Adventure #4 – The Lair of the Mad Alchemist

[kingtycoon]

Gaz Quercus' Journal Entry Concerning His Departure

At the ruined city of Tlaar the PCs find themselves... Well — only one among them is motivated to accomplish anything & he finds himself incapable of doing so.  Gideon wants to go to... What I understand to be another dimension where some Elves live.  His ambitions are confusing & unattainable.  The rest of the group does a little bit of helping with the newly resettled refugees.  Time passes & eventually there's some thought of perhaps following gnoll cattle-thieves trail to their hideout.  Mishka has a little interest in this as it seems that her people are being exterminated by these hyena creatures & that there's not much explanation as to how or why.  

Loksh the secret rat-man/ tiefling is especially interested in the group's endeavor — he's got an interest in a friend of his who's gone missing.

Long story short- the group uses tricks & wisdom to steal the cattle back & drive them to town for the benefit of all the refugees.  They do want to go back though — having lightly tested the boundaries of the Gnoll hideout.

A stone table, sans Giant

Gideon sneaks into the camp invisibly & finds that the creatures have a stone giant bolted to a stone table — the giant is fitted with all kinds of tubes & mechanical armatures that connect to something underground.  He decides to attempt to break the giant out unobserved by the ravening, feral gnolls (much more terrible than most they'd encountered) — only to be attacked by the proprietor of the place — an unknown magician with teleportation abilities & a powerful sense of his territory's boundaries.  He attacks & drives Gideon off-  but his alarms & wards having been triggered, he calls his minions & they spring to action to defend the base.

This consists principally of a pair of Centaur/Scorpion — things — which charge the plain & make short work of Mishka, Pike & Non — who aren't well positioned to defend against the charge.  They are in good shape to magically keep one another alive & it's only at the last moment that Warrill, expending his most substantial psionic abilities wreathes the mysterious base in darkness & manages to mentally beseech the rest of the crew to run.  

Which they do — covered by Elwin (activated for this contingency).  

Thereafter, confounded & lost, they reconsider their situation & decide that an organized assault of the place may be successful where splitting the party had not been.  Indeed they are correct -though the base — and it's mysterious interior of injection molded stainless steel were not particularly well guarded-  more hybrids of hyena & scorpion & of course the poor captured giant- — who Pike alone is capable of communicating with.  

The group descends into the lair & finds it full of partly dissected members of Mishka's people — all of them surgically & chemically altered &  in various (dead) states of becoming Hyena-scorpion-monster-things.  

Mishka & Non do their best to destroy the place entirely while Warrill & Pike & Gideon do their best to preserve the uncanny lore that the place contains.  They discover many books & papers — among them a letter from Gaz Quercus — Elwin the artificer's longtime rival.  

It's much worse than this actually

The group frees the giant Grrnn who uses his magical cup to help him forget the recent past including his abduction — but he is the friend that Loksh had spoken of seeking & he is eager to return underground — for there is a hidden city under the earth — a gigantic stalactite that hangs in a cavern as big as a country.  There is the Rat metropolis Waeek — where Loksh is from & which Grrnn will return to.  He offers to lead the Party there, to the great city — which they agree to.  

They make their home in Waeek for a while, planning their next moves...