Session 12 - Side Quest III

Finding themselves in a cave for unknown reasons Snowball and Pallas are greeted by two strangers from a far away land. Rafkas the Elf Monk and Inimine the Gnome Rouge, greet them and tell them a tale of a kidnapped princess who has been taken and held in this very cave. They need to free her and get her back to the local Lord her father who needs her to complete some ritual that will increase his power. 

As the party enter the cave they quickly encounter a gelatinous green cube, who wobbles its way in their direction as it senses food, the party take care of the cube leaving a splattered mess of mushed up Jelly on the ground. 

The party continue exploring the cave and enter a room to find Pallas standing on a mat watching them, he appears identical but with an orange tinge. The party engage and quickly are able to take him down, as he dies he turns into a featureless grey humanoid and crumples to the floor. 

Next up the party encounter a cave full of spider webs, shooting a firebolt down the cave to clear the webs they are encountered by a Giant Spider who scuttles in their direction angry that they destroyed its web work. They take care of him in a hurry and move on after finding very little in the way of loot in the spiders cave.

Rounding a corner they encounter a very large growling cat, with saber teeth, snowball quickly uses his deck of illusions to generate an illusion of an Ogre, consuming the cats thoughts while the party attack it from afar until they finally move in for the kill. They discover a box of sand, some balls of string and a blacksmiths model of a small rodent in the Tigers cave, Snowball is able to craft two bowstrings from one of the string balls. 

The next room contains a bubbling cauldron of orange waxy liquid as the team enter Barlumins form rises up from the pot, ready to attack, The team (some of which take great joy in) quickly dispatch Barlumins double. 

They move on, and find a room with Jamorin sitting at a desk reading scripture, he stands up and attacks, the party return the favor and dispatch him, noticing that some slicing blows remove parts of his armor, like they are made of flesh. 

The next room contains several beds with skeletons secured to them, they have sections of their body still containing flesh but are mostly stripped clean. They surmise this is some kind of harvesting of flesh to build the doppelgangers. 

Moving on past a blacksmith for the mine, they discover a familiar looking rouge hiding behind some barrels Gnarvick comes out shortbow ablazing and is quickly defeated by the party who at this stage are taking no prisoners.

The party find a bridge over a chasm, there is a bridge and a ladder down to the bottom, they spot Selmak and Snowball digging away at the end of the short mine shafts. 

Snowball casts sleep on Snowball, to no avail. Snowball casts sleep back at Snowball and Pallas counters the spell. This attracts the attention of Selmak but they cut him down before he can climb the ladder. 

Crossing the bridge the team discover a giant floating ball with several eyeballs on stalks coming out of its head. The spectator was busy reading a book and the team are able to use stealth to position themselves at various tactical positions. They attack and the spectator responds with various attacks, but the team take down its floating spherical ass. 

Restrained in the room is the princess and the team release her, she is terrified of returning to her family as her father had been desecrating the graves of their ancestors for some deal he made with a wizard named Akore.