10 - 04/11 : Cultbreaker

Following the directions of Zelem, the party, along with Sendra, came upon the gargantuan corpse of a kraken that was being excavated by Kraken worshipping cultists. They had set up a scaffold around the body and some rudimentary watch towers, but the party managed to surprise them by leaping out of cover fully without warning, fully ready to attack. They managed to take out the first guard captain, Lyrandros, and their sea spawn minions swiftly and without alerting the rest of the facility, aside from the nearest watchtowers. The party took down a few of these archers but pushed forward onto the scaffolding and into the fray with the full force of the cult, with Naomi's drone turret sticking around to clean up the rest of the archers.   Varden, a dragonborn monk, presented the first challenge, transforming into a piscine hybrid form and taking the frontlines of combat along with more sea spawn of varying aquatic mutations. From afar, Carnella, the spellcaster, attacked with eldritch blasts. Yunaleth attempted to intercept the caster, but found her more troublesome than anticipated as she took on a crustaceous piscine form and assaulted the wizard. Both these aggressors managed to deal out a large amount of damage, but Draltha's wild swings proved too much for them.   As the party continued clearing out the corpse, a new figure leapt from the ocean, the cult leader Vendrath, whose form was permanently altered by her devotion to the creature of the deeps. She allowed the voice of her Kraken patron to speak through her, striking fear into the souls of her attackers. The party struggled to take ground against the priestess, but was eventually able to defeat her and clear out the remaining cultists. With their quarry defeated, they returned to Fortune's Crossing.   However, before leaving, Sendra retrieved a large chunk of the kraken's brain. As the others returned to their rooms for a much needed rest, Sendra brought the grey matter to Zelem, who reluctantly proceeded to devour the brain raw. But he found his torment to be worth the effort, as he gained some of the beast's knowledge and it informed him of an abolethic artifact the kraken had discovered to be in Revelmoore, leading to even further interest in the growing intrigue of the City of Splendors.