Thug Muggers Under Nibiru 10/27/24
Table Talk:
I was looking over more monsters as i build up this table for the Underdark Wilds coming up and i found a creature that i love! I almost ordered a mini of it… but it's a CR 18 so it’s gonna be a little while before i can justify the cost (for reference a CR 8 is ‘hard’ right now and a CR 9 ranks as deadly). The whole table groaned when they heard this, but Nymbus found the bright side “good news, guys, he expects us to live at least long enough to fight that thing…”
“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. Words are my work, they’re my play. They’re my passion. Words are all we have really. We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. And, then we assign a word to a thought and we’re stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. The same words that hurt can heal.”- George Carlin. That sentiment is extremely true for me. I love words! In fact, in fourth grade, at a public library book sale i bought “Words: A connoisseur's collection of old and new, weird and wonderful, useful and outlandish words” by Paul Dickson; literally a big book of obscure words and their meaning. Words like ‘Toe kick’ – that little cut out under a counter cabinet. That’s part of the reason why i throw in irregular words like ‘quinconce’ into the summaries, and hyperlink them so that people can learn new words with me. Well lately i’ve been building a list of interesting words and phrases whenever i come across them in the wild, so i’ll be trying to pepper them in from time to time.
Unrelated – Identify is a level 1 Spell. … Ashley you might want to write down that your Ring of Spell Storing has 1 slot open.
Lastly a discussion about whether or not to take a Short Rest turned into retroactively having had taken a short rest before after last session. Rae didn’t need any hit dice and read her book. Cypress healed himself and Ari then used some Hit Dice. Sorin didn’t need Hit dice, but attuned to his new Bracers of Protection – making his new AC 15. And Ari used 3 Hit Dice and started reading her book – giving a kayfabe reason why Brooke didn’t understand where we were while literally looking at the map the wrong way up.
I’m out of themed quotes for a while, so the next ones will just be ones i find extremely enjoyable, especially with zero context around them. Enjoy.
I have seen… a dog skateboard… on multiple occasions… and I still get hungry.
– Chris Sims “Apocrypals 67: Bad Things to Call Your Mother (The Book of Bartholomew)”
🎈✴👾🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 26: Now on with the Show
🎈✴👾🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 26: Now on with the Show
In the back room of a workshop in Woodrow, a young woman is sitting at a table.
Frenshilor smiles to herself as she wipes the shop rag along her forehead. She’s thinking about last night again, she’s been thinking about it all day. How nice it was to spend some quality time with Yago-mitanis, even if his wife couldn’t make it. And the stew… mmmm… Yago-mitanis alway makes the best head broth, but last night… it was… divine.
She hesitates for a second, but that word is undeniable. Someone completely correct, pure, implacable. Devine.
Frenshilor laughs, of course the word fits. With a chuckle she looks over at the workbench, they’ve been working on a holy relic. A small statue of Jergal for one of the rising families in the city.
She is used to sudden inspirations so when this no one hits her, she gives in and lets the work flow through her. Frenshilor picks up the axe from the corner. With a methodical calm she tests the edge of the tool then grabs a round honing puck from and makes a couple smooth passes on one side of the axe blade – the whole time her pupils keep unwavering eye contact with the unfinished god statue, but they only see the vision inside her mind, the inspiration, the plan in her head. She carefully sets down the sharpening stone and walks over to the little statue mored to the bench by five stout iron dogs. She’s circling it carefully, moving each foot over the other in a slow studying dance reminiscent of a martial arts grandmaster starting a duel. Frenshilor raises one hand and carefully marks a line in her vision, then she breathes out and smiles a loving smile.
She raises the axe and swings! Strikes! Hacks! Cuts! Drives! Chops! Over, and over, and over again! Frenshilor swings the axe, repeatedly burying the sharp blade deep into the wood, then ripping it out with angry twisting jerks.
Her mad laughter overtakes her as she rampages against the idol in a fury.
Deep below Frenshilor’s hackin' and whackin' and smackin', our heroes finish up their rest inside a hallway of the low sewers. Rae stands up first, telling her hovering staff to stay in place and then using it like a chin-up bar to pull herself up. Not to be outdone, Sorin casts Mage Hand under himself to float up and then just uncoil his legs with a raised eyebrow. Cypress and Bostra just look at each other, but hands on knees, and stand without any dramatics. After a minute, finally Rae bumps Ari and she puts her book away to join everyone else. Rae nods at the book as Ari slides it into her bag, “Anything good in there?” She grabs the handle of the next door to pull it open.
“Actually,” Ari says as Rae opens the door, “Did you know that elephant liver oil can-”
“Oh son of a [BASILISK]!”
Ari is cut off by Rae’s curse and then a commanding string of five words in Espruar.
Beyond the door, is a hovering Goon Balloon, and the same Nothic that was here before – only now looking refreshed after a few rests of its own.
Rae is first for opening the door, then the Goon Balloon will get a reaction. Everyone else rolls Initiative for the rest of the order.
Rae starts running, ducks and slides under the hen feet of the flesh balloon. She jumps off the ground, kicks off one cave wall, then the opposite wall to cross the river, to come down in front of the Nothic already swinging her staff at it – kicking off the fight with 14 damage to the enemy.
One of the many eyes on the Goon Balloon starts to glow and it Scintillating beam hits Rae for 3 damage, stopping her turn.
Cypress makes the semicolon-forward-slash-face and bites his lip :/, casting Thorn Whip specifically to entangle and hog tie the hovering Goon.
Hmm… okay, so roll the attack. That hits, what’s the damage dice for Thorn Whip.
Nymbus: “A D6.”
So if you get over half (3) then it will work without doing damage.
The ethereal vine lashes out, wrapping around first one, then the other chicken foot, pulling them together and yanking the whole creature down closer to hobbit level. The monster’s Deepspeech is garbled and muffled now with the mouth between its legs being held tightly closed. (yeah, you didn’t think they’d get more disgusting did you – i hear you gagging).
Sorin goes to cast Chil Touch, but a thought hits him and the spell fizzles out, “Wait, If that spikey eye thing is still here, does that mean…?”
Ari, hidden from the Nothic behind the door, nocks a +1 arrow to her bow string and uses her sneak attack to roll into the open door frame and fire at whatever Rae ran after (remember she wasn’t here last time). The arrow strikes and bloodies the Nothic for 19 before she uses her Cunning Action, to roll back and hide in the shadowy corner of the hallway.
“Wait, but no, guys,” Sorin is looking around in a panic, “What about the electric shocky thing is it still.”
The Will-o’-Wisp reappears and shocks Sorin for 10 damage as Akris – who could see it this whole time, remember – howls with laughter.
The Goon Balloon flails its chicken feet with muffled deep speech curses as it tries twice to attack Cypress’s magic Whip. But the first attack fails against Cypress’s spell DC, and the second is a nat’ 1 – entangling it further in the ghostly vine.
Rae is looking at the eye of the hideous cave-black creature. Its toothy mouth – like a cave of straight and broken needles – twists up in a grin and its Rotting gaze overtakes her. The eye of Raelle Woodmaker’s mind leaves her body, pushed back as the spell of the foul creature kills her. She watches her body – now a husk without a soul – stagger back and clutch at the wall, passing away with her arms splayed out across the rocks. She sees her friends dispatch the other monsters and rush to her, but there's nothing they can do. After a moment they walk away to finish their quest so death isn’t in vain. Soon she can see the rot of her own body. Her face and limbs puff up, the bloating corpse gasses filling inside her, then deflate as the pressure tears open her skin. Now she watches herself shrink, her lifeless skin drying and collapsing around her bones. Next the worms and maggots and beetles come to her as banquetors to a host. The worms burrow past her sunken hollow eye sockets and deep into the protein rich sacks of her organs; while the beetles tear out the fibers of her muscles and drag the chunks back to their nests. It's only a matter of time before the corpse of Raelle Wooldmaker is just a hollow dry skeleton in tattered rags, hanging from the bones of her outstretched arms on the wall of a cave. But eventually even the ligatures in her joints dry and erode. First her feet collapse to the floor of the cave, then her hands fall off at the wrists – the movement freeing and jarring the rest of the body of the few stones still holding it up. It slumps back and the cave breaks her ribs against the rocks in all the porous holes where the worms dug in to feat on her marrow. Her skull tumbles down, landing top down with the jaw only attached on one side, the knobbly joint of the other side dangling inside the foramen magnum, her molars grinding and flaking away the bone where her spine used to go. Rae sees all of this and then is sucked back into her body with a gasp and 14 psychic damage, back in the fight she remembers from hundreds of years ago (Happy Halloween)!
Rae is (understandably) pissed! She swings her staff like a battle axe, striking the jaw and turning the creature’s terrible eye away from her. She’s panting too hard and her next swing goes wide, but she refuses to give in. Collecting her Ki, she lets it out an enraged Flurry of Blows until the beast in front of her lays dead on the stones, and her knuckles are stained dark with its foul rotting blood.
Meanwhile, outside the cave in the hallway, Cypress is having a wrestle with the sentient Balloon.
“Sorin! Grab a blanket!” He shouts, “Throw it over this thing!”
Sorin grabs his bed roll and uses it to insulate his arm and block the attack of opportunity from the Will-o’-Wisp as he runs over to help. With Cypress’s assistance (using the help action to give advantage) he wrestles the blanket (strength contest) over the already impaired Goon Balloon (which has disadvantage from being hogtied with Thorn Whip).
With the ghostly orbs distracted by the commotion, Ari jumps out to Sneak Attack the Will-o’-Wisp… missing as she channels Argo Keene and shouts, “Sneak attack!,” as she does it.
Much to everyone’s dismay, the Will-o’-Wisp succeeds on an insight check, sensing that Ari wants it distracted. It thinks about what the worst possible thing to do would be, and goes to attack the Balloon under Sorin’s blanket. Ari lands her Opportunity Attack, but the Wisp is not deterred. It shocks a hole through the blanket, revealing one of the Goon balloons glowing eyes as the Scintillating ray fails to find and hit Sorin or Cypress.
The Wisp’s zap damaged the Goon Balloon, and with a malicious glint in its eleven eyes, it gives in to the Will-o’Wisp’s Consume Life feat, allowing the ghost to steal it’s HP as it dies.
“Down!” Bostra shouts, and Sorin and Cypress duck.
At first the eruption of gas from the monster is contained by the blanket, but soon it’s too much and it’s forced out of just one spot where the Wisp burned the hole (5 foot range instead of ten, plus Sorin and Cypress have advantage on the Poison Save while the Will-o’-Wisp has disadvantage, since its the hole it made and is thereby aimed right at it).
Unfortunately, the Will-o’Wisp is immune to Poison and just glitters in the gas as if laughing.
Rae sprints and jumps back across the river. “What the hells happened here?” She whispers looking around, then draws her bow – not wanting to get too close to the Will-o’-Wisp after last time. The arrow flies right through the gap in the orbs. With a groan, Rae gives in and rushes forward to start punching it – stunning the creature with her Ki.
Cypress’s Thorn Whip misses… but Sorin’s Magic Missile won’t miss!
So what level are you casting it at?
Ashley: “Just level 1.”
*sigh* and that damage?
Ashley, rolling: “10.”
Ha ha, Brooke can you just read the Hp it had left here?
Brooke, deadpan: “2. It had 2 health.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Bostra says, stepping over the fallen Goon Balloon, frustrated and clearly eager to be off.
“Whoa, hold up, I wanna loot these.” Rae says, affronted at the thought she might not be able to get fist deep in some gooey organs today.
“Goon Balloons explode, and you can only harvest Will-o’-Wisp essence with high level necromancy.” Bostra sighs, “so let’s-”
Cypress pulls back Sorin’s bed roll to reveal a particalling intact flesh sack.
“Fine,” Bostra huffs, tapping his foot, “but can *I* go to the next room and wait at least.”
“Not without an escort.”
Ari steps up, trying to deescalate the growing tension. “I’ll go with him.”
“Me too.” Sorin says, looking for a change more as if he’s keeping an eye on Ari then admiring her and finding an excuse to be alone with her.
“You two can catch up when you’re done.” Bostra sighs and marches off.
So with that, Sorin, Ari and Bostra cross the rushing water and get to the door. Bostra reaches out a hand, but Ari gets there first.
Sarah, laughing: “Ha ah imagine it’s just another mimic.”
I slowly remove the miniature door on the table.
“Wait…”
I put down the mimic door mini.
Sarah: “Oh goddammit!”
Meanwhile, outside the cave in the hallway, Cypress is holding back the skin of a now dead formally Balloon.
Rae collects 2 panels of the Balloons skin hide – she was hoping for eyes, but when a Goon Balloon explodes the eyes combusts first, the wet innards exploding backward into the internal gas chambers as an initial incendiary accelerant, so those are gone.
They both look up when they hear Ari shout a familiar swear word in Infernal.
Cypress sighs, “Bet you five copper it’s another mimic from Zaanth.”
They run to help the others.
The iron circle in the middle of the door melts into a ring of white teeth, but Ari jumps back, dodging the bite as several knots in the wood panels shift and swirl into the multiple eyes of the mimic.
Without any hesitation, Ari raises her hands… hesitates to make sure Bostra is behind her… then without hesitation she casts Burning Hands! The roar of the yellow cone of flames burns away the false wood of the door to reveal the angry sizzling red wet scaly skin of the mimic beneath.
Sorin uses his new go-to and the hand of Chill Touch punches out for 7 damage on top of Ari’s 11.
Back at the door Cypress casts Sacred Flame and Rae fires her bow at nearly identical times, both doing 6 damage for a combined 12.
Before (and technically during, but before for the narrative) our last round of combat here, there was a lot of discussion at the table about whether or not Brooke should use one of her DM questions to try and find a way to kill the mimic without it permanently blocking the door like last time. She eventually decided to save it, because each time she was about to ask, someone at the table would come up with an idea, everyone would decide to try it, then she'd be about to ask again, and someone would come up with another something clever to try, and so on. So those tokens remain unused for now.
“Jump back here,” Rae shouts, waving the other two back to them, “let's try to get it to come after us and leave the door!”
Ari and Sorin look at each other and shrug, “Worth a shot I guess.”
The mimic lets out an angry defiant roar! Two meaty hooks gradually emerge, distending from the sides of the door, pulling the irregularly shaped beast forward. But the back of the mimic stays affixed in the archway. The whole face of the creature – eyes poking out at odd angles through skin flaps, teeth making new angry mouths, and the tentacular red swirling tongue – pulls forward, crossing the water as a giant cone reaching out towards our heroes.
Seeing the opportunity, Cypress uses his Thorn lasso again, the barbs of the vine dig into the creature’s distorted skin and he tugs, using all his might to pull it further and further.
Sorin can see the skin around the door stretching thin and he flashes out a Firebolt at the top of the arch, trying to break its connection.
“Ari, cut it!”
The tiefling rogue leaps forward then rolls under the protruding cone of distorted mottled skin. She takes a stance like a woodsman chopping log, and swings.
The sound of the shrieking mimic is drowned out but the sound of rending flesh. Tearing, popping, cracking and ripping like wet fabric amplified by the size of the beast and the echo of the small cave.
Eventually everything is still.
There is no door, just a red mass of dripping vicsera with bits flopping to the ground behind a torn and shredded curtain of hanging flesh.
Bostra steps up to the unholy portal and waves Ari up to him. “Use Burning Hands again,” he nods at the thin wall of flesh and we can see a shifting light behind it, “I think you can burn a way through.”
Using her hand like a welding lance against a safe in a heist movie, Ari slowly cuts a blue line through the back of the mimic corpse and into the room beyond.
Beyond is a massive hall with tall pillars, deep shadows, and bright lights. We can see that the floor and walls here are not the cobbles or the simple bricks of the sewers, but some old and dusty tiles. The pillars are small and thin here at the edges or the room, but in the middle are heavy and stout. Between those central pillars, hanging from rough iron chains sits a bonfire sized braiser – burning with a bright and unsettling pure white light.
Underneath this strange white flame, in the middle of the hall, with a head rising up to look at us is…
But we should save that… for next time.
Todlin can hear a crazy laugh coming up through the floorboards from the workshop below. It sounds cracked and unhinged. He can also hear thuds and rough splintering wood. He frowns and runs down the back stairs.
His wife, his sweet and soft spoken Fren’ is swinging wildly at some log. No, not a log. The Jergal statue they’ve been carving over the last week. The delicate lines and smooth curves… are now just a cracked splintered mess of hack marks and jerky axe dents. “What are you doing?!” he screams and rushes at her. He sees the axe in her hands too late.
She swings it…
at the statue and wedges it in the last remaining bit of Jergal fine zombie face right as he tackles her.
She laughs as she claws at his face and eyes. They tussle on the floor until his wife climbs on his back like a spider and forces him to his knees. She whispers a cooing lovely verse in his ear as she holds his eyes wide open with her fingernails, forcing him to stare at the broken god statue.
“You’re right…” he whispers as he smiles a loving smile at the broken god and tastes the bright red lines around his mouth where she scratched him. “This is better.” After a moment they both stand up as if in a daze.
Then she turns to him again with a perverse lust in her eyes, undoing her clothes, “We need to show the customer!”
“We need to bring him here.” He says going for the buttons of his trousers.
“Yes!” She moans looking at the unholy thing on the workbench, “we need him to paint it with!”
Give me a ‘lookin’ around to see if this is the moment where someone does a crime’ roll
– Travis McElroy, “The Adventure Zone: Abnimals Ep. 5: Stealing Silver!”
Table talk:
The question came up, ‘can a monk use a weapon on their extra attack, or only their fists?’ I'm 90% sure they can use a weapon, but i’ll look it up for next time.
Railroading… There was a joke when the door became a mimic that i was trying to steer the group and make them go a specific way… This hurt, and i got an apology, but i still want to explain. When i was making this second part of the Sewers map months ago and just throwing the shapes together to make rooms (i streams these on twitch sometimes if you want to see what i mean), i made this big open chamber in the middle. Then when i was greebling the map with decorations and little details, i added pillars and hard light and shadows. Later i discovered [CREATURE] and decided it would go well in that room, and eventually i decided to label it the oracle room. BUT from the very first step of making the shape of the big room, i had thought ‘what if it was this big giant important thing and all the doors were locked so they counldn’t get in lol’ and i marked the doors as ‘locked and have to do something or solve something - nearly impassible’ on the map. In fact, it wasn’t until the third step that i realized there had to be a way in, that i made the Thug tunnel connecting it to another area. That was supposed to be a hidden secret, but then the party got help with their map from Guruuuuhckck and he filled it in because [ PLOT NOTES]. Later when i was idly shopping for mini’s, i found this mimic door on etsy and thought it was perfect. Then, when the group was close to coming up on the first door, i did the math and saw that the [REDACTED] inside would be [REDACTED] and so i would either have to [REDACTED] it, or kill them – and neither would be satisfying for anyone. So i made the players go around and eventually level up so that this upcoming session would be a great one when they got to it. The room was always meant to be difficult to enter and make the team explore around the map (first for a key, then a puzzle), and then when they came there early i blocked the way so they could enjoy it fully later without dying or being let down. I hope that isn’t seen as railroading, because i try very hard to keep an exceptionally open sandbox world for the players and let them runaround free (i pride myself in this and tell them that they can take any action they want) – even if sometimes that means ending a session early so i can hurriedly make new maps or rebuild a section of a dungeon and adjust two major plot points because someone casts Darkness and jumps in a river unexpectedly. Anyways, i apologize if this rant was petty and self indulgent, but i wanted to go a bit behind the scenes and explain the process of this came to be.
