Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

Season of Rushing Waters

Magic is cast and blessing are woven, such warding as air and shadow can be coaxed to give. It is good to be on the side dropping the hammer rather than taking the blow for once.

As the four of you charge in, weapons in hand and Pepper coiled around Mina's shoulders for, one assumes, some form of magical support. Things go at first much as one might have hoped. Four pair of reptilian eyes to the entrance to the cave, wide and uncomprehending as those of the corpses hung out of dry, mole, lizard and and clutching cloaker. The spell of slumbers slithers though the air as mina gestures delicately, almost gently towards the head cook, bedecked in oils herbs and... head bombs. The magic grips and it holds fast, sending him dreaming and tumbling head first into the bubbling Cauldron. A hiss like oil on hot metal cuts the air as thick grey-green smoke fills the cave.

Wild Magic Mishap: 25 Noxious Smoke (DC 12 Nauseated for 1d2+1 Rounds)

It reeks like nothing you have ever had the displeasure to smell, like the froth off some devil's stew. Coughing, sputtering, eyes watering you see one of the remaining xulgath claw at his nostrils until he draws blood, unused perhaps to smelling something worse than their own odor. Somehow you Gorok and Mina all manage to keep your feet and your wits about you, though Cob, lower to the ground where the fumes are thickest is not so lucky. The goblin knocks into one of your legs as he tries to rush out then stumbles blindly back into the corridor.

Cob Nauseated for 3 Turns
One of the Cooks are Nauseated for 2 turns

Alas, the taste of the xolgath does not seem to agree with Gorok anymore than the smoke does as he fails to get a good grip around the neck of the closest spear-wielding cook and his claws find no purchase in their armor. It does not take a sage or sorcerer to know that staying in this smoke will have you all share Cob's fate eventually, but can you hold out long enough to get the job down, or is it worth pushing the advantage of surprise before more guards come in here drawn by the smoke?

That is when you have a mad thought, which may or may not be induced by the alchemical smoke. The cauldron does not look particularly well balanced on the flame. If you charge into it odds are good you can push it over and hopefully clear the air.

What do you do?

[] Keep to the plan, shoot the other cook who still seems to have his wits about him

[] Charge in to try to push the cauldron off the flame and hopefully stop the damn smoke

[] Cob has the right idea, retreat, you cannot fight in this thing

[] Write in

OOC: I know this is short, but the combination of rolling the smoke for wild magic and then rolling unusually high on fort saves compared to the troglodytes means that several courses of action make sense.

Season of Rushing Waters

Upon sober reflection one might conclude that your next action is not the most rational, and not just because you are screaming at the top of your lungs in the hopes of scaring off the remaining foes. Cloak fluttering behind like bat's wings trailing into ragged shadows you charge in, head down, arms in front of you. Something burns in your side as a face covered in rust-red scales floats at you out of the haze. As the blood soaks into the silk of the drow armour you strike the side of the cauldron with all the strength and all the weight you can muster, sending it to the ground with an almighty clang.

You take 5 Damage -> Now at 13/18

Probably not the most stealthy thing you could be doing, some portion of your mind not concerned with immediate survival registers dimly, but that is secondary... very secondary indeed when compared to what comes out of that cauldron. Amid the fungus broth mixed with shellfish and pieces of meat boiled into being unrecognizable emerges a being that is no longer xulgath, indeed that is barely humanoid: its limbs had all been transformed into boneless cables of muscle and scale that end in eel-like mouths with far too many teeth, its ribs had opened up in a way that should have killed any living thing to reveal internal organs shining with a festering purple light, like the fruit of some damnable plantm and its face had been boiled to the bone and the bone fractured like trails of tears that start at the empty eye-sockets and trail down to the mouth.

It is all too awake as it gathers its boneless mass under it, screaming, screaming until the echoes of its voice as the smoke had filled your eyes beforehand.

Beneath the din Mina still weaves her magic, the cook facing Gorok collapses, mind sent tumbling into slumber a moment before the iruxi warrior makes that the ever-sleep of death by divesting him of his head with one twist of the ogre-hook. The one who had stabbed you takes one look at that, one at the thing his... master perhaps had become and decides he's better off attacking Mina, for all the good it does him. The crude spear shatters slips aside, pushed by a power unseen.

Cook 2 Killed (Cup de Grace)

The third cook stumbles into the thing on the floor. Whether by malice or some misfortune of its twisted body it covers him in bile that eats at scale and flesh with dreadful speed, gnawing them both down to bone... burning its face down to bone. It's changing them.

Cook 3 Takes 5 Damage -> Now at 8/13

"Embrace the Crawling Chaos and be free of form's shackles!" The thing calls out somehow in the tongue of the People, a dread bargain that sinks deeper than words.... and then it spits its tongue at you, a glob of meat and and gristle burning with that same unearthly flame as its organs.

You duck.

As the thing impacts one of the shelves it catches roots there and sends tendrils of tainted flame through the fungus wood and the stone beneath it.

"I've had enough chaos, thank you," you say as you dive under its flailing limbs and sink twelve inches of steel into what would have once been its shoulder. Alas, though your aim is true, the strength of your blow is lacking and the enchanted metal hardly scratches the transmuted flesh.

How do you fight this thing?

[] Be bold, stay close and try to distract it while Gorok takes it apart

[] On second thought maybe you should get out of its reach (Spend a Full round action to get out of its reach without triggering an attack of opportunity)

[] Write in

OOC: Oh look, it's your first horrific monstrosity and sin against nature and you are not even level 3 yet. Seriously though, that alchemist had the worst luck.