Hunting the... Octopus?

Loose threads: Shoggti, Cythnigots, Khuk and Vratch, corrupted Naiads

Participants: Kodzak, Leelou, Trozhen Dawnlight, Bethany Claie

Short summary:

Four adventurers went on an incredible journey of self-discovery to a polluted pond in order to kill an 'octopus' - a Shoggti, a type of Neznámy, encountered during a previous quest. The issue was handled during this quest, with the vile creature banished; the Cythnigot infestation associated with this Shoggti was also discovered and somewhat addressed. Khuk and Vratch, two self-exiled Kobolds from Watchers' Tribe Village, were befriended. 

The report can be seen here as well. 

Full report:

I am Kodzak, and this is my account of my most recent outing on Guild business. The missive was clear, and a team of adventurers assembled. Our objective was to seek out an alleged mutant octopus of some sort living within a body of water to the north. We had a location on a map, with little else to go upon. What does an octopus even look like? I regret to report that we learned that truth the hard way.

Day 1

An auspicious beginning, I noted at the time. I had first met with my companions on the morning of the first day, at the western gate. The guards on duty happened to be gossiping about the alleged creature at the center of our quest. One swore to have seen the octopus before. The Wizard Leelou played a rather crass trick upon the unfortunate Neznámy, the illusion he summoned to terrorize him proving to be the first notion of what we might be looking for in the wilderness. Truly an unsettling thing of writhing tentacles.

We departed soon after, travelling westward in the direction of familiar ground. Well-travelled pathways and quiet plains served as scenery for our first day of travel.

Day 2

We ascended the Greyspine Mountains and crossed the peaks before nightfall. Long day of weary travel, nothing of note to report besides the biting cold. I do not belong in this climate at winter time.

Day 3

We descended in to the floodplains of Avis River, and soon after the swampy lowlands surrounding the waterflow's course. Temperature has improved. By afternoon, we encountered our first challenge. Signs of a massacre, several blue-scaled Kobolds lay dead or dying with warning upon their lips. We were beset by creatures, a bonded pair of crocodilian creatures I now know as Grauladons and a singular turtle-adjacent Graveshell. Our party dispatched them without trouble, as I pursued the Graveshell in to the watery depths as it fled and finished the monster with a blow from my hammer.

Circumstances changed following the skirmish. We were approached by a lone survivor of the Neznámy party, who introduced himself as Khuk.

The Kobold had confessed his cowardice in abandoning his party to die while he fled. Individuals may find it valuable to know that Khuk had a positive regard of the First Landing settlement, even if his people may not. He explained that the Watchers' Tribe had been dealing with unusually aggressive Grauladons harrassing the Village recently, and his party was sent to the swamps in order to investigate a possible cause.

Meanwhile, I searched the presence of a nearby nest. The pair of Grauladons we slew were undoubtedly a mated pair, and they can be fiercely territorial over their nesting grounds. I had some success --there was indeed a nest, but there were none of the intact eggs I truly desired. The evidence of broken eggshells suggested that the clutch had already hatched, though there was a scattered collection of odd collected baubles and trinkets of potential value that I did retrieve.

It was decided that Khuk would accompany us on our quest. He insisted upon returning the bodies of his fellows his village for proper burial, but he had neither the prowess to survive in the swamps nor the strength to retrieve the bodies alone. I confess that it was my original intention to bring him with us back to First Landing. The Explorers' Guild would undoubtedly find a sympathetic member of the Watchers' Tribe to be a valuable source of information, but the course of events upon our quest made this something of an impossibility.

Meanwhile, Beth managed to utilize parts of the Graveshell's carapace to craft an improvised shield that made use of its natural hardness and lethal spikes. Her invention will undoubtedly be the talk of the town for warriors within First Landing.

We continued our journey, leaving the swamps behind by nightfall.

Day 4

We find a stowaway in our party. A lone Grauladon broodling has followed us out of the swamp. The creature is shy if nonthreatening, and I captured it to be repurposed as a mount for Khuk. The Neznámy seemed quite pleased with the arrangement and named the creature 'Zuzu.'

We crossed the northern plains and closed in on our destination, making camp less than a day's travel away from the reported location of the octopus. After we made camp, our situation rapidly changed. The young Grauladon soon began showing signs of distress, and my own attempts to calm the beast caused me to come in to be assaulted by an invasive parasite afflicting the animal.

It seems now that the Grauladon's appearance was a trap. I have no familiarity with extra-planar entities, but the champions that accompanied me on our quest later identified the foe -- a Cythnigot, a lower order Neznámy of fungoid appearance that possesses and reanimates the corpses of various creatures to do its bidding -- as my assailant. Without warning, my own body was subjected to intrusion by its malicious influences and I was taunted by its mocking words within my mind.

The Fiend burst forth from the Grauladon in a sickening display. Though both Trozhen and I were subjected to its invasion, our party managed to hack down the Fiend's physical form and end the misery of its host. Curiously, the Fiend claimed that I was promised to it as a vessel. That stood out amongst several claims that it made, in addition to which was an inference that Khuk's party had been slain by the Fiend's machinations back at the Grauladon nest. As to the veracity of its claims, there would be no confirming without putting ourselves and the region at further risk. We burned any physical remnants of it, while also cremating Khuk's burdensome compatriots.

Day 5

We reached our ultimate destination by midday, and evidence of corruption upon the land was extensive. Trozhen in particular was affected by the scene, having come upon a Fey, a dying Naiad, who pleaded with him for saving of her kin. Not to be hasty, I ventured ahead through of copse of bare and malformed trees to find the destination proper, a blackened pond pregnant with an aura of decay and corruption.

Naturally, I set my eyes to scanning the area for hidden threats. While I was watching, the damned soft-skins rushed forward with the sudden appearance of foes. They all ran straight into a quicksand mire. With the foe suddenly upon us as well, I was forced to devote all of my attention to extricating the hapless adventurers, we were enveloped in another trap by our foes. The battle was a struggle, almost claiming the life of our Neznámy Leelou as a pair of corrupted Naiads and a stringy-horse abomination struck at us from the water. Nonetheless, we managed to vanquish them all.

We returned to the stricken Naiad that Trozhen first encountered, but it remained clear that she would perish. She gifted her remaining power to Trozhen, who felt her loss keenly, and with great trepidation we made camp again a short distance from the pond. It was said that the supposed octopus only emerged in the evenings, and so we set outselves to waiting and preparing. To that effect, we were presented with an unsettling appearance as dusk set in. It was not the octopus itself that drew us out, but the light of travelling merchant's tent. It's not clear where they had come from or where they departed when we left, but goods and services provided by the creature named Bauta were appreciated (skeptically) all the same.

When the appointed hour arrived, Khuk decided to remain with the camp. We armed outselves and returned to the pond in order to confront the bounty target, which was not long in making itself known. To my everlasting shame, I instantly fell victim to some sort of charm spell, which left be embarrassingly amenable to its presence and unable to will myself to strike against it. My companions were thusly left to rely upon themselves to fight the beast, which in hindsight proved to have an uncanny resemblence to the nightmare creature that Leelou had imagined at the beginning of our quest.

In short, they were thuroughly outmatched. It managed to keep my fellows at bay with its myriad of tentacled appendages without sustaining any serious injuries, while its thick limbs and gnashing orifaces inflicted serious damage in turn. Beyond that, the creature wielded a number of magical powers focusing on mental manipulation that we were ill-equipped to resist.

It didn't even bother to pursue us as we withdrew, but beyond that I have little recollection of my words and actions during and immediately following the encounter. I am told, however, that the champions in particular were determined to return and dispense their justice upon it. Leelou, however, was a bit more reserved on the matter, and I, in my altered state, was determined to make the others understand my insane affection towards the beast.

Day 6, Morning

The others had revised our strategy as I slept off the effects of the charm spell. I will record the facts as I was told them, a short while after. The first and most important revelation was that our foe was clearly no octopus, but another manner of Fiend. In my state, I had shared the name 'Vamari' with the party. Whether that was its individual name or class of Fiend I am unsure, though I suspect it was the former as neither the champions, nor the wizard had any knowledge of Vamari Fiends.

The second fact was that we still had a window of time to confront this Vamari before it departed again. Our party intended to use that to our advantage, recouping our strength with a short rest. My companions had hoped that the Fiend would still be fatigued from our first bout, and with my participation once again ensured, we would be able to defeat the foe.

So it went. I was mercifully restored to my senses after a period of rest, and my companions were recovered and ready to fight again. Going back in to the engagenent with prior knowledge of what to expect may have been the edge we needed, but being able to contribute my own strength certainly did not hurt. Still, the second encounter was not without its challenges. I was greviously wounded by a tandem of gnashing assaults of what were presumably mouths (they were ringed with fangs, after all). I swear upon this report that there was scarcely any surface that didn't possess some manner of orifice lined with teeth. They were all sharp, and they tasted Iruxi on that day.

No sooner did it have me in its grasp that it let me go. Whether from wisdom or fear, the Fiend had retreated. It teleported away in some fashion. After I was returned to consciousness with Leelou's assistance, we pursued the beast. Following Beth's gaze, it was qiickly determined that the Vamari had hidden itself behind the waterfall that fed the pond. We trapped it within its lair and, despite its threats turning to pleas, it felt the bite of my halberd a final time.

With its apparent death, the Vamari lost its euphoric hues and turned a drab grey color as it seemed to lose some of its stature. I retrieved the end of one of its limbs as both proof of our success, and maybe as a means to help identify the true nature of the Fiend at the source of the pond's corruption.

With our foe defeated and the quest successful, I took stock of our situation. There remained the question of a gemstone that I had discovered when retrieving my weapons, buried in the mud of the pond. It reacted to the Fiend and appeared to contain some measure of its power, and it matched a void in one of the Vamari's eyes. I had decided at that moment to renew my faith in Gozreh, a deity of some importance to the Iruxi and master/mistress of the domain of water.

After a private ritual that returned the gem to the pond, my renewed faith was rewarded. The precious stone was returned to me at the base of an ornate spear, blessed with Gozreh's power. In my mind, I knew it to be called the Coilbane Bident. The gift also began to rejuvenate the surrounding waters, a welcome sign that the corruption would pass. In light of this, I have resolved to name the body of water Gozreh's Wellspring in his/her honor.

Epilogue

Not long after, we left. We returned Khuk (I admit with less reluctance than I initially felt) to the Watchers' Tribe without incident. There, we were introduced to Vratch, one of his still-living friends. It seems that he was missed in his absence, and we did not linger overmuch. It will not be long now before our party returns to First Landing.

Further Observations

It seems that this Vamari was the source of corruption and the origin of the fabled octopus sighting. I must admit that I am far less acquainted with sea life than I am with the crratures that inhabit fresh water, but it was obvious even to me that the Vamari was something stranger and fouler than what was reported. I still carry the piece of it with me, and intend to at least deternine what it was that we slew.

Though it was beyond the scope of our quest, agitation of normally sedate Grauladons from the swamps have been attacking Kobolds from the Watchers' Village, and they do not know why. Alas, we did not find a definitive answer to that mystery, and I have been unable to decide whether the appearance of the Cythnigot Fiend, the Vamari at the source of the pond corruption, and the Grauladon agitation are merely coincidental or related in any manner. It is worth investigating, if only to confirm whether or not the elimination of the Vamari has improved the situation.

Both Khuk and his friend Vratch referred to me in a respectful manner as a fellow 'Scaled One.' It seems as though the Watcher Tribe may look upon the Iruxi with some measure of the favor that they reserve for their own kin and dragonkind. Khuk can also be counted upon as an ally of First Landing, both through his experience with the party and a curious level of non-conformity that he displays with his garb, interests, and self-admitted curiosity with the culture of First Landing. The Kobold Vratch is also a possible point of contact, as she was thankful for the safe-keeping Khuk and seemed to have more insight in to their society than the marginalized individual that we rescued.

I also have heard troubling things about a 'Taint' that the Kobolds are quite keen on keeping out of their lands. I will reiterate here the words that Khuk relayed when I asked about it:

As per Khuk's words, those with scales are immune to it. The Kobolds may be vetting certain adventurers from First Landing on the absence or presence of this mysterious malady, and is likely at the root of their fear of outsiders. Understandably, this has been my first interaction with a local Kobold, so I do not know if the Explorers' Guild already has more information on the subject.

I attest to the accuracy of these details,

- Kodzak