I talked with Valerion, Khora and Vilios about returning to the temple of the seacreatures, which we had found on our journey along the northern beach from WMC in our first adventure together, after the major had thrown us out of WMC, and we agreed to go back together, recruiting some new faces to come with us.
Joining us was the monk Oogway, whom I had travelled with in traumatising circumstances before, a half-orc cleric named Ogis and the chipper innocent kenku named Plink, whom I had also travelled with before, but along the southern beaches.
As we was gathering up to leave WMC, Valerion did not show up, perhaps he had gotten himself drunk, we spend a while searching for after half an hour, we decided to leave without him, once again electing Khora to lead our group, while I would keep watch for approaching dangers.
The first half a day of travel up north along the road and then on to the beach east was peaceful, and then we spotted a singular well standing in the plains a bit off from the beach. We investigated the well, or, Plink looked for tracks, while Khora was ritual casting a spell that would allow her to sense any magic on the well. Plink found tracks nearby that looked like dog tracks, which means it might be gnolls like we had encountered in this area before, Khora, Vilios and I, but they was not there now, and then Khora finishing her ritual and informed us that the well was magical.
Plink used another ritual to try to read some scratched and chipped etchings on the side of the well, but even with magical assistance, these writings was too ruined to comprehend, so we moved on, not wanting to risk becoming cursed or even worse faiths from interacting too much with this well.
We made camp, not far from where we had previously experienced a disturbance in the weave, and indulged ourselves on some crab meat that our foragers gathered for us and then our night was peaceful this time, except this strange pool of blood that appeared a bit off the shore, floating on top of the water, but it did not approach and seemed to pose no danger, altho we did keep an eye on it throughout the night.
In the morning, as we was waking up and getting ready to move out, we had a false alarm, as magical barrier Khora had made to sense incoming danger was triggered repeatedly by a large crab that was being washed in and out over the edge of her barrier by the tide.
We carried on our trek, and soon came within sight of the temple and once again walked the way around to get to the entrance of the temple, it appearing just as we had left it. We stayed together a bit away, while Oogway sneaked forth to gathering information in a stealthy sneaky fashion. I was almost ready to suggest to the others that we go see what was going on, when Oogway came jumping back out of a window and came over to give us an initial report: The creatures was gathered in a courtyard inside the temple around a tree that had strange blue melon like fruits on it, and upon consumption of these fruits, it appeared the seacreatures had an easier time of breathing air, perhaps these fruits was a sort of opposite to the seaweed Rael showed me a few days ago during our adventure near Ruined Oak?
Oogway had also found out that the creatures had a watertunnel leading up through one of the coffins in the main room and that seemed to be how they entered and left this temple, rather than the doors and windows.
Oogway then started sneaking along the outside walls to get a look at the backside of the temple, but he did not get that far, because suddenly, through the gaping hole in the wall that the seacreatures had made last time, one of them spotted Oogway, and we sprung into action.
The battle was fierce, not only did they outnumber us 2 to 1, but some of the small ones, the ones who was only the size of humans, rather than the size of ogres, was able to use a sort of primitive divine magic to summon tridents made out of water and light, which flowed and could attack on their own, a sort of spiritual weapon spell, and with 3 of these tridents, one of the massive ogre sized seacreatures and a dozen of the smaller ones, we struggled hard to stay on our feet, with Vilios and Ogis taking up our frontline, they took a very heavy beating, and Ogis was knocked prone once and I swear that one hit delivered to Vilios almost looked like it would been fatal, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet and keep fighting, and we emerged victorious.
Then we searched them, finding two strange red potions that turned out ot be healing potions, and a pile of copper, silver and gold pieces and took a rest, while Khora went in and scouted some more of the temple.
She returned and informed us that she found and closed the water tunnel that Oogway had told us about earlier and found only dust in one of the other coffins out of the three stone coffins in that room. She had also been able to determine that the blue melon bearing tree was magical.
We went back inside, as we had finished our rest, and looked at the tree and its fruits, and then Vilios attempted to eat one of the fruits and immediately started sufficating. Panick broke out and we hurried Vilios to come with us to the watertunnel, under the theory that maybe he needed to breath water now rather than air, and thats why he was sufficating.
We struggled, but neither I, nor Oogway nor Plink was able to push the watertunnel lid off again, and in his sufficating panick, struggling for air more and more for each second, Vilios ran to the collapse wall by the cliff and jumped out towards the ocean waters 150 feet below. He died on impact, further crushed and smashed bloody by rocks hidden beneath the water surface from the look at things.
Feeling very upset and with the mood of our earlier victory having left us, we searched the rest of the temple, finding just a bit of gold in the last coffin, along with scrampled mess and ruined furniture and rotten food in the rest of the location, and we harvested some of the strange blue fruit and put into Khora’s magical bag of holding.
We did find out that the temple used to belong to the Church of Umberlee, so Umberlee must be the diety with the black opal with crushing waves symbol we found above the front doors last time
Then we headed out, and back to WMC, after a brief attempt at collecting Vilios’s body, but we couldn’t manage due to the tide and rocks.
Our trip back to the WMC was quite uneventful, only noteworthy thing was a strange green glowing fungus that Khora found during her watch on our one nights of rest on the way home.