The bulk of the Mu Spores quickly closing in on our company definitely had hostile intent. Given that we had to carve our way through a hostile field of lethal fungus, and were creating a ruckus as we did so, that was not unexpected in the slightest.
We were just pests busting up its garden, after all.
It came crashing down as it hit the edge of the Interdiction, King Gravity proclaimethed His sovereignty over primordial mushroom nightmare, and down it went.
Trella took over, her ladyglaive Sing in her hands. She had the Monk Levels to get some real acceleration there, the Flowing Waters lightfoot for not losing her footing on slick moss and mold, and Spirited Charge and Death from Above to make the initial charge up onto the mass of its body, and cut down on it with a lethal blow.
And nicely surprised me by blowing Child of Water, the capstone Feat of the Ocean Dragon. At the beginning of an encounter, burn some Ki to double your Base Attack Bonus for the round... extremely powerful Feat, could only be taken at Ten, lots of pre-reqs.
For six seconds, she’d have a BAB of +20. There was all sorts of stuff an Ocean practitioner could do with all that BAB.
She carved deep into the thick fungoid shell of the massive Mu Spore, and naturally the tentacles there lashed out at her as she landed and kept going.
The lashing tentacles were targets, effective Sundering attempts, about 50 Health each, enough damage to hack through a small tree, enough to chop right through them, and Improved Sunder meant the blow continued through to the Mu Spore itself. Supreme Cleave meant she could take a step between the Sunder and the Cleave, if she so desired, putting her in range of other tentacles.
The path of Sing was an aria whirlpool of liquid Banefire and pure Ocean Dragon glaivework, rending a path through the shell of the Mu Spore as she danced across it. Tendrils went flying, and spores, fires, and flames of exploding mold, lichens, and crackerballs ignited underneath her like bio-bombs. The initial rent she had made in its hide lengthened in an unbroken stream of a hacking Glaive blade coming down, literally carving it open as banefire lashed along whatever semblance of a nervous system it had.
The panicked alarms of ‘oh shit she’s cutting me open because I’m trying to wrap her up in mucous-laden pseudopods and eat her’ weren’t quite processed before it was all too late, and the Mu Spore had quite literally been cut open along a sixty-foot length. Whatever passed for gastric apocalypse vented out a very unwholesome gout of burning slime, spores, and all kinds of organic things with distressingly long names and descriptions as it died.
Trella didn’t stop running, jumping right off the top of its shell forty feet up there, and turning on her Cloud-stepping Sandals to ski back down through the air in our direction, looking rather red-faced and quite pleased with herself, regardless. Her Vajra had dealt with the fire and cold, and the Adamant Pauldrons Tat on her shoulders with the invasive spores.
----
Now, we didn’t just watch as she did all that, of course, because the Mu Spore had some assistants along.
These were drow, following after the Mu Spore in a hoverboat, based on the Disk magitech, except it looked like it was made out of several fallen and patched-together Mu primary tentacles. Given that Mu hide was at least as strong as ironwood, it was actually pretty smart.
They looked to be harvesting the spores and drops of stuff the Mu Spore was constantly oozing and dropping, sometimes retrieving them, otherwise spreading them out on the surfaces of the fungi they were found on, or areas of open ground. Totally cowed by the presence of the Spore, the fungi gave the gardening crew no problems at all.
The fact the drow all had mushrooms growing out of them, to the point of covering some limbs with cilia and grey moss and little clusters of stools, might have had something to do with that, too.
They didn’t much like us there, and the three ships of them all moved to attack us. The first thing they did is lose all their altitude, crashing down to the ground... Should have used Disk geomagnetism as a back-up, I thought, as a wave of rather impossibly accurate arrow fire hatracked them with prejudice. The Ironblood and monkeys who came racing up for some action didn’t have much work to do, which earned a lot of thumbs-up for the elves.
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Still in 20. There’s money to be made...
“Is there anything worth salvaging off this?” Amber had to ask, wrinkling her nose as Trella swooped down to the rest of us. To say the Mu Spore had a distinct aroma to it was like saying the sun is bright. It made the eyes water before you even smelled it!... which nobody who didn’t have a Vajra was stupid enough to do. Alchemical Masks for just this situation were fitted on everyone’s faces who couldn’t filter the air. Nobody wanted this atmospheric soup inside of, or on, them.
“Yeah, the fluids and spores in its internal cavity are next to priceless for some very high-end alchemical work, among them orichalcum production.” Wincing faces suddenly got very interested and were wiped clean. “Get some stone jars and let’s see how much we can take of the good stuff. And for heaven’s sake, don’t get any of it on you!”
There was absolutely no doubt that was going to happen. Stone Shaping Rockborn Clerics were quick to make containers and rough stone tools, and the elves were happy to manipulate them from a very safe distance as we turned the dead elder abomination into something worth goldweight at high speed, being raced by the vivus that was devouring it, also at high speed.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
AA cleared his throat, and I glanced in that direction, seeing a Mu Spore some miles off turn from its normal path and proceed in our direction.
“Brother, you’ve got a guest coming to dinner,” I commented, and he smiled expectantly.
“What do you figure it’s worth?” he asked casually.
“Its psionic nexal can be carved into a self-empowering Eternal Plant or Phrenic Baneskull. The goo in its guts... probably a thousand gold a gallon.”
Everyone looked at the ten-gallon stone jars lined up. There were a bunch of them.
“We’re going to have to Tapestry them and send them out with Hazé. There’s gonna be tons of the goop,” Briggs said, watching stone scoops in glowing magical hands dipping and dunking into the vile, active stuff, still moving and oozing around as they salvaged it quickly.
We could Itemize and shrink the stuff down in the short term
“Ten pounds to a gallon, ten gallons to a jar, twenty goldweight a jar...”
It was a lot of freaking money, even if it only was for alchemical usages. Each jar was worth diamonds. We’d definitely be splitting it among all the Alliance members, who were already chaffing to get their hands on some. They’d still need some post-Tens with Skill Ranks in Alchemy to use the methodology for orichalcum and the high-end uses, but just having the shit was half the battle.
“Murderhoboing for fun and profit is a great lifestyle,” I said with a perfectly straight face, and Briggs couldn’t help but chuckle.