D&D 5th Edition: Out of the Abyss

Bashir has a new squire from the Order of the Gauntlet whom he calls “Lamp”, because that’s her main purpose aside from the honor of carrying his backpack. He spends the entire month bonding with and training her at the Emerald Spire.
Enna goes off to find out what happened to her destroyed monastery.
Drip goes on a search for immortality.
Telchur investigates his missing family.

As time goes on, we hear about a sinkhole that has occured 10 miles away from our new base (“Emerald Spire”). From the sinkhole a huge monster came out and attacked a local town. Defending our new lands, we enter battle with the monstrosity and for the most part defeat it, eventually following its retreat into the Underdark. At some point we get ambushed and fall unconscious.

We wake up an indeterminate amount of time later and hear voices in our head (telepathy assumedly) saying “They’re awake!”. We find ourselves in dim light and chained up, surrounded by a yellowish fog. We have lost all of our items, and only (barely) have our clothes on.

A female dwarf is shackled nearby. She says out loud “They’re awake!”. In the back of the cave we see two other figures playing a crude game of dice. They appear to be in jail with us, gambling away. There’s a waterfall nearby outside the jail bars, masking much of the noise in the area.

When asked our location from the dwarf, she says we are in Velkanvelve, a Drow outpost. We’re in their version of jail, behind bars molded into the hard earth.

Enna attempts to break her cuffs with her brute strength and succeeds on the first go. Dayum. Drip follows suit with a nat 20. Bashir says “This is how you do it Lamp” and then fails to do the same.

(Lamp)

Telchur and Lamp also both fail, making Bashir feel better. Enna, now free, shadowsteps of jail like it’s nothing. She ends up shadowstepping to the precipice of the waterfall a few feet outside the jail bars, and gets a fresh look outside the bars. It doesn’t look promising.

Bash manages to pick his manackles with a locally procured bone and makes his way towards the door to look out. Enna engages two dark elves to who appear on the other side of a bridge next to the waterfall in mortal kombat and manages to harm one of them. In the meantime, Drip summons a giant snake on the bridge, and it immediately starts constricting the closest dark elf to death. Telchur manages to wiggle out of his shackles with a massive dex check. In the meantime the other jailed creatures playing dice are taking bets on how long we’ll live and it appears our chances aren’t good.

One of the drow try to push Enna off the bridge and fails. While Bash tries to lockpick Lamp’s shackles, Enna continues to beat on the dark elves but they are tough. Drip tries to pick the cell doors and fails, but summons his totem, buffing everyone. In the meantime, Telchur is able to pick open the cell doors. Drip’s snake is fucked up by one of the drow’s poisoned swords, but continues to soldier on.

Bashir, in a herculean effort, rushes the bridge from the jail entrance. Bash then needlessly and spectacularly somersaults over both the snake and Enna. Unfortunately, the bridge is rickety and collapses under his weight as he lands and he grabs onto the ledge at the last minute. In a surge of action Bash is then able to grab the foot of the Drow in front of him and drag him off the bridge to its death below. In the meantime, Enna beats the dark elf she’s been fighting to death with her fists. Enna is truly in her element here, being the only one that does not rely on weapons or spell components. The giant snake jumps to the other bridge, where three more Drow crossbow experts have appeared. Drip summons a flame, illuminating the room for the first time. Below, we see a giant spider eating alive the drow Bashir dragged down earlier in an enormous field of cobwebs and giant spiders. Drip immediately shuts off the flame, hoping they did not notice our presence.

The three new Drow shoot up the giant snake summon and mess it up, poisoning it. Quaggoth reinforcements appear from another hallway and tackle Enna on the bridge. The fall from the scuffle almost knocks Bashir off the bridge, who is still dangling for his life. Still hanging, Bashir stabilizes enough to grab the poisoned dagger of the dead Drow in front of him and stab deep into the foot of the drow attacking Enna through the bottom of the bridge. In the meantime, Lamp sneaks up behind the Quaggoth attacking Telchur and strangles him with her manacles.

(Quaggoth)

Drip’s giant snake summon (now named “Big Tom”) in the meantime is working his way through the other group of elves, even while poisoned. He’s a goddamned beast, strangling one elf after another like they’re toys. Drip tries to throw fire at one of the Quaggoth and misses, while Telchur fails at lockpicking the dwarf free yet again. Telchur is having a bad night with the dice gods. Enna gets a bit beat down by the elves, and Bash gets peppered with bolts. After he gets up from the bridge (finally), Bashir finds the local weapons stockpile for the Drow guards nearby and gears up. Drip creates a tidal wave from the waterfall and washes away the two Drow still fighting Enna.

New Drow appear yet again, and shoot poisoned crossbow belts towards Enna on the bridge, but she grabs them midair before they hit like a boss. In the elvish language we heard some female dark elf (assumed) complain about us ruining her ritual. Only Enna understands Elvish though. Bashir rushes the group of Quaggoth, dropping the extra weapons he found in the gaurd station on the ground on the way (“Weapons for people who want them!”), and bashes one of the Quaggoth with his newly procured shield emblazed with the Spider Queen. Lamp throws her magic stone (summoned by Drip) at one of the Quaggoths. Enna shadowsteps to the dark elves fighting the snake summon and wrecks them from behind. “Big Tom” (the giant anaconda) wraps up the remaining dark elf and drags him into the next room, which ends up being the summoning room for some ritual.

The fight continues into the prison as Bashir knocks down a Quaggoth and stabs it in the throat a few times while Lamp finishes off the other remaining Quaggoth with another magical stone summoned by Drip. In the meantime, Enna shadowsteps again into the fray. That monk has crazy mobility. “Big Tom”, still constricting one of the Drow for lunch later, stumbles into the ritual going on in the other room, surprising all parties involved. Bashir hunts down the last of the stray Drow with his shiny new sword and board, while Lamp goes to the newfound armory to gear up. From our perspective, everything appears to be dead. Enna immediately shadowsteps and discovers the ritual room...by herself. Damnit Enna, this is how you die all the time. She is immediately stunned by the eldritch horror they have summoned. The giant summoned snake is then clawed to death by the same creature. Sorry, Big Tom.

In the meantime, Telchur hears from the dwarven female that our stolen equipment was stored near in a room where Bash is currently positioned and makes his way in that direction. Bash then lives up to his name and bashes down the storage room door, screaming for Lamp to attend him. Drip follows Enna into the room and is surprised by the terrible demon that is currently destroying Enna and reflexively summons a rhinoceros in panic. Still stunned, Enna hears the ritual casters wander off, hearing the leader assert that we’ll “surely die to the demon” and ignorantly wanders off like a Bond villain.

Telchur starts gearing up in the storage closet while the demon Soul Screams at Enna and Drip to no effect (this time). Drip has named his rhinoceros “Big Jim” in the interim. The Demon flies away, heading towards Lamp. Yes, apparently the demon flies. Oblivious, Lamp saunters into the storage room where Bash is gearing up, narrowly avoiding certain death. Bash, now geared up, walks out and goes almost immediately where Lamp just was. Enna shadowsteps midair right next to the demon bird thing, fucking it up with a three hit combo midair before sliding down to the bridge right next to Bash, surprising the hell out of him.

The demon finishes its swoop and attacks Bash, who blocks the first attack but soaks up the second claw attack. Pissed off, Bash knocks it prone with a shield bash as his squire Lamp hits with her last magical stone. While its still prone, Enna continues to beat the hell out of it. Telchur finishes it off while its on the ground with an arrow to the head.

In the storage room is a list of all the items in elvish. Apparently the plan on the Drow side was to sell all the gear at Menzoberranzan, the Dark Elf city. We all gear up in our old equipment, plus some. And we find two gold bars. We loot the bodies.

+2 gold bars

+keys to everything

+a ton of metal armor

+spidersilk ropes

We find another group of slaves in the other room. All together, 10 different people. They also start arming themselves.

Cast of Prisoners:

Eldef - Dwarf Lady

Boopido - Male Derro

Rant - Male Orc

Jimjar - Deep Gnome

Shushar the Awakened - Kua-Toa

Topsy - Deep Gnome

Turvy - Deep Gnome

Stool - A Giant Mushroom that has Telepathy

Bashir compliments Lamp: “You were almost as good as a man.”

We find a shrine to the spider deity Llolths in the ritual room. Enna knows all about that Religion and revels in the fact that the dark elf women are the dominant side of Dark Elf society.

There are 8 gemstones inset within the statue which Enna carefully prys out.

+60gp worth of gemstones -> Enna

Theres also heavy candlesticks in the shrine, which Drip is examining, and also looting.

+2 candlesticks -> Drip

Bashir goes over to the remaining prisoners to find out their story, only to find that they are in a telepathic mind trance with the sentient mushroom. Refusing to be a part of such mind fuckery, Bash storms off telling the rest of the group not to trust that “magic crap”. The orc prisoner does the same, and goes off to a winch nearby, trying to get on to a lift out of the facility. Aside from Bashir and Lamp, the group is discussing with the prisoners via telepathy the potential direction of our travels. We want to stick together.

Possible ideas of travel:

Gracklestugh - Duergar City
Neverlight Grove - The Stool wants to go here, giant mushroom colony
Blingden Stone - City of Deep Gnomes
Sloob Dubok - Cuatoa Shushar’s direction, near the dark lake

Blunet is the name of the monster we were trying to kill before falling into the Underdark. The one that ravaged the town on the Surface.

The Dark Elves were trying to take us to Menzoberranzan to be sold as slaves.

While we are discussing where to go, the orc finishes bringing the lift up and announces that “he’s leaving if anyone wants to join him.” Bash, Rant, Shushar, and Lamp are the first group to descend down the lift. They find a miniature lake next to a large expanse of land that seems to go as far as they can see, which is admittedly not far. Everyone takes turns in 4s going down the lift. The last two are Drip and the duergar woman. They see a lone drow trying to sneak up on them.

Drip hopefully engages him in sylvan, asking his purpose. The Drow does not appear to be trying to stop them, just curious. He is named Jorlan, and he expresses glee in how “Ilvara”, the Lloth priestess seen previously by Enna, will react when she finds out we escaped. According to the dwarf lady, he was previously Ivara’s consort until he got the giant face burn. Guess he ain’t so pretty anymore. They descend after the brief conversation.

Possible directions:

West -> Dark Lake -> Bracklestough

North -> Menzoberranzan -> Blingden Stone

South -> Bracklestough

We decide to go Left-West, but a particular group of people want to part ways when we say that: the Deep Gnomes. Rant is all in with them leaving as they are baggage in his view, but Enna tries to keep them with us with a persuasion check. She persuades them with a nat 20, and as Grant said: “she sounds like she could sell a car to Ray Charles.” Needless to say, they decide to stick with us.

We head West. We all stick together.

We walk for a while in marching order and eventually the road narrows. Enna realizes it smells weird, and Bash with a survival check figures out that the cavern ahead is full of potentially hazardous gas. We send Telchur, who doesn’t need to breath, ahead to scout with his newfangled nightvision spell. He moves further down the cavern, and it’s really bad. There’s so much gas that he can barely see. The gas hugs the ceiling, along with pockets on the floor of the casm on the road, which is 40 feet lower than the rest of the path. Telchur scouts ahead to find the safest path for the group, where we can hopefully avoid the gas pockets. He eventually finds a super narrow ledge along the side which bypasses the entire issue as long as we can traverse it.

Enna effortlessly shadowsteps to the other side, and ties a some new spider-rope, making a make-shift rope handhold. Everyone starts moving to the other side. The Deep Gnome twins go first, and one of them immediately falls (Turvy). Damnit. Drip immediately jumps down 40 feet, shattering his ankles and taking a ton of poison damage. Drip rips open a scroll and creates a Wind Wall that pushes away the poison in a ten foot sphere around him. He guides the injured gnome to the other side in the safety of said sphere. Telchur decides that he’s going to be the tour guide for this whole operation and levitates himself, guiding people across the cavern in pitch darkness (visibility is and will continue to be a problem). After that, everyone continues go across with no problem until Jimjar botches the job, but Telchur is the literal wind beneath his wings and scoops him up before he falls. A few more groups go across fine until the giant talking mushroom is attempting to go across, which is problematic because it has no arms, but Telchur just straps it to its back and no problem. In the final traverse, the rope handhold snaps, throwing off Telchurs levitation. He eventually shoots an arrow with a rope attached and uses it to pull himself across, “get over here” style.

We all huddle around Drip and his Wind Wall as we move along. Eventually we find some sort of Den that would fit our whole group and a good spot for camp. We see in the distance an area of glowing lights in a sort of aurora borealis, that the dwarf calls Faerzress. Apparently it is a sort Underdark feature, and it keeps certain creatures away along with giving off light. We’re on a 20 foot ledge. The dwarf mentions that the Faerzress is changing recently, which bodes ill. We all take camp and commune and connect with each other. The mushroom person seems really concerned about being eaten by the orc, and acts really cute like a stuffed animal. It particularly likes Telchur, and Enna immediately connects with it, seeing a new orphan to adopt. She pets it and it glows in happiness.

Bashir and Lamp have a Order of the Gauntlet session and talk about the day, and bond in their own way. Bashir doesn’t trust the mushroom and all the mind affecting fungus it’s spreading. In the meantime, Drip gambles with the Deep Gnomes and wins easily. The Deep Gnomes are suspicious, as they should be, since he cheated with magic. We all take a long rest.

As the session ends, the fourth wall sees a group of Dark Elves lead by Elvara. “I will not stop until I catch them and sacrifice them to the spider queen!”

9/7/2019 Something something cool notes by Sam

As the rest of the party sleeps, Enna and Drip keep watch. Drip sees Enna constantly brushing at her shoulders like she’s trying to keep something off of her. She can’t shake the feeling that there are spiders crawling all over her.

Drip asks her to keep an eye out for spiders since he’s looking for some for a spell that he’s working on.

Taking stock of the party, Drip notes that one of the derros, Buppido, is missing. He looks around to see where he is. He sees a silhouette making its way toward a ledge and climbs down to investigate. Casting dark vision on himself so that he can see, he makes out the derro’s form and alerts him to his presence. He is… peeing on the wall? And informs Drip to do the same - important to do your business away from the camp.

Drip investigates further into the tunnel system near the campsite…

Meanwhile… Faust and Spice are caught under a bunch of rocks from the cave in caused by the bullette. They struggle to free themselves but to no avail.

Back at camp, everyone has woken up. One of the fish dudes, Shuushar, has pointed out a large mass of rubble occupying most of the cavern space. The group contemplates going over or around it. As they do this, Faust is cursing and launching eldritch blasts at the rocks after pinpointing safe ones to hit. Spice wiggles himself free. Both are stuck in separate parts of the rock pile, surrounded by rocks but no longer in peril of having their chests crushed.

The rest of the crew, interest piqued by hearing the yelling from Faust, investigate further. Spice casts light on one of the rocks, enabling them to pinpoint the location much more easily. Drip, Telchur and Bash are hard at work trying to clear away rocks. Bash hauls away several rocks and succeeds in finding Spice. Telchur finds Faust. Their heads are free, but their bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble.

Enna and Telchur, as they’re moving rocks, hear something behind us all… This does not bode well.

Jimjar comes back to find us and alerts us to the danger behind us - a large pack of gnolls has descended upon us, blocking our exit.

Enna hurriedly resumes digging away at the rocks in an attempt to free Spice. She makes the gap big enough for Spice to crawl out.

Drip casts daylight and it gets bright as a motherfucker within the cavern.

Telchur opts to attack the gnolls instead of helping his buried friends. Frowny face.

Faust, too impatient to wait for further assistance, succeeds in blasting his way out of the debris surrounding him and crawls on out. He moves forward and tries to hit one of the gnolls… but being trapped so long seems to have affected his aim and he misses.

Spice is also free and summons his spiritual weapon. It appears next to one of our smelly gnoll enemies but fails to hit. He pulls out his light crossbow instead and starts loading it.

One of our companions, Stool the mushroom dude, urges us telepathically to run away. The rest of our companions start to run away… except for Eldeth. Awesome.

Enna goes forth… and punches things. She only lands one hit, but its helpful!

Drip yells out a sorry to Bash, and then summons a giant tidal wave to attack the gnolls. Bash uses his shield to surf the wave. Soooo sick dude. Gnarly.

All the gnolls that were hit get knocked down. Wiiiiiiiipe ooouuuuuut.

Telchur keeps it up with the shooting of the arrows and the killing of the things.

Faust moves his ass forward and makes with the setting of the things on fire. He succeeds in hitting a bunch of gnolls… and Bash. Sorry dude!

Lamp moves in to assist Bash because she’s a good little orphan.

Spice, with his crossbow readied, launches a bolt at one of the big ugly gnolls and moves his spiritual weapon in to attack as well. The gnoll is pretty fucked up.

Little mushroom buddy Stool continues to make a mad dash toward us, trying to avoid an imminent death.

The gnolls keep up their attack but we’re meeting them with just as much vim and vigor. Telchur is a boss with his horde breaker shit. He takes out three gnolls with two attacks. It’s pretty fucking cool

Faust double taps one of the remaining big gnolls and takes him out. Bash shield bashes the gnoll he’s facing off against and that mofo goes down too. We takin’ gnolls out left and right bitches!

There’s one final gnoll left and he retreats, he catches a punch in the kidney but still manages to run away. Enna, stubborn as hell, is unwilling to let him run off and makes off with the ninja quickness after him. She lays a powerful punch into his side and he falls but at the last second lashes out with hyena rage.

After the battle, Shuushar continues to explore the immense rock pile. It’s so large that it would probably require an entire excavation team and it would take like a year.

He recommends to us that we take the Silken Road… but we’re not sure how reliable his advice is as he’s never seen it himself.

We’re all a bit rattled so Drip pulls outs his alchemy jug and pours us all a drink before we disembark to take a circuitous route to get out of this god forsaken cave.

Traveling single file, we maneuver through the caverns. The quaggoth we’re traveling with claims to be an elven prince trapped in a quaggoth body - his name is Prince Darrendell, or so he says. He’s looking to rectify his situation and return to his elven form. We are suspicious.

As we continue, we encounter a corridor covered in fungi. They appear edible and are tongue shaped but we’re not sure if we should eat them. Drip inspects them but has no idea what it is. Enna takes an experimental lick. Nothing happens. Stool informs us that they’re his cousins. Faust asks if they can be eaten. Stool is horrified when Faust justifies that they’re not close relations of his. “Do you guys eat small mammals where you’re from?” he asks. We all respond with a nonchalant “yeah”. Instant trauma.

At this point we’ve gone through all our rations so we’re on a strict gruel diet.

We approach another spot in the the cavern that is illuminated by an eerie light and mist. There are mushrooms everywhere. Drip and one of our ragtag prison friends bet each other 100 gold to gather the most edible shrooms in an hour. Faust sabotages Drip by using mage hand to indiscriminately toss stuff into his bag.

That night we rest. A few of us have some bonding moments and share some stories but its a relatively chill evening.

After a good rest we continue to move through the tunnels. The path is becoming so narrow that we’re all struggling to get through.

We finally reach an opening to a chasm that’s covered in spider webs. Shuushar informs us that we’ve reached the Silken Road. The spider silk extends as far as five miles. Its easy to get lost if one isn’t paying attention, which is especially perilous as there are huge spiders all throughout the maze of webs.

Drip turns into a giant wolf spider and takes the lead in front of us. The air is super dry here there’s no moisture dripping from the stalactites or anything. He hustles ahead of us to scout the area and is able to make out some old ruins that form the base of all the webs.

Spice moves forward to take a gander at Drip’s location and notices something fluttering above. He alerts us to the possibility of something residing up there so Faust takes a closer look and realizes a drider is lurking above him. He telepathically issues an urgent warning “Hey Drip, buddy, get the fuck out there. Yeah get the fuck out, get the fuck out.”

But its too late, the drider drops down in front of him and stabs his spidery form with a sword. He’s hit so hard he reverts to his regular Genasi form. Enna shadow steps behind the drider to provide him with an assist. She starts kicking and punching. The drider’s spidery hide is so sturdy that she doesn’t even seem to register pain from Enna’s attack.

Bash starts climbing up the spider webs and urges Lamp to use her crossbow. She complies and fire at the Drider, but the bolt just bounces off of her natural armor.

The rest of our ragtag team either rushes forward to help us or, in the case of Shuushar, runs away. What a winner.

Drip, unable to escape from his predicament, pulls out the scorpion that he caught earlier and casts a spell on it to enlarge it. The scorpion grows to a pretty massive, terrifying size. He unleashes it on the drider. Our new scorpion buddy attacks with his claws with little success but manages to strike hard with his stinger tail. Drip also summons his bear totem to fill the space on the pillar to a comical degree.

Unwilling to traverse through the spider webs, Telchur levitates above and positions himself in a prime spot to do some spider hunting.

There are spiders encircling us from every angle. Shit is getting pretty real, my friends. The pillar where Drip and Enna are standing is completely surrounded. Sheeeeeit.

Telchur and Bash both experience spider assault. It’s a serious problem these days :(

Faust blasts some legs and eyes off of one of the spiders nearest to him and Spice. The Drider addresses Enna as “the cursed one” and accuses her of being in possession of the desecrated treasure of Lolth. Sheepishly, Enna realizes that it was probably a mistake to loot all those gems off of the Lolth statue a few days ago…

The Drider misty steps away, leaving us to our sticky webby fate. Enna contemplates going after her, but chooses instead to start kicking some spider butt.

Bash and Lamp team up on the spider that is obstructing their way. Their combined efforts succeeds in killing the spider. It shrivels into a little spidery ball.

Our little food friends are proving their worth as fighters and kill yet another spider. There’s still a shit ton of them though… this situation is getting pretty hairy.

Another dynamic duo, Drip and Darth Chumpus the scorpion, double team another spider, and it crumples under their combined prowess. It’s like we’re watching a weird nature program.

The spiders go on the offensive and start shooting webs left and right. It’s a field of flying bodies as we are all running and dodging.

Faust, having elected to stay on the ledge, but moves to the edge to get a better vantage of Enna and Drip. There a large mass of spiders has collected; he throws a fireball into the fray. The fireball travels through the air to the bridge they’re standing on… It expands, about to burst, and explodes into a massive shower of… glitter? A burst of radiant light surrounds Enna and the spiders and they all appear to be healed?

Meanwhile the drider shoots off some fairy fire towards Bashir. He is incensed and sneers at her “YOU’RE NEXT”

All of a sudden a gargantuan spider drops on the ledge near to where Faust is standing. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

I guess we’re all ignoring the ginormous spider right now since we’re just attacking the giant but significantly smaller spiders.

Drip’s scorpion is still going strong and his stinger is pretty fuckin useful.

In spite of the progress we’ve made in spider extermination, it feels like we’re only chipping away at their numbers. We’re being bombarded on all sides by the ones that remain and that shit stiiiiiings.

Side note. The giant spider is so big even Helen Keller can see it. Daaaaaamn.

It’s been decided - to defeat the giant spider, you gotta hit that booty just right. So Faust strikes twice with his Eldritch Blasts.

Back on the bridge, the Drider is firing crossbow bolts at Enna. She haaaaaate her. Enna catches one of the three arrows shot at her, but the two that do hit hit pretty damn hard.

She takes out her frustration on the spiders around her, and hooooly shit. In a feat of strength she gives one of the spider eight black eyes. What a boss.

Fueled by hate, Bashir rushes up the webs on the Drider. He slams his shield into her in an attempt to knock her off the ledge she’s standing on… but she’s one tough mother.

Drip and his scorpion are still going strong and kicking a lot of ass. It’s pretty impressive.

The ginormous spider starts making a move. It turns around to face Faust and Spice. It lunges forward for a bite attack and grasps Faust in its jaws. Ah hellllllll no. In retaliation, Faust casts hellish rebuke. The gargantuan spider goes up in flames before curling on its back into a ball. She dead.

With the giant spider dead, Faust shifts focus to the drider lady. He launches two at her but only one hits. This must have pissed her off, so she launches herself at Bashir and rips some flesh out of his neck. Grosssssssss.

Enna shadow steps off the bridge and attacks one of the few spiders left. Most of these spiders are on their last leg so taking them out with her fists is easy peasy.

Bash, super pissed at the spider lady, shield bashes her off the ledge and she falls several feet - getting a bit battered in the process before catching herself on another ledge.

One of our companions, the orc Rant, goes down. Sad faiz.

We’ve made short work of the rest of the spider. All that’s left is the spider lady. Drip turns back into a smaller spider and maneuvers his way toward the entry way we originally arrived through.

Faust tries to hit the spider lady with his eldritch blasts but misses. Bash follows up with his morning star. She tries to block but gets struck in the face and goes down. It’s pretty satisfying.

We loot the spider lady. We find her nice longsword, a breastplate, a small journal, and a pair of black silk gloves. Drip wants the armor. He pulls out his scimitar and hacks away at the drider until he gets the armor free.

There’s a lot of chittering sounds so we rush across the webs to the other side of the cavern where we reach the entrance to another cavern. As we do so, a large floating eye approaches us. It has four tendrils with four more eyes… it seems crazed? “Demons in the dark. I see demons, I hear demons, I taste demons. Are you demons?” He stares pointedly at Faust who tucks his tail. “Who? Me? Nah?

Fishman tells us we’re getting closer to Slubluedaub. Eldeth doesn’t trust him and believes he’s leading us to no place good. Enna contemplates the possibility of being cursed. Is it just a superstition? Who knows… Buppido is being a creep and sniffs at her then laughs. So creepy….

While everyone else sleeps, Spice and Faust, both troubled by the crossbow bolt found in the back of Rant’s neck they investigate the body further and determines that one of the prison gang must have been responsible. They choose to keep this tidbit to themselves for the time being so they can observe the suspects.

It doesn’t take long for the suspect to reveal themselves… Later as we hunker down for camp another night, Bash and Faust take watch. This is the third night straight that Faust hasn’t slept and instead reads his book of shadows. Bash inquires about it, Faust brushes it off as though he’s doing secret drugs. In the middle of the night, Faust hears the sound of frantic whispering and laughing followed by the sound of flesh tearing. He peers up from his book and spies Buppido with a knife overhead, standing over a prone Shuushar.

Totally thrown for a loop, Faust acts on instinct and rushes forward Buppido. His shout alerts Bash who is quick on his heel. Faust grabs Buppido by the throat and starts draining the life out of him. Buppido shouts at us indignantly, claiming that the fishman is leading us to destruction. Bash strikes with his morning star, narrowly missing Faust.

So Buppido is dead. So is Shuushar, and his organs have been organized in some strange sort of symbol. The rest of the group is awakened, they consult with Spice to determine if there’s anything significant to the symbolism Buppido has served up. The combined efforts of Spice and Faust determine that Buppido was definitely the guy that shot Rant in the back of the head. Clearly, we’re dealing with the workings of a psychopathic killer.

The bad news though… we’ve lost our guide. Eldeth, exasperated, explains that though Buppido was crazy he was likely right - the lake that we were being lead to would almost certainly led to us being eaten. Understandably, everyone is spooked.

Several minutes transpire of the entire group squabbling. The prison gang is worried that Faust may have actually murdered Shuushar. Eldeth plans to sleep with one eye open.

Our current predicament is to determine the best place to go. Since we’re underground its hard to gain our bearings, which is making a lot of us pretty frustrated. After a bunch of arguing we finally march, headed towards the lake since an underground stronghold will be easier to find from that location.

We march for hours. In the distance we see lights and a structure ahead with water lapping at the land around it.

9/21/2019 Mushroom gonn’ get ate.

Kekekekeke

While we march Bash has an opportunity to examine the journal he retrieved from the drider corpse. It’s written in neat Elvish but as it continues, there are frantic symbols. The last several pages are mostly just spider symbols. He consults with Enna, because her ears are the pointiest. Enna determines that its the trials of a drow priestess, how she is betrayed by another priestess that she trusts - and the murderous intents she has toward her betrayer. Sounds pretty fuckin emo to me. Bash distributes his drider loot to Lamp (the sword), Enna (the glove), and Telchur (the longbow).

The cavern starts to narrow and angle downward. Rivulets of water flow on the ground below us. As we continue slipping and sliding downwards we see a faint halo of light. Jimjar bets Drip 5 gold that Spice will slip and fall first - Drip bets that Jimjar will fall first then shoves him so he slides down the passageway. Heh. He then proceeds to slide as well.

The path bottoms out toward a lake. To our right is a path that leads to a glowing path of light. To the left it is simply dark. Faust peers out towards the left and can see rocks climbing up out of the water but it seems like a wide expanse. We elect to move towards the light.

As we walk closer to the light, we notice the light seems to be flickering. Upon closer inspection, a humanoid shape - or perhaps several - seem to be dancing in a circular pattern. Spice and Drip squint, trying to make out what we’re walking towards. The shapes appear to be incorporeal. Spooked, Bash and Spice hide.

Drip claps a hand on Bash’s shoulder and casts long strider on him. Cool.

So as we get closer it looks like there’s a single reptilian figure in the center and a bunch of incorporeal figures dancing around it. Weird. They look creepy and demonic. Lovely

Bash ushers Lamp to follow him, and approaches the circle of figures. He amicably greets them and asks for directions to the nearest stronghold.

The lizardfolk responds, though its doesnt move. He responds to Bash - he’s studying the creatures surrounding him and urges Bash to stop but is cut off as they all depart from their circle and fly silently in a rush toward Bash. He’s able to miss most of their attacks, but one manages to sneak in a hit. Lamp attempts to assist but her crossbow bolts fall just short.

Faust notices the lizardfolk guy kind of waving us away, but shrugs and starts throwing eldritch blasts because he doesn’t know what that guy’s deal is and doesn’t care but he doesn’t like that they’re attacking one of his friends.

Drip summons a moonbeam and that really fucks with the ghost guys’ day. The ones that are hit start to dim, as if they’re dissipating from this realm of existence.

Enna is a ghost puncher. She punches ghosts.

Telchur does ranger things and shoots things.

Spice deals the final blow - sacred flame - to the dimmest of the demon dudes. He wisps away into nothingness.

Jimjar sidles up to Drip and bets him 5 gold he can hit one of the shadow demon things between the eyes. Drip is like “naaaah you can’t.” Jimjar’s bolt hits the shadow demon but no idea if it actually hit between the eyes.

Bashir and Lamp team up on another of the shadow demons. Despite their best efforts, they are still on this plane of existence.

The three creatures disengage from their fight. Two disappear from our field of vision but one remains - it must not have played a lot of hide and seek as a kid. Drip summons a hawk totem and together they are able to identify one of the hidden spectres. He points it out to the rest of us.

Enna, eager to punch more ghosts, rushes towards the one that just doesn’t know how to hide, and wails on it. Unable to endure the blows, it implodes into a vacuum and dissipates.

Telchur strikes the lone spectre and hits it twice with his arrows. It poofs.

Perplexed, Spice observes the space for the other shadow demon (which he has confirmed, they are definitely shadow demons)

Turvy notices the last shadow demon and shoots a crossbow bolt at it. Bash starts flailing at it, attempting to hit it about four or five times. He fails to hit it each time. Lamp fails as well.

Faust, exasperated, hits it with an Eldritch Blast. Drip follows up with a moonbeam, and the final demon dissipates.

We introduce ourselves to the lizardman - who is actually a troglodyte named Skriss - he’s part of what he calls the Society of Brilliance. They solve problems… with their minds! We exchange questions with one another - Bash instills a healthy dose of fear about the surface (clouds eat people, you can float away into the sky).

Skriss hands us a manuscript about fungi of the underdark. Drip snatches it up, looks useful.

Bash hands the drider journal to Skriss as trade. They talk candidly about myconids, Skriss illuminates Bash on their telepathic abilities and that larger ones are capable of mind control through their spores.

We tromp through the mud with Skriss. The journey is pretty squelchy. The particularly keen eared can make out the sound of another party squelching up ahead. Spice casts light on a rock and hands it on Bash to throw. It launches out about 60 ft. He also casts light on Bash’s shield. Cool.

Faust is able to just make out one kua toa, but assumes there are more from the sound of marching, he asks Skriss if we should be worried about the kua-toa. He confirms that though they do eat people, they may not necessarily want to eat us and his dealings with them have been friendly enough.

We disperse ourselves to hide, or ready ourselves to attack. Bash and Drip move to parlay. A kua toa that looks wise moves toward them. At first he speaks in his native tongue, which we don’t understand, but then he uses magic to speak common. He tells us that a prophecy told them that surface dwellers would come according to some prophecy. And that there are dangerous creatures about - also from a prophecy.

Bash introduces himself to the kua-toa, the kua-toa leader introduces himself as Pluplopling, but we can call him Ploop. Bash, of course, calls him poop. Ploop guarantees us safe passage to Sloobadaub, but is not willing to allow Skriss to accompany us, which doesn’t seem to bother Skriss. He assures us that it’ll be okay, to scout the place and that he would meet us again somewhere down the line. He plans to spread the word to the other handful of members of the Society of Brilliance.

We follow the kua-toa to their home. Ploop again states adamantly that only the surface dwellers are allowed in, Faust manages to negotiate passage for the rest of the prison gang (Prince Darrendell in particular). He assures that he’ll take responsibility for everyone. “IT HAS BEEN WITNESS” he garbles.

Ploop is the head priest of the village, and the de facto leader, but his daughter is now high priestess to the Deep Father. Ploop tells us that we’re free to wander about the village as long as we don’t cause trouble, but he’ll have need of us tomorrow. When we ask about what he needs us for he clams up a little. We ask him about the prophecy he was talking about. At this point a younger kua-toa comes forth and starts arguing with Ploop. They look like they might be family? After the argument goes on for a bit, the younger one storms out. Ploop explains that that other kua-toa was Gloog, who doesn’t believe in the prophecy.

For dramatic flair, he throws something into the fire that flares up and starts to elaborate on the prophecy. According to the prophecy, we’re supposed to show the kua-toa the error of their ways? Something about supplanting the sea mother?

Bash, Drip, and Telchur wander off to find a tavern. They encounter a strange shrine consisting of a giant stingray with two octopuses tied on top of it. It’s very bizarre. Several kua-toa encircle it. The village is hard to navigate, there’s no signage or anything. As Bash and Drip walk, a kua-toa is approaching, pushing a sort of hand cart. Bash, Drip, and Telchur side step and then Telchur reaches a hand out to the kua-toa man. He startles awake, as if he was in a trance. Pointing out a wine flask, Telchur hands him a gold piece and takes the wine. Drip hands the kua-toa man ten gold and reaches for 10 random objects. The Kua-toa gives him back half of the gold and insists on having Drip’s left shoe and won’t relent. Drip eventually manages to pull out a spare shoe and hands it to him, satisfied.

Meanwhile, back with the high priest and the rest of our gang, Enna, Faust and Bash interrogate Ploop for more information about the prophecy. We know he is not totally on the up and up with the information he’s given us. Our combined efforts pressure him into spilling the beans - he wants our help in killing his daughter, because she is usurping his position as high priestess for a false god. Spice, through his vast religious vault of knowledge, knows that the power of belief among the kua-toa is capable of actually willing things into existence. Faust asks as to how Ploop plans to guarantee our protection if we help him, he concedes that its a good point and says that he’ll have us blessed by the sea mother.

He leads us to a shrine guarded by four stern kua-toa. There a carving of a humanoid creature wrapped in fish gut netting androtting shellfish. It’s pretty gnarly and disgusting. Ploop announces that he will make the ultimate offering and proceeds to induce himself to vomiting at the foot of the shrine. The statue glows and those of us at the shrine feel… blessed? He then invites us to present offerings to the sea mother, informing us that she is a scavenger goddess. Bash, Spice and Enna all leave an offering. From there, we all depart to the shrine of the Deep Father to seek out Ploop’s daughter.

At the altar, there are six kua-toa tending to the shrine. They eye us in a way that makes us mildly uncomfortable. Bash looks around, keeping an eye out for a duergar as Ploop had mentioned that his daughter had sacrificed two duergar traders recently, but there is one left. Bash notices a grey dwarf on the second floor of one of the nearby buildings, it appears to be guarded by two kua-toa. Faust seeks out the high priestess. After surveying the area, he notices the same building and eyes the high priestess. Pointing this out to the rest of the party, they take stock and go about their business. We reunite with everyone and head back to our lodging space. While everyone sleeps, Faust wanders off to inspect the building housing the duergar and the high priestess. He spies the duergar through some slats and tries to free him with mage hand but he’s not able to loosen them. The duergar takes notice but Faust puts a finger to his lips to signal that he needs to be quiet. After his failed attempt at rescue, Faust sneaks around and inspects the building further before returning to our place of lodging.

Drip has a really weird dream where he ages and withers into a skeleton. Its weird. He wakes up with a killer hangover and murmurs that we’re in a bad place and need to get the fuck out.

Ploop has made us a stew that is specially enchanted so that we can understand kua-toa speak. Telchur, Enna and Faust partake while the rest of abstain. Thirteen kua-toa approach us, the three that partook in the stew understand what they’re saying so hey - at least Ploop is honest. Before we leave, Ploop informs us that our participation as sacrifices is a farce and that we just need to play along with his charade until he provides a sign for the distraction that we’re supposed to cause.

We’re lead out to the shrine of the Deep Father where Ploop is offering us to his daughter. Blop, the high priestess of the Deep Father accepts us as sacrifice. From the sacred building, they bring forth the beaten and bedraggled duergar.

Ploop’s faction leads us to the pool of water meant for the sacrifices. We’re in there with the duergar. Faust sneakily hands off a dagger to the duergar who nods in acknowledgement.

Blop makes her way down to the shrine from the building and stands side by side with her father as they began to chant to the Deep Father. All of a sudden he uses his staff and slams it into her face. Chaos ensues.

Drip uses the druid equivalent of magic caltrops and situates them behind us, forcing any kua-toa wishing to attack us. As they attempt to converge on us, they hurt themselves badly and several succumb to their wounds.

Faust kinda throws out a hail mary and casts fireball out behind the kua-toa. It erupts in an immense explosion and takes out a huge swath of them. But then he turns invisible. Da fuck?

Telchur levitates himself, Enna is throwing punches, Spice summons his spiritual weapon and goes HAM. We here! The kua-toa continue to close in on us. Our prison gang friends are fighting alongside us and doing pretty well. Yay.

Drip causes a massive shifting of the earth, knocking a bunch of the kua-toa - and an invisible Faust - around. Faust yells in protest but seems okay.

The duergar sacrifice uses his dagger to free himself and can at least defend himself. Enna is facing off with another kua-toa who tries to push her off of a ledge, she responds by dodging and then succeeds in kicking him off the ledge instead.

Still levitating, Telchur starts shooting his arrows at Blop, hitting the mark each time.

Spice is offering a special delivery of mace to the face.

Blop makes another attempt at a summoning, Bash tries to disrupt the spell with an attack and while he hits her, she still manages to complete the summoning. Sting rays rage around and start attacking those of us within range. In retaliation, Drip summons a sea hag - everyone within 30 feet of her cowers in fear for a moment, some of us recover our gumption. Drip is not one of them and he runs away in terror.

Ploop, who has been attacking his daughter all this while, finally suceeds in caving in her skull. He raises his staff in triumph “Sea Mother!” His kua-toa followers, even those are hurt and laying on the floor, shout with him.

In the distance, from the direction of the lake, we see several kua-toa running toward us. Bash throws a rock and knocks one down, tripping a few others around us. They get trampled as the rest of their comrades run over them.

An enormous two headed baboon creature with terrifying tentacle arms starts to rise from the depths of the lake. Our duergar friend urges us to follow him as he has a ship and he don’t have to tell us twice. We fight against the tide of running kua-toa and make a path away from the godzilla level monster.

The duergar leads us to his boat, its manned with oars and about 40 feet long. Together we row away from the monstrosity behind us. Faust introduces himself to the duergar as we row across the lake. Our companion is named Hemmeth, he’s a weapons trader. The spell from Bloop’s stew wears off, which inhibits communication. Fortunately, we’re able to use Stool’s spore as a means of communication. We talk about potential destinations and agree that Gracklestugh would be our best bet.

Bash looted the high priestess before our escape, taking it all into account: 27 plat, 2 potions of healing, potion of water breathing and a spell scroll of light.

As our resident navigator, Drip offers to assist Hemmeth in navigating the lake to Gracklestugh. Spice, reflecting on our location, determines that we’re beneath the Evermore mountains. Eldeth stares morosely at the water, realizing how far from her home of Gauntlgrym she has ended up.

We travel for a couple of days on the water. Hemmeth informs us that we’re approaching a short cut but the water will get choppy and the passage narrow. With Hemmeth and Drip at the helm we are able to make it through the narrow cave and we succeed though its pretty harrowing.

Meanwhile… some drow scouts are in a dry cavern examining the remains of two mangled bodies. Evara is among them, purveying the bodies. TOLD YOU WE SHOULD HAVE BURNED THEM MFers. Her scouts mention that the derro is pretty crazy “Is it worth it to pursue this further?” he asks. Evara regards him cooly “Are you questioning my wisdom?” The scout sputters in response. Evara flashes a spider sigil and her eyes glow for a moment, her hand is outstretched and she commands Buppido to rise. He snaps eerily to attention. “Tell me everything…”

10/5/2019 It’s time to get spoopy

To Gracklestugh we go, to Gracklestugh we go, high ho… or something?

We find ourselves along a shoreline and decide to take a breather. All of us disembark from the boat and explore along the shore. Bash tries to pick up some Undercommon from Topsy and Turvy while Faust sticks with Hemmeth and does the same. Drip and Telchur are foraging for food, with Drip looking for mushrooms. Telchur comes across a weird grubby looking creature with pincers. He consults with Drip, who consults with Jimjar… Jimjar bets him 5 gold that he won’t eat it. So Drip immediately stuffs it in his mouth and immediately goes to town on the poor creature. Jimjar then bets that he’ll throw it up by the end of the night.

As we begin to bed down for the night, Hemmeth addresses us while tending to the boat. Inquiring as to our purpose in the Underdark, he asks what our plans are and what we hope to accomplish in Gracklestugh. He suggests that we all shouldn’t head to Gracklestugh empty handed. Bash has given Hemmeth the impression that we’re miners because he repeatedly is saying rock in Undercommon. Our response to Hemmeth is that we are neither slaves nor slavers.

Shortly after this conversation, Hemmeth goes to bed. Meanwhile, Faust feels a tendril brush against the pouch at his waist. He thinks nothing of it after taking a glance behind him. But then he feels his pouch moving away and sees a tentacle making off with the pouch. He mage hands a slap at the tentacle and the creature it belongs to reveals itself - a wild Rocktopus appears! And it attaches itself to Fausts’s face. Aggravated, he slams his head against the rock wall and manages to dislodge its tentacles. Bash uses his flail to knock it off of Faust’s head; the rest of the crew proceeds to wail on the monster, and we make short of the rocktopus.

Drip proceeds to make a fire and we cook the rocktopus. While everyone is asleep, Eldeth and Faust keeps watch. Faust starts to rifle through every one’s things looking for tools to fiddle with while Eldeth looks on disapprovingly. Eventually, she too falls asleep. And while Faust is playing around with Drip’s medicine kit, a bright light emanates from the opposite end of the cavern, the side we haven’t traveled, and seems to grow brighter and nearer. Faust casts Darkness in front of the group but finds that the figure goes straight through the Darkness and chastises him for looking through his companion’s things.

Faust is bewildered, but greets the creature. It’s tall, speaks with three voices, and is surrounded by several fist sized spheres that all travel in their own orbit around the creature. It introduces itself is Aurelia (?) a god of messages (she’s basically middle management) and confirms that Faust is now one of her agents. She throws a sphere at him which he catches, and it bathes him in light, cleaning all of the dirt and grime from his for. “No agent of mine will be covered in fitlh.” His book of Shadows is now a Book of Messages, and he is instructed to keep track of demons and report to her and the Gods (who are not actually all knowing and rely on their agents to keep abreast of the matter of mortals). She tells him to read his new book to find out about his new powers. Over all, she’s pretty judgy and snarky. After taking a few jabs at Faust, she informs him that nearby is a powerful weapon that can defeat demons. It can only be wielded by someone who is brave and worthy. “Well that rules me out.” She points a finger and light shoots out, hitting a cavern wall across the water. That’s where we must go to find the weapon. With her message delivered to Faust, she departs because she’s pretty fuckin’ busy and has several other messaages to deliver.

The sudden blast wakes everyone up. Faust is nosedeep in his book, points to the hole in the wall and says a big ball of light person told him to go that way. To his immediate confidantes, he explains the weapon and the necessity of finding it. We all agree, and disembark toward it. The hole is man sized and we climb through. As we traverse through, the place is very dusty. We come across a diorama. Our surroundings look very much like a tomb.

Spice is able to make sense of the diorama, which depicts an inverted mountain, a symbol of the Netherese. They have a weird history of floating cities, powerful magic, and some dude that tried to become a God. Bash starts touching everything, as he does, we hear a voice in our minds asking for help. “Is anyone there?” The dust here is several inches thick. We do find a stone door that is hard to open, but the combined strength of Bash, Faust and Enna they push the door open.

There are empty stone sconces lining the walls of a staircase, but it is not dusty in here. It’s well preserved. There is a wide mosaic floor, showing clouds and skies. Bash and Lamp approach the staircase first toward another room. As Bash and Lamp reach the bottom of the stairs, they hear a click and immediately jump into the next room. All of us, except for Drip and Spice, leap and dog pile on top of them. A portcullis falls behind us, separating the party. Drip transforms into a mouse and travels through the portcullis. There are two immense statues in the corners. There appears to be an altar in the middle of the room. Enna makes a beeline for the altar, Bash and Lamp inspects one statue, while Faust and Telchur inspect another. All the light sconces suddenly flash with light. A loud voice speaks to us in Netherese, but none of us understand it. Fortunately, the altar appears to have offerings before it, prompting Drip and Faust to ask if anyone has anything to offer. Drip leaves 25 gold, the voice desists. But then it comes again but it seems to be saying something different.

In the room are two doors, Bash and Lamp open one. The sconces light up of their own volition. Inside this room is a lot of dust (which is surprising, because the room we were just in had none). There also lies a sarcophagus and the room is decorated with a painting featuring depictions of Netherese culture. There are canopic jars on the shelves of the walls. They all contained dessicated organs and weird lumps.

Back in the other room, Drip finds a crank behind one of the statues. Suspecting that it might be related to the portcullis, he pulls the crank. As he releases it, it rachets a few times and clicks into place, opening the portcullis and letting Spice in.

In the tomb room, while Spice is entering the room and Bash is inspecting the jars, Faust and Enna push open the sarcophagus. Inside the sarcophagus is a half elf sorceress statue - the likeness resembles one of the sorceress painted on the reliefs outside. Another voice rings out, those of us that can speak draconic can make out the words “cursed”. The sound of metal grating on stone. The statues are awaaaaake.

The statues attack Telchur and Eldeth. They hit hard and fast, Eldeth is knocked the fuck out cold. Telchur casts levitates on himself, pushing off of the wall to enter the room with the statues. Bashir rushes in like a raging bull. He shield bashes one of the statutes and somehow manages to knock it off its feet. He then grabs his immovable rod, shoves it down onto its chest, and activates it.

Drip points his finger at the other statue and casts dispel magic. It seems to affect the statue a little bit.... But its still active and moving. Spice tries to use sacred flame to set one of the statues but it buffets harmlessly against his armor.

Faust is frantically searching through his Book of Messages. Seeing the first spell that is fire oriented, he casts Flaming Sphere and directs it toward the statue that is facing off with Drip. The sphere ignites and burns the statue, but it carries on through the flames. Still sifting through his book, Faust realizes that he can heal people and shouts some insults from across the room, reviving Eldeth. “YOU’RE WELCOME!” he shouts.

Telchur, from his elevated position, shoots at the statues, but only succeeds in hitting one. Bash and Lamp wail on the downed statue. Lamp tries to shoot it with her crossbow but fails miserably.

Spice, feeling the brunt of the elderly curse, casts Sacred Flame again on the statue that is not knocked prone. It goes up in flames. Drip pulls out his bear totem while simultaneously casting Moonlight. The statues try to get some licks in, with minor success. As the mobile one swings, it makes contact with the Flaming Sphere and erupts into shards of terracotta.

Our combined efforts take down the other statue as well, which follows its companion’s suit and erupts.

With our opponents gone, Drip immediately knocks open the other door. Inside are four more sarcophagi. Drip immediately blocks the door from the rest of us and starts to cast Detect Magic. Enna manages to shadowstep her way through and surveys the sarcophagi - trying to decide which one to open. The one in the far left corner seems different to her somehow, so she inspects it. For once she chooses to follow discretion and waits for Drip to finish his ritual before she inspects the sarcophagus that caught her eye.

While that’s going on, Faust inspects the remains of the terracotta statues and finds their hearts. They appear to be magical stained glass. He pockets them.

Drip’s spell shows that there is some sort of illusory magic cast in the room. He checks out the other room containing the other sarcophagus and finds an illusory spell on the ceiling, a curse emanating from the sarcophagus. The source of the voice is probably from the spell in the ceiling.

As Drip inspects, Enna leans against the sarcophagus that caught her interest in the other room. As she leans, it slides to the side and reveals a set of staircase. Without another word she immediately rushes down them. Once we all catch sight of what she’s up to, we follow after her.

The room below looks very much like the trapped sarcophagus room but… more real this time? The sarcophagus takes up most of this room. Enna, of course, is the first to push at the lid. She pushes it open, revealing the sorceress again. There is a finely jeweled hilt of a sword clutched against her chest, and other jewels resting along with her. Both Bash and Enna try to steal stuff from the sarcophagus - Enna going for a jewel emerald while Bash goes for the hilt. He succeeds in grabbing the hilt, but as Enna reaches for the emerald a dessicated hand reaches out and grabs Enna’s wrist. The mummy whispers that she needs to rest. It then lays back down. Enna attempts again to steal the emerald and succeeds this time. By now, Ol’ Man Spice has made it back to the room and is informed of the situation. He lays her to rest with her last rites and her body slumps, finally at rest.

While holding the sword hilt, Bash hears a voice talking to it. He immediately hands it to Spice, who hears the voice next. It asks to be taken outside and out of the darkness. A blade of flame issues forth from the hilt, casting Daylight in the room. Coooooool. From here, we proceed to grave rob the shit out of this place.

Drip dispels magic from the cursed sarcophagus and gets to graverobbing he gets two gold bracelets wort 50 gp, a vase (50), he finds a wand made of chisled ivory (25 gp), an onyx ring (50 gp), a silver necklacke with gems (250 gp), a decorated pimp cane (75 gp) its made of varnished yew with a golden handle shaped like a scorpion.

Now laden with loot, we make our way back through the tunnel to the subterranean river. As we exit through the manhole sized hole.

There we find Hemmeth and the rest of our prison gang. Drip and Bash clumsily hide our loots to avoid detection. Jimjar apparently made a bet with Topsy about our return.

Hemmeth is eager to keep going, he is concerned about returning empty handed though. In the city there is a wyrmsmith, named Thumberchun (?) that keeps the fires lit in their forges. There are stone giants in the city as well. There’s a big rift that divides the city in two. There are several districts in the city, but not all of them are open to outsiders.

We all row together for a few hours. We then reach some whitewater. Hemmeth is navigating the way and providing us with direction. The water is rough and not all of us are seasoned in fast moving water. In spite of our best efforts at rowing, we crash into the cavern wall, throwing Drip, Bash and Faust outside of the boat. Thinking fast, Drip casts Control Water, and calms the entire river around us, enabling the three that were knocked loose to swim back into the boat. Faust uses prestidigation to dry everyone off.

There is a boat moored in the center of the river. Still able to control water, Drip parts the water around it, revealing three figures holding onto the sides of the boat. As they catch notice of us, they release it and shamble towards us. They are clearly undead. Lovely. Drip smashes the walls of water together and the figures disappear. We start rowing toward the other boat and as we do… skeletal hands reach up to the edges of our boat and grab hold, rocking them from side to side. Drip, Bash, and Lamp are tossed out of the boat and into the water.

Spice and Faust are quickest to react and start launching spells. Spice lights up an immense undead ogre with sacred flame and Faust follows up with two eldritch blasts. To the rear, another undead creature is rocking the boat. Telchur shoots it with two arrows, taking it out immediately. There’s one other creature beside it, Telchur fires a third arrow and pins its hand to the boat.

Having had some time to attune to the fire sword, Bash draws it. He shudders as it attempts to talk to him and immediately blocks out the voice. Still in the water, Bash lunges for the ogre and attempts to knock it to its feet, but is not successful. Frustrated, he lashes out at it with his sword to strike it twice. The flaming blade cuts through the ogre’s flesh and lets out a bright nearly blinding light. His strikes seem particularly effective, and the ogre goes down. Bash then jumps back into the ship. Lamp strikes at the nearest zombie, making a successful strike before following suit and climbing back into the boat as well.

Enna launches a series of punches at one of the zombies, nearly breaking its jaw clean off. Drip parts the water again, gently lowering us to the bottom of the river bed. One of the zombies tries to bite him, but catches the carapace of his armor. Two zombies go after Enna, they both try to latch onto her but fail to grab her. Spice keeps it up with his sacred flame. There are only three zombies left. Faust uses an Eldritch Blast on two of the abominations and takes them both out. Telchur shoots the last one right through the head. With the danger abated, Drip inspects the second boat. It’s very similar to ours, appears serviceable but is missing the oars. We tie it to ours and continue on our way.

As we continue through the calmed rapids, we notice another islet. There is an old fossilized ribcage of a whale that seems to encircle the islet. The passage is narrow, but we’re able to pass through. There’s a pile of rotting corpses and skeletons laying destroyed on the islet. There’s a minotaur skeleton that’s smashed to pieces, but we don’t see anything in the vicinity as we row past.

About half a day goes by. Hemmeth cautions us to be careful as there’s a bit of a drop. Hemmeth hunkers down, Drip, Bash and Telchur tie themselves to the boat. Fortunately, the drop is only 2-3 feet and we make it safely. In the distance is a glowing light - the forges of Gracklestugh. Its far off, but at least within our sight. The water is open now, and calm, but it will require a lot of rowing to get there.

With calmer waters we finally feel comfortable enough to rest. Telchur and Faust take the first watch. Telchur notices a boat approaching while Faust reads his Book of Messages. He can’t make out what’s in the boat so he nudges Faust, who tries to make out the boat but he can only just make out its shape and silhouette of people. Faust wakes Hemmeth to warn him, but Hemmeth dismisses his concern. “Let me know if they get closer” and he goes back to sleep. Bash then takes up the next watch and together, he and Faust surveil the boat. Over the next hour it continues to come closer, so Faust warns him. Hemmeth strains to see and groans “Why didn’t you tell me it was that boat?”

Turns out the other boat is manned by two slaver duergars and six slaves. Hemeth informs us that he owes money to the the clan that those two duergars belong to. There’s some deliberation. Hemmeth is calling out to the other duergars in dwarvish. Fortunately, Eldeth is able to translate for us and lets us know that Hemmeth isn’t trying to sell us out even though his companions are offering money for some of us. In a split second of diplomacy, Drip offers to pay Hemmeth’s debt to the duegar clan of 500 gold, and asks that Hemmeth stay on as our guide. But he must give up slaving. Hemmeth agrees to be our guide but said he would think about the slaving thing.

We pass the other boat peacefully once the transaction is done, and Hemmeth tells us that while we can head to the main harbor, there’s an expensive fee but he knows of a lesser traveled cove where we can moor instead. It’s not especially perilous so we agree. As we get closer the constant sound of hammers rings out around us.

As we reach the city, the camera pans up. A dark elf stands in the window of a building, a stone in her hand buzzes with energy. She smiles and looks out toward the harbor. “They’re here…”

10/19/2019 LET’S MURDER ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE CITY.

Woohoo.

We meander our way to the city. There are numerous fires lighting the way. Hemmeth warns us to be careful around the city - breaking laws here when you’re not a duergar can be punishable by death if you’re caught. Hemmeth warns us that if we have any questions we best ask now before we catch the attention of the guards.

Our immediate concerns are finding a place of lodging, shopping, and locating some people from the Society of Brilliance since that’s what our buddy Skrizzle Dizzle asked for.

Grant proceeds to rap about accruing a bunch of feat and laying down some sick beats. Wicky wicky.

Drip makes some more inquiries about the guards, Hemmeth explains that they’re a part of the Stone Guard - they’re well trained and pretty powerful. We don’t really want to piss them off.

There’s one Inn that’s open to outsiders. It’s under the Blade Bazaar (?). As we go through the gates into the city, we suffer great scrutiny under the eye of the watchful guards. Hemmeth talks with them in dwarvish with Eldeth carefully and discreetly translating for us. She seems mistrustful. Hemmeth describes us as being some sort of trading convoy. The guards begrudgingly let us through.

There’s orange dim light everywhere which allows us to see. A wave of heat rises against us as smoke blows passed us. We’re not the only outsiders here - there are drow, derros, orcs as well. Hemmeth explains that we’ve reached the Blade Bazaar. As we talk with Hemmeth, who is bragging about the quality of duergar steel, a gust of wind batters us all as a heavyset dragon flies overhead, startling us.

A voice shouts across the bazaar to us, its speaking in Common. The voice belongs to a very pale human. He’s missing like half of his teeth and one side of his face has a huge brand on it - it looks like some kind of dwarven rune. Consulting with Eldeth, she confirms that it’s a slave brand. There’s a duegar at the stall that yells at Yuri, the slave’s name, and tells him to get us to buy his shit.

Faust casts Comprehend Languages on himself.

As we are browsing, Telchur is run into by a shifty looking derro. They lock eyes for a moment before it runs off. Telchur catches Drip’s attention and they pursue after the derro, leaving the rest of us to barter. Drip turns to Faust. “I trust you, handle this.” Faust giddily takes the Bag of Holding.

Bash buys a bunch of stuff from Yuri - thereby helping him meet his quota so he doesn’t get beaten. Yay.

Yuri has pointed out a gnome that deals in gems, which Faust strides purposefully toward. As he moves, a woman leading a rothay walks passed. The bovine makes eye contact with Faust, ghostly light swirling about his head. Faust stares perplexed, but goes back to business.

Meanwhile, Bash gives Lamp the immovable rod and praises her for her hard work. It’s a super awkward encounter that results in an almost hug that turns into a pat on the head. They continue to follow after Faust.

Taking stock of the ghostly glowing bovine, Faust finds his way to gem gnome. They talk shop about gems - Faust trades his 300 gp ruby for a 300 gp diamond and buys another for Spice. The gnome takes notice of Faust’s Book of Messages, remarking on how nice his ledger book is. Faust looks down in puzzlement, as the book which he had shoved deeper into his pocket seems to be vibrating. Somehow he knows there’s something new in his book. Inside the book is a message - Knock all the gems off the table now. Perplexed and intrigued, Faust proceeds to mage hand everything off the table - the gnome dodges out of the way and yells in protest just as a large club crashes through the stall. Behind us, a large two-headed giant towers overhead.

Drip and Telchur sneak after the derro. They seem to be traveling through a seedier part of the city, as ladies of the night reach out for them. The derro continues on ahead. As they follow, a duergar mounted on a giant spider blocks the path. Drip tries to talk to the guard while Drip talks to the giant spider. Drip and the Spider launch into a really weird conversation about how the spider is the strongest steeder in the city. He’s strong because he ate all of his brothers and sisters. To demonstrate his strength, he rears up to flex his eight legs. Weird flex but okay…

The duergar rider is kind of dismissive of Telchur since there’s a language barrier, he starts to say something in undercommon about keeping his nose clean when the spider rears up and nearly tosses him. He’s embarrassed and quickly shuffles away.

Back in the market, the stone giant is wrecking shit. He knocks down a duergar guard and totally demolishes the stall. It clubs Faust who is hit hard but remains on his feet. The market erupts into chaos as the crowds of people clash into each other. Duergar guards surge against the crowd, clotheslining innocent folks as they move against the tide.

Having lost track of the derro, and with all the commotion back in the marketplace, Telchur and Drip elect to head back to their friends. Drip wildshapes into a riding horse, neighing to urge Telchur to hop on his back. They rush back to the bazaar.

Spice, taking notice of the smaller head growing out of the giant’s neck, deduces that some foul magic is afoot. He casts dispel magic and pushes his magic against the dark magic inhabiting that head. He senses the magic, pushes against it when he feels it surge back. He almost manages to push through it, but then his vision is flooded with the sight of the demonic demogorgon. Thoroughly irritated about being bashed over the head with a club, Faust summons his Flaming Sphere and rams it into the giant’s back.

Bash attacks the giant with his mace. The giant flails around crazed and then takes off.

Drip and Telchur rush into the scene. Without breaking gait, Drip returns to his usual genasi form with Telchur still astride his shoulders. Drip launches a magic stone at the giant, who stops mid flail just in time to catch the stone. Telchur fires a couple arrows off at the giant from Drip’s shoulders, after which he leaps off.

Spice attempts a banishment spell on the giant. It seems successful at first and it seems less physically present but suddenly reappears.

The duergar guard meanwhile is stabbing the giant repeatedly with their lances. As they stabbity stab, Faust launches his flaming sphere at the giant and finally does the poor thing in. It continues flailing its way to Yuri’s weapon shop but stops short as its heads burst into flame and it falls to the ground in death throes.

The dying giant is still being repeatedly stabbed by the guards. The rest of the party provides aid to the injured, doing their best to be unnoticed before slowly slinking away so as to avoid suspicion by the guards.

From behind the table he ducked under, the gem dealer emerges and excitedly inquires about what happened. Faust points out the dying giant, hands the dealer 5 gold and tells him that we were never here before darting off with Drip.

We sneak through the city being lead by Hemmeth who is talking to himself about the stone giants. Apparently there are 50 in the city, and they’ve never gone crazy before; Faust asks if they normally have two heads and the pair launch into a conversation. Apparently their clan leader or king has made a pact with Gracklestugh and as long as he is in charge they have an alliance with the city.

Hemmeth leads us to an inn, which appears to be subterranean. Hemmeth informs us that as the only inn in the city that allows non-duergar customers we’re likely to see other surfacers and individuals that speak Common. Each room is 1 gold a piece, Faust doesn’t want to pay full price but is undermined by the rest of the group so we all end up paying up.

We notice the rest of our party already seated and congregate over with them, trading information about our goings on of the day. As we talk, the elven server offers refills and sets down a fresh pitcher, stating that a gentleman a few tables over bought it for us. That table is occupied by a woman petting a giant dog and a dude with an enormous feather in his hat. He has an eyepatch and apears to wink with his one good eye but its hard to tell.

We raise our glasses as do they and sort of salute each other. As they clink their glasses they cheer for the Lords Alliance. Bash takes Lamp with him and goes off to greet their party. They introduce themselves:

Ser Galvan

Manfred

Odalina

Rosalind

Fritz the Dog

West Fat Rabbit (the halfling)

West Fat Rabbit introduces himself as a bard but can’t play music here as there is a no frivolity ordinance. Faust asks if he’s ever heard of the Great Juan Carlos, but it doesn’t ring a bell. Such a shame. Bash, eager to have someone to talk to, pulls up a chair and immediately launches into a story of how we found ourselves in the Underdark.

This party came here from Blindenstone. They were sent there by the Lords Alliance whose diviner saw a demonic presence in the Underdark. From Blindenstone they found their way to Gracklestugh. An ongoing issue in Blindenstone right now is some dude called the Pudding King, a gnome that has gone rogue and has control over several oozes. He’s created quite an issue for the gnomes as he can’t be ousted - his oozes destroy all the weapons.

One of the girls has a sketchbook and is sifting through it. Faust observes carefully to see if there’s anything demonic depicted there. The party discusses their travels through the myconid grove; one of the dudes in their party suddenly yells “THEY WERE IN OUR HEADS!” He practically inhales his liquor and quickly stands and storms to his room as the rest of his companions shuffle away from him. Something weird and tentacled catches Faust’s eye. He puts a hand down to stop her page turning and asks what that is. “I didn’t draw that. He did,” she remarks as she points to the room where the man departed.

It seems pretty clear something demonic is at foot. We share some information about our own demon hunting ordeals. A silence engulfs the table, and our new companions suggest that we head to a more private location. We depart to another room (where the dog promptly takes up the entire bed) and discuss the demons further. Also depicted in the sketchbook is some kind of fungus goddess?

One of the gals draws us a map by channeling the divine power of Ogma. It depicts a path to the Grove of myconids, presumably Stool’s home. There’s been some weird interpersonal drama in the Lord Alliance party. Apparently, Manfred - the crazy one, confessed his interest in Odalina, the Ranger… Weird. She gets really self conscious, summons the dog since he needs to relieve himself and hurriedly leaves.

Just as she leaves, the door closes and we hear the door handle turning slightly. “Uh, guys?” Stool is right out the door hesitantly trying to get our attention. His arms have grown a little bit but they’re still a bit too short to reach the door. He urges us downstairs though. Apparently Turvy is back and says Enna is in trouble. Without another word, Faust rushes out the door, picks up Stool and heads downstirs. Topsy is nowhere to be found. Turvy hurriedly explains that the drow took Enna and asks us to hurry and follow.

She leads us through a forging area. There are hot braziers everywhere. The air is dry and hot. There are duegar everywhere hammering away on anvils. Turvy leads us through the complex to a building and points to it “There!”

As we make our way we’re suddenly plunged into darkness. And yay we all suceed on our wisdom saves. Crossbow bolts fly through the air. We feel a telepathic pain as Stool cries out in pain and then the link we share breaks. Ruh-roh.

Bash manages to be just out of the darkness and rushes at one of the Drow. He yells for Lamp to follow the sound of his voice. She blindly runs through the darkness and pulls out her crossbow and fires at one of the drow. Disoriented, she misses.

With the fight in full effect, Turvy runs and leaps. As this happens she transforms into a drow and lunges for Bash, sinking a dagger into his back. The wound twinges painfully as if poisoned… but somehow he shrugs it off.

Telchur backs out of the darkness and darts around a building, catching sight of the drow through the window. He fires two arrows off, and through some skilled tricky shooting his aim strikes true.

Blindly hobbling through the dark, Drip summons his bear totem and pauses beside Faust. All of a sudden the darkness is lifted as a burst of glitter showers over Drip and Faust. A ray of frost shoots out of the second story window and strikes Lamp squarely in the chest. A mage is peeking out the window.

Hemmeth is shouting but we can’t make out what he’s saying because the telepathic link is broken, it seems like he’s running away but then it appears that he’s running towards a growling sound. Spice notices several quaggoth behind us as he rushes to aid Stool. He casts spare the dying to stabilise him.

Faust summons a wall of fire and encircles Bash’s assailants. In the same breath he shouts back at Stool “Hurry the fuck up and get up!”, Stool awakens! Completely surrounded, the drow are licked by flames.

The quaggoth move in on Hemmeth, Eldeth and Stool.

The flames are thick, completely covering the four drow. Bash takes his chances with his mace and strikes something solid but he can’t quite make out what he’s done exactly. Telchur, unable to see his previous target who is covered in flames, shifts gears and goes for another target. We’re being surrounded so this is probably a good strategy.

One of the drow that’s in the circle of flames tries to levitate out of it, but doing so burns her and breaks her concentration. She falls back down into the flames.

Drip warns Lamp and Bash not to move and throws a bunch of spikes, surrounding them as well as the drow that are in the wall of flames.

A caster appears suddenly across the field and casts a lightning bolt at Faust. Thanks to the bear totem its merely a tickle. He manages to maintain concentration and keep the wall up.

Three of the drow warriors try to rush through the flames. As they do they take damage from the fire as well as the spikes. Two succumb to the combined effects. They deaaaaaad.

Hemmeth, Spice and Eldeth do their best to fend off the quaggoth and protect Stool. It’s a bitter fight. Faust fires off two eldritch blasts at the spellcaster, hiting him each time. He turns and shouts some threats to Hemmeth “DON’T YOU DIE ON ME, PUNK!” Somehow, he heals. Just in time to get attacked by the quaggoth.

This fight is getting pretty tough, it seems like each time an enemy goes down, another takes its place. A drow initiate appears from the shadows and revives one of the fallen, burned drow.

Drip drops concentration on the spike growth and pulls out a scroll to cast a dust devil but his spell is disrupted by one of the mages.

Two crossbow bolts strike Faust, the poison flows through his blood trying to put him to sleep. But he’s like “Nah, man. I don’t sleep.” So the poison is like “My bad, bruh” and stops.

The other mages suddenly disappears.

The revived drow warrior picks up a crossbow and fires at Telchur. It strikes but fortunately the bear totem provides him with some protection.

The drow cleric summons a bunch of of flying spiders. Loooooovely.

Damn this battle it long. It rages on. The mage that disappeared earlier suddenly reappears and casts another lightningbolt. This one is waaaay more effective, it strikes Faust, Spice and Eldeth and it takes Faust out.

Almost instantaneously, Spice attacks with his spiritual weapon and channels his divinity to bring Faust back. Awwww yisssss.

In retaliation, Faust launches an attack on the mage and punches him in the face with two eldritch blasts. He takes that motha out and then uses his healing light to heal Bash who has succumbed to his wounds and fallen.

His success is short lived as he hit by another crossbow bolt.

Seconds later an alarm rings out and several duergars blip into existence everywhere; we’re effectively surrounded. Most of the drow seem to acknowledge the futility of the situation and raise their hands in surrender.

Telchur alerts the duergar stone guards to the mage upstairs but as soon as he points him out he disappears.

More and more stone guard filter in. Faust casts comprehend languages on himself to give himself a chance to communicate with the guard. Drip wildshapes into a small spider an escapes notice.

Faust informs the guard that he meant no harm to anyone, they were simply defending themselves. The guards won’t have it though “You’ll answer to Captain Blackskull. You’re all under arrest.” They pile us all together and lead us to Overlake Hold...

Evara watches over a pool and sees this all unfold, and shakes her head all the while. “Asha and her group have failed. That leaves one other option…” She peers into the pool again and sighs. “I threw my best, they’re going to get a lot more..” A demonic ritual lies on the floor behind her.

11/2/2019 “What do you mean you don’t use a fucksheet?!”

Off to Overlake Hold we goooooooo!

Meanwhile… Enna is disoriented. She’s upside down and bumps into something stinky, furry and white. It feels like the wooooorst hangover. All of the blood has rushed to her head, so she’s probably been restrained like this for a while. Someone from behind her spins her around. Prince Darrendell, and Topsy and Turvy are with her, also restrained. There’s a table in the room covered in some wicked looking torture devices and poisons. In the room are two drow.

“Well, this one looks awake,” says one of the drow. As Enna’s head clears, she sees the gems that she stole from the tomb. Curses!

The drow that spoke informs Enna that Mistress Elvira has special plans for her so Enna won’t be killed but that doesn’t mean they won’t have fun with her first.

The drow moves onto Prince Darrendell and jabs him in the side with a dagger. He cries out in pain as he stirs awake. He’s in disbelief that she stabbed him lol. Enna attempts futilely to break her bonds, but being poisoned she’s just soooo tired.

Back in the city, Drip, in spider form, is all alone at the site of our last major battle before being arrested. These forges have been badly scorched from some kind of fire. Knowing that the duergar guards might be invisible. In spider form he sneaks back to the inn.

Back in a cell in Overlake Hold, Faust is in a cell with Eldeth and Jimjar. The cell is like a bank vault, with a massive door possessing a crank handle and a sliding slat that covers a window to the rest of the prison. Faust hears coughing and detects the sound coming from the pipes overhead. He engages in a conversation with presumably another prisoner that surmises he’s a “new fish”. Their conversation reveals that the likelihood of escape is near impossible. There are invisible guards everywhere, the prison itself is covered in traps.

Bash, Lamp, and Stool are in the next cell over.

Back with Enna, Topsy manages to slip free and makes a run for a dagger, knocking aside a piece of furniture. There’s screaing, a flash of a knife and the sound of struggling. Enna has to spin herself to see what’s going on. She’s starting to feel weak but in a last minute adrenaline rush, she succeeds in breaking her bonds and falls ungracefully on the floor. Fortunately, with all the commotion the captors don’t hear her.

Darrendell notices that Enna has freed herself and urges her to him. He uses a blade like claw to free her from her bonds and while still poisoned, she is free from her bonds. Still distracted with Topsy, the Drow back away from the bodies of Topsy and Turvy.

In Spiderville, Drip is moving towards the inn when a massive drow walks past him. He seems familiar… So Drip turns and tries to jump onto his boot. He misses, but the drow’s cloak flutters dramatically and he jumps on board. The drow leads him towards some ruins and opens a door before descending down the stairs… to where Enna and half the prison gang is imprisoned. How convenient!

In the prison cell, Eldeth asks Faust if he has a plan because if we don’t get out of here soon… The duergar will probably just make a deal and sell us to Elvira. Faust responds that he has a plan but he’s going to have to wait a minute. In the next cell, Bash investigates the room and notices water dripping from the ceiling. He dumps out the bucket and pulls off a plank from it to use it to chip at the possible vulnerability in the ceiling.

In the next cell over, Bash and Lamp converse while he kind of “digs” at the ceiling. “Why don’t we talk to Stool?” she asks. Bash explains that he didn’t trust him.. But now it might be time to try. He picks up Stool and starts to shake him, planning to get him to release spores.

Bashir has now entered the chat room.

Faust suddenly hears Bash and Lamp in his head. “Bash? Is that you? Hey, I’m proud of you, man.” He fills him in on a potential plan.

Back in the torture cell, Drip turns back into his Genasi form, points a finger at Enna and yells “Monkey!” and casts Polymorph, she transforms into a giant ape and goes buck wild on the drow. She starts bashing them to pieces and well… they don’t last long. The assassin that Drip snuck in on attacks him with poisoned daggers. He manages to move aside but is definitely in a precarious position. Ape Enna rushes to his aid and make quick work of the assassin. She then makes a mad dash for her cursed gems.

Back in prison, Faust starts healing himself in preparation for what’s to come. Bash, meanwhile, embarks on an exploration of his entire life story, sharing it with Faust in particular who is answering noncomittally the whole time.

Enna and Drip free Darrendell. At this point they realize now that the swelling around his eye has obscured the fact that he has lost an eye. They find its remnants squished. Then they proceed to loot the room. When they come to Topsy and Turvy, unusually somber, Enna offers to say some final rites for them… it’s awkward. Drip cries anyway.

Drip finds the contents of a poisoners kit, a torture kit, and an herbalist kit. He laments that while he would love to help his friends.. He can’t because he’s too tired. Darrendell protests, but is also too tired. They hobble back to the inn.

Meanwhile, in prison… an hour has passed. Faust realizes this when there’s a knock on the door, and someone speaks in Undercommon. He doesn’t understand anything - which means the spell he cast earlier has expired. At this, his eyes widen in anticipation. “Bash, Eldeth - you ready?”

On their way to the inn, Drip, Enna and Darrendell walk down an alley and are immediately assailed by goblins who demand gold in return for passage. They squabble easily, arguing that 4 gold is greater than 7. It’s entertaining but… annoying. Drip throws a handful of silver. They start fighting over it, which results in them stabbing each other. Drip pockets two dead goblins in his bag of holding for his Steeder friend. They make it to the inn… and sleep.

Faust grabs Eldeth’s hand “I’ve never done this before so uh-- good luck!” And with that he casts Dimension Door and leads Eldeth outside of the cell. They are right outside the cell. Faust debates on whether or not to release JimJar… and finally decides to in case he needs a meat shield. The three of them start opening cells everywhere in an effort to find Bash and the others. The first door reveals two naked duergar who pose seductively for us. Eldeth shudders and closes the door. The next door shows two derro finger painting with their shit bucket. Faust starts gesturing to them that he wants them to fight. They cock their heads but then nod and reach out a hand for a handshake. Confident in the distasteful ability to never be dirty now… he grabs the hand and pulls back… with a spotlessly clean hands lmao

They continue opening cells, accumulating another duergar in the process before they come to another cell. Inside is an orog who immediately reaches out and grabs Faust and slams him into the floor. Too injured to fight, Faust disengages and runs down the hall, willing to let the stoneguard deal with it as he hears boots marching from behind. The rest of the crew follows, save for the derro who start fighting the orog.

Suddenly, Faust runs into something invisible and falls back for a moment. A duergar guard materalizes in front of him and barks out an order in dwarven to return to the cells. Faust points ahead in the opposite direction of where we came. “It’s that way” And then uh… Bash tries to clothesline him. Jesus.

The duergar shouts for more guards and we hear more boots marching toward us… Panicked, Faust grabs Bash and is about to teleport out… but Bash asks Faust to take Lamp. He grabs her hand and they teleport out…

Right outside the prison in fact. Two duergar guards spot them for a moment. They tilt their heads in curiosity, shrug and then go about their business. Faust and Lamp book it to the inn.

Back inside, several duergar line up our friends in the prison and a duergar woman approaches. She is heavily armored, has a mohawk and an immense medallion. She tsks at Bash in common. “It seems you are quite the troublemakers. I was on my way to release you - the sooner the better. Follow me and I will explain to you your options.”

Bashir complies and he and the rest of the prison gang join him to speak with the duergar woman. She explains that while she could sell us to the drow, the Order of the Sacred Flame wants to commission us for their own machinations. She’s not really giving us a lot of options… Bash agrees to meet with a representative from the order. An old wizardly looking man arrives and parlays with Bash, who agrees to help because there aren’t many other options available. The old dude’s name is Gartocor Zundor - he expects us to be trustworthy or else we’ll be hunted down by the Thumberchaun. Awesome.

Bash shakes Gartocor’s hand as they reach an agreement and collects our stuff, lying through his teeth to get everything back. Accompanied by stone guard, he heads back to the inn to collect us and return our things. Once he reaches us, he hands out all our shit and informs us that he’s kind of recruited us for a job…

So we gather our shit and follow the stoneguard. Drip can now find a familiar, which he did before going to bed. He now has a bat… Which can see invisible duergar. As we march, Drip wargs into the bat and sees a handful more of invisible guards in addition to the ones that we can already see. He keeps this info to himself.

The guards are leading us Laduguers Furrow, a giant chasm, and escort us over it via bridge to a more affluent part of town. All the citizens on this side are derro. As we walk, we pass by a row of steeders. One of them kind of breaks off from the line and starts chatting with Drip. It’s the steeder from before! Drip chit chats with him but the stoneguard start grumbling and the steeder’s rider starts yelling at him. Hurriedly, he tosses a goblin to the steeder from his bag. The steeder messily devours the goblin corpse and marvels over the fact that Drip remembered their deal. Drip is such a bro! The steeder promises to have something for Drip the next time they see each other and runs off.

The duergar continue to lead us along past the chasm until we stand before the cave marked as Thumberchaud’s lair. The wizardly man walks out from within the cavern. Behind him the ground begins to shake as a giant dragon like creature approaches us with red scales like embers. He growls loudly “I didn’t know I was being given surfacers for dinner.” We all laugh uneasily… and well, sarcastically. The creature is massive… like dude is so fat by the time he turns all the way around it’s New Years.

“So these are the mercenaries you spoke of, “ says fatty. Apparently he wants to speak to us alone. Gartocor urges along and asks that we not offend the dragon as he tends to breathe fire first and ask questions later.

Thumberchaud is deceptively fast for a dragon as he turns around and returns to the big pile of gold in his lair. He climbs atop it, turns three times and reclines. He cautions us not to step over the line lest we want to be dinner. He’s a connoisseur of humanoid meat - apparently goblin is the tastiest. Drip tosses him his last goblin corpse.

So we get down to business. Thumberchaud basically recruits us to be his agents to spy on the Keepers of the Flame. He feels that they’re keeping secrets from him and wants us to complete tasks for them but to report back to him first. He feels kind of jilted - like they’re purposely keeping info from him so that he can’t rule the place even though he’s responsible for the city’s survival.

We depart from the lair. At the entrance, Gartocor is still waiting for us. He invites us back to their house for refreshments. There we partake in the local fare and Gartocor speaks to us - wondering why Thumberchaud wanted to speak with us. We shoot some shit and continue on with our business. He explains that what he’s about to tell us can not be shared with anyone, especially Thumberchaud. He leads us back to an altar belonging to Laduguer and asks us to swear not to tell anyone. We’re vaguely aware that this space is affected by a zone of truth.

After we swear, he tell us that a red dragon egg is missing and we must retrieve it. Faust, strangely astute, surmises aloud that they need the egg as insurance against Thumberchaud in case they need to replace him. Gartocor seems stunned at the perceptiveness and suspects that he can’t hide that from us. And we’re all “Uh yeah.. You’re in a zone of truth dude.”

He informs us that they do have a primary suspect - the Greyghosts who are working with derro, the Greyghosts are disgraced duergars who’ve become thieves. The point of contact we should seek out Droki - he describes him and it turns out he seems to be the same strange derro that Drip and Telchur were tracking before. He seems to be a courier for the greyghosts. Westcliffe district is where he’s spotted the most. That’s where we probably need to go next.

As we depart from Gartocor’s, Drip notices that those invisible stoneguard are still following us. Hm, interesting.

At the inn we’re finally able to get our long rest. Before we go to bed we discuss what we’re going to do tomorrow. Eldeth entreats some of the good surface beer from Drip’s jug. He agrees as long as she will help him with a task… It turns out he can turn into a steeder now and wants some help extracting steeder venom. Eldeth is creeped out but agrees… They wander off to Drip’s room upstairs. It’s… not successful. When she returns downstairs, she’s covered in spider venom. Curious, we go upstairs to see what happened and find spider Drip. In steeder form he gestures with his legs to the flasks. Enna and Faust shrug, and go for it. Faust is a little too clumsy and gets venom all over his hands but it just runs off like nothing. Enna is sucessful. As this happens, the door (which is blown off from Faust’s blast) is completely exposed so the door across the way opens and one of the Crimson Cohort dudes sees us. He stares at us stunned but then asks to watch. Faust asks for 10 gp. The dude pays. Hehehehe

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We go to bed, it’s great. The next day, we go downstairs to breakfast and see the Crimson Cohort. They invite us to dine with them. We discuss our personal affairs… they’re looking for thieves that have stolen some acid resistant ore that is needed to oust the Pudding King. We trade some information - that there’s a local thieves guild and they’re the likely suspects in this case. A sort of alliance is forged between our groups.. But they’re probably going to die since y’know, they’re all wearing red shirts.

Bash sidles up to the bartender to find out more information about Laduguer’s Furrow. The bartender is surprisingly knowledgeable about the rift and how it was formed. It’s super deep -250 feet deep and 500 feet wide. Massive. Somehow nudity is brought up in the conversation. Faust is perplexed at the aversion that the bartender and Eldeth has. Incredulously he asks “How do you make babies? Fully clothed?” The bartender looks at us in disgust. “You surface dwellers don’t use a fucksheet?”

What. the. Fuck.

After that bout of weirdness, we leave to do some adventurer stuff, which leads us to the bazaar to do some more trading. Drip takes our collective loot, finds the weird bdsm slave dude we saw the day before, and sells it. He divvies up the 1000 gold so we each get 148 gp and 85 sp.

The air is thick with smoke… Enna and Drip seem to succumb to a coughing fit. That doesn’t bode well.

After buying and selling in the market we make way for Westcliffe. As we approach the gate leading to the district, the duergar guards attempt to bar us from passage. We flash our badges and though they are displeased and reluctant to let us pass… they eventually do with a great deal of muttering.

There are a shit ton of stairs in this district. The district is aptly named. Its a giant fucking cliff and navigating it is fucking annoying. Enna and Drip continue coughing as they climb the stairs. Fed up, Drip casts Lesser Restoration on the two of them. As we walk we ask ourselves how we’re going to go about our investigation. We reach the next gate. Drip uses his Batman vision to check for our invisible stoneguard tail. They’ve been delayed at the first gate. This gives us a sense of urgency - we want to keep going to lose them.

The stench here is horrible and the place is haphazardly built. There’s trash everywhere. Crazy derro are reveling all through the streets. It’s like mental asylum in here. A giggling female derro approaches us, cradling something in her hands as though she’s trying to keep it hidden. As she walks up to us she opens her hands and shows us her own severed finger. Faust picks it out ouf her hand and boops her on the nose with it. She giggles and runs off, leaving her finger behind. Gross. About a quarter of the derro are mean mugging us. Bash, unabashed, approaches a random derro and asks if he knows anything about Droki. In a surprising turn of events, the derro turns out to be lucid enough and points out Droki right behind us. As we turn, he takes off running and we run after him in pursuit.

Little man is like the fucking Flash. We’re starting to lose him. Shit. Fortunately Drip’s bat familiar, Countess, is capable of keeping up in spite of several stalactites serving as obstacles. We’re all trying to keep pace, but its requiring some effort. Faust tries to Dimension Door in front of Droki but his aim is off and he finds himself in a house with two derro - one is holding another one upside down and shaking him. It’s… uh really weird. He jumps through the window and shimmies after Droki. Enna is not far behind as she parkours across the tops of buildings in pursuit.

Eldeth is towards the back of the pack and gets caught in a crowd, she starts clotheslining folks. Drip has been warging this entire time and has fallen behind. He snaps to attention once his bat is out of range for communication.

Enna and Faust witness Droki run toward a house, open the door and then slide down a ladder of sorts. We make a beeline for the house. Enna is the first to descend after Droki. He sees her behind him and suddenly grows super small and jumps through a small fissure in the cavern wall. To his surprise, she shadow steps right through it and cuts him off. With an eep, he turns around, shrinks and jump through the fissure, right into the arms of Faust who grabs him by the shoulder and starts draining him of his life energy. His shoulder starts to shrivel and his knees begin creaking almost immediately. “And this is me when I’m being nice,” Faust cheerfully informs him. “So don’t piss me off D:<”

Drip’s bat flutters around the doorway of the house where Droki made his getaway. The rest of the group eventually congregates there while Enna and Faust restrain Droki.

Meanwhile from the Dark Lake Hold, the drow prisoners are brought before the Captain. She says to them “I spoke with your Mistress Elvira and she says she is not interested in purchasing your freedom. So unless you have other arrangements we’lll have to find an alternate use for you. Of course, slavery is always an option.”

11/16/2019 The one where Faust accessorizes with a tiny man

So Telchur and Spice are still in prison. Ooops. The cell they’re imprisoned in is very much like a vault - just like the cellse everyone else was in before. They’re with Hemmeth as well. And some random Kua-Toa.

Some time passes, but after a while the door opens and the female duergar opens it. She remarks that the rest of the party left her jail a mess. She invites them to her office unless they’d prefer to stay in the cell. The Kua-Toa is not invited of course.

Telchur and Spice are led to the office. She complains that we made her look bad but she has a proposition for the pair. She asks them to spy on the rest of the party and report back to her on what we’re doing with the Keepers of the Flame. Telchur and Spice agree, she gives them two badges - the kind that belong to the Stoneguard. Their mission is very hush, she informs them that they are not to tell anyone else of their task, including her guards.

A guard escorts Telchur and Spice to the old duergar that keeps the belongings of all the prisoners. He informs Telchur and Spice that Bashir checked out all their gear. Disappointed, they return back to the inn only to discover that no one else from the party is there. But they’re able to pick up some information regarding our location, sending them into the direction of Westcliffe. Hemmeth informs Telchur and Spice that Westcliffe is a derro ghetto and he’s not eager to go there, but he knows how to get there.

Fortunately, Bash did leave Telchur and Spice’s gear back at the inn as he didn’t want to be encumbered with random shit. There are two duergar fixing the door that Faust busted up the night before. They talk and Telchur is baffled to discover that while at first he can’t understand the Undercommon, it suddenly seems to translate and he understands what they’re saying… what could be causing it, hmmmmm?

Telchur is the best.

GO AWAY ANDY

☹️

Meanwhile, Enna and Faust have restrained Droki. He hisses at them. Faust hisses back. Impatient, he grabs Droki by the neck and slams him against the cavern wall. “WHERE IS THE DRAGON EGG?!” he rasps in his best Bale Batman impression. Droki spits that the Greyghosts have it and we’ll never find the egg. Faust snarls that he’s going to take us there. He and Enna fashion a sort of leash harness on Droki.

Telchur, Hemmeth, and Spice make it toward the guard post that resides just before the Rift. Telchur flashes his Stoneguard badge to get through and flicks a gold piece at the guard to buy his silence but the guard just stares. “You dropped your gold piece.” Telchur decides that it’s beneath him to stoop to pick up a single gold piece and leaves it.

The three of them descend down the stairs The smoke is thick here… Spice starts to wheeze and cough, he’s not doing too well.

Telchur offers to walk close

“You’re not a walking air purifier, you’re just a freak that doesn’t to breathe air.”

Drip and Eldeth and the others joins us down in the cavern. Droki is restrained but he bristles as he watches Enna start to rifle through his man bag. He makes a lunge for her, drawing a hidden knife that seems to be marked with poison. Drip tries to grab him but Droki is slippery, even in his aged state. Faust manages to jerk the derro’s leash and drags him to him, stepping on him in the process. Droki retaliates by stabbing him in the ankle with the poisoned dagger. Fortunately, the poison doesn’t seem to affect him but the blade hurts. Enna flails Droki’s manbag at his head and knocks him out. She then finishes rifling through his stuff. There are a lot of dead animal parts but also… a very aged looking map!

Telchur, Hemmeth, and Spice reach the next guard check point leading to Westcliffe. They chit chat with the guards who try earnestly to discourage them from entering the premises. After some hemming and hawing they finally let the threesome through. Immediately, a one armed derro - well he has two arms, just he’s uh.. Armed himself with the severed one, rushes at Telchur, who promptly knocks him out.

Hemmeth wants to turn invisible and asks if Telchur and Spice can do the same. While they can’t turn invisible, Telchur offers to use his Pass Without Trace spell to help conceal everyone else.

We are in a long cavern of stalagmite and stalactites, water drips from the stalactites creating puddles on the floor. The air smells and tatstes slightly metallic and the sound is strangely muted. The dripping water makes no echo. Weird. We identify where we are on Droki’s map.

As the rest of the group tries to find us, they encounter all manner of insanity with the derro. They’re setting each other on fire, chewing their own fingers off… cleaving each other in half with axes. Telchur and Spice are understably disturbed. Hemmeth tells them not to dwell on it much, this is just how derro are. He identifies a building that seems unusual in that it is actually stable. And further down the lane there is Bash and Lamp, fighting off a bunch of derro. Telchur stealths his way over to Bash along with Hemmeth and Spice.

Consulting the map, we come to find that it seems pretty accurate based on our surroundings. The pool of water near us seems to block a passage and there is steam rising from its surface. Like a hot spring....

Spice offers to use his Create Food and Water spell to drop a crate of food on the derro to distract them so that they can enter the house Bash is guarding. He stealths his way closer and then drops some food from the sky. The derro pause, and go over to check the food. Once they approach and investigate, they start brawling with each other over it, leaving a clear path to Bash (who looks kind of sad).

Bash starts to tell the guys about all the self discovery he’s made, much to Telchurs disdain. Finally, Bash explains what is going on and that the rest of the party has entered this building. They climb down as we are looking at our map and we have a reunion and share all the secret missions we’re supposed to be engaged in separately.

Drip checks out the black water - it’s pleasantly warm although a bit murky. The water bubbles, as if heated by a hot spring. Drip suggests that our prison gang remnants hang out with Bash and barricade the entrance to the cavern up the ladder and hang out down here. Stool wants to come with the rest of us because he senses other myconids down here.

There are phasers everywhere, lighting the cavern and they take strange spiral patterns as they grow. It’s strange and ethereal to look upon.

The ground here is muddy and sloshy. We make our way downhill. There’s slime, moss and fungus all over the place. Enna looks around at the moss and notices some humanoid figures in the moss. Faust asks Stool if they’re his relatives but he doesn’t think so. Enna investigates, and finds some decomposing bodies. Squirming all around and in them are several green worms. Disgusted, Enna vomits on the body and as she does a bunch of the green worms shoot out of the body towards her. They immediately try to burrow into her skin.

Spice and Faust start lobbing attacks at the wormy figure while Enna struggles to bat the other worms away. Drip preps a thunderwave to launch at Enna and urges her to run towards his voice, once she does he unleashes the spell. A deafening crack resounds through the cavern and all of the worms blast off of her body. Enna looks stunned but thankful.

Drip’s movement provokes several other of these weird zombified worm creatures to expose themselves to us. There’s a lot of them.. It’s gonna be a doozy bro.

Spice moves towards the center of our battle field and lifts his holy symbol high and casts Turn Undead. All of the zombies save for 3 immediately disappear. Faust disintegrates one with two Eldritch Blasts. There’s one zombie behind Drip, he maneuvers behind it and casts another Thunderwave on it. Thanks to Spice’s holy symbol the creature is repelled and starts to run away.

Enna runs to meet it before it can escape and starts kicking it lol

Spice is attacking the third zombie, but then the other one attacks him as well so he’s effectively sandwiched. Telchur is quick to help and fires off a couple of arrows, taking out them both.

Enna contemplates on looting the bodies. She convinces Faust to do it since he can’t get dirty. He recovers about 2 gp worth of trinkets, which he drops in Enna’s hands. Grossed out, she drops it all. Drip promptly scoops it up.

Stool urges us forward to a rope bridge. He senses other myconids nearby and is eager to meet them. Drip wild shapes into a Steeder to transport us all one by one across the bridge since Steeder’s have mad hops. Faust is first to go. The bridge leads another chamber and inside are several dancing fungi. A few are about 5 feet tall, most are about Stool’s size. And there are two Quaggoth that aren’t moving but covered in fungus. One myconid stands apart as it is completely still. Faust uses the telepathic link to inform Stool that we may have found his family.

Stool sees the small myconid that’s not dancing and says he knows him “That’s Rumpadump!” He runs to the other mushroom creature, they exchange spores and start catching up. Rumpadump seems really concerned about the dancing adults. He greets us and asks if we’re Stool’s friend. Faust cheerfully replies that yes, we’re friends because we didn’t eat Stool.

He tells us that in Neverlight Grove there are 2 sovereigns in the grove now. Usually there is just one. The adults seem to like the new sovereign - because they now have “The Lady’s Gift” which allows them to travel through fungus to different areas.

Rumpadump also informs us that the adult myconids that are dancing are spraying different spores than normal and that the dancing is new - they never did it before the second sovereign arrives

Drip, still in Steeder form, approaches them and tries to get their attention. He allows them to spore him and he realizes that the spores that they’re letting off are strangely intoxicating… like a drug. THEY’RE CRACKHEADS.

They inform Drip that they’re in a special place with mushrooms that can’t be found anywhere else. They are capable of traveling through The Lady’s Dream and offer to give Drip the Lady’s gift. Another myconid explains why the mushrooms here are special - they’re called Bigwhigs and Pygmywarts. One makes you large and one makes you small. We harvest a few, and Drip eats a bigwhig and becomes an even bigger spider.

The adult myconids keep offering to give us the Lady’s Gift. Its tempting but we’re a little put off by potential side effects. Faust offers that we keep Rumpadump - it becomes clear that Stool does not want to join the rest of the myconids but we want to keep a friend with him and it seems like Rumpadump might be in danger. Through some cajoling, we convince the adults to leave Rumpadump with us.

The adults let us know that they need to leave and proceed to walk into nearby mushrooms and disappear.

We move towards another passageway and find a mushroom forest ahead of us. We all take some pygmywarts so we can walk through the forest. Faust climbs atop Drip’s back and they go up the ceiling to navigate. Hemmeth collects several prize mushrooms along the way, shooing away centipedes as he does so. We make our way through the tunnel and find another fork in the path. We go right, finding another fork and continue right.

There is a mesa overhead in this chamber. The ceiling is so high in here that it’s impossible to see where it ends. From up above we can hear strange whispering sounds. We move up the ramp and realize that the path is kind of a strange spiral shape. At the top we hear the sounds of clanging from Gracklestugh, the roar of Thumberchaud’s displeasure, etc. We all try to focus but only Telchur, Spice and Drip succeed. They each can a question about Gracklestugh and hear a conversation about the matter.

Drip hears a conversation abot Thumberchaud. The high priest is talking about replacing the Thumberchaud because he can no longer be controlled and time is of the essence.

Spice wonders about Thumberchaud’s weakness. Thumberchaud talks about not having any place to go and is too big to make it to the surface. All he has is the city and he wishes to have control over it.

Telchur asks about the agents of the Spider Queen. He hears two female voices talking about Elvira. They don’t think she will help them escape. They contemplate escaping before a voice yells out “BUT YOU WON’T”. It seems that Elvira is in a tenuous place with the Spider Queen and might lose her favor.

This mental trip is exhausting so we descend down the ramp and take a short rest at the bottom of the mesa. After we rest, we find that we all return to our normal size. Droki is awake and somehow manages to wiggle free from his bonds. He makes a run for it. Telchur, first to act, shoots him through the thigh, stopping him in his tracks. We all catch up with him. Faust hoists him up by the neck and threatens to age him if he doesn’t tell them where the Greyghosts are. Droki finally fesses up and shows us on the map where he needs to go to deliver a strange red and black metal thing that he’s had hiding in his pants. After he gives us the info he asks if we’ll release him, Faust nods to Enna and she knocks him out cold once again.

With the spot on the map marked, we decide to make our way towards it, taking the most direct route possible. As we head north, the cave seems to be pretty unremarkable. Faust has a manacled Droki. He force feeds Droki a Pygmywart.. So freakishly well in fact, that it’s disturbing. Returned to a doll size, Droki fits perfectly on Faust’s belt as an accessory. Cool.

As we maneuver through the cavern system, Rumpadump brushes against something hanging from the cavern ceiling and all of a sudden is ensnared and lifted towards the ceiling. Telchur hits it with two arrows, causing it to drop Rumpadump. Fortunately, Drip catches him. The other strange white lobster looking creature shoots filament at Faust. He retaliates with a Hellish Rebuke and just as he’s about to reach the creature’s mouth it is engulfed in flame, dropping him. He hits the ground hard. It hurts.

Drip shields little Rumpadump while Enna shadow steps above one of the cave lobsters, kicks it and then slow falls back down to the ground.

Spice tries his hand at a light crossbow and is having a hard time of it. Telchur’s not having much better luck. The lobsters scramble away but Telchur and Faust won’t let them go, their combined efforts kill them both. Hemmeth informs us that these creatures are Cave Fishers and they are highly useful - their blood is like alcohol, their filament can be used for rope, their carapaces are useful for shields, and their flesh is good for meat. Drip sticks one in the bag of holding to deconstruct later after we drain as much blood as we can.

We continue along on our journey. We come across a fissure that, according to the map, leads to the point on the map that Droki pointed out for us. It seems like the fastest way to get there, so we elect to pop some Pygmywarts to travel through the fissure. As we travel, Enna hears some conversation to the left. There are five derro conversing. They seem to be playing a game with some rocks and stones.

Enna uses the telepathic bond to inform us of what’s going on. Faust offers to close them in with a fire wall. Telchur whispers in our heads “Murder is not off the table.”

We macguyver a plan together - combining Faust’s Wall of Fire with Drip’s spike growth. It starts out well at first, several of these thugs get taken out by their combined power. One dude is pretty resilient though and he jumps through the flames to attack Hemmeth. Telchur, who is on the the other side of the passage has readied an attack which he launches at the brute. The dude takes more damage as he reaches the other side of the firewall where Faust slams him with two beams of Eldritch blasts.

Out of nowhere another derro with a staff appears and shoots a lightning bolt straight down the passage, fucking us all up. Our concentration spells drop, but not all is lost. We’re able to take out half of the remaining derro and Faust is able to erect another wall of fire to take care of the rest.

There are two derro left in the cavern barracks and they don’t seem to want to leave, even when Faust drops the fire wall. We then interrogate them for info about the dragon egg - they stubbornly try to lie but we see straight through them. Faust dangles his Droki key chain at them and demands the whereabouts of the egg or they’ll suffer the same fate. A little shaken, they eagerly show us where we need to go.

We’re lead to a large cave containing a massive obelisk made of the same reddish metal that we pocketed from Droki. There also is, of course, the egg.

Meanwhile…

There’s a room full of cultish drawings all over the floor and walls. In the middle is a bed. And on the bed is Elvira… She is laying in repose and appears to be pregnant. There are drow priestesses tending to her. Her boytoy tells her she can always go back she retorts “I know” as she gives birth to some four armed abomination that seems to grow as it exits her body. With a final push she gives birth to some giant blue demon with glowing eyes. She sighs in relief “I haven’t lost favor…” The demon replies “But this is your final chance.”

11/20/19 How to anger your dragon

Wheeeee.

After a steady upward climb, we’re lead to a huge illuminated cavern. There is a mesa in the center, with several shelf-like level that have several ramps connecting them as well as a bridge. At the top on one side is an egg, on the other side is an immense obelisk that looks pretty worn, as if parts of it have been chipped away. There is a female derro beside the obelisk, she’s stroking and whispering to the obelisk. It flashes once. The derro in the room squeal with glee, she grabs a small notebook to record something. With her is a derro man, he is also taking notes (in a much larger notebook). All the phosphorus in the room seems to have changed in response to the flash.

No one seems to detect us in the cavern so we take advantage of the situation to get the jump on everyone. Spice holds his holy symbol aloft to cast a spell, and as he does we all turn invisible. The dude with the book is lit up with divine light. He drops his book in surprise.

Faust follows up with a couple of eldritch blast pewpews. Drip summons Big Bertha at the site of the obelisk to terrify some beezies.

From around the corner a beholder lite creature similar to the one we’ve seen before - the one that was searching for demons. He tells us telepathically that he has been sent to guard this ritual and is glad to finally have something to kill. He fires some rays at Faust and Drip. Somehow Drip gets confused af from the ray that’s fired at him.

Big Bertha death glares at this large stinky creature that is accompanying the two bookworms. Lamp and Bash, not the most effective at long range, remain invisible. It seems like every time someone casts a spell, the obelisk casts another spell. The stinky monster runs from the sea hag ‘cause he’s afeared but he runs toward the crew and fires a death ray at Spice who is currently invulnerable.

Drip is confused!... He uses Magic Stone on Faust… It’s not very effective…

After the attack, Drip manages to snap out of his confusion. “Ah, that’s just what I needed” Faust rages behind him.

Bash, taking advantage of his invisible state, rushes up the mesa unnoticed and reaches the top. He wails on the spellcaster up there and knocks him the fuck out.

Lamp beats up on the Beholder Lite. He seems a little battered so he disengages and floats up to the cavern ceiling, but is not able to escape from Spice’s sacred flame. He disintegrates whilst yelling at us

With the nearest spellcaster dispatched by Bash, Faust aims for the Stinkyboi and hits him squarely twice. Undeterred, the Stinkyboi bum rushes Spice and tries to club him with his ankylosaur tail.

The derro, at the top of the mesa are pretty surprised and displeased at Bash’s sudden appearance so they gang up on him. The moment is short lived, as Drip summons a tidal wave to sweep them away. A few of them are knocked prone, and one succumbs completely to the might of the wave. Bash, spotting an opportunity, launches himself off th top of the mesa onto the dudes below. He pretty much crumples one dude and then starts wailing on him with his morning star.

Drip casts another spell and uh… all of a sudden he starts growing a second ahead. You might say he’s getting ahead in the world...

The stench from the Stinkyboi is so bad. It smells like a thousand corpses rotting at the bottom of a port a potty. Just being in its presence poisons both Lamp an Spice. In spite of the smell, they resume their attacks on Mr. Stinkboi.

The sea hag is doing her think by the obelisk, facing off with another derro. She casts a spell and the obelisks flashes again. The derro in front of her turns green.

Faust attacks the Stinkboi with two Eldrich Blasts, only hitting once unfortunately. The enraged Stinkboi fires a deathglare at Spice, who mostly resists it.

An archer from way the fuck out manages to land a lucky hit on Bash. Being the badass that he is, Bash shrugs it off, makes eye contact with the archer and makes a “You’re next, gesture”

A newly two headed Drip uses Toll the Dead on the Stinkboi and deals some necrotic damage to it. His second head is still developing so… it’s pretty gross.

Bash smashes the last dude on the mesa with him and then jumps off the mesa, onto his shield to surf down the sandy enbankment but he biffs it. At least he makes it the bottom, though not totally unscathed.

Big Bertha finally lands a hit on the derro savant she’s been facing off with, cackling gleefully all the while. Yeesh. Unsettling. In return, the savant tries to grab the hag with lightning but she sidesteps out of the way.

Faust is getting pretty fucking fed up with Mr. Stinkboi. The next two eldritch blasts he fires off prove to the be the stench monster’s undoing. It dies.

Drip tosses a magic stone to Lamp and then uses the other to brain one of the archers. Spice finally catches sight of Drip’s second head and panics. He casts Dispel Magic on Drip and it succeeds in poofing the head out of existence.

The derro savant tries to cast a spell but to her surprise, she levitates instead. As she’s levitating the sea hag swipes at her, breaking her concentration and grounding her again.

Drip keeps his distance but casts Toll the Dead on the savant. She’s kind of a tanky biatch.

Bashir climbs up an enbankment to attack some archers. In a beast move, he wipes them out and then makes a second attempt to shield surf down the sands. This time he succeeds

Big Bertha shoves the savant off of the top of the mesa and then jumps on top of her. A giant old, wet lady just jumped a chick. It’s uh… really unpleasant.

And that seems to cow her into submission. She surrenders on behalf of the derro that are left; the archers lower their weapons but they refuse to drop them.

The derro that the sea hag tackled approaches us placatingly and explains that they brought the egg here for experiments - it was her brother’s idea originally (unless it was a good idea then its hers). We inquire as to what the end game plan was in the first place.

Plinky, the derro savant explains that she believes Derinka, the patron derro god, hid the obelisk here. Spice recalls that there are mythical obelisks with mysterious origins, perhaps built by the Netherese. They are scattered across Faerun. The fractures in the obelisk are oozing with magic, it’s leaking quasi magic. Faust goes to touch it and finds the obelisk strangely warm but smooth to the touch where it is unbroken. Plinky provides the location of her brother who is also in this network of caves but has lost interest in the experiment.

Bash loots the bodies of course. He finds a single gold coin on Plinky - it’s a shilmair coin. It’s very rare and could be worth 100 gp to the right buyer. There’s a few crates of strange ore behind the obelisk. There’s a dwarven clan symbol on the crate. The ore ingots is a similar color to the obelisk, maybe they were trying to repair the obelisk? There are scattered notes and ritual circles drawn around the egg. There are spells, notebooks, and spell items and viscera everywhere. Faust collects the potential spell items. There are also some cool repeating crossbows, which some of us pocket.

We deliberate about what to do from here - we’re “spying” for three different factions at this point, what we should do about the obelisk, and what to do with the egg.

As we deliberate, Hemmeth hears someone approach and ushers the shroom kids away from the cave entrance. Our Lords Alliance companions from the inn rush in, but they’re down a person. It would seem that they encountered a mindflayer - which is why they’re down a man, she was turned to stone.

So apparently the mindflayer is pretty key into the history of the duergar and the derro. So some dwarves were digging for treasure and instead found mindflayers who enslaved them. The patron god for Duergar, Ladaguer, brokers a pact on their behalf with Asmodeus to free the duergar slave but when they return to the surface, the dwarves reject them, which creates a lot of beef. The derro were originally duergar but got the short end of the stick with all the torture and enslavement.

The Lords Alliance dudes tell us that the Mindflayer they were facing off against also possesses a retinue of duergar with glowing weapons. Plinky clarifies that these dudes are the Empty Saber bros. Hemmeth thought these guys were just legends but at this point he’s ready to believe everything.

It turns out the ore that we find near the obelisk is the acid resistant ore the LA dudes were looking for, so we take that too and load it up on the disk that Faust ritually summoned. For good measure, Spice does a mass healing.

And then we make our way out of the obelisk room through the cavern. We reach a set of double doors. The Alliance douches remember barring this door as they ran from the Mindflayer. We take a moment to berate the Lords Alliance guys - calling them the Worst. Faust drives it home, saying their names are synonymous with failure, cowardice, and running away. They urge us not to open the door, so Bash throws the doors open. Down the rocky corridor are two duergar.

They ask if the Red Shirts are with us… Apparently they stumbled across an operation of theirs and want to hunt them down. We try to negotiate with them - they didn’t see us and we didn’t see them. For our silence they mention that they can ensure that the fallen Red Shirt companion can find their way back to us. We agree and they point out a way out but tell us not to open any closed doors. Faust mentions mindflayer and the duergar hesitate and whisper to each other, but Faust assures that no one will hear of it of course. They usher us through - and as we move down the hall we encounter a pool. It’s dark, murky and steam rises from above it.

Big Bertha, still with us, checks ahead for us. Immediately two heads emerge and lunge at her. And then uh… six more. We make a tactical retreat. With precious cargo its not worth it to pick a fight. So we go back. The rest of our journey is blissfully uneventful.

When we reach the ladder to the shack, Faust decides that between him and Bash, it would be possible to carry the egg and teleport. Drip goes up the ladder first to scout ahead. The shack has been burned down as well as several of the buildings around it. Seems like the derro have been rioting. Once we all reach the top, Fausts ritually casts the floating disk again. We throw a cloak over the egg and keep it moving.

As we traverse through the city, it becomes clear that some crazy shit has gone down. A steeder approaches us from around the corner. Seems to be looking for his rider. Drip pulls out a scroll of charm animals and succeeds in charming the creature. The Steeder is hungry. Faust baby bird feeds one of the “get big” shrooms to Droki and feeds him to the Steeder. Of course, Droki picks this very moment to wake up. It’s not pretty. Oh well.

Drip changes into the fancy clothes he bought in the city, pins his Keeper of the Flame seal on the front and proudly rides his Steeder to the gate with the rest of us. The first gate out of the derro ghetto is guarded by Stone Guard that seem more on top of things than the last pair. Drip tries to bluff his way through, with a little Guidance from Faust. They kinda just shrug their shoulders and pass us through.

We make our way through while further discussing what we’re going to do. The Red Shirts want to come with us but we assure them that we’ll meet them at the inn and send them off on their way once we make it through all the gates.

As we’re discussing things amongst ourselves, a stone giant approaches Drip. He seems incredibly curious about us and informs us that he is of Clan Carngahn and that their leader Stonespeaker Hagrahm might want to speak with us.

We consider meeting with the stone giants but want to get rid of the egg first. Along the way, we spot a familiar Steeder - Drip’s buddy that he fed the goblins to. The Steeder is pretty happy to see him and excitedly chitters that he has something for Drip. He regurgitates a hand - one that has a very fancy ram’s head ring on it. Drip pockets it.

Finally, we make our way to the Keepers of the Flame. They seem to be waiting for us outside of their compound. We’re lead to a more casual meeting area than last time (probably ‘cause what’s his butt doesn’t want to be caught in his own Zone of Truth again). We relay information selectively to the Keepers. Apparently they were concerned about the derro savants getting the egg as the derro savants have a council of their own and are the leaders of the derro. Hm… maybe they were worried about an insurrection. We bluff that we didn’t see any savants. But the derro were performing experiments that involve licking the egg…?

We get our rewards from the Keepers:

Gauntlet of the Slave Master - allows the wearer to speak and understand Undercommon and Dwarvish

Ring of the Ram -

Wand of Secrets - detects secret doors

Steeder mounts

The Keepers insist that what we’ve discussed will not leave the room and then dismiss us. We reach our steeder mounts and as we do, Drip pulls out a copper wire and casts Message to contact Thumberchaud. He informs him about the Keeper’s plans to kill and replace him. It’s not long before we hear a woosh of wings and the red dragon lands before us, he’s livid. It would seem that he’s peeved that we didn’t report to him first. We’re kind of like “Welllllll… we did their bidding like you said and you’re the first person we’ve reported to since.” We point out the Keeper’s compound and let him know that he can find the egg there…

Meanwhile, within the Keepers’ compound…

They’re wondering why the derro were licking the egg and take an experimental lick. Lol

12/14/2019 Leaving Gracklestugh

So we don’t plan to stick around when Thumberchaud comes back. Instead, we decide to follow up with the stone giants. We find one in town. His name is Chud, he offers to take us to see the Stone Speaker. He leads us to a cavern with a long tunnel. It extends far and wide, much farther than the eye can see. It’s called “Caern Gorn Cavern”.

To the casual observer there are no duergar present. There are several stone giants lounging about, its pretty bare bones.

Chud leads us to the oldest giant, he’s sitting beside a fire, staring into it pensively. The stone walls are covered in carvings. Chud introduces us to the speaker and then dismisses himself. Drip consults the Countess to make sure we don’t have an invisible tail.

The Stone Speaker says that the stone giants don’t officially take sides in the politics but are supposed to be sworn to the king. We begin to discuss the two headed stone giant we fought earlier. He explains that there is an evil rising in the land - that he can feel it in the stones. He starts spouting prophecy:

The rock itself screams in horror, a cave with two faces rock devoured. And the land overgrown. The pebble believes itself flesh. Yadda yadda, etc. etc.

The stone giant that sprouted the second head complained of dreams before the incident occurred. No one seems to know the cause, just that it’s immensely evil. The Stonespeaker calls out for Dorhun; he has a gift for us.

Dorhun gives the Stonespeaker a polished crystal the length of a human forearm. He holds it up above the fire before handing it to Enna. It will help us locate the Library of Gravenhollow. The only instructions he give us is to look within our hearts…? Okay…. We ask him if he knows anything about the wyrmsmith… and if there was another one before him. He is very reluctant to share any information but Faust is able to charm some of that info out of him.

So apparently Darzant was the wyrmsmith before Thumberchaud. When she was about his age now, the Keepers killed her in her lair while she slept. Thumberchaud was a hatching at that point, kept secret.

After we depart from the stone giant cavern we see a procession of a chain gang of slaves being marched to the Furrow, where the mines are. It’s pretty depressing. In the distance we hear a dull dragon roar. We definitely don’t want to go in that direction.

It takes some deliberation but we decide to split the group to divide and conquer. Telchur and Spice plan to go to Darklake Hold to report back to the warden, Captain Blackskull. Drip and Bashir meanwhile, plans to join them but go off to interrogate the drow prisoners that were originally sent after us. Faust and Enna plan to go to the Dark Lake District market to find books in hopes of finding a lead on the Society of Brilliance.

Enna and Faust manage to make short work finding books. A gnome (?) with an orc guard man a stall. At the table are two books for sale. The gnome seems to be working with paper and quill. He speaks out to us in Undercomon but uh… fortunately we have Stool with us, who spores them. The merchant tells us about the books - one is dwarvish history book, the 16th volume. The other looks quite a bit like Faust’s book of messages. There are depictions of angelic figures fighting demons. In th center of the book a few pages appear to be missing. Faust grumbles about the missing pages and haggles down the price of both books. As they talk, he inquires if the merchant knows anything about the Society of Brilliance. The merchant explains that he did encounter a member - a Mindflayer that wanted a book from him. That is in fact how he got the Celestial book, the mindflayer traded it for a book containing wizard spells. Faust definitely wants the book now. He buys both of them for 450 gp.

Telchur and the others go off to speak with Captain Blackskull but she’s gone off to look for them. Since shes gone, they talk with her second in command who is about to take the drow prisoners we’re looking for out to the slave market. The second in command dude tells them that if they want to talk to them they’ll have to buy them. Drip has spent all of his money… but somehow Rumpadump has a bunch of money though he doesn’t want to spend his money on buying slaves. Drip manages to convince him to lend some money. There is a loud squelching sound as he pops it out of his body. There is a leather pouch full of 400 gold. Drip promises that he’ll pay him back.

As they prepare to leave with their newly purchased two drow slaves, Captain Blackskull returns. She’s a little surly after having gone out to look for them for nothing. She then proceeds to grill them about information regarding our group’s involvement with the Keepers. They tell her about the egg and its return to the Keepers. She says we did well; if Thumberchaud were to find out what was going on he would detroy the city. They laugh nervously. Fortunately, they’re able to keep their stories straight and lie through their teeth. Strangely, she seems really concerned about whether derro savants were involved in the theft of the egg. Interesting. They bluff their way through and are allowed to leave. Phew

Drip starts casually conversing with the drow slaves about their intentions. Are they still trying to kill us or are they… chiiiiiill?

The drow explain that Elvyra has left them to their fate and that they have no personal interest in us. Drip suggests that he doesn’t want to keep them against their will and they are welcome to travel with us and go on their way if they can tell us more about Elvyra. “So what’s the deal with Lolth…?”

Meanwhile, in the marketplace… Enna and Faust are chit chatting telepathically when they come across the Crimson Cohort surrounded by deep gnomes. They seem to be negotiating with some duergar. We approach and talk with them, it seems that their two missing members that have been petrified are still missing and have not been returned. We mention to them that they should reconvenene with us at the inn. As we’re talking suddenly, we hear a roar and a woosh, then a crashing sound as Thumberchaud desends upon the town. He spouts out some flame overhead to catch everyone’s attention an then addresses the town. He describe the Keeper’s treachery, how they planned to kill him and replace him. He has the egg clutched in his claws and proceeds to smash it. A two headed red dragon hatchling slides out. “LOOK AT THE ABOMINATION THEY PLANNED TO REPLACE ME WITH” he then proceeds to crush the hatchling.

Enna notices some very shiny stoneguard starting to materialize nearby. They gesture to one another with hand gestures as they try to get into position to apprehend the dragon. Thumberchaud talks about establishing a new order, and wanting the people to help him apprehend the members of the Keepers that have escaped. He then points us out as those that helped him. Uhhhhh.

Suddenly three large boulders have been catapulted and fly towards the dragon, Enna shouts in draconic to warn him and he easily dodges. The stoneguard shoot their crossbows at him in a coordinated effort but he counters with a flame attack.

Chaos ensues. Faust urges Wes Fatrabbit, the Worst, to load up the ore and then make an escape. The duergar with them argue that its not necessary, but they proceed to enlarge and prepare themselves to fight. Faust shrugs, and loads the ore up on his steeder.

At the prison, the alarms and chaos going on in the city catch the attention of our friends an the captain. She arches a brow at them. “I thought you said that the dragon had no idea of the egg?” It’s no matter, the chaos takes precedence. She dismisses them.

With drow slaves in tow, the three depart from the prison and with their steeders try to make it to the city gates. Drip asks Hemmeth if he knows of a passage to Blindenstone. He points out a gate and informs us that a dude Wortsaltbaren, a friend who owes him a favor, is manning that gate and can provide us a way through.

They then part ways with Hemmeth and make their way to the inn to meet with the rest of the party. Faust and Enna astride their steeder mounts, followed by the Crimson Cohort, make their way to the inn as well. There, we all share information about what we’ve discovered, what we’ve encountered and what we should do next. Sir Galvin of the Crimson Cohort refuses to leave while two of their partymembers are missing. Faust argues that they should just take the ore to Blindenstone as there is no way the ore is going to be smelted with the chaos going on here. The rest of the red shirts consult with the deep gnomes who agree with Faust. So Galvin will remain behind and the rest of the Crimson Cohort will travel with us.

We then leave the inn and head off toward the gate that Hemmeth pointed out to us with our rag tag team. Around us there are stalactites crashing to the ground as Thumberchaud knocks them loose.

Most of our journey is unhindered but toward the home stretch we see several Stoneguard materialize in front of us. They block our passage. A member of the Keepers appears on the roof of a nearby building and accuses us of being responsible for upsetting the dragon and killing his brothers. Enna shadow steps and gets up to him. She immediately starts punching him in the face. Spice, on the other hand, tries to tell the Stoneguard that they don’t need to fight us and should really try to go after Thumberchaud. He attempts a diplomacy! They ignore and charge us.

The attack is savage. Drip, Telchur, and Spice take some heavy hits. The Keeper dude focuses on Enna and tries to use his mind powers on her but she shakes him off. He curses in frustration.

Our drow “friends” cast darkness around the archers as a hindrance. Yay

As the stoneguard close in on us, Faust summons a wall of fire in front of them. Their armor glows with the heat; it seems to be protecting them from most of the fire damage but it still seems to hurt.

Telchur, on his steeder, jumps into the air. He leaps off of the steeder and levitates himself at 70 ft in the air.

A weird steampunk looking smith comes around the corner towards Faust. “You better turn yourselves in to the Stoneguard or you’ll have to deal with me”

Faust balks. “Who the fuck are you?!”

Drip summons a nereid and his bear totem.

A wicked axe wielding mofo climbs the building where Enna is fighting the Keeper. His axe slices into her. She retaliates by punching him back.

With the wall up and the stoneguard unable to see them, both Drip and Spice back away from the fight.

But it isn’t enough, the duergar walk through the flames to continue their attack. One of the drow goes down. The other fires her crossbow and makes a dash for it.

The Keeper makes another attempt to work some mind tricks on Enna, but she is still able to fight him off.

Faust darts further away from the oncoming stone guard as well as the steampunk blacksmith.
“SERIOUSLY, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” The smith snarks back “All you need to know is that the power of steam will change th world.”

Disgusted, Faust fires off two beams of eldritch blasts… the first hits him hard in the chest, the second hits his steam pack. Its explosion takes out him and part of the building behind him.

The nereid summons water from the well and wraps it around a stalactite. She flings it at a couple of stone guards, forcing them back through the wall of fire. They stumble through it and collapse, succumbing to their burns.

The stoneguard finally take notice of Telchur who has been firing from above. They respond in kind. He get hit hard but remains levitated.

Drip, feeling bold, rushes into the middle of the guard and casts Thunderwave into the fray. He knocks pretty much all of the Stoneguard save for a couple with a bunch of electricity through the wall of flames. There’s an immense explosion. It is awesome.

The axe dude cleaves into Enna like three times. She is looking riggity riggity wreeeeeked. She disengages, books it out of there and heads back towards Spice and Faust.

Eldeth rushes to Darrendell’s aid and shanks him, he goes down. Spice, seeing the state that Enna is in, grabs her arm and casts a healing spell on her.

The drow, seeing that the guard phalanx is now down, provide assist from a distance with their crossbow fire. One of them succeeds in taking out the last surviving member of the stone guard phalanx.

The Keeper dude is pretty pissed that Enna got away, he shifts his focus to Telchur and focuses his energy, which really just makes him look constipated. Telchur is also able to fight him off. Get the fuck outta my head. Faust, noticing that the archers are still up, sneaks around the building and fires off another couple of eldritch blasts, successfully taking out one archer.

Telchur, still levitating, is kind of in a difficult spot because he’s so darn visible. He lowers himself about 20 feet in an effort to get away. Meanwhile the nereid lands a drowning kiss on the stoneguard she’s facing off against. While she isn’t able to drown him, she does hit him with some acid damage.

The archers keep attacking Telchur. Most of them miss fortunately. Drip has the ingenious idea to send the Countess up above the the wall of flame and through her eyes and locates the Keeper. He casts Toll the Dead, but the constipated Keeper is able to brush it off with his superior mind powers.

Axe wielding douche bro jumps off the building to attack the nereid. “PUT ON SOME CLOTHES OR MEET YOUR MAKER” he shouts. But she manages to shake him.

Enna, healed by both Spice and Faust, shadow steps back to Mr. Mind Master. She comes in with fists flailing and succeeds in landing three hits on him. She finishes him off with a kick. Badass.

Spice moves out towards Faust and moves his spiritual weapon so its handy for his next attack. Faust comes around the corner, launches a couple of blasts at Axe Man, one misses but the other hits.

The nereid summons a bunch of water, encases her and axe man in a cube of water. The axeman decides he doesn’t need this shit and swims out of the cube to retreat.

The duergar archers noticing that their Mind Master leader is gone, they start going invisible and make a retreat as well.

Faust drops the wall and, a little bruised and battered, we make our way to the gate. But no before looting the bodes!

We find: a keepers of the flame amulet, a keepers robe, a dagger with a crystalline hilt, a beard comb, 12 fire resistant shields, chain mail, shortswords, spears, pikes, and 36 gp.

Spice, Bash and Lamp all arm themselves with a fire resistant shield. Drip puts the rest in his bag of holding. We proceed to the gate and hail Wort what’s his face. He acknowledges that he owes Hemmeth, our buddy, a favor and allows us to through. We ask how far from Blindenstone we are - it’s about a couple of 10 days. Especially with our deep gnome retinue. We pass on through to the other side.

As we travel, we take the time to talk to our drow companions. They do not trust us enough to offer their names. They plan to travel with us for a bit and acknowledge that we’re pretty boss for surfacers. They know a place in Valkenvol that can get us to the surface but we’re a long way from there. We ask them about Mistress Elvyra and the demons. They mention that Menzo Barrenzen - the city of Spiders - is a legendary Drow city and right now it’s chock full of demons right now.

The drow pair also informs us that Mistress Elvyra is obsessed with us and believes we are some sort of test sent by the spider queen for her.

We talk to the deep gnomes who are greatly unsettled by our relationship with the drow. Faust assures them that the drow are a neutralized threat at this point - they’re terrified of us for one thing. The library we are looking for is legendary and curated by stone giants. It can only be found by those who want to find it. The deep gnomes want assurance that if we help them we will make their plight a priority, which we agree to.

As we bed down for camp, Enna stays up to attune with the crystal. It has the following stats:

Speak with animal 2

Speak with dead 4

Speak with plants 3

10 total charges

Advantage on investigation checks

Faust settles down to finally write in his book of messages. As he does, he hears a voice behind him asking why he hasn’t written in his journal. He heaves a deep sigh and discusses with her the demon sightings they have encountered. Once that’s taken care of, he shows her the celestial book he found and points out the missing pages. She determines the missing pages were for a ritual to summon an angel. Curiouser and curiouser. Faust promises to keep his book updated and is tasked with reading the celestial book once he finishes with his messages.

The camera pans away into a cavern full of flies and various demons. Aboe on a ledge, Mistress Elvyra and her grown demon baby watch over a procession of demons as they enter our world through a portal. Crazy.

12/28/2019 “We’re Pretty Much An Army Now”

We spent the last 3-4 days in gracklestough. The air is now clean and we don’t have to worry about grackle-lung (dwarf aspesos). Other than us, our current party includes:

2 Dark elf slaves now freed
West Far Rabbit, the halfling from the Crimson Cohort
They have a puppy that he rides
Odalina, half elf from Crimson Cohort
2 Mycodids, Stool and Rumpadump
Steeders (spider mounts), one for everyone
Prince Derendel, Eldeth, Jimjar also are all still alive
16 gnomes we are escorting, lead by Burrow Warden Yager

We have 20 days of downtime. We all do our own projects:

Bashir trains Lamp and bonds with his sword Janet. Janet wants to spread the light and go back to the surface.
Drip fills up vials of acid and catalogues the local flora (i.e. mushrooms). Learns the name of the drows: Soliloquay and Continua. Fills up 7 gallons of wine.
Faust is learning to use the poison kit and undercommon. Talks a lot with the drow. Writes in his journal.
Enna glares at the drow. Enna attempts and then fails to trade her Steeder for one of the gnomes riding lizards.
Spice “is observant”

The deep gnomes hate the drow since they really messed up their city, Blingdenstone. Faust attempts to mend these bridges with the help of Drip’s wine and somewhat succeeds (went from antagonistic to neutral). Bashir takes point and allows Janet to fully shine her full 45 feet of light the whole way, which pisses off the whole group. Lamp feels an existential threat from the sword which is taking her role away.

Eventually we run into 10 Stoneguard with a bunch of orcs and goblins in chains. Faust jumps to the front of the group to speak for us an lets the dwarven group know we are fleeing Gracklestough, which is now under dragon attack and that we are under government business. We flash our dwarf badges to convince them. And convince them we do. They move to execute their prisoners to expediate their travel back to town when Faust stops them, saying “we can use them”. She buys them all for 100gp, and we now have in addition to our group:

2 orcs and 4 goblins

Faust says they aren’t slaves but they can” either fight for us or die”, which according to Drip is “slavery with extra steps”. They are emaciated and don’t really respond. Drip offers to pay them in mayonnaise. Faust heals them up to make them more combat worthy. Drip gives them Ripplebark with mayonnaise on it. Eldeth hates everything that just happened and makes it known.

Eldeth starts talking about Grontlegrim, a dwarven stronghold in the Underdark that was taken over by the Drow (they called it Quzolard), and then eventually the dwarves took it over again. She then complains about how duergar are said to be the better blacksmiths just because they have a dragon to help with their forging. She talks about how dwarves have dangerous elementals instead, and they are just as good. Alas, she doesn’t know where Grontlegrim is.

We eventually make our way to a shady ledge along the river that leads to a precipice (which falls to a raging river). As we go along said ledge we find a weird, dead monster. Spice figures out it is called Hook Horror and it looks like it has been clawed up and not consumed. Since Hook Horror sounds like Hooker Whore many jokes are made and Andy cracks a few jokes about Watt Avenue. Bashir tries to find tracks of the thing that killed it, and he find claw marks on the cliff. Just after he does so, we get ambushed by 2 giant gorilla things and 6 weird dog-like demon things along with 2 giant insects with human faces, one of which looks like Ryan Renolds and the other like Sean Connery. Roll initiative.

Bashir gets nicked a few times and Spice banishes one of the bugbear looking things. Faust launches a few eldritch blasts at the other haulking thing attacking bashir to great effect. Bashir pushes one of dog-like demons off the edge and murderizes the other one. Enna punches Ryan Renolds like hell, but it still stands (flies). Drip casts Moonbeam on the crowd of dog demons.

Reinforcements arrive in the form of a giant crab doing crab damage. It also does magic stuff that dispels telchur’s levitate. Then he attacks spice with crab claws, breaking his concentration on the banish. The banished creature immediately finishes off Lamp, knocking her unconscious. Ryan Renolds attacks Enna and hits her hard with necrotic damage. Spice has figured out at this point these enemies are all demonic in nature.

Spice heals everyone, bringing Lamp back from the land of the dead: “I saw my mother over there…”. He then casts sacred flame on the flying insect attacking Enna, but it lives. Faust eldritch blasts one of the gorilla demons to death. Drip casts Blight on the unbanished creature, causing much of its flesh to slough off. Telchur, now on the ground, shoots at the blighted owlbear like creature. Bashir shoves one dog-demon off the edge then slashes two more to death with his fantasy lightsaber.

Enna continues her campaign against Ryan Renolds Flying Insect. One of the demons knocks Spice off the edge of the cliff and takes massive damage, falling into the shallow but still wet riverbed. The two flying insect demons attack Enna but miss. Spicer comes to and casts Light, to find a horrific scene of a giant tentacle horror eating the creatures Bashir has pushed off the edge. And this tentacle monster is HUGE, taking up tens of feet.

Faust shots eldritch blast at the gorilla demon, finishing it off. The last demon dog runs up to Bashir, slightly scratching him, but runs into Drip’s Moonbeam, suiciding it. Drip move the Moonbeam to the flying insects, but they still survive somehow. Telchur shoots at the giant crab to little effect. Bashir finishes one fo the flying demons off and moves to the giant crab, but gets stabbed by the proboscis along the way, messing up Bashir. The demon crab shoves bashir off the ledge into the water far below, causing him to lose consciousness and start to drown.

Spice, now with a friend at the bottom of the cliff, wades through the water to Bashir and heals him alive again. Drip summons up some dryads and they do magic stuff to buff themselves. Telchur shoots an ensnaring strike at the flying bug demon, succeeding in making it stuck. Lamp makes a wimpy and ineffective attack at the crab demon. Bashir gets up, heals himself with his warrior spirit and starts climbing back up to finish the fight. Enna elbow drops the last dog demon and moves to attack the crab demon.

The crab demon does magic again, confusing Enna and Lamp. In the meantime, another demon spawns below near Spice, heading towards Bashir on the cliff. Faust slides down the rope, holds onto the rope with his tail and successfully ties a knot to another length of rope to the bottom of the cliff. Drip, still confused, hits the crab demon with his sabre. One of the dryads casts entangle. Telchur sinks two arrows into the crab demon while Bashir rapidly climbs up the rope to the top again. Lamp attacks one of the dryads in confusion with her sword. In her confusion, Enna attacks the crab, finally killing it.

A pale skinned lady with dark leathery wings comes from nowhere (its the flying thing Spice saw earlier) arrives at the ledge and immediately hacks off the crab demon’s arm. Spice starts ascending the rope as Faust attempts to lift the rope to hasten their ascent but fails to assist. Drip, still confused, casts toll the dead on the crab demon, finally finishing it off.

Bashir finally scales the cliff, discovers the Devil that finished off the crab is the only thing alive and slices it with Dawnbringer. Enna searches her religious knowledge and discovers that it is probably a fallen angel.

The Devil begins to speak with the accent of a Southern belle. Janet tells Bashir to not sign anything the Devil brings up. The fallen angel starts offering deals. She nestles up to Enna specifically to look for a deal. She says everyone but Faust is eligible for some Devil bargaining. Prince Derendel steps right up, looking for a deal. She also looks down on Faust as he’s not really a full devil. She also remarks on how the devils and the demons are at war for eternity. None of us touch on that subject.

I try to dissuade Prince Derendel from the deal, but he doesn’t listen. With Enna’s encouragement (“Well, you’re my best friend after all!”) He signs the deal and turns back into an elf, a very handsome elf. Enna is very happy to be best friends with a handsome elf. Spice tries to read the contract, and it entails 30+ years of Devil service among other things before she rolls up the entire scroll. The devil takes off after a successful deal. Drip, in spite, turns Derendel into a frog with polymorph and convinces him that he made a bad deal. We all laugh.

We take a break, and after a while Drip releases Derendel from his frog state. We delve into whether Prince Derrendel is wearing clothes or not for a while. The question is never resolved.

After 5 hours we make our way out of the dangerous ledge area. We arrive in a giant cavern/grotta full of mushrooms. We make camp. Enna makes yet another attempt to trade her Strider for a riding lizard. She uses the translation crystal thing to talk to it, trying to Talk With Animals. Seeing her ability to communicate with the lizard, the deep gnome agrees for a temporary trade.

We have a powwow around the fire and start sharing stories with the deep gnomes and adventurers. They ask about our story, and Bashir immediately starts his narrative ...when he was 6 years old. He rolls a 1 on performance and everyone eventually resentfully draws away and pretends he doesn’t exist.

We hear the story in Blingdensone: the deep gnomes had helped the surface against a dark elf invasion in years past, causing a loss; in revenge, the drow tracked down their town and sacked it. The city is now in ruins, with only ¼ of the city secured. The rest are controlled by ghosts and the Pudding King (a giant slime king). The rockblight quarter had some sort sort of Air Elemental bossing around earth elementals, but the Crimson adventurers helped out. Alas, their equipment died fighting the pudding king. We have a whole lot of acid resistant ore to mae armor; the deep gnomes might be able to forge it.

Prince Derendel is boasting all the time now that he is going back to the surface to recapture his kingdom. He claims to be 374 years old when asked. He’s been in the underdark for about 100 years. We all doubt his kingdom is still around, but none of us have the heart to tell him.

A full day goes by with nothing happening. Much rest happens.

At one point, Burrow Warden Yager approaches: “My nephew is missing.” Spice grabs one of his clothing articles and has the dog sniff it and tracks it to the location where he last went to pee. Bashir investigates the surrounding and finds a giant blood splotch and fallen dagger below a hole ceiling, which looks large enough for something to snatch him through. Super creepy.

Drip turns into a rocktapus and slides into the ceiling after the gnome, and Bashir and Spice quickly follow after muttering the slogan of the Order of the Gauntlet. They go hundreds of feet and find a cavern of bioluminescent mushrooms, some of which float in the room with what appear to be eyes on them. Lots of stalagmites/stalactites. It seems ominous so we go stealth.

Andy falls asleep.

We find a misshapen giant lumbering around. We don’t see the gnome, but the giant is looking down into a pit. He says “Faster, deeper, I need more gems!” in Undercommon. We attempt to sneak up on it and Drip sees a creepy mushroom, which then starts shrieking when poked. Bashir throws a knife through it then continues to attempt to stealth.

Drip, still in rocktapus form, rushes the giant and restrains it with his tentancles. Bashir sneaks in further for the backstab while Lamp shoots it from the distance with a drow crossbow. Spice summons his spiritual weapon and casts sacred flame at the giant. The enraged giant casts a curse on Drip the rockatapus, causing him to be massively hurt and misshapen. Enna gets in a few good hits after she shadowsteps onto to the giant’s back, punching into its face a few times. The giant gets a crit and smashes the hell out of Enna in revenge. A Grick (weird giant gecko thing) attacks Bashir, latching its tentacles into his body. In response, Bashir summons a ethereal whip and lashes back at the Grick. Spice casts Spirit Guardians, which end up fucking up the giant. Drip eventually breaks the giant’s neck, and it slams to the ground.

Enna, Bashir, and Lamp all concentrate on the surviving Grick. Drip joins in the fun as it tries to escape. Enna breaks its neck with a karate chop. As it dies, it throws up a gnome arm. The Grick looks like something that might be able to abduct and murderize a gnome through the hole we found earlier.

We assume the gnome is dead until we lean over the pit and find the gnome, still alive. Drip says “it puts the lotion on its skin…”. The gnome tells us how it was kidnapped and forced to mine gems.

Found some loot:

+50g worth of uncut gem

+Bone statuette (kuoatoa made) 25g

+Brass mug with jade inlay 250g

+Staff with a cobra on the top -> Drip

+Potion of Flying -> Bashir

The gnome wants Spice to restore his arm, but Spice tells him he isn't quite good enough of a cleric to do that. Drip hands him a hook hand, which he just happens to have due to his past as a pirate. We all head back to camp.

01/01/2020 New Year, More Murder aka Do You Want to Ride the Dragon

So we return the injured gnome to his daddy, who is grateful that we were able to find him in more or less one piece. Since we had a rough battle we decide to take another short rest before we hit the road.

The path onward is pretty perilous and steep. For those of us with steeders it’s relatively easy but those onfoot struggle a bit. We reach some cloudy water. The drow reach it first and are communicating to each other using some sort of sign language. As we approach they point up above toward another tunnel that connects to our current path. Bash uses his steeder to climb up to the tunnel and pulls out Dawnbre-- I mean Janet-- to light up the tunnel. It continues on pretty smoothly, like it’s been bored. Enna climbs up with her lizard and comes across a purple scale… Bash also notices it and fills us in. Eldeth, curious, takes a look at the scale and the scope of the tunnel and realizes it is a purple worm tunnel.

Telchur use his ability to levitate objects to sort of create an elevator for the rest of our ragtag party. The deep gnomes inform us that they should still be able to find our path back to Blindenstone. Enna suggests that we keep the purple worm scale to turn it into a shield for Drip. After a few more hours of travel, we come across an area where there’s a glint. The gnomes get all excited and wish to stop for a moment. All of a sudden picks and helmets are out. They’ve found an emerald vein. They ask for permission to check it out. We give them 30 minutes to dig to assess the size. It’s definitely a sizable chunk because they havent unearthed it in that time. They decide a future expedition is required to dig it out and we ask for a cut since we’re responsible for finding it.

We continue along our path and encounter another large cavern - like it’s super immense. There are luminescent mushrooms all over the place, dimly lighting the area. But its still pretty dark. Drip summons the Countess and has her flutter around to investigate as he wargs into her. It looks like there was the aftermath of some sort of battle. There are dead gnolls everywhere, drow cleaning their weapons, and some riding lizards. We deliberate on whether or not to kill them, but decide to attempt another diplomacy.

Drip, Faust, and Spice elect themselves as envoys to the group. Bashir ends up tagging along.. Wonderful. Enna also sneaks into a position to keep an eye on us.

Faust greets them in Common “Good whatever time of day it is!” The drow seem open to trading with us if not a bit suspicious. One with a fancy cloak introduces himself as Yazantar House of Ulatar. He inquires if we have any slaves as the gnolls they just fought had killed a bunch of their slaves - the four dead quaggoth we see on the ground. They inform us that if we have slaves to trade that they have something very valuable to us - a sphere that tells us the time of day upstairs. As they negotiate with us, they approach closer and closer until Bash tells them it’s close enough.

We have no slaves, but they finally relent that they will trade for gold. Bash exchanges 200 gp after a quick negotiation and Bash tries it out. After concentrating on it for a minute, he sees the sky. Yazantar has a really cool fuckin cloak. It seems to distort his features and cause it to blend in with his surroundings. Faust asks about it - it’s a bow something or other, made from spider silk and a gift from his matron. It is definitely not for sale. With our transaction complete, we continue on our two separate paths.

The deep gnomes have a little pow wow along the way once we reach a fork - they seem to be deliberating about the correct path to Blindenstone. Eldeth and Bash work together and discover what appears to be an old, dilapidated path. It seems like the most likely route to Blindenstone so we elect to take it after we take a long rest. Spice prepares a Remove Curse spell for Drip who is still pretty visibly deformed from the Phelorean curse.

Onward, ho.

During our journey, Drip hunts for spiders while Bash uses his weird Master’s gauntlet thing to whip random small animals. Fuckin’ weirdo.

The further we go, the hotter it seems to become. The path takes a downward slope and we find occasional stairs. Seems like we’re getting closer to the city.

As it gets hotter the thirst is real. We find a rare water source but the Burrow warden tries it and shakes his head in dismay. Fortunately, Drip is able to create water and makes about 10 gallons for the group to share.

The Burrow Warden asks our two drow companions about why they didn’t join the other drow we encountered. Apparently they’re from separate, feuding houses and don’t get along. This line of questioning gives us pause as we realize we don’t know much about the two drow in our party so we ask a little more about their families. They express concern about whether or not they will be allowed in Blindenstone as they are not looking forward to parting ways from us - there is safety in numbers after all.

The closer we get to the city, cavern is tinged with an orange glow. And it gets insanely hot. Our path opens to a bridge hanging over a river of magma flow. Little bursts of flame shoot up from the flow. The bridge has no hand rails and looks a little worn but seems pretty stable. It’s dwarven made!

The bridge is about 900 feet long and fifteen feet wide.

We’re naturally wary. Drip inspects the area cautiously. There’s a column on this end of the bridge and inscribed on it is “This Bridge is built by Ulfnor” it was built 4000 years ago. Bash is first to cross. The air itself is shimmering with heat. It’s absolutely sweltering. Some of us start suffering from heat exhaustion.

Bash starts to notice figures of fire starting to flank the bridge and consults with Janet who he holds aloft. She confirms what he’s seeing - and Bash warns the rest of us.

Fuck.

There is a faint humanoid form at the heart of each moving flame. Creepy.

Bash rushes to meet the elementals as they approach. They start swinging at him and one makes a solid hit. Bash lights up like a torch. Holy shit. Bash retaliates by trying to shield bash one of the fire people. Undeterred, Lamp follows after him and attacks the fire elemental as well.

Drip has a pretty bright idea and summons a water sphere to encase one of the spicybois. It succeeds in drawing in one of the elementals, effectively restraining it an creating a ton of steam in the process. Telchur seems a little baffled for a moment but fires off an arrow at the steamyboi. It strikes the elemental - surprisingly effective. After lobbing off a couple of arrows, he hears something bubbling up from his left. Hmmmm… ominous.

The drow and Eldeth fire crossbows to assist Bash who is locked in melee combat. The bard launches some insults at the spicyboi that is not encased in a ball of water, “You’re no bigger than a campfire” he sneers.

Enna, resident puncher, decides to punch some fire. It goes surprisingly well. Each hit feels like it’s striking. It’s weird.

Spice maneuvers his spiritual weapon in front of spicy boi and also casts sacred flame. Faust follows up by attacking spicyboi with two Eldritch blasts.

From the magma below, two massive stone-like golems rise up from the heat and punch the sides of the bridge, fracturing it slightly and rending apart one end. 3 goblins and an orc fall into the magma flow below. They scream in agony as they ignite.

The magmabois rise up from the flow and make their way onto the bridge.

Our combined efforts vanquish the steamyboi.

As our battle rages on, the cracks that the magmabois have created seem to spread out. Our non fighting members of the party scuttle across the bridge.

Enna bravely runs away toward the other end of the bridge lol

Spice puts out the flames on himself and then moves his spiritual weapon beside one of the magmabois. The bridge then splits, separating into different sections and splitting the party.

There are some casualties from the split - Eldeth narrowly escapes falling into the magma below but Jimjar is not so lucky and falls to his death. The gnomish delegation with the swiftness of a synchro team jumps across to the rest of the bridge with us. A section of the bridge falls, taking Drip with it. He’s now floating amidst the lava. Oof.

The other spicyboi breaks free from the restraint of the water sphere and leaps into the magma. Bash points a purple glowing finger at one the magmabois and commands it to flee. The elemental stares at him a moment and just goes “Nuh uh”

Drip, in a precarious position, wild shifts into a giant eagle and scoops up a struggling Eldeth before rising up into the air away from the lava.

Telchur, still levitating, ties a rope around himself and throws down the other end to Stool and communicates telepathically to him with the request that he hold onto the other end and lead him across the bridge as he levitates. Telchur has turned himself into a balloon. OF DEATH.

From Enna’s vantage point she notices shimmering in the air and sees another figure that seems to be communicating somehow with the flames. It seems smaller than the other elementals. She just shouts “GUYS, MORE FIRE!” Uhhh.. okay.

Spice casts banishment on one of the magmabois. It gets vacuum sucked into another dimension. Meanwhile, Faust hits the other magmaboi with some eldritch blasts. Said magmaboi dashes away down into the magma and heads further down the bridge to catch up with the retreating party. The other fire elemental bursts out from below onto the bridge and lunges for Lamp. She fends off the attack with her shield.

Telchur, the deadly balloon, rains arrows from above onto the magmaboi. It hits pretty hard and he glares up at Telchur, who promptly lets out a little more rope and levitates higher. Drip moves the water sphere toward the magmaboi and succeeds in encasing it in water.

Our myconids and precious cargo types dash through the battle, headed towards the other end of the bridge. Stool hilariously runs across the bridge with Telchurballoon in tow.

Enna witnesses two figures with snake-like arms conversing with two much larger humanoid creatures in glowing armor. For some reason she uh.. Runs closer to them.

Spice maintains his hold on the banishment spell and runs past the battle and heads further down the bridge. Faust runs past the fire elemental to keep up with the group and gets slammed by a fiery appendage, setting him aflame. He dispels the fire with prestidigitation as he runs. Bash, still flanked by the fire elemental, starts to be enveloped by the fire elemental. As it encases him, he slices into it with Janet and succeeds in slicing it in half - dispelling the creature entirely.

In eagle form and carrying Eldeth, Drip flies even further ahead and sees the figures Enna tried to warn us about. Hmm.. that doesn’t look good.

Telchur, still being pulled along by Stool, fires a few more arrows at the magmaboi as he’s pulled along. He succeeds in putting down the final magmaboi. Spice’s banishment spell succeeds in permanently banishing the other magmaboi.

Unhindered now, we’re able to outpace the crumbling of the bridge and travel across the rest of the bridge. Drip, Eldeth, and Enna witness what appear to be fire giants arguing with the weird snake arm dudes. At their end of the bridge, they seem to be wading into the magma and forging stuff…?

Enna just tries to walk past the giants and hope they don’t notice. Meanwhile, Drip and Eldeth fly through the archway marking the end of the bridge. Enna succeeds in slinking by undetected.

As we get closer, Bash hears one of the snake arm dudes claim that they make the best armor. And the fire giants argue that theirs are even better. The fire giants forge their weapons in the magma while snakearm bois are just sticking swords in their chests as they’re made of flame, and forge the weapons in their own flames.

We sneak past them since they’re so distracted with their dick wagging. With the bridge and magma river behind us, the heat dissipates as we pack in the distance. Once we’re far enough from danger, it’s unanimously decided that we take a short rest and everyone stops for a breather.

Ten days pass with minimal hindrances and fortunately we don’t have any additional casualties. The gnomes keep stopping to examine veins of precious gem stones but we’re kind of on a time crunch so they just mark down their locations. Our travels bring us to more familiar tunnels, which reassures the deep gnomes. Upon reaching the outskirts, they inform us that the Diggermattox will decide on our fates - whether we enter the city or not. We blindfold the drow as a sign of good faith to the gnomes, their ancestors did sack Blindenstone before after all, and allow the procession to lead us to the city.

The Burrow warden gestures to a cliff face “We’re here!” and he disappears through what appears to be solid rock. It proves to be an illusion and we’re all able to pass through it just fine. There is a well fortified wall and a gate leading to the city. The Burrow warden passes through ahead and vouches for the party, drow, orc and goblin included, to allow us passage into the city.

The walls are very well fortified and thanks to the illusory cliff face it seems unlikely that there would be any enemies breaching these walls at this point.

Fortunately, within the walls the city looks much more welcoming. Blindenstone consists of a cluster of different levels, akin to pueblos carved in cliff faces.

Wes Fatrabbit - The Worst, has a huge fanclub here. He’s well recognized by the children and people here and they adore him and his ridiculous pan pipes. Ugh.

Some guards approach us and nod to Jaeger, the Burrow Warden. They seem a little displeased by our more unsavory companions but over all trust us after the help that we’ve provided in procuring the ore so we’re in the clear. They offer us baths at their bath house as they don’t mind nudity like the duergar and drow. The baths are gross since everyone’s pretty fuckin naked. Apparently Telchur is smooth as a baby’s bottom but has the hairiest nipples. Eye bleach. Need

After cleaning up, we’re lead to the “palace” but it’s basically a large warehouse looking building. The walls here are better adorned than the likes of Gracklestugh.

There’s a lot of hustle and bustle within. Serfneblins are everywhere, poring over maps, and having some serious discussions it would seem.

They usher us inside and ask for us to sit with them and actually seem excited to speak with us. We talk shop for a bit about the ore and their plans to smelt. As we talk we realize that an old ghost is among us.. His name is Gorbo and he’s well versed in the history of the city but he takes great umbrage to the presence of drow, orcs and goblins and walks through a wall away from the conversation. The serfneblins permit us to remove the blindfolds from the drow and what not. We converse further about the Pudding King and wererat problem that the city is experiencing.

The serfneblins also assure us that the orcs will not be alone as there is an Orog is named Blurgg and he’s trying to recruit Yantha Coatsrock to the Society of Brilliance, he hasn’t caused any trouble so as long as the orcs follow suit they’re alright.

01/25/20 You snooze, you get oozed.

Faust meets with the gnome smiths to discuss the forging process for the acid resistant armor. The smiths inform us that there used to be an ironworks production but that area of the city is overwhelmed by wererats. Spice suggests that he could cure the wererats that we find so that we don’t commit any errant murder.

We’re informed that we can find the Orog, Blurrg, in the Foaming Mug, the local tavern. He’s trying to recruit Yantha, who is a mage for the Stoneheart Enclave - they specialize in earth elementals.

At the center of the city is the Trader’s Grotto. There are several layers of dwellings carved in the cavern walls with the topmost level appearing to be residences. At the bottom lies a marketplace. Though not heavily populated, there is a requisition area for mining tools and dry goods. Perhaps in the past this was a thriving marketplace.

Drip heads to the Trader’s Grotto to sell some loots. We each get 45 gp from the sale.

Spice elects to get his mace silvered.

Spice and Bashir work together to spread the gospel of the evil surface clouds. Enna heads to the Foaming Mug to catch some z’s. It looks like the Blurrg is hanging out at the tavern. The barmaid asks Enna what she needs in undercommon but Enna is shit out of luck. She mimes her desire to find a bed and the serfneblin nods her head and points down the hall. Enna heads over to the bed and passes out.

Telchur seeks out some magic arrows. The local weapons dealer has one magical arrow for a longbow. After inquiring what Telchur plans to use it for, he hands the arrow to Telchur for free if he uses it to kill wererats. Drip casts detect magic on the sucka. It’s an arrow of elf slaying

Faust heads to the tavern to meet with Blurrg. The orog is sitting with a gnome poring over several books whilst they drink. There are rumors swirling about the dangers of the surface, courtesy of Spice and Bash. Blurrg goes all “Akkkshuaallly” and launches into an explanation that while the surface has weather, he has never seen a cloud kill anyone before. Faust comes up behind him and chimes in that he has. Noting the books on the table, Faust whips out his book of messages just for the sake of comparison. Blurrg states that the book he has on the table, one that looks pretty evil and archaic, is for trade once he finishes reading it and asks Faust if he would like to trade. There are bits in Infernal - Faust takes a peek and it seems to refer to the Blood Wars. Blurrg introduces Faust to Yantha and they discuss the Society of Brilliance, and how each member is working together in spite of their differences for the betterment of the Underdark. Blurrg tells us that he’s been in touch with Skriss who is currently in the Labyrinth seeking out maze engines.

Spice has joined us and shows us a page in Blurrg’s book that refers to Jubilex, the faceless one, a demon of the oozes and puddings. Blurrg believes that all this demonic activity could be an effort to open a door to the Abyss. Yantha chimes in that puddings, oozes, gelatinous cubes - all of them are headed towards the city as if summoned by a beacon. We trade information about demonic activity.

Unbeknownst to us, a black ooze creeps above us and seems to be spying on us before heading down the hall towards Enna’s quarters. It drops down from the ceiling and lands on Enna’s stomach. She cries out in pain as it starts to melt into her flesh and the bed beneath her. It starts head butting her somewhow. It’s pretty crazy.

Her screams draw the attention of the rest of the party. Faust takes off like a shot with Drip and Spice close behind. Enna jumps up from the bed and tries to kick the ooze. She hits it with her foot and manages to hurt it but the acid burns her foot. She dashes out of the room towards the rest of us running to our rescue.

Bash hangs back to “make sure there aren’t any others in the tavern.” Faust runs up to the room and starts launching off Eldritch Blasts. He hits the ooze hard, before warning the rest of the party about the presence of a Black Pudding. Drip, not aware of what a Black Pudding is and unintimidated by the name, runs up to the doorway to see what the fuss is about. The Black Pudding looks… gross. Drip casts Tidal Wave and flushes the room. The ooze seems to disappear into a crevice and we lose line of sight.

The rest of the tavern is a little freaked about our impromptu battle. There is no sign of the ooze. Enna’s clothes are mostly burned off at this point. For the sake of modesty, Faust hands her his cloak. Blurrg tells us about the gelatinous cube that made its way to the market yesterday. The pudding problem is getting pretty serious. Enna gets annoyed about not being warned; Faust quips “Well, Enna you were asleep. You snooze, you get oozed.” Blurrg quickly writes this down in his notebook.

Bash tries to conscript Yantha and Blurrg into the Order but its pretty awkward - Yantha says she needs to take a bath and they’re both just super busy.

They ask if we’re going to help with the Pudding King. We confirm that that is our purpose here but we’ll need to eradicate the wererat menace first. We ask for more information regarding the wererats - apparently those afflicted generally look rat like and if they are in their original form would look dessicated, with thinning hair. The wererats tend to run around the town in all groups. With that information tucked away, we go to bed.

Faust spends the night reading the celestial book he found - taking note of the four missing pages that are used to summon a celestial. He finds an image of what looks like his patron Aurela. He also writes into his Book of Messages to ask about the Blood Wars. Aurela fills him in about the battle between the Devils and Demons who are fighting for turf in the nine hells.

Everyone else has some unpleasant dreams - they see Shushar eating at the table with us, his guts spilling out, but no one addresses it.

The next morning we consult our little time keeping orb and Spice produces food and water with each box decorated with propaganda revolving around evil clouds, the nemesis of the Order of the Gauntlet.

Stool greets us att the dining hall and tells us that Anferni and Soliloquy have captured a wererat and are “having a mean” conversation with it. There’s a shack nearby where we hear the sound of otherworldly shrieks. Enna strides straight up to one of the drow as she pulls a hot poker out of a fire and slugs her in the face. The other draw drops to her knees in fealty. Spice casts Remove Curse on the wererat and he reverts back to his gnomish form. He then removes all of the needles and shit that the drow gals were torturing him with.

He stats gibbering in Undercommon but none of us understand. Bash summons his slaver whip and hits the gnome to shut him up. Thanks to its weird mystical powers he is capable of understanding Undercommon. Soliloquy looks at Anferni and realizes that she is dead. Spice uses Revifify to bring her back while Faust demands Enna pay them 300 gp for the diamond that we had to use for her resurrection.

The information that the drow are able to glean from their torture session is that Chipgrin is the leader of the wererats and there are about 40 of them. Our captive’s name is Thimblesqueak - we shorten it to Thimble. He refuses to betray any information on his clan so we decide to get him shitfaced drunk. Turns out he’s kind of a sad drunk and he starts ugly crying all over the tavern. Faust consoles him and is able to coax more information from him. Apparently Thimble’s brother Goldwhiskers was taken by the oozes and killed. Thimble offers to take us to see Chipgrin.

Bash goes off to talk to Dorgo Diggermattock who wants us to eradicate the wererats or drive them from the city, but confesses that his wife wishes to cure them and have them return to society. With the message delivered, Bash returns to the rest of the party and Thimble leads us to the rat colony.

A guard is posted at the border between the two territories; he cautions us from going forward.

Drip is about to say “Danger is--”

Faust finishes “Danger is my middle name.”

Drip then goes on to suggest that all of us have the same middle name.

The guard asks us to be careful as the wererats have been known to kidnap children.

Faust has a lightbulb moment. “We should pose as children!” The group lets that percolate for a minute.

After assuring the guard that we’d like to go through to the other side, he opens the gate and ushers us over to the other side. It’s super dilapidated and unrestored.

Drip casts Protection from Poison on himself and Faust to help sober up.

The gate shuts loudly behind us. We’re in a dark dusty chamber. There’s a foul stench in the air. A stone statue lays topped and broken amidst a plethora of other wreckage. It feels like an old tomb. Every step seems to echo in the cave

Thimble seems a little on edge. We ask him if he’s okay but he says that things feel different, not like they should. As we traverse through the area, it looks like a residential area. In the center of the area lies a pile of refuse. Oozy looking bodies lay amid the gunk. Bash pulls out Janet and holds her aloft. Thimble mourns for his friend Flecktooth, whose body we have just found.

Thimble leads us to an area where there’s a big smelter. It looks to be in disrepair. There are the remnants of a bellows nearby. Telchur, Drip, and Enna notice some humanoid shapes concealed nearby. We appear to be surrounded. Bash casts Comprehend Languages on himself and tells everyone that we’re looking for Chipgrin and we mean no harm.

Chipgrin reveals himself standing atop the plaza holding a torch. Bash suggests that we offer “purification” and that we need to use their forge. Faust suggests to Bash that we try to broker some peace between but Bash refuses on the basis that lycanthropy is evil.

He continues his parlay with Chipgrin. He suggests that if they allow themselves to be purified, they can unite with the rest of the serfneblin against the Pudding King. The rest of the rats chitter in assent but Chipgrin rallies them back to his side. They go back and forth for a while but Chipgrin’s final word is that he needs to hear from Dorbo Diggermattock himself that the wererats will be accepted if they agree to be cured.

Bash tells them to meet us at the gate in three hours and instructs us to meet with Senni Diggermattock, Dorbo’s wife, and work on her first. She is an easy sell and agrees to work with us on convincing her husband to at least meet with Chipgrin. It’s a tough sell, but Faust and Dorbo’s wife are able to convince him to head to the gate and speak with Chipgrin.

When they meet, they speak only in gnomish. Drip squeezes Stool to force him to spore all over the place. Chipgrin expresses an interest in at least a temporary alliance with the gnomes, but Dorbo is annoyed with the wererat’s thievery. They seem to be bickering so Bash jumps in and suggests that they’re both correct and that if the wererats are “purified” they will be on the same side.

Bash asks Chipgrin to volunteer to be cured. Spice casts remove curse on Chipgrin and he’s revealed to be a rather handsome gnome. Spice cures a couple more and then he’s sent to rest.

We get to work rebuilding the forge while Spice cures the werefolk. Faust lounges near the forges, and casually casts his wall of fire while he reads his book.

The gnomes are able to make Spice and Bash half plate armor that is twice as heavy but sturdy enough to hold up against the acid.

The rest of the city has been cleaned up some and all of the werefolk have been cured though about half of them are really struggling with adjusting to being normal gnomes now.

At the east side of the city, that’s been closed off from the pudding, lies another set of double doors. We all assemble near these doors; they’re pretty bent up and look battered. On the other side is what was the king’s quarters. There’s a pulley set up to lift the less damaged door.

Blurrg approaches Faust and asks about the book he offered. Faust shows him the book that he obtained in Gracklestugh. Blurrg confirms that his associate, Grazzleaxe the mindflayer, is interested in celestials but he doesn’t know much about the ritual. But Grazzleaxe and Skriss are both in the labyrinth seeking out the maze engine and he might be able to lead us there. He also takes note of Enna’s stone speaker and asks to hold onto it to keep it safe from the puddings. Faust explains that when it comes to valuables, Enna is a bit of a greedy gut and there’s no chance that she’ll be willing to part with it. Blurrg offers us passage to the surface if we give him the stone speaker but permits us to make a decision after our battle. He also offers to lead us to the labyrinth so that’s an option too.

The pulley finally lifts the door and we’re able to travel through the doorway into the king’s quarters. It is devoid of any dust. Puddings are great housekeepers. There are skeltons strewn about. The floor is not level but its mostly intact.

We hear a strange moan coming fro around the bend. It sounds like someone is injured. We see 3 badly injured gnome warriors. They’re all in varied states of meltedness.

They wail that they were left behind and have waited for so long to be rescued. Bash looks closer and realizes that thin strings are attached from the back that head toward the ceiling. Bash follows the trail up just in time to see a pseudopod crash down towards him and thrashes him upon landing.

A tentacle reaches out for Spice in an attempt to integrate him into the hive mind. Spice manages to fight it off. Bash pulls on the pseudopod and with some strain succeeds in hauling a giant black pudding down from its position atop a column.

Lamp follows the ambush by swinging her new battle pickaxe at the pudding. The pudding tries to push its way into Bash’s mind but his special ring interrupts the connection.

While Spice, Lamp, and Bash are engaged in battle with the first pudding, a shit ton of others descend from the ceiling and join the onslaught.

Enna uses her recently forged acid resistant staff to whack the shit out of the nearest oozey boi.

Telchur covers her from behind and fires off a couple of arrows. Their combined effort takes out the ooze and it explodes.

The dryads that Drip summons attack another ooze while Drip puts some distance between himself and the oozes as he casts Toll the Dead. He also summons his bear totem. It’s pretty awesome.

Faust fires off a couple of eldritch blasts and sidesteps, but as he does the floor starts to crumble beneath him. He deftly backs away from the crumbling stone. It would appear that the floor is not as stable as it seems…

Spice heals Bash before backing away to maintain distance away from the oozes. Bash and Lamp are wailing on their black pudding opponent but its able to find a backdoor into Lamp’s mind and gains access to her memories. Apparently this is a painful process as she drops everything and cradles her head with an ear piercing scream before collapsing onto the ground totally silent. Distracted by Lamp’s cries, Bash takes a pseudopod to the head.

Suddenly visible, a gelatinous cube sidles up to Enna. In a panic she disengages and darts away toward a less intimidating ooze and attacks it.

Telchur moves his hunters mark to the gelatinous cube and strikes it with a couple of arrows. Meanwhile, Drip’s dryads nom on some goodberries and everyone within the space of his bear totem heals up a bit.

Faust summons a flaming sphere and places it between the cube and his buddies and then heals Lamp with another minor healing.

Spice tries to hit the cube with sacred flame and then follows up with a spirital weapon strike. Way to double team.

Bash and Lamp both take their second wind and continue wailing on the pudding. As they attack, the ooze conjures an acid doppelganger of Lamp’s mom as it utilizes its knowledge of her memory. Lamp is totally caught up in the simulacrum’s act and attacks Bash with reckless abandon as the ooze slinks away. Bash slashes as it moves away and succeeds in hitting it.

An ooze takes out one of Drip’s dryads and several pseudopods are thrown about at the party. The cube flees from the flaming sphere and tries to engulf Spice. He manages to dive out of the way and winds back to back with Enna, who is striking oozes with her staff. Her strike causes it to explode. She darts away and as she does, an area of floor collapses beneath her but she easily jumps over it.

Telchur keeps launching arrows at the gelatinous cube. It leaves a bunch of holes in the gelatinous cube.

Drip casts a tidal wave and it rushes past two of the oozes but they’re still on the field. Faust rams the gelatinous cube with the flaming sphere and then strikes it with two Eldritch Blasts. It explodes in front of Spice. A little stunned, Spice takes a breather on the field as he narrowly avoided being engulfed a moment ago.

Lamp manages to shake off the mind control and faces off with the slime impersonating her mom.

Enna somehow is within range of ooze mind control but she manages to break free from the psychic hold.

Pseudopods attempt to wail on Bash but he’s able to fend off the attacks. Drip’s other dryad is still at it but she takes on a few more hits and deals a few to the pudding as well. Enna lands the final blow to the pudding and yet another ooze explodes in front of Enna.

Impersonator ooze is still up. Drip’s dryad just double fists berries and eats them all.

Faust slams the flaming sphere into the last red pudding. The entire pudding goes up in flames and all of the simulacrums wail as they’re eaten by flames and attempt to flee while they melt.

The battle rages on all around us. A voice calls out from behind some heavily reinforced, illuminated door. “I told you the last time you came here to wait until I’m ready” He tells us we’re never going through the door. Bash takes the challenge to heart and runs straight over to it with his thieves tools.

What greets us on the other side is a sickly gnome, flanked by two puddings adorned with crowns. There’s a dimensional doorway at the side of the room where several oozes appear to be entering the room. The doorway itself is encased by another ooze with about 37 eyes. Is that Jubilex…?

The Pudding King sics his two Pudding princes on us. They leap forward. Slowly.

02/08/2020 It’s jell-o time, y’see?

Bill Cosby, King of Pudding, chastises us for bursting through his door. There’s a long banquet table dressed with various puddings and custards. The Pudding King is accompanied by a male and female figure comprised of ooze. Each of them wear a crown.

Apparently the Pudding King has planned some sort of elaborate party - one that we weren’t invited to - and is awaiting several guests. The first of which, the Earl Viscount is the first to arrive. The Pudding King plans to get rid of us. He points his finger at Bashir and casts Ray of Disintegration. Bash bats it away like nothing.

Frustrated, the Pudding King summons a foul smelling cloud of poison that engulfs us all. Enna, coughing, quickly darts out of it.

Duke Mucous is next to be regurgitated from the doorway.

Drip isn’t as lucky and takes a big breath of poison. He sputters but recovers enough to cast a Wall of Fire emanating from the doorway out into the banquet hall. Lamp is recovering from some PTSD issues and takes a big lungful of poison before darting out of the cloud.

Enna is annoyed because Lamp moves towards her with her lamp… “Stop it, you’re encroaching on my darkness!”

Faust also can’t help but breathe in some of the foul poisoned air. Coughing, he darts out and is annoyed by Drip stealing his thunder. Not to be outdone, he also casts Wall of Fire to create a hallway of flames on either side of the ornate ooze doorway.

Bash dashes up towards Prince Liven, the grey ooze humanoid thing, and starts pushing him through the wall of fire.

Some black puddings start taking shots at Faust while some acid corrodes the floor underneath Drip. The Pudding King launches a spray of ooze at Faust, but only succeeds in disintegrating his cover, leavhing him and Telchur exposed. Upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that

Gelatinous cubes encroach on the group. Drip heals Lamp, giving her a chance to go and wail on a gelatinous cube. Drip holds back his Toll the Dead spell until after she hits it.

Faust darts out of the line of fire of the ooze princess after using Hellish Rebuke on her as retribution for spitting acid at him. He follows it up with an Eldritch Blast, causing her to blow up. He then fires off another Eldritch Blast at Prince Levin, hitting him hard.

Bash attempts to grapple Prince Levin but just pushes right through him. Gross. Annoyed, he starts pummeling him with Janet.

Lamp is not faring well, she gets engulfed by the Cube she’s facing off with. Prince Levin, a little alarmed by the change of tide in battle, disengages and climbs up on top of the pillar to get out of Bash’s reach.

The pudding king is gunning for Faust. He shoots another disintegrating bolt at Faust who successfully dodges out of the way but a ten foot wide hole is left in front of him.

Perturbed by the fire, the moss of a thousand eyes starts to peel itself off of the doorway. As it moves the dimensional door blips and we see a hallway behind it. The moss finally pulls free of the doorway, fully disrupting the entire portal. It takes the form of a centipede consisting entirely of eyes. Its creepy.

Earl Visken follows after the Pudding King, on the hunt for Faust.

Telchur fires off a couple of arrows at the Gelatinous Cube. They embed inside the cube.

The gelatinous cubes continue to move toward us. Telchur tries to move out of its path and as he does he hears a whirring sound. Sensing something amiss, he leaps out of the way.

Earl Visken plays a game of peek-a-boo with Faust and comes around his cover, shooting two rays of acid. Faust goes down like a rock. His wall of Fire drops.

The Pudding King, sighting Telchur being backed into a corner by a cube. He somehow manages to teleport from one cube to another. He teleports to the one cornering Telchur

Drip, sensing the imminent danger that Faust is in summons a healing spirit right over him. Faust rises to his feet, casts Darkness on his wand of the war mage, darts away and heals himself. He’s pretty bedraggled looking from the acid.

Telchur manages to fire an arrow that ensnares the Gelatinous Cube and in turn the Pudding King.

Bash and Janet start wailing on the centipede of eyes. Janet seems thrilled. She confirms that the centipede is a demon.

Meanwhile, across the battlefield, Enna gets engulfed by a gelatinous cube. It tries to eat her. She manages to shadow step out of its path and books it for the Healing Spirit.

The centipede starts attacking Bashir. All three of his attacks miss as Bash dodges deftly. But then the centipede emits this horrid humming sound, drowning Bash in the sound. Bash succumbs to the madness it creates.

Drip casts Toll the Dead on the cube that Enna just escaped from. It disintegrates into a puddle of slime.

Faust, meanwhile, engulfed in Darkness, fires off his Eldritch Blasts. One explodes the cube containing the Cube. The second one strikes the Pudding King, which startles him.

With immediate danger abated, Lamp follows after her master into more imminent danger. Drip is not far behind.

Enna’s reprieve from damage is cut short. The last cube left tries to engulf her, which she evades. But in her distraction, she’s not able to dodge the pseudopod that it issues forth. It hits her hard as does Earl Visken who comes from around a pillar. She goes down, but fortunately is within reach of the Healing Spirit which quickly revives her. She retaliates against the cube with a few punches and then shadow steps the fuck out of there.

The pudding king, fearing for his life, runs behind the cage that Telchur narrowly escaped from, and hides. What a pussy!

The centipeyed seems not too interested in Bash at this point and makes a dash for Drip. Not fazed, Drip heals Bash.

Faust is not having this hiding bullshit and shoots the cage with his eldritch blast. It creates a big enough hole through it to enable him to see the Pudding King better. His second Eldritch Blast hits the Pudding King. The hole gives Telchur an opportunity to go for another shot as well. He strikes twice and his second shot hits Bill Cosby straight through the throat, killing him.

Earl Visken is scandalized. In retaliation he fires two shots of acid at Telchur. One hits him pretty badly.

We all sing along to I Can’t Stop this Feeling. And celebrate our assassination of the Pudding King.

Bash suplexes the centipeyed. It is awesome.

The last cube starts oozing over the table to head for the party, taking the desserts on the table with it. Enna rushes to meet it, striking it with a punch and a kick, finishing it. “You just got your just desserts” she quips.

The centipeyed jumps up in a weird, acrobatic display and whips her tentacles around at Bash and Lamp. The centipeded starts to hum, this time directing it at Lamp. She succumbs to the madness as well.

Drip, just on the edge of Faust’s darkness, casts Blight on the centipeyed. It withers for a moment but snaps back to attention.

Lamp is a bit confused from the humming but shakes it off to slam a warpick into the carapace of the centipeyed.

Spice is a little confused about what is going on. As soon as he arrives he heals Enna and Telchur before casting Sacred Flame on the Earl. He melts into a puddle.

Telchur leands up against the table to get the centipeyed and takes aim. His arrow fires true, striking it in one of its many eyes. It starts to burst before contracting and winking out of existence into a pocket.

We won!

As we recover and start to gather our used arrows and search for loot. 55 gold pieces, 30 electrum pieces, a gourd filled with a potion, 2 magical scrolls made from mushroom paper, and a varnished eye… and one face. Apparently the Pudding King’s face is disembodied in ooze.

Can I wear his face as a mask? Faust wonders. He goes over to investigate the house and starts sloughing it off the ooze. As he does this, the face begins to talk in a raspy sort of death rattle.

“We will rise from our faceless lord. Jubilex is supposed to consume the fungus demon queen or something. Yadda yada.”

Ok bruh, I’m still going to wear your face as a mask.

Faust peels the face off, puts it on and offers his best Bill Cosby impression. The group is halfway entertained and horrified. Faust shrugs, and stows the mask in his bag which has been mended at this point by Spice. At this moment, the leader of the gnomes enters the chambers, a little perturbed. “I take it the Pudding King is defeated.”

Faust shrugs, says yep, and pulls out the face. He uses his finger to make the mouth move “I have been defeated.” and stashes it again.

Andy puns “I guess you could say he’s saving face.”

The gnome Homer Simpsons out of the room.

We decide not to linger in the chamber for too long. The gnomes seem to have suffered some casualties but are more or less okay.

As we leave behind the carnage, Bash asks Janet about the portal demon. An alcolyth - what this creature was - is a sign of end times and if less undisturbed, it can open a portal to another realm. They are all aspects of Jubilex. It seems like the oozes were planning to attack the fungi peeps.

The Diggermattock informs us that while its a good day, it’s also a sad day as they lost “their favorite.”

On a plinth, Wes Fatrabbit lies with his arms crossed over his chest. The gnomes are surrounding him.

Faust rolls his eyes. Bash makes a big show of grieving, and then proceeds to “discreetly” loot the body. It does not go well. Everyone sees him. After a while he drops pretense and just looks for cool shit. He finds 20 gp and some adventuring gear.

Spice and Bash try to evangelize the gnomes with their preachy preach stuff regarding the dangers of the surface. The gnomes seem to believe us and agree to maybe offer help some day but not right now, as it is a time for sadness.

We all retire to the Foaming Mug. The bartender greets us cheerfully and then asks about Wes.

Faust deadpans “He dead.” She gives us drinks on the house to help us mourn.

Blurrg is at the tavern, he greets us and asks about the battle. We explain to him that we saw an alcolyth. He pretty much tells us what Janet already told Bash. He then tells us more about Zuggtmoy, the mortal enemy of Jubilex.

Our conversation takes us to discussion about Skrizzle Dizzle and Grazzleaxe. He tells us more about the Labryinth and the search for the maze engine, which comes from the elemental plane of Wah(?).

Blurrg makes another play for the Speaker Stone, but since Enna refuses to let it go, he offers to travel with us in hopes that we’ll find the library of Gravenhollow. Faust cautions him that we are a dangerous lot, involved in dangerous things, but Blurrg is willing to overcome any obstacle to find Gravenhollow.

After a night of revelry, we’re invited to attend the funeral of Wes Fatrabbit and the fallen gnomes. After the funeral, the Diggarmattock pulls us aside to discuss a reward for our services. He basically gives us an open invitation to live in Blindenstone to escape the dangers of the surface.

Faust asks if anyone can identify the magic scrolls we have. Yantha speaks up. She is super excited about the prospect of scrolls and whips out a wand, waves it around in a glittery display and identified the scrolls “Conjure Minor Elemental” and the other is “Speak with Plants.”

Enna pulls out the varnished eye. Yantha deduces that it can be used as a crytal ball of true seeing that can only be used once. The gourd is poison.. Yay.

The diggarmattock finally offers us one last parting gift as a merit of our service. It is a stone of controlling of earth elementals. Which allows us to summon an earth elemental once a day.

Our plan is to next travel to the drow city of Menzoberrenzan.

Faust writes in his book of messages to find out what we should do next. His patron is not impresssed with his mask gag but asks to be kept abreast of more demon info. Through some cajoling, Faust is able to convince Enna to at least let Blurrg hold the stone to see if it’ll help us find Gravenhollow. Unlike everyone else who has held the stone, Blurrg hears the crystal speak. It urges him to go east. And… that’s what we decide to do.

As we disembark from Blindenstone, the camera pans away. And as it moves, we catch up with the weird white haired monster that Evara gave birth to. She’s watching us from a crystal ball. The camera drifts to the drow surrounding her. Several of them are sharpening devides of torture… Hoo boy.

02/22/2020 FACE OFF

Racist grandpa gnome calls us over before we leave town. He is reluctant to admit it but believes that we did more good than harm. He cautions us to stay off the well traveled roads and suggests we travel through some abandoned mines to get past Menzenberrenzo.

Drip offers some jade dust for Faust to summon his familiar but he declines for the time being as he’s not sure what he wants to summon.

The path out of Blindenstone is pretty windy and its easy to get turned around. Bash takes point on navigating us through the maze of tunnels and keeps us from getting lost. He condescendingly points this out to our druid and ranger. “This is how a man survives in the wilderness.” The mine paths consist of rickety platforms and zirkwood ladders that are in mild disrepair.

Blurrg is definitely not used to travel and carrying a pack. He seems pretty winded after a couple of hours. He asks if we can rest without coming across as whiny. We pause for a while and Derrendel seems to concerned about the stability of these caves. Eldeth asks us if we’re headed in the direction of the surface. Faust lies pretty easily but Blurrg totally fucks it up by innocently telling her that we’re actually going in the opposite direction. She and Darrendel get really upset and want to go back to Blindenstone. A heated discussion ensues but we eventually relent that it might be safer for the pair to return to Blindenstone and be lead to the surface from there. Drip gives them two health potions and we bid them farewell.

We check in with the myconids to see how they’re doing. Stool has a dagger thumb now. Bash straps five more daggers to his other hand. Oh god why

After a nice rest, we keep moving and reach a decline. It seems pretty damp in here; the zirkwood steps are starting to experience some rot. The ground is rather muddy and as we reach the lowest point we find a small stream diving the area. It looks more like a natural cavern at this point rather than a mine.

As we make our way around a turn we notice that in gnomish there is a figure carved into the wall. It looks like a religious figure. An engraving lies beneath it. Spice recognizes it as a symbol of Garl Glittergold.

Bash looks around for something to hit with his magical slaver whip. Drip lets out a spider from his spider jaw which makes a bee (spider?) line for Enna. The whip cracks and makes a horrible screeching sound. Bash’s eyes seem to roll back into his head. It is uncomfortable. He then casts Comprehend Languages to allow him to read the engraving. It states that the mine has been fully mined and is now empty. They thank Garl Glittergold for a successful minin expedition.

As we pass the carving we continue walking along the stream. From around a bend we notice a strangely bright light. Bash consults Janet. She asks us to quiet down so she can hear. She senses a water mill. We just ignore them and keep going.

The next cavern is indeed well lit. The cavern is tall and gives way to trees, blue sky and clouds. The sunlight is bright and inviting. Faust squints skeptically and takes a good look around. After a moment he sees through the illusion and notices figures up top closing in on us. A familiar voice rings out - someone misses using her slaver’s whip on us. It’s Ilvara and her goons. Woo fuckin hoo.

Our enemies are 40 feet above us. Ilvara looks like she’s going to monologue. She says she’s not sure if we should thank her for saving our lives in the rock slide or if she should thank us for exposing the location of Blindenstone. She claims that we could have been better servants than slaves. She also says that she should thank us for being so easy to track. Apparently they have been tracking us using the gems that Enna stole.

She makes us a negotiation offer - if we give her Enna she’ll only enslave half of us? Faust counters with “Or you could die because fuck you.” Bash demands to know if she has his letter opener. She quips back with “You mean, my letter opener?” Bash flies into a rage.

Ilvara kicks off combat by giving the order to have these ballista mechanisms fired at us. Bash, Lamp and Faust stagger back from bolt fire.

Faust retaliates with a Hellish Rebuke to one of the crossbow wielders and incinerates him. But he’s wounded and poisoned as a result

Enna shadow steps to one of the turrets and destroys it. Spice takes out the dude manning the other. Telchur follows up Spice’s attack by shooting the same dude and he goes down. He then fires into the turret and destroys it. Ilvara tries to attack Bash but he blocks it with his shield. Frustrated, she then shouts now and two demons previously invisible appear. Great.

Then she casts freedom of movement and jumps down from the canyon edge and lands gracefully.

A drow mage reveals itself suddenly and blasts a spell toward us that envelops us in cold and ice. Faust gets fucked.

Drip summons two rocktopuses to assist Bash but they disappear as quickly as they appear once he’s hit by the ice blast.

Enna is out breaking necks since she’s had good practice with breaking drow necks.

Bash shield slams one of Ilvara’s guards and he goes crashing into the water wheel, creating a hole in it and allowing water to rush through it. In hot pursuit of Ilvara, he jumps on his shield and slides down the canyon side to charge her.

Faust, annoyed by the ice attack, summons a wall of fire behind the spellcaster and the crossbow wielders. The crossbow dudes are burned to a crip. The mage gets burned pretty good too…

Ilvara opens her mouth to shriek and as she does so, flying spiders burst forth from her mouth to harry Bashir. The balgurra that she summoned assails Lamp.

From behind Enna a strange, misshapen beast with four arms jumps on Enna, tackles her off the side of the canyon and lands on top of her in the swarm of flying spiders.

Ilvara casts another spell and she kind of turns Bash into a mummy. It hurts. Bad. He goes down.

Telchur fires an arrow that bursts into a tangle of ensnaring vines around the spellcaster backed by the wall of fire. He’s ensnared. He attempts to escape but is held in place as the flames engulf him and he screams in terror.

Drip re summons the animal guardians - this time two lions. The balgurra takes Lamp down.

Spice takes pity on the burning mage and kills him with his magical weapon. Enna escapes from the flying spiders and shadow steps to one of the crossbow mofos. She nearly snaps his neck but not quite. Spice finishes him off with his mace.

Telchur fires off a couple of arrows at one of Ilvara’s guards, hitting once. Drip has his unicorn spirt totem up and utitlizes it well by healing Lamp. The totem gives some healing for Bash who has been out of commission. Ilvara has Bash straddled and is about to plunge the letter opener - Bash’s sister really - into him. Lamp, seeing that Bash is near death, rushes through the flying spider to pour a health potion into his mouth. Ilvara still manages to stab Bash and then tries to attack Lamp with the same weapon.

The hole in the wheel breaks down further and a bunch of water starts to rush out into the canyon.

Drip’s lions, one of which just narrowly missing a ray of enfeeblement from Ilvara, tackles the balgurra and knocks it to the ground. They scrap for a while but eventually the balgurra is able to make it up out of the dog pile

The weird four armed demon is in hot pursuit of Enna. She launches a flurry of punches and kicks but is only able to land one. I guess the extra arms help.

Bash manages to shield bash Ilvara down and proceeds to wail on her. She drops the letter opener and he eyes it with a gleam in his eye.

One of Ilvara’s guards is all up in Drip’s business. The lions taking note of their master’s plight, leaps over the balgurra and tackles him to the ground. The balgurra tries to swipe during the pass but fails to grasp the feline.

Ilvara, still knocked prone, tries to cast another spell but Bash slams his sword down against her bracer armored wrist and stops it.

Lamp, who has been healed, rushes forward to place the immovable rod on Ilvara, but she ah-ah! She cast freedom of movement already so she manages to escape from underneath it.

Ilvara casts another spell, this time aiming for our mounts and companions. One of the drow girls is vaporized, as is the orc. Fingers the goblin manages to survive as well as our riding lizard.

Four Arms keeps coming for Enna. She manages to block most of his fists but he still succeeds in biting her. She tries to hit him back but he’s hard to hit.

Bash finally picks up his sister’s ensouled letter opener and then he heads toe to toe with Ilvara once again.

Telchur, suddenly realizing that he has an arrow of elf slaying, has the idea to shoot Ilvara with it. With sweat beading his brow, he nocks the most pretentious arrow in his quiver and lets it go. It flies true, striking Ilvara right between the shoulder blades. She flinches from the blow and then an eruption of barbed wire comes out from her eyes, nose, mouth, and chest.

Drip all of a sudden drops the lion summoning and casts control water. He waterbends the water into a whirlpool around Ilvara’s guards. They get sucked in and tumbled around. The balgurra, no longer occupied by lions, tries to maul Bashir.

The dragoloth just won’t leave Enna alone. He tries to hit her with faerie fire but doesn’t succeed. Exasperated, Enna rushes to meet him and hits him hard with a punch. He shakes his head in surprise, giving her an opportunity to fly in with a flurry of blows. She manages to break his neck too. Awesome.

Bash tries to shield bash the balgurra as well. He almost gets him into the water but not quite. Faust fires a beam of eldritch energy at the monster but he’s still up if not a bit hurt.

Telchur finishes it off with an arrow.

Spice, still astride his steeder, leaps over the dam and notices that it’s about to burst

Drip maintains the whirlpool. Rocks from the dam enter the whirlpool as he continues to use the control water to divert the water.

On Ilvara we find mithril half plate, a magical demon staff, 500 gp of various jewelry, cloak of elvenkind, a 1000 gp pearl

Faust and Telchur volunteer to go find the NPCs that got swept away. It takes them quite a bit of time to find them but the mushroom babies are none worse for wear. Faust heals the riding lizard who has been badly hurt. They make their way back to the canyon edge safely.

Once we get away, we’re able to look at our loot. Blurrg helps us determine what the evil staff is. Apparently it is suuuuuper bad juju. You have to be pretty evil to wield it lest you want to suffer a horrible curse. We debate over how best to handle this situation. Bash tries to slash through it to destroy the staff, but Drip blocks him and Faust pulls it away. Enna snatches the staff from Faust’s hands and shadow steps away. Irritated, Faust misty steps in front of her and she hands it back.

When we finally settle down for a rest, Faust resolves to teach Rumpadump how to use the Wand of Magic Missiles. Bash, intrigued, comes over to watch. He then proceeds to use rope to tie the thing to Rumpadump’s hand. Faust is like wtf but he doesn’t question it. Rumpadump asks if they know why he is so itchy. At this point, Bash Homer Simpsons the fuck out of there.

After convincing Rumpadump to focus, Faust gives him a command word to cast the spell - Go Go Rope because lolol. It takes a bit, but Rumpadump finally gets the hang of it. Afterwards, Faust spends some time reading Blurrg’s book.

The next day while we travel, Faust checks in with Fingers the goblin and inquires if he’s good at making traps with the intent of providing Bash things to strike with his slaver whip. Fingers is actually quite good at making traps and offers a corkscrew trap containing a mouse as a gift to Faust. A little perturbed, he tries to hand it off to Bash but Bash once again homer simpson’s away. Fingers asks for the Pudding King’s face so Faust tosses it on his face like a piece of cheese on a cat.

Meanwhile, our surviving drow is apparently hot for Telchur since he killed Ilvara. Telchur decides it would be rude to rebuff her advances and they sneak off. Gross.

Fingers runs off with it pleased. The next day he presents Faust with another trap after hiding a skull that he found with the face that Faust gave him. Faust is eventually able to take it from him. It’s painted to look like Musk. It’s kind of sad. Faust sticks his hand in the skull and uses it to ask Fingers wtf this is. Fingers scurries off to be alone.

Eventually we’re approached by a quaggoth, drow, duergar and a few other creatures. Upon closer inspection they are covered in fungi. The drones approach us and offer us the following invitation: “There will be a wedding at Neverlight grove. Come, all are invited to the wedding. In several different languages. The messengers show us the way. They all point in unison due south. In three ten day’s time Our Lady will marry Araumycos.”

Spice remembers that Araumycos is a giant fungus creature. Apparently there are messengers all over the place and they will lead us in time to the wedding.

We keep moving. As we continue our journey, Janet senses a monster up ahead - a basilisk. As we cautiously approach, we notice a several legged creature that seems to avoid looking directly at us. He greets us as the gate keeper of Gravenhollow. He can sense that at least one of us really wants to find the library and is very enthustiastic. Maybe too enthusiastic.

The basilisk tells us a little bit more about Gravenhollow. So there are three Stone Giant Librarians. Ulthar is the keeper of the past. Ancient texts and what not. Urmas is the keeper of the present. Ustova is keeper of the future.

3/06/2020 Gravenhollow

Walking across the threshold in Gravenhollow is otherworldly. The gloom of the Underdark is left behind us. It’s brightly lit here, with high ceilings and numerous hallways. Rainbows are trapped in glass prisms on the ceiling. There are stairs everywhere. A rocky creature detaches from the wall and greets us.

He introduces himself as Horm, and states that the masters are occupied. There are rooms for all of you. Choose your own. The resources of Gravenhollow are at your service.

Our basilisk guide leaves us in Horm’s care and reminds us not to cause any trouble and then departs from the library, stone golems closing the doors behind him.

The entire library is suffused with magic. Its relatively empty. There are some humanoid figures in the distance but we don’t have much time to take a look as Horm leads us down a staircase to give us a tour. There aren’t books anywhere - but there are lots of engravings and stone tablets.

Horm informs us that the archives of the past, the present and the future each have their own levels. We’re allowed to use magic as long we don’t try to destroy anything within the library. Drip asks who created Gravenhollow but it turns out that no one knows but it is at least as old as giants.

He then leads us to our quarters. There are a row of doors, they’re all unoccupied save for one, which he points out. Emerging from that door is what appears to be a knight - he’s yelling at three other humanoids - an old guy, a middle aged man, and some kid. He’s pretty annoyed with them because I guess they’re causing him to run late. He and Bash eagerly greet each other as they’re both wearing plate and are members of the Order of the Gauntlet. His name is Hector. His servants are Kay, Wort, and Marlin. Bash and Ector complete a complex secret handshake, but it looks more like a weird mating ritual to Faust.

Pleasantries exchanged, we go and check out our quarters. Horm takes our mounts to the stables.

Drip casts Enhance Ability on those of us that plan to do research. We determine who is researching what - Telchur wants to understand the geography of the Underdark; Drip wants to learn more about the Demon Princes and if they’ve been seen on this plane before, as well as animals of region; Spice wants to know all there is to know about Steeders; Faust wants to learn more about celestials and how to summon them in the hopes of cross referencing the illuminated text that he’s been holding onto in addition to finding some ritual spells. Bash grabs an architecture tome - the thickest he can find and uses it as a pillow. As soon as he goes to bed, Lamp runs off to find some romance novels.

Telchur is strangely adept at navigating the library and beelines for a spot of the library where he finds a map illuminated in water. It ripples and seems to live update. Gracklestugh appears to be on fire. A few swipes of the hand later, Telchur is able to span through the Underdark and identifies a route back to the surface - it’s north of Menzoberrenzen. He takes a closer look because he sees movement. As he zooms in closer he sees that there are drow dragging creatures in chains. It appears to be a slaver route. Intrigued, Telchur keeps looking. He finds a second route - called Mantle Derrow. It looks like a small dockside trading post on the shore of the Darklake. Zooming in, he idenitifies some surfacer zhentarim offloading there.

So involed in what he’s doing, Telchur is suddenly startled by an old man. He warns that the routes are heavily guarded and difficult to pass, even for mages. There are barriers that prevent teleportation. The old man recognizes Telchur as a member of the party that stopped the demons from rising to the surface, but he doesn’t remember if Telchur makes it - he knows for sure not everyone does. He then explains how the library works - that the library remembers you and that those we encounter are often times echoes of the past. His explanation is spooky. Telchur gets creeped out.

Drip is off in search Demon Prince information. He looks around but is SOL so he then calls out for Horm, who is happy to help. Apparently, the Keeper of the Past, Ulthar, knows a ton on the subject, but he’s currently in the gym. Horm leads Drip down several flights of stairs. They arrive in a wide open cavern, where the Keeper is doing squats with giant boulders. Dude lifts heavy.

He takes a breather from his workout to chat with Drip. It would seem that the demons have never walked freely in the Underdark previously. They have roamed in the Dreamlands but never in the Underdark like they are now. He hands Drip a stone about the size of a basketball and urges Drip to exercise as it helps one think. After a moment, Ulthar tells Drip in confidence that the Demon Prince might be in the library now or later. The library doesn’t discriminate so even the most foul beings can access the knowledge that they seek.

Drip then asks for information about the beasts of Chult. But those are parts of the Dreamlands and of no consequence to the Underdark so there is no information in the archives. After a pause, Drip then asks about entrances to elemental planes. Ulthar replies that as the Underdark is inherently magical, there are certainly ways to access the elemental plane and that there should be information in the archives. He challenges Drip with another stone throw and asks him to knock over a bunch of pins… Which Drip does handily. As reward, Ulthar plans to lead him to the section of archives containing the information he seeks.

Spice is able to find some information on steeders but its all written in Giants. There is a duergar clan that specializes in raising Steeders; they’re stationed in Gracklestugh. The clan’s name is Clan Xundun and breeding steeder’s is their game. Spice now has advantage with all animal handling checks with steeders. As Spice is taking notes, another Stone Giant passes by him and regards him appraisingly. “Interesting, learning about Steeders” he comments. He advises Spice to see Gracklestugh someday. Spice lies through his teeth - that he shall. It turns out that Haram (the stone speaker we saw in Gracklestugh) or a past version of himself anyway, is conversing with Spice.

Faust wanders from room to room, with a sense that he knows where he needs to be. He walks across some stairs, bridges and finds himself in a strange walk in closet sort of room. The glowing crystals don’t seem to reach this area - it doesn’t look as well tended as the rest of the library. There are several scrolls all over - there is a robed figure muttering to himself. He’s clothed in red and seems pretty agitated by Faust’s presence. “Begone apparition!” Faust retorts that as far as he’s concerned the other dude’s an apparition. They research side by side but the wizard gets irritated and huffs away, walking through Faust and disappearing. He seems vaguely familiar, but Faust can’t quite put his finger on it it. Fortunately, the research goes swimmingly and he finds scrolls containing the following:

Ritual of Alarm

Ritual of Comprehend Languages

Ritual of Ceremony

Ritual of Detect Magic

Ritual of Identify

Ritual of Illusory Script

Ritual of Gentle Repose

Ritual of Meld into Stone

Faust hurriedly begins copying all of it into his Book of Messages.

Bash is sleeping soundly but in the middle of the night his slumber is disrupted by a woman who demands to know why he’s in her chambers.

Lamp seems to have a hard time finding romance. A galeb dur points her in the correct direction but stone giant romance is pretty boring and leaves her cold. She returns to her quarters disappointed. Like always.

Hector is bored by research so he practices with his sword while his servants join Telchur down below to look at maps. As the three walk down the stairs they talk a bunch of shit about Hector and are relieved to be away from him. Shenanigans ensue - it’s like a Three Stooges routine. They’ve been tasked with finding information to find a way out of the Underdark. Telchur just chuckles and tells them that they won’t find a way out of the Underdark before it breaks them. He suggests they check out the water and then leaves.

Drip is lead by Ulthar to the Archives of the Past where he finds Spice researching steeders. Ulthar then leads him past the archives to the Hall of Visions. In the center is a large, crudely carved obelisk crystal. He bids farewell as his attentions are needed elsewhere. As Drip looks around he spies a dark skinned humanoid who regards him with surprise. “What are you doing here? Surfacers seldom find the library” He walks a circle around Drip in an appraising fashion. “I suspect that you aren’t looking for your lineage - what are you actually looking for - what’s your true reason?” Drip informs him that he’s looking for information on the Demon Princes. And asks for the dude’s name. He introduces himself as Grazzit, the Demon Prince.

Grazzit is coy about his own motivations, but says he might be able to help. He pulls a horn off of his head and sets it down on a shelf. “I have my reasons for helping.” He then bids him good luck and sashays out of the hall. He looks back to the shelf and notices a fine layer of dust on the tip of the horn. He picks it up, it feels like ivory. Cool.

After pocketing the horn, he examines the massive crystal prism in the hall. He attempts to Scry on the demon prince and he sees in the crystal a demon woman in the mushroom forest. He’s handing her a medallion and says “Do with this as you wish, this is now your home. There will be many more like it.”

She accepts the medallion and flares out her succubus wings and gives him a hug, referring to him as the Dark Lord. “Do what feels natural, and you’ll be doing my will.” He then turns and looks right at Drip through the scrying crystal. “Nosy aren’t we?” and the vision disappears. Drip is spooked.

Spice is learning a shit ton about the history of steeder breeding. At some point they tried to breed a steeder with 10 legs. There seems to be a big debate on the viability of 10 legged steeders, which are quite rare.

After transcribing a bunch of Rituals, Faust wanders back to the Hall of Visions and finds Drip who looks deeply perturbed. Faust tries to pry for information but Drip is a bit vague though he does mention that he saw the Demon Prince with the mushroom demon lady. Faust invites him to reserach celestials together. The crystal becomes transparent for a moment and shows them a scene of a massive, muscular angelic figure with fiery wings. He’s joined by two others and they fly in formation deep into a cavern where there are demon summoning circles. And demonic creatures everywhere. There’s a strange naga lady with swords, a baelor and several other creatures. An epic battle ensues. It seems to go well at first, but the demons get the upperhand on the celestials. The two smaller ones seem to be killed, and the largest one is enslaved by the demons and tortured for centuries. Somehow, Faust is able to intuit where that location is and he decides to meet with Telchur.

The lady in the room was just an apparition and Bash goes back to sleep but he is awakened by the myconid babies trying to open his door. They struggle because their hands are weapons now. Apparently Blurrg has met some of his friends here and he wants us to meet him. Since Bash is nearby he’s the lucky one that gets to meet them. He and Hector meet up with Blurrg and find him chatting with our man Skrizzle Dizzle and the illithid Grazzilax. Introductions are made although Hector is pretty freaked out by Grazzilax. They inform him that they have information for our party and Bash to gather us up so we can meet with them after they trade notes.

After a beat, Bash finds us all and we meet at an oval table with the Society of Brilliance. Apparently we’re all honorary members now. Normally meetings start with planning the next meeting, but we jump right to the point and exchange info.

Telchur explains the escape routes but laments that he didn’t make any physical copies. Drip tells all about his encounter with the Demon Prince, Grazzit. Spice recalls that Grazzit was once an archdevil but became a Demon Lord. Spice then launches into great length about steeders. Bash immediately ignores him and asks Faust about the celestials. Faust relays his findings and points an accusatory finger at Grazzilax for taking the papers out of the illuminated text. He asks Telchur for a map but Telchur sheepishly points to his own temple.

“I’ll show you the cartograrium,” he replies.

At some point Hector’s servants return with their findings, hilarity ensues. It would seem we need to lube our shoulders with blood to fit through tunnels?

Skriss and Baphomet and Yeenoghu are vying for power in the labyrinth. The maze engine is from the plane of La. In their search through the labyrinth they did find some stray modron - who were abandoned from their tour of the planes. The maze engine is probably from their home. They explain that we need to activate the maze engine and could use it as a weapon.

During our conversation, a strange disfigured drow in rags and a strange humanoid toad with razor edge teeth. The drow appraises us carefully as he approaches. After a moment he speaks “A bunch of artifacts - is that a demon staff I see?” Blurrg acknowledges him as Viseryn Deveer, archmage. The dude is coughing a lot. He does not want to join us but he states that he already has his own plan and we’ll find that he’s right in the end. He places an emerald on the table and states its his calling card and to reach him for help later.

Vader joins us as at the table, taking Telchur’s place.

Spice recalls that he met Hogram earlier and tells us that we may need to leave the Stonespeaker crystal here so that he can give it to us later… God, this is weird.

Enna is hoarding it in her room of course. She’s sleeping with her arms wrapped around the crystal. Bash volunteers to sneak into the room to grabt it. He switches a giant book with the crystal and takes it to Spice who finds Hogram to give him the stonespeeker crystal.

Bash has this great idea to ask Faust’s patron about the celestial he saw. She replies after a beat and we discover the name of the Celestial - Firebringer. He’s been MIA. Faust ventures into the cavern where the map pool was located, and determines that the location of the enslaved celestial is about 100 miles away.

The society wishes to meet in the Hall of Visions again so we can find out more about the demon’s origins. We see an imperious drow wizard casting a spell, phaserous beams erupt and the wizard realizes he has lost control. There are cracks in reality and demons rend their way into our plane from the abyss. The drow wizard is wearing an insignia of House Vannery, the leading house of Menzoberrenzen - as pointed out by Continua.

We witness another vision in the crystal. In the heart of an alien cavern, we see several Mindflayers congregated around a massive brain. They seem to be in mourning. In our minds, we hear the chanting of Cyrog. Phaserous energy crackles. A massive figure appears and points at the elder brain, awakening it and it speaks to the Mindflayers’ surprise. It states that Orcus has awakened it and the Mindflayers must follow him.

Grazzilax approaches Drip as we exit the chamber. He hands him a stone - a sending stone - so that we can communicate with him. He seems concerned about the situation with Cyrog so he has some affairs to take care of back home I suppose.

Faust checks in with the NPCs. Fingers the Goblin is being read to by a stone golem. He’s trying to find out more information about goblins in the Underdark. We learn that his clan is all destroyed at this point which technically makes him the leader. Faust tries to reassure him that he doesn’t need a home since he is the clan. Fingers decides that he needs to find some Goblin gals to bring rebirth to his clan. Faust awkwardly encourages him. “Sure… Let’s find you a goblin harem…?”

So long ago, the Labyrinth was just like any other part of the Underdark but the discovery of precious metals and gem stones saw an influx of dwarven miners. There are abandoned settlements everywhere. Dark mine shafts leading into the abyss are numerous. Many a tunnel leads into a rift. Some of these rifts are as deep as a few hundred feet. Many of the tunnels show their age through the crude stairways and bridges left behind. The entire area is infused with phaserous.

As we exit the library we find ourselves deposited into a completely different area from where we entered.

After traveling through some tunnels for a while, we enter a cavern that is propped up with columns. Across the chamber there is a rift and the walls are marked with sigils and glyphs. There are decapitated heads mounted on stakes. The glyphs praise Baphomet, demon lord. And it would seem this area is consecrated in his name. Spice thinks back to what he knows about this demon lord. He’s a bestial god, with a cunning intellect hell bent on enslaving all civilization. He rules over minotaurs and those with savage hearts. He envisions a world without restraint where animals can act out their heart’s deepest desires.

Janet senses someone approaching. Three seconds later, a wretched looking gnoll appears amid the severed heads. He looks us over with his one lone eye. He cringes with his arms out and his head down. He seems very placating but this is definitely not typical behavior of a gnoll. He speaks to us in Abyssal, which Spice understands. He touts himself as the best guide for the labyrinth and that we should enlist his services but Drip doesn’t trust him at all and we opt to skip out on his offer.

Drip volunteers to serve as navigator. As we cross the chasm, Bash pulls out his gauntlet of slavery and tosses it into the abyss, claiming it’s too evil to exist. We enter the labyrinth and traverse as best as we can with Drip leading the way. Janet warns us that there are monsters trying to close in on us. Sure enough, minotaurs approach from all around

Faust is quickest to react and tries to use Hold Monster on one of the minotaurs but the monster is able to break free. The minotaurs rush in, closing in on all of us. They gore Faust and Telchur. The latter of which gets knocked down. Faust manages to stay on his feet and casts Hellish Rebuke in return. Bash tries to shield bash one but the creatures are just too large. Sir Hector just clobbers one of the minotaurs, nearly taking him to his knees in a single round.

Drip, perhaps the cleverest of us all, casts wall of stone and blocks off all of the minotaurs save for one. He urges us to kill the lone minotaur and move toward a more defensible position.

Spice uses his sacred flame to take out the minotaur blocking our way and succeeds in burning him to cinders. We begin to filter our way through the safe passageway with Faust readying a Wall of Fire to block off the path behind us once everyone is safely through. We filter our way through and as soon as the last ally makes their way down the hallway, Faust pulls up the wall of fire and delves further into the passage.

Our relief is short lived as we hear the high pitched yipping of gnolls approaching. Bash rushes forth to meet them head on while Hector mans the spot nearest the wall of flame to strike any minotaur with the moxie to cross the threshold of flame.

Drip, thinking quick, launches a tidal wave over Bash’s shoulder and sends it down the hall where the gnolls are coming in hot.

Telchur fires off arrows. Spice continues usng Sacred Flame with great success. Hector and Faust lie in wait and as soon as Alpha Minotaur walks through the flames, They unload a shit ton of attacks, battering the creature ruthlessly but it stays on its feet.

The battle rages on with the other minotaurs whittling away at the walls of stone that Drip summoned. With a few Tidal waves and well placed attacks, the gnolls are vanquished pretty speedily. A few eldritch blasts, smites and a shield bash from Bashir later… the minotaur daddy goes through wall of flame and burns to his death. We wait for the rest of the minotaurs to make their way through the flames but the chipping at the stone walls ceases and after a minute the wall of flames drop but the minotaurs are nowhere in sight.

Time to loots!

Big Daddy Minotaur dropped some magical hide armor, which is pretty sweet. There’s also a pouch made from a human face with the eyes and mouth sewed shut full of 32 gold pieces. There are silver caps on its horns, each worth 35 gp. There’s a vial made out of a minotaur horn with a strange potion inside of it. We each get 5 gold and 4 silver from the pouch.

Drip hands Faust the face pouch. So he can save face yet again.

As we clean up and get ready to mosey out of this section of maze, Hector mentions that there’s a war brewing up on the surface.

04/04/2020 Back to Dicktown

We continue moving through the labyrinth after taking our rest. We’re moseying along when we arrive in an open chasm with bodies littered about the ground. There are Gnolls, Minotaurs and some corpses so decayed they are beyond recognition. Drip spies overhead, a strange figure. He warns us that we have company and as we look up a carrion crawler drip a long tendril of saliva before shrieking to alert its companions. A number of other crawler’s shriek in reply.

Roll initiative!

There are several carrion crawlers and they close in on us all, striking us with nasty stink ridden tentacles. One manages to poison Faust, paralyzing him. But he’s able to break free. The rest of the party is able to shake off the poison with relative ease. The battle isn’t particularly difficult but there are several carrion crawlers so it takes us a moment to work our ways through. At one point in the battle, Drip summoned a wall of fire which remains in effect as we hear the sound of something large approaching from the other side of the wall.

We all ready actions and lie in wait. As we wait, the creature gets closer as made evident by the clanking of armor. Drip throws a magic stone and hits something that sounds heavily armored. From out of Bash’s pack a young ghost girl emerges - huh.. that’s new. She attempts to attack whatever is approaching us from the other side of the wall.

What walks through the flames is a large cadaver collector construct. Drip warns us not to attack it but we all pounce. Faust tries to use Hold Monster, but the construct can’t be paralyzed. All of our attacks cause the eyes of the construct to glow and toxic green fumes pour out of its body. All of us save for Bashir and Lamp are paralyzed by the toxin. In addition to the gaseous fumes, ghosts taking the shape of gnolls and fly out to attack Bash. Thinking quickly, Bash dodges the ghosts, grabs the Immovable Rod from Lamp’s stash of items and shield bashes the construct. He manages to knock it prone and jams the rod on top of it before activating it.

Under the weight of the immovable rod, the construct cannot escape. It tries futilely to push itself out from underneath but it fails. The toxin lasts a full minute, in that time Bashir successfully dispatches the ghosts. Just as we’re about to regain our senses, the construct is able to escape from underneath the rod and faces off against Bash. It succeeds in knocking him unconscious and then proceeds to impale him on one of its many spikes amidst the bodies of gnolls and Minotaurs.

Although paralyzed, we see the peril Bashir is in and once we regain our ability to move, the rest of the party rolls into action. Enna is throwing punches, Faust manages to run up the cadaver collector’s arms and reaches Bash before promptly teleporting both of them out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, Lamp is left between the collector and the rest of the party. The collector swings at her and hits hard; she is knocked unconscious and suffers the same fate that Bash briefly experienced. Drip enchants a stone and throws the magic rock, hitting the construct on the head, killing it. Lamp comes to as we attempt to haul her body off the spike.

After some healing, Bash sifts through the all of the remains and is able to find an ornately carved golden skull mug. For the right buyer it could fetch 100 gp but is otherwise worthless. Bash plans on putting it on the mantel piece back home.

While we lick our wounds and prepare to move on, we hear a faint sound of someone’s raspy breath. Hidden beneath some of the bodies, we find an old man who looks beaten and scarred. He identifies himself as Thor (?) and he thanks us for rescuing him from being discovered by the collector. He seems wary of us but impressed by our power and says that he could show us to his village. He and the rest of the denizens of Filthriddens are former slaves who have escaped from the drow. Thor himself has served many years under the drow and has obvious disdain for them. Under the condition that we not kill his people, he offers to bring us to town so we can bed down and rest.

As he leads us, he sings the praises of Grisha - a follower of Yeenoghu, who serves as the leader of the residents of Filthriddens. He claims to have been saved by Yeenoghu and because of his devotion to the gnoll demon lord, the small town is protected from the likes of the Minotaurs, perhaps the only ones Thor hates more than the drow.

We approach a very narrow path, far too small for the Steeders. Spice offers to watch our mounts and stays at the mouth of the tunnel while the rest of us venture inside to find a dilapidated little shanty town. Along one wall near the entrance is what appears to be a fountainhead with a dwarven face. At one time the wall was ornate and beautiful, remnants of a mural lie obscured along its face. At one point these ruins were a dwarven settlement. The people are thin, malnourished and barely clothed. They all look a little sickly. Grisha, a strapping lad in his 30s approaches us. He welcomes us and almost immediately courts us as potential new acolytes of Yeenoghu. His expression is mildly crazed and we’re not really sold. Nonetheless, Grisha appreciates our service in helping Thor and offers us a room to bed down. It’s a tight fit - pretty much all of the structures here are hovels and lean-tos.

While the rest of the party settles down for a rest, Faust sets an Alarm perimeter around their resting place and goes off to do some exploration. After wandering around and taking stock of the size of the town, Faust spots some of the townsfolk including Thor having a chit chat around the fire. They are speaking Undercommon and broken Common but he is able to distinguish enough of the conversation to realize that they are discussing the party’s arrival.

Thor expresses some concern about how powerful we are and if we can be trusted, but acknowledges that we could be strong allies. He pauses once he takes note of Faust’s presence and invites him to sit, which Faust does. The people appear to be roasting a cave fisher and are passing a goblet of its blood around. Faust obliges them for a drink and they chit chat. Thor and his friends praise Faust and the rest of the party for their martial prowess while Faust sheepishly discloses that he’s a warlock and they’re pretty great.

There’s a moment of tension as the Filth people inquire about his patron and if it’s Baphomet. Faust scoffs “Bull people? Ew.” Everyone visibly relaxes. Grisha approaches and wishes to speak with Faust. He decides Faust must be the leader of the party since he’s the last to go to bed. Faust does not correct him. It seems that Grisha is also a warlock and the two talk shop about their patrons. Grisha propositions Faust as well as the party to do him a favor - if we kill 4 minotaurs for him he’ll give us this weird object he found. Faust is intrigued but says he will talk it over with the party. Plus, he acknowledges that they’re likely to kill any Minotaurs they find as the travel through the labyrinth anyway. As they continue to talk, Grisha pries more about Faust’s patron, he simply replies that she’s a real bitch and walks off to check on his friends.

… and he walks right into Aurella, the patron in question. “A real bitch, you say?”

Faust backtracks quickly. Aurella chides him for not being more proactive about helping the people of the Filthriddens. She lectures him on doing better to save these people from the clutches of demon worship and encourages him to liberate them. Faust has the devilish idea to make them worship him and after considering it for a minute, agrees to redirect the peoples’ religious devotions. Aurella tells him to keep the messages coming, to which Faust agrees. He asks if she enjoys the pictures he’s drawn for her and with a rare smile she says that she does. The moment is cut short as three glowing orbs encircle her and she flits off to make some deliveries.

After returning and once everyone is awake, Faust fills the group in on his discoveries. Bash is all over the plan to evangelize the Filthriddens people. When he realizes the extent of Grisha’s worship of Yeenoghu he marches straight to his hovel, with Faust right on his heels in the hopes of averting total crisis.

Bashir bursts through the flap of the dwelling and demands that Grisha stop worshiping devils or demons or whatever the fuck he worships. Grisha and two of his sycophants are in bed; Grisha lazily rises, fully nude. Ew.

He gets dressed (I assume) and gives us a lecture on not really understanding what its like to be enslaved. He likens Yeenoghu to being his salvation and through Yeenoghu’s power he and his people have been able to survive.

Faust points out that while they may be surviving, are they really thriving? Has Yeenoghu really delivered them from hardship? Bash takes an intimidating stance and tells Grisha and his people will change.

His and Faust’s combined effort give Grisha’s followers pause. They want to hear us out and even Grisha appears to have his resolve shaken. Faust changes tactics and confesses that he believes he was sent by his patron, Aurella, to save the people of Filthriddens. Yeenoghu may be protecting them from Minotaurs, but what will happen to them once the Minotaurs will be defeated? He suggests that him finding these people is no accident but Aurella must have guided them here for the purpose of liberating the people from a demonic blight. Grisha’s resolve seems to crumble, but he steels himself and then asserts that if we won’t listen to him, he will show us the power of Yeenoghu.

He points a finger at Faust and grins wickedly as a crack in the earth forms beneath Faust’s feet. With a scoff, Faust kicks some dirt over it like he’s covering up some crap and the banishment spell dissipates. Bash is quick to knock Grisha prone and punches him in the face. Drip tries to hit him with his Staff of the Adder but Grisha appears unphased but mildly impressed. Faust attempts to reason with him once more, but Grisha tries to Charm him. Faust shakes it off and grits his teeth in irritation.

“Alright, now you’re just pissing me off.” With Grisha held down by Bash, Faust grabs the other warlock by the throat and starts siphoning away his health with Vampiric Touch. Grisha snarls, and infernal flames swirl around the pair as the Yeenoghu follower casts Hellish Rebuke. Faust simply grins as the flames do little but singe his hairs. “That tickles!” And with a laugh he casts Hellish Rebuke on Grisha in return. A burst of holy flame engulfs the pair and when the light dissipates, Faust is left holding a charred corpse.

Grisha’s followers marvel at their former leader’s defeat and acknowledge that Faust’s celestial patron must be superior. They start firing off questions on how they should worship her - who is she? What does she want them to do? Faust tries to field their questions but he soon realizes he doesn’t really know that much about his patron. He fibs that she’s the goddess of messages and that her hope for the people of Filthriddens is to live a simple life of contentment.

“Even for the people in the cages?” The reformed zealouts ask.

The party pauses. “What people?” Faust asks…

While this is happening, Bash loots Grisha’s body and finds the weird artifact he had promised Faust before - it’s a strange looking clockwork dagger. Faust takes a look at it and determines it is humming with magical energy; he asks Drip to tuck it in his bag of holding to await being Identified later.

The zealots pull up a rug to reveal a crude hidden passage that leads underground. What we find appears to be an old tavern at one point. But now, lining its walls are about six cages. One is empty, and four contain the yellowed, decaying bodies of ghouls. Without Spice present, Faust and Bash make short work of dispatching the undead with a combination of sacred flame and Janet. In the last cage is a strange, one eyed clockwork creature that makes weird ticking sounds and repeatedly states that it is malfunctioning. It seems to be a modron. We free it and it starts following us around like a lost puppy. If puppies made weird ticking sounds and repeatedly state that they’re malfunctioning.

The townsfolk warm up to the idea of worshipping Aurella and continuously ask Faust how to best worship her. They wonder if they need to sacrifice their children for her protection as they did with Yeenoghu. Disgusted, Faust emphatically states that they will not be doing that anymore. Aurella wants to see them live thriving, happy lives where they can start families. He demands that they give up the sacrifices and focus on leading normal lives. He’s not sure how Aurella would want them to worship her so he tells the people to make art since she enjoys his drawings. And with a mischievous grin he states that Aurella LOVES dick pics so they should draw lots of dicks everywhere.

With the people liberated, the party discusses what we ought to do. Bash and Drip advocate possibly taking the people with us - there’s 50 of them but we’re no stranger to escorting large groups. Faust feels a little more dubious about the matter. After some deliberation we reach the conclusion that fortifying the city and then returning once we’ve accomplished our mission of finding the maze engine is the best course of action. Drip uses shape stone to build walls all around the encampment with turrets and doorways.

Satisfied that this should offer the Filthriddens people some added protection, the party prepares to depart and continue the search for the maze engine. Before they leave, Bash and Drip announce with fanfare that the prophet of Aurella wishes to offer some words of encouragement to the people. Faust bristles at being put on the spot before begrudgingly clearing his throat and delivering a speech. He urges the people of Filthriddens to abandon the old ways - no sacrificing babies. Yeenoghu may have protected them but he didn’t help them thrive. Aurella wants to see them succeed, and the only way to do that is to cooperate with the party and with each other. Together, everyone stands the chance at a bright future - one that is safe, that doesn’t require human sacrifice for security, and one where the people can raise families and lead normal lives. He promises to return and lead them to a safe haven and that the promise is backed by Aurella. Faust Aurella 2020, change that doesn’t require human sacrifice!

The denizens of Filthriddens eat the speech up and cheer. Several of them already have dicks drawn on their foreheads. Faust also suggests that they build some sculptures. By the time the party gets back he expects the place to be a total Dicktown.

Our journey into the labyrinth continues. We travel for a full day and come across some bodies from a recent fight. Among them is a humanoid figure with what appears to be an eye tattooed on his forehead - Grisha had mentioned that there were two individuals like this that had entered the labyrinth in search of the maze engine. Faust is able to find a journal on the tattooed guy’s body. Inside is a scroll to cast Greater Restoration. The rest of the journal is simply that, a journal. After reading it, we are certain that we are headed in the right direction and continue moving forward.

In the distance we hear the distinct yipping sound of hyenas and the snorts of large bull like beasts. Bash sheathes Janet so that she doesn’t give away our position with her brilliant light. It is almost totally dark. Those of us with dark vision peer out into the distance and make out a battle between a huge Gnoll wielding a three headed flail. He and his hyenas are fighting against an immense Minotaur - one even larger than the daddy minotaurs we fought days ago. In a frenzied surge, the hyenas overtake the large Minotaur and Yeenoghu rips out his throat. We look on as the hyenas feed like hungry piranhas, devouring everything. As they do so, they turn into gnolls. Once their meal is finished they giddily yip and run away, perpendicularly to the direction of our travel. We debate springing a surprise attack but their numbers are too great and so we lay low until they pass.

During the next day of travel we are able to identify the clockwork blade that we found.

Identify: Blade of Mechanists +1 to attack, extra d8 to any extraplanar demon

Faust experimentally transforms the dagger into a whip. It looks awesome.

Bash and Faust try to figure out how the modron, which is stil following us, works but the technology is beyond them and they’re left with more questions than answers.

After another day or so of travel we notice that the air is becoming hotter and drier. It reminds us of the magma flow we encountered on our way to Blindtenstone. Sure enough, we find a large river of magma in an immense gorge. Resting in the middle is a massive astrolabe resting on a stone platform above the lava. Guarding the ledge leading to the astrolabe, is a large creature with tiny wings.

It’s a Nalfeshnee named Slaughtertusk. Once he notices us he tells us not to move any closer lest we incur his wrath and he takes our souls. We shrug and say okay, much to his surprise. He laments that someone important as him is left to guard the contraption when no one has even come looking for it, but its what Baphomet bid him do. Faust and Bashir agree, stating that he is clearly a powerful being and far too important to be wasting away guarding an item no one is even looking for. Faust shares that the tide has shifted in the favor of the gnolls and that Slaugthertusk’s Minotaur brethren could really use his help. The combined efforts of Bash and Faust succeed in convincing Slaughtertusk to leave his post in front of the giant astrolabe which is in a ravine surrounded by a river of magma. He tells us to guard the Machinist’s work but not to touch it and zooms off to find some gnolls.

We take stock of our situation and realize that it’s a pretty perilous journey to get to the maze engine.

Drip turns into a giant eagle and takes Enna down first. She immediately looks at this complex construct and starts pulling one of many levers. All of a sudden there is a blinding light. When we blink our eyes and realize what has happened we realize that we have gone back in time to the time where we were captured by Ilvara the first time. We’re about to attack Ilvara when a blinding light blips us back to the maze engine. Unfazed, Enna pulls another lever.

Lightning strikes out of nowhere; striking half of us. Faust at this point has made it to the maze engine and glowers at Enna. Taking stock of the levers, he manages to fiddle with them until the lightning finally fizzles out thanks to his efforts.

Drip takes a turn at the maze engine. He pulls a lever and time seems to stop for a moment and then gravity seems to pull violently at the party. Everyone but Faust is hit hard with 50 force damage as they feel their muscles and joints push and pull, knocking Bash and Lamp unconscious. Additionally, everyone but Faust changes gender. Faust takes a moment to point at Drip’s boobs and yells “WHAT ARE THOOOOOOOOOOOSE?”

He then realizes Bash and Lamp are unconscious and heals them.

Undeterred, Drip takes another turn at giving the maze engine a spin. He pulls a lever and it rains gems like we hit a jackpot on a slot machine. We all reach out to grab precious gems, Faust succeeds in nabbing a 500 gp diamond to use when the maze engine inevitably kills one of us.

Each pull of the lever causes the astrolabe to spin faster and faster. The nalfeshnee notices us fiddling with the maze engine and after every pull we hear him getting closer and closer to us, with several minotaurs in tow.

We pull the lever again and glittery bursts of fireworks erupt harmlessly around us.

Drip pulls a final time just as we see the Nalfeshnee approaching. He appears ready to launch an attack. The astrolabe is spinning wildly around us. With one final pull of the lever, we see all the demons before us blip out of existence one after another.

The sudden lack of danger gives us pause and we stare at one another, shrugging. Drip pulls out the sending stone given to us by the Society of Brilliance and sends them a message informing them that we “found the maze engine but it was already broken.”

Blurrg responds that while this news is disappointing, perhaps something was done right as all of the demon followers of Baphomet and Yeenoghu, as well as the demon lords themselves, have disappeared from our plane of existence. Or perhaps it was a coincidence?

We all pat ourselves on the back. Potential crisis averted.

5/16/2020 Honesty is the worst policy

Bashira manages to smooth over our immense social faux pas - y’know, murdering spiders and stuff. Gryn and his noble buddy are not pleased but they buy our bullshit. Meanwhile, Drip is gathered up by the drow nobility and their henchman. They throw a burlap sack over her head and rifle through her shit. She is lead away elsewhere but is disoriented as she can’t see. She’s laid down upon a stone slab and strapped down and when the sack is removed from her head it becomes very apparent that she’s in a torture chamber.

Back with the rest of the gang, Gryn’s contact, while appalled, agrees to help us. They urge us to abandon the warehouse and the spider bodies. Faust doesn’t know what to do with his drow captive, so Bashira just knocks her out and stabs her through the throat. We decide to keep Fark aka Fart the masochistic dwarf. He awkwardly befriends the myconid babies. They lead us to an old abandoned drow manse. Unfortunately, it too, is filled with spiders. They swarm around us, much to the surprise of our wizardly companions. They succeed in scaring off the spiders, but warn that more will follow. Chagrined, they note that this behavior is unusual for the spiders and want us to level with them otherwise they won’t help us any further. Faust is mildly annoyed and explains that Enna is cursed and that he can help, but he’s kind of tapped out of magic at the moment and will need an hour to recuperate before he can break Enna’s curse.

Drip is being tortured pretty hardcore. They’re dropping hot coals on her feet, shoving brands on her face… it’s brutal. What’s worse - she’s giving truthful answers and they’re torturing her anyway. I guess it’s because of the staff in her bag of holding, the one that is obviously from House Mizzeryn, and the piwafwi gave it away. So she reveals the truth - we’re trying to save the world from the demon lords. But yeah, they don’t seem to care, the torture is gratuitous, so Drip becomes fed up enough to attempt an escape. She transforms into a Steeder and tries to break out of her bindings but fails. So now she’s just a flailing spider strapped to a stone slab.

Meanwhile, a familiar old friend is in the middle of a friendly interrogation by some council of nobility. Sir Hector, our paladin buddy, has been tracking us apparently. He’s pretty brazen actually - he just arrived in town and asked about us. Which resulted in him being brought before the council. They seem to recognize his knightly status so they’ve been treating him with some respect. The drow queen? Is brought to the interrogation and she inquires about Hector’s friends and where he suspects they might be. She then asks if one of his companions is a Genasi.

Drip finally manages to break through her bindings and jumps her torturer and “suggestively” bares her fangs at her neck. Just as this happens, Sir Hector is lead into the room by the noble that was interrogating him. They’re all “what the fuck”. The drow royal immediately demands that everyone stand down.

Drip, seeing an old ally arrive, assumes that he couldn’t have arrived on good terms and assumes that he is a traitor so she immediately jumps to attack him. Hector is taken by surprise and turns to the queen. “Can you ask your dog to stand down?”

The queen uses power word stun and stops Drip in her spider tracks. She turns to Hector and explains that his companion transformed herself and that if she wants to live, he will tell her to revert back to her true form lest she prefers death. Hector is super confused.

Sensing, Hector’s confusion, Drip turns back into her original Genasi form since she figures he’s too dumb to finesse the situation. They all turn away from Drip’s naked form like vampires hiding from sunlight. Hector drapes his cloak over her to protect her modesty. The Drow Queen is mightily offended.

Hector is able to “lay hands” on Drip and partially heals her scarred face and maimed feet.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party is taking a short rest. Faust is reading his Book of Messages to acquaint himself with the Greater Restortation spell since healing isn’t really his staple. After an hour has passed, he approaches Enna and like a televangelist denounces the curse and demands it to be gone in the name of the lord before smacking Enna in the forehead with the heel of his palm. Enna feels the curse leave her body and finds herself immediately disgusted by the cursed rubies in her pocket. She throws them away from herself and all of the spiders scratching at the door seem to lose interest.

With the curse lifted, the wizards agree to help us and we determine a game plan. The Sorcere is heavily guarded as Gromph is the brother of the Drow Queen. We’ll need to get to Gromph’s study as stealthily as possible and then need to find a way to teleport out… The wizard draws us a map.

As this is going on… Antillua, our drow companion, has managed to escape during the warehouse fight. She heads straight to her matron mother with news that there is a group that intends to destroy Menzoberrenzan.

Sir Hector and Drip are escorted back to the throne room. The queen wishes to know more about Drip and her friend’s exploits. Hector assures her that he only wishes to collect his friends and return them to the surface. The queen echoes her inquisitor’s inquiries - why does Drip have the demon staff of house Mizzeryn? Drip is honest and explains that they’re trying to return the demons back to their own plane.

The queen narrows her eyes and asks about where we plan to hold this final battle. Drip pleads ignorance about the logistics of it all as it’s Vizeryn who is mainly in charge of this plan. The queen explains that Vizeryn has been missing for a long while and that it doesn’t explain what our party intends to do here. Drip is a little too forthcoming with information--she implicates Gromph, suggesting that he summoned the Demogorgon in the first place and that we need to study his notes. The queen bristles at the suggestion that her brother is responsible and is very icy. She informs us not to utter Vizeryn’s name in her presence again and that we are grossly misinformed. Nevertheless, she wishes for us to investigate the demon presence and gives Drip the go ahead to go join the party so long as we follow the rules, refrain from nudity, and oh yeah - she demands on alchemy jug of endless mayo. And the drider cuirass.

As they move to rejoin the group, the rest of the party makes their way toward the Sorcere. We head north. We arrive at an immense staircase, the entrance of which is guarded by jade decorative spiders. The wizards explain that these stairs must be taken to continue further, and while they cast invisibility on two of us, the rest of us will require some stealthy maneuvering. We’ve decided that the dwarf belongs to Gryn’s wizard friend since he’s whipped him at least once.

The wizards make Bash and Faust invisible while the rest of us sneak. Telchur casts Pass Without Trace on us all. We manage to successfully begin our ascent up the stairs. The stairs are quite busy, there’s a lot of hustle and bustle across these 50 flights of stairs. We’re a little winded by the climb but manage to climb the steps without much fuss.

The tower of Sorcere stands before us. There’s some kind of procession going through the area, led by the royal guard. They’re actually there to escort Hector and Drip to the doors of Sorcere. The rest of us are stopped behind some Menzoberranzan citizens who are mystified by the royal guard presence. Hector and Drip are escorted into the tower. Drip looks around trying to gain her bearings. She spies a surfacer slave who expresses how good it is to hear Common as she hasn’t heard or spoken it in years. Drip asks for some directions and she points to some stairs.

Drip follows her directions and as she approaches the hall to the stairs, she comes face to face with a many eyed, many tentacled blob. It speaks to her telepathically. Some snark ensues. It points her to the direction of the stairs.

The rest of us our stuck outside of the cordoned off tower. The wizards are visibly spooked by the presence of the royal guard. They start to freak out, Faust approaches Gryn’s buddy and shakes him by the shoulders. “Nut up, soldier!” The wizard steels himself and informs us that there is a back door but it is through the sewers. We lament that we’re used to shit luck so…

We head around the back way. Enna ovehears some of the guards speaking in Elven as we sneak by. They’re gossiping about how the surfacers were allowed by the Matron Mother to ascend the tower, but that once they finish the job they are to be executed. She passes this information along to us discreetly once we’re out of ear shot.

So we head to the poop chute.It’s pretty disgusting. Super shitty. The myconids love it, as does Fart. The wizards are not so pleased. They kind of whine about the filth as they lead the way, until a giant tentacle leaps out of the water and grabs Gryn’s buddy, dragging him under the surface.

Drip and Hector head up the stairs and enter a library. They see wizards all studying the various books in the library but they take pause upon the intrusion and stare. One says in elven, “I don’t care what the Matron Mother says. I won’t be insulted by surfacers desecrating our library.” Magical energy crackles as they ready spell attacks.

Hector is hit by several magic missiles; simultaneously, Drip is hit by a firebolt.

Back in the pooper, Lamp lunges into the water and grab’s Venden (Gryn’s buddy) by the feet and hauls him out of the water. Enna is in no mood to ask questions and just jumps into the water to punch the monster. Bash somehow manages to knock the monster prone.

Up in the tower, Drip chides the wizards for their rudeness and summons two giant toads. They each attack one wizard.

The weird tentacled creature is joined by a second, which pops up behind Enna. The new tentacle monster manages to smack her with a tentacle. How very ecchi.

Telchur fires two arrows at the first monster and Faust follows up with an Eldritch Blast. It’s pretty badly hurt.

Upstairs, Hector is slashing and smiting like a badass. Must be nice.

Down in the poop chute, Venden shoots a bolt of electricity at the tentacle monster that grabbed him. Gryn follows it up with a fireball, which hits the second monster and narrowly misses Enna.

One of the mages is dead and one is restrained by a toad. Another shoots off a fireball at Drip and Hector. Another hits Drip with a Ray of Frost.

Lamp slashes at the badly injured otyugh but it stays on its feet. Enna, grappled by the other otyugh manages to break free and resumes punching.

Drip throws her snake staff at the grappled wizard; it latches on and bite him on the neck.

The badly injured otyugh attempts to run away but is swiftly put down by Bash, Lamp, and Enna. The second otyugh bites Enna with its ugly alligator mouth and succeeds in poisoning her. Telchur fires off two more arrows and the otyugh backs away from Enna. Faust follows up that ranged attack with two more Eldritch Blasts. The otyugh is being totally barraged.

Hector resumes hacking and slashing. Apparently he has his own version of Hunter’s Mark, which he casts on one guy because fuck that guy in particular.

One of the wizard misty steps away from Drip and Hector. The other two wizards gang up on the giant toad with a firebolt and shocking grasp. The toad seems unfazed. Drip takes a hit from the cowardly one that misty stepped away.

Bash succeeds in killing the second otyugh by slashing through it from top to bottom. Badass.

Drip uses a tidal wave back in the library. A wave of water erupts out of one of the bookshelves and slams into the three wizards, knocking one prone while the other two are buffetted by the slamming tide.

Hector slashes through the wizard staff of one of the mages and then decapitates him. It’s pretty badass. The other mage points his staff at Hector and begins some incantations. A burst of lightning is conducted through the water and strikes Hector squarely and looks on in disappointment as Hector grits his teeth and bears through the pain.

Drip follows up with Toll the Dead on one of the remaining wizards. A bell tolls for only him, and he shrivels and starts to puke blood. He dies.

Once the battle dies down in the poop chute, we find a tunnel that leads up into Gromph’s study. It appears to his toilet. There are lots of handholds to climb up, it’ll just be gross. Before we ascend, Bash asks Venden about the Stone Curse. If anyone tries to use earth magic it’ll sound an alarm and likely cause the spell to fail, throwing the caster in the air. The measure was set in place to prevent earthquakes and protect the integrity of the city. Soooo yeah, not worth it.

We climb out of the toilet. The chamber is lined with books and scrolls. A desk made of polished bone greets us. There is an obsidian statue of a four armed Drow warrior. Weird.

On the other side of the door are Hector and Drip. Bash peers through the key hole and peeps Hector on the other side. She shouts “Order of the Gauntlet” before opening it.

Faust settles in to ritually cast Detect Magic. Drip uses control water to clean off the party because she can’t stand the stench. Hector kind of leches on the ladies but is turned off the shit. We find out that Drip is

Faust’s detect magic outlines several items as well as a door hidden in the wall. The other objects include a gem, some spell components, and the fact that are so few magical items seems kind of surprising. The statue also glows with magic.

The gem is a spell gem based on what Venden tells us, Enna hands it to Faust.

Venden examines the secret door. He surmises that it requries a password. Faust deduces that there is a portal on the other side of the door and that a password is in fact necessary. Just as Faust finishes his little investigation, Venden goes “Aha!” says a word in elven and disintegrates into ash. Wel… that was interesting.

Realizing that there are dire consequences to being wrong, Faust starts investigating the study more carefully. He spies a rune underneath the desk and, being able to read all writing, reads it outloud in common. He asks Enna to say Trost in Elven. As soon as she utters the elven translation, the secret door slides open.

A dark gloomy portal awaits us. Drip enters first, followed by Bashira, Enna and the rest of the party. What greets us on the other side is some kind of magically generated maze. Drip tries to figure out which direction to go but seems pretty confused. Faust recalls that mazes like this require a high level spell to guide you to the end but can’t remember what its called.

Drip concentrates and attempts again to predict the correct direction. Faust lays a hand on her shoulder and assures her “I don’t really believe in you, but pretend that I do” and casts Guidance on her. She is able to deduce the correction direction and as we move, the maze seems to flip and disorient us for a moment before revealing a second door, one that we can walk right through. We enter and find ourselves in a chamber with double doors and several windows. Outside we don’t see Menzoberranzan but lots of green, gaseous fog instead.

A female drow in priestess regalia stands in a magic circle, hands resting on her hips. There is a shelf full of arcane paraphernalia. On a lectern in front of her is an open tome covered in spidery glyphs. The only exit is the portal behind us.

The priestess is a priestess of Lolth and she demands that as our superior, we are obligated to let her go. Faust argues that there is no need and that she’s not in a position to make demands but he’d be willing to bargain with her. She states that since they are in Menzoberranzan - Faust corrects her that they’re actually in a pocket dimension - that we are obligated to listen to her. Faust then shrugs his shoulders and states that they could just leave her be for another century and he’d be just fine, ball is in her court and if she wants her freedom she should just tell them why she was imprisoned and what she needed to talk to Gromph about.

Drip casts detect magic and illuminates some runes, protective wards, and the tome of course. The tome is called the Book of Eight. We find 1000 gp worth of spell components, and a 6000 gp diamond. Enna reaches for it, touches the diamond and disappears. The diamond clatters to the ground. As we peer down at it, we see a one inch tall Enna in the gem. We all laugh at her. Fortunately, the spell is deactivated. Yllarah, the priestess, joins the laughter and can’t believe that anyone was dumb enough to fall for that ruse. We assure her that Enna is definitely the type to do that.

Faust searches for some magical items and notices the glyphed glass cases. Drip lowers the wards on Faust’s choice of the two, the left. There are three spells and one component in the glass shelf on the left. As Faust loots, Drip notices a shadow demon lurking on the ceiling and Bash sees some weird thirteen eyed, wide mawed creature peering through the windows. It’s huge. We decide to bounce, so we rush back through the portal. The priestess shrieks after us since we made a deal with her… but we leave her “It was so nice to meet you byyyyyyyyyee”

We run through the portals and arrive back in Gromph’s study. Gryn wants to get us out of here but in order to make a portal we need to deactivate the anti portal magic that is currently protecting the city.

Meanwhile… a drow dressed in all black robes speaks with a drow priestess. There are skeleton archers on the wall nearby. He’s arguing for the usefulness of necromancy in the protection of the city. The priestess looks on the corpses with disdain and also find them weak as they are fragile.

While they bicker, we burst through the door and uh… fight music ensues. Hector is the first to react as skeletons close in on us. He crumbles one to dust. Lamp shield bashes another skeleton and knocks it down.

One of the mages summons a ball of noxious, poisonous gas. Most of us are okay but Gryn and Lamp are having a hard time dealing with the poison. Telchur, not needing to breathe, seems to do fine with the poison too though he seems to shake off the effect. He notices some movement beyond the door on the other side of the room. He nocks a couple of arrows and points them at the doorway in the event that anything moves through it. Faust backs out of the clutches of the gas and then casts Wall of Fire along the wall where the mages are standing.

Rumpadump notices something weird going on with the door on the other side of the room and asks to explore but Faust shuts him down. Drip notices the door as well and bursts through the door. On the other side he finds a bunch of skeletons preparing for a feast. They look very annoyed and one rushes at Drip with a butcher knife at the ready. Drip casts Thunderwave to intercept them. At the same moment, Telchur lets his arrows loose and he explodes one skeleton with an arrow and pins a second skeleton to the wall.

Hector is a bamf and just devastates the necromancer. He cuts off his arm, smites him, the whole shebang. The necro goes down. It is fantastic.

Telchur fires off at some more skeletons. Faust runs out within sight of the priestess and hits her with an Eldritch Blast. Rumpadump provides some support with his wand of magic missiles to those fighting the skeleton warriors. The priestess, sensing that she is outgunned, reaches for a crystal amulet on her neck and shatters it on the ground. An immense blaring alarm issues from the shattered crystal. She laughs and announces in common that all of menzobarranzan knows we’re here and tries to run away. Bash cleaves through her leg as she attempts to run and Hector follows up with another attack. Their combined attacks kill her, but now we have all these alarms to contend with.

Bash disregards the alarm and starts looting bodies. Gryn rushes forward and gurgles that we need to destroy the gem in the next room. He’s struggling, so Faust heals him a bit. Hector is first to reach the gem and he destroys it. When he does, he immediately starts dancing. We’re weirded out by it but it gets worse when he doesn’t stop. Apparently he’s being magically compelled. Gryn urges us all to gather around him and hold hands. And he proceeds to transport us to the Tower of Araj. There is an old hag with a cart full of pixies at the entrance, she’s negotiating with Vizeryn who shakes her hand and bids her farewell. Upon noting our arrival he immediately starts shouting orders at Gryn. I guess an apprentice’s work is never over. Gryn starts hauling the pixies into the tower and we settle in after a long journey.

5/30/2020 “Don’t mess this up for me, Telchur!” (he does)

It takes a day for Vizeryn to free Enna from the diamond. He relentlessly teases her the entire time. It didn’t need to take a day but Vizeryn was preoccupied with the pixies he had just purchased when we arrived. Poor Enna is stuck watching and listening to him as he experiments and dismembers pixies so he can make more gender bender potion. Faust approaches him to find out if he’d be interested in trading something for the flesh golem manual but he’s not interested. He does ask about Gromph’s study and how it compares to his tower. They shoot the breeze for a bit and talk about Faust’s inability to get dirty, he also gives Faust some advice on the flesh golem and then shoos him back downstairs.

Drip exits the tower and finds the nearest amenable looking Zirkwood mushroom and casts talk to plants. After the mushroom makes a pun, Drip decides its okay and casts Awaken it over the course of the night. He names the woke tree Woodstock. Bash gives it his partially disintegrated piwafwi.

The next day, Gryn and Vizeryn meet us for breakfast. Vizeryn wants to talk about Antillua - we don’t know where she went but she abandoned us in Menzoberranzan. Vizeryn is also curious about which of us spoke to the Matron Mother and were escorted directly to Sorcere. What did they talk about he wonders? Drip lies through her teeth that she didn’t reveal any information about Vizeryn to the Matron Mother and Vizeryn doesn’t really seem press her on it. Drip changes the subject by saying that we need to go kill a beholder and Vizeryn concedes that she has a point. Karazikar, the beholder, has a mine on an island in the Dark Lake; we’ve encountered some of his followers before in the labyrinth. They were super dead and we used their journal to find the maze engine. After some instruction on Beholders from Rick, I mean Vizeryn, we prepare ourselves and head out to go slay a beholder. We leave the ritual components that Vizeryn needs with him as well as Woodstock and the shroom babies.

During our journey, Janet seems to be having a nervous breakdown. Bash pulls her out and they have a heart to heart. Apparently Janet is kind of freaked out by Beholders since her original wielder, Rehemma Kayem, was killed by them.

We reach a Kua’Toa checkpoint dock. Faust approaches the Kua’Toa with a piece of paper and a quill so they can communicate via writing but it turns out that one of them can speak Common. The fish guy propositions Faust…? Creepy. We’re able to rent their largest boat and take 6 rothay with us because apparently we have rothay with us.

One of the Rothays has taken a liking to Enna and has been following her around and trying to lick her. Drip casts water breathing on us all as a precaution. We continue traveling and as we do we hear some strange click clacking sounds in the distance. The closer we get, the louder it becomes. As we approach the source of the noise, we notice some hooked horrors hanging from the cave ceiling, eying our rothays. Let’s go kill some hookers, y’all.

Telchur is quickest to react, he starts shooting. It does little to discourage the hookers and they come at our boat, several of them landing in the boat. One of them manages to knock Bash out of the boat. She goes over the side but manages to grab a hold at the last minute. One of them hits Drip too, she reacts by casting Thunderwave.It hits two of the hooked horrors but the crack of thunder also dislodges a bunch of stalactites from the cave ceiling, causing it to rain down on the boat. Hector starts wailing on one of the hookers and through a succession of 3 hits just annihilates it.

Lamp fends off a couple hooked horrors and then rushes over to Bashira He hauls her out of the water nice and easy with a nat 20. Bash appreciates the help but still bristles at being in a vulnerable situation. She takes it out on the nearest hooker by shield bashing it into the lake. Enna tries to lay a kick on another hooker but somehow manages to slide her ankle along its beak without really making enough contact to do any damage. She gets frustrated and lashes out with three more strikes, two hit the hooker solidly in the face.

Telchur got rocked out of the boat but managed to hold onto the side. He casts water walk on us all and then hauls himself into the boat. It’s a good thing too, because the hookers that got knocked out of the boat take revenge by hooking onto the side of the boat and rocking it back and forth. Drip, Hector, Lamp, and Bash all go tipping out alongside one of the other hookers. Two of the hooked horrors attack Faust, one hits, Faust strikes back with a Hellish Rebuke. The offending hooker’s head catches fire and burns above the water.

Drip runs around to the other side of the boat, winks at Hector, and transforms into a mosasaurus. She tries to eat one of the hooked horrors but somehow manages to miss. Hector is a little bewildered by his ability to stand on water but also by the giant dinosaur that is now beside him. He shrugs and starts wailing on one of the hooker monsters. He does a number on it but it stays on its feet.

Lamp fends off one hooker with his pick while Faust is shooting off eldritch blasts and tries to get his fingers sliced off since these hookers are all up in his grill. Enna goes super aggro and lays like three blows on her hooker. She finishes with a roundhouse kick and the monstrosity disappears beneath the water. Bashira shield bashes and slashes with Janet. Telchur is trying to fire off arrows but is being nuzzled by one of the Rothay in the boat lol Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to affect his ability to shoot though.

The hookers, sensing imminent defeat especially with a giant dinosaur involved, begin to fall back and retreat. The one nearest to Drip tries to escape and gets grappled. By Drip’s monster mouth. Drip swallows the creature and eats it whole.

One of the hooked horrors reaches past Faust and Lamp, trying to grab one of the rothays but it fails and then desperately swims away and flees. Lamp climbs back on the boat and pulls out his repeating crossbow. He hits one of the retreating hooked horrors but it keeps frantically swimming away. Faust fires off an Eldritch Blast at each of two hooked horrors, hitting them both pretty solidly but they still struggle to retreat. One is stuck on a cliffside and the other is still swimming. Enna shadow steps to the hooker on the cliff wall, she appears above it and drop kicks it back into the water. She hits its as they fall back into the water.

We make short work of the remaining hookers and tend to our rothays and put some more distance between us and the site of the battle. The current seems to slow to a crawl. As we row, we see why - there’s some kind of dam up ahead. The dam is lit by some fire beetles otherwise it would have been difficult to notice. There are two kua’toa at the top.

We continue to approach, the kua’toa lower the dam door lol The leader of the kua’toa stationed here starts yelling in a variety of languages until he lands on one that some of us understand. In fishy Elven, he calls out to us and Enna translates. Apparently we can’t cross unles we allow our boat to be painted blue as decreed by their new god Ploopidipoop. We don’t object, so they let us through only for us to discover that we are stuck between two doors. The water raises beneath us and we slowly rise. As we reach the top we are escorted out of the boat so they can paint it. After they finish, the leader states that there is an additional fee but it requires consultation with Ploopidipoop. He vomits all over the idol. Grossed out, we quietly sneak back onto the boat and start rowing away. He notices us and shouts for us to wait - Ploopidipoop demands that we are given five gold. He tosses five gold pieces onto the boat as we depart while the rest of the kua’toa at the encampment, watch us with wide, unblinking fishy eyes.

Our journey forward leads us towards a strange pillar and little stalagmites with strange eyes engraved on them. Faust realizes that they are made from divination magic and resemble the eyes tattooed on Karazikar’s cultists.

We’re definitely approaching the mine.

Another boat is docked near the pillar. Out on the jetty is a guy with nine eye tattoos on his forehead. He’s holding a staff and his robe is also covered in eyes. Weird. He approaches us a we prepare to dock. It’s almost like he was expecting us. He has a retinue of 20 or so people. There are duegar, orog, and several other races. It’s like a diversity poster. As he gets closer… Telchur realizes that this dude his adoptive brother, Ivan DeCaine. We are all thrown for a loop. He suddenly recognizes Telchur and… it totally gets awkward because he’s thrown for a loop too.

He finally regains his composure and addresses us by welcoming us to Karazikar’s lair. He assumes the rothay are offerings but he doesn’t understand who sent us. Telchur immediately calls him a dumb bastard and says that while he and his father always knew he would find his way in the muck but they never knew he’d find him this far down.

Ivan is pretty annoyed but attempts to collect the rothay. His lackeys approach with leads to take the rothay but Enna holds her arms outstretched and refuses. Ivan addresses Lamp as the leader, and Lamp is just stuck like a deer in the headlights. Bash convinces Enna that if she leaves the rothay we’ll buy her a herd of cows when we return to the surface. Enna, tears in her eyes, relents.

Ivan then escorts us into the mine so we can meet Karazikar. He and Telchur quibble as they walke while bash peppers them with awkward questions. Faust asks about all of the eyes as he notices the eyes on Ivan’s cloak narrow as they stare at Telchur. He wants to know if Karazikar can see through all of them, Ivan confirms that this is true and that Karazikar sees all. That’s not creepy at all…

The mine is full of scaffolding and there are individuals of all different species milling about. We continue to ask about Karazikar and the situation here for followers. He is pretty forthcoming with information and describes himself as Karazikar’s right hand man. 120 feet above us we see Karazikar up above us. Greaaat.

There is a network of various tunnels with miners milling about with ore and gems. Karazikar has the classiest Brooklyn accent. He yells out to Ivan, asking that we all get started on butchering the rothay so we can have a nice big shindig.

Bash asks a nearby orog if they like working here but they don’t understand her so… that conversation goes nowhere. Karazikar seems pretty nice to his workers which is really bizarre and kind of takes us by surprise.

He wants to know where we’re from, we can’t be from Gracklstugh since there are no duergar among us and the city is his best customer. Faust explains that Gracklstugh is experiencing a dragon problem and that we are free agents with an entrepreneurial spirit. Drip then presents the giant diamond we got from Grog’s.

Karazikar is impressed. He levitates the diamond and examines it. He agrees to purchase it but wants to know what we would like in return. While we think…

Ivan beckons to Telchur from a cave off to the side, Telchur follows so he can figure out what’s going on. Ivan wants to know if Telchur was sent by their father. Telchur explains that the estate burned down and he’s just scrounging around looking for a meal. Ivan threatens that Telchur better not mess things up for him.

Faust suggests that they don’t understand the full scope of what Karazikar has to offer so they would appreciate a tour. He also plys him to join us on the tour but… Karazikar has other matters to attend to and declines. Darn.

Karazikar addresses Ivan as Shadrach and orders him to give us a tour and suggests that he might join us later before departing to a cave up at the highest level of the pillar. Shadrach leads us into one of the tunnels. There are a bunch of different races working here and they seem to be doing so happily. Its weird. Shadrach speaks with us about his trials - apparently it involves being dumped in a hole to starve and then a beholder zaps you until you die. If you survive you can be a special follower. He asks what we’re interested in purchasing and Bash comes up with a story that we’re here on behalf of a wealthy private investor. Shadrach sees through the lie and says he will have to speak with his boss. He poofs out. Drip and Faust, sensing that things won’t go well try to hand off their vials of purple worm poison to Telchur. The workers seem to notice this and start clearing out. Once they disappear, the tunnel caves in, blocking our exit.

Karazikar appears up above us and says that he tried to give us the benefit of the doubt but now he has to zap us.

We all ready ourselves but Karazikar is fast - he opens up his antimagic field and then starts firing rays off at us. One of the rays throws Telchur into the scaffolding against the cavern wall. Hector gets slowed, and Bashir gets put to sleep. There are still miners in the tunnel and they start attacking us as well.

Drip moves out of the anti magic field, rushes up to Telchur and applies the purple worm poison to one of his arrows before summoning his unicorn totem.

Hector starts beating the crap out of the miners surrounding us. He takes out two miners. Karazikar moves his anti magic field so that practically all of us are in it.

Telchur retrieves the poisoned arrow that Drip poisoned for him and shoots it at Karazikar. It strikes true, and hits insanely hard (49 damage dude!). Karazikar starts yelling in pain.

The antimagic field is really giving us a tough time. Drip finally is able to get out of the field and pulls out a scroll of Earth Bind, which Karazikar succumbs to - it causes him to fall 60 feet further down.

Karazikar is super pissed at Telchur and fires a bunch of rays at him but Telchur succeeds in shaking off the effects. Drip gets hit by a ray of death though… and she dies. Shit. Telchur is soon to follow her as his brother Ivan/Shedrak.

Bash drinks her Flying potion, giving her the ability to surge toward the Beholder. Karazikar lowered his antimagic field, giving Bash an opportunity to charge in and strike with Janet.

Faust, noticing that Drip has fallen. Runs toward her, pulling out on the of the revivify diamonds that we bought. Through magical means he crushes the diamonds between his palms and slams it down onto her chest, imbuing her with light energy. She gasps as she is brought back to life. For extra measure, he heals her and dashes forward to get to Telchur. Drip somehow beats him there and heals Telchur. Fortunately, her unicorn totem is still up so we all get some healing back.

Bash is up in Karazikar’s face, which he doesn’t appreciate. He fires a petrification ray at Bash and Bash turns to stone… She’s flying in the air. But now she’s falling… thank goodness for the ring of feather fall. Her statute floats gently back down to the ground.

There are laser beams being fired at Drip, Faust, and Teclhur and they’re being surrounded by miners. Telchur’s brother spots us clustered and casts cone of cold. Drip gets frozen. It sucks. Faust is able to withstand the cold and after hitting Shedrak with two eldritch blasts, he heals Drip. Hector heals her as well. Reinvigorated, Drip dashes away and cast Conjure Animals to drop two Rocktopuses on top of the Beholder. One of them slips off but the other is able to grab ahold of the Beholder and grapples him.

Lamp’s earth elemental reappears from the wall behind the Beholder and throws a bunch as it emerges, striking the Beholder in the back of the head. Enna has also shadow stepped onto its head so they’re all dancing atop Karazikar’s head. Karazikar fires off a death ray at the octopuses, but they somehow managed to survive. It fires a ray of fear at Enna, and somehow she succumbs. Enraged that the octopuses are still alive, he uses a telekinetic ray and throws them off. Enna manages to land the killing blow on Karazikar after shaking off the fear coursing through her.

Shedrak/Ivan yells at Telchur and anger and bamfs out of there. The miners look insanely upset.

At first it seems like they might want to fight us but Bash has the clever idea of plucking the eyeball out of Karazikar’s head and then flying up to the center of the cavern. Faust summons a wall of fire behind her in an intimidating display. The party claims the mine as their own and Drip demands that everyone drop their left shoe in the hole in the ground where one of Karazikar’s followers was undergoing his “trial”.

Meanwhile…

Captain Blacksull of Gracklestugh meets with a rogue wizard in a brutalist, barebones office. It appears to be that she’s meeting with Telchur’s brother. He offers the mine to her, but she is skeptical as we were able to defeat Karazikar. An angelic, winged figure with a southern accent enters the room and announces that if they want it, she can make anything happen.

06/13/2020 A Succubus and a Wedding

Some of the miners are dutifully carving a “pillar of the community”. Drip summons a Xorn to rob the mine blind. As she does this, Faust and Telchur attempt to evangelize the crap out of the mine but the miners are pretty resistant. Apparently, Karazikar was a great boss. One of the miners rushes into the open cavern and warns that a duergar fleet approaches.

Bashira and Enna exit the mine to investigate. The fleet is encircling the mine. Enna notices about 40 steeders on the ceiling, closing in on us from above. Enna and Bash return to the mine to inform us. We discuss the possibility of Drip using Control Water to take out the fleet.

As we talk, we hear thunderous explosions around us so we book it to our boat and start rowing. Faust starts shooting off some eldritch blasts and takes out the cannons on a handful of ships. In spite of this boon, the other ships continue to close in on us. Drip uses Control Water to create channel for us and guides us away from our pursuers. Once we are far enough away she then shapes the water into a tidal wave and pushes them away from us.

Ahead we spot a dark tunnel which we take as an evasive maneuver. The duergar attempt to fire cannons and crossbow bolts at us but we are able to remain untouched. Faust casts light on the prow of the boat to see better and notices that we seem to be hurtling towards a water fall. There are stalagmites and rocks in our way, Faust warns Enna, who is navigating, to avoid certain obstacles and we make our way toward the edge of the waterfall. As we approach the descent, Faust uses dimension door and hauls Lamp out of the boat to a landmass at the bottom. Drip wildshapes into a giant eagle and hauls Telchur and Sir Hector out of the boat. Bashira and Enna slow fall. We all manage to land safely.

Shortly after we land, Vizeryn brings us back to the tower. He greets us and we present the Beholder eye. He has completed his pixie based gender bender potions and offers them to those of us that are still gender swapped. Drip knocks one back and though the change is uncomfortable, he returns to his male form. Bashira was initially suspicious, but seeing Drip come out the otherside just fine, she risks the potion as well. She downs the bottle and starts to change as well… it starts out great, but after he changes back to a man he starts to sprout hair everywhere. After his transformation is complete he looks like a giant wookie.

The myconids rush to greet us; they’re super excited that we’ve returned. They inform us that they’ve had visions about the Demon wedding. They seem really mystified that we haven’t seen the visions or spores.Stool urges us to follow them and leads us to a beautiful, swirly mushroom and tells us that if we eat a few we might be able to see. Faust, Enna, and Drip partake in the mushrooms and have a little ayahuasca trip.

Our vision shows us Araumycos, the largest and greatest being of our world. We hear voices chanting Araumycos, declaring that all that you see before you is Araumycos. The entire world is in danger if you don’t come. To the wedding we presume.

The three druggies come to and explain what they’ve seen. We need to collect a certain mushroom cap that only grows in the steps of a powerful don. Seems like we could collect that at the demon wedding. We resolve to go, and contemplate on upgrading our duds.

Vizeryn demands that we take Woodstock, our animated zirkwood, because he’s noisy. After we gather our things together, we disembark with our steeds and Woodstock. It’s slow going because Woodstock is slow, but between the three of us that have sporevision we’re able to navigate our way towards Neverlight Grove.

Drip, ever our expert navigator, leads us down the wide cavernous tunnels. It’s smooth going for a while, but eventually the path forksh. One pathway reveals three shambling fungus zombies. Drip whispers “Take my lead” and starts shambling towards them. With a shrug, we follow his lead. The zombies don’t seem to notice, but everyone except Telchur and Faust sucks at imitating zombies. As we follow them, from a ledge up above we hear someone hissing as if to get our attention. “Psst, psst..” there’s a woman up above that notices that we’re not fungus. She’s in the process of dressing a cave fisher carcass. In one hand she carries a bow.

There’s something off about her.. She’s a little shifty. She mentions something about needing protection from spores in the air if we’re going to attend the wedding. Faust asks us if she had to partake in any magic mushrooms to see the spores. We’re dubious and don’t really believe her. As we talk, Faust and Drip notice the wall start to ripple and crack on the wall beside us. We all ready ourselves for a potential fight.

All of a sudden several Umberhulks burrow out from the walls to attack us. We all let go our barrage of attacks; Faust succeeds in casting Hold Monster one one of them, allowing Enna an opening to attack. Drip casts Toll the Dead on the umber hulk closest to him. Woodstock, behind us, is being assailed by another umber hulk. He gets hit three times pretty hard. One of the umber hulks grabs Faust in his jaws and bites down, but Faust maintains concentration on the Hold Monster spell.

As it tries to attack Faust again, Bash shield bashes it in the face and knocks it down. Faust is able to skirt his way around the umber hulks and out of immediate danger. Concerned for Woodstock and the myconids he’s carrying, Drip transforms Woodstock into a giant ape and Woodstock immediately drops the myconids (who run to safety) and starts wailing on the nearest umber hulk.

Predictably, Telchur levitates. Sir Hector slashes at the one knocked prone, but he can’t get in a clean hit since Bash is covering most of its vitals. Our elven companion with the bow fires a few arrows to assist us.

Enna, a flurry of punches and kicks, beats the snot out of the the umber hulk that is being held by Faust’s spell. It goes down like a sack of potatoes.

The umber hulk grappling with Bash manages to break free and stand then attempts to turn the tables and pick him up but Bash holds his ground and prevents him from throwing him across the room. In desperation, all of the umber hulks’ eyes eerily glow in a swirl of colors. They succeed in confusing Drip, Bash, and Woodstock with some interesting results. Drip punches one of the party members, Bash is disoriented, and Woodstock runs away. Being naturally charismatic, Hector is largely unaffected by the spiraling colors. He slashes at one of the remaining umber hulk and follows the melee attack with a brilliant smite.

Enna rushes into the battle but notices the flashing lights in its eyes. In spite of her confusion, she still attacks the umber hulk, punching it in the face. Lamp succumbs to the confusion as well but also manages to land a hit on the umber hulk.

Despite our confusion, the umber hulks are pretty freaked out and retreat, one of them burns in the wall of fire and dies while the other two succeed in running off though Bash and Enna do give chase after breaking free from confusion.

With time to regroup, we confront Minerva, the elf with quite a bit of suspicion since the umber hulks arrived nearly in time with her. She appeals to Sir Hector’s sense of honor and manages to talk us down from a full on interrogation. Bash apologizes for our hot headedness but Enna is still not convinced. With the matter temporarily settled, we get back down to business and talk about how to protect ourselves from the spores. Minerva claims to be a member of the Emerald Enclave and can share with us a salve that will protect us from the spores.

Once that’s been completed we find a spot to make camp. Enna, doubting the sincerity of the elven woman, stays up with Faust to keep watch. While Faust reads, Enna watches Minerva like a hawk and notices that she’s slowly maneuvering closer and closer to Telchur and Sir Hector - inching her sleeping roll along until she’s snuggled between them. She starts to whisper into Telchur’s ear, at which point Enna has had enough and catches Faust’s attention. He looks up a little irked but then takes in the weird behavior and immediately casts Hold Monster on Minerva then gestures for Enna to hoist her out of her sleeping bag and tie her up. Once she’s tied Faust asks her “What the fuck are you doing?” and threatens to set her aflame.

Minerva coyly looks up at him from hooded eyes and asks him if he ever feels lonely in the middle of the night and casts Charm Person. Faust succumbs to the thrall and tries to untie her but Enna gets in the way and grabs Minerva, demanding to know what she’s doing to her friends. Minerva steps back and her heel catches on Hector’s armor. She falls over and with insane reflexes, Hector has her in a hold. He muses that this was a rude way to wake someone up but then helps her up and demands to know why Enna is threatening our guest. The rest of the party awakens in confusion.

Enna tries to explain that something isn’t right so Hector uses his Divine Sense and realizes that Minerva is some kind of demonic creature. He approaches her with his blade drawn, as if to free her and then plunches the sword through her neck, killing her. As her body shifts into its true form, Enna kicks her and Faust spits on her body. Hector regards Enna with a nod as he wipes his blades and apologizes for doubting her before promptly going back to sleep.

Drip and Telchur lament that they put that weird mushroom lotion on their bodies at Minerva’s instruction and wonder if it will be to their detriment. Some regrets. With the evening’s events over, we go back to sleep. The rest of the night is uneventful and everyone sleeps.

The next morning we continue our travels to the Neverlight Grove and the closer we get, the more animatedly Stool and Rumpadump chatter in our minds. Crowds are starting to appear around us, lots of myconids dancing, more shroom zombies… Spores in the air are becoming more noticeable, with several landing on Woodstock. He doesn’t seem to succumb to them fortunately. No zombification on our watch!

Thanks to our mounts, we’re able to push and shove our way through the throngs of fungi. It takes some urging to get a couple of the mounts through but with a little patience we’re able to urge them on. There are spores everywhere, some so massive that even Woodstock appears dwarfed.

Most of the guests appear to have fungus all over them. Enna, who refused to use the lotion that Minerva showed us, appears to be really itchy and notices that there are shrooms growing on her hands. Telchur hands her the remainder of the lotion and she applies it to her hands, sloughing off the fungi in the process.

The procession comes to a halt as we approach a fungus encrusted stone giant who asks us for gifts. Telchur immediately hands over a drow longbow. The stone giant explains that the bride would prefer a body part that we don’t need.

Faust rummages through his pack and hands over the Pudding King’s face, attached to a skull. He hands Telchur a derro finger that he’s had since back in Gracklestugh. Bash hands over the blood covered whip we got in Menzoberranzan and pawns off a bunch of garbage, Drip provides an urn of ashes from a powerful wizard, and Enna produces something equally macabre. Hector has nothing to offer so Faust fibs that Enna and Hector are a couple and their gift goes together. The stone giant asks for a kiss and the pair sells it so we can move along. The stone giant sighs happily “This is why I love weddings. Love is in the air.. And spores, lots of spores.”

As we enter the wedding venue we’re bombarded with myconid thoughts and there are several guests milling around us, bombarding us with questions and generally getting in our way. There is a pretty grisly buffet table with live beings being dissolved into fertilizer. Bash discreetly puts a few out of their misery. Lamp and Hector wander off to hang out with some succubi, Drip tries to collect them to join Drip, Faust, Telchur, Enna and the myconids who are approached by a large myconid who sprays a bunch of spores which cuts through the chitter chatter in our heads.

He introduces himself as Sovereign Visigia and wants to know if we are here to respond to his message. He pulls us aside, save for Lamp and Hector who are unwilling to leave the attentions of the succubi. Visigia explains that Araumycos is a god - a sentient being but he is currently asleep in a dormant state. Myconids are capable of melding - fusing consciousness and Visigia asks that we meld with him to awaken Araumycos. He feels confident in our ability to fight off the evil threatening the myconid colony. We agree to help, but we first need to extricate Lamp and Hector. The succubi that they leave squeal in disappointment when they leave before starting a weird orgy together.

We approach the Sovereign and he guides us into a circle around us. We about to do some weird sexual shit, y’all. As we meld with the Sovereign, we find ourselves floating in a weird white space with a planet sized brain in the distance. Rumpadump and Stool tell us that we can become the ideal version of ourselves in the meld. They’re both adult sized; Stool looks badass and is covered in spiky plate armor with large blades in his hands. He’s inspired by Enna’s fighting spirit and Bash and Lamp’s armor. Rumpadump has a wand and is wreathed in flame. He wants to be a powerful magic user like Faust. It’s adorable. We squee.

Each of us takes the shape of our ideal form, most of us looking more attractive and muscular. Some of us are wreathed in different auras. Everyone looks badass.

We fly towards the brain, which appears to be rotating. As we get closer, fungi grows all around us and a towering figure appears before us. It’s Zuggtmoy and she looks annoyed. She demands to know why we are intruding on her special day. Talk about a bridezilla…

Drip and Faust fib that their purpose for coming to the wedding was to gather samples from her footsteps. She narrows her eyes and ponders why we would do such an inane thing. “For science!” Faust replies. She seems even more irritated.

Faust huffs, annoyed, and mutters that he gave up the Pudding King’s face as a wedding gift for this. Zuggtmoy seems pleased by this and her lips twitch into a smirk. She assumes that we want her favor since we brought her the face of her rival and states that if we leave this domain, we are welcome to collect the mushrooms that grow in her footsteps at the wedding. Drip and Faust consider this while the rest of the party exchanges a look and draw their weapons, readying for a fight.

Oh boy…

06/27/2020 Some weird vaguely sexual spirit journey

So I guess we’re going to fight Zuggtmoy. Yaaaay…

She is pretty dismissive and wants us to leave her domain. Faust tries to guilt her into letting everyone stay but she’s too much in Bridezilla mode to pay us any heed. With a wave of her hand she summons a bunch of spores and casts them in our direction. Woodstock, with shocking speed moves out front to defend us while Faust summons a wall of fire to block Zuggtmoy and her spores from reaching us. Bridezilla’s attack bludgeons Woodstock and he goes down hard.

Lamp tries to teleport, focusing his energy with all his might. He only succeeds in looking constipated. Drip, however, takes note of the technique and gives teleportation a shot. He succeeds and with a bellow, he grabs Zuggtmoy and casts Contagion, imparting her with a gift of flesh rot. She wails angrily in surprise.

Bash flies over the wall and into battle, shield bashing the demon queen in the face. He’s slashing at her. The shroom babies rush in to join Bash, Drip and Lamp but they expend all their energy reaching her. By the time they arrive she unleashes a torrent of spores. Everyone except the shroom babies shakes it off.

Enna and Telchur focus their attentions on the corruption nodes--there seem to be four of them. Enna teleports directly next to one and punches it, but as she does, a big plume of noxious gas sprays out at her. She is able to cough her way through it.

Noticing that Enna was assailed by spores, Faust targets the node nearest her and scores a critical hit on the node - completely evaporating it. He then strikes another node with a second beam of eldritch energy, but the node strikes back with poison barbs.

Telchur shoots another node with two arrows, one of which is flaming. The node erupts in fire and burns to ash.

Zuggtmoy slaps Bash around with some pseudopods, it’s gnarly. Drip gets the same treatment. They look like they are straight up not having a good time. Still, Zuggtmoy is having a worse time. She is looking haggard and rotten and wails at Drip “What have you done to me? This is my wedding day!” Drip doesn’t care. He hits her up with another spell - Blight. It hits pretty dang hard.

Bash strikes at the demon bride as she turns to face Drip. He strikes but as he does Rumpadump fires off magic missiles at him. Bash succeeds in shield bashing him to the ground before he can attack any further. Stool moves around the demon queen to start approaching Drip.

Telchur takes out the final node. Zuggtmoy shrieks angrily that we’ve ruined her wedding.

Hector runs up and wails on Zuggtmoy, and is immediately assailed by Stool who shivs him. Zuggtmoy is livid. She focuses all of her attacks on Drip and he blips out of existence. Lamp flies over the wall of fire and lunges for Bridezilla’s neck. He launches his pick into her and with a shocked expression, she too blips out of existence.

With the danger gone, Bash tells Lamp to blip out of here. He’s just trying to see if its safe. Lamp succeeds. Encouraged, Bash attempts as well… but fails. Faust tries to talk to Araumycos. Its quiet at first, but a deep bass reverberates all around us, stating that it is fine. It shares with us the gift of insight - it shows us the rise and fall of civilizations as it lives on and on and on…

It then sends us back to reality. We all wake from a dream, some of us laying down and drooling, some just camly laying down in respose. Faust is sitting up straight, his eyes wide open.

As we come to, we see that we are tended to by the Sovreign Visiga. We are tucked away in a cavern, but outside there is a great deal of commotion. Drip, being the first to wake up, immediately contacts Grazzilax via sending stone. Grazzilax responds that he’s already hear. Drip notices a myconid walk into the cavern. Its form shifts all of a sudden, and our Illithid buddy Grazzilax appears. He warns us that Jubilex has crashed the party and as if on cue, Grazillax announces his arrival. There are oozes and slimes everywhere, engulfing the guests. There are several spore servants trying to protect Zuggtmoy.

Drip takes Grazzilax aside and asks him how attached he is to his illithid form. Grazzilax wryly states that he knows where Drip is going with this but suggests that they talk about this at another time. We still need to collect the mushrooms from Zuggtmoy’s footsteps. Enna elects herself in charge of this endeavor. She casts Pass Without Trace on herself as Bash hands her a potion of Gaseous Form in case things get hairy.

Enna shadowsteps and hides among the fungus among us. She is struggling due to the sheer number of fungus available to us.

Out of nowhere, we hear a voice “I object!” It turns out Uriel has crashed the party too. Jubilex and Zuggtmoy’s lackeys bumrush him and the demon lords start fighting each other.

While the fighting goes on, Enna keeps searching but is still struggling to find the tin mask mushrooms. Drip looks on in exasperation and casts Pass Without Trace on himself, he sneaks out to the battlefield and tries to aid. Drip is able to pinpoint an immense footprint and moves towards it, he sneaks over undetected. Jubilex has practically engulfed Zuggtmoy and she blindly flails her pseudopods, nearly striking Drip by accident. Drip reaches the massive footprint and spots a mushroom with little beady eyes. Drip picks it up and seeks for more in the footstep. The mushroom squirms and makes weird little squeals. Enna moves in to assist him. They scrape up as many mushrooms as they can and stow it in the bag of holding before running back to the cavern we woke up in.

As they rush back, Hector runs past them towards the melee to cover them. Hector is about to brawl. Seeing him rush in, Telchur and Bash ready themselves for battle as well - with Bash trailing not far after Hector. The rest of us release a collective groan.

At this point Jubilex has completely consumed Zuggtmoy and he has grown as a result. He eyes Hector amusedly.

Hector is not dissuaded, he rushes directly to Jubilex and slashes like a whirling dervish. Imbuing his strikes with holy energy, he smites Jubilex. Sprays of acid fly out of the wound. Looks like it hurts.

Its hard to see how Uriel is doing because the demon hordes are surging all around; it is total chaos.

Telchur fires some arrows at Jubilex. Drip casts Plant Growth and covers a huge swath of the battlefield in overgrown shroomage. Bashir’s sister, Nisha, appears out of her letter opener and turns into a pair of wings for Bash, enabling him to fly so that he can avoid the shroom growth.

Faust brings up another wall of fire, taking out a few spore servants and engulfing Jubilex in flame.

Enna joins Hector and side by side, the “married couple” attack Jubilex; Enna winks at Hector all the while. It’s kind of cute. Until Jubilex projectile vomits acid on the pair. Sexy. Enna evades it but Hector gets a healthy helping and it starts to corrode his armor.

Hector responds by hacking and smiting at the ooze demon. He strikes but it seems to do little due to the sheer size of the creature.

Telchur fires off more arrows and hits Jubilex squarely each time--it’d be embarrassing if he missed honestly. Lamp is still working on summoning his Earth Elemental.

Drip notices Hector isn’t looking so hot so he shouts “Hector, accept this magic!” and turns him into a giant ape. Dicks out for Harambe!

Jubilex unleashes a bunch of noxious, poisonous gas. Enna succumbs to being poisoned while Harambe somehow manages to push through it. Bash is a flying flurry and hacks and slashes from above while Enna kicks and punches down below.

From the other side of the cave, the stone giant that collected our gifts comes reeling from around the corner, making a beeline for those of us clustered by the cavern mouth. He is screaming in agony, and totally covered in mushrooms.

Jubilex, tired of being on fire and surrounded, rushes through the flames and charges toward Telchur and Faust. As he rushes passed, Enna, Hector and Bash all strike out at his departing figure. Their strikes hit and Jubilex erupts into a blast of acid, which flies in an immense radius and hits Telchur, Enna, and Hector. The velocity of the strike knocks Enna out cold.

As the stone giant continues to approach, Lamp finishes summoning the Earth Elemental. It bursts forth to meet the Giant and knocks it flat on its back.

Drip sends the Countess to Enna and through her casts Cure Wounds. Enna finds a bat stuck in her hair as she awakens.

The stone giant keeps trying to push past the earth elemental. Faust fires off two more eldritch blasts and blows the giant’s head off. The remaining oozes lose their zeal for battle after the loss of Jubilex. Uriel is also nowhere to be found. There are a few incubus and succubus left but they fly off with one incubus pointing at Sir Harambe, shouting “Dicks out” and then flies off.

Sovereign Vesigia surveys the area and states “we’ll have some rebuilding to do.” The shroom babies want to go with us but we have to explain to them that where we’re going, they can’t follow. The babies are saddened by the news but seem to understand. They tell us that we will always have a home with them and they hope to see us again. The sovereign releases a bunch of spores that he says will spread to the rest of the Underdark letting all myconids know that we are friends always to the myconids.

Bash has a sweet exchange with Stool; he pats him on the head and lets him know that because of him he believes in magic again.

Drip and Bash try to loot the remaining bodies but they’re nothing but myconid fodder now. Disappointed, we leave that endeavor behind. After finishing our farewells, we join Grazzilax who wishes to speak with us privately. He creates a portal and waves us through. We wave goodbye to the shroomies and pass through the portal.

There are no shrooms where we find ourselves. It is a vaulted stone cavern. Grazzilax explains to us that his purpose in the Society of Brilliance is to study the effect of madness on creatures. He is concerned that once the demon lords are dealt with, things will return to normal but not necessarily for the better. Where we find ourselves now was once an asylum. He feels that we have all been touched by a hint of madness thanks to the demon lords’ presence. We ask about the derro and he says that they have been largely unaffected - however the drow, the duergar and the deep gnomes have all acted in a bizarre fashion. The existence of the Society of Brilliance itself defies all logic of the Underdark.

In the cavern are several brains suspended in liquid. He tells us a little about them and that he has released all of the inmates. Grazzilax is worried that after the demonic influence has been lifted he will return to being a typical Mindflayer. He doesn’t want that for himself… he wants us to take his Mindflayer spine for our quest and resurrect him in a new form.

We agree to help him with this endeavor, but tomorrow… we really need our rest.

As everyone gets ready for bed, Drip pulls Faust aside and they have a little chit chat about our futures after this is all over. Drip confides that he plans to stay behind in the Underdark to right some of the wrongs that we have caused here. He feels changed… far too much to be able to return to a “normal” life back on the surface. Faust asks if there is no way he could change his mind and says that he is sad to leave Drip behind. They share a brotherly moment before parting ways to go to bed. Faust spends the evening writing a letter of thanks to Drip and tucks it into his things.

The next morning, we prepare Grazzilax for what is about to happen. We ask how he wants to go about dying and he says he has it taken care of. He pulls out a magically imbued stick, points it at his head and shoots himself straight through the face. What a badass motherfucker.

Drip dresses Grazzilax’s body and harvests the spine before preparing his ritual to resurrect Grazzilax. He is brought back as a half elf and marvels at his new form. He tries the botched breakfast that he tried to make for us and concedes it is awful and he’ll have to learn how to cook when he heads to the surface.

He thanks for us making good on our end of the bargain and asks if there is anything that he can do for us. He hefts out a chest full of silver ore with the stamp of Gracklestugh. We decline, saying that he should keep his riches as he’ll need them more than us. But we do ask for an edge on fighting demon lords. It takes some rustling around through his belongings but eventually he hands us a scroll of protection from evil and good. And a scroll of magic circle.

After a beat we head on our way. It takes us about a day to return to Vizeryn’s. He idly wonders how we managed to obtain a mindflayer spine. “A friend, may he rest in peace.” Vizeryn is a little nonplussed but is ready to proceed with the rest of the ritual. We hand him the spine and the mushrooms and then head to dine with Grin.

Grin conspiratorially whispers to us wondering if we put more thought into where we plan to place the Darkheart. He doesn’t want us to leave it in Menzoberranzan as any place with phasorous would work just fine. Though he isn’t close to them, his family lives there and it is his birthplace. Drip and Bash lie that we’ll consider putting it elsewhere. Wink wink. Grin is none the wiser.

Vizeryn joins us downstairs for dinner and wants to celebrate with us while we wait for the rending to finish. He portals in fresh tuna for Drip, gives us some crazy expensive ancient wine from Menzoberranzan, and gives us some drugs. Snails that give you intense euphoria but make you shit your pants. Faust suspects that you can’t shit your pants if you don’t wear them and takes a snail. And then when he shits his pants it just slides down his pant leg because he can’t get dirty. Bahahahaha

After several hours the rendering is complete. The resulting object is very similar to a heart, it pulsates and is about five pounds. We go over the plan with Vizeryn. He didn’t really consider how to get us safely out of there so he tells Grin to join us and hands us a teleportation scroll just in case Grin doesn’t make us. During our journey we cajole Grin into listening to us about placing the Darkheart in Menzoberranzan. Faust and Bash take turns playing good cop bad cop and we’re eventually able to convince him that his family doesn’t matter and he should just say fuck ‘em. It takes some convincing but he relents that we know best.

When we do arrive at the city, we survey the space below and think of the best spot the place the Darkheart. Grin suggests the center of the city where the various schools and the temple of Lolth are located. It seems the best place to cultivate the most destruction. We ask Grin if he can transform us into spiders to infiltrate into the city.

Grin doesn’t have a transformation spell prepared and we give him a hard time as he sifts through his spellbook. After some more brainstorming, Drip and Hector decide to transform through Drip’s spellcasting instead. Its a great plan - they wander through the city undetected and unharried while the rest of us keep watch from the mesa on the outskirts of the city.

The spiders continue on unmolested. They pass through a training ground near the school. There’s a lot of hustle and bustle but no one pays them any heed. Drip specifically targets the temple of Lolth. Drip plants it at the top of the tower, disguising it as spider eggs. Their deed done, they make their way back to us.

Meanwhile, the rest of us wait and watch. But Enna notices something amiss and spies in the shadows several cloaked figures. They descend down ropes and Enna shouts a warning. She and Telchur are quickest to react. Enna punches one while Telchur fires an arrow but narrowly misses. The rest of us are bewildered for a moment but spring into action.

There are a lot of drow. They admit that they’re here to take us to the queen and they attempt to encircle us. Hector and Drip are booking it back to us as they can feel the magic wearing off on Hector’s guise. As they reach us Hector transforms back into his human form and he is quick to compliment Enna who is already kicking and punching lol

The ninjas shoot at Gryn, he takes a solid hit and looks like he might be down for the count. Drip arrives, transforms back into his Genasi form and casts tidal wave. He summons a little baby wave that succeeds in knocking a few of the ninjas prone but it doesn’t hit very hard.

Faust is annoyed and casts another Wall of Fire. He burninates a few of the Drow and also, unfortunately, Hector. He casts a bit of healing as a bit of apology.

Gryn is injured but succeeds in shouting into the sending stone so that Vizeryn can activate the Darkheart. We’re carving through the ranks. Hector keeps providing assists to Enna whilst flirting. What a strange world we live in. She quips back that she doesn’t need his help.

The drow start to fall back as their numbers dwindle, they fire some parting shots and hit Gryn with poisoned bolts. He goes down. While they run, Telchur returns fire and picks off another ninja. Drip summons some spike growth to encircle the retreat of the ninjas.

As the battle starts to die down, the ground shakes and rumbles. We continue to pack off the drow. And then the earth shatters. From below Grzz’t appears, as well as Orcus, Demogorgon and they’re joined by a late arrival of Thumberchaud. An immense kaiju battle ensues between the four.

We have a quick debate on whether anyone is staying behind to keep watch over the destruction but after a few seconds of deliberation we all decide to bounce. The clock tower comes crashing down as the demon lords duke it out. We pull out the teleportation scroll and hand it to Nisha who silently reads it and all of a sudden we are encircled in light.

All of a sudden we are somewhere else. It is cold. There is sun. And we can see miles and miles in the distance. There is a dwarven outpost behind us. The view is majestic but it is freezing up here. Hector surmises that we are in the Sword Mountains overlooking Waterdeep way far in the distance.