"Wait, I still don't understand why we can't just remove the Eye? Why replace it?"
The Triad
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"Chasme..." He hisses through teeth gritted against the pain. "They are... giant demonic flies with the faces of men. Their drone causes one to fall unconsciousness."
Nym's next words are barely heard. "They are but one more thing to hate about this place..."
The dark elf looks up at Alalla. "I know not the answer to your question, but I would guess that Lady Lolth does not wish to upset the... the beast."
She returns to Erevain and puts a gauntleted hand against his face. She is the practical sort, and finds instructions and cautions should she die coming to her lips. "Tell Shelur I loved her. Let my people know it was for them. Don't mourn me too much." But Erevain will be unsettled by such things, and he already knows.
"Stand strong, sharuhk," Al tells him in Orcish. "I'll try not to be too long." She kisses him, then prepares for the descent.
He steps up to the edge and picks up a rock. He touches it with a glowing finger, and the small stone begins to shine brightly with Ilmater's radiance.
"We'll drop this, then we'll follow." He then grins wolfishly. "Who's ready to jump?"
Fenthick casts Freedom of Movement on Al, Zen, and Halla.
The target can also spend 5 feet of movement to automatically escape from nonmagical restraints, such as manacles or a creature that has it grappled. Finally, being underwater imposes no penalties on the target's movement or attacks.
It immediately feels as though they have entered another world.
To their own eyes they seem almost to be staying still in midair as a kaleidoscope of light and shadow whirls by them almost too fast to make note of. Twisted arachnid forms hiss, fleeing the light of Zenithral’s stone. As the demonic spiders skitter along webbed strands to their dark holes, the companions catch glimpses of humanoid teeth dripping inky, black venom.
There are corpses as well. Desiccated and dry, they hang here and there from webs. In one nightmarish flash, Alalla thinks she sees Erevain’s face among the dead, withered and mummified as she once saw it in the tunnels beneath the Spine of the World. But no, they are but his kin, elves both fair and dark consigned to death in this pit. From the shriveled mouths gaping in silent, forever-long screams, it is enough to wonder if their spirits linger, unable to escape this dark place.
A practically solid wall of thick webbing suddenly rushes up to meet them, anchored firmly about the sides of the pit. The lit stone falls straight through the webs, and the heroes are left in darkness as they hit the sticky mass. With their light source gone, they can hear scuttling and hissing as spider-things leave their hiding places. From above and below, from every side comes a tide of bulbous bodies with too many legs and too-human teeth.
Zenithral rolls to one side, magically unaffected by the webs, and slices a hole in the webbed stuff with his shortsword, ready to slip through and continue the fall. Alalla, similarly warded, starts to follow suit when she notices Halla. The druid struggles for breath, a strand of webbing wrapped around her throat. The strand suddenly goes taut, and Halla is nearly dragged into one of the many holes that line the sides of the pit. A flash of bright flame holds the encroaching demon spiders back, and then Alalla’s burning sword shears through web snaring Halla. With the druid free, the group makes their way through the hole Zenithral cut, and they continue their fall just before the monstrous arachnids reach them.
But now the only light is the flickering fire from Alalla’s enchanted longsword. Far below, Zenithral’s lit stone has fallen out of sight. The whirling, gut-wrenching fall continues, but this time all the more disorienting for not having a light source ahead of the group. Before Zenithral can magically light up another object, the walls around them abruptly vanish, and the companions feel that they are falling through a much larger space than the pit.
Throughout the fall, just in case, Zenithral has kept track of the passing time. With the sudden change in surroundings and knowing that they have been falling for nearly two minutes (not counting their brief time caught by webbing), he casts his feather fall spell. Immediately the three heroes’ fall is slowed to a much more comfortable descent. As the wind in their ears dies, however, they become aware of another sound… an deafeningly loud drone, as if from hundreds of thousands of cicadas. The three companions feel their senses dulled as the drone reverberates uncomfortably through their minds, and realize, looking at one another, that they can’t hear anything else, not even the speech of their friends.
A few moments later the floor rises up to greet them. Well, perhaps not quite the floor. It seems to be a large island of rough stone perhaps 80 feet in diameter, the edges sloping and then dropping away to even lower depths. They land on uneven footing, but can’t help but feel some relief and no longer falling. However, they wonder when the last time, if ever, a living mortal set foot in this place hidden away by the Spider Queen.
Rolls
Dex saves DC 15 (Zen, Al, Halla) - (1d20+4, 1d20+2, 1d20+2)
1d20+4 : (16) + 4 = 20
1d20+2 : (20) + 2 = 22
1d20+2 : (1) + 2 = 3
The woman locks gaze with Zenithral, eyes wide. This time he can hear her words. They sound shaky even in his mind. "We have not yet reached the ground."
Just then, the stony earth beneath their feet shifts. The motion is somehow both small and huge; small in that it's only a negligible angle, but huge in that it's the entire plateau. As if the top of the thing were made of one enormous inverted saucer, the whole floor tilts slightly to one side.
The buzzing seems to grow louder, if possible, and the ground underfoot stills once more.
In the air, he draws an arrow pointing down, accompanied by the text for both Alalla and Halla to see The Beast?
She nods in response, then gestures to the group before pointing down off the 'plateau' with a questioning look.
She picks her way over to the edge Alalla indicated. She glances over the lip, then ducks back quickly. She gestures for the others to look, and down some 80 feet they see the glow of Zenithral's lit stone. By its light the three companions can see that the floor below this plateau is covered in giant demonic flies. The chasme crawl under and over each other, their insectoid wings constantly clacking together to produce that awful drone. None of them seem to fly more than a quick jump through the air to reach a more favorable position in the mass.
What's more, the companions can tell that the edge they stand on is a severe overhang. With Zenithral and Alalla's darkvision they can see a broad pillar off to one side underneath the plateau. It looks to be made of scaly organic material. The pillar's far end extends all the way down to the ground, and the near end comes up somewhere outside their view, presumably all the way up to the plateau's underside.
Halla pulls back, and with Zenithral's magical help explains her thoughts. "Could the Beast perhaps be a giant turtle? This," she taps the 'ground' lightly with her staff, "could be the shell. And the pillar we saw, 'tis possibly a leg." She shakes her head ruefully. "But my vision is not so good down here. I could perhaps become an owl or a bat and fly around to have a look, but... with unknown dangers about, I would prefer to save my shapeshifting magic for later."
With the terrible buzz ringing in their ears, they don’t notice the approaching chasme demons until nearly too late. Three of the repulsive monsters light on Ityak-Ortheel’s back. They close in on Alalla, her sword’s flames reflected in their faceted eyes. This close, their clacking drone is overwhelming. Vaguely human mouths open wide, and a long needle-like proboscis extends from each. The demons attack!
Rolls
Mystery Roll - (1d20)
(1) = 1