It was a lovely early spring day when the Hand set out from Zhuran, the sixth such day in a row the region had enjoyed. But pleasant as that was after the harsh winter, the resultant thawing had left the kingdom’s roads a muddy, gluey mess. The main road south was no exception, and they made poor time as a result – despite setting out an hour before noon, it was well after dark before the group arrived in the town of Ondazel, 25 km away.

Dor Ondazel was the keep long charged with guarding the southern approaches to the capital, and possessed of some of the best-maintained fortifications in the kingdom. For three years prior to his coup, it had been held by Crown Prince Laravad as Constable, a post his father had hoped would steady and calm his increasingly wild and erratic son. But Laravad had become, if anything, even more unstable, eventually using the keep as the focal point of his plot against his father, replacing the veteran soldiers of its garrison with his own creatures.

Now the keep was back in King Balen’s hands, the traitorous younger knights and mercenary soldiers rooted out and a new Constable assigned to oversee the rebuilding of the garrison. Ser Barot Atlar, a Knight of Tanar and married to a distant cousin of the king, greeted the Hand with courtesy and a hot meal. He had remained loyal to the king during the usurpation, leading a group of men and women in a guerrilla campaign from the nearby Verduth Woods. During the meal he was happy to tell his guests all he knew of the area and of the former prince’s infamous hunting lodge.

“Hart’s Lodge was by far Laravad’s favorite place,” he said as a servant passed around the table pouring the port that ended the meal. “He visited it every month for years, in hunting season or out… for all his passion for the hunt, it was passing strange, I always thought. Even as his madness grew, and his plots were set in motion, he always found time to visit for at least a day or two, and often held meetings there with his chief lieutenants.

“In fact, I and my little band of merry loyalists had some thought of ambushing and seizing the traitor on one of these visits – they were almost like clockwork, which made the prospect very tempting. But once his coup had succeeded, he never travelled without a large and well-armed party of his mercenaries and suborned knights around him. So close to the edges of the Porgos Marsh there is little high land or natural ambush points, and the one attempt we made proved futile when the usurper’s party took an unexpected detour… almost as if they anticipated us.

“Well, we never had a chance to make a second attempt, thanks to your timely intervention this past Kristala Va,” he raised his glass in salute. “Since then, the lodge has remained empty and abandoned… I can’t imagine His Majesty, nor the Crown Princess, has any desire to make use of the place, and I suspect it will be allowed to fall into ruin. A pity for the nearby village that supported it, of course, but there’s little help for it. Frankly, that’s probably where this talk of “disappearances” comes from – folks simply recognizing the inevitable and moving on to greener pastures. The kingdom is still in such a roil, it’s a good time to make such changes I should think!”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The next morning the Hand, although having less distance to travel, nevertheless set out at an early hour, after a hearty breakfast served up by Ser Barot’s servants. By early afternoon they reached the small village that took it’s name from the royal hunting lodge, which itself lay a further two kilometers into the forest. Almost immediately it was obvious that something was terribly wrong.

The village consisted of more than 30 buildings, mostly homes, several with business occupying the lower floor. Apple trees abounded, just beginning to bud, and it should have been a charming scene. But, while smoke drifted lazily up into the pale blue sky from many chimneys, the streets seemed abandoned. No one could be seen moving outside, no one gathered at the well in the center of the village, and no one worked the small garden plots or grazing pastures nearby. And something else… it took a moment before they realized that the usual cacophony of bird sounds, ever-present in the countryside, was entirely missing.

The uncanny feeling was only deepened when the group, entering the village proper, was assaulted by the stomach-turning stench of rotting flesh. The sudden fear that the villagers had all been murdered was eased, if not completely erased, by the sight of mutilated and gore-covered corpses of sheep and pigs all around – in pens and yards, some in the very streets. Covering their mouths and noses with scarves or handkerchiefs, they paused in the village common, near the common well, to ponder their next move.

Furtive eyes peered out at them from between slats of closed shutters in the upper windows of a few houses, and eventually Vulk sent Jeb to go knock on the door of one such. His first knock elicited no response from within. He knocked again, more forcefully, and called out “Halloo the house! Is any one home? We are–”

“Go away!” screamed a frightened male voice suddenly. “Leave us alone, for the love of Alea!”

“Please, don’t hurt our children!” sobbed another voice, female, followed by the muffled crying of at least a couple of children. Jeb was taken aback by this response, and took several involuntary steps back, looking over at Vulk in puzzlement.

Not inclined to force their way into the obviously terrified peasant’s home, Mariala instead reached out with her arcane senses, heightened by casting Deana’s Perception. She almost reeled from the resulting wash of horror, fear and overwhelming terror that flowed over her. Staggering back a step herself, she quickly ended the spell.

“Dear Shala, these people are deeply, deeply afraid,” she told the others, rubbing her temples. “It’s not clear what has traumatized them so… not exactly… but clearly our presence is exacerbating it.”

The party decided to head the rest of the way through the settlement, to see if they could find anyone out or at least figure out which home was the village reeve’s, the man who’d sent the requests for help. As they left the common and turned south on the largest of the village’s five roads, they finally caught their first sight of someone actually out-of-doors.

At the end of the road a man had his back to them, apparently intent on carving something into the wall of one of the larger houses in the settlement. A common peasant by his clothes, the man seemed oblivious to their approach, muttering unintelligibly to himself, until they were about 5 meters away. Devrik cleared his throat to speak, and the man whirled around with a snarl. Everyone froze in horror.

The left side of the man’s face was a pustulant mass of slimy green scar tissue, out of which erupted half a dozen writhing tentacles of various sizes. His left eye was missing, the socket filled with a gelatinous blue substance,  and within its depths a shadowy shape appeared to be… swimming. But more ghastly than his face was his right arm. The hand had been severed and the flesh of the forearm stripped entirely away, its bones sharpened into vicious double points. Bloody rags encircled the upper arm, where the flesh remained, and the smell of putrefaction was strong.

He appeared to have been using the sharpened bone ends to carve mysterious glyphs into the plaster wall of the house.

His one good eye glared at them, ringed in bloodshot white, the pupil fully dilated. Movements jerky, almost spastic, he lunged forward, bone arm extended, shrieking in a voice like finger nails on slate “Sacrifices for the Dol’Gurthog!”

Devrik drew his battlesword, Erol and Toran drew arrow and bolt, Korwin reached for his cutlass, and the others began to prepare spells – but it was Vulk who acted first. Leveling his staff at the lumbering figure he spoke a low word. The green resin ovoid at its head flared and glowing white strands of writhing energy erupted from it.

The Weaver’s Web spell engulfed the gibbering creature (Vulk could hardly think of it as a man), the countless ends of its milky strands attaching to the walls of the house. In seconds the man was ensnared in a glowing web of energy, immobilized completely, despite his thrashing and shrieking, in the “L” formed by the two wings of the house.

The Hand stared at the struggling thing and at one another. For a moment, no one spoke. Even the strongest of them felt a queasy, unpleasant roiling in the gut and the shivering goose-flesh of fear on their skin.

“I don’t recognize this script,” Mariala said at last, trying to shake off the feeling of creeping dread that was nibbling at the edges of her mind. Keeping a safe distance from the ensnared… individual… she peered at his unfinished carving.

“Maybe…” she cast a spell of understanding, but while the sounds the symbols represented swam clear to her mind’s ear, no meaning followed. Gibberish it might be, but her feeling of unease grew stronger the more she studied the jagged symbols… Erol, trying his own arcane methods of translation, had the same result. They both desisted quickly, looking at one another in consternation.

As they tried to explain to the others what they’d felt there came a series of answering calls to their prisoner’s continuing shrieks. The responding cries came from the woods beyond the village, and in moments several more cultists were rushing at the group from three directions.

Vulk immediately slipped into his link with Cherdon, the falcon already aloft and surveying the scene from above.  His attention was immediately drawn to the nearest threat, two men to the west moving from the woods into the narrow lane between two houses.

One man was equally as disfigured and brutalized as their first acquaintance, if in a different fashion – while he had his hand, the flesh on all his fingers had been stripped away and the bones sharpened to lethal claws. He had a chain around his neck, the other end of which was looped around the wrist of the other man. This fellow was somewhat better dressed, in robes of dark red and brown – although they were filthy with dirt and dried gore. There was no way to tell if his face, too, was disfigured, as it was covered by a crudely carved and painted frog mask. A necklace made of frog skeletons haphazardly woven together rattled at his neck, and the hand not holding the chain/leash appeared to be a single, massive tentacle.

“Therok!” Vulk called urgently but quietly to his barbarian follower. “Go up over that roof and come down on the other side… two of these… men… are moving up between the houses. Get behind them and attack!”

The Firilani warrior nodded his acknowledgment, and with feline grace leapt atop the stack of barrels against the side of the house, and from there to the roof. In a moment he had scrambled up the shakes and vanished beyond the peak.

Erol, meanwhile, had moved to engage the first of the new arrivals as they stepped into the road – another disfigured, tentacle-faced monstrosity brandishing a flail. The weapon was made of bone and wood, its head a small human skull and the leather strands of the whips knotted with human teeth. When the madman opened his mouth to shriek “Sacrifices! Flesh for His spawn!” it became obvious where the teeth had come from.

Erol’s thrust his trident forward, taking the rushing figure in the chest, and bright red arterial blood gushed from both the savage wound and the man’s toothless mouth. Unfortunately, even as the man collapsed with a wet, gurgling death rattle, the flail whipped out and dug into Erol’s leg, just below the leather of his hauberk and above the plate of his kneecop. The leg gave out and he went down, teeth clenched in pain.

Toran, alerted by Cherdon through Vulk, was prepared for the frog-masked, dark-robed zealot that lurched out of the alley northwest of the group. The Khundari Shadow Warrior swung his battle-axe in a horizontal arc that should have intersected with the cultist’s chest – but with a speed and finesse that astonished the Dwarf the man brought up his brown-stained bone sword and turned the blade. In the return motion he attempted to slash Toran’s face, but the hero leaned back, easily avoiding the counterattack.

Mariala had, for a moment, wrestled with getting her cross-bow from where it hung down her back, cursing herself for not preparing it as soon as they’d entered the eerie village. But as another disfigured horror staggered into the roadway near her she gave up and grabbed one of her throwing knives from its wrist sheath. The black-bladed taburi flew out and buried itself deep into the creature’s chest. It collapsed, gurgled wetly, twitched twice… and died.

Once he had sent Therok off and warned the others of what was coming, Vulk immediately turned to prayer, silently chanting the ritual of Kasira’s Smile to bring down the Immortal Lady of Luck’s blessing on his friend Devrik. The fire mage felt the subtle tingling that he had come to associate with the blessing of the goddess, and his sword flamed to life at his murmured  summoning.

Haplo’s Karmic Missiles missed their intended target, but Korwin’s Ice Needle took the same cultist in the thorax, and the man collapsed, shrieking and grasping ineffectually at the spike of ice protruding from his chest. As the cultist collapsed Haplo rushed over to join Toran’s fight, while a pained grunt and the sound of flesh and bone striking wood drew the others’ attention to the wide alley to the west…

Therok had scuttled quickly across the roof of the house to the north, and dropped down behind the two cultists, as per Vulk’s instructions. Unfortunately, the element of surprise he’d expected to enjoy didn’t materialize – before he could do more than bring his sword up the dark-robed man whirled on him, his tentacle-arm whipping out with blinding speed. It slammed into the barbarian’s chest, sending him flying sideways almost two meters to crash into the wall of the house whose roof he’d just traversed.

With a grunt, as ribs broke and his skull slammed into the wall, Therok crumpled to the ground, unconscious and bleeding from nose and mouth. His demented attacker loomed over him, raising a bone sword in his scarred but human-looking right hand to deliver the killing blow. The cultist’s twisted features relaxed into a look of bewildered surprise, however, as three sharp tines of metal suddenly erupted from his chest. His own blood gushed forth as his eyes rolled upward and he collapsed bonelessly at the feet of his would-be victim.

Erol, levering himself up on his wounded leg, had seen the attack on his friend’s bodyguard, and knew no one was in a position to reach the fallen man in time. Instinctively he’d whipped his trident back and hurled it with all his strength and skill, taking the thing full in the back. The deformed creature it had held on the chain, suddenly freed from control, rushed headlong at Erol then, stripped-to-the-bone finger tips clawing for his face. The fighter drew his gladius just in time for the shrieking thing to impale itself on the blade.

Meanwhile, Toran and Haplo between them finally managed to put down the Rasputin-like cultist they faced, who simply would not die. Even after Haplo almost severed his hand, the raving madman merely passed out… but at that point even his stamina couldn’t survive a battle axe to the neck, as Toran was happy to demonstrate.

Mariala hit the last attacking cultist with a second thrown taburi, burying the blade in its shoulder. Devrik followed up with his flaming blade, nearly severing the man’s arm and then leaving him to bleed out in the dirt.

While Vulk rushed to tend to Therok’s near-fatal injuries, Erol pulled his own vial of Baylorium-7 from around his neck and dosed his injured knee. In a matter of minutes the gash had begun to knit together, and by the time he joined the others gathered around the one crazed villager who was still alive and conscious, struggling in Vulk’s webs, only a slight ache and a thin pale line remained.

During the sharp, brief fight, the demented cultist had been hacking at the bands of white energy that restrained him with his mutilated blade-like forearm, and several of the strands had actually parted. Thinking to put a stop to that before they tried to question the prisoner, Devrik whipped his sword up in a sudden slash that severed the man’s arm at the elbow.  Unfortunately, the blade was still flaming with Goraten’s Brand, and the magical webs turned out to be highly flammable…

As the writhing creature became engulfed in flames, its shrieks quickly tapered off along with its struggles, and Mariala pinched the bridge of her nose, casting a baleful glance at her old friend.

“It would have been nice to have at least one of these… things… alive to question,” she sighed, shaking her head in exasperation. “I hope you’re not planning on burn down the whole village – again.”

“No, it’s not my intention,” Devrik growled, returning the glare. “How was I to know the damn webs were so flammable.” He focused his pyrokinesis on the burning corpse, now collapsed to the ground as the last of the magical webbing vanished into smoke, and then reversed the usual flow of his power… the flames flickered out quickly and only the smell of seared flesh remained. The usual nauseating-appetizing pork-like smell of burned human flesh was underlain by a disturbing stench of fetid rot.

“This one’s still alive,” Erol said diffidently, gesturing to the leashed creature that had spitted itself on his short sword. But even as the others turned to look, the body gave a last shudder, a rattling sound escaped its throat, and it settled into the unmistakable stillness of death. Mariala sighed again, but before she could say anything further a sudden sharp crack caused everyone to wheel back around to the first body.

To the group’s horror, the burned cultist’s head was bulging grotesquely at the base of the skull. The corpse began to jerk and shudder as the bone cracked again, the bulge expanding… and then suddenly the whole back of the former villager’s head exploded outwards in a spray of bone, blood and brains. From the gaping hole a slimy shape lurched out into the pale sunlight, and everyone took one horrified step backward.

The creature was slightly smaller than an average bullfrog, to which it bore a passing resemblance – save for the shiny green-black skin visible through the blood and brain matter dripping off it, the four small tendrils waving from its head, and the dark, empty sockets where its eyes should have been.

It turned its blind gaze toward the group and as one Devrik, Erol, Toran and a still shaky but revived Therok all raised their weapons, while Mariala, Korwin and Haplo each began to gather energy for various spells. Jeb whipped an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow as Vulk aimed his staff, prepared to unleash–

“Stop!” a quavering voice called out, as the door to the house before which all the action had taken place suddenly flew open. “Don’t kill it, for the love of the Immortals, don’t kill it!”

As the Hand stared in surprise, a short, round-bellied man of late-middle years dashed out of the doorway, a large metal wash basin clutched in his pudgy hands. Sidling skittishly around the smoking corpse on his doorstep, he bent down and slapped the container over the unresisting frog-thing. With a relieved sigh he stood up straight and smiled tentatively at the group.

“We need it alive, you see,” he said, as if continuing a conversation. “So that you can defeat the beast. It – it–” At their blank stares he stuttered to a stop and looked momentarily doubtful. “That is, assuming… I mean, you are here to kill the Dol’Gurthog… aren’t you?”

“What in the Void is a ‘Doll Girth Hog,’ and who the Void are you?” Haplo demanded. “And what the Void is going on in this cursed village?!”

The man looked momentarily taken aback, but he quickly gathered his obviously frayed nerves and made a slight bow, first toward the silver-haired illusionist and then to the group as a whole. “My name is Hal Neelow, sir, and I am the Reeve of Hart’s Lodge Village. As for what is going on here, and the Dol’Gurthog… well, those are much related, I’m afraid…”

The nervous little man then explained to the Hand as much as he could. The village had been under siege from these horrifying cultists for two months now – most of whom were actually former villagers. He assured the party that his fellow citizens, all of whom he’s know his whole life, would never harm a fly – but after the first cultists appeared, strangers to the village, people began wandering off into the woods, seemingly in a daze… and coming back as savage monsters who can no longer even be called human, as they’d just witnessed.

After a few days the missing villagers first began to return, and if they seemed a bit ‘off,’ they weren’t actually mad – not slicing-off-their-own-hands mad, anyway. In the beginning they just tried to recruit others to come with them, talking of enlightenment and joy. A few villagers actually followed them back into the woods. Later they, too, returned, if anything even more violent. Their minds apparently were deteriorating over time, withering away, breaking down what control they once possessed. Eventually they began demanding that more townsfolk go with them, or the entire village would face the consequences.

The people of Hart’s Lodge fought back that first time the demand was made… Five men were left dead and another four were dragged off into the forest. Reeve Neelow pointed to the man with bone claws, the chain leash still around his neck.

“That’s one of them that was taken in the first attack – Jerama Merrol. So now the people of the town are too terrified to fight… I sent off messengers to the Chancellory, begging for soldiers to come to our aid.

“And the next day the Learned Rythek, a master of the arcane arts who makes his home amongst us, followed the cultists into the woods, determined to confront the evil at its source. For all that he was a mere hedge-wizard, he was quite strong, especially with fire.” He gave a sidewise glance at Devrik, whose flaming sword had been re-sheathed after the Reeve had begun his tale. “But there’s been no word from him since.”

“A tenday past two of the King’s (may the All preserve him) men-at-arms arrived, and they went off into the woods as well. They were quite big, strapping fellows, and very sure they could handle some ‘damn frog worshippers,’ as they said… but we’ve not heard from them again, either.”

“So what exactly is this Dol’Gurthog,” Devrik asked impatiently. “Have you actually seen it?”

“Well, no, not myself,” Neelow replied, “but others have described it… A frog the size of a wagon with nothing but empty sockets where there should be eyes. Four massive tentacles extending out of its back, lashing out wildly for meters around it, and spikes of bone running down the length of its spine. A beast of nightmare, it seems to me… but those besotted by it seem to think it is glorious and the source of all bounty and goodness.”

“So, essentially a larger version of the frog-thing you’ve trapped under your wash basin,” Mariala stated, glancing dubiously at said kitchen implement. “Why is it so important that we not kill the creature?”

“Because I’ve seen this happen before,” the reeve replied. “One of them emerging from the head of a cultist and all. That um, frog, hopped off into the forest, going back to its progenitor I believe. If you were to follow the creature, it should lead you to the very root of this evil…” He paused again, doubt and desperation warring on his round face.

“You are agents of the King, are you not?” he asked again, almost pleading. “Sent to succor us in this terrible time, in response to my second messenger?”

“Yes, yes,” Vulk assured him gently. “We are indeed sent by the King and his advisors to sort all this out. Have no fear, the Hand is here.”

♦ ♦ ♦

It was eventually decided that the village reeve’s plan was, in fact, the best they could come up with under the circumstances, lacking any actual living cultists to act as guide. No further deranged people emerged from the woods, so following the baby frog-thing it would be.

Reeve Neelow having retreated to the relative safety of his home after securing the groups horses in his stable, Erol lifted the sieve off the creature, which had remained silently unperturbed by its brief imprisonment, and the Hand stared down at it expectantly. The thing seemed to have almost doubled in size during its brief captivity, which was disturbing in and of itself.

After a moment of staring sightlessly back at its liberators, the frog-thing gave a deep croak and suddenly leaped forward, heading down the road toward the wood’s edge.

“Maybe we should put a… a harness, or something, on it,” Erol suggested, and reached down to pick the creature up before it could get too far away. But Haplo put a restraining hand on his arm.

“I wouldn’t touch that thing with a bare hand,” he said, frowning. ” Some frogs can secrete toxins through their skin, I’ve heard, and given what we know about this little monster… well, I shouldn’t think it worth the risk.”

“I agree,” said Mariala. “Given the rate it seems to be growing, I’m not sure we could keep a harness on it anyway. Besides, it’s not moving that fast, we shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up with it.”

She proved correct, and the frog-thing seemed to be perfectly happy to follow the rutted track that led westward into the woods, in the general direction of the royal hunting lodge – which meant the Hand didn’t have to scramble through the underbrush to follow it. The creature seemed to have no trouble avoiding any obstacles in its path, despite its lack of eyes, and occasionally the tendrils atop its head would lash out at insects, pulling them into its mouth to be devoured.

Despite the pleasant spring day, the woods were gloomy and nerve-wracking… shadows seemed to stretch longer than they should, and to be deeper, the flowers in the understory smelled foul rather than sweet, and not a single woodland creature was anywhere to been seen. Like the village, no sound of birdsong could be heard, and the silence was both eerie and unnerving. Cherdon, flying low over their heads, was the only other thing moving.

After some 15 minutes of steady travel the unnatural monstrosity had again almost doubled in size, and its leaps were becoming longer… though its pursuers had no trouble keeping up. It continued with a swift and confident determination, and as they all moved deeper into the woods the party began noticing disturbing things… strips of human flesh nailed to trees with spikes of bone… remnants of scattered fire pits, visible off the path, appeared to contain scorched bones, both animal and human… and at last some birds. But these sat in the trees, unmoving, eyeless, and giving out low sounds of anguish rather than pleasant chirps – the sound seemed almost taunting.

Another ten minutes brought them all to a fork in the road. The main path bent sharply to the left, while a narrower and partially overgrown track led straight on. The frog-thing took the narrower path, but as they came to the bend the party was stopped by sudden movement to their left.

Ten meters down the main road two cultists were hunched over the carcass of an enormous elk laid out in the roadway. One man had a needle and thread and the other held a vicious looking bone saw. The cultists turned to stare at the group as they came into view, and both dropped their tools to draw weapons. One grabbed an executioner’s axe while the other took up a sort of club with rib bones shoved through the wood, forming sharp spikes.

With a staggering, bucking motion the dead deer stood up as well.

The horrifying monstrosity stood over two meters tall at the shoulder. An open wound in its side revealed where some ribs had been removed – apparently the same ribs now sewn along its back to form a set of curving spikes. Its antlers were sharpened to jagged points and its eyes, while still intact, appeared to be bleeding. There were distinct wounds and stitches around the deer’s back legs… almost as if they had been hacked off and then hastily reattached. The revenant corpse was partially covered in a dark-blue slimy substance, and even at this distance the smell was strong, and foul.

With inarticulate shouts, the taxidermist cultists raised their weapons and rushed the party, their undead class project lumbering behind. Before they had moved more than a couple of meters, however, Erol had loosed a single shaft from his longbow. It plunged deep into the monstrous elk’s chest and through the heart it apparently still had… and needed. The beast crashed down with an impact that everyone felt in their feet and lay there, its legs twitching spasmodically.

At the same time that Erol was letting the grey goose fly Mariala and Haplo were unleashing their own arcane attacks. As the undead elk crashed to the ground behind them the two cultists were struck almost simultaneously by Fire Nerves and Mokel’s Karmic Missiles. Their jerking spasms and shrieks of pain caused by the first spell were almost instantly stilled as the invisible bolts of the second slammed into them. They fell like puppets with their strings cut.

It was all over so quickly that Vulk, who had continued to follow the baby frog-spawn, and Devrik, who had followed Vulk to keep him safe, were still in sight down the narrower track. After a desultory search of the dead cultists, which yielded nothing more interesting than a few coins and a crude sketchbook, the others hurried to catch up.

Mariala and Korwin studied the sketchbook, and passed it on to the others as they continued deeper in to the increasingly wrong-feeling woods. The pictures in the book were all charcoal renderings of a monstrous frog, with empty eye sockets, clawed feet, and waving tendrils snaking from its head. In the early pages the drawings were actually quite good, but as they progressed the images became cruder, more simplistic. The last sketch was so abstract that it could be construed as the Dol’Gurthog only by context.

Looking though the book only deepened the oppressive disquiet everyone felt as they moved deeper into the woods. No one objected when Korwin pocketed the book after everyone had seen it. What the Void, he thought, maybe he could publish it back in the Empire, perhaps as illustrations to his recounting of this adventure… suitably edited, of course… this sort of macabre shit sold big back home, in certain circles.

♦ ♦ ♦

Another half hour of steady walking at last brought the Hand to what seemed to be their destination – a massive cavern entrance set into a low, treeless hill that rose like an island from the forest. Stalagmites and stalactites lined the mouth of the cave, giving it the appearance of a snarling maw. The skeletons of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of frogs littered the ground in front of the opening.

Their own amphibious guide hopped toward the entrance without slowing, and vanished within.

“Maybe we should’ve killed that thing before it went in,” Erol muttered, but it was already too late, and none of his companions replied.

As they approached the entrance themselves, the group stopped suddenly in their tracks, almost as one. A delightful smell wafted out of the cave, making all of their salivary glands suddenly start working overtime. The odor was utterly alluring, yet impossible to identify precisely… it seemed to hit all the pleasure centers in the brain, evoking memories of baking cookies at Grandmother’s, holiday roasts turning on the spit, savory mushrooms fresh from the farming caves, brillberry wine fermenting in the cellar, clams hot from the coals… it smelled like all of these things and like none of them.

Half entranced by the smell, the group stepped into the cavern, where the same blue slime they’d seen on the cultists in the village and on the zombie elk in the woods coated the walls, flowing down as if oozing from the very stone. It seemed to be the source of the magnificent smell, and the urge to run a hand through it and then lick it off one’s fingers was almost irresistible. Almost.

It looks more like blueberry jam, Mariala thought. Just like old Nan used to make when I was a child. She’d baked it into the most delectable tarts… Mariala could smell them baking right now, in fact, and she longed for that innocent, beloved taste of childhood… she reached out for the wall and the beautiful blue jam…

Devrik was torn from his own reverie, of roasting venison and the sour cherry reduction that had covered it each Höl Kopia before he’d been sent off to the chantry, by the sight of his friend reaching out to touch the dripping slime. He hastily grabbed her wrist, pulling her back and speaking her name sharply. For a moment she stared at him, her eyes blank and glassy, then she frowned and shook her head.

“I’m… alright,” she said, pulling her arm from his grip and shaking her head as if to clear it. “By Shala, I really was going to eat that! Ugh!” She looked slightly green and she shuddered. While it still smelled wonderful, the spell was broken and she no longer had any desire to put the stuff in her mouth!

“Thank you Devrik,” she said, patting her companion on the shoulder. “That could have been… unpleasant.”

“No problem,” Devrik rumbled. “And I think we all need to keep an eye out for each other, and not just for enemies… pair up and make sure your buddy doesn’t try to taste that crap. Whatever it smells like, there’s no way it leads to anything good!”

Everyone agreed, with the exception of Haplo, who, a look of fascinated anticipation on his face, was reaching out to run his own finger though the goo even as Devrik spoke. Fortunately, Korwin was close enough to stop him before he could succeed, and after a sharp shake Haplo, too, snapped out of his trance and felt the urge to eat the horrible stuff subside. Despite the lingering scent of positive-reinforcement-memories in the air, no one else seemed terribly tempted to lick the walls after that.

The group continued cautiously into the cave. The initial cave, beyond the opening,  was over seven meters wide. Painted on the walls beyond the blue slime were various depictions of the monstrous Dol’Gurthog, primarily in white paint. But the void where the being’s eyes should be used some darker pigment… dried blood, as it turned out on closer examination.

The cave narrowed quickly as it led further into the hill, and downward. Rarely more than two meters wide, the descending pathway wound lazily and was lit by flickering torches mounted periodically along the walls. Whispers seemed to echo around them, with no distinguishable origin.

More of the strange blue slime began to appear, coating the walls in wide patches. Fortunately, the appetizing smell was no more compelling than it was near the surface and the urge to consume it was no longer strong. After traveling down a narrow path for a score of meters the way turned into a series of winding natural stairs which opened up into a large, roughly “L” shaped chamber.

In the center of this area, between four slender pillars topped with carved frog capitals, sat an enormous, if crudely realized, statue of the Dol’Gurthog. While not well crafted, the emotion that the artist was attempting to capture was clear – madness, deep and utter. Aside from the feelings it evoked, the most notable part of the statue were the two massive jet gemstones  set into the empty eye sockets.

Around the walls of the space the party noticed furtive movements in the shifting shadows cast by the few torches that lit the area. This quickly resolved into 30 or more large albino squirrels, scattered about the space and eating from various pools of the blue slime that formed near the walls. They seemed calm and docile, and some ran across the floor, large red eyes faintly glowing in the torchlight, as they curiously examined the visitors.

As the group made no hostile move, a few of the small creatures came hesitantly forward, sniffing warily at their clothes. One ran up Jeb’s leg and torso to perch on his shoulder, and began examining his hair. The youth was clearly freaked out, but before he could decide what to do Therok had stepped up and plucked the squirrel from him. He set it chitttering on the floor, and it ran off to join a knot of companions.

“If one of those things tries to climb up me, I’m Fire Nerving the lot of them!” Mariala said nervously, eyeing the milling crowd of subterranean rodents. While not mice or rats, the albino squirrels were close enough to set her musophobia to a hair trigger. Keeping a wary eye on the creatures, she made sure her back was to an empty section of wall.

Toran began examining the walls of the cavern, eventually coming to a bronze-bound door of black ironwood at the bottom a narrow sloped passage. The door was locked, with only a smallish hole in the center of the panel, and neither his lock-picking skills nor his magic key had any luck opening it. Half a dozen of the albino squirrels gathered around him to watch his attempts with apparent fascination.

Korwin scouted out the exit to the north and east, going only few steps down the narrow passage before retuning to the statue chamber, while Devrik, suppressing disturbing memories of Taloxta going for his eyes in another cavern, moved to examine the statue. As he did so, he noticed that the alluring smell was hardly noticeable any more… indeed, he had to strain to smell anything besides musty, wet stone.

Must have finally gotten used to it, he thought as, keeping a wary eye on his furry audience, he cast Goraten’s Brand, lighting up his battle sword with comforting yellow flames. As he examined the crude statue in the better light of his flaming weapon, he realized that a new smell was making itself noticed – a foul smell, as of putrefying flesh and rotting vegetation. As the stench grew, his tension ratcheted upwards, and he felt suddenly uneasy and angry… had his flames caused this terrible smell? Was it coming from the statue?

He poked experimentally at the ugly sculpture with the tip of his sword – and as if that were some sort of signal, every squirrel in the room suddenly burst into frenzied action. With a mad chittering they attacked whomever was nearest, running up clothes, leaping from niches in the wall, biting and clawing at exposed skin.

For a moment it seemed that sheer surprise would allow the swarming rodents to overrun the group, but the tide was quickly turned. True to her word, with a shriek of fear-fueled rage Mariala sent a wave of Fire Nerve energy fanning out across half the room and eleven of the attacking rodents fell writhing in agony to the stone floor. She kicked and stomped the ones nearest her to bloody pulp, and plucked one surviving creature from her hair to fling it across the chamber in disgust.

Therok and Jeb, having been more-or-less out of the initial attack by being still on the stairs, rushed down and began dispatching the writhing, chittering victims of the Fire Nerve spell, and then stomping or spitting any others that came near.

Erol, having dropped his trident when several of the albino vermin had sunk their teeth into his wrist, took to pulling them off himself and smashing them against the nearest wall. He also followed Mariala’s lead and began stomping the ones underfoot into paste until he could retrieve his trident, at which point it became a game of spit-and-hurl.

Vulk attempted to invoke Kasira’s Smile, but whatever foul power held sway in this place seemed to block his access to the Lady’s blessing. With a grimace he began to lay about him with his staff, sending vermin flying with each blow, breaking legs, backs and skulls.

Toran cast Fist of Kuhan on himself, and as his arms began to harden into mace-like strength and durability he merrily worked his way back up from the locked door to the main chamber, smashing albino squirrels right and left as he went.

Korwin’s hastily summoned Frost Blade allowed him to slay several of the insanely attacking vermin, and kept the rest of them at bay while Haplo’s invisible karmic arrows impaled three of the hoard. Both men stomped a few more into ruin for good measure.

Most of the remaining albino squirrels were incinerated by Devrik’s Orb of Voral, and as their smoldering corpses twitched on the smoking stone of the floor, the few survivors skittered away into the shadows.

The brief Battle of the Squirrel Temple had lasted less than a minute, but it left the group shaken and on edge, their nerves frayed and tempers short. Matters weren’t made better by the overpowering stench that now filled the air. While no longer getting stronger, the miasma showed no sign of abating, either.

Mariala attempted to cast Feel on both the statue and the door, but achieved little more than a pounding headache and the sense of powerful, chaotic, almost alien magic permeating everything around them. Unable to open the locked door, the group continued on through the northern exit.

Another 15 minutes passed as they moved slowly through the dimly lit, twisting passages, and as they did the stench began to slowly fade. The removal of the horrible odor lifted everyone’s spirits just by its absence, and by the time they arrived at a curtained doorway the pleasant smell of all things delicious had begun to fill the air again. As they pushed through into the chamber beyond, everyone was feeling optimistic and upbeat.

The new chamber appeared to be a living area. A rotting bed, with a nightstand nearby and a small chest at its foot lay at one end of the room. On the nightstand was a candle and a small green dragon statue. Closer to hand a pile of mostly decayed scrolls was visible on and around a battered desk – at least twenty scrolls in total – and uncomfortable-looking chair.  A moldering deer-skin rug lay in the center of the room and scraps of cloth were scattered around the room.

But what immediately caught their attention, just to the right of the entrance, was a man sitting against the wall and gazing up at the ceiling as if it were a night sky filled with stars, or perhaps a fireworks display. Dressed in soiled but still serviceable robes he possessed a long, grey beard and gnarled hands. He didn’t appear to be sliced up or otherwise mutilated like so many of the other cultists they’d encountered… but there was a madness, nevertheless, behind his gaze.

Stepping forward Toran, his battle-axe lowered but at the ready, cleared his throat. The man’s head snapped down and whipped to the left, his bloodshot eyes going wide as he stared at the party as if they were phantasms.

“Guests!” he gasped out suddenly… and in apparent delight, a smile lighting his face. “Here to see the Master, no doubt?” he asked, using a gnarled staff that had been leaning against the wall next to him to lever himself stiffly to his feet. “You have heard His call and seek to give yourself into His embrace, yes?”

The man was clearly mad, but it seemed a very manic sort of insanity, and his enthusiasm was almost disarming. Compared to the other cultists they’d met so far, he seemed almost normal, if a trifle eccentric. He stared expectantly at the group, his gaze moving hopefully from face to face.

Small flames flickered occasionally between the fingers of his right hand, something he seemed completely unconscious of, like a deeply ingrained habit…

“Er, yes,” Vulk said, stepping forward, his own magnificent staff held slightly forward. “We have indeed heard a call, and have come here to learn what it means… who is your Master, and who are you?”

“Oh, I am the Keymaster,” the old man chuckled as if at a great joke. “Yes, or the Keyholder… though some still call me Rythek, my name from before my Enlightenment and being granted my holy task…”

At which point he pulled a small book from his robes, one that seemed to be bound in leather made from human flesh, and reading from it went off on a rant about his deep love for the Dol’Gurthog and his “god’s” unsurpassed magnificence. Eventually, however, Vulk was able to bring him back around to the whole Keymaster/Keyholder subject.

“Ah, well, you see…” he began, tucking away his horrid book in the folds of his robe. “There is a special key to open the Inner Sanctum, allowing entry into the Holy Presence itself. The Dol’Gurthog, in His infinite wisdom, has made me His Keymaster, solemnly  charged with the duty of seeing that only those worthy of His radiant presence, those able to endure his puissant power without dying, may pass within.

“To do this, He has created a puzzle of sorts… to test the strength of mind of those who would worship Him. The Dol’Gurthog wishes to have only those who are strong of mind, who will not crumble so easily before his glorious presence, come before him. This room contains all of the clues you will need to get through the door behind me.” He gestured at a closed door set in the north wall of the room. Glowing numbers appeared to be etched into its surface: 5612469 2 23015.

“Just say the password and it will open for you… then down in the pit, amongst the playful Children, you will find the key to the Inner Sanctum.” He smiled widely then, and for the first time his teeth were visible. All had been filed down to needle-like points. He gestured again, this time at the wider room, encouraging them to begin the search for clues…

The group spent some time examining everything in the room, which contained scores of items from the mundane to the arcane, including such esoterica as: a commemorative platter on the liberation of Tharkia;  an ornate Lirilalian Carnivale mask, in red and gold metallic foil over leather; a silver-plated gauntlet set with six multi-colored glass gems; a crystal punch bowl and seven small glasses; an onyx statuette of a panther; and a great many musty books.

In the end the group narrowed their focus to three items that seemed of particular interest, as they were the only three items with numbers written on them in some fashion. First, the carved jade statuette of a green dragon from the nightstand had the numbers 412 7142 scrawled on a piece of parchment glued to the underside of its base.

“Ah yes, the very inspiration for the cypher,” Rythek said with a fond sigh of reminiscence as soon as Devrik had picked it up. “Where it all began… the clever green dragon.”

The second item was the small chest, or footlocker, at the foot of Rythek’s bed. When Korwin opened it and began shifting through the odd little “treasures” within (frog skeletons, strips of human flesh, bone dice – the usual sorts of things one would expect to find, really), Rythek again spoke up. “Oh yes, my treasures, my collection of beautiful things… please make sure they remain within my treasure chest.”

As Korwin turned to stare at the demented arcanist standing at his back his eye caught the numbers scrawled in dried blood on the inside of the chest’s lid: 6151 8956. Making note of it, he gently shut the lid, leaving the “treasures” undisturbed within.

The last item was a seemingly mundane broom that Toran found in a nook after he had finished a fruitless examination the pile of rotting scrolls around the old desk. The implement seemed nothing special, and Rythek offered no musings on it when the Khundari picked it up, but the numbers 013 were etched deeply into the broom’s handle.

The Hand wrangled the problem about for awhile, and to Mariala’s chagrin it was Devrik who first realized it was a simple substitution cypher that used only the consonants, ignoring vowels altogether. To Devrik’s chagrin it was Korwin who actually decoded the password first, blurting out the phrase “strength in numbers” before the fire mage could.

Rythek looked inordinately pleased, and clapped his hands together in child-like glee as the door in the north wall popped open with an audible ‘snick’ of a bolt releasing. There seemed to be a glimmer of true happiness behind the madness in his eyes.

“Now you need only retrieve the Key, the Eye of God, from its resting place amongst His Children,” he said, flashing his sharklike smile once more and gesturing them on toward the now open door. With a communal sigh, the Hand filed through the narrow doorway…

♦ ♦ ♦

Beyond the doorway was an equally narrow stairwell that descended another six meters. At the bottom the group found themselves on a stone platform with a drop of at least another seven meters into a pit of darkness. From within the darkness the croaking of hundreds of frogs could be heard, and the slithery, wet sounds of amphibian skins rubbing together.

The darkness was utterly impenetrable, pierced by neither torchlight nor spells nor rituals. Hoping there was another way to accomplish their goal, they searched beyond the platform area, but the only other thing to be found was a small chamber to the northeast that contained thousands of squirming maggots and the hunks of rotting meat that hosted them. Even the alluring smell of the blue slime could barely counteract the stench when actually inside the chamber.

Retreating back to the pit of darkness, Korwin had the brilliant idea of trying his glowstone bullseye lantern. To everyone’s surprise, it worked, actually piercing the uncanny blackness at the bottom of the pit. It revealed a writhing mass of juvenile frog-things, much like the one they had followed into this nightmarish cave complex, crawling over one another in a shallow pool of black water. To the left a narrow, crumbling set of natural stairs led down to the pools edge.

Toran produced the Cord of Qorelia-Sym, the magic Telnori rope he carried for Vulk, and tied one end around his waist. Korwin and Erol tied the other end around themselves, and began their descent into the pit as the Dwarf cast Joining of Merkünon on himself, causing his feet to become temporarily welded fast to the stone floor.

At the bottom Korwin cast a ball of freezing energy into the center of the squirming mass of frog-things, hoping to at least slow them down, but the additional cold seemed to have little effect on them… it didn’t even freeze the water he noted with consternation.

After considering his options for a moment, Korwin heaved a sigh and slid off the last step and into the icy, calf-deep water and thigh-deep scrum of squirming amphibians. The creatures didn’t seem to react to him, and after a moment, with Erol shining the light from the lantern around, he began reaching into the mass of wriggling flesh to feel for the Key.

The light proved to be less useful than one might’ve expected, and after almost two minutes of fruitless groping amongst the frog-things even Korwin was beginning to go numb from the penetrating cold. Then his fingers brushed against something not living flesh nor rough stone – something smooth and curved. He groped back, found it again, and closed his fist around it.

Opening his fist in the beam from the lantern Korwin and Erol saw a glass sphere the size of a large plum, greenish-black with an iris of virulent yellow and a slit-like pupil of pure black flecked with gold. The Eye of God, obviously, and their key into the Inner Sanctum.

♦ ♦ ♦

Once they had dried and warmed Korwin as best they could under the circumstances the Hand had returned to Rythek’s chamber and presented him with the Key. He had merely smiled his needle-like smile at them and waved them on.

“Back to the Outer Temple,” he’d chuckled, beaming in pride at their accomplishment. “Now you can open the way, and soon you will join us and be as one in the Dol’Gurthog… if not in His heart, then at least in His belly.”

On that unnerving note, the group headed back to the site of the albino squirrel massacre and the magically locked door that had previously barred their passage. Fortunately no more of the demented rodents had yet repopulated the chamber, and they passed unmolested.

Toran took the Eye of God and inserted it into the round slot in the center of the door. With a ‘thunk’ the glass sphere dropped out of sight, and then a flurry of clicks, whirring and clanks followed. In a few seconds there was a louder ‘ker-chunk’, as of a massive bolt withdrawing, and the door swung inward.

Beyond the doorway was another narrow flight of twisting, uneven stairs. They descended steeply some eight meters, over a span of perhaps 20 meters, to open out into the largest cavern the group had yet seen in the complex. The dim light from a score of torches, spaced erratically around the wall, reflected off the black, glassy surface of a large body of dark water that filled much of the center of the space. A smaller pool of equally still, black water lay off to the left, beyond the larger lake.

On the far side of the chamber, in a large natural alcove or bay, the Hand could see a collection of tables, shelves, what looked like a rack, a large glass aquarium, and a stone basin with a large fire burning in it. Three robed and cowled figure were moving about purposefully, obviously engaged in some arcane job of work. They made no sign that they were aware of the groups entrance into the cavern.

As the group slowly made their way around the dark lake several of the adventurers noticed four largish lumps rising from the black water near its northern end. It was Vulk who realized, with a shock, that they were the dark brow ridges, and empty eye sockets, of two enormous, monstrous frogs, apparently at rest beneath the water.

“They must be two-and-a-half meters tall, if they’re to scale with those, um, eyes” he whispered to the others as he quietly pointed out the beasts. As the group moved past them the glass-like surface of the lake was disturbed by small ripples as the giant amphibious heads turned to follow their progress.

As they rounded the end of the lake one of the cultists finally noticed their approach and stepped forward to hail them. “Who are you? I don’t know your faces… what is your business here?” His voice was cracked and not a little mad-sounding, but friendly enough for all that. His eyes glinted with a feverish excitement as he stared at the newcomers, and seemed to harbor no suspicion of them.

“We are, um, new to the worship of the Dol’Gurthog,” Vulk offered. “We have been sent by Rythek, the Keymaster, to meet the Great One and become one with Him.”

“Oh, how marvelous!” the cultist exclaimed, and the other two turned briefly from their own indecipherable tasks to grunt pleased agreement. The one nearest the speaker seemed to be working with frog-things taken from the large, dirty glass aquarium, stroking them to encourage the flow of blue slime from their skin. The one nearer the blood-stained rack seemed to be working on creating bone weapons, reinforced with iron bits… a barrel full of completed such stood nearby.

“But the God is sleeping now, as you can tell… Speaker Kythel will come for you when the Great One wakes,” he smiled and gestured at the dark archway off to the group’s right. “Would you like to help with our experiments while you wait?” This time he gestured at the array of bloody instruments strewn about the surface of the scarred and stained workbench behind him.

“Um, well, perhaps another time,” Mariala temporized, and the man seemed to take it in stride. “But if you’d like to tell us about your… experiments… what, for example is that blue slime –”

“Ooooh, the Primordial Ooze!” the man gushed, his excitement doubling. “It is from the Dol’Gurthog Himself! He exudes it and He causes the very earth to put forth a form of it,  here in His womb. To consume it is to be one with Him… and with it, the world shall be reborn.

“Once we have enough gathered, the forests, the lakes, the world will all fall under the influence of the Dol’Gurthog… and we, His humble servants, have been tasked with finding ways to better utilize the Blue Mana to this end… but so many tests require live human subjects, and there are never enough…” He eyed the group speculatively, but was easily diverted by another hurried question from Haplo.

It quickly became obvious that all three men were so far gone in madness that they had lost all sense of reality. They seemed highly suggestible, and Mariala suspected they would be very easy to manipulate into doing almost anything – if they believed their “god” desired it of them…

Before she could think of a way to take advantage of this, however, she noticed that the alluring odor in the cavern had faded away, and a growing stench was quickly beginning to take its place. At the same time, Erol made a slight miscalculation, in the sudden surge of annoyance and impatience that came over him…

Noting, as had Mariala, that the cultists seemed unusually gullible, he decided to cut to the chase and probe for more information about their nasty frog-god. “So, the um, Mighty One must be quite powerful,” he began. “Is there anything He is particularly vulnerable to, that might –”

He wasn’t even able to finish the question before the faces of all three men went from vaguely idiotic friendliness to masks of full-on twisted rage. “Why would you ask about how to harm the Master?” snarled the one near the weapons barrel, reaching out to grab a nasty-looking double-edged blade of razor honed bone.

As the other two also reached for weapons as well, from behind them came the sound of water cascading. As Toran darted forward to intercept the cultist coming at him, Erol turned and whipped up his longbow, nocking an arrow and letting it fly at the nearest of the gigantic green-black frogs lurching out of the lake. But the creature took a prodigious leap, and the shaft flew under its massive form. It came down less than three meters from the party, its companion tight behind.

Toran blocked the maddened cultist’s first blow with his battle-axe, chips of bone flying as the macabre weapon met the enchanted iron of Ergonkïr. The crazed zealot, unbalanced by the block, completely failed to dodge the Khundari’s counter attack. He collapsed with an almost soundless exhalation as his intestines poured out of the gash the axe opened in his abdomen, spasmed, and was still.

Vulk had instantly aimed the Staff of Summer at the remaining cultists, and the faintly glowing strands of the entangling Weaver’s Web shot forth, enveloping both men and their workbench in a cocoon of nearly unbreakable energy, while Mariala had whirled and fired of a blast of Fire Nerves at the nearest of the giant frogs.

The creature was just opening its mouth to launch its no-doubt lethal tongue at Erol, who was scrambling to drop his bow and bring up his trident, and the blast caught it full in the face. With an enraged croak, the beast turned its blind gaze on Mariala and leaped over the gladiator, intending to come down on the woman and devour her in a single gulp.

Devrik swung his battlesword up over his head in a mighty arc which bisected that of the monstrous amphibian – the creature’s guts spilled forth, much like its human compatriot’s had moments before, and it crashed to the ground less than a meter from its target. One clawed, webbed arm reached for her, but fell limp as the beast shuddered and died.

“Thank you, my friend,” Mariala gasped, more than a little shaken by the close call. That gaping mouth rushing down on her had looked big enough to have swallowed her whole! “I don’t think –”

“Ah, I doubt I could have reached the thing if your magics hadn’t weakened it before it leapt,” Devrik shrugged and gave her a wry grin. He flicked the blood and guts of the dead frog off his blade, and they both turned to deal with the last frog.

That beast was preparing to leap into the midst of the group, but even as it left the ground Haplo gestured and gave a shout – three shimmering, almost invisible bolts of karmic energy shot forth from his hands and entered the frog in head, throat and belly. It collapsed to the ground much like its companion, although it continued to twitch until Erol drove his trident through its skull.

The web-bound cultists were trying to shriek in rage and fury at the death of the giant frogs, but their mouths were bound by the glowing strands, and little more than muffled squeaks escaped them. Ignoring them, the Hand drew together to discuss their next move… they knew where their ultimate adversary in this labyrinth lay, but how to deal with such a powerful being…

“It’s clearly a demon-spawn of some sort,” Mariala said. “And we do not have the best record with demons… I don’t think we want to loose a third demon on the world…”

“Well, technically, we only freed one demon,” Vulk argued. “Admittedly, one of the five most powerful demons in existence, but… anyway, the spider-demon was already free in the world, we just failed to banish it once we’d killed its physical form.”

“Well, that’s not a mistake I plan to repeat,” Mariala declared firmly. “Here’s what I propose…”

♦ ♦ ♦

A few minutes later, the group was ready to descend into the thick, noisome darkness of the Dol’Gurthog’s inner sanctum. Both Erol and Devrik had tried, and failed, to enflame trident and battlesword, respectively; the oppressive, cold chaos magics of the caves seemed to choke off their own power.

Toran, however, managed to cast Bladesharp on his battle-axe, giving his already powerful blade a particularly lethal edge, while Vulk spent several minutes in mediation and succeeded in gaining Virtues Armor, its faint glowing golden light providing him with the Lady’s holy protection in the upcoming fight.

In the hopes of softening up whatever waited below for them, Erol tossed one of his crystal spheres, imbued with the power of the Blast of Norinos, down the broad steps and into the darkness of the lair… but whatever uncanny blackness filled that space seemed to be too much for the light magic, and nothing occurred.

Erol then used his psionic Amplification ability to power up his companion’s defensive spells and rituals, while Korwin opened the lens on his bullseye lantern, hoping that its arcane light would again prove able to pierce the frog-demon’s arcane darkness.

And so it proved to be, the beam punching through the murk as the Hand descended the wide, rough stairs into the inner sanctum of the Dol’Gurthog, leaving Jeb and Therok above to guard their retreat.

The chamber was not as impressive as one might have expected for a supposed demon-god – maybe 30 meters wide and 15 meters deep. Its black stone walls dripped with the blue Primordial Ooze, while pulsating, bilious green masses of fungus grew in patches on the rough floor. Scattered bones, human and animal, littered the area, including an large pile of human sculls, topped by an immense giant’s skull, that formed an alter of sorts. A black-robed man stood near this structure, but his fierce glare at the intruders hardly registered, given what loomed behind him in the darkest corner.

Even after seeing all of the sketches and monuments, the Dol’Gurthog’s actual appearance was both horrifying and fearfully impressive. It stared in the group’s direction with empty eye sockets as the four large tentacles rising from its back flailed around above its head. Massive warts covered its body and a dozen horns jutted from the top of its head. Blue slime dropped from monstrosity’s flesh to form puddles on the floor around it. The eyeless stare seemed to flay the soul, and for a moment they all hesitated, caught in a grip of overpowering terror.

But with a collective shudder the companions all threw off the stultifying horror of the creature’s gaze. The Hand grit their teeth and moved forward, weapons ready, and the demonic amphibian gave out a croak that shook the chamber. As the echoes died away a thousand higher-pitched croaks answered, as from a great distance.

“His children come!” shouted the robed figure, presumably the infamous Speaker Kythel. “You shall suffer for your insolence in entering the presence of the Great One with violence in your minds!” He drew a wicked looking dagger and lunged at Vulk with a shriek.

Vulk easily blocked the attack with his broadsword, but the wiry man was limber and fast, dodging his return blow. At the same instance a tentacle whipped out from the Dol’Gurthog, sending Korwin’s lantern flying, and darkness descended like a shroud.

As the light failed Toran leapt forward to strike at the now-invisible bulk of the demon, but the attack was blocked by a tentacle that in turn sent the Khundari flying into a wall.

Mariala cast the Syncope of Shala on the monster, and for a moment it seemed to have staggered the thing. The stench that permeated the air began to fade somewhat… but then, suddenly, a tentacle flashed out of the darkness, just missing her head as she stumbled back. The stench returned in full force, and another enraged croak shook the room.

Erol shot shaft after shaft into the darkness. If the arrows hit he couldn’t be sure, but he suspected, by the sound of  wood clattering to stone, that at least some were knocked out of the air by those damn tentacles. Haplo’s karmic missiles vanished into the darkness as well, but by the squeal of rage that followed, there was little doubt they had hit.

As the others did their best to damage and distract the beast, Devrik stood still in the darkness and gathered all his arcane and mental strength. When he had found his calm center, and the heart of flame that burned there, he closed his currently useless eyes. He sensed the massive bulk of the hideous creature… there! He opened his mouth wide and with a roar unleashed the Breath of Zhone.

The cone of intense flame that blasted forth burned the darkness away and engulfed the monstrous demon frog. As the searing flames made a living bonfire of it, the Dol’Gurthog writhed and shrieked in agony and fury, tentacles lashing out at random. In the light of the burning Toran had no trouble nimbly leaping and ducking away from the flailing limbs, but Kythel, stupefied into immobility at his master’s  immolation, was struck and sent flying into a wall.

Mariala clutched the Bowl of Barsol tightly in both hands, and she felt the moment when the demonic entity that animated the mutant frog monstrosity fled its dying host. She sensed it trying to leap into Devrik. But the power of the bowl was irresistible and the arc of its trajectory, visible only in her inner eye as a streak of violet light, was bent and sucked into the bowl. It swirled ever faster, caught in an inexorable vortex that forced it to the center of the shallow concavity – and then it was gone, at least to her mind’s eye. She felt its raging presence within the artifact, however, and she smiled coldly in triumph.

“Did it work?” Vulk demanded, rushing up to her, the others close behind.

“It did,” she replied, her sharklike smile widening. “Just as planned. The demonic form is trapped in the Bowl, and once we can get it to a proper Temple sorcerer it will be cast back out into the Void.”

The group’s rather raucous response was interrupted by a sudden, heart-stopping shriek. Kythel had regained consciousness and he now knelt on the cold stone floor near the charred, smoking remains of his god, hands clutched to his head and unintelligible sounds – moans, grunts, shrieks and even less identifiable noises – poured from his writhing mouth.

As the Hand soon discovered, all of the cultists still alive in the complex were in a similar state. Their minds seemed completely gone, leaving them trapped in what seemed an unending horror they couldn’t articulate. No amount of talk could get them to respond, and mental probes only threatened to spread the madness to the prober.

The only exception seemed to be old Rythek. When they found the hedge wizard in his chamber he seemed dazed and listless, but clearly not raving mad. As Vulk tended to him he slowly came to his senses, and under gentle prodding, he answered some of their questions. It seemed that he had been kept relatively sane by the Dol-Gurthog so as to act as the demon’s interface with the human world… just as the Crown Prince Laravad had done for the previous two years.

This revelation shocked the company at first, but on reflection made perfect sense. Papers recovered from Kythel’s “office” had further fleshed out the tale – never stable, the Prince had discovered the lair of the proto-demon on a hunting foray from his lodge, while the creature was still fairly young. It had found easy purchase in his mind, and seemed to understand that their ambitions ran parallel, at least for the time being.

The Prince had fed the demon on outlaws taken by his men, travelers seized on remote roads, and eventually on his own servants and peasants. His own sanity had deteriorated, as the months went on, and whether he directed the Dol’Gurthog’s actions or the demon controlled his was unclear. But when the Prince died the demon frog was left to its own devices… and had quickly spread its influence to seek followers/victims in the nearest settlement. If not stopped, there was no telling how far its insanity and power might have spread…

Rythek eventually grew strong enough to move, and agreed to return with the Hand to the village of Hart’s Lodge.  Making their way out of the cave complex the group came across thousands of baby frog-thing corpses, which had apparently been on the way to answer their progenitor’s summons – and died with it. They trod carefully, and with great disgust, over the stinking corpses, already beginning to slough into a fetid slurry.

Once out into the relatively fresh air of the surrounding woods, the group turned to look back at the mouth-like entrance to the caverns. There was a brief discussion about how to keep innocent people from wandering into the underground shit-show, and what to do about the mindless cultists still within, but before anything could be decided Rythek took the matter into his own hands. With a look of fierce concentration, he reached out with both hands and used his apparently substantial telekinetic powers to bring down the entrance to the cavern, sealing the madness away forever…

“Works for me,” Devrik said with a shrug after the dust settled, and turned to lead the way back to civilization… and a cold beer.