Hello,
You swam toward the dark clouds that rose from the ruined “castle,” unable to communicate with each other about what might lie therein. Sinister humanoid shapes darted toward you from all directions- at first they seemed to have hair of snakes, but as they closed in they were revealed to have misshapen goatlike heads sporting a wreath of writhing octopoid tentacles— a horrid chaos hybrid, walktapus broo! They had no armour or weaponry but fought well with inky clouds of sickening darkness emitted from their abdomens and rasping, lashing, strangling horny head-tentacles. It was a terrible fight; all of you suffered some nasty wounds and some nearly died, but in the end you prevailed using almost every resource at your disposal in a desperate struggle. The Stinging Spear of St Buquaim proved to have surprising power in striking these horrors dead with merely a scratch, but other wounds to them could heal quickly.
Then you descended into the narrow, tall ruin and the Captain led you to one end of it, where the central “keep” lay in shambles. You came into a main courtyard where stairs led up into a crumbling chamber at the top of the “keep”. The floor of this dark room was cluttered with slithering globs of iron, with inert bits of other metals strewn amidst them. Some of you felt great anger and paranoia welling within yourselves- there were old, bad feelings that had seeped into the very stone of this chamber. Quickly the iron-worm-amoeba drew together and raised into somewhat humanoid, segmented hulks of metal, with almost faceless heads that shifted their form constantly and occasionally produced scowling or pleading mad expressions.
Again there was another brutal fight, and you realized that most of your weaponry could not harm them due to their thick metal shells. They reflected magics cast at them, leaving the Baronet blinded by his own Darkstrike! But they were slow and heavy and could not swim to chase you up out of the room, so you beat a strategic retreat. As you did, the Captain noticed a shadowy figure watching you from the back of the room, and spoke to it as he outmaneuvered the iron-things. He recognized it as the spirit of Saint Buquaim, grantor of his magical spear, but it seemed unable to communicate to him except giving him strong feelings of fear, despair and anger. You lured the iron-things out to the courtyard where you could swim above them, and Ciddar proved his mettle against their metal with his Tear of St Tutrys, which cut deeply into their heads and left them empty, soulless piles of inanimate, twisted iron.
The Ouori came to help you, as you were sorely wounded and feeling a growing sickness. As you came back to The Shadow, the Baronet and Captain began dry-heaving up not just the water they'd breathed but also a vile oily substance that had sunken into their pores. Apparently Boamund's Skin of Life spell had not stopped some malevolent essence of the walktapus-broo's “ink clouds”- whether disease, curse or poison it left its victims almost helpless. But back on your ship, you began to recover and receive healing, and found that drinking fresh water would remove the sickness.
As you regained your strength, you planned your vengeance on the remaining iron-things and the Captain and Baronet told the story of St Buquaim and their heroquest with him to crash the concrete hull of a Mostali ship into the reefs back in the Second Age… the “drowned castle” was no castle, but a dwarven vessel haunted by chaos and its own past misdeeds… —-
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