Galingal, you momentarily come back to your senses, seeing that the icy creature is in fact Lia's pet tiefling... and that the wight you had been stabbing is Lia herself. She's in poor shape, blood staining her otherwise immaculately clean appearance.

There is a bellow from outside, and a slosh of the waves lift the boat, and you can feel  your perception shifting again, as Lia's appearance is overlaid with that of a wight, and Neth with the ice monster... then they are both themselves... then a hybrid again...

((Galingal, you may take your turn as normal, repeating the CHA save at the end of your turn. If you pass, you have another round of lucidity, if you fail,  you slip back into your delusions.))

Neth, you see clarity come to the shadow elf's eyes as he looks around and realizes what he's done. You're unsure why he just stabbed Lia, she doesn't seem to have done anything to him...

((Gal and Neth are both up. Stena will be up in like 8 rounds.))

Neth recognizes the lucidity in the elf, but is unable to stop himself. Neth rears back and slaps him cross the face.

”I don’t know why I just did that! Please stop stabbing her!”

((Flavor slap, or damage slap?))

Flavor 

((If that's your action this turn, I'll say that confers the Help Action to Galingal on his save at the end of his throw. But flavor slapping him turn after turn is likely to have diminishing returns, regardless of how he takes it. ie, it confers advantage on this check, but won't on future checks.))

Galingal stares for a moment at the shifting shape of the wight as it becomes Lia and then back. He can guess at what has happened here. But once the blow to his face registers, he glances at the blue tiefling, the tip of his rapier rising slightly. Only the sight of Lia's bleeding form and the frozen body of Stena cause him pause.

"I would not touch me again," Galingal says. "I do not sleep like your kind does."

He kneels momentarily by Lia's body to check to make sure she's still breathing, an odd sensation passes through him as he does. Concern?

"She is one of us. This should not happen. The behemoth outside. It has power. Much power," Galingal says, pauses, then looks at Neth. "Are you with it? In league?"

He looks around again.

"Take them. Run. Join others. Shuushar can help."

Galingal slips his rapier away, kneels and scoops up Lia's body, nods at Neth to do the same for Stena and then heads for the gangway to head to land.

CHA SAVE: 9  

Lia is still standing, just seems to be in shock, her hands not even moving to the wounds Galingal has inflicted as she stutters nonsense, her eyes wide and unfocused. Galingal grabs Lia, instructing Neth to do the same for Stena and heads for the dock, leaving the drow child he'd stabbed behind on the archpriestess' bed.

Out on the docks, Galingal sees that Jimjar is struggling to drag Buppido to the boat. "What are we doing? Buppy went down, just locked up and toppled over. The crazy fish are cheering for this thing, it sounds like they're moving this way!"

Galingal, your vision fuzzes for a bit, Lia becoming a wight, and Jimjar and Buppido a pair of zombies before things revert to what you have known over these last weeks to be real.

((You may both take a turn, at the end of which, Galingal, give me another CHA save, DC 13. If you pass this third in a row, you'll break from delusions, but if you fail, you'll slip back in.))

Neth feels the sting in his hand still as he listens to the dark elf’s words. “Well… *clears throat* don’t get all… stabby again and I won’t.”

The allegation that he might be in league with the giant daemon beast is just offensive enough to make Neth’s eyes light up with a blue frost as he angrily addresses Gal “I have to admit, the tentacles did excite me at first. Wait, that didn’t come out right… I mean to say I was impressed… no. Of course I’m not with that thing. Blast, I just helped all of you.”

”Fool” mumbles Neth as he picks up the other unresponsive party member.”

“Do we use this boat or run for it?”

Lia’s brain is locked up!

In her mind, she’s…

Lia can’t process reality right now.

She’s being carried.

It takes all of her concentration not to let her head and arms disassociate from each other in a shower of blood and chunks. Concentrate. Hold yourself together! Must concentrate!…

…

Galingal pauses on the gangway once he gets a better look at what's coming towards the KT town, added to that is the mob and there are no easy choices.

He stops and watches the zombies change to Jimjar and Buppido. 

"We can't drag two through town," Galingal says, gesturing at Lia and Stena, and vaguely including Buppido. "Or three." 

He looks past the docks wondering about the others. Shuushar may be a pacifist but he's been invaluable. Sarith. Lex and Stool both have helped them survive. And with three frozen in some way there's no way they can survive on their own. He nods at Neth.

"Use boat. Get boat ready to leave. Wait long as can for others. Then go south before demon come."

He gestures at Neth to go back to the boat, and then he leads Lia there again. Once there he starts looking around for whatever ropes may be holding the boat in place and starts undoing them, hopefully keeping just on easily accessible one loosely tied so they can leave as soon as others show up.

CHA SAVE: 13 

((For flavour for when Lia snaps out of it, where does Gal leave Lia while he readies the boat?))

Galingal, you feel the madness ebb away... for now at least your mind is your own. Neth, similarly, you feel the tension that your spell was helping buffer the shadow elf through ease, though you are welcome to continue concentrating on it if you'd like.

The two of you bundle back aboard the boat, which is bucking as the waves from the approaching creature toss it about. Jimjar manages to get Buppido aboard as well, dumping the derro out of the way and drawing his shortsword.

Farther up the shore, the Deep Father makes landfall, scaled reptilian legs lifting high to step down, crushing docks below them. Some kuo-toa, overcome with religious fervor, rush to meet him an sing his praises, but his bellow shakes the cavern and a mighty sweep of his tentacled arm sends broken bodies flying, one of which skips off the roof of the houseboat to splash into the water to the south of you, where it is set upon by a multitude of swift dark shapes that leave gaping bites behind.

He looks back and forth between the five of you, then worriedly back towards the city. "They're not stupid, and they knew this city was about to explode... knives, we kind of pushed it to explode... but they've got to get out on their own, we can't wait any longer!"

He slices through the rope and the boat is pulled out by undercurrent.

"I'll take the rudder, you two get us moving!"

There are long poles with paddles at one end that can be used for punting or rowing.

((Athletics checks from Gal and Neth please!))

Gal didn't think much of where to stick Lia. He moved her inside, facing a wall, so she wouldn't fall overboard.

As Jimjar cuts them free, Galingal grabs one of the poles and pushes off from the docks and ramshackle flotilla that makes up this part of the waterfront.

Athletics: 20 

Neth quickly tries to secure the unconscious team mates with whatever is laying around, hoping they don’t fall overboard. 

Neth grabs the other pole.

14

The three of them get stowed away within the cabin, and between Neth and Gal, the boat is able to be punted out into the lake. Fortunately, the chaos of screaming kuo-toa and the fires now spreading through the ramshackle buildings has drawn the rampaging attentions of Leemooggoogoon the Deep Father, and you slip further into the dark waters, leaving the city of Sloobludop in burning ruins behind you as Bloppblippodd's summoned god lays waste to the city. Some of the kuo-toa have come a bit to their senses, and are slipping away from the city in their fungal dugout canoes. Others forgo the vessels, but don't make it too far before they are torn apart by the schools of predators that you've seen around the docks, or water elementals similar to the one you fought in the fertilization pool.

Shortly Stena's consciousness surfaces, her muscles unlocking slowly and painfully. She is lying curled up on the floor of the houseboat, and can hear water lapping at the hull. Lia is leaned against a wall, staring straight ahead, drool having puddled down her front, mingling with blood from two stab wounds she's taken, and onto the floor. She still breathes, and registers your presence to some degree. Buppido is locked up and rigid in the doorway, and the drow child still rests on the dead archpriestess' bed. Galingal and the tiefling are poling the boat out into the lake, Jimjar at the rudder steering. 

You can only hope that those you care about in the city have made it out alive...

[Cinematic Slow Motion Camera Pan]

Prince Derendil, with a limp and unmoving form of the fire genasi, Lex, slung over his furry quaggoth shoulder, his fuzzy robe wrenched open as he turns, revealing the still pack still secured to Lex's back. Derendil reaching for Thom, whose at times unfounded optimism seems to have fled him as he stares across the chaos of the Deep Father's shrine and the kuo-toa fervently prostrating themselves. Some kuo-toa are catatonic, others driven to maddened violence lash out, and a second head bursts from the neck of one as it savages one of its fellows. Derendil shaking the half-elf's shoulder, shouting and pointing as a scaled leg smashes the altar and shrine and a tentacled arm smashes down, shattering buildings and bodies.

Sarith, your drow companion on his back, one hand clutching his head as he writhes in pain, while the other arm is raised weakly to fend off an attacker with a broken bottle. The attacker is a kuo-toa... Shuushar, his normally calm and placid eyes filled with rage, his mouth gritted in anger as he slashes at Sarith. Nearby, Ugglukja the half goliath-half ogre watches with a curiously impassive expression, a full pack dangling forgotten in one large hand.

Lia, by the time you are able to sort reality from fiction, it is just you, the drow kid and Buppido in the cabin, the light and sound of Sloobludop fading in the distance. Your front is wet with blood... and drool.

((Do you have any particular destination in mind? Sloobludop is pretty much your only landmark at the moment, but none of you want to still be bobbing about if and when Leemooggoogoon finishes destroying the town and wanders back into the lake to pick up stragglers.))

Stena swallows hard and tastes blood where she bit the insides of her cheek and can feel the wetness down her leathers where she soiled herself. Rising unsteadily she looks around the boat before slowly turning, almost unwillingly, in the direction of the cracking, smashing and roaring. She stares at the thing for several long moments before shaking her head and looking away violently. Hissing a curse under her breath at her own weakness getting people killed she heads up and, without a word to the three on deck, finds another pole to help move the boat away from that thing.

((Being on the boat is probably the fastest way to put distance between us and Sloobludop, right? We keep at it until Sloobludop is long out of sight. Then...))

Stena, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the Darklake, says in a quavering voice,

"What wa-"

Then she stops, very clearly gathering herself for a few moments and says in a more normal (angry) tone,

"We are lost. More lost than before we even went to that gods forsaken festering heap."

She seethes for several more seconds, knuckles going white on the pole she is holding.

"We left those other fools behind to that thing and why in the Golden Forge is he here?"

She shoots a glare at Neth. She gives the pole a few powerful gabs in the water. She focuses again on the darkness to calm herself and says to Galingal,

"We should search through Blopp's things for a map or a lead to somewhere else to go to get to the surface. And supplies."

The noise around Lia seems to be slipping away and it’s getting darker and darker. Maybe her mind is shutting down. The quiet-dark seems more appealing than the chaos of her current situation…

But she can hear the ‘ploopp-ploopp’ of something rhythmically breaking the water. She can feel her feet on the gently swaying floor. She can move her arms: they go to her eyes, and the heels of her palms press in against her eyes to hold her head together… It doesn’t explode.. In all the realities her maddened mind can see, it doesn’t explode…

She stands like that for a while, conscious of her own breath, loud in her ears and ragged. She pulls her hands away from her eyes at last and begins to see reality.

Her darkvision allows her to pick out shapes. She sees Buppido and the drow child. She hears voices. She’s in a boat… she sees the wreckage of the small shrine… It’s the sister-priest’s boat…

She takes a deep breath, but winces at the pain in her chest and stomach.

Falling to her knees, she unlaces the front of her scavenged drow armour and sees two stab-wounds there… She’s in a bad way… She places one palm over each wound, closes her eyes and grits her teeth against the pain. Her hands flare up in the darkness and radiant energy closes both wounds ((healing hands racial trait for +2hp)).

She pulls her hands away gingerly and sees the skin there reformed and the bleeding stopped. She uses magic to clean herself up and fastens her clothes and armour again. Clean, but dishevelled, she looks about once more.

She moves over to the drow child to check on their state. Still stable…

She moves to Buppido to check on him…

Assuming Buppido is stable and safe ((Let me know)), Lia goes back to sit in her corner by the wall and, without thinking, she takes out her Lyre. It’s automatic in times of pain and stress… She begins to play a tune, ever so quietly. Barely even sound really… Little more than a whisper of a tune… It follows the rhythm of the oars in the water and the slight murmur of familiar voices outside…

She plays a Song of Rest… ((plus 2 to anyone resting and rolling hit dice, IF we get a short rest! Let us know)). She plays it for the drow child, and for Buppido… and for herself. And for anyone else who might hear the quite sounds of the strings she plucks…

((song reference incoming))

Lia starts this Song of Rest, so so quietly!…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vzMc9B2SblQ

((0.75x playback speed if probably more like how she plays it. And so quiet it is barely there…))

Her Lyre is small, more like this…

Quote from Rodgeir >>

((Being on the boat is probably the fastest way to put distance between us and Sloobludop, right? We keep at it until Sloobludop is long out of sight. Then...)) 

((Yes, fastest way away from Sloobludop would be keeping the city to your stern as you row away.))

Lia, you check on the drow child, who seems to be stable, but having suffered a stab wound similar to yours. Buppido is locked up and rigid, his eyes rolled back in his head and his fingers contorted. Breath still whistles through clenched teeth, so it would seem the paralysis does not extend to his ability to breathe.

As you begin your song, five minutes or so later he beings stirring, his neck cracking as he's finally able to move things. Becoming aware of his surroundings, his eyes snap to you and your lyre, before panning across the remains of the shrine. There's a faint scent of blood still lingering, though not nearly as bad as before you cleaned it. He says something to you that you can't understand, before stepping out and grabbing a pole-oar and fitting it to a lock.

Jimjar greets the scruffy derro in Undercommon with a jovial grin.

 Buppido barks a laugh and responds.

 Jimjar translates to Common for the benefit of all.

"Buppy's got a good question... where are we headed now? If the others are still in the city, they're dead or driven mad... their only hope is to have made it out of the city before that... thing got there. What was that, by the way? I'm wagering none of us have seen that before?"