Orion Malanis - Report
This was one of my first ventures into the caverns which surround the city. When I saw the original notice I was unsure if my own abilities would be up to the task, however after meeting the rest of the group it became clear they were all well equipped and capable of making up for where I lacked.
Our journey through the sand layer was uneventful. We ran into no major issues and we're able to get a rest in for a few hours before we pushed into the deeper areas. I was able to find some time to summon a bat familiar and cast mage armour, in preparation for whatever we might run into.
As we pushed onwards we picked up a trail of blood. I myself was unable to gleam much from it but from what I heard it seemed to be a few days old and from a humanoid creature. Tracking it led us almost straight to a camp where we found gore, bones and several dangerous masked creatures.
Never before have I seen such unnatural and strange beings. Their limbs were long and narrow, like they had been stretched. They often moved on all fours, like some kind of beast, but in a way that just looked wrong. Each beast wore a mask, all with differences, though I didn't get close enough to examine any of these masks in detail.
The fight with the beasts was intense. Several of our group took the front lines while myself, another mage and some kind of ratfolk in a armoured vehicle attacked from behind. It was a long and tedious fight but we did eventually succeed, thought a bulette did intrude during the conflict and caused some serious harm to both our frontline and the strange creatures.
Worth noting is that these creatures seemed to be unaffected by many of my necrotic and poisonous spells. Also, they had a tendency to scream and wail, which seemed to have some kind of negative affect on those with weaker mental defenses. Nothing a simple warding wind could not deal with but it did cause some problems in our front line.
After dealing with the creatures and escaping the bulette we found a straggler, similar to the other masked beasts, that was showing some interest in a small cavern. We swiftly dealt with this beast and then found one survivor of the attack, hidden in the back of the space.
This final beast left its mask behind, which one of our group attempted to cast remove curse on. Unfortunately the spell seemed to fail and the mask seemed to fuse itself with her hand and caused her flesh to turn to what appears to be porcelain, starting from the point of contact. The spread was stopped by wrapping her upper arm with chain, which lasted until we made it back to town with the survivor.
For the most part we handled the work well, dealt with the creatures and retrieved the survivors. However I believe this could be a cautionary tale about using remove curse without being aware of the strength and properties of the curse itself.
