Deadly Fog

It took five days for the party to completely recover from their sanity damage and regain some control over their minds.  Madnesses were pushed to the background or in some cases removed completely.  Discussion continued to ensue about what route to take, should they reenter the city or just leave and let everything be.

Erevel was adamant about heading back into the city.  She wanted so badly to get Lowls and maybe he was still here.  Even so his foul plan caused her to choke on her food.  No way could Golarion be drawn anywhere near more Flying Polyps or worse.

Ciprian found two Rituals marked in the large Tomb, Beckon the Stars to prime the Star Stelae and Path to the Black Stars to journey to Carcosa.  He felt that if he memorized the Rituals, not like a spell memorization, neither he nor Lowls would need to have the Necromonicon to cast the Rituals.  He was wondering why Lowls had left it in the camp.

Lowls notes gave the location of the other two Star Stelae, one in the fallen building area near the lake, which he named the Snarl and the last in a round building at the eastern end of Neruzavin.  The Snarl seemed to be the same area where Upianshe's sword was supposed to be.  So the party finally agreed to head toward the lakeshore and then move east toward the Snarl.

So early in the morning the group moved up toward the lake outside of the city limits.  Then at the lake they turned eastward and found themselves in the maze of "streets" and "alleys" between the strangely shaped buildings.  The wind still whistled through whole area seeming to come from below.  The buildings mostly had no entrances and the ones that did had the haphazard hallways leading nowhere.  As the party was getting use to the city, they were no feeling shaken any longer.

A new development was ominous, oddly moving cloud of in the distance. The cloud moved oddly with multitude twists and undulates with unholy intelligence, dipping below the skyline before emerging elsewhere in the city, then breaking apart into thousands of "birds" spelling out strange symbols in their flight.

As the party moved toward the jumbled area they saw that it was a chaotic logjam of obliterated buildings and stone skyscrapers.  The pile looked very old but little altered other than from weathering. There seemed to be a network of irregular spaces between fallen buildings but the party would have to scale the toppled stone structures, maybe to a height of seventy or eighty feet above street level.

As the party was sighting the Snarl in a rather open space a cloying green mist filled with horrid shapes forming within, oozed out from between two buildings.  The green mist pulsed sporadically and with seeming voracity.

A battle began as Black Tentacles was cast to catch the heroes from an undead tendrilled female.  A pair of tendrilled rouges moved out to attack Gavril and Ursina and then they retreated.  The fog moved over Erevel, Gavril and Ursina.  Ursina and Gavril found themselves staggered by the monstrous ooze.  Armania let loose a fireball, Ursina ducked out of the fog as did Gavril.  Paullus let loose arrows at the fog as Ciprian stated that it was a Hungry Fog that was immune to sonic and had resistance to cold.  The other creatures were the usual undead that the party had fought previously.  He then began a Bardic Performance and moved to attack the oracle.

As the battle continued the group found that it was easy to hit the enemy but the fog seemed to heal them up and the rogues appeared to have evasion as they also dodged a chain lightning spell.  Erevel kept attacking the fog and Ursina found herself flanked and the pair had a special ability that allowed an immediate attack on a miss.  Erevel destroyed the fog just about the time Ursina hit the dirt and was bleeding.  Gavril killed off a rogue as he and Erevel then saw the spores escape.  Armania fired magic missiles into the fray and Ciprian kept attacking the Oracle who also died with a burst of spores.  Paullus was firing arrows continuously and the rogues were easier to kill after they were no longer being healed.  The last two died also bursting open as Gavril poured a potion of healing down Ursina's throat and brought her conscious.

The party surveyed the damage but also saw the dark cloud of angry birds moving closer to their position.

DM's Notes: The party earned 10,667 XP for the night and now have 399,388 XP with another 45,612 needed for 14th level.