Session 31 — 25 October 2026
Lana makes her longsword a sacred weapon, ready to strike the giant scorpion sprawled in front of her. But Daiki has enchanted it into helpless laughter, and attacking it might break the spell. She leaves it alone.
There is another creature available. The ankheg has already sprayed her with acid, and she is still badly hurt. With two escaped mascots left to find in the Witherbloom marsh, this search has become considerably more dangerous than putting collars on little creatures.
Lana turns towards the ankheg instead. Her first swing misses. She waves to draw its attention, calls it a horrible thing and gives herself a little healing. Above her, Ruben invokes bad dreams with “Memento Mori”, then flies higher. The ankheg feels his psychic magic, though it remains very much ready to fight.
Kroak sends another surge of lightning through the spell already connecting them to the scorpion. The creature shakes with laughter. They descend beside it and reach out with Chill Touch.
That is enough to wake it from the joke.
The scorpion gets up and closes a claw around Kroak. Its other claw misses, but the stinger rises. Held fast, Kroak cannot get away. The point punches through their rib cage; when it pulls out, blood and venom seep from the wound. Kroak goes limp in the claw.
Daiki sees them fall unconscious. White flames with iridescent colours inside them fume around him. He wants to hurt the scorpion, but Kroak needs help now. He flies over the creature, evades its tail and reaches down to touch his friend. His Cure Wounds brings Kroak back to consciousness, while protective flames surround them.
The claw still holds them.
Lana lets Daiki know through their mind link that she will keep the ankheg busy. This time her sword connects. She bangs the blade against her shield, trying to draw the insect farther from the others.
“Come on, you awful insect, come on.”
Kroak is awake but trapped, so Ruben turns his last reserves of spellcasting towards the scorpion. He starts pulling feathers, sending them down as Magic Missiles. More follow, and more, until the barrage kills it – the attack is VERY powerful. A final feather shoots towards the ankheg.
The scorpion drops Kroak before its body falls from the raised ground into the water below.
Lana reminds Ruben, privately: “You can add that to your tally, Ruben.”
Now that Kroak is free, they consider turning the scorpion's own stinger against the surviving enemy. Unfortunately, it is far too firmly attached for a quick removal, and much too heavy for their Catapult spell. They settle for a rock. Kroak's throw is awkward until magic takes over and sends it hurtling towards the ankheg.
It misses.
Kroak retreats into the air and drinks a healing potion. On the ground, Lana continues to fend off the ankheg with her shield. It reaches for her and fails to find an opening. Then acid starts dripping from its jaws again.
Lana turns, her braid whipping round, to warn the others. They need to attack now or get out of the way.
Daiki has seen quite enough of this creature. Kroak has been unconscious, everyone is hurt, and he is still burning with magic. He sends a Sorcerous Burst of thunder towards the ankheg.
“Stop it.”
A shockwave reverberates behind Lana. The ankheg explodes.
She ducks, but there is no avoiding the shower of insect. Goo covers her head and clothes. Pieces of the creature are everywhere.
“Oh my God, this is so disgusting.”
Ruben flies down, cheering at the sudden end of the fight. He suggests that magical cleaning might be more suitable than their communal bath. Kroak, meanwhile, wants to save the remains.
Lana sits on the ledge and looks into the water. A moment ago she was ready to keep fighting so the others could get to safety. Now she is covered in meat. She plucks a piece from her shoulder, feels it under her nails and flicks it towards Kroak.
She reaches for Daiki through their mind link instead. His magic was amazing, she tells him. He apologises in case he frightened her, but she is quite happy to have that kind of power on her side. There is just one favour she would like.
“Would you please clean me up and give me a hug?”
Daiki is still fuming with energy, but he cleans her and gives her the hug. Then he checks on Kroak.
Kroak congratulates everyone on their impressive magic, caught between relief at being saved and disappointment that the ankheg is now scattered and contaminated.
Ruben wants to leave. He has almost nothing left to cast, and waves of life-draining magic are still passing through the marsh. Daiki wants to finish finding the two remaining mascots. He is spent too, but the energy flowing through him makes it difficult to feel that yet.
Lana proposes a compromise: some rest, then finish the search. Clean clothes have not repaired her acid burns, but she agrees they should collect the mascots while they are here. Ruben will accept a quick search. Beyond that, their lives come first.
Kroak has one other requirement before leaving: the scorpion venom. After what it has just done to them, they intend to get something out of this fight.
While Kroak harvests the venom, Ruben searches the broken hut and the ankheg's remains. He gathers clippers, a mortar and pestle, pouches and vials: enough tools to make a herbalism kit.
Daiki sees something black moving nearby. For a moment it looks promising. Then he realises that the ooze crawling over a tree and consuming whatever it reaches is a black pudding, rather than their missing inkling mascot.
He warns everyone and takes a wide arc around it towards another hut, where he waits outside and looks for a way in.
Before Kroak finishes, another necrotic pulse washes over them.
Lana tries to stand from the railing and finds herself slow and wretched, her wounds bleeding again. The giant fly, Youffool, also suffers.
She heals herself again. It helps considerably, although she remains tattered and the sluggishness stays. Ruben draws on the blessing he received from a spirit statue to judge the pulse's direction. From here it seems stronger to the north-west. He shares that with the others.
Lana asks Kroak whether they need help. Kroak is working with their head inside the scorpion, one hand lifting a huge flap of meat. They hand the flap to her.
“A little higher.”
She lifts it.
At the other hut, Daiki spots a little pest on a table, gnawing a dark blue stone. He compares the gem with the green one in his pocket. The blue one is darker and does not look quite the same, but it might make a very nice addition to his hoard.
He calls for the others. Lana, more than two hundred feet away and occupied with the scorpion, cannot hear him.
Daiki wants everyone to be able to rest. He is tired of being careful, too. He flies through an open window and strokes the pest's poky back. Getting its collar on is easy enough; as he does so, he takes the blue stone from its mouth. The pest crawls out and heads north, as the other collared mascots have done.
Five recovered. One inkling to go.
Daiki puts the stone in his pocket beside the green gem.
Kroak's harvesting succeeds, and they rejoin Lana for a very slow walk towards the others. Lana thinks about what might attract an inkling. Students at Silverquill try to befriend the creatures and persuade them to help with their studies. Inklings particularly enjoy ruining clean parchment. They also leave ink behind them, whereas the black pudding takes things away.
That ought to give them a trail to follow. They just need to find ink.
Kroak has seen some already.
They passed blotches on a walkway. Kroak simply did not know that ink was what they were looking for.
Lana curses in Giant under her breath and makes her slow way over. Beyond the stained walkway lies spongy, mossy ground. Its little bumps move occasionally, like hills that refuse to stay put.
She takes parchment from her bag.
Lana begins an exaggerated performance about having a wonderfully clean piece on which to write an excellent thesis. Crouching down, she spreads the sheets out and watches.
Kroak joins in, considerably less convincingly.
“Oh yeah, I can use this nice fresh parchment to write this haiku down. This beautiful poem that I sure don't want spoiled by anything.”
A little blob of ink pulls itself out from beneath the roots of a tree.
Lana extends the parchment and bares her arm. She offers it a choice: does it want to write, or does it want to be her tattoo?
The inkling slides onto the walkway, leaving stains behind. It sprays the parchment. It also sprays Lana's outfit.
Well, the clothes are black anyway.
With the creature right in front of them, Kroak tries to slip a collar around it. The inkling shoots away at the last moment and appears behind them instead. Wet ink drips down Kroak's neck.
Ruben considers whether his water magic might help. Freezing the creature is no solution, but perhaps he can guide the water that makes up so much of its body to flow towards Kroak.
For another attempt, Kroak sets the collar in a circle on a clean piece of parchment. Lana coaxes the inkling closer and persuades it to stay. It busies itself spraying more ink onto her and the paper, satisfied that it is leaving a permanent mark.
As Kroak tries again, Ruben uses Shape Water to keep the inkling's ooze in place and guide it into the collar. He feels the strange connection of being able to bend a creature's shape with his magic.
“Use your powers for good,” Kroak tells him.
The collar closes. The inkling looks up as though waking from a trance, then starts north.
Ruben gives it a final alteration before it goes. With Shape Water he changes its colouring to black, white and red: a touch of Lorehold for a Silverquill mascot.
The work is finished, and Ruben expects another pulse fairly soon.
It arrives as he says so.
Now the direction is north-east. Together with the earlier pulses, that gives them a location: a tree in the area they have been searching. It also leaves Ruben visibly hurt and slowed. He climbs onto Youffool, which resists this pulse, and wants to get out before another one strikes.
Lana asks whether the fly can carry her too. It cannot carry them both. She will have to keep walking.
Kroak stays beside her. They are slow as well, and someone has to follow the path anyway. As they go, Kroak thanks her for banging her shield during the fight. “Drawing the ankheg's attention was clever. It kept the creature busy, so it didn't attack the rest…”
Before leaving, Daiki approaches the students still nearby and asks them to tell Professor Lang about the tree giving off the draining magic. They are exhausted from their mission and need someone else to handle it. He describes where to look and warns them about the black pudding.
One student agrees that it ought to be studied and takes the other along.
The group reports back to Professor Sharpbeak. For recovering all six mascots, each of them may choose a small magical item from the Biblioplex. The choices can wait.
Daiki also learns from other students that his blue gem is a rare Stone of Awareness. It is slightly broken, but with some time he might be able to fix it.
The others still know nothing about the stone in his pocket.