Prologue: The Barony of Harkenwold

The horses are all terrified but Hunter, Zoe, Jojo, and John all manage to calm theirs, causing Carlos' and Kat's mounts to calm down as well through herd mentality. Which is a good thing, because emerging from the new hole in the structure is a massive translucent ooze full of floating magical lab equipment. As you guys watch, the equipment slowly dissolves. Disgusting stalks emerge from it's body and wave around the air, sensing the world around it until they start pointing at you guys! It moves to attack, leaving a trail of acidic slime across the lawn, destroying the grass almost instantly.

Roll Initiative

Calor immediately springs off it's mare, and slaps her back in order to get her away from there - "On second thought, get lost Judy!"

He pulls out his Hammer and gets ready for a... whatever this will turn out to be.

Initiative 14

Startled by the sight of the advancing ooze, Kathryn instinctively goes for her shield and her weapon. She dismounts Carrot and sends her away to keep her away from the danger. She then steps toward Illyana's manor, ready to protect her friends from this... thing. "Carlos, with me!"

She squeezes the handle of Durandal, her sword, and prepares to attack.

Initiative: 3

Initiative 22

Like that, Hunter is just as startled as the horse was. He pulls on the reigns and nudges Moonshadow with his knee to get him to move away.

Animal Handling (Wis) 8

Hunter tries to direct Moonshadow back the way they came, but none of the horses are trained in combat, and he ends up riding off to the west with Noble tailing him as the huge oozee advances. Deciding against getting a handle on the beast, Hunter hops off over the rear of his mount and shoots at the slime, lodging an arrow in its viscous innards.

"What's the plan?" asks John.

"You stay with me, no matter what," says Kathryn. "We attack together."

Unsure, Hunter can only nod to his cousin at her answer.

"Me thinkin' go over there and hit it really hard. See how it agrees wi' that," Carlos adds as the creature ominously advances.

"You hang back till we know it's not just gonna swallow us whole when we get close to it...LIKE SO!!" he shouts, springing forward and rushing at it. "Hola señor Slime. JODE-TE!!"

He slams his maul into the ooze, causing it to shudder and ripple, stopping it in it's tracks, so stunned that can't hold itself together and splits into four smaller versions of itself. Jojo points his wand and casts Scorching Ray, launching three laser-like fire beams at three of them. After this, the ooze reconstitutes and lumbers into Carlos, engulfing the macho warrior. Restrained, he starts burning within the creature's acidic body, unable to breathe.

Alarmed, Kathryn shouts, "Zoe! Look after Carlos!"

John leaps into action and runs forward, grabbing Carlos. He shouts in pain as he pulls him out, dragging them both away from the ooze.

Carlos spits in in disgust, "Mierda Carajo, tastes like dead caterpillars!" He looks up at John in surprise. "Johnny!? Get away from it!"

"Working on it!" He grunts, dragging him away.

Zoe runs up to them both. Carlos' armor has resisted the acid far better than John's did. With only a spllit second to take stock of the injuries, she decides to heal John first. She says, "I'll heal you next Carlos, don't worry!"

"Aye aye, look after the kid. Uh... Man."

Kathryn raises her shield and moves between the enemy and her friends. Enraged, she yells, "Hey, doofus! LEAVE. THEM. ALONE!" as she starts hacking at the translucent ooze. The creature wobbles under their combined assault. When done, the knight leaves an opening for the ranger.

"Hunter! Now!"

Focused on the ooze while his cousin seethes in pain on the grass, Hunter fires off another shot the moment he hears Kathryn yell at him. His attack pierces and floats inside the ooze just as before. Feeling confident, he shoots again, but this time the arrow goes wide. He moves closer to his friends and Noble follows, easily outpacing him, yipping with ferocity at the enemy savaging the friends of The Hunter of Tasty Food.

Carlos stands, fighting through the pain, and rushes up to the ooze, and notices Kathryn next to him just before he swings his hammer. "Oh hi Kat!"

"Huh?"

The hammer comes down with a sploosh while their foe struggles again to keep form. It starts spreading across the ground, like an acid soup, destroying all natural life on the ground beneath it; be it grass, shrubs, or bugs. Carlos spots a snail on the grass, about to be engulfed. In a rare moment of empathy for the things which crawl on the ground, he quickly picks it up and tosses it away. "Get lost," he says to both it and the enemy they just defeated.

And like that, the party has heroically slain a gelatinous cube.

Then he turns around and walks over to John. "Oy big man, how's that sting?"

Hunter rushes over. "Are you alright, John?" He looks between the pair of them. With Carlos looking worse off, he's unsure who he should be helping.

"Spiffy," he groans, "Thanks for asking." He's holding his arm out away from his body. The spell took care of most of the acid, but he's not looking too happy about the remainder which covers splotches here and there up his left forearm.

"Let's wash it off using water." Zoe pulls out her waterskin and starts using it to shoot water onto the acid to wash it off of John. "It's working! Hunter, take over!"

She hands Hunter her waterskin and then moves over to Carlos. "Hang on, I got ya!" She says a quick prayer to Avandra and hits him with Cure Wounds, healing him for 6 hit points. "Kat, Jo, take care of the rest of the acid. I'm going to see if I can gather up our horses."

"O-okay!" Jo pulls out his wineskin and starts using it to wash Carlos' beard and face.

She leaves you guys to it to do just that, running after Carrot which happens to be the closest horse to the group.

"Uh, that feels better. Wow, Judy didn't think i was kidding, huh."

Kathryn pulls out her own waterskin and uses it on her dwarven friend first.

"I'm sure Zoe will do fine," she tells Carlos. "Good thing John pulled you out of that cube of gelatin. Does it still hurt?"

Hunter pours water over John's hands to rinse off the rest of the acid. "Sorry, John. I should have got crossbows from the Keep."

Carlos grimaces a bit - "Ugh, never get hit by acid, Kat. Even if you have to run a little."

The silver-haired knight chuckles and says, "That's why I have a shield! Come on, we need to find out if Illyana is fine."

She lets Jojo handle the rest and looks for Zoe.

"Don't worry about it Cuz. I'd have done the same thing if anyone got trapped inside that ooze. It's just...let's leave this part out when we tell my mom about it, okay?"

Zoe has managed to mount Carrot and is now trying to ride down Judy and Moonshadow. The rest of you soon have the acid off. Who helps gather the horses and who goes to look for Ilyanna?

Carlos goes help gather the horses. - "Gonna catch me my mare back. See you in a bit."

"Sounds good to me. I'm gonna go flag the horses down, you can help if you're up to it."

After making sure that John is all right after having acid eat at his arms, Hunter chases down the horses with Zoe, whistling to call them.

Handle Animal 9

Kathryn nods at her friends who've decided to gather the horses and tells them, "Me and Jojo will go check on Illyana. We'll shout if we need help."

She grabs her sword and shield, and carefully peeks into the hole the ooze made. If she detects no danger or traps, she will step inside the building while Joshua guards the rear.

John decides to help gather the horses and the horse gathering party quickly makes progress. Between Hunter's ranger training and Zoe trying to herd them towards Carlos and John, you guys will have them gathered up in about 5 minutes.

In the meantime, Katherine and Jojo don't see any danger but they do see the remains of a lab. What was the roof lies over the top of the various tables and smashed glass and chemicals are everywhere. From under a pile of rubble in the far corner, Kat can hear the sound of muffled yelling. As she draws closer she sees two feet sticking out from under a wood beam and the sound of a muffled "Help!" coming from what use to be a table and a standing storage closet.

"Illyana? Hold on!"

Kathryn sheathes her sword and hangs her shield to the strap on her back. She then grabs hold of the wooden beam and starts to lift it.

"Jojo, take this side!"

The two of them do their best to move all of the debris out of the way.

"On it!" Jo takes the opposite side but the two soon find out that if they aren't careful, the beam might shift, a fact they find out when Ilyanna screams in pain. "Please don't do that again please and thank you!"

The two friends take a moment to confer and decide to have Jo move what he can while Kat lifts up the beam. It takes all her strength, but she manages to do it. As soon as she is free, a frazzled young woman, black hair askew and full of splinters, sits up and looks around at the remains of her lab before saying, "Well, looks like Solution 17 was a bust too." She looks down at her mangled legs, "Heh, heh, bust. Busted legs. Get it?" She passes out.

An entirely too young Illyana the Alchemist:

It's at this time the others arrive.

Kat gazes in disbelief at the woman whom she assumes is Illyana. Is that really the famed alchemist she's met before?

"...Solution 17?" she repeats. "Uh, Zoe! Come take a look!"

Carlos breaks into a run when he hears someone scream from inside the former lab - "Jo! Kat! Are--" - he catches sight of the alchemist's poor mangled legs - "...ay caramba, that's gonna take more than a few spells."

Hunter gawks at the unconscious woman. He didn't know she was the type of person to have guests over.

"Whoa! Yikes, just look at those legs."

The comments about Illyana's legs worry Kathryn, and she immediately turns to Zoe. "Do you think you can do anything about them?"

Zoe looks down right green as she stares down at Ilyanna's legs. But Kat's questions prompt her to action. "Um, okay. Right. Right. I'll try a spell." She moves quickly to Ilyanna's side and starts praying. She hits her with a level 2 Cure Wounds, which heals her for 8 hit points. The sound of bones snapping back into place is soon drowned out by Ilyanna's screams. She starts thrashing about, not herself. "Hold her down!"

John is too scared to move and stares at the thrashing young woman with great big saucer eyes. Jo moves forward to try and hold her down.

Kat moves next to the achemist, kneels down and pushes her down.

"Hang in there!"

"Uh...Carlos, hold her feet down!" Says Hunter, demonstrating his lack of healing knowledge.

He decides to help too, and starts praying and intoning Cure Wounds.

Cure Wounds (heal for 6)