Thug Muggers in the Sewers 3/23/24
Table Talk:
I gave out 2,000 XP for solving the Boiler Room puzzle. *cough cough* How’s that town XP project coming…
When i was doing a bunch of the world building with the drow burial this week, i realized that i need to start working on a couple bigger (regional, world, and global) maps, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know. I have lots of experience with making dungeon maps and plenty of tools/programs for them, but very little for world maps.
I spent a moment to ask Ashley how Sorin is feeling – specifically, how he’s feeling about girls. He’s spent his whole life pining after big beefy babes strong enough to grab him around the waist and use him as a dumbell. Well now he’s met a couple and spent time with them… and they’ve traumatized him. Meanwhile there’s this nice little older holy man who keeps supporting him, speaking gently, defending him, healing him, and soothing him. So i asked if his romantic interests are starting to change. Is there a crush on Cypress coming down the pipeline? “He looks at Cypress as like, ‘Huh, this is what I SHOULD want’, but the spark just isn’t there. Meanwhile, like, he knows that Ari is terrible for him but he’s still super into her. But internally, it’s not like he thinks it’s something wrong with her, he just keeps thinking like ‘oh god what does it say about me that i’m into this?’”
"How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
This lost, I decide. Precisely this lost.
-Doctor Sebastian Bell* —Stuart Turton, “The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: 1”
🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 11: A Mound of Terror (cont.)
🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 11: A Mound of Terror (cont.)
As we walk south down the corridor, away from the Boiler Room, we come to the first intersection, where the hallways making a kind of box around the room we’re going to, meet this one. Ari and Sorin stop, ready to head that way. Without thinking, Cypress and Rae head further south, presumably to the next turn off where the box connects. Ari and Sorin shrug and follow.
When we reach the next intersection, Ari and Sorin call out to the other two as they keep going south. “Hey, this way.”
“What, oh, uh, yeah, duh.”
“Must’ve spaced off for a minute.”
Okay, Cypress and Rae make wi-
Nymbus: “Yeah yeah, Wisdom saving rolls.”
Yep, DC 13.
Well neither of those pass… Ugh… I JUST set up the map, i’m not gonna make you roll more and maybe go further south into the next sheet i’d have to set up… and i don’t really wanna make you take damage again… I’m just going to give you guys disadvantage on your next rolls, okay?
There’s some mechanical bits here in the intersection, crammed into a sort of cut out corner off the walls. It's stuffed with pipes and valves and gauges. (Crap, this is vaguely important, so i’m gonna have to write another paragraph describing walls of pipes, uuuggghhh). We stand next to the torch bracket on the wall, but the light feels faint and gloomy. There is a drainage grate at our feet on the floor, and as we look, it seems darker and deeper than the others we’ve found. Next to it is a pillar of large wooden rings edged with dull gray metal that looks almost black in the dim light. The rings are stacked up in a column underneath the large spoked shaft like the crank wheels we’ve used before. Even the wood seems to be covered in shadow. Behind it along one wall is a stone trough with several holes in the bottom. It looks to be running dry but it's hard to tell with so little light. Along the other wall is a bank of valves and gauges with knobs and small gears. Cypress tries to read some of them but the writing is covered in shadow and almost impossible to read.
Dim light? We’re standing next to a lit torch.
Sorin is looking at the dark corner of mechanical things and then back at the torch. He leans in and rolls high on an Arcana Check. He can see that the shadows here aren’t being cast by the light, but by something else entirely. As he squints he can tell it’s not magic, also he can faintly see a seam of purple running through it. He backs away.
“We should get to the next room. We can piece it together there.”
We walk a little further and Cypress pulls out a slip of dirty paper with the notes on it from Guruuuuhckck. “Can I see the marking on the maps?” After a brief look at the other paper Ari hands it over, he finds the same mark in the list. “Huh.”
“What?” Rae asks.
“This one looks a lot simpler.” They cough.
“Yeah?” Sorin asks.
“It’s only three words.”
“You're making it sound really ominous, what is it?” Ari laughs nervously.
“Destroy the poison.
💀💀💀🍄🍮🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 12: The Poison Pudding
💀💀💀🍄🍮🛡️🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 12: The Poison Pudding
We walk into the room, comfortable in our knowledge of the Pump Rooms now, just waiting for the next batch of Thugs and the next Shambling Mound. We’ve figured it out on the map and we see that Guruuuuhckck’s mark here is almost identical to the one over the brightly lit and happy – allbeit smashed up – room we just left. So we turn the corner and see… a dark and ominous room. In the gloom, the hulking pumps are not whirring along in here, but moving at a near dead crawl. The cauldron is not on the far wall this time, but in the far corner, and the dark shadow it casts seems to pull the light and hope from our eyes. Even the white and gray furnaces seem almost black in this gloom.
There isn’t a Shambling Mound in this chamber of darkness, but there is a Gazer.
And there are Thugs.
Three of them.
All on the floor.
All dead.
Ari and Rae nod to each other, silently walking in further.
Cypress talks briefly to tZulèe and it starts melding into the wall of the entrance. Then he crosses the room to look at the dead Thugs by the other entrance as Ari examines the one by the cauldron.
With a nat’ 20 Cypress’s heart sinks. The farthest Thug has a familiar look to him. Checking over their body, he can see the bloody hollow sockets of his kneecaps.
Ari turns over her dead Thug and then jerks away with a gasp. She can’t make out the face, but she knows this Thug. She knows the ragged gore marks scoring his chest. The punctures in his ribs exactly as far apart as her own horns. And, exactly the same size.
Ari, make a Con Check for me.
Brooke: “Yeah, that’s fair… 1…”
Nope. You will have disadvantage then. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.
Brooke: Yeah…”
Cypress moves to the other Thug, laying on their back, and with a sudden worrying thought, he flips them over to their stomach. There, sticking out of his butt, are two arrows.
A voice echoes throughout the room. A voice we've only heard once before, once in another dark room before the Rat King came. “Get up!” Zaanth’s echoing ghost-voice drips with malice and suppressed rage, “Finish the job we made you for.” Her hatred punctuates every word.
The Thugs all start to stir, shambling and shuffling to their feet – one with a distinct cracking at where its knee bones used to be. We see something poking out behind the cauldron, like another Gazer but larger with several more eyestalks. The dead Gazer at our feet begins to inflate like the husk of a basketball, slowly filling with air with wheezing slimy coughs. The Thugs are all standing and moaning now, one a dried out to a nearly mummified zombie, one a true and accursed Ghoul, and the last one revived with the glowing green eyes of a Ghast. As the bloating half empty Gazer uses its eye stalks to crawl and pull itself towards us, Zaanth’s laugh echoes away, “So long, idiots.”
Roll initiative!
Ari you have disadvantage on attacks against the Ghoul; that’s the one you gored.
Rae and Ari, you are both in line to look at the thing behind the cauldron. Give me Nature (Int) Checks - DC 15.
Sarah: “18.”
Brooke: “12.”
Interesting.
Brooke: “Oh great, what does that mean?”
Ari, you are completely sure that you know what this thing is; it is that most dreaded of all beasts – The Beholder! Rae, you can tell that it's just a trick of the light and this is not that most dreaded of all beasts – The Beholder.
Ari is first up in the order. She takes one look at the Beholder behind the cauldron, grabs her sword and runs. Rae tries to reach out, but even as the words “No, wait!” are queuing up inside her cheeks, Ari swings. This actually would be a good move… If it was a beholder. Ari’s thin rapier zips through the air and slices the swollen skin. With a dull poop and a fwoosh, the Gas Spore lets out its Death Burst. The fuming spores overwhelm Ari as she coughs, but the others pull their shirts up in time to cover their mouths (everyone but Ari failed the Con Save, she takes damage and is now diseased. She will die in 6 days, if not cured).
Cypress is up next, casting Bless on everyone and summoning their Spiritual Weapon. The light of Sheela drips from the ceiling nearby and the ghost of the holy sickle sprouts from the floor where it lands.
Next to her, the Ghoul claws out at Ari for vengeance! With a second bad Constitution Save, the corpse ooze under its nails drips into her blood. Her heart rate is elevated from the fight and in just a few seconds, the grotesque goulish gored Ghoul’s gross gooey goop has Paralyzed her.
The Ghast shambles for Rae, and Cypress is able to swing at it (an attack of opportunity) with his Mushroom Mace. It’s a critical hit and they stop the Ghast in its tracks with 10 damage.
Rae runs to Ari’s aid, swinging her staff at the Ghoul. The spike on the end crunches into its already sunken ribs. Rae lets go with her back hand, to drive a fist into his undead face. While it’s reeling, she pulls her staff back out of its chest, plants the end of it on the floor and swiftly lets loose a series of kicks in a Flurry of Blows. In a single turn she takes the Ghoul from 45 health – to 8.
Overhead the cloud of darkness grows deeper and deeper, we can see it flowing together into a dripping miss. It grows bigger and bigger until the gigantic wave of black ooze falls to the ground. When it does the room seems to grow brights around the walls and machinery as the Black Pudding emerges. It looks different from when we saw it in The Cradle a month ago. Now it has purple lines and veins running on its surface and deep within it. It attacks Ari for 7 bludgeoning and 14 acid damage. She’s still paralyzed and her scream dies against her gritted teeth.
Sorin flicks a lever and the Locate Undead lens slides into his goggles. Through the magic HUD around his eyes he can see the ring of red around the Ghoul and casts Chill Touch. The simmering hand passes into its chest as the foul thing stumbles back and the hand remerges on the other side, holding its pustulous, still beating, heart. With a blank look, the Thug falls to the floor, dead once again.
The Husk Zombie swings a hand at Cypress, but its shattered knees buckle and with a hissing, dusty wheeze it staggers back.
The Gazer sits bloated on the floor and its eye stalks wave around wildly like a lawn sprinkler toy. A Ray of Frost hits Rae for 7 damage, and the Ray of Fear hits Cypress making him stumble away from the monster as it gurgles out a sloppy crackle against the cold brick floor.
Ari’s muscles slowly clench and unclench as, dripping with the dark ooze of the Black Pudding, she starts to work herself out of paralysis.
With no other choice from the Fear Ray, Cypress backs towards the wall, climbing up unto the crate there. They pull themselves together enough to swing at the Husk Zombie, but they’re still shaking and the undead Thug dodges it easily. The spiritual Sickle of Sheela flies over and scores deep into the corpses’ hyde for 7 damage.
The Ghast steps forward, and takes 5 damage from an opportune swing of the holy sickle. Then he grabs a sword out of the barrel there and swings at Rae. He misses, but lunges forward to bite at her for 5 damage and an embarrassing hickey.
Rae can feel her eyes burning at the stench of the Ghast, she coughs but fails the Con Save, becoming Poisoned by its noxious fumes. She swings her staff, hitting it for 5. Then she tries to punch it again and again, but even her Flurry of Blows misses as she coughs in the gagging powerful wreak of the glowing green pus running in gimlets down its arms.
The dark menacing wave of the Black pudding swells again and slams down on Ari. With a natural 20 it lands a critical hit, doubling the 9 bludgeoning to 18, and doing acid damage fo-
Brooke, eyes watering: “18 puts her at negative ten… please don’t kill my baby…”
…
…give me a luck roll…
As the world fades around her, and the blackness closes in on her eyes, Ari drops her sword. She's no longer paralyzed as her heart pumps to a stop. Her outstretched hand goes limp and falls. As its last signals of life, her brain receives the feeling of cold smooth metal as the pad of her thumb glances off the Rewind Button.
The world resets by just a few precious seconds, and the confused Pudding charges its victim again. This time it rolls a nat’ 1. It feels the crackling energy of the rewind around Ari, and flees away from her.
Sorin cast Chilling Touch but when the hand emerges and hits the Ghast it just fizzles out in a show of sparks, for only 3 damage. (Ghasts are resistant to necrotic damage)
While the Husk Zombie claws Cypress for 5, the half inflated Gazer claws towards Sorin. The crawl is part roll, and part worm inching – using its opening and closing mouth to pull it along – while the eye stalks try to work the ground like limp arms to pull it along. In disgust, Sorin pulls away from its rotting mouth, avoiding the bite. The fowl thing rolls over with its mouth up and laughs through its gasps and flying drips of corpse spittle.
Able to move now, Ari runs away from the memory and the spot where she just died. She grabs her rapier and slices the gurgling eyeball monstrosity, neatly severing the bloated belly-mouth from the wriggle eye tentacles.
Cypress winces and casts Sacred Flame on the shrieking, laughing mouth-monster at Ari’s feet, and it dies. Finally silencing the unsettling sound of it trying to laugh while gargling its own blood and brains.
Is it bad that none of these descriptions bothered me to write? I’ve been doing this long enough now, that literally just sipped my tea and kept on typing.
The Ghast swings its limp sword arm ar Rae and slices her for 13 damage.
Brooke, pushing her fingers together: “Um, I shouldn’t uh… Have you been, um, including the extra damage from their Puppeteer Parasites?
Nymbus, screaming: “YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH! WHY WOULD YOU TELL HIM THAT??”
Brooke, nearly crying again: “I’m sorry! But, you know he’s just gonna figure it out later when he’s writing the summary!”
Good point, Brooke. Thank you. Cypress and Rae each of you takes 1 more damage. Thanks again, Brooke.
Brooke, in the smallest voice possible: “You’re welcome…”
Nymbus: *unintelligible screaming that causes discord to cut out*
Rae fails another Con Save in the presence of the Ghast and takes a point of damage from the stench emanating from its drooling wounds, before whirling her staff and knocking the undead Thug first to one side, then the other. Finally, it falls down dead, landing on its face with the old half broken arrows limping poking up from its decomposing buttcheeks. (Okay, yeah, that one did make me smile). Then she runs to Cypress’s aid and unleashes the fury of her Fist on the Husk Zombie. It staggers back, not bloodied, but um… dustied? With dust leaking out? I don’t know, you get it.
The Black Pudding descends and smashes into Cypress for 27 total damage, and the little cleric passes out in the puddle of ooze on the floor.
Hey Sorin, got any bad ideas?
Sorin gulps and then tosses his rope into the air. The portal of the Rope Trick spell opens above him, and he steps into the puddle of the Black ooze – gritting his teeth as he takes 28 damage. Then with his bonus action, he casts Misty Step and ascends into the portal, taking the horrible Black sludge monster into the portal with him and away from his team.
The entire table erupts in admonishments and berating jabs at Ashley. Sorin hears all his friends' voices in his ear, yelling at him not to sacrifice himself; that they still want him alive; and that he’s an idiot.
As the Husk Zombie staggers forward in a half falling lurch, Ari scoops up Cypress and runs for the hall shouting for Bostra.
Bostra stabilizes the cleric enough to get his eyes blinking open, then Cypress immediately points at the nearest enemy and calls down a Sacred Flame on the Husk Zombie. Then he staggers to his feet and asks what happened.
Rae takes out her frustration with Sorin on the shamling Thug Husk, killing it – again. It bursts. The cloud of corpse dust engulfs Rae. She coughs… and cough… and… stops coughing. She collapses on the floor.
Bostra cups his hands together and shouts one of the nine holy words of Deneir. The Mass Healing Word gives back 6 HP to everyone in the room, except Sorin who is trapped in another room, and in another dimension with a horrifying monster of poisonous acidic death.
Speaking of Sorin, the sludge around him constrictics around him for 15 more damage and he chugs a Health Potion to recover 6 of it before falling back down the hole to our reality – momentarily sliding from the Pudding’s grasp as the glow of the healing potion surrounds him.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Ari asks nervously.
“PLAN!?”
“What do you mean, plan?”
“We had a plan?”
“Uh…” Ari chugs down her own health potion and then knee slides to hide under the table before the sludge drips out of Sorin’s hole. (hehe)
Cypress holds his medallion in the air and speaks the true name of ‘blood’ (the carrier of life) in the old tongue of gods, Channeling his Divinity to cast Preserve Life and granting 5 HP each to Sorin, Rae and himself.
“Thanks.” Rae runs into the room and starts dragging Sorin with one arm under his shoulder, out the other hallway. “If I didn’t want you to still be alive,” she grunts, swatting his head with her free hand, “I’d kill you myself for being so stupid!”
“Hey, ow! I was, ow, was trying, ow, to save you! Owe that one really hurt!”
“Good!”
Bostra dumps a Health potion on Cypress’s more obvious wounds with a nod, noticing the hole that the beast burned into their armor.
Back on his feet now, Sorin pulls out a recycled glass bottle full of dull opaque water.
“You’re gonna use that now?” Rae asks.
“Its all I have left.” Sorin grips the bulb of the bottle and casts Firebolt. The flames lick up the sides of the glass, flash boiling the water inside. It turns a bright 55A641 green as it bubbles. In an instant, the glass cracks with the fire erupting over it. Then it bursts apart with the bubbling warm green healing waters of the crystal lake dripping down Sorin’s outstretched arm.
“No, perhaps the companionship of even an evil person is preferable to loneliness.”
-Gaara of The Sand —Masashi Kishimoto, “Naruto: Season 5 Episode 21”
Table talk:
We had a hard out this time so we stopped here. It’s a good stopping point with everyone healed up (somewhat) and the Black Pudding – as the only enemy left – about to re-emerge.
Next time though, i think we need to have a chat about tactics… This could have gone a lot better…
