Thug Muggers in the Sewers and Caves 6/11/23
Table talk:
A brief notice; some of this summary is recapping conversations we had over the table. And while i’m pretty confident i got the jist of it here, it’s definitely not all exact as to what was said.
I decided that Ari needs to make a roll to establish something about how she’s feeling. These caves are so different from the caves she grew up with, i want to establish something. I left it completely up to Brooke as to when this comes up though, letting her best judgment. It didn’t make sense to me when everyone was fighting or just barely starting to explore the caves, but on a rest, or looting, or something i want Ari to roll, so just let me know when you think it’s the right time.
With the past few weeks off i got some more prep work done and one of the things i did is to get some more room descriptions pre-written. In most book campaigns and adventures, this is pretty common. It establishes what is in a new area, and it reinforces that the players are taking part in a narrative. I’ve also found this helpful for when not all the players (especially when teleconferencing) can see the map. However i did go maybe a bit overboard on one of the bigger rooms coming up, so please let me know if it gets to be too much.
The other big thing i did in our time off was to edit and update some of the older summaries from early on, before this blog-thing had really developed a format. In case you don’t know, the ‘Start Here’ button takes the reader to the April 30th 2022 Summary because that’s when we really started the story, and when Sorin was introduced. But the current format didn’t really come about until the 6/26/22 Summary. So i re-edited, re-formatted, and generally touched up the 4-30-22, 5-7-22, 5-22-22, 5-29-22, 6-4-22, & 6-11-22 Summaries.
On the note of my writing, and needing to edit…
“There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey...”
-Commander Sir Sammuel Vimes –Terry Pratchett, “Jingo”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 6: The Caves (cont.)
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 6: The Caves (cont.)
Cypress looks up from stabilizing the wizard to ask how things are going with the Snail. He opens his mouth, but closes it again when he sees Rae standing over the slowly deflating corpse.
It seems like the lifeforce that held the Flail Snail to any sort of shape was the slimy meniscus ooze now dripping out of it. And with that life force gone from the beast, nothing is left to hold it in. The snotty sludge is simply pouring out of the slug in gimlets like miniature waterfalls from its wounds.
Turning to look around the room, Cypress can see the bits of their teammate’s blood on the stone pillars and can see the chipped stone where attacks were dodged or missed all together. A sudden fright makes them look up at the ceiling, but this ancient stone ceiling isn't coming down anytime in the next melania.
They look at the floor, and start to piece something together. They can see lots and lots of crumpled bits that don’t quite look like stone. Piecing it together in they’re mind, they begin to see a pattern in the shapes, like little empty half-cones. A quick check of one of the stone ‘shells’ reveals a scrap of meat covered in dried out, veiny meat.
So, the Piercers grew here, it's probably some kind of natural nest, or spawning, for them. Then the Snail came in, he glances at the entry tunnel, probably as a small pup, and it just kept eating the Piercers when they hatched until it was too big to get out.
A cruel natural trap, balanced just so.
Cypress, I’m curious, how do you feel about this trap, this weird conjunction of feast and dispares?
A long pause.
Nymbus: “Meh”
Laughter.
Nymbus: “I care, because it attacked us, more than anything. Cypress wouldn’t really have wanted to kill it, but it was an act of defense. I think the overall situation doesn’t really phase him, it’s just one of those things that happens.”
Ok, that’s fair. And Sorin, what’re you- oh yeah you’re unconscious.
Laughter.
Okay fine… gawd i am way too nice to you all. Go ahead and make a Death Saving Throw to see if you wake up.
19.
Sorin’s eyes open wide and he gasps. For just a moment he seems to be trying to brush something off his arms and legs, then reality dawns on him and he looks around the cave.
Brooke: “I actually think this is a good time for Ari to roll the thing, with her looking around after the fight.”
Ok, give me a Constitution and an Intelligence roll.
A 5 and a 19. So, one failure and one success.
Hmmm… i think i’ll let you decide for yourself the outcome here, since you got one failure and one success. I was having you roll to see if Ari is depressed. You’d mentioned in the Inn feeling homesick and kinda down when you were around all the fancy stuff; and now here you are in these tunnels. I’m sure you remember the caves from back into your childhood in the second hell. Maybe roads, or crystal mines, or just servants corridors. But, all those caves were like lava runs, black obsidian and rough pumice rocks that looked like sponges, and the cave walls always had that comforting faint warmth to them… But here... These caves are wet limestone; slick and clammy brownish rock walls with long drips like candle wax, speckled with spots of white and green. These caverns are probably the first you’ve been in since your family left, and they're so opposite to the caves that you used to run around in. So how do you feel?
Brooke: “I don’t know about depressed... I think she feels nervous and sorta anxious, in them, because it’s so hugely unfamiliar. Like it definitely makes her feel homesick and she probably feels out of sorts.”
I’m gonna count that as depression, especially since you specifically mentioned feeling ‘homesick’. So go ahead and mark ‘Depressed” on Ari’s sheet as a tag. So, until this is resolved, Ari cannot use or receive inspiration (including giving it or getting it from other players), and she has disadvantage on Initiative rolls, Wisdom saves, and Constitution Saves (there is no actually written Depression mechanic in D&D 5e, so i am sorting piecing together ideas from the internet). I’ll let you decide how you resolve this. It can be anything that might help with a depressive episode; writing a letter home, a night at a brothel, talking it out with Rae, whatever. You just need to take some action to address this. I thought this might be an interesting way to add more realism to the world, beyond just me giving visceral descriptions of gore and goo.
While Ari looks around the cavern and thinks about her far away homeland, Rae is examining the corpse of the Flail Snail and deciding what she is going to take with her. She looks at the goo pouring out of it and gets a bottle out.
Before you scoop it up, give me an Intelligence check. I guess technically a nature check.
Nat’ 20.
Rae remembers back to her adolescence, to living in the monastery and a day when she was working in one of the upper workshops, and she overheard some commotion in the ox yard. She’d looked out and seen a woman was pulling back a tarp from a cart, revealing 4 enormous snail shells. They were somehow dull but still shining like a mirror under a layer of dust, and they seemed to almost change colors in the sunlight as she watched. The monks around the cart were bowing and thanking her and handing a payment… Rae remembers that payment was, not in a cheap cloth sack, but in a small teak and iron lock box.
Her memory throws up a card with a number on it, and here in the present, Rae mouths, “Five. Thousand. Each.” Rae grins.
She gets out a knife and then remembers something else. Her memory, again, throws up a card with three words. She sighs, “Intact and Unbroken.”
Rae looks at the narrow opening to the cave, and then at the shell wide enough for Cypress to use it like a tent. She lets out a little moaning sob and looks at the floor.
She sees the shimmering opalescent goop on the floor hardening to a thick plastic sheet, and her memory of that day continues to spin out its little internal play.
She was looking out the window as the monks and stable hands carefulling unloaded the cart, and wrapped each shell in soft cloth before carrying them off. The woman in the leather armor pulled back some of the hay on the cart, and she set down her big spear to pull out a sheet of glass… or almost glass. It was ripply like the cheap bullseye glass that they used in the lower dorms, and it seemed pearlescent like the shells had been. It changed colors in little waves as the woman held it out for inspection.
Rae carefully places a hand on the floor, and rubs a patch of the dry slime. It feels hard and smooth.
Using her tools, Rae manages to roughly score and chip-cut four one foot square panes of the shimmering ‘glass’ from the floor. She sets to working on the shell with a chisel, and after several attempts that basically just leave tiny cracked dust, she manages to save two plates of the shell, each about the size and shape of a shallow punch bowl.
Cypress tries to ignore the breaking, chipping, and crunching sounds of Rae’s industrious spirit. He pulls out a moss covered rag and folds it over like a tiny carpet. Then he pushes it towards Sorin’s mouth as the wizard sits on the floor, clutching his own knees. “Bite down on this.” Cypress says and rolls up his sleeves.
Sorin accepts the moss-rag with wide, fearful eyes that only grow wider as he sees Cypress push up their sleeves and reach for Sorins injured arm.
Making sure the wet moss-rag is correctly positioned in Sorin’s teeth, Cypress grips the wizard’s upper arm where a bruise is already starting to show. He pushes.
Sorin tries to scream but the moss is in the way. He remembers, and bites down. He bites down so hard that he thinks he would have cracked a few teeth, without the moss there to cushion them. Then suddenly, the pain is over. Cypress has let go and Sorin feels a warm wave of relief wash over him.
Cypress rolls his sleeves back down and takes the moss out of Sorin‘s mouth. He pushes it back into the little jar it came from.
Panting, Sorin asks, “Was it broken, did you have to set it?”
“What, oh no, just bruised.” There's a small confused silence, then Cypress adds, “The little massage might help the muscle later though.”
“Wait, then why?”
“The moss has a special kind of oil in it, but it only comes out under a lot of pressure. Usually I’d use a vice and give you the drops but…” His voice trails off and he buckles his little bag. “Your color is coming back though, so it looks like it helped.”
(Cypress cast Cure Wounds on Sorin for 8 HP)
A few minutes later, the Thug Muggers are back in the little circular room off the main cave tunnel, deciding to take a short rest. Cypress (rolling 1 Hit Dice) has recovered 4 Hp, Rae (rolling 3 Hit dice) has recovered 22 Hp, Sorin (rolling 2 Hit Dice) has recovered 11 Hp, and Ari (not having been hurt at all in the last fight) is standing watch.
Sorin pulls out his little brazier to summon Akris. He moves through the motions, but the magic doesn’t come. He’s too distracted as he thinks back to his restful meditation. In his inner trance he had pushed himself to remember; to see whatever had been out there when he almost died. He remembered staring into the light of the Snail’s shell…
The light… All that colorful ever changing light… The lines of it… Pulling him… Pulling him in… Pulling him through…
It was like a time or a space warp as the colors and lights flowed past him faster and faster, further and further. He was pulled into the shell, past the shell, into the ground, past the ground, into space and stars, past space and stars and into…
Sudden Blackness.
‘No’, Sorin thought, ‘not blackness… Blackness IS something, this… This is nothing.’
Emptiness on all sides. A great void of… not even void.
Thought feels hard here, somehow slow and sludgy like an arm crawling through mud.
Where was he, where is Sorin, where will they be, where have I will have been?
Where…?
…
What…?
A tentacle wraps around Sorin and begins to crush him, a monstrous beak op-
He slipped from the tentacle and fell and saw the light and the colors…
And saw the cave… the cave with Ari and Rae and Cypress looking at him and the corpse of the dead Snail leaking on the ground.
After another minute of trying, Sorin breaks down the little brazier, disassembling it and putting it away. Cypress is watching him with a raised eyebrow and Sorin mutters, “I’m just worn out. I’m exhausted. I’ll do it later.”
Oblivious to all this, Ari is looking down the crack in the rock. Not the tight tunnel they just came through after killing the snail, and not the one with the chalk marked arrow pointing to the main tunnel. The tunnel crack on the other side of the Snail cave. She sees it has a shimmering colorful light and then some familiar sounds.
Brooke: “I bet it’s another Snail”
Give me a perception check.
Natural 20, Bay-bee!
It’s another Snail.
Ari gets on one knee and contorts herself, finding one straight hole she can see all the way through the little tunnel, unobstructed. “Hey guys, there's another giant Snail thing in that room.”
Cypress sighs, “Do any of you know anyone around here that knows some shrinking spells?”
Four heads shake in unison.
“I wish we did.” He sighs. “I hate seeing them stuck like this. It’s like a turtle caught in those loops of string they pack bottles with.”
“Okay,” Sorin says, “That’s terrible, but maybe just maybe… maybeit’snotreallyourproblemthistime.ImeanIdidjustalmostdieisallI’msaying.”
Before a discussion starts, Ari grunts, rolls her eyes, and walks into the little tunnel.
Rae follows her friend, but not before giving Sorin, A Look.
After a moment of frustration, Sorin follows Cypress after them.
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 7: EsCAVEgot
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 7: EsCAVEgot
On the way through the tunnel, Ari fails a claustrophobic Con save. She pushes through it though, unwilling in her current mental state to ask for help. She has disadvantage on her next 2 rolls.
This room is set up identically to the last room with the Flail Snail. Only it is mirrored from the entrance, and this time the Snail is roaming around outside the ring of pillars.
The Flail Snail sees Ari and the others coming, and curls into its protective shell, readying an unknown action.
Ari moves into the room and a Piercer drops down on her from the ceiling, lodging in her shoulder for 4 damage.
She tries to pull it out, but with the disadvantage on her strength roll, only manages to wiggle it around for 5 non-lethal damage.
Rae sprints across the rooms, jump-stepping from pillar to pillar. She takes up position behind the pillar across the room from the entrance, and readies a crossbow bolt for the second she sees the thing’s head.
Cypress steps to the side of the entrance and immediately casts Sacred Flame, leaving a burnt score across the shell for 7 damage.
“Aaawwee yeeaah,” Sorin whispers to himself under his breath, “Ari is going to be so impressed with this…” He opens his brain to the magic and looks around. Through the shell he can see the vague magical x-ray outlines of the snail. He can see how the veins and fluid sacks move and how the energy flows to swing the giant mace-like stalks. He concentrates and begins to copy this to his own body. His arms, from the elbow down, melt and droop, changing as he coaxes them to be more like the Snail’s mace-stalks. His arms lengthen and stretch. His fingernails harden, becoming spike-like all around his balled up fist. Sorin casts Alter Self and transforms his forearms into two 4 foot swing Snail Flail mace-stalks.
Ari is working on dislodging the Piercer from her shoulder, and does not notice.
The Snail’s shell begins to glow, and then to shine. It spills light into the room. Enchanting, dancing, changing colors, a hypnotic swirling cascade of lights. Ari is still behind a pillar struggling with the Piercer, so she doesn’t have to roll. But Cypress and Sorin are in the open, and Rae has been staring at the thing for her readied action. Sorin and Rae both save against the Scintillating Shell, but Cypress is Stunned.
The Piercer in Ari’s shoulder attempts to wiggle itself free, but it can only jerk back and forth doing another 5 non-lethal (now 1 regular) damage.
Groaning, Ari gives up on pulling the little rock-beast out. Instead, she points her fist at it, concentrates, and casts Poison Spray. She does max damage (12) to the nasty creature, and knocks it out of her shoulder and halfway back to the entrance tunnel.
Rae, ignores the lights, focusing on the mantle of the shell, still waiting with her crossbow at the ready.
Cypress is still Stunned. They look into the lights and almost feel like dancing. Their friends in the room hear him say, “Nature is so beautiful.” As he stares, swaying on his feet.
Sorin runs in swinging his magic-tentacle-mace-arm-stalks at the glowing shell. He misses the first swing. The second swing connects with a thud, but bounces off.
This triggers the Flail Snail’s readied action to leap on the first melee attacker that hits it. It springs from its shell, like one gigantic slimy spring and Flails (hehehehe) at the young wizard. One mace-stalk misses. A second misses. The third hits for 7 damage. The fourth lands a critical hit for 10 damage, the fifth misses. That’s gotta hurt!
Sorin runs for the tunnel. The Snail starts to move after him, but, wait, it’s hit in the face. A thick crossbow bolt is sticking out of its cheek. 7 damage. It lets out a roar. The Flail Snail charges for Rae-the-Monk.
The Flail Snail slams against Rae’s pillar and swings. The First mace-stalk crit’s for 12 damage! The second hits Rae in the gut for 6 damage. She buckles. The next three mace-stalks swing. They miss, swinging right where her head just was!
(…in the distraction of the fight, the Piercer stealthily climbs the wall and hides in the ceiling again with the other stalactites…)
Ari knocks an arrow. She fires. A stray, swinging mace-stalk knocks it aside as the Snail creature pummels Rae.
Rae is still bent over. She grabs her staff. She swings. She misses with a nat’ 1. But wait, she spends her last point of inspiration to reset the clock. She comes up swinging, with all her might. She lands a nat’ 20 against the beast! Rae drives her staff into its face. The blow knocks the arrow out of the Snails face on the other side. She rears her arms back. She lets go of her staff. It floats back behind her. She misses her bonus attack. Rae-the-Crusher channels her rage into Ki. She unleashes a flurry of blows. She jumps. She brings both fists down on that hopped-up-cave-slug for 9! More! Damage! Oh my gawd! She’s knocked it onto the cave floor. It’s Prone. Rae flip jumps over it to a pillar on the other side.
The Snail is down, the shell light goes out and, and , and YES! Cypress is back to reality folks. He’s groggy but he casts another Sacred Flame on the thing for 4 damage, and he steadies himself on a pillar.
Sorin’s in the tunnel now, his broken concentration means his arms are back to normal. From the safety of the tunnel, he casts Ray of Enfeeblement. Yes! He has effectively de-buffed the monster! I can see its muscles seizing up. That’s gonna mean only half damage from here on, folks.
The snail is up. It’s moving slow, but it’s going for Raelle-the-Hammer! Before it can do anything-
-oh wait, in the corner is that, yes it is!
The Piercer has fallen from the ceiling, and into Ari’s shoulder AGAIN!
Ari doesn’t even think about it. It worked last time, so let’s do it again, Poison Spray! Oooh and the Piercer is Bloodied!
Back in the ring, Rae-the-Punishing-Fist is wailing on the head of the Flail Snail! Her staff may have missed, but not those punishing fists, folks! Her Bonus punch lands for 3 damage. She screams! She lets out another Flurry of Blows! The Ki is flowing off her now, we can see it in the booth! The first kick misses, but-wait-wait- OOOH that fist was a critical, folks. Smashing that slimy slug into the pillars.
The board says it has 7 health left, is that punch enough?
16 damage!
Com’on ref that Cannot! Be! Legal!
*shiver*
Sorry… i don’t know what happened to me there.
Cypress attempts to pull the Piercer out of Ari’s shoulder, but fails the strength roll. She’s too high up and he can't get a good grip.
Sorin casts Ray of Sickness and gets another crit’. He does 28 damage to a creature that only had 11 Hp left (and only 30 Hp to start with). The ray flies through the air and leaves a smoking two inch hole above the piercers mouth, right where its brains USED to be.
Loot Time!
Rae moves over to the dead Flail Snail and rolls up her sleeves when Sorin tries to intercept her.
“Hey, save me a piece of that.”
“What, why?”
“I want to make armor.”
“Ha!”
“What!? It has a bunch of anti-magical properties! Don’t you want me to stop getting knocked out all the time?”
“Okay, what’re you gonna give me for it?
“What!?”
Rae and Sorin are arguing over the Snail corpse as Ari wiggles the Piercer out of its second hole in her. She hears something about Sorin wanting armor as she takes 5 more non-lethal damage, but finally gets the nasty little thing out. Rae is laughing and asking what Sorin will do for it, as Ari pats the hole down with a rag. She looks up at Rae, “Hey Rae, can you save me a piece of that shell?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
“Thanks, I think it’s really pretty.”
“Wha-wha-wha-” Sorin throws up his hands and walks away.
It’s early night now on the 6th of Mirtul, and the Thug Muggers are walking, or maybe tired trudging, down the halfway towards the Thug room they camped in before. Everyone is just thinking about resting, eating, and sleeping, in that order.
Rae has managed to get 2 more half-panes of the slime-glass and another good sized chunk of shell (and a severed Snail eye that she grabbed, because i think she’s a pervert, maybe). Cypress got a deep scratch from the tight cave walls, Sorin is exhausted, and Ari is leading ahead surrounded by a quiet cloud of gloom as we come to the door the Thug Muggers left open yesterday morning.
We walk back into the little Thug room.
Rae walks over and kicks at the carpets to make sure they're safe, then Ari drops down on the fur skins and pillows and stairs at the ceiling. The fire is down to just a few ash-covered embers. The low table still has some random camp-gear on it, the cushions are in a little bit of disarray from when we ate breakfast before, and the cat is purring on top of them. Sorin goes over to dig through the bottles of wine and see if there’s anything good.
Cypress, what’re you doing?
Cypress walks over to stoke up the embers and get a pot of tea started. Sorin grabs the best bottle of wine he can find and flops onto some cushions. Rae sits down, and looks at Ari. Ari is smiling for the first time in hours as the little cat steps up and rubs against her leg.
Ari reaches down to rub the cat's back. Suddenly, the fur on its back pulls to the side, revealing a horrible zipper-like row of teeth that open to a hideous purple maw. The thing jumps up and closes its back-mouth around Ari’s hand.
Everyone, roll initiative!
…
Next time.
“The hands on his watch read 11:40. On up toward the hour of witches, he thought. When churchyards yawn and give up their moldy dead. When all good little boys are sacked out. When wives and lovers have given up the carnal pillowfight for the evening. When passengers sleep uneasy on the Greyhound to New York. When Glenn Miller plays uninterrupted on the radio and bartenders think about putting the chairs up on the tables”
-Ray Garraty –Stephen King, “The Long Walk: Part Two: Goning Down the Road, Chapter 8”
Table talk:
Really nothing, here, we had some scheduling talk, and Ari/Brooke complained that she just wanted to pet a cute kitty and cheer up, but nothing of real significance. No questions, or anything to look up.
I will say really quick though, that during the fight, after the Snail hit Sorin, it originally went for Cypress and dealt 16 damage, knocking them out, UNTIL we remembered Rae’s readied action to shoot it, and making it charge her instead. So lucky break there!
