Parent session: 01 - 21 - To the mine!
Guys, they let me out of the dome! I thought maybe they were holding me being friends with shapeshifting demon child against me. To be fair, Annabell is quite nice.
Anyway. There were kobolds outside the dome as expected but surprisingly they seemed to be most oasis kobolds, the group that had attacked us previously but then also brought me back to life so they can't be that bad right? They at least have good taste in resurrections! They were dragging other incapacitated kobolds onto a cart, carefully putting bloodied, still breathing bodies into rows. A couple of them approached us and talked to Wax who used magic to make himself understood. I didn't get a word of that but from what he told us afterwards the oasis kobolds said that 'we promised to help them and haven't, they asked about the Sabertooth Tiger Rusheonos & we hadn't dealt with that. (We did talk to Rusheonos we just tried to find a way to get along with him too. Probably best not to tell the kobolds that.) Instead, they asked if we could help them 'take control of a mine overseen by another group a couple of days southwest of here.' Saying it had 'precious metals' they wanted. They gave us some sort of Temporal device that makes a mini-dome from what I understand, something about pausing time. I guess we'll have updates on how that works with more testing. They followed us for the first day to get us on our way.
We pushed on further, suddenly getting pounced on by this gargantuan-sized worm! It was blindingly fast, taking a massive bite out of me in a single hit. Maybe it eats metal? The worm seemed all but immune to acid attacks and resisted Fire/Weapon attacks from what we could tell so taking it out was quite difficult, we had to rely upon Force attacks from Haeldir and myself, Ice from Waxillium and Furet and guidance from Zazu. The worm also projected an aura of fear, which delayed our attacks but eventually we were able to overcome that too. Wax polymorphed into a Giant Ape, (wish I could do that... I'd be a Giant Crab and walk sideways all day. That'd be fun.) Furet shot ice, fire, and sling bullets, Jarvis stabbed then also did a necrotic attack from his hand? That's new. Finally, with lots of Spiritual weapons, spear stabs from Jarvis, Fire and punches from Zazu and Wax's Ape the worm went down. We collected vials of its acidic blood, scales and meat off of the massive creature.
Luckily, the kobolds guarded for us that night and it passed uneventfully. Continuing on, we found a huge wall running East/West, 150 ft. tall, maybe 2-3 thick blocking out path. We followed to the west, finding that the wall ended at a wide crater, patrolled by about 8 kobolds from a central point. It looked like this 'quarry' of sorts continued much further on as well. This was likely what we were looking for. Guess that would explain where they got so many bricks to build a wall like that, although that construction might pre-date the kobolds? Hard to say.
I disguised as a 4 ft. tall kobold and Wax and I went towards the guards, who noticed me at least. Wax hid and used his tongues plus illusions to make it look like I was talking, then in the kobold tongue said there was a 'human' after him. He then popped out (in human form now!) and 'dragged me away' back to the others who we buried under the sand to ambush the kobolds with Furet's mould earth cantrip. We attacked the three that followed us out surprising them and dropping the two regular ones without too much hassle but the 3rd was in heavy armour & was quite a bit tougher. He kept fighting on despite his injuries, managing to land a few good blows on me before he went down. I just fear that if the other kobolds inside are all this tough this may prove a much more difficult mission than anticipated, and this mine may stretch on for miles and miles.
On the plus side, that just means more to map!