up the pile of rubble and pulled himself up to the walkway in front of Nicki. He smashed his club straight down onto the sorcerer’s head, and Nicki had no way to duck the blow. Blood sprayed the walls and Nicki was left reeling. The other giant picked up a table-sized chunk of rubble and flung it at Bella, but it rebounded harmlessly off the wall above her head.

Sandoval rushed to the edge of the walkway. To his left, Nicki was being pulverized by one stone giant, while below him the other giant and his little friend were threatening to pick off the party from a distance. Trying to guess the greater danger, he cast a Rainbow Pattern onto the floor of the chamber. The stone giant seemed oblivious to the swirling colors, but the warcaster stood slack-jawed and Fascinated.

Shinjiro had joined Sawyer and Bella in battling the warriors, and they were making short work of them. Sawyer thrust Suishen through one hobgoblin and flung his body off the ledge, and Bella disemboweled another, but the third slammed Bella against the wall with its morningstar.

But Nicki was in the greatest danger. Marie dashed forward and gave him the Breath of Life hoping to keep him alive just a little longer. Zhustin cast Feeblemind on the stone giant; the lumbering creature didn’t appear to be all that bright to begin with, and it wasn’t clear if the spell made much of a difference. Nicki knew he had to do something, so he took a step back and started to cast a Maximized, Empowered Scorching Ray, hoping he could fry the behemoth with one go. But he hadn’t counted on the giant’s long arms and longer club. He had barely began uttering the words of the spell before the tree-trunk sized club smashed into him once again, splattering everyone around with Nicki’s noble blood, and disrupting the spell.

Sandoval cast Grease on the giant’s club, and as he drew back for another blow, the club slipped out of his hands and went spinning off into the room below. Shinjiro stepped up and assaulted it with a flurry of blows. He didn’t seem to hurt it very much, but he did succeed in drawing its attention away from Nicki. It stared dumbly at its empty hands for a second, then closed them into enormous fists and punched Shinjiro so hard he was seeing stars.

Sawyer started to rush to their aid, but the other stone giant abandoned throwing rocks, and climbed up onto the ledge behind Sawyer, slamming him into the wall with its club. Sawyer knew he couldn’t afford to turn his back on an angry giant, so he let out a furious cry and unleashed Suishen’s full fury on his new attacker. His last blow cut the giant’s leg off at the knee, and it fell to the floor below with a thundering crash.

Across the way, Marie had charged forward to harry the other giant, and her mace shattered its kneecap. Limping, it roared and raised its fists to retaliate, but Zhustin blasted it with Scorching Rays, and it, too, fell back into the chamber. Nicki slid weakly down the wall, leaving a smear of blood behind. “I think I’ll just sit here for a bit,” he whispered through bloodied lips.

Bella and the last Withered Blossom Warrior were still trading blows, but now Shinjiro and Sawyer rushed to her aid, and the hobgoblin didn’t stand a chance. That only left the warcaster, still standing enthralled by Sandoval’s Rainbow Pattern. They knew that any attack on him would release him from the spell’s power, and they couldn’t risk entering the area of the spell to hit him, lest they too fall under its sway. Timing their actions, Sandoval dismissed the spell, and as the warcaster began to regain his senses, Sawyer Air Walked down and decapitated him.

As Nicki chugged healing potions and Marie added her own healing, the others took in the rest of the room for the first time. This hall had once been a place of great grandeur, but had fallen into disrepair over the century and a half since the Five Storms' escape. However, brightly painted frescoes still covered the walls, depicting blinded ettins pulling huge golden wagons filled with horrible creatures, and surrounded by hundreds of slaves, groveling and averting their eyes. With some study, it became clear that the creatures being pulled in the wagons and commanding the obeisance of the slaves, were the leadership of the Five Storms. One figure was recognizable from the statue they’d seen in the pagoda upstairs: an obscenely female figure nursing a pair of infant nagas: Munasukaru.

Now that he was down on the lower level, Sawyer could see that there was another passage leading south beneath the upper walkway. In addition, there was a closed wooden door on the upper walkway, near where Bella had been fighting. She tried to open it, but it was swollen shut with damp, and Shinjiro had to help her wrench it open. The small room inside was almost empty, its floor damp from water dripping slowly from the ceiling. The only thing in the room was a small pot holding a wilted bonsai tree. Bella stared at the tree for a moment, brow knitted. “Didn’t somebody tell us something about a bonsai tree?” she muttered, and then the light went on. One of the kami, back in the Forest of Spirits, had said their ward, a bonsai tree, had been stolen by the hobgoblins, and asked the party to search for it. The endless drip of water was the only thing that had kept the tiny tree alive so far, but it could not survive much longer in the lightless environment. Bella smiled to herself as she gently picked the tree up and stored it away in her Handy Haversack. She wouldn’t admit it to the others, but she felt a thrill of joy at rescuing something so beautiful.

Once Nicki was well enough to walk, everyone clambered down the rubble from the collapsed bridge to the lower level, and began to explore the new passage Sawyer had found. It was much narrower than the previous passage – no more than ten feet wide – and very soon they encountered an obstacle. Another stone bridge had once spanned the river rushing away from the distant lake, but it had collapsed, creating a tumbling whitewater where the water rushed over the broken stone. On the opposite side, was an opening into another large room, but nothing of its contents could be seen from this side. 

Sawyer was still Air Walking, so he picked up Bella and skimmed across the water’s surface into the room. They found themselves in a vast hall, its vaulted ceiling supported by endless rows of columns disappearing into the unknown distance. Unfortunately, they were not alone. Upon their entrance, another pair of Stone Giants and yet another group of Withered Blossom Warriors turned to confront them.

The PCs earned 8,800 XP for the night, putting them at 224,348 XP. They have reached Level 12, and need 315,000 XP for level 13. Have your new characters ready to go next week, when we’ll be at Leo’s.