Thug Muggers in the Caves 7/16&23/23
Table Talk:
We spent some time calculating passive perception (10 + Wisdom Modifier + Bonuses) for everyone and making sure it was set up on the character sheets. I explained that the purpose of this is so i can have a rough idea of ordinary things that the characters notice, without everyone having to roll constantly. In fact i have a lot of old memories of older game systems where players would be shouting ‘Spot check’ and rolling every five minutes or every other turn.
The other mechanical question is about the Monk Feat ‘Deflect Missiles’ and whether or not it can be used to deflect or even catch falling Piercers. I spent some time thinking about this over the week, and decided to focus on one particular thing. Page 78 of the Player’s Handbook, under Deflect Missiles: “Starting at 3rd level, you can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack.” The key there, i think, is a “ranged WEAPON attack”. I don’t think it can be used against living things like Piercers, Bats, or Birds, because that is basically a Charge attack like a Boar, or Bison. In TTRPGs we use the dice to very simply determine complex outcomes, but in essence they are covering a LOT of narrative ground. If you roll a 11 against an AC of 12 that doesn’t mean you wiff it completely; it can simply mean they dodged, or that you hit, but the armor stopped the blow from doing damage. Rolling a D6 for damage and getting a 6 might mean you hit exactly where you aimed, and getting a 2 might be that you aimed for the head but they ducked to one side and you caught their leg as they stepped back. In this way, i think part of a Piercer’s (or bird’s even) attack roll, is determining the aim and the timing of dropping from the ceiling; choosing a moment when the Character is not looking for instance. Perhaps it twitches in mid air to adjust the angle of the fall as well. That is opposed to an arrow, that just IS once it’s released cannot adjust at all. Obviously this is harder with a Piercer as opposed to a Bird, but the ruling i made is that ‘Deflect Missiles’ does not work on an attack by a living thing using its own body. However, a living thing being thrown (a Thug picking a Piercer up and throwing it, for example) does count for Deflect Missiles, because it was not that living thing's action. It all goes back to the key phrase, “a ranged WEAPON attack.”
“Six centuries ago, the pre-Columbian natives who settled here named this region with a word that in their language translates to, “The Mouth of the Shadow.” Later, the Iroquois who showed up and inexplicably slaughtered every man, woman, and child in those first tribes renamed it a word that literally translates to, ‘Seriously, Fuck this Place.’ When French explorer Jacques Marquette explored the area in 1673, he marked it on his map with a crude drawing of what appeared to be a black blob falling out of Satan’s butthole. In 1881, a group of coal miners got trapped when an explosion caused the entrance of the mine to collapse. When rescuers showed up to the mouth of the mine, they found sitting in front of the rubble a coal-dusted kid, the youngest of the miners. His exact greeting to the men was, ‘Don’t dig ’em out. They sent me out here to tell you that. Them boys blew it themselves. Caved it in on purpose, to keep what they found in there from gettin’ out. So just leave it be. Now you there, with that pickax? I’d appreciate it if you’d go ahead and use that to cave in my skull, same as they did to that mine. Just maybe it’ll gouge out that blue eyeball that’s starin’ back at me from inside my own head.’[. . .]”
-Dr. Albert Marconi —David Wong (Jason Pargin) “This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 9: The Cradle
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 9: The Cradle
Bloodied and wore out, Ari, Rae and Sorin trudge up the cavern corridor to the locked door.
“Where do you think it went?”
“Who do you think took it?”
“You mean, ‘WHAT’ do we think took it?”
Past the cool pool of water, Ari, and Rae slump against the wall, sitting down on the floor.
Sorin examines the little hank of rope tied to the open window of the door. A moment later a Rat with muddy and blood-matted fur crawls through, and drops to the ground.
The air-window changes back to glass (with a couple strands of hemp rope fused inside it), and at the same time that the Rat becomes the shape of a bloodied and exhausted Cypress. Part of their chin still has some gray wolf hair on it under a gold eye and a muddy boot print on their cheek. Their arm has a swelling bruise that looks like Rae beat them with her staff, and his sleeves are wet with water and blood as he ties the last remaining few feet of his rope back into a bundle.
The others stare at him.
Cypress looks up at the rest of his team.
Rae has just stopped playing with a strip of still wet gum-leather that has fourth teeth with the roots still showing, passing it around and through her fingers like she’s making up her mind. She is ignoring the dripping bite mark on her leg and slash on her face. Sorin actually looks pretty good, just exhausted and a bit scratched up, his face is creased in nervous worry, though who knows if that’s recent or just his perpetual outlook. Ari has the pale and faintly blank expression of someone still coming back from being knocked out and smiles like someone with a concussion who has just been told by the nurse that they're not allowed to go to sleep, even though they’ve been on shift for 12 hours. Ari’s arms and legs look okay though…until the beer drips away and Cypress can see all the open wounds and the ring of jagged concentric bite marks.
“What the hells happened to you?” All four adventures say, pointing to each other. “Okay, okay, you first.” they say again, in unison.
“I found her.” “I used some of the dynamite.”
Cypress and Rae say at the same time.
“WHAT!?” They all four say at once.
“I think she might be possessed though.” “We found a healing spring though.”
Sorin and Cypress say together. Then, “Really?”
“They were like little horrible potatoes with butts and teeth,” Loopy Ari says at the same time Cypress says, “so I left her, knocked out, leg-broke, and tied to a wheelbarrow full of grave dirt.”
There is a pause and then a chorused “Okay, no, explain.”
Roll initiative to see who explains first.
“Well, we went into the west testie cave after you went in.” Rae begins, “See, I was thinking about how things have been down here, and there always seems to be anothing way in or out of every place we go. So I thought maybe the Thugs had left another tunnel, one that led into those square rooms. A tunnel we just didn’t know about. Well, where better to hide a secret tunnel than in a deadly room with a giant angry slug?”
As Rae talks, the team moves down the short tunnel to the round room between the caves where they fought the Flail Snails.
“So I lined up along the wall, and started looking for a way in.” She says, dropping her pack down with the others. “I didn’t find any painted nails or hidden red stones. But I did find a crack in the wall with a little bank of crystals growing in it.”
“What kind of crystals?”
Rae pulls on out and shows it to Cypress. “They’ve got all these different colors around them, see? Anyways, the crystals were just out of reach, so I tried using my staff, but it got wedged in.” Rae says, pantomiming it out for dramatic effect. “But fortunately Ari and I are pretty strong, and together we managed to get it out real ea-”
“Hey what!?”
“Shut up wizard boy, it’s my turn to tell the story.” Rae clears her throat and continues. “Where was I? Oh yeah, fortunately Ari and I are pretty strong, and together we managed to get it out real easy. But, I could see we didn’t have the right tools to get into this crack, so there was only one option.”
“You left and came back later wi-”
“T.N.T.” Rae says with a self satisfied grin. “I still had those two sticks in my bag so I wedged it in the corner, it went boom, and we broke off a couple crystals, easy as pie.” She says in a ‘the rest is history’ voice and wipes her hands. She sits down to rest, picks up a small stone at random and tosses it to Sorin, “You can take it from there.”
Sorin catches the rock and glares at Rae, “Okay, so… it’s my turn now?”
“Yeah duh, I passed you the talking rock.”
“Well first of all,” Sorin begins in a lecturing tone, “When the staff was stuck in the wall is was me tha-”
“We already covered that Sorin, move on.”
“Yeah move on, Sorin, hahah.” Ari says, sweeping her hand in a shooing gesture at him.
“Should we be worried about her?”
“Keep going, I’ll look at her.” Cypress says walking over to Ari.
Sorin resumes the story, “Well, so then we went to the cave tunnel that you guys kept calling the ‘park’.”
“Yeah,” Ari giggles, “‘cause Akris called it that, and… Hey, where is Akris by the way, did we summon him back yet?”
Cypress moves a hand in front of Ari’s wandering eyes. “Hey” he snaps his fingers, “look at me, right here okay?”
As Cypress examines her head wound, Sorin scoffs under his breath, “Yeah, did WE summon him… pfft, that sums it up perfect.” Then he continues “Well we found another cave room with a green pond and a glowing blue crystal in it. And then, because someone didn’t want to use her Fireball necklace, Ari and Rae got turned into chew toys.”
“Hey,” Rae chimes in, defending her friend, “don’t say that, you were the one refusing to do Magic Missile the whole time, which would have actually done something!”
“I was doing a bunch of-”
“Rae,” Cypress cuts in, mediating and breaking up the fight, “It’s Sorin's turn to talk, he has the talking rock.”
Rae sits back down muttering something about ‘made up dumb rock anyway’.
“What was it that chewed on you all?”
“Little monsters,” Sorin says and squints in recollection, “maybe two feet tall at most. Ari was right, that they look like potatoes, but like potatoes with shark mouths. I’m serious,” He whines defensively, even though no one is questioning this, “the mouths were, like, as wide as their whole body and had, like a few ROWS of teeth. They didn’t have any hands or arms, but just jumped around on two stubby back legs, just running and bouncing into whatever and trying to bite everything. There were five of them, and five Piercers too.”
“Wretched Sorrowsworn.”Cypress says and everyone looks at them. They shrug, “You get them sometimes when you dig out out a new hole if its near a Grey Wood (a dark and ‘evil’ foggy grove of trees where chaotic creatures lurk, common around long-dead shrines and temples.), graveyards, or a ritual site, things like that.”
“Good to know. Well Ari can tell you the rest.” Sorin tosses the rock.
Cypress catches the rock before it can hit Ari in the chest, “Let’s let Ari rest a minute. She’ll be fine, but some time to just sit will help. So, I’ll go next.” He hunkers down over Sorin’s map and puts some pebbles on them. “The rooms there are some kind of mechanic room, but not like the mechanical rooms we had on the first level. Those were mostly mechanical, right?” He looks up at Sorin who nods, “Well these were mostly magical. They had big poles in them with glowing runes, and when I found Belgruse, she was doing something to shut them down, to block them up or turn them off or something.”
“Wait, so you found her!?”
“Yeah…” Cypress pauses, “Or I found something inside her head and body.” He goes on to explain the torn up pipes and ripped up grates, the broken mechanism and the bloody scratches on the wall. Then he tells them about the horrible feeling of some kind of god thing, “It was holy… but I did not enjoy it; I don’t think anyone would.” When he comes to the ranting and laughing and screaming and the upside down face crawling at him, it seems like the cave gets a little darker, and his audience shudders. “So eventually I left her tied up down there… That way she can’t damage anything else over there, or herself.” After a pause, he says defensively, “I didn’t want to though!”
There is a long silence.
“Okay, but why do you look like you’re almost dead?”
“It was a compromise.”
“A compromise?”
“She wanted me to be all the way dead.” Cypress sighs, “So we compromise, she bloodied me up pretty bad, and I broke her leg and tied her up.”
Another long silence. This time Ari breaks the silence by reaching out to Cypress. “Talkie Rockie” she says, making childish grabby hand gestures and everyone laughs.
“Okay Ari, what was the rest of it?” Cypress hands her the ‘Talkie Rockie’.
In a fuzzy voice, Ari starts, “There were five of the biting potatoes and five of the ceiling arrows. We fought them hard, but we won.” This doesn’t seem like enough so she tries for more detail. “Rae and I got bit a lot. It hurt.” She shrugs, but she sounds a bit clearer now, “It was a fight. We won. Sorin hit some stuff, I stabbed one through the head, Rae knocked one into the water… It was a fight.” With a that-covers-it-what-do-you-want-from-me tone she goes on, sounding more like herself. “Afterwards, Sorin stuck his hand in the pool, which was good, cause I sure wasn’t gonna do it. I mean come on, in the caves I grew up with, that probably would’ve been Acid.” Ari sighs, “But things are different here. Sorin figured out it's a kind of natural health potion, but it needs to be heated to work.” Sounding almost back to normal now, “So we bottled up as much as we could, grabbed some of the crystal rocks, and came back to meet, met you, walked in here, rested, told you what happened, listen to what happened to you, then I started happening, and then it was now.”
“I see.”
“Oh and on our way back, the trap was gone.”
“Huh?”
Ari explains, “The one I set by the door, when we found out Sorin broke the door.”
“What!?” Sorin barks.
“Oh yeah, Sorin it turns out you broke the door.”
“I definit-”
“I’ll show you when we go back.” Ari feels the back of her head, “In fact If we want to look at it now, I’m feeling a lot better, and I’d really like your opinion Cypress.”
During this Short Rest Ari rolled two Hit Dice for 15 Hp, Rae rolled three and got 19 Hp back, and Cypress rolled two to get 17 Hp back. Sorin still has all his spell slots *evil laugh*, but i gave Ari the option to get one Spell Slot and her Hellish Rebuke back. She agreed, so we’ll see what happens with that *second evil laugh*.
Headed back to the Sewers, Cypress investigates the trap, or rather the spot where the trap was - and where the blood spots are now. He can’t tell what kind of blood it is, but he can tell that it went from the caves INTO the sewers.
So that’s probably not good.
With that the party heads up the north door to try and find a way to Pulgrok’s office.
On the way up the hall… Sorin, make an Intelligence saving throw. 22. Your vision blurs for a second and your eyes feel tingly, but nothing happens.
Ari comes up to the door and inspects it.
This door falls somewhere in between the big imposing vaultish door by Belgruse, and the lighter sealed door that just walked through. Instead of a small normal latch, or a big impressive turn wheel, it has a simple iron bar in the middle. A glance at this shows that it can be opened very quickly by turning it in either direction. Along the right side, the hinge side of the door, is a slit of thick glass about two hands wide and running the full height of the door. On the left side of the door in great big letters reads… reads… Does anyone here speak Frog?
As Ari is straining her brain trying to make sense of the swirling, spiralling, tongue-shaped letters, Sorin grabs the side of his head and shouts, taking 9 psychic damage. “Huh,” Ari says before turning around, “Maybe it’s cursed… or maybe the letters grant wishes.”
Then the Gray Ooze on the wall shifts and spears out a lance of gray sludge. It bludgeons Sorin’s shoulder for 8 damage.
Rae is the first to turn and she hits the main body of the Ooze for 9 damage. Then Sorin snaps his finger and a Firebolt burns down the gray lance and into the blob. Ari draws and cuts. The Gray Ooze loses any cohesive shape turning into just another puddle in the sewers.
Cypress peers at the Ooze and, with a high nature check, notices something that disturbs and troubles him. The gray puddle seems to have ridges on the surface, little wrinkling patterns in the meniscus that form a wavy pattern of lines… like a brain. ‘A brain’ He thinks to himself, ‘could that have caused the psychic damage? A Psychic Gray Ooze? The other Oozes didn’t have anything like that… what would cause such a transformation?’
Keeping this worrisome discovery to himself for now, he turns to Ari and nods.
Ari turns the large iron bar handle and we hear a mechanical thunk, then a faint clockwork ticking as the door opens inward. For just a brief second our adjusting eyes seem to see the outline of light around the door frame.
The cave we step into is called, in cave terms, a cathedral, and when we enter it, we can see why. This chamber, this under-earthly room of stone, is nearly as big as the churches and temples you've been in. The cave roof above us is damp and clammy, yes, but it’s so high, high above you, it’s so lovely. After the narrow slit crevices by the snails and the low roofs of the sewers, it almost feels like being under an open sky. Only this sky has occasional stone icicles glittering in the moss-light instead of stars.
The cathedral is dotted with natural columns, huge monuments to the passing of time. Several are wider around than even the old trees in most forests. We look on, and see two columns on the far side of the cavern that would take all four of you linking arms to encircle. Giant magnificent statues of long dead water-drip-soldiers stare back at us from the darkness. They’re sides have long curls of spiraling flat edges with stalagmites fused together and hanging inside one another. There are smaller columns too, spaced throughout the uneven floor. They would be grand in any room but this one, where they are dwarfed by their giant brothers.
Across from us, due north is another sealed stone doorway. Its glass window betrays a faint glow beyond it. To the south west there is a sort of false wall, a line of stone spikes all nested and angled together with two openings on either side of it. We look down and see words chipped into the limestone at our feet, where a welcome rug might be in a normal home. The words, once crisp and clear cut, look almost to be melting as the calcification of the cave grows over and consumes them. The words read simply ‘The Cradle’. We stare at them in confusion and then look out at the room again to notice that the floor does indeed form a kind of bowl in the center. We notice the geologic fault line where the shale and granite-limestone turns to a pale reddish yellow sandstone that is slowly being eaten away into a large depression. If any of you were geologists, that would be super fascinating by the way.
We hear the twang of a powerful spring and the door slams shut behind you. We all spin to look at it and see a thin line of glyphs illuminate along the doorframe. Then with a soft ‘wush’ the rock seals over the lip of the door. Suddenly we remember Bostra’s message “Beware of the the cradle, avoid it at all costs''
We notice two Ochre colored poodles on the lip of this sandstone ring on the floor. They shimmer in the light and seem to be wrapped around tiny stalactites as if some baby creature made of goo is suckling at an earthen stone milk-bottle. Curled up near one of the smaller columns are … green things. They seem to be in a constant state of dripping, like a booger on the end of a childs nose that refuses to fall off. They’re slimy and faintly glowing… Except no, wait... Only some parts of them are glowing, deep in the core of these slimy oozy skins seems to be long dark patches. They’re linked together in a sort of pattern like… oh… those are bones inside those things. And, as we think that, a black humanoid skull lifts up, surrounded by dripping, faintly glowing slime, and turns to stare at you.
As a single unit, the party turns back to the door. The edge is just rock, grown over the crack in the door. There is no handle to be found.
As a single unit the party gulps. They turn back around and see the glowing line of the window in the other door.
Ari nods to Rae, and whispers, “Distract them and I’ll get the way out.”
Rae nods as her friend disappears into the shadowy darkness. Raelle-the-Warrior readies her staff. Let’s begin!
As the Fight kicks off, Sorin casts Dancing Lights, creating a vague humanoid shape in the far corner of the room. As it moves in an almost normal walk, a few of the blobs in the darkness begin ambaling towards it.
Cypress can feel a presence around him, trying to spear into his head. They close their eyes steadying themself and cast off the psychic attack. When they open their eyes, a horrible humanoid skull covered in ooze, rolls up to their feet, lifts up on a pillar of dark tibias of differing sizes inside a column of faintly glowing green muck. The skull bites into their neck for 5 damage. Cypress, remember that wonderful afternoon in your adolescence? The time you spend in the woods behind Na’an’s bakery out past the Hobins’ patch? When you found the little Y-shaped branch and you carved it into an attempt at a slingshot? I didn’t work well, but it was still something special, remember that? No you don’t. Not anymore.
The flow of knowledge and memory reverses for just an instant as this thing lets go of him, and Cypress has a sudden insight into what these things are. Oblex Spawn.
“Burn them.” Cypress says to the others. “Burn them any chance you get.”
Just then a column of green sludge and dark bones collides with Sorin and he loses the memory of the time Master Bellfan taught him about orientating worm gears in order to prevent back slippage under high pressure.
The next Oblex Spawn charges at Rae, but she is ready, and dodges out of the way… Unfortunately she dodges right under the forth Oblex Spawn as it hits her with a piece of rock. The sandstone breaks apart on her arm for 7 damage.
Enraged, Rae spins on the dark thing, her arm is numb and the staff goes wide, but she kicks out with her bonus attack and hits the blobby monster for 4 damage.
Behind the partial wall of dripping stone is a wave. It is crested like ‘Under the Wave off Kanagawa’ by Katsushika Hokusa, but this wave has no poetic white foam cresting the top. In fact, no part of this wave is white at all, it seems to suck the little light here into itself as it curls over, black and ominous. It begins to leak out at us, pooling around and we can see… chunks… floating and bobbing in the encroaching sludge. Bones and claws and something like a decaying retilaloid face tumble in the wave.
As a single unit the party gulps. Again.
Cypress quickly casts Bless on everyone.
Somewhere ahead of Ari in the darkness, a Gray Ooze quietly moves into possession.
Quietly creeping her way along the back wall, Ari comes to the door. The door that is the same as the one they entered through. The door without a handle on this side. The others hear an angry swear word in their Sending Stones.
Sorin Firebolt’s the Oblex Spawn in front of him. It cowards back from him, just barely dodging the flames.
Like Cypress, Rae can also feel something invisible trying to pry into her brain, but she too saves against the attack and looks around.
The Oblex fighting Cypress swings a hollow sludgy arm at them and it wraps around their throat, choking not only 5 damage out of the halfling, but also a lovely afternoon where they hunted for four leaf clovers. He can feel the memory fading, that first time he felt truly, truly lucky… (Nymbus got a point of inspiration for coming up with the memory).
In the Darkness, the second Ochre puddle shapes itself into a larger Jelly and starts advancing towards our heroes.
An Oblex Spawn lunges for Rae but misses as she bashes its friend for 12 damage, then uppercuts its skull out of its sludge. Then she plants the back of her staff on the ground, channels her Ki, jumps into the air, and kicks a Flurry of Blows at the one that just missed her. She knocks it back into one of the cave pillars for 5 damage.
This time Sorin can feel the psychic pain coming, and he shields himself with his will (saving against a Psychic Gray Ooze attack).
In the darkness, the looming black wave crests again and moves towards Ari.
Cypress casts Scared Flame on the monster that keeps taking his memories. It dodges, but at least it jumps back giving him space to breath and think.
In an alcove next to Ari, a Gray Ooze readies itself as a trap. And with the dancing magic lights now gone, one of the other Oblex’s moves in that same direction.
Desperate for some hopeful sign, Ari pushes against the handless door. In its hardened stone socket, it doesn't give at all, but Ari pulls her hand back and winces, there's something there, some kind of raised bumps.
Sorin blasts the Oblex sludge in front of him with a Firebolt, and looks around in a panic. The Oozes, the Jellies and the Oblexes are starting to close them in on all sides.
Rae saves against a Psychic attack and then ducks to the side, dodging another standing green muck puddle of black bones.
The next Oblex manages to hit Sorin and at the same time the Ochre Jelly engulfs his feet. In a woozy voice Sorin slurs, “Hey that hurts, bad, carpet, bad.” Then he kicks out with one foot, and collapses to the ground.
The Oblex Spawn that just hit him is going in for a bite when its skull is knocked out of its sludge by Rae’s staff. The skull goes flying into the depths of the cathedral, and the Spawn’s sludge loses its form, collapsing into just another oily black puddle. Rae kicks at the Ochre Jelly, and it backs away. Then she charges her Ki into her hands and shouting “Judo…. CHOP!” She brings her blade-like hand down and her Ki slices the thing in two parts that scurry away in opposite directions.
While the Black mass in the darkness moves closer, pulling itself from pillar to pillar, Cypress casts Spare the Dying on the wizard.
Still in a dark alcove near Ari, the Gray Ooze waits for its move. (This is just here to show i was still making moves and taking turns, even when nothing was happening.)
Ari’s hand grazes over the bumps and she slowly recognizes the pattern. She closes her eyes and mouths out the Thieves' Cant there. “Don’t Fight” and then an arrow with two segments pointing to the left of the door.
Sorin… is unconscious …I wonder what he sees… I guess we’ll find out later …unless he dies of course.
Suddenly the Psychic Gray Ooze that had been attacking them from the other side of the stone column slorks around it and shoots out a bar of Gray muck, hitting Sorin’s body For 5 more damage and putting him at -7 Hp.
A couple of the Oblexes seem to lose interest in the overcrowded feeding frenzy, and they peel off in search of Ari.
One of the split baby Ochre Jellies comes back and flicks out at Cypress for 3 damage, but fortunately, the other one misses.
Rae kills the remaining Oblex, turns and punts one of the Ochre Jellies into the distance, and then unleashes a Flurry of Blows onto the the Psychic Gray Ooze as if it was just a practice dummy.
The dark black mass of unknown oily ooze in the middle of the room is coming closer still, and Cypress grabs the wizard under the armpits pulling him back into the alcove to their right.
Ari moves along the wall frantically searching for the way out. She feels, wait, wait, wait yes, yes it's there. She feels the nails in the rock and her fingers probe around them for a crack, aaaannnndddd… YES! There it is, she found the seam, she found the door! She moves her finger along the seam and it lands in a puddle. A slimy, gray puddle. The Gray Ooze waiting there pulls her hand up and then shapes its body into a fist, gut-punching Ari for 8 damage. Her eyes flare, and suddenly spark, the sparks fly from her eyes and the Hellish Rebuke returns that 8 damage to the horrible little Trap Ooze!
“I found the door, I found it, I found it! There’s a Thug tunnel out of here.”
Ari’s voice brings Sorin back to consciousness. Prone, but awake. At -7 Hp (temporarily 0), but alive. He starts to slowly stand up.
Rae feels the Psychic Ooze trying to attack her again, but her rage keeps it at bay.
In the blackness of the cathedral, outside the circle of moss light, several Oozes, Slimes, Jellies, Oblex and more can be heard moving and shifting in the darkness.
Rae runs for Ari, pausing only to kick out and destroy the baby Ochre Jelly that was going for Cypress again.
“Thanks, we’ll be right behind you, get the door open and get ready for us!” Cypress yells after her, casting Cure Wounds on Sorin and bringing him back to 12 Hp with a Gasp.
Now Ari gets to see what the others have been dealing with as an Oblex lunges at her, Startled, she staggers and its swing goes wide. She steps back, trying to move into the small gap between columns on the edge of the sandstone cradle bowl. The Gray Ooze and the Oblex both hit her. She’s bloodied and suddenly she can’t remember the first time Tank taught her to pick a lock. She can remember the day leading up to it, and hanging out in the Ivory Thorns club house, but the lock, the picking, the way his face looked as he showed her, it’s all gone. She tries to shoot a Ray of Sickness at the bony sludge monster, but her head feels fuzzy and the Ray peters out a couple inches from her hand.
“Cypress,” Sorin asks, standing up, “Can you take care of yourself and get over there if I remove myself from the equation?” He looks down at the Halfling.
“Go, I’ll be fine, I’ll be there right behind you.”
With that, Sorin casts Spider Climb on himself and walks up the nearby pillar, and onto the high ceiling.
The Oozes over here hide, but the large Ochre Jelly and the two split off babies all jump for Cypress. Only one manages to hit him though, and only for 3 damage.
Running up behind Ari, Rae swings her staff wide and it THWACKs into the Oblex that was feeding from her. She kicks out, then does a spinning backhand, turns to spin the other way and back hands the thing again. The Oblex Spawn is knocked back, by her Ki, now several feet away from the door.
As Sorin is moving along the ceiling, the ground/roof under/over him rumbles. He looks up/down and gulps. The monstrous black wave is underneath him now. Its dead and oily pudding skin is flowing up the stone column. Runnels and gussets of black tar-like slime are flying up and out. Dark tentacles that seem to eat the light are chasing up the rocks behind him.
Cypress seizes his moment. He casts Entangle behind him and runs. The ethereal thorny vines that emerge from the rocks pin and hold all but one Psychic Gray Ooze. It leaps out, landing exactly where Cypress was. But the lucky little cleric has already started his run around the columns.
Ari Slashes at the Gray Ooze. It falls and she uses her Cunning Action, readying herself to dodge at whatever comes next.
Sorin dashes over the Black Pudding beneath him, and skids down a pillar of stone.
Rae’s staff twirls and rips the bloodied Gray Ooze apart.
Cypress dashes, running the remaining length of the cave.
Ari flings open the door.
And…
And…
Find out next time, on “The Nibiru Cave Adventurers!”
Did Ari find the right door? Is that really Sorin? Will we ever know the fate of Ricky’s loved ones? Tune in and Find Out!
**The Thug Muggers Organization is not responsible for any jump-scares, gross feeling, gore vibes, or big yucks. Nibiru Sewers Company cannot be held liable for any fire damage obtained while reading this summary**
“[. . .] Things have only gone downhill from there. Here, in this town, three friends will stroll into a dark alley, and only two will emerge from the other end. Those two will have no memory of the third. It’s rumored that a year ago, a five-year-old kid went into surgery to have a brain tumor removed. When the surgeon sawed open his skull, the “tumor” jumped out, a ball of whipping tentacles that launched itself at the surgeon and burrowed into his eye socket. Two minutes later, he and two nurses lay dead in the OR, their craniums neatly cleaned from the inside. I say this incident was “rumored” because at this point in the story, men in suits showed up, flashed official-looking ID and took away the bodies. The story in the paper the next day was that everybody died due to an oxygen tank explosion.”
-Dr. Albert Marconi —David Wong (Jason Pargin) “This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It”
Table talk:
This fight was a Deadly Challenge Rating, even if everyone were at level 5. I held back a lot, just to make it scary, but i still tried not to kill you guys. The main point was to find the exit, and escape. So, good job Ari!
We did have to have an uncomfy confrontation about player etiquette. I won’t go into big detail here, but basically we had a lot of issues with cross talk and players making meta decisions. The main point i want to emphasize is that when we are playing, i really need the player to focus up. Sharing memes during someone else's turn is not only disrespectful to that player, but it is distracting to everybody. Also when that happens and then players have no idea what they're doing on their turn, it lets me know that they just weren’t paying attention. I do a lot of work to make the world as immersive as possible, but i need you all to really bring it to life when we play. Part of that means being in your character’s head, even when other people are rolling dice, and not talking about work while i’m telling someone how much damage they took. I won’t belabor the point, but we went over that for a bit. It was uncomfortable, but needed, and i hope i was reasonable and kind about it.
Lastly, We are getting close to leveling up soon, and i put out a few things to think about. I’m considering having Rae take her next level in Barbarian to reflect a bit more of how she’s been playing, similar to how we did with Cypress taking points in Druid. I also proposed that Ari might take a point in Ranger. I won’t force this on anyone, but i think it’s worth considering and maybe reading up on.
