Thug Muggers In the Sewers 1/29/23

Table Talk:

We will have to do a flashback today. I decided that it makes more sense for the players to acquire the map showing where the floor drains are from an NPC. They can choose any NPC, and we will flashback to them talking to acquire the map. There are a couple reasons for this, that i’ll make clear when we get there.

I had a very busy week with work and some extra projects that got thrown at me, so i don’t have any fancy drains to put on the table map and mark the spots where they are. Instead, i just have some printed out ones that i’ll have to tape on. Sorry about that.

“No one could see them in the tall grass, but she was afraid that what she was doing was wrong, and knew it was, but it was impossible to resist him. Suddenly, all she wanted was to be with him, and lie in his arms.”

—Danielle Steel, “Royal” (Chapter 2)

🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿

Chapter 13: A Gelatinous Puzzle

🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 13: A Gelatinous Puzzle

Our vision wobbles and we’re back in Pulgrok’s office a little bit ago. We are all getting ready to leave. Pulgrok looks annoyed. A title card pops us reading “The following scene is a flashback.” And… Action!

As we all turn to leave a sudden future-thought travels back from the future and lands in Sorin’s head. He turns back and looks at Pulgrok, “Um, before we go, do you have a map of the sewers we could have?”

Pulgrok blinks, surprised at such a useful question coming from the wizard. He motions Sorin over to one of the tables, and lifts some papers off of it. When he does, he reveals a dimensional model of the sewers. Each of the hallways are made of small square rods, and each room is like a little box. Between some of the spots on the map, there are little pieces of string. Almost every room has markings on it. The markings are all round impressions with curves and swooshing lines, presumably it is written in Bullywug. Little painted lines seem to show important pipe routes and there are a few places where we see small colored dots and symbols painted. With the papers taken off of it, we see that it takes up the whole table. Pulgrok croaks apologetically, “You cannot take it with you, CROAK but you can take as long as you need to look at it.”

Sorin pulls out his little book, turns it upside down, and flips to a back page. As he pulls out a pencil he asks if Pulgrok minds him copying some of it down.

Ari looks over Sorin’s shoulder as he starts lining out the map, “Yeah, but how good is your drawing, Wizard Boy?”

With a prideful smile on his face, Sorin turns to the page where Akris and he made the map last night.

“Alright, that looks pretty good,” Ari admits with a nod. She crosses her arms and looks it over seriously, trying to hide the fact that she doesn’t really understand maps.

After a few minutes of lining out hallways and rooms, Sorin looks up at the toad-man, “Do you know on here, or I guess, can you tell me, where the chain cranks to the gates are?”

During this flashback i am making the players roll charisma to see how the map turns out. This is because i have two maps ready to hand out, a good detailed map, and a very basic map. When i was making the map, and talking with an old friend, i realized that the players really hadn’t earned a great map with how they’ve been treating the NPC’s. So, i set up this exercise to coax them into playing out these interactions, and not just saying ‘gimme’. Sorin rolled a 4.

Pulgrok rolls his eyes and looks very annoyed. His big, round face seems stretched in a grimace that clearly says, ‘I used to work with professionals’, “Have you CROAK not made notes of them as you went?”

“Well, um,” Sorin scratches his head, “we were in a rush, and, uh, I was trying to make sure I didn’t die.”

Ari scoffs, “Not dying? You weren’t even hurt and nothing was attacking us.”

Akris nods a thank you as Ari. He would’ve pointed it out himself if he’d been there at the time.

Sorin glares, “You sure sounded like you were dying when that little spider fell on you.”

“Listen!” Ari points an angry finger, “Those spiders are after me.” Suddenly her anime-eyes twinkle with angry red stars, “it’s personal with them…”

Rae and Cypress cough.

“Pulgrok, can you please point out the cranks and if you can, the grates they go to? It really would be a big help for us.”

With a better Charisma roll this time, Pulgrok sighs. He leans over the model and points to a few hallways and connections. Sorin realizes as he points to one then another, then one, then another, that he is just tracing the strings with his hands. Embarrassed, he finishes the map and thanks Pulgrok.

Our vision goes wobblewigglewigglewobble as the flashback ends.

Walking into the well lit room, the first thing we see is a crude wooden sign, “Wach yur Steep!” carved above ‘By Order of the City of Nibiru Sewers’ stamped in the rough wood. The sign is poking up over the pathway, and as we walk up, it's obvious why. Beyond the sign, the bricks of the sewer floor we’re used to drop away. Three feet down is the crude cement-tile floor of a sort of pit. It's well lit by lamps that hang on ropes a few feet back from the edge.

Belgruuse walks away to the right, and after a moment, comes back holding a pitchfork. She catches the rope of a dark lantern with the simple hook welded to the back of the pitchfork. After pulling it in, she takes a long thick candle out of her toolbox, breaks it in half, and puts it in the lantern. She whispers to it, and it lights.

The freshly lit lantern swings back over the pit as she lets go. When it does, our eyes follow it and we look out into the pit. After a moment our eyes adjust to a couple shapes moving around. If we weren’t expecting them, we probably wouldn’t have seen them. These Gelatinous Cube Babies are just over 3 foot tall, and almost crystal clear. As we watch on, one of them goes over towards the far end of the room towards a raised platform. We hear a click as its weight pushes a small wooden plate down. Then there is a gurgling drippy noise and the stone facade on the raised floor here glows red for a minute. A slow moving brown-green-red slime drips from a stone bung directly into the baby Cube underneath it.

Rae looks around and notices that all the corners between this far floor and the sewer floor we’re standing on have little columns in them, just big enough to stand on. And, after noticing the crooked iron bars jutting out near the ceiling, her Monk brain pieces it together. It looks like a way of swinging with a rope from one pillar to another to get to the far floor.

Ari looks around and sees Belgruuse to the right, putting the pitchfork back by the little pile of sacks and crates in the corner by the south hallway. The next corner has some wood slats in it, probably the tops of those open crates. And the next corner has a desk. It’s covered in blue arcane symbols with an iron cauldron and a ceramic pitcher next to it.

Next to Ari, Sorin is staring at the shelves. Along the four walls behind us, there are four shelves. Each one is covered in potion bottles of either green, beige, red, or blue. There are some slips of paper in the spots where missing bottles leave room on the shelves.

On the other side of the shelves to the left, is another desk, this one covered in official looking papers, very similar to the ones in Pulgorks office, but much dirtier. And in the corner next to this desk are two giant caldrons, each one basically a small hot tub to Cypress. One has yellowy-beige glowing steam around it, and the other has several iron rods and a wooden paddle in it. They all drip with a thick green slime. In Between the caldrons, is a small brick pool that looks to be full of fresh cool water.

In that last corner by the north halfway, is a pile of broken wood scraps and a heap of roop. One of the coils looks almost neat, as if someone at least made an attempt to keep it in good shape after recently using it.

And that is where we find ourselves around 8am on the 4th of Kython.

Sorin looks at the cubes, then looks at Cypress and smirks. “Those Baby Cubes are bigger than you.”

“It’s not hard.” Cypress says with a you’ll-have-to-do-better-than-that shrug, and walks away to inspect the pile of wood for supplies.

Sorin gives up and goes over to Belgruuse where she is putting away the pitchfork. “Do you have any tools or anything that are resistant to the Gelatinous Cubes that we can use?

Roll.

“I know we do,” she scratches her bald head, leaving a slimy smear there, “but I CROAK do not know where we keep them, or what exactly they would be.” She says with a sorry-not-my-department grimace and a shrug.

Cypress, give me an investigation roll to see what you find in the pile.

Ari and Rae are staring down into the pit, trying to figure out how to get the Cubes out.

“I figured we’d just,” Rae’s arms move in an up and down pantomime, “stick a board under it, and fling it up.”

Hang on what?

“Yeah, just like wedge a board under it and toss it up onto the ledge.”

Diedrick: “I got a 20 by the way.”

They are 3 foot tall cubes of wet jelly.

“Yeah, I know.”

A cubic foot of water is over 60 pounds.

That's 27 cubic feet of mass.

Diedrick: “I got a 20.”

Hang on, Diedrick. Rae, think of how much a gallon of water weighs.

Rae: “Ok.”

That’s 202 gallon jugs of water.

“Oh”

So assuming they weigh only as much as water, that means each cube is around 1,688 pounds, the weight of a bog donkey. I just did the math. (assuming a Gelatinous Cube is the same density as store bought Jelly (UPC: 894672001133) then aqua-calc.com calculates the weight of each cube to be 2,166lb or just over 1 ton, essentially weighing almost as much as an adult male cow. If it has the density of Jello, then we are looking at 3,291 lbs or over one and a half tons, so the weight of a small hippo)

“Um..”

And you want to just stick a board under it and toss it?

“Well..”

So, assuming you found a 5 foot board, and something to wedge it on as a fulcrum, even with leverage you would need at least 725 pounds just to LIFT it. And, that’s assuming the lightest theoretical weight for the Cubes. To catapult it!? So, let’s assume you use a box as a fulcrum, say 18 inches up off the ground, and you do find a 725 pound weight, maybe all 5 of you jump on it at once, so drop is from 3 feet up if you use the ledge, then-

“KAI!”

Huh?

Diedrick: “We all know Rae’s idea was bad. We’ll just have to build a ramp or something. In the meantime-”

Sarah/Rae: “OH! I’m proficient in carpentry.”

What? We all stare.

Sarah: “Yeah, I forgot about it until now, it hasn’t really come up.”

Diedrick: “IN THE MEANTIME, I got a natural 20 in investigating the pile of scrap.”

Oh yeah.

Cypress moves aside the top coil of rope and starts lining up the boards when something catches his eye. It’s not shiny, but the dull black iron sticks out against the pale green bricks of the floor. He picks up the chain and sees that each of the links has a few runes hammered into it. With a high Arcana roll, Cypress recognizes some of them. They are the same runes that are on the iron bars of the grates. The ones that stop the cubes from being able to touch them.

Sorin has his sketched-out map laid out on the desk. As he looks it over, he can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. He scratches his chin and looks at Akris for help figuring it out. “Something’s missing.” The snake says with a frown of concentration.

So a few minutes later, Rae and Belegruuse are working away, nailing pieces of broken boards together to make a ramp sturdy enough for these Cubes. Cypress is laying out boards and passing them to them, and Ari is standing around like a hapless puppy in a kitchen, smiling and convinced she is somehow helping, despite not doing anything.

Over at the desk, Sorin has figured out that what was missing. He needs markings where the floor drains are that hurt the Cubes. He looks up at Belgruuse with a cheerful smile, “Hey Beetlejuice!?”

Silence

A piece of wood narrowly misses Sorin. Cypress laughs.

“Um.. Hey Ari?”

“Oh so you know her name!” Another piece of wood misses Sorin.

Eventually Sorin convinces Ari to ask Belgruuse to mark the floor drains. And, with that, the team now has the good map of the area. It even includes some parts we haven’t been to yet.

The ramp is built, and everything is in place. Now, we just need to make a plan, once this starts, there won’t be much time to figure things out. There are lots of possibilities. Do we pull them with the chain? Do we lure them and use the chain to steer? Sorin suggests hitting them to make them go forward. Cypress points out that if they are hit, they will just be provoked and atack, not run away. Sorin suggests hitting them and running away to get them to chase. Ari spends some time wishing she hadn’t sold the Zombie hand because it would’ve been perfect bait. Rae suggests that the wood crate lids we found (there are 5) could also work as shields, just in case, until we use them to cover up the floor drains.

I want to point out here that Sarah grew up on a cattle farm, and some of her favorite memories are of herding cattle (in fact, when i taught her how to play Hnefatafl, she started winning as soon as she viewed it as herding cattle). During this whole planning she was bubbling with happy excitement as she treated the planning and the map on the table as a cattle herding plan. She got even more excited at the idea of Cowboy Rae lassoing Gelatinous Cubes.

Somewhere in this planning, it gets mentioned that the Thug Muggers want to move the first Cube to the room by the Church of Shadows crypt.

“Panicked CROAK wait what? CROAK You wouldn’t do that to me would you?”

“What?”

“I have to repair that archway!” Belgruuse says in a panic, “You’re not gonna CROAK leave me CROAK in there with a Cube are you!?”

So we decide to take the first Cube to the other room, and let Belgruuse repair the Church of Shadows Crypt Drainage Room in the meantime. The repair should take about as long as it takes to move the first cube. Conveniently. Don’t think about it.

At the end of the discussion, this is the plan;

Ari and Sorin will go in front of the cube. Ari will have a crate lid to put down and cover the floor drains. And, Sorin will have some meat to bait the Cube. We’ll wrap the chain around the Cube like a lasso, and Rae will be behind it stopping it from going the wrong way, or lurching and engulfing anyone. Cypress will stay in the back with Rae, holding another crate lid as a shield in case the Cube loses interest in Sorin and tries to attack Rae.

“Okay, so what are we all doing?” Ari asks at the end of the planning to make sure everyone knows their role.

“I’m doing whatever you say…” Sorin says in a dreamy voice.

“Then shut up. How ‘bout you do that!” Ari snaps. “We have a plan together for moving the Cube,” she coughs, “But, what’s the plan for getting a Cube out?”

There is a new huddle and more planning.

A few minutes later, everyone is lined up along the ledge. Ari and Belgruuse are crouched by the “Wach yur Steep” sign with the wooden ramp between them. Cypress and Sorin are in the middle of the ledge, each holding one end of the chain. And, Rae is standing at the edge holding a rope with a loop on one end.

Rae flings the rope onto the crooked iron bar in the corner. She pushes off, and swings for the pillar. With a low Dex roll, she lands, but it’s sloppy. She unhooks the rope from one hook and catches it on the next. This time she rolls, and lands, just fine. Once more she unhooks the rope and catches it on the last iron bar. She swings out, around the corner of the wall… and the knot comes loose. The rope is falling and so is Rae.

The others watch on in horror as they see the rope falling off the hook. A couple pounds of thick hemp is about to hit Rae and knock her down… into the hungry Baby Cube beneath her.

Sorin can still hear his own muffled gurgles from inside a Gelatinous Cube, the faint choking sound is screaming out of his memory. In a heartbeat he reaches a hand into his spell component bag. In a blur, he throws the feather out and shouts Feather Fall. He reaches out his mind. His consciousness flows out around the bubble universe of reality, and he swaps the essence of the rope with the essence of the feather. Back inside the universe, the rope almost stops. It gently wafts back and forth falling ever so slowly to the ground. In front of the wizard's hand however, the feather drops like a small lead marble into the pit.

We’re still in bullet-time now as Rae tries to save herself. She can feel the veins of Ki running in her body and, unsure what else to do, she pushes it all to the base of her foot. Rae can vaguely remember one of the old monks teaching something about “Feet of the Wind”.The Ki bursts out from her toes and for a single heartbeat it forms a hard surface, hovering in the air. She kicks off of it and jumps again.

Her heart pounds, her ears ring, her arms swing, and her feet land on the far ledge. With one more big swing of her arms, she steadies herself and steps away from the edge.

Safe on the ledge now, Rae looks around.

In the corner are some gears and mechanical works that don’t really make sense to Rae. Blocking most of the ledge here is the dark stone fountain. After looking behind it, Rae steadies herself and covers her mouth,trying not to vomit. Floating in a greenish-yellow and red slurry stew, is a Stirge. It’s a dead Stirge, and it has a gash running across its open belly, about the same size as Ari’s dagger. As Rae looks again, another dead Stirge bobs to the top, this one has a hole in it’s chest. The hole is exactly the same size as one of her darts.

“You okay?” Ari shouts across the pit as she sees Rae dry heaving next to the fountain.

“There’s” Rae coughs, “a cauldron,” she thinks for a second, “well I guess more like a giant stone tube.” She coughs again, “It's got Stirge and bits of Rats and a foot in it.”

“Well of course,” Belgruuse looks puzzled, “Confused CROAK Where did she think we put your trash?”

“Waste not want not.” Cypress says, nodding.

After a feeble attempt to get the Gelatinous Cube’s attention with a soggy piece of jerky from her pack, Rae has an idea. She goes back to the stone cauldron, gags, picks up the dead Stirge, gags, holds it over the edge, dry heaves, then wiggles it up and down. The Stirge-corpse-puppet’s wings make a sloppy wet fwapfwap noise and spray bits of blood on the wall. One of the drops lands on the Cube, and suddenly it turns. The parallel lines of its body make a straight line towards Rae’s hand as she dries not to vomit. She has it’s attention now.

“GO!”

Cypress jumps into the pit, with Sorin right beside him. Roll Dex. 18. They both land easily and pull the chain with them, into the pit.

Ari and Belgruuse go to pick up the ramp. But, Ari is nervous and hasty. She picks up her end too fast, and the ramp tips. Belgruuse drops her side, bracing it so it doesn’t topple onto her.

Cypress plants his feet firmly against a tile on the floor that has started to come up. He nods at Sorin, and the wizard runs around the Cube.

“Keep the other one distracted, Rae.” He shouts, “We’ve almost got this one.”

Rae looks up and is just in time to pull the dead Stirge out of reach of the jumping Baby Cube.

Ari rolls a 2 on a strength check. As she tries to pull the ramp towards her, it over-corrects and tips...into the pit.

Sorin finishes his run around the cube. He hooks the hook on a chain link. Cypress pulls it tight and Sorin’s hand slips. He takes 1 damage as he brushes against the Baby’s acidic jelly meniscus.

Rae sees the ramp in the pit. She looks at the cube and swears. She tosses the Stirge without looking, and jumps into the pit, already running for the other end.

Behind Rae, the unchained Cube slurps up the dead Stirge and begins to ooze after her.

Ari jumps into the pit, grips the edge of the ramp and heaves. With a 9, she has successfully gotten the ramp upright. But, it's about 2 feet away from the ledge. She looks at the ramp and swears.

Cypress has good strong arms, and with a 14, he begins to pull the chained Cube towards the ramp.

Rae runs ahead of the cube and nods at Ari, together they push the ramp into possession.

Relief!

They’re just in time as Cypress sets foot on the ramp and tugs. His mighty little arms strain as he works his way up the ramp and gets the Cube to its base.

“Everyone out.”

Ari rolls a 12, and heaves herself out of the pit.

Sorin rolls a 15, and pulls himself up the ledge.

Rae rolls a 16, and jumps out of the pit and onto the ledge.

Cypress pulls, but it's just too much for him. The Cube won’t slide up the ramp. It’s there, it even has a couple inches ON the ramp, but it’s not going any further UP.

The other Baby Cube is right behind it now. Maybe it senses the way out, or it's just chasing Rae, but there will be no stopping it if it gets on the ramp behind the other one.

“Quick, somebody distract it!”

Sorin Jumps into the pit and throws a rock at the unchained Cube. It turns towards him with a lurch.

Rae grabs the chain and pulls with Cypress. Working together, the two drag their quarry up and onto the ledge.

“Yes! We got it!”

“Sorin, get out of there.”

Ari puts one triumphant foot on the ramp to kick it over.

“Wait!”

She turns.

“If you knock it over IN the pit the other one might goggle it up,” Cypress says. “And, without a ramp, we’ll never get it out!”

Ari groans and jumps back in the pit.

With Belgruuse’s help, and a 19 strength check, Ari lifts the ramp out of the pit and onto the ledge.

The chain pulls taught in Cypress and Rae’s hands. Belgruuse screams as the Baby Gelatinous Cube lunges at her. Rae and Cypress pull tight and stop it just a foot away from her.

Sorin runs to the north edge and pulls himself out.

Ari pulls herself out right in front of Belgruuse, and throws a protective arm out to shield the sexy-frog-maiden from the Gelatinous monster.

The Cube strains forward, inching its way out of Rae and Cypress’s grip one chain link at a time.

Thinking fast, Ari casts Thaumaturgy. We suddenly hear the weird chittering-cooing sounds of Sirtge behind Rae and Cypress. The Cube turns.

PHEW! Okay, we’ll take a little break here because that was a lot of action and excitement all happening very quickly. In fact Sarah is squatting with her feet on the Couch like L. So let's all take a quick breather. We have the Cube chained, lassoed, and up the ledge. Everyone is basically in position and we’re ready to head down the hallway. So let's use the bathroom and get ready for the next part; steering the Cube, and herding it without hurting it, ha ha ha. (on a side note, when i was typing up my notes for this section, the song “Kingdom Dance” from the movie ‘Tangled’ kept playing in my head, and i have no idea why. Anyways, back to the action.

Sorin grabs a soggy piece of meat from Rae, and runs into the West hallway. Ari grabs two of the crate lids, tosses one to Cypress, and runs after him.

The Baby Gelatinous Cube starts to ooze after them.

Cypress has the brief thought ‘wait, how are we going to get the lid back to Ari after the Cube crossed over it?’ He takes up position in front of Rae, with the wooden lid-shield at the ready. ‘Meh, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.’

Rae takes a deep breath in and out, centering and calming herself, then wraps the chain twice around her forearm, and walks slowly down the hall, keeping the chain tight in case she has to pull on it fast.

We’re down the hallway now and Ari puts her crate lid down to cover the larger drain in the middle of this intersection with the mechanical room hallways. She looks up and shouts, “Cypress, once it’s over, grab the lid for me and hold it up for me.” She starts backing away, “I’m gonna try and use Mage Hand to bring it back to me.”

Sorin backs away with her, wiggling the soggy jerk, but he sees a problem and shouts, “Rae, pull! It’s trying to turn up the hall!”

Rae heaves on the chain and it stops the Cube from going north, but the cube is still ignoring Sorin and straining against its bonds.

“I’ve got it!” Sorin grins, “It needs live bait, right?” He pulls out his knife, “I’ll just cut my hand and it’ll follow the blood.”

Everyone stops. Even the not-face of the expressionless Gelatinous Cube seems to say ‘what’s wrong with you?’

“No,” Ari pushes Sorin further down the hallway. She moves her hands like a shadow puppet of a weird bird and uses Thaumaturgy to make the Stirge noises again.

The Cube oozes away from the intersection and off the drain towards her.

Cypress leans down to pick up the wooden lid for Ari, and stops. It’s not there. He looks up, and sees it dissolving in the pale jello flesh in front of him. “Uh, Ari?”

“Cypress, hold up the lid, “I’m almost at the other drain.”

Cypress hesitates for a breath, then holds up the one he brought with him.

Ari brings her hand in towards her chest, pushes her fiery demonic will into it, and then flings it out. She feels her hand keep going further and further away from her. A red spectral hand appears floating away in front of her. The hand seems to be a hollow structure filled with veins the same color of her blood running through it. Its transparent skin is glowing with a pale flickering fire light. Ari moves her hand, and the hand in front of her moves with it. She steadies her outstretched arm with her other hand and pushes the Mage Hand towards Cypress. Like a Nintendo Power Glove, the fingers of the Mage Hand move and flex in sync with her own hands as it glides the wooden lid, and lifts it up.

The Cube stops as Ari’s Mage Hand floats above it. It seems to focus on this new blood-colored flying creature. It jumps. Ari jerks her real hand up, but not fast enough. The cube scrapes the bottom of the Mage Hand right as it finishes passing over. Ari can feel her wrist both burning in pain, and not burning in pain, at the same time. She takes 1 Psychic Damage from what is basically magic-phantom-limb-syndrome as her brain tries to figure out which hand is real.

Her concentration flags, the hand flickers and evaporates, but it does get the crate lid over the Cube. Ari darts forward and stumbles, but swoops up the crate lid before the Cube can engulf it.

She gets to the next intersection just in time, putting the wood down over the drain with a slapping sound. Her and Sroin move to the south hallway.

We’re almost there.

Sorin bounces up and down with the wet meat, and this time the Cube wants it. It oozes south towards them, clearing the drain.

“Yes, now we just need to leave it in the room and we’re good!” Ari Turns to check that the room is empty, and her face falls.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In the archway to this Crypt Drainage Room is a large, familiar sign. It is 4 feet tall and made of thick stone. Carved below a stamp of the Sewers are the words “Caution! Gelatinous Cube!”

How well our heroes get past this hurdle? Will Sorin transmute the stone? Will Rae throw the monterous Cube? Will Belgruuse get the rose, and win Thomas’s heart? Find out, find week on: Frog Bachelorette, Love in the Sewers!