DDW: Muck

[Jim Roberts]

[Feb 5 AM – The Waterworks]

> Pools of dead ooze, however, remained in puddles at various spots on
> the uneven flagstones. And on one of the larger puddles, a ring of
> rippling waves began to spread out. Just as the more sensitive among
> the crew could feel an ominous vibration rumbling from below. Not in a
> cadence like footsteps, but something rather more even… a continuous
> rumble that was slowly getting stronger.

“I knew that was too easy,” Lomi muttered. “You feel that?”

“The floor is angry,” Jeyshann sighed. Tramma, meanwhile, continued her
little ditty. Clearly some ongoing bardic magic was going to be needed.

You'll see it's tru-u-ue (Shoo-be-dee-doo)
A girl like me-e-e (Scooby-doo-bee-doo-bee)
Can learn to be
Br-u-tal
To-o-oo!

Ever the artist, Tramma kept singing, now turning to address her next
verse to Finfin.

Now don't try to kid me, elflord
We're all countin' on you

The vibrations continued their crescendo. Whatever was about to happen,
would happen soon.

What I desire is you hold it's ire
To foil the dream of that goo!

Some twenty feet down the corridor, well within range of the elven
Nightsight, but unseen by the humans, was a sight that was going to
linger in nightmares. First peeking, then poking, and finally OOZING out
of every conceivable drain, culvert, or hole were gelatinous streams of
black.

Now give us the signal, elflord
Come on, clue us what to do

And as the ooze streams squirted and poured into the corridor from all
angles, they flowed together, forming an amalgamation that was far, far
bigger than the ooze they had just dispatched. And it kept on growing as
more and more of itself poured into it.

We'll use the drubs of kobold stone clubs
To beat this thing askew!

A veritable Wall of Ooze was now bearing down on the Away Team. The
entity they had dispatched in record time had been huge. This new ooze
was… simply gargantuan.

“I thought,” Lomi grumbled to Tramma, “that Pilinde said these things
liked Bowling Alleys. Does this look like a Bowling Alley to you?”

“Yeah,” the silver haired bard lamented. “It does. With US as the
bowling pins. I shoulda figured out the third verse, now we only have 30
seconds to finish this thing.”

Grimly, Finfin stepped forward, his own Rickey Ratte Club at the ready,
while behind him, the rest of the team assumed their matching positions,
Laurelin a mere step behind and beside him, the rest a prudently few
paces back. The strategy of letting the elven officer play bait worked
well enough for the previous monstrous pudding. Whether it would work as
well against this current inky sea of death remained to be seen.

The Wall of Ooze was not really approaching Finfin in slow motion; it
was probably just an odd effect of adrenaline. But the elf could see
Death Itself not quite reflecting back at him as the –slowly – oncoming
Black Pudding formed a massive pseudopod that was at least as big as he
was. Its purpose, obviously, was to squash him into jelly, and then
digest whatever was left.

With a squelching, sickening “ECCCKY – THUMP” the massive pseudopod
descended, clearly intended to crush the elf. It would not be entirely
correct to say that Finfin’s parry with the stone club actually
deflected the trajectory of the massive appendage. It might have been
more correct to say that by angling a swing of his club at the right
moment, the collision between weapon and pseudopod deflected Finfin
rather forcefully out of the way. But the result was the same; Finfin
was unscathed from the massive blow, and the barrage of club strikes he
unleashed in exchange smacked wetly into the creature.

That was everybody’s cue to dogpile onto the expanse of blackness. Abbot
Kenobi, following the success from his previous battle, fully leaned
into his double gripped club blows, sending squelching splashes of Black
Pudding flying with each mighty stroke. But club blows – and thrown
rocks – pelted the massive Pudding from across the whole battle line,
and before it could form another pseudopod to squash… ANYONE, one of
Finfin’s club blows finished it off.

Now, the Away Team had a truly massive carcass on their “hands”, so to
speak. It was slowly succumbing to gravity and was expanding, even as
its height diminished. Volume was going to be conserved, and that meant
that it was going to be taking up quite a bit of floor space before it
could liquify sufficiently to begin its descent into the drains.

“Perhaps a careful withdrawal?” Finfin suggested, eyeing the pool of
blackness that was extending in all directions… and most importantly,
towards them.

“Oh, ye of little faith!” Jeyshann scoffed at him. “The Mother of All
Cats has made everyone resistant to Acid for at least ten minutes, you
and the Galdis longer. It should hold.”

Finfin nodded, noting silently that she was not offering to step forward
and test this prediction. Carefully, Finfin slid one of his new gloves
off of his hands, and lightly brushed the back of a palm against the
slowly spreading black ooze. There was no sensation of any harm, and the
skin was untouched. Lightly, he dunked an entire finger, and then a hand
into the goo, and they too were unharmed. As was a handkerchief
extracted from a pocket and dipped into the expanding goo.

“Yes, it protects your gear and clothing,” Jeyshann sniffed, not
entirely pleased to see her Patron’s protective gift tested.

“No disrespect for the Mother of Cats intended,” Finfin replied,
carefully putting the handkerchief away. “This was just a case of being
prudent, as we are all going to be wading in this stuff in just a moment.”

“About that,” Laquendi mused quietly. “Now that the… flood-ooze, or
whatever term fits best, has lowered, I can see that there appears to be
a chest peeking out from the receding ooze-tide.” She frowned, and
added, “My apologies for not having noticed it before… if it WAS there
before. But I cannot see how it could have carried it along WITH it, so
I must have failed to observe it when my attention was focussed on the
ceiling.”

“No matter,” Finfin suggested. “For all we know, it could be a stealth
chest. Or some sort of monster appearing to be a chest. As long as it
stays stationary, there is something I should like to attend to before
our ooze liquifies completely and drains away.”

“Collect samples?” Laurelin asked, not at all displeased with the notion.

“Just so,” Finfin agreed, rummaging into his Bag of Holding. “I have
Mithi’s sample jars in here somewhere. I am certain that she would wish
for me to gather samples for future sale.”

“Captain?” Laquendi quietly interjected. “That chest. It seems to be…
dissolving, as if it HAD been back there all along, and it is made of
something that does not care for acid.”

Finfin grimaced. “I had best get down there quickly, then, before
whatever is in it is destroyed, or washed away.”

“We’ll take care of the samples, Fin,” Tramma suggested. “Lomi and I
have seen Mithi do it before. You go take care of that mystery box while
it is still there.”

Finfin, possibly accompanied by a few others, began wading through the
deeper parts of the deceased and expanding ooze, pushing through the
muck to reach the chest before it vanished once and for all.
Fortunately, the results of Finfin’s earlier experiments held true, and
no harm came to any wader, to either themselves, or to their gear. So
the journey, while gooey and rather sickening, was short and uneventful.

“That, I suppose, is ONE way to deal with a potentially trapped chest,”
Finfin mused. By now, the chest lid and a few inches of its sides were
all that was left. Pulling these aside revealed… ooze, but groping
around where the lid USED to be recovered a handful of acid washed
coins, a few gems, a glass scroll tube, and a curious club that appeared
to be made from some sort of dark and opaque glass.

All of these were quickly gathered, and returned back to the main body
of the Away Team.

“I’m sorry Mithi didn’t carry a sample sized bathtub,” Tramma joked,
screwing the lid tightly on one of the sample jars.

“I as well,” Finfin agreed. “Particularly as folklore holds that I ought
to be standing in a bathtub when I examine one of these,” he added,
holding up the glass scroll tube. “But out of prudence, I will step away
a few paces.”

Tramma’s attention, meanwhile, was focused on the recovered club. “I’ve
heard of these!” she exclaimed happily. “I really can’t remember the
details, but they are supposed to be good against oozes!” She looked
around at the still knee deep ooze they were now standing in. “Which, I
suppose, is kinda ironic.”

“The irony continues,” Finfin added, where some fifteen feet away, he
had just completed scanning the scroll that had been encased in its
glass tube. “An Arcane Spell. Shrink Item. Exactly what I could use, had
I stacked one, to save the entire creature for later sale, and not just
a few sample jars.”

“This COULD be of huge value for those wishing to make items of Acid
Resistance,” Laquendi mused. And Finfin and Laurelin exchanged a glance,
and a nod. Not only were they agreeing with Laquendi’s entirely accurate
assessment, but they were also agreeing about the irony of finding this
sort of treasure, some of it exactly AFTER it might have been most
needed. But there was no denying that the scroll was a fortunately timed
gift, even if the club rather less so.

There was no disagreement amongst the mages about the disposition of
either the newly acquired scroll, or of its intended use, and a moment
later the wizards had a Shrunk vestige of the Elder Black Pudding’s
corpse in their possession.