They Seem Nice Enough
We leave the dead Ogres behind and explore the many tunnels that lead off from the cavern. Only a few lead anywhere, so we pick a direction and off we go. We find a smaller cavern that has mounds of dung in it, and a couple more exits. Whilst picking a new direction we are all at risk of puking from the foul stench in there, but we are pretty much okay. The Paladin, however, doesn't feel too good when he walks in, and starts to retch. Being at the back of the party (where else?) he was the last to enter the cavern and the rest of us were on the way out, and as he stumbles a poo monster appears out of a piles of dung right next to the Paladin, catches him with its tentacles and drags his body closer to its gaping mouth.
It turns out to be a benign poo monster, merely asking us to feed it something, offering a gift if we decide to do so, rather than wanting to attack us. The poo monster puts the Paladin back down when the Mage asks, and we decide that we may as well feed it the dead Ogres we left behind. Still, what a disappointing encounter that started out so promising. The poo monster is happy with the dead Ogres we give it to eat and gives us a poo spear as a reward, which the immune-to-disease Paladin takes. It also tells us of some sinister humans in black robes nearby, so we head off to investigate them.
We wander down the small tunnel in the direction these people are supposed to be, ending up with the Gnomes walking and the rest of us crawling, such were the dimensions of the tunnel. It opens up in to another cavern, where our Rogue spots a humanoid, maybe two, wandering around. When we encounter them proper we find they have a strange attack, whereby tendrils shoot quite a distance from their hands that try to attach themselves to their victims with barbs. I found this out quite quickly, as well as how strong these humanoids were, with one tendril stuck in me and nearly being pulled off my feet towards the monsters that snared me.
Our Mage catches sight of them and rummages through his memory to see if he knows anything about them. Whilst he has never encountered them personally before, he seems to recall reading somewhere that they are undead that used to be humans but made a pact with a dark lord, probably Orcus, who gave them dark powers in return for their souls.
Our Paladin, sharp as ever, asks 'Are they evil?'
At least the Mage didn't recall, after one snared me, that they are known to have barbed tendrils that shoot out of their hands. He's too smart to do that sort of thing.
15th July 2005 at 11.09 am
Funny we asked each other the same when we saw the Paladin