Killing a God

Chul spider climbs down the sinkhole and discovers a room full of the green floating spores. While above, the rest of the group is interrupted by one of these large green spores floating toward them. Snake takes a shot at the spore with his crossbow. The creature is hit and explodes with a massive burst that echoes through the cave painfully loud. Chul climbs back up and shares what he saw. Snake is tied to the endless rope and lowered down the tunnel where he takes a shot at one of the passing spores in the room. There a large chain detonation as massive explosions go off in the room, deafening Snake and causing stalactites in the larger cavern above to come loose. The rest of the party is caught in this hail of stone, but manage to only suffer minor bruises.

They find a second attached cave below, the only feature being a rotting corpse. This time it definitely is the same sort of creature as the "eye tyrant" they saw in the Malachite Fortress. Morgan runs over and begins stabbing the rotting corpse, despite the awful stench. The rest of the party, of sane mind, see a second smooth circular tunnel, but it appears to have caved in from the recent explosions. Salla notes that this whole area is very unstable. Also, smaller circular holes are found cut throughout the room for no obvious reasons.

With no other options coming to mind on how to continue the party heads back out of the sinkhole and continues to try and follow Salla's locate object spell. They come to a large cavern, a ramp leads from the tunnel entrance to the floor below, with a side passage off the ramp. Investigating the side passage, they are attacked by two creatures that blend in perfectly with the rough rock of the cave. These squat humanoid shaped creatures have abnormally large hands that they use to smash and grapple with. One of the creatures is quickly dropped, the other withdraws, speaking in low rumbling noises. Since Morgan cant understand what the creature is saying he kills it.

In the meantime, Salla has spotted a large 0puffball of fungus rolling about the cave floor below, inching closer and closer. Chul and him descend down the ramp and on to the cave floor, and are suprised as the puffball picks up speed and charges at them, rolling over Salla and crushing him. The puffball discharges a cloud of spores into the air around it, causing Salla and Chul to cough and choke and effectively blinding them.

As this new battle erupts, Snake does a 10 second loot of the room Morgan and him are in, grabbing a leather case and a glass vial containing a citrine surrounded by some sort of gas. Modisto throws a number of acid arrows at the puffball, while Jonl's arrows seem to just pass right through the creature. It seems the acid arrows are effective as the creature retreats after being hit with a few of them.

After making sure everyone is ok and that none of the temporary pains will become more permanent, they continue on, following a tunnel east out of the large cavern.

They arrive at a natural stone bridge that crosses a deep ravine, 80 feet below a fast flowing underground river moves to the east. Snake is tied to the endless rope once again, and he begins to cross the stone bridge. Stalactites from the ceiling above are actually ebony-colored creatures similar to giant bats. They leave their resting areas and swoop at Snake, four in total. While Snake dodges and evades, the rest of the party on the side of the ravine take the creatures down with missile fire. After the last of the creatures plummets into the river below, the rest of the party follows Snake across the bridge.

Again, they follow the tunnel as it heads south then turns east and opens up into another cave. The river they saw before crosses this room, creating a small lake in the majority of the cave, except for a five foot ledge that surrounds it. In the middle of the lake sits a dead tree, its bare branches drooping. Morgan, as the paranoid psychopath of the group, fires a shot at the dead tree. The tree begins to move toward the party slowly, its branches no longer drooping, but waving wildly about. Finally, Morgan recieves affirmation that his belief that inanimate objects are not what they seem is true and correct. There is a place in this world for mustached sword-wielding psychos. Err, back on topic. The rest of the party joins in the gunning down, and promptly the tree is floating in the lake motionless.

Modisto throws a detect magic to see if maybe a past victim of the tree had something valuable. He detects a magical aura in the bottom of the lake. Snake, already wet from retrieving the corpse of the tree, does some diving to collect an ivory tube with a divine scroll inside, and manages to also gather a few quartz crystals and some gold.

Moving on, they finally arrive at a T-intersection. To the north a bit is a statue of exquisite workmanship, a lizard-like humanoid attempting to defend itself from some unseen foe. Further up the northern tunnel is a second statue of a similar creature in the middle of swinging its club onto another unseen target. The party decides its best to avoid this tunnel for now, having heard tales of creatures with the ability to turn victims to stone.

The southern tunnel opens up into a enormous cavern, the largest yet. Water falls from the river flowing above, crashing into a huge lake. On the side with the tunnel is a sandy beach, with a constructed stone bridge crossing to another beach on the other side. The cave extends out of sight on the far beach. While Salla is scouting out this room he detects a trap in the middle of the stone bridge (he has his handy detect traps spell running).

For the fifth or so time, Snake is tied to the endless rope and he is sent out to scout around the enormous cavern. Snake makes it the beginning of the bridge, when the monstrous form of the indigo-colored lizard creature that visited them in Whitefang emerges into the light from the other side of the beach. Before Snake can react the monster shoots forth a bolt of lightning, striking Snake. With all abandon, Snake leaps up at the monster plunging his sword into it. He attempts to hold on, but can not and falls back down to the far beach below (for those who dont know, Snake has boots of striding and springing). The monster bears down on Snake, between the enchanted shield he has borrowed from Salla and the shield of faith spell active on him, he only manages to suffer some minor damage from a glancing claw.

The others have moved out into the cavern now, Morgan hits the monster with an icy bolt from the crossbow. The monster speaks, in Draconic, ancient words of power and a translucent shield of energy flickers into existance in front of it, saving it from being hit by further missile fire. Modisto, with only a lightning bolt at his disposal, does some quick thinking and shoots his lightning bolt at the stalactites above it. He knocks a number of them loose, two large ones strike the monster. Snake can see it now has a broken leg and is badly beaten and bloodied from the rocks. Snake leaps to the side of the monster, attempting to bypass its magical shield, the monster snaps it jaws as Snake leaps over. Snake twists away from the bite and brings his sword down on the monster's neck, cutting through muscle and bone the head of the monster flops down on the beach, lifeless and no longer attached.

After everyone stares in dumb silence, Jonl disables the trap on the bridge, making it safe for the rest of the party to cross over to the monster's dead body. Further in the cave, a large stash of shinies is discovered, and, after a long journey, the censer they seek.