>>5399802>18 vs. 17The twisted, oozing abomination produces no audible response to your flames—no scream or wail, no roar or bellow. However, the poppin,g bubbling, and sloshing as it slides away from the Junior Novice’s agonized form to escape your dragonfire sounds like victory to you! You press your advantage, marching after the fleeing shoggoth and keeping the heat of your breath weapon on it until you are forced to stop to refill your lungs—fire and otherwise. By that time, all that is left is a greasy streak of char upon the ground.
You turn around, and see that the Junior Novice is not so badly off as that… But also not great. He may or may not be fire-resistant, but he is certainly not fire-IMMUNE, judging by the state of him. He struggles to his feet, indicating that the underlying damage is not so severe as the surface injuries would indicate, but that surface is NOT a pretty sight. He’s had patches of skin and flesh dissolved away, and is covered in a fine char and in reddening burns. Blood seeps off of him, leaving a trail as he limps away from the site of the attack, in a random direction and without any apparent plan aside from escaping the pain. He doesn’t get far before he doubles over, stopped by a spasm of agony.
Your other companions, by now roused by the commotion, see the results of this attack and quickly gather round—except the Novice, who rushes to Junior to attend to his injuries as best she can.
“Do you know how much time and IRREPLACEABLE material has been invested in this thing?!” she snarls. “I will not lose all this research to some… Slug!”
“What are we facing?” you demand of Jazkarmel, for you know it is no mere slug.
“Shoggoth,” she answers. “I have never encountered them, but there are… Tales. A mother-and-father of slimes… A creature with a thousand mouths and a million limbs, which oozes out from deepest places to consume any traveler it finds. Its limbs detach, squirm through crevices, capture prey and drag them back to the body in a hidden place.”
“What place?” Ivno asks nervously. “Where does it come from?”
Jazkarmel shakes her head, and answers: “Nobody knows. Few survive a shoggoth attack. Only one Drow that my people know of has ever survived being dragged to a shoggoth’s main body, and escaped to tell the tale… And she was mad, babbling. Her directions led to empty tunnels and caverns but… Wrong. We had scouts who knew this area, but the cave system there did not match those maps any more.”
“What do you mean?” you ask.
“Where the shoggoths go, things… Change. The stone shifts and wraps with their passage. Old tunnels seal, new tunnels open, and the minerals change.”
You recall the wary words of warning of the Throat-singer.
