It was time to finish the Blood Bees once and for all, the trolls of the Iceclaw moot had started trading with Throal in the aftermath of our last expeditions, but now the bees had blocked the route again. Dubahn, Dvarim, Jael, and Vlolkir also answered the call.
We decided that some research on the bees would be helpful so we chipped in to get Dubhan in the library, a few our later he came back with some information: apparently the bees are allergic to salt. We all stocked up on salt in various ways and also picked up some antidotes and poultices to deal with the poison.
We set off and reached the Iceclaw moot without problems, where we performed the customary greeting rituals, I have to admit my performance was subpar, but because they hadn't met Vlolkir before they focused their suspicion on him instead. We spend some time exchanging news and they inform us that not only the bees are behaving more intelligently than usual, but a new kind of bee with red eyes has been seen "leading" them. Given the relative proximity to the Cloister of Silence, my mind immediately went to horror influences. The moot also informed us that they lost some people to the bees and asked us to recover the bodies.
We set out the next day towards the nest, at which point I started wondering why we were doing this in the middle of winter. No matter bees and horrors wait for no namegiver! However I wonder if the cold or heights are making people dumber, Vlolkir is apparently following Zil's brand of crazy and also jumping into fires to heal himself but it didn't seem to work anywhere near as "well".
Yet again we found a bee ambush at a bridge, we attempted to bait them out but they wouldn't take, so we just duked it out and had our first encounter with one of the red eyed bees, whose carcass we took to bring back to Throal for examination. As we press on we found the corpse of a troll youth, one of the lost members of the moot, I made a note of the location to pick up it up on the way back and reunite him with his family. Jael on the other hand stripped him of his fernweave armour...
About an hour later we reached the entrance of the hive and entered without hesitation. I've been in my share of caves, but the hive was a new experience: dark, cramped, and claustrophobic, with twisting tunnels and a constant droning in the background drowning most noises. We soon encountered bees and started a slogging fight to get deeper. The red eyed bees were a constant presence in the mix of drones and warriors.
Salt didn't seem to be affecting them much, until one of the bees latched onto me and I punched it straight in the blood sack, which shrivelled and dried out. After what felt like forever we reached a tunnel that had been blocked up. We quickly removed the obstruction to find yet another chamber, but also our prize: in the distance we could see what looked like a much larger Blood Bee, likely the queen.
As the queen and its guard approached us, we also saw two ghouls, confirming my suspicions of horror involvement. Even worse one of the ghouls was unusually large and seemed to be directing the queen! Weary, we formed a line at the choke point and prepared to end this threat for good. It was another slog but eventually Jael managed to tear the queen apart and we mop up the rest.Statistics:Posted by sigfriedmcwild — Sat Apr 11, 2020 8:01 pm
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