Session 9

Spring-loaded hops (1d12 mobility)

Treacherous Home Turf (1d12 environment)

Hooked whip-tongue w/rust toxin (1d8 +1d4(toxin) equipment)

Flexed steel skin (1d10 body)

* Dreadcoil Springtoad

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The Springtoad lashes out its coiled tongue. The steel is fibrous, like muscle, and cuts with a heavy slow swing from the side. At the end is a rounded hook, barbed throughout. With a heavy crack the hook latches onto the closest wooden post of Accretio’s scaffold as it slingshots itself straight toward you.

Mobility (1d12) + body (1d10):

9 (2 Steps)

I reach for my Baker’s Peel and try to brace the impact of the toad with it. I want to try to cram the handle into its mouth to block it.

Step 1: Equipment (1d8)

4

You manage to get the head of your Peel in the way but the impact is heavier than you expect. The impact knocks you back a ways and the toad scrambles along the wooden floor of the scaffold, its slick steel body slips and slides with little traction. The barbed hook at the end of its tongue slashes towards you as it winds its way back into the toads maw.

The scaffold is still at an angle, right? Is the toad downslope from me?

Yeah, you’ve just been knocked into the far corner, where the platform has tilted highest. You’re sort of draped over the edge, hanging on the corner post.

I let go, and start sliding down the platform toward the toad. I want to dip under the tongue and get too close for it to hit me.

Step 2: Body (1d4)

3

Total 7 vs 9

This thing’s tongue is coming straight toward you, and that great fish hook tip looks like it’s going to hook right around your hips, its wicked barbs headed for exposed flesh.

You can roll a third step, but it will come with a consequence.

Step 3:

I let the barbs sink into my forearm so I can grab hold of it.

Body (1d4): 3

Total 10 vs 9

You manage to dip your arm into the knotted bundle where the hook protrudes. This hook, which is about the size of your forearm, twists in your grip as you bear some of the weight of the springtoad, which struggles to find its footing on the polished, tilted platform.

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The barbs, which at this close distance resembled frayed steel chords, sink their way into your flesh as the grip tightens. You are poisoned (1d4), but you have a chance to act.

As I keep sliding down the platform, I want to drop off the opposite side of it as the toad. I want some part of the scaffold or of Accretio’s shell to get between me and the toad, so the tongue gets caught on it and we’re both hanging from it.

Accretio (environment) 1d10 + Scramble (mobility) 1d10

7 (2 Steps)

You manage to get in position, and you’re both sliding off the platform at roughly the same time. With the last bit of footing the toad has on the corner of the platform before it drops off, it’s going to try to leap outward toward a nearby tree.

Step 1: mobility (1d12) 10 vs. 7

The toad is able to hop safely from the platform and into a rather wide tree. Its roots dip in and out of this wet soil, and it seems to be constructed of many interwoven branches that form a stout circle that launches high into the sky.

But you still have hold of its tongue.

Step 2: Swallow Elk

Body (1d10) 5 + 3 (carryover)

8

The tension on the tongue suddenly increases as it begins to wind itself inward. You’ve gotten the tongue levered on one of the rocky spires that spike from Accretio’s shell under the scaffold, but it’s moments before you’re snapped into this thing's mouth.

I try to wedge myself into a crevice where I won’t be able to get pulled through.

To take any steps here, you will have to take some harm, or sacrifice something.

I’m willing to take some damage.

Accretio (Environment) 1d10:

9 vs 8

You manage to tuck your small spindly body between the support posts of the scaffold and the upper part of Accretio’s shell. You’re wedged into a spot where the toad is attempting to pull you through a space you will not fit. Your arm is pulled at a nasty angle and you hear the cracking of bone as the toad yanks and continues to winch its tongue.

You can feel the rust toxin working further into your body as more flesh is stripped from your upper arm.

It wrenches and pulls a couple more times but there is a moment where it relaxes.

I want to stick the sharp edge of my peel up into where the tongue starts to hook. I’ll lean my body into it to slide it up so the weight of its next pull is all on that edge.

I try to cut the tip of the toad’s tongue off.

Baker’s Peel (1d12):

9

And I’m willing to lose the arm to do it.

Sidestep: Sacrifice Arm (1d10):

3

First, you feel a rush of nausea and a pulse of barbed pain as the rust toxin sets in.

Consequence (Poison) 1d4:

2

Then there’s the baritone shudder of wood surrendering to metal as the torque of this toad’s incessant tongue hits a tipping point, and you feel one ultimate tug from the dreadcoil body.

Step 1: Whip tongue (1d8)

1 + 2 (poison) vs. 9 or 3

There’s a lot of crunching noises. The whistling of slackened cable through air. Then a snap. And then another, as this toad’s severed tongue slaps into its body. The impact sends it from the tree it had latched onto and barreling into a pit.

As you climb away from the desperate wedged position you were in, you see the hopping ball of dread steel bounding away from you with its limp tongue trailing behind it.

Then you see the wicked rusting hook hanging loosely from a support beam, and the arm still wrapped and spiked into it.

You are bleeding profusely, but at least the part of you with rust toxin in it isn’t attached to your body anymore.