Reptiles, Savage and Noble
On the hunt for the crocodilian monster that slew Baesellor Rhelareon and Lancion Strong, a party of adventurers ventured north from Correnwald into the depths of the Hellmire. The path through the underbrush was thick and untamed - where the mud didn't sink into pools of stinking water, ferns and tangled vines barred the way, impassable without the cleave of a blade. A twig snapped, and the party turned to see a figure creeping through the woods towards them, half-shadowed in the mist. The party drew their weapons, but the figure identified himself as Chosk - a lizardfolk hunter in his teenage years: green-scaled, with a yellow ridge along his spine, carrying a wicked scimitar and a shield in the shape of a beetle. The party introduced each other, with Kharmir identifying Callidus as their 'resident bastard.' Chosk revealed that his home had been destroyed by a vast and terrible beast who had devoured his people and burned their homes to cinders with its flaming breath. The party recognised the description of their quarry, and offered to hunt the beast alongside the young lizardman.
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| 'The Monster in the Hellmire', from a tapestry dated to the late Fifth Age |
The party then ventured off into the woods, wiping sweat from their foreheads and trying to ignore the prickling heat beneath their armour. Scouting ahead, Visimar spotted a foul black bog and diverted the group, losing an extra hour of daylight but avoiding disaster. Vilwyn took the lead, and as they sloshed through the waters, they come across a clearing where the tangled vines overhead grew thickest, and the available sunlight dulled to a near-darkness. Tangled lianas laced around the trees, tied between branches in a strange overhead net of vines. Much of the ground was submerged in water, and the fringes of the clearing were clogged with mangrove trees. The party passed through, and Visimar noticed in the nick of time a gigantic serpent descending from the canopy to clamp Callidus' head in its massive jaws. A fight ensued, and Kharmir was snared by the snakes and dragged up into the trees. In pursuit, Visimar climbed up only to find a second snake - the other half of a mated pair - which tried to choke the life from him with its constricting form. Kharmir slew his own captor with a greatsword to the neck, and as Visimar was dragged through the thorny canopy by the serpent, the party watched in amazement as vines wrapped themselves around Chosk's body, empowering him with a strange dread magic. The lizardfolk then pointed his hand toward the canopy and fired a bolt of concentrated scalding water that melted through the canopy and pierced the snake's skull, killing it and dropping both it and Visimar into the mud below.
Deeper into the swamp, the party came across a clearing scattered with the same purple moss that grew in the Needlefang Cave. A bloody mass lay in the middle of it: half a deer's carcass, its rotting innards strewn across the forest floor, a thick trail of blood leading off through the trees to the north west. Remembering the creature's tendency to hunt for sport, the party followed the blood trail onward. The forest thickened. Scarlet-barked pantano trees towered over the stooped mangroves, and cloud of biting flies swarmed around the party's heads, and the earthy smell of the forest clung to their clothes. Heading on towards the sound of a running creek, the party avoided falling into its leech-infested waters and instead made it to the edge of the Ramman River, where the fetid water flowed into a large and low-ceilinged cave. Suspecting the proximity of the monster's lair, Visimar went forth into the tunnel, crawling along the ceiling. Inside, the river flowed downhill into a waterlogged chamber. On a small rocky bank at the edge of the chamber was a large black mass in the shape of an engorged crocodile.
The Barrel Plan
As Visimar returned to the group, the group formed a plan: they would suspend the barrel of alchemist's fire above the cave opening, Visimar would lure the crocodile out of its lair, and then Callidus would fire an arrow at the barrel to collapse the cave mouth on top of the beast. Supported by a rope held by Callidus, Kharmir hammered a piton into the stone ceiling while Callidus - skilled with knots from his childhood on the Sturmenfell streets - tied a rope to the barrel and then to the piton. Chosk also swam underwater and secured a spring-locked trap at the entrance to the waterfall. Visimar transformed, alarming Chosk, and ignited his scimitar with blood-flame. Vilwyn applied a protective shield of faith to guard Visimar against the monster's attack, while Callidus distributed the purple moss from the earlier clearing, applying some to the heads of his crossbow bolts. As the party waited with bated breath and Callidus nocked an arrow, Vilwyn used a thaumaturgy to amplify his voice, and boomed out a summons to the creature.
Nothing happened. Confused, Visimar entered the cave. The crocodile-shape remained, crouched on the bank, immobile. The dhampir threw a silver dart at the shape, and the dart cut straight through without resistance. It was no crocodile at all, but a mass of vaguely-translucent skin, with scales, claws and even teeth still clinging to it. Since their last encounter, the monster had grown.
Uneasy, the party decided to press on into the cave and investigate in the creature's absence. Slipping down the waterfall with varying degrees of grace, the group came to land on the bank. Ahead, the river continued on into the darkness, crashing down somewhere far below, while a rocky tunnel opened up about twenty feet above on the west wall. Enthused by the discovery, Chosk insisted upon the nutritious benefits of shed reptile skin, and convinced his sceptical companions to eat of its husk. As they did so, he utilised his superior aquatic capabilities to scout the river ahead, which led down a second, larger waterfall into a huge cavern almost entirely underwater. Loose plants and moss grew on an island in the centre of the lake. Nestled between withered shrubs, Chosk glimpsed red: a clutch of crimson eggs, scaled like crocodile hide.
The group made their way into the chamber, with Visimar retrieving the alchemist's fire and carrying it across the cavern ceiling while Callidus, Kharmir and Vilwyn helped each other climb up into the tunnel above. The tunnel was choked with rubble, causing them to slip and tumble onto the bank in the cavern below. As Callidus landed, his foot crunched through a lizardfolk skull, which was one of many skeletal remains that littered the bank along with the tattered bounties of the monsters' previous meals. From Visimar's vantage point above, and from Kharmir's proximity to the water's edge, neither could see any sign of a creature. However, when Chosk splashed down the waterfall into the lake, he dived below the surface, and through the thick green murk, a pair of blood-red eyes stared back. The teenage lizardfolk panicked and shot to the surface, diving aside just in time to avoid the monster's gargantuan jaws that erupted from the water and snapped shut over the space he had been swimming.
For Baesellor
At once, Visimar dropped the alchemist's fire onto the crocodile's snout, and the barrel sundered at once, spilling the acrid emerald substance across its face and onto the surface of the water. The hexenbrand ignited upon contact with the air, and the blast destroyed the clutch of eggs in one lash of flame, but to the party's horror, the fire did nothing to the monster's infernally-enhanced body. As the fire lit up the cavern with astonishing green light, they noticed that the creature's swollen form was beginning to split under the stress of its own rapid, unnatural growth, and gouts of blood and flame came spilling forth from seams in its skin, burning the flesh of anyone who came too close. As the party assailed it from the bank, the monster engulfed them in a burst of flaming breath, sending them scrambling away in terror. The monster went to sink beneath the lake but, in an unconscious echo of Lancion Strong, Kharmir drew his glaive and leapt onto its spiny back, jamming the blade into its flank as he vanished with it underwater. The beast rose again within the emerald flames, searing its unwanted rider, and Vilwyn conjured a spiritual sword of glowing energy to lash at its face and hold it at bay while Callidus and Visimar harried it from afar.
However, a great power was flowing through Chosk - the voice of the hell-touched swamp that had whispered in his mind since the fall of his village. As vines burst through cracks in the stone to enwrap his body, Chosk turned upon the beast and conjured a huge tendril of entwined plantlife that raked its thorns across its body. As the heat within him reached its apex, a burst of crackling lightning erupted from Chosk's outstretched hand, blasting into the monster's face and half-blinding it. More gashes opened in the crocodile's flesh, and the red-hot blood gushed out across Vilwyn and knocked the cleric to the ground. The crocodile's maw fell upon Chosk and this time gained purchase, but his insectoid shield let out a spurt of noxious fumes that momentarily stunned the beast and sent it reeling into the water. Kharmir shouted a healing word to Vilwyn before he and Chosk were dragged again under the surface, slowly succumbing to their own injuries.
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| The beast is slain |
However, just before the crocodile could fully submerge, a figure fell from the sky: a pale elf in a billowing robe, clutching a burning scimitar that plunged first through an opening in the creature's hide, and then through the top of its monstrous skull. The blood-flame and the alchemist's fire mingled with the creature's own and erupted, leaving its lifeless body to wash ashore, smoke and ooze flooding from its many wounds. Visimar helped pull Chosk from the monster's limp mouth, Kharmir dismounted its back, and Callidus slid down the rocky slope to where Vilwyn lay dazed from his burns. At last, the Monster in the Hellmire was slain, and vengeance - for Chosk's people, for Lancion Strong and for Baesellor Rhelareon - had been achieved.
The group took a moment before searching the pile of skeletons on the waterside, discovering a signet ring that Callidus favoured, a few valuable items of clothing, as well as a wooden medallion that seemed magical. They also claimed a few teeth, two vials of boiling red blood, and a few patches of scaled hide from the monster's corpse. Meanwhile, Kharmir stepped away from the group, and returned with five loops of string, each with a crocodile tooth strung across it. He presented one each to Callidus, Vilwyn and Visimar, stating that - in light of their agreement - they should have a marker of unity: a shared souvenir to denote their mutual allegiance. For every new step in their journey together, they could add a new item to their string. The party took them enthusiastically, and though Callidus initially resisted, he finally, reluctantly, accepted the gift. Now that the party had been officially formed, Kharmir noted, they needed a name. A few suggestions were raised, but Visimar recalled the translated Elven proverb Baesellor had shared with him, just a day before his death. 'Honourable men are forged in the fires of loss.'
And thus, The Reforged were born.
Of the five necklaces, Kharmir kept one for himself, and the last he gave to Chosk, insisting that without his help, they would have never survived the monster. Chosk thanked them in turn for their aid in defeating the monster that had ravaged his home, and for showing him how to be a hero. In the forest outside the cave, as the moon reached its zenith, the party bade farewell to their new friend, who meant to return to his village and lay a tooth in the dirt, to pay his final respects to those he had lost. As the Reforged turned their back upon the Hellmire, Chosk called out one last thing, asking where he should go once he went to Correnwald. Visimar suggested Ario Va'Kel, while Callidus merely replied:
"You know, there's a wonderful place called the Wheezing Beaver…"
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