Rivenhold Campaign: Rising Tide

Aziz and Selena lay in their bedding beside the fire, Loughlan was on watch; Thorn sat beside him and stared into the darkness of the cavern. Two days travel and a further day of clearing out this cavern system of Goblins had left them too tired to travel back to Mayhill immediately. This probably saved them. A complete lack of any golden Dwarven armour, said by a local merchant to be in the hands of the Goblins, had dampened their spirits. Suddenly Thorn growled, something was moving in the dark, something had entered the caves. Loughlan heard it then himself, the sound of guttural, broken Elven, he only barely recognised it.

He woke the others, who were to their feet and armed in seconds. They peered into the tunnel that lead to their camp site. Selena recognised some of the speech, it was Pale Elvish, a group of Elves, cavern dwellers, from far lands. Still it did not seem like the words were right somehow, but she couldn't be sure. Between the grunts and speech of the Elves they heard the sounds of men begging, two maybe, begging for their lives.

Aziz took the initiative and transformed himself in a small wave of constriction that rose from his feet until he was but a small serpent, a milk snake of the Sapphire Isles.  He slithered his way down the tunnel to the crossroads, there he found a grim sight, Pale Elves, naked and covered in some sort of ugly growths. They were feasting upon what was left of two guards, employees of the local Goldenroot merchants in Mayhill. Sharp, sharklike teeth crunched on bone and tore through soft flesh. Aziz made his way back, relating what he had seen to his companions.

Selena now took the lead, moving quietly and carefully through the shadows of the tunnels until she was in striking distance. Loughlan stood further down the tunnel training two arrows upon the crouched forms of the Pale Elves. Selena struck, diving forward and plunging her rapier into the base of an Elven skull. The Elf slumped forward to the floor, Selena had slipped back into the shadows unseen in her grace and swiftness. The Elves cast about for their attacker, spotting Loughlan as he loosed the pair of arrows into the back of another Elf.

The Elves charged forward, exposing the growths, the outcroppings of yellowed fungus the marked their forms. Aziz burst into a spring, shifting into the form of a great Gorilla as he grabbed one of the Elves by the head and smashed him it into the wall. Their eyes, their eyes were gone, replaced by a cluster of fungi and mould. The final three Elves were dispatched, Aziz's great strength smashing the twisted Elves as Selena darted in and out of their view, taking what she could and felling another Elf.

After searching the bodies of the fallen guards, relieving them of their coin and seeing the spread of fungal tendrils from their bodies, they made their way to the cavern mouth. Selena pulled herself free of the cavern first, looking out across the outcropping in which the caverns were set. Across the marsh ran groups of the twisted, fungus infected Elves, five or six to each and a count of twenty groups at a glance. They ate almost everything in their path, tree, root and man. Some animal or men were being dragged away, to some unknown fate.

A tide was rising.