Nell Meets Grell

“Nell Meets Grell”
Rise of the Runelords episode
Episode no.	Episode 18
Date	2008
Game Master	Abbe
Characters	Dorothea Honeypot Nathaniel Nell Velicia
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "Bruthazmus" "Nualia"
Rise of the Runelords chapter list

In this chapter Nell tries to scout ahead but gets into trouble.

Nell Meets Grell

Honeypot was quite shook up after the last fight and didn't really want to carry on, but after being encouraged by us others she agreed to follow close behind as we continued on.

We went to check the doors leading from the room and the stairs Bruthazmus had been heading for. The first door led to a room that looked like where you keep chickens. Someone said that that's how goblins breed their children. The stairs led up. At the end there was a door but it was blocked from the other side. Dorothea told us using message, that there was someone at the stairs we had blocked and we told her that it was us.

She unblocked the door and came down the stairs to join us. Then followed a short lesson in tactics where Nathaniel draw from his experience from the Sandpoint militia and told us to work better together. I don't know much about that stuff but I will try to keep it in mind.

We opened another door and it turned out to be a corridor leading to several doors looking like living quarters. As the others had heard of my experience in searching rooms I opened the doors and took the first peak in, making sure they were empty before entering. I also know a thing or two of where people might hide things. The first room turned out to be quite properly ordered but had some papers lying around. I guessed that it belonged to Tsuto. A quick glance at the papers told me I was right and it was about his plans to extort his father. The next room was messier and I knew it would be Oriks. The clothes thrown about confirmed that it belonged to a man of his size at least. We collected his things into a sack and continued to the next room. It looked to be unoccupied at a first, but a closer look revealed a very neatly packed chest under the well made bed. In it were a womans clothes matching Lyrie. We packed those too. I tried to keep them in as good order as I could. The last room was in less order and had almost no things in it. Some strands of hair in the bed made me sure that Bruthazmus lived there.

The last room was at the end of the corridor and was bigger than the others. It contained a chair, a desk and a very big bed with black satin sheets. I immediately tried to find out how it would feel to lay on those. It felt great! I rolled around some and searched the bed for any things that might be hidden in it. We didn't find out anything of note in the room, except the sheets and that the bed could be dismantled.

We went back and took the last door we hadn't checked and went down another corridor. I sneaked ahead to scout in advance. It was a storage room with some crates and a lot of garbage that had been recovered by the goblins. I could hear the sound of the sea outside from a tunnel leading further ahead. I whispered to the others and we continued. It lead to a cave with an opening out to sea which was covered by ivy. Once the rock had been smoothed by flowing water, but it had been a long time ago. I sneaked toward the opening when suddenly tentacles reached down from the roof and grabbed me.

The monstrous grell.

I reacted quickly and slid out of the grip and looked up. There, near the ceiling hung a strange and unnatural creature looking like a brain with tentacles and a beak. I retreated carefully away from it, but it reached after me again with it's long tentacles. I couldn't avoid it and the tentacle grabbed me and squeezed me so hard I coughed up blood. Then it pulled me up to it's mouth and bit me leaving a deep wound and a poison that dazed me. I could hardly breathe as the tentacles squeezed me harder and harder. I still managed to wiggle around enough for it to miss me with another attack with the beak and another tentacle. I can vaguely remember Honeypot healing me some but finally I snapped out of the daze. Then Nathaniel cut straight through the tentacle holding me, leaving it twisting on the floor, before dying. I had no time to move or hide before another tentacle grabbed me once more, but now Nathaniel struck it so hard that it was forced back and floated away. I held on for dear life and the monster once more lost it's grip on me. I moved to a safe distance from it behind Nathaniel and threw my trusty dagger straight into the big brain wounding it severely. Now Velicia used her thundering storm spell and blew the monster out the opening. Nathaniel drew his pistol and with a deafening roar he fired at it. Dorothea fired her usual strange magical effects at it. From the damage it took from our onslaught it slowly fell down to the surface, still being the target of Dorothea's strange magic. It splashed into the surface and I thought I saw a shadow below the surface. Suddenly the awful grell was gone as if some unknown sea monster swallowed it whole and disappeared.

This was the worst combat I've ever been in. I was very beat up and spat blood. It certainly is much safer to sneak around in the back and throw a dagger from hiding, than sneaking around ahead of the others.

While I mostly took it easy and made sure never to be far behind Nathaniel, we continued to a room beyond the lair of the grell. There were remains of the grells earlier victims. There we found some magical things, a staff and some boots. We had now looked through the entire underground complex. We knew Nualia should be down there somewhere, but we had looked in every room, so we started to search the place more carefully. After a couple of hours we finally found a secret door in the room Orik and Lyrie had barricaded themselves. It lead to stairs leading down. Meanwhile we made a meal of some of the rabbits we found in the cages upstairs. It was getting late and we decided to head back to Sandpoint before night.

When we left Nathaniel rode Shadowmist and Honeypot used some strange magic to transformed into a wolf. I walked beside Nathaniel, who at least took some of our baggage on the big warhorse.