Starday, 21 Desnus (small hours)

There is a saying among soldiers that goes, “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. What it means is that you can’t account for every contingency, and once the fighting starts something will happen that you did not expect which will necessitate a change in tactics or strategy. A good battle plan, then, must allow for flexibility and adaptability when circumstances change.

That being said, as far as battle plans go, ours unfolded pretty well.

We ran in under cover of invisibility and silence, but were detected (vibrations, air movement, odor, and who knows what else) much more quickly than we had expected. But that was fine, because we were not expecting to go undetected, and the precise timing of it did not really matter. We made it to the chief’s chamber with lizardfolk mobilizing behind us—how many, I don’t know as we couldn’t hear anything outside our magical bubble, but likely dozens—and set up our rear defense.

Zhog dropped the arrow that was the source of our silence spell at the base of the steps before entering the chamber, and our spell casters spun into action. We only had two passages to defend: one’s surface was coated in grease thanks to Viktor, and the other was obstructed when Snagsby reshaped the stone to form a solid wall. The rest of us engaged Shukak and his guards.

One of those guards dropped quickly under Sera’s attacks. Zhog and I tore into two of the others. Then Shukak joined the fray, throwing his trident at Zhog, which then magically returned to his hands. Nice trick.

Sera felled a second of the guards. Viore disabled a third. I dropped the last. And then we all converged on Shukak.

Behind us, lizardfolk were carefully stepping their way through the grease, which was not at all part of the plan. Varin summoned a wolverine to distract the one that made it through while Viktor obstructed the greased passage with dense layers of sticky strands, much like spider webs. We heard the bellowing of one very pissed-off lizardfolk as he tried to pick his way through it. That, we reasoned, was Shukak’s lieutenant.

Viktor used a spell to enlarge me, and we concentrated our efforts on taking Shukak down. I called on Abadar’s power to strike him, then stepped back to help cover the rear.

Then we noticed something odd. As one of Shukak’s guards lay dying, three green worms emerged from its ears and mouth. He didn’t look like he was a zombie, so whatever we were seeing here? It must have been some new variety.

Several of us called out, “Worms!” Viktor responded by targeting each with bolts of force, killing them instantly.

Sera delivered the final blow to Shukak. As he fell, I called out in Draconic, “We are only here for the chief and his lieutenant! They were the ones who took our people as prisoners!”

From behind us, we heard Hishka’s voice call out. “It was Shukak’s misguided policies that brought the soft skins down on us!”

More arguments and discord followed. “Now is not the time to question our leaders! Our enemies are here!” someone yelled.

The lieutenant reinforced this. “It doesn’t matter what the soft skins’ intentions are. They are invading, and we will hold our territory and our prisoners!”

I answered, “We don’t intend any harm to the rest of your tribe! We have acted to block your access or impede your progress, not harm you who are not the chief’s guard and officers.”

“And what of the chief?” the lieutenant demanded.

“The chief had to go.”

More cries out from behind us. “So the chief is dead?” and “What did they mean by what they said?”

Hishka spoke again. “Now you see the fruits of Shukak’s leadership. This is the future of our tribe if we don’t change our ways!”

His lieutenant scolded Hishka loudly, then asked me, “Where is the chief?”

“Which pieces of him?”

So he tried to take power right then and there. “The chief is dead! Long live the chief! Rally to me, everyone!”

I don’t normally like to trade barbs during battle, but he had earned it. “You’re next.”

And he was. With two strikes from my horsechopper, he fell to the ground, dead. And then it was over.

I called out to the lizardfolk. “We have no quarrel with your tribe. We’re here to free our prisoners, and help you with your worm infestation.”

That got a response. More of a panic, as the news of worms spread. Hishka spoke up quickly before it swelled.

“Soft skins! You are our enemy and have invaded our domain. However, I understand your desire to save your people. Will you agree to a parley to discuss a peaceful resolution?”

“Absolutely,” I said. And that seemed to ease the growing tension.

We negotiated an immediate truce between us. In exchange for releasing the prisoners, we would return their lair to its previous condition, and assist them in removing the threat of worms from their egg chamber. We had already stabilized and begun to heal their wounded (all except Shukak and his lieutenant, that is) which helped establish our sincerity to the rest of the tribe. Long term, we would build a preliminary treaty to take to Korvosa, and propose negotiations for a lasting agreement.

But the immediate problem was the worms.

First, there was the matter of the dying (and now stabilized) lizardfolk which had leaked worms onto the ground. According to Hishka, Ilthane had gifted the tribe several potions, and this lizardfolk had been administered one. And if that wasn’t the very definition of “suspicious”, I don’t know what is.

We had Ilthane’s potions brought out and they were fairly cloudy and opaque, which we found even more suspicious. We used a sieve to filter their contents; each, and every one contained a small, segmented worm. And that took care of any lingering doubt among the tribe that their worm problem had returned, not to mention who was behind it. Fortunately, only one of the potions had been consumed.

Next, was the egg chamber itself. As I said, if Ilthane later confronted the tribe we wanted them to be able to say truthfully that humans invaded it, so we went in alone. It was, as we were told, guarded by eight kobolds, and while they were not much of a match for us, the big surprise was that several of the eggs appeared to be moving. On closer examination, these were lizardfolk young that had been infested and turned into undead in their shells. We destroyed the ones that were infested, then scanned the chamber to ensure no more eggs were tainted.

That left only Ilthane’s egg, which sat among the Lizardfolk eggs. We wrapped it for safe transport and brought it out of the egg chamber into the space where we had been negotiating with Hishka. A close examination of it showed small holes as though numerous worms had bored their way out from the inside. Hishka sent for a cauldron with a sealing lid that would contain any further worms until we had recovered the spells to deal with it.

We revived Captain Alezar and Marzena and brought them up to speed. Marzena was skeptical that we had negotiated peace with the tribe.

“How?!” she asked.

“They had an aggressive, outsider leader. And we solved the problem with a change in leadership.”

Varin got us focused on the important part. “They have a problem where worms are infesting and killing their young.”

And that got Marzena’s attention. She’d been trying to get ahold of one, herself, for study—her now-undead predecessor back at the Keep was way too dangerous to approach—so we showed her one we had filtered out from Ilthane’s potions. “This would be easier back at the Keep,” she said. We agreed, but that would have to wait because we all needed some sleep.

Hishka graciously allowed us to rest in the abandoned village.

(morning)

When I woke this morning, I saw Zhog and Marzena—who I swear is old enough to be my mom—cuddled together. At first, I thought I was still asleep or seeing things, but nope. This was a thing that was actually happening.

That image is going to linger.

We examined the egg once we were all awake and had eaten some breakfast. I cast a spell and confirmed that it was riddled with disease. Viore followed that with a spell to cure disease, and when I cast my spell a second time, it came back clean. So we opened the egg and looked inside.

It was completely full of dead worms.

Fireday, Desnus 20 (dawn)

We followed Gathok over 15 miles into the Mushfens overnight, stopping in the pre-dawn light just a couple of miles outside his village’s patrol perimeter.

It’s been a long time since I have done this sort of thing. In my days (and nights) with the Night Walkers, we would be out a couple of nights per week, occasionally well into the early morning. The only rule was that we would always be back before what Sergiu called “civil twilight” because that was when you could no longer navigate by the stars, and the point of the Night Walkers was, obviously, to be out there in the dark. Supposedly this term comes from sailors, though how he got to know sailors in a land-locked mining town in the middle of the Fenwall Mountains is beyond me.

We made camp while Gathok continued ahead, and waited for his return.

We didn’t have to wait long. Just as the sun was rising above the horizon, we saw Gathok walking up the path towards our campsite. His expression was grim, which told us what we ultimately needed to know. The rest was just details.

“I have good news and bad news,” he began. “Our worst nightmares are confirmed. This batch of eggs are full of corruption. However, our alliance with Ilthane is not ill-informed. Her own egg is deeply infected as well, so she’s but a victim of the same ill fortune as our tribe.”

I hate being the one to deliver bad news. Really. I do. Gathok was holding on to a spark of hope, that there would be something salvageable in this mess, and I was about to smother it.

“Gathok…when we spoke with Hishka yesterday, she said to us quite clearly and directly that Ilthane was protecting your eggs, and leaving one of hers with you as a show of faith. That she was your ally, protecting you from this corruption.

“Either she hasn’t protected your tribe as she promised, or she is the source of this corruption and has been lying to you. Regardless of which of those statements you believe, your alliance with her has ultimately failed.”

However bad I felt about doing this to him—and I felt plenty bad, you try it sometime—he was feeling far worse. Losing another generation of eggs like this would be disastrous. Ilthane was their one great hope, that she had the power to stop it. With her alliance revealed as a fraud, and no understanding of why and how this was happening (much less how to stop it), they were facing the extinction of their whole tribe. And that thought was terrifying.

It took some gentle cajoling to get Hiska’s actual message from him, and not just his interpretation of it. She said she snuck into the egg chamber long enough to use the wand without being seen and saw that both Ilthan’e eggs and the ones closest to her were corrupted. “We are in over our heads,” she told him. “let the soft skins know!”

So here we are.

There were three problems to be solved: separate the good eggs from the bad ones to save as many of the new generation of hatchlings as possible, remove chief Shukak from power, and free the prisoners. Just the first one, alone, required that we meet with Hishka: we needed to get a better understanding of the egg chamber, and what could and couldn’t be done with the eggs. So we needed a place to meet.

Gathok said that their current lair is underground, next to their old village (now abandoned since their numbers have dwindled). He suggested that we sneak into one of the huts of the old village after dark, and meet with Hishka there. We’d have to hide everything about our presence, including our scent, but it would put us in a position to meet quickly and do so face-to-face without raising suspicion from their tribe. As I’ve said, time was not on our side, and multiple, long treks through the swamp would compound the problem. We agreed to the “abandoned village” plan, and sent Gathok back to deliver the message.

Hiding our scent would be a challenge, of course. Varin has a cantrip that is good for cleaning, and certainly a clean animal smells a lot less than a dirty one, but that can only take us so far. We could, however, use natural scents to mask our odor, and make the natural smell of the Mushfen on our bodies stronger than that of our own. This was another throwback to Sera’s and my time with the Night Walkers. She’s kept her skills sharper than mine, so I deferred to her.

We’re resting here for the day. We’ve been up nearly 24 hours with no sleep and we’re starting to feel it. And, the spell casters need to refresh their spells for what comes next.

(late night)

Gathok said that Ilthane has stationed kobolds in the egg chamber (ostensibly to guard the eggs, but we suspect their real purpose is to prevent interference with Ilthan’s plans, no matter the source), and they are loyal only to her. As soon as we enter, there will be a fight. That told us right away that dealing with the eggs would have to come last, lest we find ourselves trapped inside with angry kobolds in front of us and angrier lizardfolk behind us.

That meant dealing with Shukak first.

As an added complication, we cannot put Hishka or Gathok in danger from their tribe, or the lizardfolk tribe in danger from Ilthane. Which means they need what’s known as “plausible deniability”. Everything we do has to have the appearance of us acting alone.

As such, we formed our plan around a prisoner rescue, using a lightning raid. Zhog actually had the best idea on how to do that.

“Why don’t we just run straight through?” he said.

It sounded crazy at first, but…we have a map, courtesy of Gathok, and we know exactly where to go. With cover provided by invisibility and magical silence, we could get quite a ways before we were detected by other means, and even then it would take time for them to figure out what was happening. That would be enough for us to get into position and block off key passages, so we could limit the scope of the engagement by making it more difficult and time-consuming for the rest of the tribe to enter the fray. If we take Shukak down quickly enough, Hishka can assume the role of acting chief before we put other members of the tribe at risk.

At that point, we can legitimately negotiate a cessation of hostilities with Hishka. From the lizardfolk tribe’s perspective, humans will have staged a raid into their lair to rescue their prisoners, and Hishka will have acted in the best interest of her people since, after all, it was Shukak that led them to attack the human lands.

Then, Hishka arranges for us to enter the egg chamber and deal with the corruption in the eggs. Once again, plausible deniability would come into play here: no lizardfolk would enter the egg chamber with us, just in case one of the kobolds escaped. It had to look as though we were raiding the lizardfolk lair on our own, and specifically going after Ilthane’s egg. We wanted Ilthane retaliating against us, not the lizardfolk. (Actually, we don’t want Ilthane coming after us, either, but she may not give us that option.)

The biggest unknown was the safety of the prisoners. What would stop Shukak from simply executing them once he learned we were inside? Fortunately, Hishka had a solution for this. “I will have them brought to my chamber. Shukak’s lieutenant knows I’ve been healing them, and tending to their wounds. I’ll simply find another excuse to do that.”

Good enough, and probably as good as we were going to get.

We launch the raid at midnight.