Play Report 21: Lizard King

The party descends the stairs into a familiar set of rooms — the same set of cell-like rooms that were below the first of these nightmares. The smell of paint thinner is nauseatingly thick. Akela leads with a lantern, carefully surveying the rooms. She suspects that the one closed door will again reveal the anchor and its guardians, and kicks it open. She is correct.

As before, a skull-faced lizard much more human in appearance than the others wears a crown made of garbage (recognizable as the anchor of the nightmare), lounging on a throne made of garbage. It is flanked by two non-lizard skeletal attendants holding trays upon which only dust remains, offering them to the lizard lord. The lizard lord hefts its axe and prepares to dispose of these intruders.

Akela gets the best initiative in the lineup and immediately rushes in to kick the lizard back into its throne. It is staggered back into its seat, which shatters. Enraged, it responds with three rapid blows with its axe — two connect, reducing Akela’s disposition to 0 and wounding her in the side. She fails to save against the wounds and decides to spend the next full round recovering to remain in the fight, trusting in her companions to follow up and save her from death.

Almuund leaps to the rescue, casting Immobilize Monster. This spell is corrupted from the horseman encounter, and his head swims as it drains his intelligence score to cast. Luckily it is successfully controlled. The lizard lord is stuck in place, axe raised, illuminated by Akela’s lamp near its feet. It hisses at Almuund: “This trick wont work every time. Your luck will run out.”

The skeletal attendants crowd into the kicked-in doorway and lash out ineffectively at Almuund, trying to get him to release their master. Cleo strikes one with her hatchet and Hant capitalizes on the confusion to obliterate its skull with his pistol. Akela staunches her bleeding, and the lizard taunts her, saying that she will die far from the home she never had a chance to see again. Almuund maintains the spell.

The remaining skeleton manages to slam the heel of its palm into Hant’s forehead. The damage goes straight to his wounds score and cause blood to drip into his eyes. He decides to flee blindly rather than risk remaining in the flight, and scampers up the stairs to what he hopes is safety.

Akela stands and punches the head clean off the skeleton.

Cleo runs forward and decapitates the lizard.

The party reassesses their situation. They have the anchor (which Akela stuffs in her bag), but they are hurt, dazed, and lacking Hant. Akela and Almuund look around and find the stash of treasure the lizard had accumulated, some coins, several iron ingots, bags of spice, and a few doses of drugs. Almuund and Akela gather these while Cleo is sent to find Hant, which she does after taking something from the lizard corpse. Nobody has the stomach to try to determine what.

Hant has been wandering the woods in the dark, no longer blind due to blood but instead because its night time under tree cover. It is extremely lucky for him that no random encounters happened in this time. He sees Cleo’s lantern and approaches casually, asking how everything went. Cleo briefly considers trying to kill him but holds off. He’s a less enticing target than the others in the long run, and her hatchet leaves distinct wounds that the others would recognize. She guides him back to the party.

Almuund and Akela do a thorough search of the rooms and discover two secret chambers behind loose rock facades. Both are full of paint. One has it sloshed about haphazardly, staining the walls and floor like some sort of dungeon-Pollock. The other has similar splatter, but with a perspective painting of a hallway on one wall. Almuund tries to walk into it and just thuds against it.

The reunited party then leaves the dungeon, pausing only when Hant decides to set it ablaze as he leaves, for old times sake. When they carry the anchor out of the nightmare grove, it fades away, leaving only the smell of burning paints lingering in the air. They plan to find a place of safety where they can recover from their significant injuries.