Heavy Metal: Flesh For The Spider Queen Part 8: Watching The World Die

NOVEMBER 7, 2016 / DREADPIRATESITE

As Manliness decides to take quick rest on the officers bed Flutterbudgets, the Animal, Psycho Helmet, Larala, and Granitos decide to explore the rest of the barracks. They discover the door to the officers quarters has been webbed up which Pyscho manages to get rid of with his telekinesis. They check the barracks searching for treasure and discover the mage barrack door as well as their spellbooks are trapped with fire spells. Bypassing the trap Flutterbudgets decides to fly pass the door trap and ritually cast dispel magic on one of the books to have access to spellguard magic.

While Flutterbudgets ritually cast the spell, Pyscho literally bumped into a mysterious stranger. As a metal head, I felt a little more rock influence should be in this game. So as such Dio himself in all his glory has stepped into the world of Toril. The Man On The Silver Mountain has observed the hordes of zombies invading the world and in particular his castle and has been conducting his own investigation into the Underdark and eventually learning of the parties efforts via scrying. As an epic level bard, fighter, sorcerer Dio has offered to lend his hand to the party if they need it and giving them a little more knowledge about Queen T'saran's plans in particular her constructing the Undying Temple in Maerymida. As part of her Great Revenance spell the Undying Temple functions as an interdimensional fortress which Kiranselee could eventually use to walk on this plane of existence. Flutterbudgets was very distrustful of this mysterious stranger who had been scrying on them. Regardless of that Dio was committed to help them and gave Psycho Helmet a magical crystal heart, the Sacred Heart, that he could use to save the party in an emergency by "calling out to the dragon". As suddenly as he appeared, Dio vanished.

Flutterbudgets then found another barracks room with 4 sleeping/meditating drow warriors in there. They didn't even have a chance as Flutterbudgets blasted them with a fireball. An acid arrow from him, Animal's savage werewolf form, Granitos strength sapping tentacles, and a throat slit from Larala finished the job the fire ball started.

Having explored the entire barracks and having killed every soldier they found there the party attempted to leave and discovered a massive red basilisk had wandered in and was chewing on the bodies of the Quth-Maren. Flutterbudgets as he usual does instantly fell in love with the giant feral hell dinosaur and proceeded to try and make it his pet. The rest of the party deeming him insane decided to sneak past it while he attempted to befriend it. He did manage to befriend the creature by offering it his rations and it sate next to him and allowed him to pet him. He then tried to hug it and convince it join their quest at which point it farted and went to sleep. The Animal had to drag Flutterbudgets away from the basilisk who wanted to spend all day with the dinosaur instead of saving the world and whatever.

They left the barracks cave and explored the other caves connected to the spider's web. They found an old store room overrun with spiders and for whatever reason chose not explore it. For some reason the spiders were not worthy of being Flutterbudgets new best friends .

Making their way across the web they saw a strange man dressed like an Egyptian pharaoh standing on the webs staring upward. Flutterbudgets called out to him and he walked to them and explained that he has come here to watch this world die. This mysterious seemingly all knowing individual who identifies himself as Randal Flag, is excited the ramifications of Irae T'saran's Great Revenance spell and is apparently intimately knowledgeable of the party and the role they play in it. Pyscho Helmet attempted to probe the man's mind and was overwhelmed by horrific nightmarish images nearly losing his sanity. The probe also enabled him to see the man for his true monsterous form. Regardless the creature offered to help the party, offering Flutterbudgets a nightmarish but powerful sword to aid him in his quest before vanishing. The party knows this mysterious entity is now watching them and a new more malevolent entity has a vested interested in the fate of Toril. As for the true identity of this man, well, naturally he's my favorite Lovecraft villain who I talked about a couple of posts ago. The Crawling Chaos has entered the world of Dungeons And Dragons Heavy Metal!

Nytharlohotep

The Crawling Chaos

The party then made it to a cave which had been converted into a bizaar by the drow. There they found duergar merchants with their wares packed onto huge predatory pack lizards, haggling with mind flayers. Some kuo taos were there collecting supplies and several drow civillians were attempting to live their lives admist the undead filled chaos that it had recently become. A few drow soldiers were there as well but had no idea who the party was or that they had depopulated the drow base north of them. Flutterbudgets attempted to do some shopping with the duergar merchants in order to by some food. However he soon discovered they were trying to over charge him do to his obvious affiliation with surface dwellers and for appearing to be a surface dweller himself. The shopping attempt ended in curse words and hurt feelings but no actual violence so I'm calling it a success.

Flutterbudgets consults Larala for advice. Based on her advice they have decided they can either take one of the side caves to Maerymida and stop Irae T'saran or they could head to the main city of Szith Morcane and paint the cave walls read with the blood of Kiranselee worshippers and zombies. Either solution would make Larala happy. It seems like the party is leaning towards heading to Maerymida and taking down Irae T'saran either meaning they will save the world from zombies or they will get kidnapped and made into drow sex slaves. So it's win win!

That's all for this week. Tune in next week for the continued adventures of the Heavy Metal heroes. The clock is ticking for them to stop Irae's zombie hordes. But with Nytharlohotep entering the fray how much more dire is the situation? What are depths and horrors that the Great Revenance spell can release? And can the heroes stop it with their minds and humanity intact or will they join the hordes of the ravenous dead?

See you in one week to find out! Rock On! Don't look to the edge of Rainbows! Don't sleep anymore! Or you'll Dream Evil!

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Edward "Dreadpirate" Peeler

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