>The party is too late to stop the cultists and prevent the ritual>Now from the deeps of time immemorial, a scion of age of slime arrived >The Old One, Spriggina!What would your party do ?
>>93135703Stab it with my bone spike in my left tentacle
>>93135703An anoxic event ended the ediacaran so maybe induce the countless cyanobacteria gods to bloom? Sure, we'll all die but our souls cannot be consumed, they will infest the next hapless species to stumble into sapience!
>>93135703Step on it. Spriggina was pretty small.Now Dickinsonia, that thing was a giant for its time, and still a sizable beastie by today’s standards. But that still only amounts to a max of a few feet.
>>93135703>The organism reached 3–5 centimetres (1.2–2.0 in) in lengthI don't know, guess we step on it if it gets uppity.
>>93135766The great god of the ancient world scurries under the couch and when you move the couch out of the way you can't see it. Did it crawl inside the couch? Did it crawl through that crack in the floorboards? Is it crawling up your leg?
>>93135808Just wait it out. It’s aquatic so it’ll dry out soon enough.
>le biblically accurate angelI think I will turn off reddit :)
>>93135703Flip it on its back
Point and laugh ruthlessly at the cultists
>>93135760>DickinsoniaI unironically thought this was a ligma setup before I looked it up.
>>93135703Just let it lie there, I guess...what's he gonna do?
>>93135760Who's Sonia?
>>93138353My Dicksonia lips
>>93135703I roll for marksmanship with a +2 natural weapon bonus to take a whizz on it.Take that, cultists.
>>93135703I change Spriggina to face-down Defense Position.
>>93135703>Cult finishes>Summon a 15 foot horseshoe crab >Party begins to laugh>They watch as the cult leader jabs the summoning artifact (a long complex ivory rod) into the "face" of his scion and lifts the thing off the ground>Party stops laughing as they now watch him take a battle stance and whisper, "Come">For the rest of the fight the cult leader (an amazing mage in his own right) is effectively wielding a sword with 15 feet of reach, that can grapple and throw, and deals sanity damage all on top of doing more overall damage than a regular blade>He can bonus action strike you if you come into his range or leave it >can also roll to reduce ranged damage or outright stop it>It also grants him an additional action per turn because he's wielding a sentient creature that can likewise use all the magic he can if it chooses to>It also boosts his AC and he can now use two spells at a time that require concentration>He is seriously still not sure why people always laugh at him when he summons this thing
>>93135703Arem't those things the size of a shoebox?
>>93135703Spriggina was a plant, not an animal.Zoo-fags are turning every odd fossil into animal
>>93139927Good one
>>93135808>tfw you summon the ancient one and he crawls behind the fridge and dies
>>93135703>My bard tries to use flattery to convince it to get on our side >https://youtu.be/4h9eRzUOLgw
>>93135703Nothing, that bitch is like a foot long.
>>93142737You are confusing Spriggina with Stromatoveris (which is still an animal. Compare with modern Crinoids).Spriggina is clearly a trilobite-like critter.
>>93135703
>>93155889Spriggina isn't a bug. we actually have no idea what it was beyond the fact it was more advanced than a jellyfish but clearly not closely related to anything alive today.
>>93135703Probably try to recruit it. It’s clearly not an Old One in the lovecraft “horrible beyond human comprehension” sense because I’m staring right at it and I haven’t lost my sanity. How well is this cult actually treating it? Is this one of those setups where they’re only summoning it to stab it in the head and swing it at people? I’m taking it with me as a new friend.
>>93135703Grill it, literally.
>>93163731You think there's much meat on a Spriggina, or is it 99% crunchy exoskeleton?
>>9316375599% crunchy exoskeleton would be unable to move, every animal has more meat than shell or bone except maybe auschwitz jew
>>93163798Would it even have meat inside the shell though, or would it be miscellaneous goo like a jellyfish or sea pig?Or is it more like a very difficult to eat crab.
>>93163817It needs to move somehow even with the weight of its own shell, so it needs to have muscle. Jellyfish can get away with virtually no muscle because it lives in the environment where it is effectively weightless, so it can just float freely, creature with a shell needs to exert force to move.
>>93135703I ask the cultists if they even tried this week or were just out of better options.
>>93140993>>93158944I love the shared narrative between these two posts. On one hand, a cultist mage who is lowkey annoyed by the fact that his opponents never take him and his extravagant summon seriously despite the fact that he is scarily effective with it to the point of overcoming a fair share of opponents with it.And on the other hand, an experienced somewhat prgmatic down-to-earth adventurer who has apparently seen this exact scenario happen way too many times by now, spent way too much time thinking about the implications and at this point just wants to solve the situation non-violently (in a sense).
>>93135760>>93135766
>>93174510
>>93174523
>>93174535
I cast Cambrian Explosion.
>>93174510Funny to think that the francesvillian biota predates all other complex multicellular life by 2 billion years, only to die as local oxygen levels lowered. It was a small, isolated, early window of the life that could be in the far, far future, living for an instant and then extinguished for unmeasurable eons.I salute you, pioneers of the earth that couldn’t be yet.
>>93174678
>>93175086Go back.
>Go back.
I can see why Lovecraft made monsters out of things like these. Vile, loathsome looking creatures
>>93179262Because sea creatires, especially deep sea, are very unique looking. They dont have to bow to gravity 100%. It is all about pressure.
>>93179334Thy are also truly 3D in a manner few creatures are. They do not have a floor that constrains them. They barely need to move in a single direction. The pelagic critters of the abyss exist surrounded in all directions by emptyness and monsters, so they adapt to an environment that completely wraps around them.For us surface creatures where up and down, forwards and back are integral parts of our existence, they seem otherworldly.
>>93180445The surface is really just a minimal area.
>>93174678>the francesvillian biota predates all other complex multicellular life by 2 billion years, only to die as local oxygen levels loweredThis checks out with the Ediacaran biota appearing right at the time when the amount of Oxygen went from about 10 % of modern levels to comparable to modern levels. It seems the reason it took so long for complex multicellular life to emerge was less that it was very unlikely and more because there simply wasn't enough free oxygen to sustain multicellular animals.
>>93174546The Cambrian Explosion is not a literal explosion you fucking retard.
>>93182408>The Cambrian Explosion is not a literal explosion you fucking retard.Excellent post, anon. Very witty.
>>93182408But the spell 'Cambrian Explosion' is
>>93135703it went extinct for a reason, find that reason and duplicate, with some plan B added in case Old One learned and prepared
>>93188839It's extinction coincided with a big anoxic eventThat could be replicated, but would kill a good chunk of ocean life along side it
>>93135703Boil it up like lobster.
>>93197640It's probably better treated like chicken feet.
>>93182408wrong
>>93135703Probably step on it or keep it as a pet since this thing is probably between 1 and 2 inches
