Everyone sits in shock at the gods' departure. They detect magic on the burning handprint in the table. The residual magical auras are off the charts. Kyle detects evil and none of the aura's are evil. Eorin looks at the aura's of the rest of the party, and there is a noticeable difference in the intensity of their auras (aka it's noticeable with detect magic now). And each person's aura reflects the touch of their particular deity.
Eorin brings up the point that it's very strange for a deity to come speak to mortals themselves. They usually send heralds or their avatar since the gods aren't allowed to directly interfere with mortal matters. So he believes we met with the avatars of the deities, rather than the deities themselves. Which is still really bizarre, but less so than if they had been the gods themselves.
We decide to sleep on it, and go after the River King anyway for Orias, and then see if we believe this ingredients business. The ingredient the River King has in his possession is the really creepy statue according to the bar napkin drawing.
Then everyone else gangs up on Eorin and informs him we have to go look in the ear hole first.
We wake up at about 11ish the next day and eat brunch. We head to the outcropping of rocks that looks like a half submerged head. Eorin is reluctant to go exploring the statue since we have such a great task set before us. His objections are overruled. Kyle climbs up the head. It's a little slippery, but she makes it up alright. Zelara follows soon after with similar success. Orias helps the other two search the head for secret doors after finding no obvious entrance. They convince Eorin to climb the head so we can take a picture of everyone on the top. Illythan uses mage hand to click the camera button. The pictures are all terrible, since magehand can't look through the viewfinder. Orias decides to cast mirror image and have that be in the picture instead of him so he can take the picture.
Kyle notices goblins in the distance looking at us through a spy glass and waving at us with a torch. Kyle looks around to see if there's anyone else they could be signaling. Kyle sees some weird looking gobliny thingies coming out of the river. They look like goblins with tentacles (aka grindylos).
COMBAT ENSUES! We murder the shit out of the grindylos (aka Illythan electrocuted them all).
We notice the goblins are still waving at us. Orias takes out his spyglass to see them better and we think they're trying to tell us to get off the rocks. Orias and Illythan use feather fall. The rest climb down carefully. Illythan notices the river is bubbling and steaming. A dragon head appears attached to a large serpentine neck taller than a galleon's main mast. Eorin realizes it's a Linnorm and recommends a strategic retreat. And we run away.
It starts following us down the river, and Kyle stops and turns towards it. It stops, looks at her, and says something none of us understands. Eorin casts tongues on Kyle. (Orias and Illythan are long gone) Zelara stays behind with Eorin and Kyle.
He wants to know why we were running and if we brought the horrible things with us. Kyle explains that we were just investigating the rock outcropping to see if there was a tomb underneath as legend says. The Linnorm tells us there is no tomb, and sniffs each of us. He asks what we were doing in his territory. Kyle continues to have a conversation with the Linnorm that none of the rest of us can understand. Eventually, it goes back under the water and speeds away. Kyle turns back to the rest of us and tells us we need to return to the town immediately.
Kyle informs us that she asked the LInnorm if there were any other dungeons since there wasn't one under the rocks. And it told her to meet it in town. And we should get back there, now!
Meanwhile, Illythan and Orias have arrived safely back in town when the Linnorm's head pops up out of the water. The Linnorm begins to emerge from the water towards Illythan and Orias. The town is afraid, but realizes it's after Illythan, so they try to stay as still and non-threatening as possible.
Illythan tries to speak to it in aqua, and it huffed at him then paused as if to say "hold on a sec" and turned to look at Orias. It beacons them forwards. Illythan reads a scroll of comprehend languages and gestures that he can understand the Linnorm now. The Linnorm instructs them to wait for the other minions. Illythan attempts to catch fish for it.
Kyle, Eorin, and Zelara run into town full tilt. Kyle cries out "DON'T WORRY! EVERYTHING IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL!"
The Linnorm tells us where to meet our fellow minions in the mountains. Our job, because it's busy, is to get rid of the other person in his territory trying to claim it as his own. Kyle asks if he means the River King. The Linnorm confirms this, and instructs us to go and meet the other minions in the mountains. He picks off a scale so the other minions will be able to identify us. It's about the size of a shield. The other minions will have one as well.
He tells us not to let him keep us, and we head off towards the mountains in Illythan's boat. We travel along the river when we see a kobold with an eyepatch waving a scale at us. They prepare a net to stop our boat, since they have a secret passage they need us to go through. It seems to be made up entirely out of river boats that have been wrecked over the years. They have built a model of Isger in a sand box. It is very carefully tended to. Since we're officially minions, they want us to go through the right of passage. It involves drinking and a bath. We're taken further into the caves and we see a skeleton of a dragon with a pool of blood that bubbles. Apparently, we're supposed to bathe in it. Zelara and Kyle go first, and Eorin turns around to give them privacy. Illythan goes next, having gotten naked the second he heard the word "ritual." Orias is next, then Eorin. We are each given an object to dry off with. Kyle gets a tigerskin. Zelara gets a wolfskin. Illythan gets an eagle. Orias gets a stick with spider webs wrapped around it. And Eorin gets a scroll written in draconic. W'ere then handed a loincloth to wear and told to sit around the fire. The kobolds are throwing herbs and incense into the fire. They hand each of us a beverage poured inside a half a geode. There are three kobolds going through the ritual as well. Eorin is averting his eyes as best he can from Zelara and Kyle who are both topless. We are instructed to drink the beverage, which appears to be dragon's blood. Nothing weird appears to happen in the aftermath, except one kobold who is now as tall as us. The kobolds explain that the ritual will grant us darkvision 60 and the ability to breathe under water for one week.
One of these kobold's job is to get us closer to where we're supposed to go. He takes us to his boat, and it's a bit cramped. We're allowed to put our real cloths back on, but are told to bring our drying items with us. We travel through an underground river. By the end of this crazy nightmarish journey, we end up near Dustpawn. We climb aboard Illythan's boat and continue on down the river. We decide watch shifts and pass the night on the boat. Zelara takes first watch, and notices a bunch of goblin corpses floating down the river. Some of them have nicer stuff on them. Zelara decides to try and fish out a hobgoblin body, but it's a bit too heavy. She tries again and manages to fish one out. She finds a very interesting hat, a dogslicer, and a knife and sheath. She strips him and then tosses him and the dogslicer back into the water. Zelara inspects the knife - it glows in a salmon color. There are bright pink glowing letters on it in crudely written common that say "KNIF O DOOME." Chubby Baby goes to fetch Kyle to take next watch. Kyle sees a tentacle coming out of the river. It's very evil. She tells Chubby Baby to sound the alarm. Chubby Baby proceeds to let out a woof that is capable of waking surly orcs and is laced with a threat of "i will eat your face if you don't wake up."
Kyle shoots it with an arrow, and the rest of us run up the stairs in a bleary sleepy confusion. Illythan tossed a bunch of lightning at it, but it was mostly able to dodge. Suddenly, everyone except for Kyle and Illythan becomes fascinated by twisting patterns of color in the air. The tentacle recedes under the water. Kyle and Illythan shake the rest of us out of our fascination and wait around for the monster to return, which it does not. Zelara thinks it was an Aboleth. Eorin goes back to sleep. The others not on watch soon follow.
Morning comes. We've reached a fork in the river. We decide to continue heading north rather than stop in a town. It's approaching evening by the time we reach Elidir. We dock the ship and get the caravan back on land. We decide to have a pow-wow with the kobolds in the caravan about what we're going to do. They explain its there job to find out where the River King's lair is, but they're going to do it at night. Kyle gives them a lecture about morals and appropriate behavior in town. We get rooms at the inn. The next day we wake up, the birds are sining. Orias can make out the words. It's not really singing, so much as the language has a singsongy quality to it. Orias tries to sing back to the birds but they all fly away. Except a crow, which comes into Orias' room and asks where the shiny is. They have a brief conversation aka mugging. Orias notices the crow has a pouch. It sasses him when Orias asks him why he has it. They continue arguing, and another, more obedient crow flies into the room and becomes Orias' familiar.
