The party spent some time relaxing and recuperating. Tallis had a wash in the river, while Justin attempted to protect her modesty and Mephisto ogled shamelessly.
A group of bargees appeared, towing their barge up-stream with a hefty barge-horse; naturally, as soon as they saw our disreputable crew they leaped to the conclusion that they were about to be looted, pillaged and (probably) killed by bandits. Their fears were allayed to a certain extent when they saw Tallis... then they caught sight of Kaelli and ran for it, setting the barge adrift (the boy cantered off down the track on the barge-horse). It probably didn't help that Mephisto kept suggesting that the party's trip downstream would be substantially eased by stealing the barge...
Mephisto kept on and on about how they should have nicked the barge, in spite of expressions of disapproval from Tallis and Justin. Eventually Pandora got sick of his shouting (she didn't particularly care about the bargees one way or another) and turned his nose into a huge red bulbous clown schnozz.
The party camped for the night some way downstream. Justin, while on watch, observed a large snake-like thing thrashing about on the tow-path and immediately woke everyone up before going to deal with it. Regrettably, everyone's attention being riveted on the imminent threat made it easy for the River Kraken to sneak another of its 16-metre-long tentacles around the back of the group and grab the unfortunate Mephisto, crushing the breath out of him and lifting him high into the air.
Tallis fired a couple of arrows at the head (body?) of the thing, now apparent in the water by the river-side, but failed to do more than irritate it. Kaelli took a running leap for it, intending to purêe it with her Shortswords of Death; alas, she misjudged and jumped right over it and was immediately attacked by more of the creature's tentacles. Justin laid into any tentacles he could reach with his sadly nicked bastard sword, and managed to sever a couple of them as Kaelli did likewise from behind it. After a short but bloody fight, the river kraken fled at top speed, trailing blood from its severed tentacles.
Unfortunately it took Mephisto with it. In imminent danger of drowning, he managed to put himself into a death-like trance which reduced his metabolism almost to nothing. Regrettably, it did nothing to improve his anti-bite potential (but more of that later). The kraken took him back to its lair and prepared to devour him.
Justin had Pandora transform him into a dolphin, and went swimming off after the beast. He tracked it via its blood trail and his newly-aquired sonar sense and managed to distract it from eating the entranced Mephisto by taunting it into attacking him. This turned out not to be quite as good an idea as he had thought when it bit him almost in half. He drifted off downstream, unconscious — the kraken fortunately prefering to return to snack on its tasty human prey rather than eat any more blubbery-tasting dolphin.
Mephisto pulled himself out of his trance and found himself in pitch blacknes underwater; more by luck than good judgement his struggles sent him in the right direction (up) and he found himself in a small air-pocket. He groped around, trying to find out where he was and (more importantly) how to get out, but was interupted in his search by the return of the kraken.
Outside, dolphin-Justin had regained consciousness and returned to the bank to try to let the others know what was going on. Unfortunately, neither having human vocal cords nor being able to speak dolphin meant that nobody could make head nor tail of what he was trying to say, so he swam back to the kraken's lair to try to lure it out again — this time being ready to swim like stink when it appeared. The kraken was lured back out, it did chase him, and he did swim like stink. It gave up the chase after a short time and went back to finish off its much-interupted supper.
Mephisto had taken the opportunity to resume his search for the exit, and found it. He was just swimming out through the tunnel to freedom when the kraken got back home. Fortunately, it was as dark as a black thing painted black and stuffed into a black bag in a cellar, so we need not dwell on the awful scenes of blood and gore which ensued as it grabbed him, tore him into pieces and ate him. It took all of four bites to eat every last bit of him.
Justin, hanging about outside the kraken's lair (still trying to lure it away) smelled the surge of Mephisto-blood as it washed away downstream, and realised the awful truth. He swam back to the others with the news — which he was unable to relate, not being able to talk at all. Pandora re-transformed him into a human again, and he emerged looking rather like Fabio, with long wavy blond hair and a muscular, sun-tanned body.
A brief period of mourning followed, especially by Pandora who indulged herself in paroxysms of guilt about having sent Mephisto to his death with a giant red clown nose. She got over it though.
The slightly diminished group set off down the tow-path and camped some distance away from the river bank, hopefully to dissuade any veangeful river krakens from bothering them any further. The next day they continued their journey, and by the morning after that they made it to the edge of the civilised and well-developed townlands of the city of Rath Connul.
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