the Crock Pot

[cellio]

September 9 (Monday)

We stopped early last night, but we got an early start this morning so we've managed to get far enough away from Treefall. It doesn't look like anyone is following us, according to Hrolf.

Prolix has been doing some weird things yesterday and today. He's been experimenting with shape-shifting, or maybe it's just an illusion. Yesterday he sprouted a tail, and this afternoon he sprouted wings and tried to fly. It was clumsy, but he did get off the ground. (Hrolf says the joints are all wrong and so of course he can't fly well.) I wonder what's next -- antennae?

Meanwhile, Hrolf and I have been experimenting with my new ability to shock things. I can give him the ability to do it too, and he really enjoyed going hunting with this ability earlier today . He zapped a rabbit that has to weigh five times as much as he does, and he's been feasting on it ever since. He says the singed parts are still edible but he prefers his meat raw. I'll have to teach him about the redeeming qualities of ginger.

I tried to give Liandra this ability (the shocking thing, I mean, not cooking), but it didn't work. It appears that I can do it myself or give it to Hrolf, but I can't give it to anyone else.

It's been raining for most of today, and I'm sitting in one of the wagons writing this. Colm says that we'll reach Edwest Burrows tonight and we absolutely must go to the Crock Pot, a tavern he really likes. Hot food that we don't have to cook ourselves sounds like a good alternative to this rain.

I realized while writing this that it's been exactly a month since Jehan's floor fell in and changed my life. It seems like I've grown up more in this month than I had in several years before that. I guess Ferdinand was right; magic grows if you use it. I wonder if I can actually direct it; I'd like to take that missile thing I can do and maybe make bigger balls of fire or something.

September 10 (Tuesday)

What a night. I've had two long baths and thoroughly cleaned my clothes and I still feel like I've got bug goo and sewage all over me.

Ok, Colm was right; the Crock Pot has fabulous food, and the proprieters are friendly. (They're halfings, in fact.) But what is it with taverns and holes appearing in floors? I'm starting to think that taverns are bad luck or something.

So there we were, minding our own business and enjoying the company. Delroy (that's the owner) has two daughters, one of whom (Dalia) was fawning all over Kyle all evening. The folks up here had actually heard about the rat-kin back home, though they had the details wrong, and they wanted to know all about Treefall. There was a bard there named Toby who wrote a song about us. It was pretty good. (He's also a good flute player.) Mostly, we all sat around telling stories and eating and drinking.

Then the floor fell in. Well, in the kitchen, which isn't where we were. We heard a loud noise and some screams, and then these huge roaches started swarming out of the kitchen into the dining hall. (Gee, the place looked too clean for that...) We fought off a bunch of them, but before we could kill them all some of them crawled back down that hole, taking Dalia with them. Needless to say, Delroy and his wife were frantic.

We looked around the room for others who might be able to help. There was a fellow named Crate who looked like he knew what to do with a sword. I tried to get Toby, who had been telling stories about his adventuring days, but he was in a corner throwing up. He admitted that his adventuring days had been cut short. Um, right.

So what could we do? It didn't look like Dalia would be able to get away on her own, and who knows what a bunch of dog-sized roaches would want with a halfling? We grabbed armor and weapons and jumped down the hole after them.

We found ourselves in the town's sewer system. It smelled awful! Somehow, Slade was able to track Dalia anyway. We ran into lots of giant roaches. We killed them all, but they kept inflicting small bits of damage. Sometimes they seemed to be coordinating their attacks, which was pretty weird for roaches. (We figured out why later, when we found the queen.) We used up most of our healing spells and all of our potions, and we still didn't have Dalia. I felt like I only had one or two spells left in me, too.

Eventually we got to a tiny passage (single file, and the taller folks had to crouch), and Slade was sure that Dalia was down there. Naturally, there were also roaches, and they managed to do a lot of damage. Then Prolix turned himself into a roach! This confused them. (Me, too. Fortunately, I was hanging on to my spells for an emergency.)

Once we got through those roaches, we followed the passage to an opening into someone's basement. There were big roaches there (which we killed), and when we went up the steps we saw at least 20 in the kitchen. They seemed to be in some weird sort of stasis, though; they didn't bother us, so we walked past them through the other door in the room. Leaving roaches behind that could block our escape route seemed like a bad idea, but we just did not have the means to do anything about them. (We actually thought about turning back, but we were worried that if we waited until morning Dalia would be dead.)

So anyway, there we were in someone's house with a bunch of roaches. We opened one door and saw human bodies (the occupants, I presume). It looked like they were surprised when they died. We opened another door and found a bunch of roaches and what we assume was the queen. And Dalia was there, wrapped up in some sort of cocoon.

This is where we gambled our lives. We went into that room and closed the door behind us, so the other roaches in the house couldn't get in. We tried to concentrate fire on the queen, though that basically meant Prolix and me because Turok, Kyle, Liandra, and Slade got mobbed by roaches. Liandra made a flaming blade to attack with (neat trick! I wonder if I can do that). Slade got knocked out.

The queen spewed a bunch of larvae (yuck!) on Turok, and they started trying to burrow in. He kept fighting anyway; Kyle picked some off of him and after a little while Hrolf and I joined him. Turok was in really bad shape by then. I dazed the queen before she could do that again, but that was only a temporary fix.

Meanwhile, Prolix had created an illusion of a giant spider, and that was distracting the queen and some of the roaches. Liandra and I think Kyle were able to get to the queen and attack her, and she died soon after. Prolix cut Dalia out of the cocoon, and she ignored him and ran to Kyle, calling him her hero. Prolix looked so grumpy! It was hilarious.

Once the queen died the other roaches lost interest, and we were able to walk out of the house with Dalia. We went back to the tavern and told them what happened. Then Delroy drew baths for us and after that we went to sleep. Today we're going to rest, and then tomorrow we're probably going to go back down and make sure all the roaches are gone. Besides, we saw some interesting things we didn't get to investigate last night, like a door that had not been opened in a while. Who puts doors in sewer tunnels?