Diomedes: IWD Update 3

Our run up to the Forgotten Temple proved to be mostly frustrating.

*The “Heartstone”, a sort of divine scrying device, had beed been taken just before we arrived.*

A lot of destruction left behind. We found oursives fighting both the original temple priests and guards, and some of the attackers. These were Yuan-Ti, large and vicious snake men.
Basically we stepped into a war zone and were not recognized by either side.

The only good to come of it was that in facing the Yuan-Ti, Arundel guessed this trouble might be coming from an old cave complex known as Dragon’s Eye.
In considering our next move, we decided to look into a couple detours along the way to Dragon’s Eye.

First was a lake that had once been a minor Holy Site, something involving dreams and romance. But recently things had taken a bitter turn.

*We encountered a barbarian shaman at the lake. He claimed the locals used to fish the lake, and had a good relationship with the guardian spirit. But things had all turned a couple years back.* *This had become a popular spot for suicides since, especially those related to a romantic malfunction.*

*There were colorful old paintings in a cave at the site. It seemed likely offerings had once been made here.*

The shaman suggested we could try to make an offering (some sort of fish was prefered!) and see if that helped. So we did that. Then we explored another cavern nearer the lake, and found the Guardian spirit.

*She was deeply grieving, and there was evidence of drowned dead all around. We were able to learn she had her heart broken by a human man.*

Apparently her grief was tinged with wrath, which had something to do with the suicides. We rushed back to Kuldahar and consulted with a couple of the local magic types. The gnome Oswald came up with an idea for purifying the water. I think Psyche and Moya both understood this whole conversation better than I did! Soon we were rushing back to the lake and introduced some uh, “ghost filtered” something or other…

It seemed to help! The spirit was able to quit weeping. The Shaman thought she might be able to recover more naturally now. It did feel like a dark cloud had lifted.

Next we set out for a small patch of forest. A mage we met in Kuldahar had asked us to track down a beast known as the “Skineater”. Yeah, lovely name. The forest was thick and hard to navigate. But we eventually found a large cave, a lair.

It completely regenerated itself a couple times. After we had slain it three times it stayed dead.

*There was a dead mage to the back of the cave, he seemed to have kept a lot of records.*

As near as we could tell he had created the monster with the help of his brother, the mage who had sent us on this little mission. Apparently we were to feed the creature. Oops! We returned to the mage and ended his monster making business.

Finally we made it down to Dragon’s Eye. We fought some trolls outside the entrance.

*And Lizard Men inside! Really a lot of Lizard Men.*

He admitted to abducting villagers, for food. Yeah, we killed a lot of lizard men.

*We found a large number of villagers in these caves too. Most were still alive, we were able to heal and feed many.*

The problem was, these caves still went deeper. A lot deeper we suspected. These chambers seemed to be secure now, and since it was a solid 8 hours back to Kuldahar we requested that the villagers hold tight. We would be back for them, and accompany them home.

*The next really problematic thing we encountered were beetles.*

Bombardier Beetles, the sort who attack with a loud *BOOM* and a spray of caustic acid. They’re not really very big, and wouldn’t be a challenge except the noise and the acid are often incapacitating for a brief period. It seemed every fight led to one or two of us being helpless for a period. Fortunately with three of us up front, we were never *all* down.

But I really hate bugs.

Trolls are nasty, they are strong and always want to kill. And you need fire or acid to really put them down. Fortunately we have flame arrows for Harg, and Psyche knows a few spells. But seriously I lost count. I think we killed 20 trolls.

*In a large chamber, some sort of unholy rite was going on. There were several Talonite clerics, and a bunch more trolls.*

That was an exciting fight. Psyche’s Fireballs and Moya’s Holy Smiting carried the day.

After, we found the missing priestess for Kuldahar. And another bunch of villagers. We moved them up to the previous group, and continued deeper into the cave.

From here we faced a number of undead, lead by an evil lady mage… I forget her name but I think Psyche was taking notes.

Deeper in things seemed to change a lot, we had walked into an artificial chamber. Something constructed, not natural. It first *felt* like a quiet, peaceful place. A man in robes came forward speaking words of friendship.

*But I could immediately sense this was all wrong. He had an aura of pure evil.*

When I plainly saw through him he actually seemed relieved. This was a large enclave of Yuan-Ti. And we had a large running battle for most of the next hour.

*Most the villagers we found here were already dead. The evil was growing more overt and oppresive the deeper we went.*

*Continuing on we had a strange encounter. A clearly demented little girl spouting odd riddles.*

The Yuan-Ti did her bidding, it was obvious she was no human child. We slew many more snake men. We were able to free a few more captives, but as we drew nearer to the heart of this beast the surviving slaves were fewer and in rougher shape.

*Finally, in another large chamber the little girl changed before our eyes. I was relieved, this was much less frightening. And there were no more riddles.*

She was some old demon named Yux something or other. Psyche did not note this one down, she said she didn’t feel like digging into the pack again.

*Yux and her snake boys fell pretty quickly.*

And we found she did have the Heartstone Gem!
Garaint and I felt some of the earlier battles in these caves were tougher. Shuri mentioned the fight back at the Ziggurat was really brutal. Yeah, we were feeling pretty good just now.

Moya said she hated to break up the party but we had a lot of villagers we needed to get out of here. And many of them would need help getting back to Kuldahar.
No doubt, she is the wise one amongst us…

The trip back took more than the whole next day. We had a large crowd who weren’t all in good shape for travel. And we didn’t have nearly enough cloaks and blankets, this was not fun for many of them.

*Just as Kuldahar came into sight we saw orcs, kind of big orcs. Neo Orogs I believe?*

There were maybe a dozen of them causing trouble in town. This wasn’t a huge problem for us, but it was very concerning. Troubles for Kuldahar were getting worse. After slaying the Orogs we rushed to find Arundel.

*We were too late. His last words to us were to head down to an old elven fortress for help using the Gem, and get guidence on where to go next.*

*It wasn’t exactly a party at the Inn that night. But it was good to all be together.*

I wanted to sleep for a week. But we would be ready to head out in the morning.

2 responses to “Diomedes: IWD Update 3”

Zeno

April 15, 2026

sMan that Remorhaz? look awesome! I love how that turned out. Also Yux and the Yuan Ti! I remember how brutally painful that was to do with DALL-E when I rendered IWD. My only quibble would be Yux should be bigger, but I’ve found that even with GPT I really have to get wordy describing size differences to force genuinely giant sized things.

I love the choking on the bombardier beetles too. And the colors on the Lizard King are a nice touch. But really all of this came out really, really nicely. Comparing it to just a year or two ago… man. You gotta wonder what it will be capable of in a few more years!

LikeLiked by 1 person

1. atcDave
  
  April 15, 2026
  
  The Rhemoraz thing is the Skineater. It starts as more of a Shambler, then a Carrion Crawler, then another Shambler. So I went with an oversized Carrion Crawler for the render, it did come out pretty frightening!
  
  Yes absolutely the abilities of current renderers is amazing. There’s obviously still things they’re not great at, and I think I’m actually spending more time on them than I was a year ago. But it’s so much fun, feeling like you can get almost anything if you think it through right.
  
  although I did run afoul of the filters a couple times with these. It did not like the first big battle with Yuan-Ti. I had “sleeping” villagers on the table in the background. It was quite plainly disturbing, and the background render rejected about half of all attempts. Then adding characters for the fight also rejected another half. But then the final image I posted doesn’t show the “meal” at all. Which is clearly why this one passed muster. I’ll try to remember to put up an example later, when I’m back at my computer.
  
  LikeLike

DavesGaming