Kay’s Journal – 12/11/2020
• 845 XP
• 600 GP worth of assorted creature bits
• 4 pints hot blood
• 8 spinal discs
We spent the night at the mayor’s lake house. In the morning, we all felt more powerful. Yay!
We could also hear the snow falling heavily outside. Time to get going on to the lake, if we were going to do it.
Fathom had checked the dagger multiple times through the night, and it stayed pretty steady. It also seemed to be pointing the same direction in the morning. As soon as Lyndon showed up with the boat, off we went. Lyndon brought along some tools, oars, and such.
Fathom checks the dagger again, and it pointed a slightly different direction, but not by much. She tried putting it on the bottom of the boat where it can turn freely to see if that still worked, and it did. That should make things easier. She tied it to the end of her staff so it could hang and swing freely, and we tell Lyndon to follow the dagger.
It keeps snowing, and after a while the wind picked up. Yuck. Maybe we can get a quest somewhere in the south next time. Maybe some place with a beach. And Mai Tais.
As a storm blows in, the dagger starts to move. It whipped around to a different direction, and I saw a shadow in the water going the direction the dagger was pointing.
Gooseneck greased himself up and tied a rope around his waist, preparing to dive into the water. Then the dagger moved again. We kept following it. I asked Lyndon if he had any harpoons, and he said they don’t fish anything here that’s big enough to need a harpoon, but there is some spear fishing.
Lyndon tells us we are heading toward the ice push, where a big chunk of ice floats in the lake. We got to the edge of the glacier, and decided to continue on foot from there.
We used a rope to tie us all together as we forged ahead. Abran hears a cracking sound from underneath us – yay. That bodes well. He looks for a cave or something. No dice there, but he does notice that it looks like we are going across super smooth, clear ice, with powered snow on top. If we move the snow, we can see through the ice to the water below, though it’s dark.
CornCob thinks the clear ice is unnatural. Pujol tries to look into the water with his dark vision, and sees a massive shadow move past us. Ice starts cracking around us, and a huge bug erupts through the ice in front of us.
Fathom’s dagger points right at the beast. Well, at least we don’t have to go diving.
CornCob casts a bolt at the creature, and hits it. Abran shoots an arrow at it, but it bounces – the thing has a pretty tough hide. Gooseneck rages and rushes at it. His lightning goes off, and then he swings at it with his axe, and hits! The monster’s blood spurts out, hits Gooseneck, and burns him. Even I can feel the head from it, and I’m standing a few feet away. The monster bites at Gooseneck.
Pujol notices the creature’s skin is pulling away, like a snake molting. Gross, but also…it this just a young one? Oh, dear. Guess we better keep an eye out for Mom.
The creature chomps on Gooseneck pretty hard. Pujol shoots at it with his crossbow, and Fathom stabs at it with the dagger. I run up and stab it through the tail with my rapier, trying to pin it up here, above the ice. That works, yay! But I also get splashed with the blood, and burned. Boo!
There’s more attacking back and forth, until finally Gooseneck falls. The monster grabs him in its maw, and goes to dive back under the ice. Considering we’re all still tied together, this is bad. It manages to pull itself free from my rapier (Boo!), but hurts itself pretty badly in the process (Yay!). Corncob gets splashed with the blood, and the rest of us are holding on to try to stay above the ice.
Pujol cuts himself free of the rope, and shoots into the hole the monster dove into. I grab my rapier, which is still stuck in the ice, to try to help anchor us up here. CornCob, Abran, and Fathom all attack it again, and that seems to finally do it in. It goes limp, and stops trying to pull us under.
We pull the creature, and Gooseneck, back up out of the water. I stab the creature again to make sure it’s dead – it is, but the blood is still hot enough to burn. CornCob heals Gooseneck, who’s in a bad way.
We drag the carcass back to the boat, hoping it will cool down on the way. It doesn’t. We tied a blade to a staff, so we can cut into it without getting burnt. Fathom reaches in and grabs the orb from the innards.
Lyndon is kinda freaked out by all this. I can’t say as I blame him.
We drag the carcass back to the house. Fathom and Pujol work on draining and saving some of the blood, and get four pints of the stuff in clay pots. Gooseneck takes some bones and chitinous plates from it, as well as 8 undamaged spinal discs. Pujol finds various other parts that all together would be worth about 600 GP, to the right buyer.
Fathom inspects the orb. It’s strongly magical, but you have to be able to see the thing to notice it.
We’re supposed to take this thing to a port town to the north from here. We also remembered that part of the reason for this trip was that some of these towns were supposed to be experiencing difficulties that we might be able to help with. We ask Lyndon, and he says he’s heard some kind of creature is stalking the town on Lake Acatia. We’ll stop there on our way north.
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