Ignoring all around her, embracing the heat from the center and the lingering effects of her fireball, Ashley continues to run towards the Heart of Fire. She is vaguely aware of the shadow clicking away above it, but she cares for one thing and one thing only.
As she reaches the pillar, she attempts to take the Heart of Fire into her possession.
(assuming it isn't that easy, that is her interact with object, waiting to see what happens before using her action.)
Ashley gets inside the cavity in the base of the pillar. Without hesitation, she reaches out with both hands to cup the egg-sized stone.
When it touches her skin, a wave of heat explodes through her. The same warmth that had been calling to her. It feels like home. A vision takes her. The sensation of rock so hot that it has melted, exploding violently up from beneath the earth. But this doesn't feel like the explosion from her premonitions. Those felt like destruction. Undoing. The end. This feels like birth. Life. The first life.
She understands now. In a time eons past, before men and dwarves, orcs, and elves, there had been an fierce eruption. And from that primordial flame had her ancestors crawled. Forged from earth and flame. The first people.
In her hands, she now holds the core of that first flame. And should it be destroyed, the entirety of Cambria would once again erupt and the essence of her people would be unraveled.
A powerful flame to bring the genasi into the world, and a powerful flame to end them.
With a small tug, the stone comes free of its position and rests in her hands. It burns, but her skin remains undamaged.
Tucking the stone against her like a baby, her face glowing with a knowing and satisfaction, she turns and uses her action to dash away from the pillar and whatever creature that lies in wait.
Almost desperately, Samir grabs a small capsule from his satchel. A snap of energy surrounds the small item for an instant before it trembles and shoots off at high speed out of his hand. It zips past Ashley and into the mouth of the pillar, where it bursts and erupts into a cloud of thick, roiling fog. The fog's edge nips at Ashley's heels as it expands and flows outwards, but falls short of wrapping around her. With a wave he gestures at the others to hurry towards the room's entrance as he follows his own advice and moves towards their exit.
As Ashley claims the glowing stone, the Heart of Fire, and Samir summons the enveloping Fog Cloud, Joren feels strangely at peace. His eyes close and he reaches out with his senses, as he had been trained (10' Blindsight). As he had in the howling mists of the Veil Mountains during the bloody carnage of the Dragontail Narrows. A battle that had defined his life, but now seems an eternity ago, though it has been but a year.
If my friends and these captives are escaping with their lives, and with the Heart of Fire, then my job is done, no? For what is a soldier's life but fighting so that civilians may be safe and thrive. Duty is weighing heavier than a mountain, but death is floating lighter than the mists upon the pass.
Less laden without his handaxes, now lost in this foggy abattoir, Jorendashes 60' back south towards the exit and deposits the woman from his shoulder gently upon her feet, pointing her own shoulders in the correct direction and thumping them gently to get her moving. His drawl is quiet and gentle.
"Making haste now, friend, go. Double-time. You are not wanting to be here for this."
With his bonus action, he summons his echo once more, just over 5' back north of himself, the virtual form standing tall in the fog cloud and looking upwards, as if inviting attack from the awakening monstrosity. The half-dwarf himself sets his stance lower, gazing into the mists with his blindsight.
Rear guard sentinel, Time and fate turning, like mist, The echo knight falls.
The cavern trembles once more. Though the pillar is now shrouded in fog, no one misses the moment it shatters. Large waxy chunks slowly emerge from the fog, bursting out in slow motion and leaving little trails of fog behind them. A 20-foot-long jointed scythe-like limb slashes out through the mist, followed by another on the other side.
Vilus does not miss his opportunity. The hand he'd conjured darts forth and sinks its bony fingertips right through the chitin plating on the insectoid arm. The creature within looses a warbling bellow of frustration and rage at its pain and blindness. The man furthest back stumbles in fear and his foot plunges through the hard outer casing of wax with a crunch. The roar stops. He quickly stands back up. There is a blur of movement from the fog cloud.
Thud
The man falls to his knees again
Thud
His head hits the ground
Thump
The rest of his body lands right next to it, blood pooling around the stump where his neck abruptly ends.
Malachi’s breath catches in his throat as the pillar breaks and chunks of wax break through the fog followed by the swinging legs. He turns to usher the former captives near him out the door and back into the tunnel “Go, go, get out of here. Quickly!”He turns back toward the pillar and lets forth a string of guttural curses focused toward the now freed creature, hoping to push it back and buy time for the group to escape. “Ashley, Vilus. Let’s go, back into the tunnel. Joren, no time for a last stand. Get back here.”With those shouts, Malachi moves back himself, following the freed captives back toward Samir.
Vaguely aware that she actually got the heart away from that creature unscathed, Ashley is in a bit of shock. She doesn't even register the man that was decapitated by the queen right after she ran or the fact that fog has appeared out of nowhere, licking at her heels. The feeling of the fire, the feeling of birth, the feeling of home... it all encompasses her.
Each of Ashley's footsteps makes a small tapping noise on the surface of the wax. The fog stirs suddenly as the creature inside whirls around. So distracted is Ashley, that she hardly notices the nearly silent scythe-limb stab straight through the wax beside her trailing foot, a hair's breadth from severing her Achille's tendon.
(Reaction attack. Made a successful perception check to know Ashley's location by sound, but missed the attack)
"This way! Hurry!" Samir steps forward, his hand digging into his satchel once again. With an almost pained grunt, he hurls a small canister over the heads of his companions and the fleeing captives. Landing just in front and to the left of Joren's echo, the canister instantly bursts, spraying slippery, viscous liquid across the ground.
Moving 15' forward and casting Grease so that it coats the ground in front of the opening in the pillar. The center point should be 5' up and to the left of the Echo.
Joren snarls as he sees the scythe-claw strike out at Ashley. No!! He spins his Dunamis Blade down in a two-handed slicing cut into the limb.
Dunamis BladeSentinel reaction attack (advantage due to being obscured in the Fog Cloud while himself having blindsight): To hit: 21 Damage: 10 magical slashing
Standing in the fog, straining to feel movement nearby with his blindsight as warriors who fight in the Veil Mountains have been trained to do almost since childhood, Joren senses his friends and the surviving captives escaping (for the moment) out the southern entranceway. He hears Malachi and Vilus' admonishments to retreat and Samir's urging to hurry back.
Hears them but does not heed. Some things never change. The echo knight's throat clenches as the scythe-like limb nearly impales Ashley and he is able to strike back in return with his Dunamis Blade. They are going to make it out the entrance. And I am going to make sure of it.
"Having the right idea, the bottleneck, but only working if everyone is getting there. Or everyone else, anyway. Making haste, double-time, all of you!"
In what he knows may be his final moments, Joren instead steps forward into the fog, side-by-side with his echo, within striking range of mother gloazworm. Cloaked in the Fog Cloud through which only he can "see," he launches into a strangely silent flurry of action, diagonal strokes in the pattern of infinity.
(5 attacks with his Dunamis Blade, one from his own position, the rest from his echo's, all with advantage).
Attack 1 (from his own position): 14 Attack 1 damage: 6 magical slashing
Then, having seen the gloazen queen already use her reaction to strike at Ashley, and knowing the monster cannot see him for an opportunistic attack, Joren moves in tandem with his echo back south and 10' apart laterally, standing within the southern boundary of the Fog Cloud facing north. Ready to move but completely still for the moment. Knowing that a likely lethal attack is coming but hoping it is at disadvantage due to the mists, and also that it targets his echo (who did all the damage). Come on Joren, you always knew it was going to end like this. Gloazworm mother, send me to see Jean-Lou.
Joren's reaction slams into the arm reaching out at Ashley. It crunches into the hard, glassy exoskeleton. The arm retracts, nearly pulling the sword from Joren's hands. He wrests it free, causing an arc of thick green ichor to spray free from the wound. His following flurry of slashes paints the ground around him and his echo that same shade of green, and the bottom part of the creature's segmented abdomen spills more ichor out onto the floor in a steady stream. But Joren now gets more of a sense of what he is up against. Her head is at least twice the size of the full-grown insects they had seen before now, and her abdomen arches back and up toward the ceiling, out of the range of his senses. He can't even sense both of her cutting arms at the same time. She is truly a queen among insects.
She let's out a warbling screech, spittle flying from mandibles twice the size of Joren's arms. The sound masks his steps backwards as his echo silently glides into position beside him. In a rage, the Gloazen queen lashes out with two quick strikes where Joren and his echo had been when they attacked her. Each stab elicits a wet crunch from the hard wax beneath, and Joren feels milky liquid spatter his cheek.
With another roar, Joren hears a number of wet popping sounds from above where he last saw the queen. a moment later, they are followed up by the sounds of small things splatting onto the ground below. a multitude of small chewing sounds arise from the ground within the fog.
One of the captives (Cap 3) hops down off a crest of wax onto a rare patch of bare ground and continues to limp toward the exit (All living captives move another 15 feet)
Malachi strains to peer through the thick fog as the sounds of Joren’s strikes, and other popping sounds echo through the chamber. The fog may slow the creatures, but it made it hard to see what was going on. Frustrated, he spits out another string of curses focused toward the creature lurking in the fog, knowing it was futile as he did so.
Still, they were all moving too slow. He mentally reaches out to the captive that was the furthest from safety and pulls him forward toward the tunnel. “Hurry, through here.”he waves the other captives, and his companions forward. “Ashley, Samir, the grease, can we set it on fire? We can cook this thing before it gets out.”
Bonus Action Telekinetic Shove to pull the slowest captive 5 feet toward the tunnel and safety.
"Joren I'm holding a shatter back to cave in these things behind us!" Vilus calls out hoping that this time the trick would pay off, he knows that Joren isn't listening to him and stops his escape wheeling around to take in the mess and observe where he can best position himself to assist Joren. "Shit."
Vilus runs 20ft north west stopping on a patch of bare ground, once more he summons a spectral hand, a darting eye in the palm, and sends it blindly into the fog, hoping to hit the massive insectoid queen.
(Chill touch, 23 to hit with disadvantage, 10 necro dam and no healing for the queen until next round)
Then Vilus has an idea, "it's attracted to the heart of fire, maybe cold will slow it?" His voice curious but desperate for someone else to pick up on it, as he is not able to dish out cold damage himself.
"I can't do cold!! I can't see it!! I mean I can do cold, I just can't see it!" Ashley had spun around and was surveying the scene in front of her, torn in so many ways as to what to do. She couldn't set the grease on fire, though that was a good idea - Samir's concoction didn't ignite. And Vilus's thought on slowing it with cold was also a good idea, maybe deter with more fire? Confuse it if fire was all around?
At these thoughts her blazing hair turned white, wanting fire to dance all around, bathe in it, breath it in... she was almost under a spell from the intoxication of fire.
She points her finger towards the pillar and sends out another fireball, making sure it doesn't engulf Joren or Capt 5, pushing just past them.
Vilus feels his magic make contact, though he now hears that same chewing sound as Joren. Like a bunch of tiny mouths trying to tunnel through the outer crust into the soupy goo beneath the wax. Then Ashley's fireball hurtles by, punching a hole through the fog. There is an explosion of flame from within the pillar, and for a brief moment the fog is cleared.
Within, everyone can see the monstrosity that is the Gloazen Queen. Her pulsating abdomen extends up behind her like a scorpion tail, disappearing into top portion of the pillar, anchoring her in place. Small wriggling white masses can be seen through her translucent skin, moving to emerge from her torso. Five small gloazworms, each about the length of an arm fly out through the hole in the pillar, scorched bodies landing with a crunch and a squelch on the ground several feet away, but one more can be seen just slipping into the wax in time to avoid the worst of the damage.
(5 of 6 small Gloazworms killed outright by the fireball. Last one is badly damaged)
The fog reforms, closing back in, but a small silhouette streaks out under the wax right under Joren's feet, heading straight for the last captive on the wax!
(Joren can make an AoO, AC 13. BUT, he has to deal at least 10 damage to break through the wax and hit the gloazworm)
Goo splatters from the impact of Joren's sword, but the shape rushes on. A second later, the wax beside the last captive nearly 100 feet away bursts open as the small worm punches through. The man's eyes open wide in shock as the rings of sharp teeth inside the worms may latch onto his shoulder. It's body begins to pulse and swell, taking on a reddish hue in its translucent flesh. The colour of human blood. The man falls to the ground and the colour starts to fade from his face while he writhes. His movements turn to smaller spasms and the worm continues to feed.
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Ignoring all around her, embracing the heat from the center and the lingering effects of her fireball, Ashley continues to run towards the Heart of Fire. She is vaguely aware of the shadow clicking away above it, but she cares for one thing and one thing only.
As she reaches the pillar, she attempts to take the Heart of Fire into her possession.
(assuming it isn't that easy, that is her interact with object, waiting to see what happens before using her action.)
Ashley gets inside the cavity in the base of the pillar. Without hesitation, she reaches out with both hands to cup the egg-sized stone.
When it touches her skin, a wave of heat explodes through her. The same warmth that had been calling to her. It feels like home. A vision takes her. The sensation of rock so hot that it has melted, exploding violently up from beneath the earth. But this doesn't feel like the explosion from her premonitions. Those felt like destruction. Undoing. The end. This feels like birth. Life. The first life.
She understands now. In a time eons past, before men and dwarves, orcs, and elves, there had been an fierce eruption. And from that primordial flame had her ancestors crawled. Forged from earth and flame. The first people.
In her hands, she now holds the core of that first flame. And should it be destroyed, the entirety of Cambria would once again erupt and the essence of her people would be unraveled.
A powerful flame to bring the genasi into the world, and a powerful flame to end them.
With a small tug, the stone comes free of its position and rests in her hands. It burns, but her skin remains undamaged.
Tucking the stone against her like a baby, her face glowing with a knowing and satisfaction, she turns and uses her action to dash away from the pillar and whatever creature that lies in wait.
Almost desperately, Samir grabs a small capsule from his satchel. A snap of energy surrounds the small item for an instant before it trembles and shoots off at high speed out of his hand. It zips past Ashley and into the mouth of the pillar, where it bursts and erupts into a cloud of thick, roiling fog. The fog's edge nips at Ashley's heels as it expands and flows outwards, but falls short of wrapping around her. With a wave he gestures at the others to hurry towards the room's entrance as he follows his own advice and moves towards their exit.
As Ashley claims the glowing stone, the Heart of Fire, and Samir summons the enveloping Fog Cloud, Joren feels strangely at peace. His eyes close and he reaches out with his senses, as he had been trained (10' Blindsight). As he had in the howling mists of the Veil Mountains during the bloody carnage of the Dragontail Narrows. A battle that had defined his life, but now seems an eternity ago, though it has been but a year.
If my friends and these captives are escaping with their lives, and with the Heart of Fire, then my job is done, no? For what is a soldier's life but fighting so that civilians may be safe and thrive. Duty is weighing heavier than a mountain, but death is floating lighter than the mists upon the pass.
Less laden without his handaxes, now lost in this foggy abattoir, Joren dashes 60' back south towards the exit and deposits the woman from his shoulder gently upon her feet, pointing her own shoulders in the correct direction and thumping them gently to get her moving. His drawl is quiet and gentle.
"Making haste now, friend, go. Double-time. You are not wanting to be here for this."
With his bonus action, he summons his echo once more, just over 5' back north of himself, the virtual form standing tall in the fog cloud and looking upwards, as if inviting attack from the awakening monstrosity. The half-dwarf himself sets his stance lower, gazing into the mists with his blindsight.
Rear guard sentinel,
Time and fate turning, like mist,
The echo knight falls.
Joren Kryn draws his Dunamis Blade.
Tanis(Ranger1): Shiverquill's Tempest City | Xarian(Fighter2): NioNSwiper's Tyranny of Dragons
Dyson/Eleo(TwilightCleric4): Vos' Beyond the Veil | Soren(ShepherdDruid5): Bartjeebus' Ravenloft | Ophelia(WildMagicSorcerer4): Ashen_Age's Risen from the Sands
Joren(EchoKnightFighter6): NotDrizzt's Simple Request | Sabetha(MercyMonk3): Bedlymn's Murder Court | Seri(NatureCleric3/DivineSoulSorcerer1): Bartjeebus' Greyhawk
The cavern trembles once more. Though the pillar is now shrouded in fog, no one misses the moment it shatters. Large waxy chunks slowly emerge from the fog, bursting out in slow motion and leaving little trails of fog behind them. A 20-foot-long jointed scythe-like limb slashes out through the mist, followed by another on the other side.
Vilus does not miss his opportunity. The hand he'd conjured darts forth and sinks its bony fingertips right through the chitin plating on the insectoid arm. The creature within looses a warbling bellow of frustration and rage at its pain and blindness. The man furthest back stumbles in fear and his foot plunges through the hard outer casing of wax with a crunch. The roar stops. He quickly stands back up. There is a blur of movement from the fog cloud.
Thud
The man falls to his knees again
Thud
His head hits the ground
Thump
The rest of his body lands right next to it, blood pooling around the stump where his neck abruptly ends.
Malachi’s breath catches in his throat as the pillar breaks and chunks of wax break through the fog followed by the swinging legs. He turns to usher the former captives near him out the door and back into the tunnel “Go, go, get out of here. Quickly!” He turns back toward the pillar and lets forth a string of guttural curses focused toward the now freed creature, hoping to push it back and buy time for the group to escape. “Ashley, Vilus. Let’s go, back into the tunnel. Joren, no time for a last stand. Get back here.” With those shouts, Malachi moves back himself, following the freed captives back toward Samir.
Vilus continues moving toward the entrance casting two eldritch blasts back into the fog cloud as he goes, (12 to hit, 2 force. 22 to hit, 7 force)
"Hold at the entrance, get the victims out! Joren regroup!"
Vaguely aware that she actually got the heart away from that creature unscathed, Ashley is in a bit of shock. She doesn't even register the man that was decapitated by the queen right after she ran or the fact that fog has appeared out of nowhere, licking at her heels. The feeling of the fire, the feeling of birth, the feeling of home... it all encompasses her.
She just holds the heart of fire close and runs.
Each of Ashley's footsteps makes a small tapping noise on the surface of the wax. The fog stirs suddenly as the creature inside whirls around. So distracted is Ashley, that she hardly notices the nearly silent scythe-limb stab straight through the wax beside her trailing foot, a hair's breadth from severing her Achille's tendon.
(Reaction attack. Made a successful perception check to know Ashley's location by sound, but missed the attack)
"This way! Hurry!" Samir steps forward, his hand digging into his satchel once again. With an almost pained grunt, he hurls a small canister over the heads of his companions and the fleeing captives. Landing just in front and to the left of Joren's echo, the canister instantly bursts, spraying slippery, viscous liquid across the ground.
Moving 15' forward and casting Grease so that it coats the ground in front of the opening in the pillar. The center point should be 5' up and to the left of the Echo.
Joren snarls as he sees the scythe-claw strike out at Ashley. No!! He spins his Dunamis Blade down in a two-handed slicing cut into the limb.
Dunamis Blade Sentinel reaction attack (advantage due to being obscured in the Fog Cloud while himself having blindsight):
To hit: 21
Damage: 10 magical slashing
Tanis(Ranger1): Shiverquill's Tempest City | Xarian(Fighter2): NioNSwiper's Tyranny of Dragons
Dyson/Eleo(TwilightCleric4): Vos' Beyond the Veil | Soren(ShepherdDruid5): Bartjeebus' Ravenloft | Ophelia(WildMagicSorcerer4): Ashen_Age's Risen from the Sands
Joren(EchoKnightFighter6): NotDrizzt's Simple Request | Sabetha(MercyMonk3): Bedlymn's Murder Court | Seri(NatureCleric3/DivineSoulSorcerer1): Bartjeebus' Greyhawk
(Now Joren's turn, his reaction resets).
Standing in the fog, straining to feel movement nearby with his blindsight as warriors who fight in the Veil Mountains have been trained to do almost since childhood, Joren senses his friends and the surviving captives escaping (for the moment) out the southern entranceway. He hears Malachi and Vilus' admonishments to retreat and Samir's urging to hurry back.
Hears them but does not heed. Some things never change. The echo knight's throat clenches as the scythe-like limb nearly impales Ashley and he is able to strike back in return with his Dunamis Blade. They are going to make it out the entrance. And I am going to make sure of it.
"Having the right idea, the bottleneck, but only working if everyone is getting there. Or everyone else, anyway. Making haste, double-time, all of you!"
In what he knows may be his final moments, Joren instead steps forward into the fog, side-by-side with his echo, within striking range of mother gloazworm. Cloaked in the Fog Cloud through which only he can "see," he launches into a strangely silent flurry of action, diagonal strokes in the pattern of infinity.
(5 attacks with his Dunamis Blade, one from his own position, the rest from his echo's, all with advantage).
Attack 1 (from his own position): 14
Attack 1 damage: 6 magical slashing
Attack 2 (from echo's position): 25
Attack 2 damage: 15 magical slashing
(Action Surge):
Attack 3 (from echo's position): 26
Attack 3 damage: 10 magical slashing
Attack 4 (from echo's position): 26
Attack 4 damage: 9 magical slashing
(Bonus Action Dunamis Blade attack from echo's position when making an attack from his own position):
Attack 5 (from echo's postion): 21
Attack 5 damage: 14 magical slashing
Then, having seen the gloazen queen already use her reaction to strike at Ashley, and knowing the monster cannot see him for an opportunistic attack, Joren moves in tandem with his echo back south and 10' apart laterally, standing within the southern boundary of the Fog Cloud facing north. Ready to move but completely still for the moment. Knowing that a likely lethal attack is coming but hoping it is at disadvantage due to the mists, and also that it targets his echo (who did all the damage). Come on Joren, you always knew it was going to end like this. Gloazworm mother, send me to see Jean-Lou.
Tanis(Ranger1): Shiverquill's Tempest City | Xarian(Fighter2): NioNSwiper's Tyranny of Dragons
Dyson/Eleo(TwilightCleric4): Vos' Beyond the Veil | Soren(ShepherdDruid5): Bartjeebus' Ravenloft | Ophelia(WildMagicSorcerer4): Ashen_Age's Risen from the Sands
Joren(EchoKnightFighter6): NotDrizzt's Simple Request | Sabetha(MercyMonk3): Bedlymn's Murder Court | Seri(NatureCleric3/DivineSoulSorcerer1): Bartjeebus' Greyhawk
Joren's reaction slams into the arm reaching out at Ashley. It crunches into the hard, glassy exoskeleton. The arm retracts, nearly pulling the sword from Joren's hands. He wrests it free, causing an arc of thick green ichor to spray free from the wound. His following flurry of slashes paints the ground around him and his echo that same shade of green, and the bottom part of the creature's segmented abdomen spills more ichor out onto the floor in a steady stream. But Joren now gets more of a sense of what he is up against. Her head is at least twice the size of the full-grown insects they had seen before now, and her abdomen arches back and up toward the ceiling, out of the range of his senses. He can't even sense both of her cutting arms at the same time. She is truly a queen among insects.
She let's out a warbling screech, spittle flying from mandibles twice the size of Joren's arms. The sound masks his steps backwards as his echo silently glides into position beside him. In a rage, the Gloazen queen lashes out with two quick strikes where Joren and his echo had been when they attacked her. Each stab elicits a wet crunch from the hard wax beneath, and Joren feels milky liquid spatter his cheek.
With another roar, Joren hears a number of wet popping sounds from above where he last saw the queen. a moment later, they are followed up by the sounds of small things splatting onto the ground below. a multitude of small chewing sounds arise from the ground within the fog.
One of the captives (Cap 3) hops down off a crest of wax onto a rare patch of bare ground and continues to limp toward the exit (All living captives move another 15 feet)
Malachi strains to peer through the thick fog as the sounds of Joren’s strikes, and other popping sounds echo through the chamber. The fog may slow the creatures, but it made it hard to see what was going on. Frustrated, he spits out another string of curses focused toward the creature lurking in the fog, knowing it was futile as he did so.
Still, they were all moving too slow. He mentally reaches out to the captive that was the furthest from safety and pulls him forward toward the tunnel. “Hurry, through here.” he waves the other captives, and his companions forward. “Ashley, Samir, the grease, can we set it on fire? We can cook this thing before it gets out.”
Bonus Action Telekinetic Shove to pull the slowest captive 5 feet toward the tunnel and safety.
"Joren I'm holding a shatter back to cave in these things behind us!" Vilus calls out hoping that this time the trick would pay off, he knows that Joren isn't listening to him and stops his escape wheeling around to take in the mess and observe where he can best position himself to assist Joren. "Shit."
Vilus runs 20ft north west stopping on a patch of bare ground, once more he summons a spectral hand, a darting eye in the palm, and sends it blindly into the fog, hoping to hit the massive insectoid queen.
(Chill touch, 23 to hit with disadvantage, 10 necro dam and no healing for the queen until next round)
Then Vilus has an idea, "it's attracted to the heart of fire, maybe cold will slow it?" His voice curious but desperate for someone else to pick up on it, as he is not able to dish out cold damage himself.
"I can't do cold!! I can't see it!! I mean I can do cold, I just can't see it!" Ashley had spun around and was surveying the scene in front of her, torn in so many ways as to what to do. She couldn't set the grease on fire, though that was a good idea - Samir's concoction didn't ignite. And Vilus's thought on slowing it with cold was also a good idea, maybe deter with more fire? Confuse it if fire was all around?
At these thoughts her blazing hair turned white, wanting fire to dance all around, bathe in it, breath it in... she was almost under a spell from the intoxication of fire.
She points her finger towards the pillar and sends out another fireball, making sure it doesn't engulf Joren or Capt 5, pushing just past them.
Then she turns and continues to run.
Vilus feels his magic make contact, though he now hears that same chewing sound as Joren. Like a bunch of tiny mouths trying to tunnel through the outer crust into the soupy goo beneath the wax. Then Ashley's fireball hurtles by, punching a hole through the fog. There is an explosion of flame from within the pillar, and for a brief moment the fog is cleared.
Within, everyone can see the monstrosity that is the Gloazen Queen. Her pulsating abdomen extends up behind her like a scorpion tail, disappearing into top portion of the pillar, anchoring her in place. Small wriggling white masses can be seen through her translucent skin, moving to emerge from her torso. Five small gloazworms, each about the length of an arm fly out through the hole in the pillar, scorched bodies landing with a crunch and a squelch on the ground several feet away, but one more can be seen just slipping into the wax in time to avoid the worst of the damage.
(5 of 6 small Gloazworms killed outright by the fireball. Last one is badly damaged)
The fog reforms, closing back in, but a small silhouette streaks out under the wax right under Joren's feet, heading straight for the last captive on the wax!
(Joren can make an AoO, AC 13. BUT, he has to deal at least 10 damage to break through the wax and hit the gloazworm)
Hidden in the Fog Cloud, Joren strikes opportunistically from his echo's position at the small gloazworm burrowing through the wax.
Dunamis Blade to hit: 18
Dunamis Blade damage: 8
Unfortunately, the unexpected speed of the burrowing larva causes his rushed swing to mostly destroy waxy goo instead of insect.
Tanis(Ranger1): Shiverquill's Tempest City | Xarian(Fighter2): NioNSwiper's Tyranny of Dragons
Dyson/Eleo(TwilightCleric4): Vos' Beyond the Veil | Soren(ShepherdDruid5): Bartjeebus' Ravenloft | Ophelia(WildMagicSorcerer4): Ashen_Age's Risen from the Sands
Joren(EchoKnightFighter6): NotDrizzt's Simple Request | Sabetha(MercyMonk3): Bedlymn's Murder Court | Seri(NatureCleric3/DivineSoulSorcerer1): Bartjeebus' Greyhawk
Goo splatters from the impact of Joren's sword, but the shape rushes on. A second later, the wax beside the last captive nearly 100 feet away bursts open as the small worm punches through. The man's eyes open wide in shock as the rings of sharp teeth inside the worms may latch onto his shoulder. It's body begins to pulse and swell, taking on a reddish hue in its translucent flesh. The colour of human blood. The man falls to the ground and the colour starts to fade from his face while he writhes. His movements turn to smaller spasms and the worm continues to feed.