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Chapter: The Outpost
(Khaznad, Sparkle, Dastardlyx)
After taking the canoes over the water they see a big outpost on the shore, scouting around a bit they find about 150 lizardfolk and more than 250 bullywugs.
Dastardlyx wishes to charge straight in and fight all of them, Sparkle wishes to try to gain some information first, Khaznad thinks it would be easiest to just sneak in over the moat where they don't guard so much, and tries to reason with Dastardlyx that attacking 400+ enemies even without considering their leaders inside the outpost is very suicidal. Khaznad wonders how that dragonkin managed to survive to grown age?
In the end Sparkle gets upset and says he had enough discussing this and goes straight at the opening, the others follow. Soon we meet a lizardfolk guard, but Sparkle just commands him to tell him where to find the leader and the lizard is intimidated by his strong words and hard demeanor. He does the same to every other guard that tries to stop him, and they walk through the entire outpost and down to the dungeons without a single fight.
Some of the guards looked at your new helmet, made of the head of Cyanwrath the halfdragon, they probably admired it.
Khaznad is very impressed by Sparkle, he must be a very wise person to talk so peacefully with so many lizards and human guards, perhaps this is the fabled human berserkers that grows stronger when they are angry, he certainly got angry an then grew much stronger?
Chapter: The Dungeon
Going down into the dungeon, and after wandering around at random for a bit, talking with some bullywugs taking a mud-bath, they end up walking into a room with several bullywugs with a shaman, worshipping at an altar.
They seem angry at us for intruding and starts attacking, Sparkle for some reason freaks out and starts screaming that the monsters are going to kill the adventurers before he can defend himself, but Khaznad acts really quick and cast a Spike Growth covering the entire floor, holding all the bullywugs stuck unless they want to blood to death moving over it. They seem angry and all of them cast their javelins at Khaznad but they're hampered and all miss. The Shaman manages to jump out and flees further into the cave, while the adventurers kills the remaining bullywugs with ranged attacks.
Khaznad takes down the spell so they can go look for the shaman, he cast a spell that entangles them, and tries to make a run for it past them, but Khaznad shape-changes into a giant octopus, rolling over to one side, and just barely snatch the shaman with a tentacle and grapples him. When the spell ends, Dastardlyx kills the shaman before anyone has time to talk with him, he must be really allergic to prisoners?
—
Looking further into the room we find a chest, the moment Sparkle touches it something falls down from the roof and breaks, some weird kind of gas hits Sparkle and Khaznad, but Khaznad manages to hold his breath, Sparkle doesn't. Dastardlyx standing guard in the opening is too far away.
Suddenly Sparkle looks at Khaznad and has that look on his face again, as if he's staring into a Tranosaurus again, and starts freaking out screaming and before Khaznad can react he cast that annoying thunder spell right in Khaznad's face.
Stunned by the sudden attack, he looks up just in time to see multiple glass vials falling down, blanketing the area in that weird gas, and he can't hold his breath after that shock. Suddenly the whole world turns weird, colors is off and things looks slimy and disgusting somehow. he hears more screaming but it sounds weird, he look in front of him and finds a hideous looking demonic monsterous nightmare amphibian, that stands waving its arms menacingly shouting terrible words of doom.
Khznad feels some kind of primal fear inside, and it makes him lash out against this monster, it screams and seems even more agitated and flees, Khaznad follows trying to kill this thing while figuring out what happened. Another horrible scream, and down near the opening another larger vile amphibian appears, where Dastardlyx was, it must have eaten him, so he focuses on trying to kill off this one before him before the other can come and help it, but it keeps running away! Why does a demonic creature run away?
Before he can ponder that further, the big one grabs him, and tries to hold him down while it opens its mouth wide with many teeth trying to bite Khaznad's head off! He struggles to get free, but the vile amphibian is too strong. Suddenly he hears the smaller vile amphibian scream more heinous words, that sounds familiar, he thinks it says “EAT EMPOWERED FIREBALL VILE TOADS!!!” and then Khaznad is engulfed in a sea of fire.
—
The moment the fire is gone Khaznad feels weak, he can barely move, and his wound has opened up again and is bleeding freely, his head starts feeling a bit clearer, and he sees Dastardlyx smoking like a grilled steak holding Sparkle by the throat and slapping him silly with his hand. Khaznad had it, sick of whatever it is that's been going on, he cast a spell and melds into the stone in the ground, summoning up all the goodberries he can to start slowly healing up, he remains inside the rocks and rest.
The day after, they reason out that the vials in the rood must have held some kind of mind altering toxin that made them hallucinate. After a bit further exploration they find another room with a portal, and they get ready to go through it.
—
…To be continued…
