Thug Muggers in the Sewers and Caves 5/19-20/23

Table Talk:

Monk Bonus Attacks: We spent some time looking at the rules and figured that Rae can always get a bonus attack (while wielding a monk weapon) regardless of if she hits her target or not. We did establish though, that it has to be either the same target, of one within her reach, not one that requires movement in between attacks.

Rope Trick: We discussed this spell a little bit more, and basically it CAN work as a short rest sense the spell can last exactly and our and a short rest is at least an hour. BUT, since it says anything inside the spell falls out, that also means that characters will have to make a roll to land safely when they fall out. Also, you cannot shoot anything out of the Rope Trick bubble, but you can climb down a ways, shoot and climb back (making rolls for the movement). It’s a very cool spell and i look forward to seeing what you all do with it.

“Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon – he'd run them all. Later, when he'd learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he'd been equally certain he wasn't one.”

-Terry Pratchett, “The Last Continent”

🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 5: Back in the Cold Dank Dark (cont.)

After our fight with the Ochre Jellies, we are hunkered down for a bit of a short rest. (Everyone but Cypress rolled two Hit Dice, and Cypress only rolled one; Rae healed 4, Sorin healed 15, Cyp healed 9, and Ari is back to full health.)

After her turn at watch, Ari is sitting on the workbench next to the square tank of water. She spends some time looking at her busted dagger and wishing she had a file or some tools to try and straighten out the tip. It’s notched now right at the end and the point is crooked from being stabbed into a cobblestone. She sighs and works it back into the sheath, then gets out a rag and starts to clean her rapier. She pushes the last droplets of goo down the length of the blade, slowly buffing the blade back to its original shine.

Meanwhile, Sorin has tied the middle of his rope to one of the rungs on the pipe-ladder with a bite hitch and is folding and knotting down the length of it. He takes the halves and folds them back to make a quartered bite and then loops them back and through each other over and over again. After several minutes, he pops the bite on his hitch and holds up what he’s made. He’s holding a sort of tactical survival style belt rope, for quick access and easy carrying (like a paracord bracelet). He’s showing it off… to no one as they all seem absorbed in their own thing.

“Uh huh, cool, it’s very nice.” Ari says without looking up as she runs a stone down the blade.

Cypress has been healing himself during the rest. He put some of his holy moss on his burns when they first sat down, then went into a deep meditation. In his mind he has seen his own tree. The vine-covered Kapok Tree at his center. He spends this time meditating by carefully lifting the vines from his inner tree and bringing them through his arms and legs to rest coolly on his burns. The Pothos leaves are cool inside his aching muscles as they absorb the burning jelly and take it back to the tree to be cleaned. After some time, Cypress feels better and opens his eyes. He smiles and goes to take the moss off his burns, then frowns in perplexity. The dark green moss has sucked up some of the ochre, now it looks like the color of a dried out dead lawn. Cypress puzzles over this for a moment and then scoops the moss into a separate pouch to examine later.

As Cypress fits his pauldrons back on, Rae decides her watch duty is officially over. She walks back to her bag and pulls out a glass bottle and stopper. She goes back to the dead puddle of the Ochre Jelly and starts scooping the slime into the bottle. It’s a thick viscous slime with a rich orange color to it. Like Ooblec, it doesn’t really seem to move in quite the right way either. As she’s pushing and funneling it with her hands, Rae feels a slight burning, like an Icy Hot or Tiger Balm menthol heat on her skin. She moves faster and notices that mixed into the goo are little pebbles, bead sized bits or rock coated and immersed in this viscous fluid. Rae tries to pick and separate a few by hand, but gives up when she pulls them away and brings a long stretch string of slime away with it like a pizza commercial cheese pull. She eventually fills the bottle and puts it back in her pack, getting ready to head out again.

“So where are we going now?”

“I don’t know but I’m not leading.”

“Ugh we know, Sorin.”

“Guys,” Sorin whines, “I don’t think you get it, like, I almost DIED!”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, and?” Ari puts her hands on her hips, “Everyone here has almost died down here too you know!”

“It’s true,” Cypress says, settling their gear on their back, “I’ve had to cast Spare the Dying on all of you now.”

“But…but I… I saw”

“Sorin, we know you almost died, it happens, Cypress kept you alive, so say ‘thank you’ and let’s pick a direction.”

“Thank you, Cypress…” Sorin mumbles.

“Oh hey,” Rae perks up, “We can go check out those two doors we saw now…”

While the others decide where to go, their voices fade from Sorin’s ears as he huddles inward and thinks back. Sorin, make a Constitution and a Wisdom roll for me. 13, and 6. The Con Save was to see if you remembered anything from when you were unconscious. He’s heard people dark about the bright light at the end of the tunnel, but that’s not what he saw. Sorin stands there, not talking, remembering what he saw when he almost died.

The eyes. All those horrible eyes staring at him in the dark void. All at different angles and tilts, and all staring at him. Why had no two eyes been the same? Purple eyes and white eyes. Yellow eyes and blue. Square irises with star pupils and lumpy goat pupils on triangles. Had one of the eyes been shaped… like a man.

Those teeth… Those horrible teeth smiling in the dark. The long needles fangs. The pierces rending teeth dripping in the void. Were those the worst, or was it the long flat grinding teeth? Teeth like wroughting mill stones tho crunch and squish and squeeze and pop. Orange teeth, and red. Blue teeth with blackened gums…

What was that thing that reached for him? Was it a hand, a giant hand to pick him up and pull him in? No. No it couldn’t be, too many fingers for a hand. Or too few, if only the short parts were fingers. Those… legs… were they legs? They had so many parts, like spider legs with extra segments added on.

And they just kept reaching.

And they just kept staring.

And they just kept … grinning.

Staring.

Reaching.

Grinning back at him.

Sorin shakes himself back to the moment, and opens his mouth to ask something but stops. The Wisdom Save was to see if the others shamed you into not talking about it, and they did. Sorin closes his mouth, breathes, and opens his mouth to try again. But, nothing comes out. Why bother, they’ve all almost died, they probably all saw this before. Don’t be such a baby, right? So tell me Sorin, because this is a healthy space where only good things happen, how do you internalize and suppress these feelings?

Ashley: “He feels like he just shouldn’t talk about it. He probably thinks this is some kind of social taboo or something. He probably spirals for a minute and figures that this is something everyone knows about but, since he didn’t have parents, no one ever told him anything about it, or told him not to bring it up. Then at the long rest tonight he’ll spend some time drawing everything he saw in his notebook to try and make sense of it.”

Nymbus: “Would we even be able to comprehend that drawing, if any of us saw it? Or would it just be like layers of angry not-okay scribbles and swirls?”

Me: I would say that anyone could understand the drawings. I think that since the magic school is really built on, like, the old idea of Natural Philosophy, and stuff, that drawing is a big part of the curriculum. First year students, drawings probably do look insane, but they take classes specifically to interpret and draw magic, so by now Sorin is adept at that kind of scientific illustration. I would imagine that the Older senior lectores can even draw on thin sheets of glass to make multidimensional rendings of magical theories.

Everyone is set to head back to the doors we saw yesterday, and they turn to Sorin.

“You ready, Wizard Boy?”

Yeah, one second.” Then Sorin grabs the square tank of water, and spills it across all the mucking Ochre slime on the floor. He washes it away to reveal 7 Gold Pieces, 17 Silver pieces, and a Health Potion that Rae immediately bullies him into giving to her.

At the other end of the big square now, the team nervously stops and sends Akris to scout ahad.

“There’ssss a big iron gatesss like you ssssaw befffore, and there’ssss a large sssstone door, like the onesss that lead to the cavesss.” He says when he gets back.

“Are the doors locked?” Sorin asks, rolling to get another point with the familiar.

“How sssshould I know, wizzzzard boy?” Lose a Will point with Akris. Man, it is not Sorin’s day today.

Down the tunnel now, we stand before the iron gate. Just like Akris said, it is identical to the one Ari ‘picked’ open up stairs that lead to the Church of Shadows Crypt. Cypress illuminates his moss ball and pushes his staff with it between the bars to get a better look at the room beyond.

Beyond the gate are shelves. Rows and rows of shelves like a twisting turning library, but there are no books. Instead, on these shelves, are rows and rows of urns. In the dark blue-green glow of the moss-lantern light, it looks almost as if we are underwater, exploring the depth of a lake or sunken ruins in the ocean. Each urn is simple clay with a white and a black half divided by a wavy line. And on top of each urn, rests a skull. Lines of skulls look back at us with one hollow empty eye socket. In the gloomy underwater darkness, they each seem to be trying to guess our thoughts. We only see one of the skull’s eye sockets, because each skull is only half bone. Each skull has a mask, a diagonal face only covering half of it, with a gray-metal mask. The mask is a smiling face with a closed eye, at peace in this final rest.

When a church member dies, they are laid out and mourned with the iron mask placed on the face to symbolize their balance in death. Then taken to the hall of the dead where spirits can leave the body and become a ghost in the world of shadows. We know all this already. But here, we are learning what comes next. The body only remains in the upper crypt long enough to decay to a partially mummified skeleton. Then the keeper of the dead cremated the body, and detaches the half-covered skull. When the ashes are poured into the urn, it is sealed with wax, and the skull is then fixed to the wax before it hardens.

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that the ceremony where the mask is placed to cover the face, also involved a sort of embalming treatment of the skin there. This means that the face under the mask will not decay or sink, or be eaten away. So under the gray iron death mask of each skull is a still very life-like half a face preserved underneath. This also serves to identify remains, by looking under the mask to see the face. But for us, here in the darkness of the tunnels, it means that we can see little glimmers of flesh poking out around the masks of some of the skulls staring at us.

It is here, dear reader that we have to take a break. We had been playing this session late into the night while celebrating Brooke’s birthday, and as such, everyone was at a very fun and happy stage of drunkenness that was very difficult to wrangle and get them focused on the game. This is proved by the fact that in 2 hours of playing they basically just managed to walk down a hallway. In screenwriting, it is usually assumed that one page equals one minute. That's not the case here when i write these summaries because i am describing a lot and not really taking up much space with dialogue. But, usually, i figure on 2ish pages per hour of play, and this was about half that (in fact, this time it took me less time to write this than it did to play the session, which is very funny to me). So we took a brief overnight break to sleep and return to the game in the morning.

So back in the morning now, with everyone apologizing for being ungovernable and me laughing it off. A quote, to pull us back into the world:

He finds himself wishing the proper people to talk to would light up or have hovering indicator arrows over their heads or dialogue options to choose from. He doesn’t always wish that real life were more like video games, but in certain situations it would be helpful. Go here. Talk to this person. Feel like you’re making progress even though you don’t know what it is you’re trying to do, exactly.

-Erin Morgenstern, “The Starless Sea, Book I: Sweet Sorrows; Those who seek and those who find.”

Pointing to the lock, Sorin says, “I can transmute that into air when we need to get in so we don’t have to break anything this time.”

“What do you mean break anything!”

“Er, uh, I mean, uh, What do you think is behind the other door?” Sorin says as a hurried distraction.

“A big beautiful Orge babe,” Cypress says without missing a beat.

“What!? Ha ha I don’t know what you’re- Hey wait why are you laughing, Akris!” Sorrin stammers, blushing.

“Don’t yell at the child!” Ari, Cypress and Rae say at once.

Akris makes pouty little duck lips and presses his tail up to them. “I’m uh in-nocwent wittle baby…”

What follows is a long discussion of where to go next, that basically boils down to the players saying, ‘but what if there is something we have to fight over there’ and me explaining that that is kinda how this whole thing works. Eventually someone points out that if they go back through the cave door where they fought the Ochre Jellies, there is a good chance of them not having to fight anything because they already did, and the cowards players go that way.

🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 6: The Caves

Back into the cave tunnel now, Ari rolls a critical success on her perception check.

In the distance, echoing from one of the side caves, she can hear something like crab legs moving around. She opens her mouth to tell the others, then she hears a crunch and a slurp and then silence. She decides not to tell the others.

We’re standing in front of the first off-shoot tunnel. It’s small. A narrow rocky passage with bumps and dips. It looks like there are parts where we’re going to have to go in, turns sideways.

Cypress fails his constitution check.

“Uh.. I think the other tunnel up ahead looks a little bit wider, maybe we should check it out first.”

“You two go ahead, I’m gonna send Akris down to scout this one, and Rae can cover me if anything comes out.”

Rae rolls her eyes and Ari and Cypress head to the other tunnel.

The other tunnel is just as narrow, but Cypress swallows the lump in his throat and nods at Ari, they turn, and shimmy down the crack in the cave.

A few minutes later, Sorin is asking Akris what he saw down the tunnel.

“Ohsss boy, yoursss gonna love it! It’ssss a pretty little park! It’ssss got grass and a benchsss and everythingsss.” Akris lies.

“Oh my wows, that’s awesome, Rae did you hear-”

“You’re an idiot.” Rae grabs the Wizard’s collar and pulls him along to the tunnel Ari and Cypress just went through.

The tunnel here is a tight squeeze, with Ari and Rae having to turn sideways to get through. We breathe an anxious sigh of relief when the little tunnel ends at an open chamber. It's a round room with ancient rock walls. The cave air seems to have pulled the moisture out here and it’s cool but dry. The walls are sturdy and safe, and now we can see the only other ways out from here are two similar narrow passages on either side of the walls curve in front of us to the south.

Ari and Cypress have been standing here for a little bit trying to figure out where the noises are, but with the circular shape of the room, they can’t tell which of the two paths it’s coming from. Arbitrarily, they choose the one on the left.

“Hang on one sec,” Sorin says and he pulls out a little piece of chalk. He marks an arrow on the ground, pointing back the way they came, and earning an inspiration point from me.

Similar to the last rooms, this tight squeezing tunnel opens up into a wide chamber. It’s sort of an oblong oval, but the far wall from us is a bit straighter than the walls to the sides, Which are kind of lumpy, filled with areas of stone mixed with outlying dips. The walls are the same gray and ochre color we’ve been getting used to in the caves, with little veins of yellow and dull green running throughout. In the center of the room is a ring of six pillars. Ancient formations where stalagmites stood and grew through the ages until they kissed their stalagmite bridges and made a permanent union through time (See i can do poetic imagery stuff too) Right in front of us is a seventh pillar, new that the others and, with small strings of stone connecting them and looking like rocky hands in the darkness. The darkness… Wait. As we step into the room we see a glow. (On the other side of/inside of) the ring of pillars, is a formation glowing the darkness. It’s opalescent and beautiful. A kind of rock, or no wait, maybe a shell, like a flat conch shell or… As we look at it the shell moves. It turns, and now we can see the tail, a long yellow-green slimy foot with no toes, skirts with a cluster of blue veins. The foot shifts on the floor, and the shell turns more, we see the mantle riding above the lumpy wet skin at about thigh height, the body of this slug thing contracts and bend and we see eye stalks staring at us, then suddenly they retract into the head of this monstrous snail as it rises above us in this tall cavern. The snail's cute little mustache mouth feelers twitch, senting the air, and then the mouth drops open and roars a hissing roar. The shuddering hiss shakes loose a small stalactite that crashes to the ground by Cypress’s foot. More stalks appear above the eyes as four thorny nodules extend and begin swinging around in wild erratic arcs, each one is the size of a mace hard as the rocky shell on its back. Meet the Flail Snail! Thug Mugger, roll initiative!

Cypress walks to the side of the monstrous snail, between two pillars, and lifts a hand into the air. He closes his eyes and a faint glow appears around him. As we watch, the shimmering air moves down around his hand and then begins to reach out towards the beast. The glow reaches out as Cypress extends his good will in the Animal Friendship spell. The light gently touches the side of the snail's face, and the snail turns. The light shatters apart and disappears. (Animal Friendship fails if a creature has an intelligence of 4 or higher).

Seeing the kind animal-lover approach fail, Sorin pulls his goggles down and casts Chill Touch. Ths thick, bumpy hide of the Snail seems to frost over for a second for 2 damage before the muscles underneath the bumpy skin undulate and break the effect.

In the shadows of the cave pillars, something moves, unnoticed. Tee hee

The Flail Snail rears back and howls! It’s howl shifts into a strange musical note. The air seems to hum and the shell on its back begins to glow, vibrating in frequency to the musical call of the Flail Snail. The glow shinies throughout the room, it’s mesmerizing, and almost comforting. The strange colored lights wash over our face and we feel mellow, still and at peace.

Everyone except Cypress fail their saving throws and are Stunned.

Ari shakes her head and manages to break free of the Scintillating Shell’s grip on her. She staggers but comes back to herself, then she moves quickly to a pillar behind the Snail to hide. She throws her back to the pillar and kicks a rock to another pillar to confuse her enemy where she’s hiding.

Thought about a gif here, but light sensitivities.

Rae hears the bouncing rock and looks around for Ari. When she looks away from the Scintillating Shell, she breaks free of its spell. She picks out the pillars that Ari would probably hide behind, behind the Snail. Then she moves to a pillar in front of the snail, for cover, but still in possession to flank the beast.

Sorin is stunned. Nothing else to say here really, he failed his saving roll so uh… oooo pretty lights i guess.

Cypress tugs on the wizard's cloak and as he whispers ‘sooo… pretty…’ they pull him into the tunnel, backing out of the room. “We disturbed it, in its room, so we should lea- Ow!”

As Cypress is trying to get the Thug Muggers to leave, a familiar looking stalactite falls and pierces his shoulder through his pauldron for 12 damage.

Oh hey guys, by the way, the Flail Snail has five attacks, so lets roll some dice!

The light from the Scintillating Shell fades and the Flail Snail puts its head between two pillars, and its flail stalks fling out wildly at the Stunned Sorin on one side, and Rae on the other. One of the two hits Sorin for 5 damage. Rae ducks and dodges two, but the third swings into her gut for 5 damage.

Ari pokes out from behind her rock, draws her arrow back to her cheek, breathes, aims, releases. The carefully aimed arrow hits the Snail right under the mantle, the shell bumping against it and irritating the area more. (10 damage with sneak attack.) Then she stands and runs, ducking behind another pillar.

Rae crouches in front of the Snail, and with a lunge, prods the Snails eyes stock for 7 damage. The eye stalk retracts and shrivels, the whole body pulling back just in time to dodge Rae’s bonus kick as she runs past the creature, to once again flank it with Ari.

The shock of the hit has broken Sorin free now. Unstunned, he ducks behind another pillar for cover.

Cypress pulls the stalactite out of his shoulder and is surprised and a bit grossed out to see eyes open in the rock and, like a hard shelled crab, legs sticking out from it. He examines it and rolls a nature check. A distant memory returns to him. A passage from an old forgotten book;

“...rock-like shell encases a piercer’s body, giving it the look and texture of a stalactite. That shell protects a soft, slug-like upper body that lets the piercer move across cavern…”

The Piercer bites the cleric's hand and writhes to try to escape, but Cypress holds on to it, only taking 5 non-lethal damage from the bite.

Once again, the Flail snail turns around in its circle of pillars, and thrusts its head out between Sorin and Rae. One mace stalk barely misses Akris, one misses and one hits Sorin (4 damage), one misses and one hits Rae (7 damage), and the beast lets out a triumphant hissing yowl!

Ari ducks out from her Pillar and casts Ray of Enfeeblement, but the spell glancing off the shiny shell of the snail. Once again she runs around the room and changes positions to hide.

Rae gets a nat’ 20 and bashes her staff against the head of the Snail for 8 more damage, then kicks the thing. She attempts to use her Flurry of Blows, but now the Snail is retreating. It pulls away, gushing oozy blood from its wounds.

Sorin sees Ari’s plan, and whether trying to show off or help, succeeds his own Ray of Enfeeblement with a critical success and 12 more damage.

Back in the exit tunnel, Cypress holds the Piercer in their hand and casts Poison Spray. Rather than the usual line, the spell forms a puffy ball of poisonous mist that scours the hard shell of the little critter. I didn’t make Nymbus roll for this, figuring that thawing the thing in his hand, basically amounts to triple advantage, and just making that a success.

The Piercer bites the cleric's hand and writhes to try to escape, but Cypress holds on to it, only taking 5 non-lethal damage (now 1 normal damage) from the bite.

This time, one of the Flail Snail’s Snail Flails does manage to hit Akris, and the familiar winged snake disappears in a puff of glittering orange sparkles. Once again one flail miss and one flail hits both Sorin and Rae for 5 damage each. Then, the bloodied monster moves to the center of the circle of pillars and sucks itself back into its shell. Now the faintly glowing shell is all we see of the Flail Snail.

Sorin readies a Firebolt, and Rae readies an crossbow bolt for the instant the thing shows a peak of it’s smiley foot.

Ari shoots off an arrow but it plinks off the glowing shell (it has +4 to AC when it's in its shell).

Cypress lets loose another Poison Spray on the Piercer still trapped in his hand for 7 more damage.

The Piercer bites the cleric's hand and writhes to try to escape, and this time Cypress cannot hold onto it. The critter drops and wiggles its legs, impaling into Cypress’s foot for 2 damage.

The Flail Snail peaks out of its shell, and Sorin and Rae loose. The crossbow bolt and the Firebolt spell bounces off the glowing shell (they have advantage against magic). The beast lets out an enraged shriek and charges! Two mace stalks flap together on either side of Sorin’s head, knocking him unconscious with 14 damage, and a third one bruises Rae’s arm with another 7 damage.

Sorin is downed for the second time today. Maybe he’s getting good at it, because he succeeds on his first death save right away.

Ari lets fly her last +1 arrow, and it buries itself deep in the back of the Flail Snail's head for 8 damage.

Um… Nymbus, can you please look at my notes here, i’m afraid the others won’t believe me.

Players: “Are you serious?”

Nymbus: “Well…”

Players: “I swear to god”

Nymbus: “Looks like it was at 9 hp… and Ari did 8 damage… So…”

*lots of swearing*

Rae swings her staff to try and finish off the monster, but misses. Sarah gets angry and uses a point of inspiration.

Rae swings her staff and knocks the head of the Flail Snail, motionless, to the floor.

In the little tunnel, Cypress pulls the Piercer out of his foot, casts Poison Spray on it, one last time, kills it, and walks back into the room to see what he’s missed.

Cypress walks back into the main room to see Rae angrily panting over the dead Snail and Ari holding a drawn bow, pointed at it just in case. They think back to when the Piercer struck them, right as they were trying to get everyone to leave and let the snail alone.

We’ll leave off this time with Cypress sighing and casting Spare the Dying on Sorin…

"If a spider walks onto your bed, you squish it. If a butterfly lands on your bed, you take a picture. Is the butterfly ‘doing something to your brain’? If I didn’t make myself look like this, I would already be dead. You kill everything that doesn’t have pretty wings.”

-Maggie Knoll —David Wong (Jason Pargin), “What The Hell Did I Just Read”

Table talk: