River Aberrations

Manu had been a fixture around the Freelancers Tavern for a while now, and the others were bemused that the pale hanyou with the tall horns suddenly expressed an interest in a mission, and curious.  So Lorcan, Timmy, Dominic, and Kairos had headed with him to Arnari's office.  

Arnari glanced them over, flipped through her papers, said, "I have a variety of missions," then rattled off four very quickly.

• Go find hippogryph eggs for House Aldous.  They'll give you 1 hippogryph for 10 eggs.
• Pollution cleanup.  Weird creatures and such on Pirates River.  I'm not too worried about sending you off; unlike Tomtom.  It's 100gp/person plus an uncommon potion.
• Recheck the grblin cave near Marshfork.  Manu, you've been there; the Mayor wants a recheck.
• Go to Hindmarsh & back.  From there, go into the Marsh to find out why the bullywugs are capturing herb gatherers.

Arnari looked at them all expectantly.  The last one was such a surprise, Lorcan lost his normally polite, disinterested attentiveness.

Lorcan:  wait, find out what?!
Arnari:  actually, just find their camp, and if possible, harass them out of it, it's okay if you just find it and report back.
Dominic:  I kind of want to go after pollution.
Timmy:  I'm willing to go help with pollution, and try to repair some of that damage.
Lorcan:  I'm intrigued by these bullywugs.
Kairos:  so am I.  Pollution would be okay; I'm not particularly interested in hippogryphs.
Manu:  I see how the bullywugs could be a problem, but they seem like such cute little guys.
Dominic:  cute is not the same as adorable

A discussion broke out, in which it became quite apparent that nobody really wanted to travel all the way to Hindmarsh, nor get captured by grblins.  So pollution it would be.  Then the discussion moved to whether they would take the road or cut cross country along the treeline.  After realizing that could result in encounters with giant elk, they decided to take the roads to Lakeview, then work their way along the north shore of the lake to the river.

So, since Manu, Lorcan, and Kairos all had pegasi, they were able to have Dominic and Timmy ride behind Manu and Kairos, respectively.  So the plan changed again, and they flew to Cliffgate in a day, and overnighted at The Hippogryph's Wing, because Kairos preferred it.  From there they flew directly to Lakeview, which did not even take a full day, allowing the mounts to be fully fed and rested at The Biting Badger Inn before they started checking out the north shore of Lake Mossey.

The Freelancers didn't see much on the north shore of the lake.  Manu was having much too much fun flying about on Nāhōkū, which distracted Dominic from looking too closely at anything.  Kairos was also enjoying the wind on his scalp as he flew on Catherine, but he and Timmy watched the osprey hunting a school of fish on the lake.  Lorcan, not distracted by a passenger, was able to pivot Bandit quickly and circle back over anything interesting, but nothing really stood out as corrupted from the pollution.

They made camp at the north end of the lake, near but not on the river, and set up a watch order:  Manu, Timmy, Kairos, Lorcan.  Pembroke was circling to the west, but nobody saw or heard anything beyond the usual sounds of small creatures thriving in the night, the pegasi stamping nearby.

The next morning, the Freelancers argued about what next.

Dominic:  let's go up river
Manu:  we could split up and cover a broader area, because we are flying!
<Dominic gave Manu a look.>
Manu:  these, these <gestured to indicate mutants> don't fly, right?
Everyone:  the Hydroose.
Manu:  okay!  That's terrifying.  Let us not split.
Dominic:  also, the bears

At that the Freelancers started to follow up the river.  Nāhōkū, with Manu and Dominic, flew up the eastern bank; Catherine, with Kairos and Timmy, flew up the western bank; and little Bandit, with Lorcan, kind of alternated between them.  Thus they looked for corrupted wildlife for some hours.

However, Lorcan was really looking for herbs to use in healing potions and whatnot.  Manu, thoroughly rebuked in their conversation, was really looking for a hydroose.  And Timmy was contemplating the amount of life he'd wasted as an apprentice to the wizard who'd caused all this mess.  So the three of them totally missed the grell fishing in the Pirates Dream river.  Kairos and Dominic saw it, but just as Kairos figured out what he was looking at, it "saw" them.

As if a grell has eyes. 

Manu directed Nāhōkū to fly over the water, and cast thaumaturgy on the water in front of it, trying to scare it off the water and onto the land.  Possibly in reaction to that, possibly because it was a grell, the creature drifted towards the western bank.

• Manu also dropped Dominic off a bit further away, on the western bank.  Dominic got out what looked like a holy symbol, and gestured with it.  As he finished his gestures, he turned into a velociraptor.
• Timmy was stuck on Catherine, behind Kairos.  He cast chill touch on the grell, and the skeletal hand brushed aside the weird creature's tentacles to firmly grasp the brainstem, necrosis spreading from the fingers.
• The grell floated up towards Timmy, but as it passed over Dominic-the-velociraptor, it grabbed the velociraptor in its tentacles.  The prickles at the end stung Dominic, paralyzing him.
• Lorcan put potent poison on a blowgun needle, and totally missed the grell with it.  He moved 30' away from Kairos, whom he'd been next to, more towards the river.
• Kairos sent an arrow through the grell's squishy brain, and noted disinterestedly that the grell's blood had a purple tinge.  He focussed on the grell as a favoured foe, then had Catherine land so Timmy could hop off.  She then flew back up next to Bandit.

Manu also cast chill touch, and the skeletal hand shot straight up from the ground to grab the grell by the tentacles.  Necrosis spread from the hand.

• Dominic-the-velociraptor flailed, but did not wrest free of the grell's tentacular grasp.
• Two chiminimeras flew up!  One was red, and it flew to Manu, and one was green, and flew after Kairos.
  • The green chiminimera spat acid on Kairos and Catherine, then stung Kairos with a poison, and slashed him with its little claws.  Kairos, surprised at all this pain, lost his focus on the grell.
  • The red chiminimera spat acid on Manu and Nāhōkū, and slashed Manu with its little claws.  Characteristically, Manu responded with hellish rebuke, burning the tiny creature, so its sting went wide.
• Timmy ran up to the grell and crit it with his shortsword, slicing off a large number of its tentacles.  The velociraptor was almost free!
• The grell floated back downwards, hanging on, and attacked Timmy with its beak, but totally missed.  Perhaps unpleased, it then squeezed the velociraptor with its remaining tentacles, and the velociraptor shuddered and became Dominic again.
  • To his intense displeasure, Dominic was still paralyzed by the grell's poison.
• Lorcan cast infestation on the green chiminimera, and it moved south, which left it still engaged with Bandit, who disengaged and moved north.
• Catherine disengaged with the green chiminimera and moved south herself.  Kairos nocked an arrow, saw how small the target was, cast hunter's mark on the tiny creator, then sent an arrow through it, killing it.

Manu did not like having acid spit on him at all!  He cast an uplevel'd magic missile, sending the darts at the red chiminimera one at a time, until it died; then sent the last dart at the grell.  He had Nāhōkū fly to the grell and kick it, but he missed.

• Dominic shook off the paralyzing poison, but was still caught up in the grell's tentacles.
• Timmy stabbed at the grell's tentacles, piercing them and freeing Dominic.
• The grell beaked at Timmy again, piercing the Djogeon halfling's shoulder; then it struck Dominic with its tentacles, and the druid fell.
• Lorcan didn't bother with poison, and crit the grell with a blowgun needle while it was preoccupied with Timmy.  The needle went all the way through its brain, and the grell fell to the ground, slain.
  • Lorcan pulled out two healing potions and passed them to Kairos.

Kairos drank one of the healing potions, then landed next to Dominic and administered the other to him.

Dominic, feeling a bit more himself after the healing potion, went to the mess that was the dead grell and started poking at it.  The body was disintegrating as he poked, but he found a stone the size of his thumb joint, of indeterminate colour.  The stone caught Kairos' interest, but upon examination, the Holder dwarf had no recollection of encountering such a stone in his past.

Manu and Lorcan were looking at the chiminimeras.  Manu took one and shoved it into his bag of holding.  Lorcan tried to harvest the poison off the other, but failed miserably.

Kairos held up the stone to the Daystar, and then poked again at the remains of the grell, trying to figure out if stone was normal for a grell, or what.  Manu, always interested in shiny things, also came to look.  Surprised, he invoked the tides of chaos to assist with his examination, and he realized with excitement the stone was a Feywild Shard.

"This is a very special tool, for sorcerers only!" Manu declared to the others, "I don't know if any other in the party are sorcerers, but… I could really use this."  His voice trailed off, uncertain in the end.

Nobody answered him, but Lorcan looked around if there were any other items of interest, as he knew grells could sometimes hoard.  But he found nothing.  

The Freelancers camped for the night, and Manu realized their lack of an answer was an answer.  Nobody was going to lay claim to a tool they couldn't use just to spite him, so Manu was pretty happy.

The Freelancers reported in to Arnari, who (while dispensing 90gp each for the mission) couldn't fully hide that she was disappointed and tired to hear about grells and chiminimeras.  Manu, sensing this, produced the chiminimera corpse out of his bag of holding, and gave it to her.  Arnari recoiled.  "Euwww!"

"We did kill stuff!" Manu explained, "We didn't just walk to the lake!"

At that, Arnari got out the potions and handed them out.  Dominic got a potion of poison; Kairos, a potion of water breathing; Lorcan got a potion of fire breath; Manu, a potion of lightning resistance; and Timmy got a greater healing potion.

"I'm happy to see you all made it back just fine," Arnari told them sincerely.  Timmy's face fell.  "Well, actually," he said, "Dominic…"

Arnari sighed.  "Well, good job taking care of each other," she said soothingly, then added, "I'm not happy to see more chiminimeras; I thought the Freelancers killed all these."

• Dominic → lvl 3 Druid of the Stars!