Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!
Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”
I saw her give a startled scream, then drop to the floor as Korinn’s electrified orb slammed into her. Despite all the evil she had caused my instant reaction was to run to her side.
Atalia’s face was mangled and burned, and her eyes, once full of haughty confidence that I had fallen in love with, now showed nothing but fear. She tried to speak but could only cough up blood.
I saw the nearby cultists charging me. I called back to T.I.M. to save her life, and he nodded.
I stood up, lashed out my Phantom pike, and beheaded the cultist who had just come into my range, his face contorted in both anger and shock as it rolled down the beach into the water.
I didn’t stop. I could feel the rage building inside like a thundering herd. The Mind-Zei had warned us about losing ourselves, and to always remain in control of our psychic abilities. But I had just seen my own people, former friends and lover, enthralled because of a great evil. And that evil was here.
I turned just as a second cultist of the K Society crept up, his sword raised. I whipped outward, impaling the man through the chest and flinging him into the water like a doll. His body slowly floated outward to join the others.
That’s when I noticed the tentacles.
Giant tentacles had begun pulling the bodies downward, and now more tentacles were appearing. A surge of water poured forth as a monstrous form rose from the depths.
A keening wail echoed from an unseen mouth as it shuffled onto the beach like a giant deformed octopus. At astonishing speed it flung a tentacle around me, and I could barely gasp as it lifted me up into the air.
The rage was subsiding.
We survived another epic, session-long combat encounter this week as we cleared out the second half of the Pirate Cove dungeon, culminating in an epic boss fight.
Many of the pirates and my former brothers and sisters from the Mind-Zei monastery lay dead from out initial assault on the pirate’s cove island. But the fighting didn’t stop.
I had stumbled into the nearby lair of a weird fishy, tentacle mind creature, and it responded by summoning a bunch of creepy insects that swarmed over me. A single fireball from Bryseis melted the lot of them, while Halfred’s arrows ended the monstrous fish thing.
With the relatively small size of the dungeon and the amount of noise we were generating, we remained in combat-mode throughout the session. We found half a dozen Bugbear Brutes guarding some prisoners – including Halfred’s long-lost master Wuce Bwayne! Once again a Fireball went sailing past my head, softening up a good chunk of them while Bryseis cackled behind us.
Her reckless use of Fireballs triggered a Wild Magic Surge, and she temporarily popped out of existence. T.I.M. and I went to work mopping them up with melee attacks, while Halfred flew over us, flanking the rest and savagely beating them with his bladed bow.
Halfred was astonished and relieved to find Wuce Bwayne, though we couldn’t afford a lenghty reunion at the moment. He warned us of a ritual nearing completion in the next room, which owned up onto the beach. We scrambled to free the prisoners, cast a few buffs, and threw open the curtains leading outside.
A grim site welcomed us. A dozen pirates and cultists stood on the beach and slowly turned toward us. Kazin immediately recognized Lady Atalia, his former lover from the Mind-Zei who was instrumental in the K Society’s utter destruction of our former home and school. We last encountered her in Yartar where she and an aboleth worked to kidnap nobles and enslave them. Bit of drama there.
She was busy drowning one of the prisoners, and was surrounded by the bodies of previous victims.
We had a brief exchange where once again she attempted to sell Kazin on joining the K Society, named after the Kraken they all serve. Kazin was having none of it (Klauth 2020!), and everyone drew weapons.
The pirates charged with swords and throwing daggers as Kazin held the ground in the narrow passageway. I responded by throwing out a Fear spell, nailing about half of the pirates and cultists (alas, Atalia had advantage on the save).
A third and final Fireball rang out from Bryseis, enveloping the bulk of the enemy forces and reducing them to ash. Korinn twinned a Haste spell on Halfred and Kazin, while she threw a Chromatic Orb at Atalia, downing the twisted acoloyte.
Halfred was instrumental with one key decision: killing the cultist who had been left to completing the ritual behind everyone else. A double-blast of arrows ended his life, though it was followed by several tentacles emerging from the water and grabbing the bodies.
Just as we were mopping up the last few cultists, a gigantic tentacled monstrosity poured out of the water. Atalia had teased what their ritual was all about: creating new Kraken spawn for their master, and we were witnessing one right now.
Thankfully because of Halfred’s quick actions, the creature was only half-formed (mechanically – it had its HP reduced by half). It still packed a deadly bunch, particularly as we had just blown through much of our spells, and our hit points, in our non-stop trek through the dungeon.
It began by grabbing both me and Halfred with its giant tentacles, and flinging Halfred against a wall and into Bryseis.
That proved a big mistake, as Halfred responded by flying up into the air and raining down volley after volley of arrows, taking full advantage of his Greater Favored Enemy and Hasted attacks.
T.I.M. and I would keep it busy in the frontlines, both of us getting reduced to half HP (my HP in particular was a damn rollercoaster this whole session). Our once powerful sorcerers were nearly nullified in this fight, Bryseis rolling badly on her last few damaging spell slots, while Korinn would discover that the damn monster was completely immune to lighting damage.
It was Halfred’s incredibly damaging arrow attacks that really kept us going as our HP continued to dwindle. Finally the monster dropped T.I.M and me, knocked us backwards with a tidal wave of water, and retreated back into the watery depths. We sat blinking, dazed, bleeding, and tired, but alive. Sweet merciful crap that was a hell of a fight!
Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!
RogueWatson 