Thug Muggers in the Sewers 2/2/24
Table Talk:
I am continuing to update and edit the oldest entries in this series. At time of posting, I have 5/29/22, Devin, 6/4/22, 6/11/22, and 6/26/22 done.
The poison Rae found last time can be used twice either on an arrow, or on an edged weapon. If something is hit with an arrow/weapon imbued with it, they must pass a DC 12 Con check or take 1D6 damage per round until they do.
I finally got a prototype made for something i’ve wanted for a while, a map plotter rod, sometimes called a croupier stick or a war rake. Not a garden tool used for combat, but a shaped stick to moving miniatures, flags, banners, and markers on a battle map. There are a lot of different types out there but i designed something new with a hook on one end to more easily pick up figures with gaps. As i mentioned, this is a prototype though, so we’ll see how it goes and i’m sure i’ll be updating and refining it as we go on. Hopefully this will make things easier as i arrange things on the table throughout our sessions, and get in the way of everyone's view a little less.
The quote this week was inspired by Sorin’s misadventures last time.
“Then physics showed up with a vengeance.”
—Andy Weir, “Artemis: Chapter 16”
🦠💥🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 6: How to Spot Traps
🦠💥🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 6: How to Spot Traps
We hear an unzipping sound but like unzipping a bone. Then we look down to see the belly of the Teddy Bear has grown teeth. Its head lolls on one side, deflated and flat like a dead balloon. The teeth open to show…another row of teeth, and another, each row bigger than the last. Then as Ari’s bow gives out its warning, the mouth on the bear-belly opens and a lolling tongue flops out, licking around in a circle. The left hand and foot of the stuffed toy squash and elongate into feet with horny claw-toes and five green pupiless eyes open on the right side of its chest. The whole thing pitches over to the left with the teddy bear side-ways and the weird feet on the ground. Cypress's hands have become fused inside its growing flesh and he’s pulled down with it. Then the right hand and foot of the Teddy Bear Mimic stretch out and thin into long scrawning bone-thin arms with talons for hands on the end. It chuckles a humorless hungry chuckle and licks its long scaling tongue in the air like a tentacle.
Bostra sighs, “Really?” then with a shrug, “Well I’m going after my bag, you all can just come meet me when you’re done with this.” And he starts climbing his way down the half exploded hole in the floor.
Ari doesn’t have time to ask Bostra ‘what the hells!?’ and instead she just groans and pulls out her rapier. With Cypress’s hands still stuck in the back of the fused and changing monstrosity, she has to be careful, but her aim is true. She lunges forward, slashes and lunges back in perfect fencing form. With 7 damage, the two clawed arm-hands of the beast fall off.
As the creature starts growing two new nubbin arms, Rae swings her staff. And swings it again. And a third time. With 23 total damage the monster is beyond bloody (So, funny thing actually, it has 1 HP, y’all are cursed or something), but the Stunning Strike has only shocked it into releasing Cypress’s hands from its melting back.
Seeing that the Mimic is mostly done already, Sorin casts Spider Climb on himself, “I’m gonna follow Bostra just in case. It looks like you guys have this covered.”
“Good idea,” Cypress says, wiping his hands on a rag, “Shout if we need to hurry after you.”
The Mimic is up next. It looks around in a panic.
Who can say why it does what it does next. Maybe it thought the box was a good place to hide. Maybe it has a secret intelligence and ran the odds on its survival and wanted vengeance. Maybe the DM thought up an idea during the middle of the week and thought it was hilarious, so he readied the action in his notes. Who can say…
The Mimic looks around wildly, then dives face first into the box that Ari, very carefully, carried here through the halls.
It explodes.
Oh yeah, and so does the box, everyone in the room, give me Dexterity Saving throws. With disadvantage since this is such a small room and the explosion will be bouncing back at you from the walls.
Ari, Cypress and Rae all succeed on their saves and only take half damage (6) as they turn away from the rapidly expanding plume of combustion.
The mimic fails its save, and perishes laughing.
Sorin, give me a dex check as you Spider Climb down the hole. The poison and traps are gone, but i just want to see if you cut yourself on any of the left over sharp bits on your way down.
7.
Okay, not bad, just 2 damage, as you forget to concentrate on gravity and slip a couple times near some broken shredded bits of pipe.
With her nat’ 1 on the nature check to loot the mimic body, Rae manages to cut the back of her hand on its sharp teeth. The last mimic had still been gooey and pliable when she’d dissected it, but the fire roasted this one to a crusty hard shell and it scratches her as she tries to pry open its maw to extract the tongue.
Ari looks down at the exploded box, sighs, and decides to summon Devin anyway. She picks out a copper and presses it to his mark.
When Ari puts the coin into the wall it rotates like a flattened door knob.
Suddenly a blinding bright line appears on the wall, zigzagging in the spaces between the bricks. The bricks pull backward as the door reveals a quick glimpse at a meadow covered in a thick rising fog at dawn. We see two tails coming towards us as Devin shouts over the sounds of battle, “Good luck, I totally didn’t sell to the other side earlier.” One head says, while the other snickers under its breath, “I did though,” before shouting, “Buy, I’ll be seeing you!” He waves and somehow we know he’s pronouncing it ‘BUY I’ll be seeing you’.
Then he turns to us and closes the bricks behind him, returning them to an unmagical wall.
His middle arm sets a blood stained sack down on the ground. It squirms between his legs as his outside hands ring together in happy anticipation,
“Thug Muggers! So good to see you!”
Raelle just can’t take it, “Okay, Devin, I can’t not ask. What’s in the bag?”
“Actually, you could, technically, not ask.” one head mutters while the other cherrily waves the question off, “Oh, ya know, just the usual.”
Ari chimes in, “Devin, with you that could be literally anything.”
“Exactly.” Both heads nod in unison.
There is a long uncomfortable pause.
“So are we selling or buying here folks?” The other head tisking, “Come on, I got other appointments you know.”
“You do?”
Ari pulls out the used up chimes, “I’ll be up front with you. These were chimes of opening, but they’re dead and used up. Do you want them for the silver?”
The tubes are tapered and hollow, and Devin wedges them together into a single longer pole. Then his right head licks along it from end to end, using all three arms to drag it under his tongue so that head can stay perfectly still with its eyes locked on Ari’s. His heads turn and whisper to each other as his middle hand traces the patinated over scroll work. “Hmm, the dwarfish arti-”, “scroll of fifth is sti-”, “-boot runes might be-” Then he turns back to Ari, “3 Gold, that’s one gold each.”
“Sold!” Ari blurts out. She had only been secretly hoping for 2 silver.
“Excellent!” The strange lizard-man breaks the pole back into its three parts, slips the drawstring of the squirming bag, and rams the metal tubes into it. We hear a squelch and fearful wet chattering teeth, but he pulls the bag closed before we can look. “Anything else?”
Rae offers up the pistol crossbow she found on the Thug.
“Hmm, still in good shape, and hand crossbows are still rare over here… hmmm… I’ll give you 74 gold. That’s damn close to market value.”
“Sure!” Rae gladly pockets the coins and tries not to look down and the still squirming bag. It sounds for a moment like crunching metal tubes, but one of Devin’s tails whips it and it goes quiet.
After Ari checks that her new rings aren’t magic, and for some reason decides not to sell them, Devin reaches down and picks up his squirming bloody sack.
Then he reaches down again with another arm and lifts up a section of the floor. The sudden hatch there is now open to a roiling ocean with waves cascading to and fro. Devin hikes the bag over his shoulder with one hand, like an awkward grinch cosplay, then his other two hands plug his nose and he jumps.
As he falls to the water below, his tails pull the trap door closed behind him and it returns to simple bricks.
Rae uses her second to last Spider Climb from her mask, Cypress Wild Shapes into a lizard, and Ari… just climbs (lame) down the hole to meet Sorin and Bostra down below.
This new room is, well, very much the same as the others.
I’ll be honest here people, i don’t know how many more descriptions of fantasy pipes and gears i got in me…
We see some bits of rubbish on the floor, bits of broken pipe and ladder are strewn around from the explosion. In the middle of the floor, some of the explosion has left a broken pipe shaped like a trough of funnel, catching the water that Rae and Sorin diverted, and sending it down below.
Bostra goes over and kicks at some of the collapsed iron bars underneath it. “Well that grate is bent out completely. When we do go down to the caves below, you’ll have to find another way.”
Rae looks around and sees something familiar in the corner. The crate there is just an ordinary wooden box nailed together with scrap wood. But stenciled on the box in green paint is a symbol she knows well.
The symbol of The Temple of the Buried Tree (Rae’s home), is a few symmetrical geometric lines inside a circle. There are two parallel lines going up to a cord on top giving the image of a tree fanning out with two quarter circles on either side like branches. At the bottom of the tree, its sharp angular roots form a diamond in the hidden shape of a house, and on either side are the steep cliffs of a canyon, giving way to the roots, and bound inside the circle.
With a smile, Raelle Woodmaker, Daughter of Carden and Cien Woodmaker, caretakers of the great tree Aldabár-Arele opens the simple box.
Inside is air. There’s more of course, but the air is the first thing she notices because of its wonderful smell. It’s the smell of sweet and gently spiced potpourri. A smell like flower bulbs right before they bloom, with hints of cinnamon bark, and mineral water. It wafts out to her as she looks down at the leaves. She knows those leaves, the leaves of the little Aldrelsén. Big and broad like catalpa tree leafs; green spades as thick as cloth and as wide as dinner plates. Here in the box the leaves are hard and curled, and they whisper as they rub against each other. Raelle-the-Homesick can still picture the drying racks these must’ve hung on, rows and rows hung up to dry in the hot air over the kitchens. The ever useful leaf that is sometimes used to protect a package (like packeting peanuts), or used to mulch the ground, or crushed into a rough powder to soak up spills. Digging past the thick dry leaves, her hand finds a familiar smooth round shape. She pulls it back and takes a bite without even looking.
The apple is sweet and delicious, juicy and just a bit tart. Its bright red skin opens to her teeth and bears forth the crisp barely green-white of the fruit inside. Rae hesitates for a moment to even wipe her chin, it's so good she wants to even let the juices linger.
Sorin calls over, “Hey, Rae, what’s in the box?”
“Things.” She calls back, but with a mouth full of apple, it comes out ‘Thermngs’. Then she turns and tosses one of the little red treasures to Ari.
With high Religion and History checks, Cypress knows a little bit about the Temple of the Buried Tree and recognizes the symbol stamped on the box. Then as he catches his own apple from Rae’s toss, it hits him. That's the same symbol dyed into the band Rae tied around her staff. The bit of fabric she always used to have around her waist when they first met. She hadn’t talked much about the past but now Cypress has a great deal more insight about the young elven monk.
Bostra hefts up his bag, then reaches in and grabs an apple. As he turns to walk out of the room he takes a bite, and then with the eye the rest can’t see, he winks at Rae, “Tastes a bit like horses to me.” Then grinning, he leaves the room with the others following.
Rae is about to leave and follow after him, but her stunned thoughts slow her down, ‘How much does he know? Where all has he been!?’
What a perfect sweet moment. A little bit of the past, a little bit of mystery, a little bit of knowledge, and a delicious treat in a dark place between friends… Sorin, you wanna ruin it?
“Hey where's my apple? Everyone else got one!?”
“Pfft, get it yourself wizard boy.” Rae laughs.
“How rude. Where’re your parents, didn’t they raise you better?”
Yup, there it is.
It’s dead quiet as Ari and Rae both turn and glare at Sorin with hellfire in their eyes.
“Do you really wanna play this game?” Ari asks in a low, malicious voice like cracking brimstone, “It never goes well for you, orphan boy…”
Sorin hestates for a split second and then, “I’d call you mommy if you told me to.”
Yeah… that tracks, you found a way to dig deeper and make it worse.
“Ow!” The orphan rubs the back of his head as Cypress climbs down off the box.
Rae rolls a nat’ 1 to hit the boy. She goes to intimidate him, punching out hard right in front of his face, then stopping less than an inch from his nose.
Sorin just winks and sticks out his tongue as Bostra and Cypress shake their heads, the two tired dads of this insane little troop that is somehow in charge of saving the capital city.
Moving on now…
We walk out of the room to the T intersection there and turn left until we reach another corner where we turn left, and another corner where we turn left again.
As we walk through this little box, our heroes are making constant Perception Checks, on the look out for traps, enemies, or treasure! While they do, they go over a bit of the loot they just got upstairs.
Ari begrudgingly takes the +1 stealth cloak from Sorin when points out, “If it were from Rae, or Cypress or Bostra, you’d take it.” Then she shows him the magic scroll she found but couldn’t read.
The scroll is outside of Sorin’s comprehension, but Cypress recognizes it. “Command. It’s a holy spell.” (cleric spell) and so they give it to him.
Then Bostra reads out the letter we found while the others keep watching as we walk:
“Trim,
[symbol] needs you. Bring someone from the passel who’s good with traps. Go down to the sewers. He wants you to work on the southeastern second, just like we did with the section by the market. But you're to just stay on the upper floors for now. I'll send you a new litter soon and then you can go absolutely ham wild. But until then, you're to stay on the top level.
-Z
Oh and Trim, none of you special piggy parties in this area. After all, we don’t want to scare the Rats yet. And don't pretend you couldn't read that. If you do, I'll rip your tusks out and use them to make a flail to whip you with until you stop breathing.
Everyone agrees that ‘Z’ must be Zaanth, and Rae pulls out the little bag of powder she found on the Wereboar, “Sorin, do you know what this might be?”
“No, sorry.”
“Cypress?”
“Nope.”
“I do.” Bostra takes the bag and looks it over. “Rage powder.” Rae’s eyes light up before he continues, “Nasty stuff… ” He hands it back, “Some of the mountain barbarian tribes use it, it allows them to go into an unnatural battle fury, but it has a pretty high cost.”
“It’s not safe then?”
“Let’s just say, there are reasons we never used it, and leave it at that.”
And with that, we come to the door. This is another one of the cave doors with the air tight seal and the two windows. Ari takes a look through the window to see the cave beyond.
Just ahead of the door is an intersection of passages with two stalagmites in the middle, one large and one small, and a puddle of cave water. Straight ahead, on the other side of the rocks and little puddle, this tunnel turns to the south. From this vantage though, we can’t see anything of the north-south intersecting cave.
Ari checks the handle of the door. Locked. She looks around to make an investigation check for some kind of lever or gear mechanisms before she remembers her latest acquisition. She pulls out the silver chime and gently taps it on the handle of the door. We hear a hum and then a soft sweet note followed by a click, and the latch starts to slide down, unlocked. Ari pockets the chime, and we walk in.
Standing in the center of the crossing caves now, we can see a small stream to the north, and another cave-sewer door to the south. We go to the south and-
Everyone make Wisdom Saves.
Okay, so Ari failed, Sorin passed, Cypress passed and Rae failed…
Oh wait, the other one can cast two, duh.
The table: “The other what!?”
Cypress and Sorin roll again.
Nope. You both fail. Perfect.
The table: “What is happening!?”
So with you all failing the save against the Suggestion Spell. You just have to obey and go along with it. No metagaming this one.
The table, crying now: “Go along with what!?”
A pair of clear voices ring out in the cave. “̆’§ ðk奅 Èvêr¥†hïñg ï§ £ïñê… Rêlåx… Lê† ï† håþþêñ… Gð wï†h ”
Rae, Sorin, Cypress, and Ari’s bodies go limp and they watch with placid content faces as two disguised creatures detach from the rock walls and float over to us. They don’t react when they see the underside of these creatures, like flat green amoebas covered in spiky teeth on one side. One lands on Cypress, biting and attaching itself for 6 damage, but it’s fine. One lands on Rae, biting and attaching itself for 11 damage, but it’s fine.
The party walks on in a daze and opens the next door back into the sewers.
The hallway beyond is a regular sewer hallway with two offshoots further up. The closest one, going to our right, has a familiar purplish-pinkish B73DBE glow of light. And the further one, veering to the left, has a much stronger 7DFF7D green light coming from it.
“I’ll check the first one with the purple.” Ari says, and Rae nods, heading to the green one.
Ari immediately spots the eight foot tall giant violet mushroom with swinging tentacles. She attempts to give it a wide berth and sneak around on the other side of the hallway, but rolls a critical failure.
The Violent Fungus rolls a nat’ 20. It gets 1D4 multiattack by the way, so one is a crit’ for 6 total damage, two miss, and one hits for 2.
Rae hears Ari’s shout of surprise, then the thuds, then the thwacks, then Ari’s cry of pain and goes back to the first hallway.
“Wait!” Sorin comes running in, “Remember what happened last time we hurt these things? We can’t damage the sewers.”
Cypress comes in behind him with Bostra in tow. “Those were in cages, with magic ropes hooked up to them. These are growing in the cracks and pushing up the bricks around them.”
“Yeah,” Kai Bostra says, “I assume these ones are good to kill. Like weeding.”
While everyone is talking (and because of surprise attack mechanics and a good initiative roll), the Violent Fungus swings two more thick meaty mushroom-stalk tentacles at Ari. 5 and 8 more damage, didn’t she say she was gonna stop going first all the time to avoid exactly this?
Sorin Firebolts it for 13, but the living tissue is too damp down here to catch fire.
Ari’s Poison Spray misses, but Cypress’s Sacred Flame hits for 6.
The elven monk rushes forward to punch the violent purple mushroom to death! (Again, sometimes i just love the sentences i get to write for this.) She takes 8 damage from its flailing arms, but deals 9 damage back with her fists!
The giant purple mushroom goes limp and dark, falling over in the dirt.
Rae loots it and finds some small baby-mushroom caps at the base that she plucks.
“Okay, this time we’re gonna be sneaky.”
Ari and Rae both crouch and slowly walk to the next corner, sighting the two other Violent Mushrooms there.
Ashley: “Wait, wouldn’t they be unable to sneak up on the mushrooms since mushrooms, like, communicate with each other?”
Good point, and good call. Normally you’d be right, many mushrooms do have a type of communication through nerve-like pulses in the root systems, special spore releases, or gassy odor releases. But the draft is going away from them, towards you (for reasons of cooler air you don’t know about yet) negating any spores or gasses. And they are in separated colony dirt so they can’t communicate through their roots.
Ari leans back against the wall, stabilizing her shoulders. She pulls back her new bow and aims for the trunk. The arrow flies out for 19 damage and removes a huge chunk from the base of the now panic-flailing Fungus.
Then Rae’s bow takes out another chunk on the opposite side. Now the flailing Fungus among us is only holding onto the ground by the tiniest last bit of stalk. (It does have more than 1 HP left this time… it has 2.)
The flailing mushroom stalks pick up clods of dirt and huck them at us. But they miss and the mud only plops against the brick walls.
Cypress casts another Sacred Flame. The mushroom rolls a Con Save with a total of… -1, so that’s gonna be a hit.
The holy spark burns away the last bit of mushroom trunk and the whole thing collapses in a dead heap.
Looking at the last remaining Violent Fungus on the other end of the hall, Sorin concrates and focuses his energy. He draws more power into this Firebolt as he casts it, and this time it burns bright white as it flies through the air. The magic arrow rips through the middle of the mushroom cap singeing away a large two foot hole. The mushroom falls over dead and sizzling with a pleasant aroma.
Ari goes to collect the arrows, but they’re -1 now with the fletchings all covered in mushroom and she tosses them away.
While she’s doing that, let's all get a look around.
The sewer passage angles back the way we came, revealing a very new mechanical room. It’s just a short hallway and we can see clear signs of a hidden door to a Thug Tunnel on the other side.
This mechanical room is gears. Gears, levers, chains, and paddles all meshed in together, and in the middle a plinth. It resembles a large iron cone nut, on further inspection, we can see all the channels and teeth. Thirteen layers of interlocking helical internal gears all just barely beveled to a taper a foot across at the base and half that at the top. In the top is a dish with a clear indentation as if some object is missing.
“Yeah… we don’t wanna mess with whatever that is.”
We turned to the hidden Thug door.
“Ari, let me go first this time. Please.” Rae says with an exasperated sigh. She pushes the door open.
Give me a Dexterity Saving throw.
She pulls her hand back, just in time to avoid the falling guillotine-style blade.
“Phew, I guess I need to be on the look out for traps!” Rae says, immediately failing her perception check. She steps forward and the ground falls away from her foot. The gravel-painted canvas falls away, revealing the swallow pit of very sharp spikes.
Next, Rae fails her Dex Save and impales her foot onto one of the spikes.
As her friend shrieks in pain, Ari slaps her Rewind Button, and we all stand on the edge again, unharmed.
“Okay let’s try that again.”
Rae pokes the cloth with her staff, making it fall away to reveal the spike pit and giving everyone advantage on avoiding it.
Sorin has a critical success, and Ari has a critical failure. So the only fair thing here is for Ari to slip and start falling, and Sorin to catch and save her. Sorry Ari.
Reader, For the next little bit, i’m not going to worry about giving you exact dice rolls, i’m just going to mark successes with ✔, and failures with ☒… You’ll see why…
We walk up the little zigzagging length of Thug tunnel hallway, with its rough slat wood walls and hard packed gravel floor, and we come to the next corner. Rae looks around for traps, and then forages on ahead.
Rae, give me a Perception Check. ☒
Give me a Dexterity Saving throw. ☒
Take 1 damage.
We walk up the little zigzagging length of hallway and we come to the next corner. Rae looks around for traps, then forages on.
Rae, give me a Perception Check. ✔
Give me a Dexterity Saving throw. ☒
Take 3 damage.
We walk up the little zigzagging length of hallway and we come to the next corner. Rae looks around for traps, then forages on.
Rae, give me a Perception Check. ✔
Give me a Dexterity Saving throw. ☒
Take 3 damage…again.
We walk up the little zigzagging length of hallway and we come to the next corner. Rae looks around for traps, then forages on.
Rae, give me a Perception Check. ☒
Give me a Dexterity Saving throw. ☒
Take 1 damage.
We walk up the little zigzagging length of hallway and we come to the door.
“Thank the gods!”
Rae examines the door for traps… and pushes it open to see-
We’ll stop there for this week, but i’ll tell you all that something big is coming… or someone big at least!
Thanks to Rae’s genius, and Sarah's terrible dice, the quote i planned to end off with this week is just… *chef’s kiss* perfection.
“I need to stop doing things, in the dumbest possible way. That just seems like a good recipe for success.”
–Griffin McElory, “Trial by Fieri Trial By Fieri - Ep. 10: An Ill-Advised Zelda: LTTP Randomized Run”
Table talk:
I’ve been continuing to try and get caught up with painting minis, and good thing too. I just got those traps and the sewer-cave door painted just this last week. Just in time, since it turns out i sure did need them.
