Thug Muggers in the Sewers 7/7/24
Table Talk:
So… Ashley… You remember what you wanted me to look up? About how having a +4 Constitution Modifier will help your AC? I looked it up. It doesn’t. DEX is what helps your AC, CON helps your HP. So this will help you heal with Hit Dice and have better HP as you level up… but you’re still ridiculously easy to hit. There there now its ok. Yeah… i know. You got the belt specifically thinking it would help your AC… Ssshhh… It’s okay, we all make mistakes…
Just a heads up, i decided to write this summary from Bostra’s perspective. I don’t know why, so don’t ask. But the idea struck me as i was setting up my notes Sunday night and i just stuck with it. I’ll try to still include gameplay (in parentheticals), but i’m also trying to keep more in line with his militaristic mindset and terminology to reflect his inner monologue for this one. Either way, please leave a comment at the very bottom and let me know what you think. If it’s a fun twist i might do it again, if it’s distracting and bad, i won’t.
THE ARROW-HEAD in its symbolism had a similar significance to that of the Axe, and in Japan flint Arrow-heads were thought to have been rained from Heaven, or dropped by flying spirits. They were very popular in the early days of the present civilisation as Amulets to protect the wearer from disease and to avert the Evil Eye ; whilst throughout Europe they were regarded as the product of Elves (Elf-shots, or fairy weapons), water in which they had been dropped or dipped, being considered very efficacious in curing feminine ailments (see Illustration No. 17, Plate I).
—William Thomas & Kate Pavitt, “The Book Of Talismans Amulets And Zodiacal Gems” (1914)
🥔🥔⤵⤵⤵⤵🦋🦋🦋🛡️⬛🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 20: When will you learn… That Your Actions Have Consequences?
🥔🥔⤵⤵⤵⤵🦋🦋🦋🛡️⬛🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 20: When will you learn… That Your Actions Have Consequences?
It’s around midday now and everyone is taking a moment to get some food. Carts have their canopies out as far as they go, shops have their doors open wide, and everyone is selling just as fast as they can – while sneaking little bites from the pies and wraps they keep out of sight whenever no one is looking at them. It’s a nice day in Nibiru so far, and it seems like some of the recent unpleasantness has abated…for now.
When Bostra wakes up he looks around at Cypress finishing his prayers, Ari playing with her ring, Rae working on Zaanth’s note, and Sorin scratching his awkward beard stubble. He sighs “Anyone think to make any breakfast?” There is a chorus of seven hungry stomach gurgles. “I thought not. Ration bars it is then.” He hikes his bag up on his back, “Come on, let’s get moving.”
He stops for a moment at the hidden door to wait and listen for the sounds of the young ‘heroes’ hastily adjusting and putting on their gear and trying to catch up. With no one around he shakes his head and mumbles, “My kingdom for a trained platoon…” and then moves down the hall to the main room.
Everyone comes walking in behind him and glances around. Seeing the green glow of Krubos’s lake to North Zero* Rae taps Ari’s shoulder. “Hey, didn’t you say you wanted to go see Krubos again?”
The old Scout Handbook i based the direction system off of.
*a traditional gnome method of marking and communicating directions which stemming from early map making, but is primarily used in trained fighting forces. The Direction (up, down, North, East, South, West) is followed by a number 0 - 10, the number indicates the number of hand spans (an extended arm straight out from the chest, and a flat together palm) the indicated thing is from that direction. Ex: an Up Two hilltop would be the top of a hill about 2 hand spans above the straight out horizon. Or Ex: a West Five tower would be a tower five hand spans clockwise from West – in this case directly NW, centered between West and North. All hand counting moves in a clockwise circle from North to East to South to West and back to North, then up from the artificial horizon line – the expectation is the direction Down, which does not count up from a central point below, but down from the same artificial horizon. Ex: a river South Three Down Two would be a river at SouthSouthWest on a regular compass, and down a hill or bank by around 20 degrees.
Ari scratches a horn, “Yeah but I’m not sure I have enough money if we trade any of the lower items that actually I’m fine getting rid of.”
While the Thug Muggers discuss the options, Bostra slowly moves over to Devin's mark on the wall. He leans against it and yawns, casual back-kicking the wall with one boot. The small paper envelope tucked in the brick mortar falls into the hand behind his back while he ‘accidentally’ lets a coin slip from his hand onto the cobblestone. He coughs, covering the sound, and stands back up. “Are we ready then?”
The group around Bostra nods and moves South to the door.
He pinches the bridge of his nose as they get to the door and Ari says something about going in first.
Sorin: “Check it first.”
Rae: “What do you mean check it?”
Sorin: “Check the door.”
Rae: “Uh, yeah. It’s a door.”
Sorin: “The last one wasn’t.”
Ari: “That was like, two days ago.”
Rae: “Listen wizard boy-”
Bostra interjects to keep things on track. “Once you open the door, where do you want me in the pack?”
Cypress says he and Sorin should take the middle while he takes up the rear. Then, with quite an effort (Strength Check) Rae and Ari heave the door open. The cold damp cave air rushes past, fluttering the heavy bottom of his cloak as the pressure equalizes. He’s concentrating while Sorin sends the Flying Snake in to scout ahead. He can smell… water, clean water… and something else. After he steps over the door sill and he waits for Cypress to close it behind them, he closes his eyes. Iron, yes. Limestone, of course. Water, again, and something stale… is it blood or is he just being hyphy? All the same he tightens his grip under his cloak.
Just Inside the cave is a small pool of crystal clear water with a stalagmite to one side.
Sorin immediately begins studying the rock, and Ari studies the water. ‘Well,’ Bostra thinks to himself, ‘we’re on the tip of the underdark now.’
“Well?” Rae asks.
Sorin looks sheepish. “I was trying to tell if it was a Roper again.”
Cypress lifts an eyebrow, “I thought Ropers were indistinguishable from ordinary rocks until they moved.”
‘Or you hit them with a pickaxe,” the old gnome thinks to himself with a small hidden smile.
“Yeah…” Sorin sighs, “that's what I remembered.”
Bostra shifts his attention as Ari stands back up from where she knelt to put a hand in the water. Even when she pulled her hand out, the surface seemed still. “The water’s interesting though,” she says. “The top looks still but there’s a small current pulling it along, and further down you can really feel it pulling.”
“Like the water from the other cave.” Cypress nods.
There is a sharp sting high up in Bostra’s shoulder and he grunts. Following his training, he drops to one knee.
Damn piercers.
The thing managed to hit him right next to his neck where the cloak was open and loose. He can see the little rock cone’s legs skittering in the air trying to push itself past the outer layer of skin and into his meat.
Sorin moves to pull it out of him, then turns around as he hears the smack of the Piercer that just missed where he’d been standing, hit the ground.
Ari grunts and spins, pulling her rapier out, and Bostra can see the third Piercer biting its horn into her shoulder. Behind her he can see Akris flying back in a panic, being chased by a few Stirge. ‘Well at least that answers the question of the stale blood smell’. As he gets back up, he can feel the nature cleric putting hand on him and the familiar feeling of the Barkskin spell moves over him, pushing the rocky-spike-bastard out of his shoulder.
He gives Cypress a begrudging nod. It’s not like he couldn’t take a hit, but they are protecting him – or trying to – and that’s their job.
Letting her sword drop down to a tower-guard-four** Ari uses her off-hand to cast Magic Missile at each of the oncoming Stirge. Knocking one out completely and bloodying the other two (Actually leaving them at 1 HP each, much to my delight).
**the fourth (down-right) guarding position of a sword form used by officers – meant to be a casual but easily raised into active combat.
Rae goes to pull the Piercer out of Ari, and Bostra can see her pull back her hand and shake it, hissing between her teeth, as it bites her. ‘Gotta grab them from the back,’ he thinks.
While Sorin is casting, a fourth Piercer spikes into one of the green cracks holding tZulèe’s body together. Bostra raises an eyebrow, curious to see how the woodling gargoyle will handle it. Then he's distracted by another yell from Rae as two Wretched Sorrowsworn jump at her and one latches on, biting into her waist. Bostra ticks off distances as he stares down the tunnel, ‘they must've been tucked around the next big stalactite over there trying to hide.’ Then as he’s thinking, and looking that way, he sees one of the Stirge latch onto Rae’s prop arm*** and see it starting to fill with her blood as the last of the Stirge and Akris circle in the air around each other.
***in some staff/spear techniques the non-dominant arm is used to hold or ‘prop’ the staff, while the dominant arm is used to steer/aim.
Cypress – presumably Cypress, his cop brain corrects – in the form of a Giant Spider skitters past him to the right, then up the wall, and to the ceiling – running overhead and scooping up the Stirge fighting Akris. Bostra’s stomach rumbles watching the halfling-Spider-cleric-druid getting breakfast (and gaining the 1 HP it had left). To his left, the Gargoyle is shaking its hand and gritting its teeth in a snarl after the piercer in its arm bit it (losing a contest to the Piercer’s nat’ 20 in an attempt to pull it out).
‘Effective,’ Bostra thinks to himself, now watching Ari spear her rapier through the center of the Wretched Sorrowsworn attached to Rae. ‘But sloppy’. He watches the tip poking through the other side of the little monster do a figure eight as she disembowels it, leaving the dead weight of the creature hanging off of the elf.
(With disadvantage from the attached Stirge and Wretched Sorrowsworn) Rae kicks her staff up-and-into the bottom jaw of the second Sorrowsworn. ‘That’s it, knock them back, maintain your perimeter’.
A new skull totem in Sorin’s hand glows as he casts his own Magic Missile hitting the Piercer trying to eat tZulèe and popping the last Sorrowsworn critter. ‘...I’m gonna half to ask about that. Seems like I missed something,’ Bostra thinks, looking at the skull. And then immediately, ‘I think I’m gonna have to teach that kid about perimeters.’ As he sees both the Piercers on the ground by Sorin biting his ankles – making him hop around.
Ari grunts as the rock cone in her tries to burrow deeper, then Bostra frowns in confusion watching Spider-Cypress on the ceiling trying to bite at it. ‘Why-’ Spider Cypress’s eight eyes grimace in pain ‘yeah, bud, roshambo – rock shell beats spider teeth.’
There's a loud crunch and the whole fight pauses for a second as everyone looks at tZulèe. The little gargoyle is seated back on its haunches, eating away at the stoney shell of the wiggling Piercer in its hand like its an ear of sweet corn, with the fleshy middle left as the cob.
Bostra watches as Ari tries to turn and use Poison Spray on the Piercers by Sorin’s feet. ‘Nope,’ he thinks, watching her shoulder with its spiky passenger still in the mouth of the Giant Spider Cypress. ‘Gotta take care of your own thing first.’ Then, as the puff of brown gas hits Sorin in the face, ‘sometimes you should feel really lucky that boy likes you so much’.
With Spider Cypress backing away and shaking their head on the ceiling – like someone who just bit down to find a piece of rock in their rice – Rae is finally able to pull the Piercer out of Ari's shoulder. “Gotcha” she shouts as she plunges the thing into the flowing water. When she pulls her hand out, Bostra’s eye catches the red tear under her hand where it tried to cling onto her as it was sucked away by the current.
Then, right as she stands up, Sorin jumps over the water and wraps his arms and legs around the slippery stalagmite, trying not to fall in. ‘wh- w- but why?’ I don’t know, Bostra, i really don’t know.
On the ceiling, Cypress tries to scoop up the Piercer only for it to jump down, barely missing Rae while Ari slashes into one of the other rock-maggots on the ground.
Rae down-cuts the Piercer that missed her with her staff before stomping on it hard.
Somehow, miraculously (with a nat’ 20) Sorin manages to jump off the Stalagmite and back onto the regular Nibira-firma**** of the cave floor (followed by a nat’ 1, so there are no consequences, but he doesn’t have a chance to cast this round).
****like terra-firma, but it's Nibiru.
One of the remaining Piercers bites at Ari and a moment later Bostra can see battle lust in her eyes as she bares her fangs and glares at the tiny monster (she failed the Wisdom Save from her sword's curse and HAS to attack that Piercer). ‘hmmm…’
Spider Cypress drops to the floor, spearing the Piercer there with two fore-talons before ripping it apart and gobbling up the squirming insides. Bostra makes two-to-eight eye contact with them, not bothering to hide his malcontent, ‘oh sure, you get a tasty breakfast’.
tZulèe has scooped the Piercer that bit Ari off the floor and is trying to bite into it when Ari growls and lunges, trying to pry the living stone away for the gargoyle with bared teeth.
“What in the hells?” Rae shouts, and pulls her friend off the gargoyle, pushing her to the wall.
Cypress slorps up a Stirge corpse to munch, while tZulèe takes all the tasty stone off the Piercer and drops the fleshy core to the floor, then backs away, keeping an eye on Ari.
She leaps under Rae’s arm and while Cypress chews the last dead Strige, she rips the Piercer apart, tearing it with her claws and ending the fight.
Bostra watches Ari carefully.
Rae: “What the F[IFTH EDITION]K!?
Ari, nonchalant: “What?”
Rae, pointing at tZulèe: “You could’ve hurt it!”
Ari, trying to brush past: “I wasn’t gonna hurt tZulèe. I was finishing off the Piercer.”
Rae, blocking her path: “Uh, not the point. What the F[RIENDLY FIRE]K is going on with you!?”
The rogue shrugs casually, but Bostra can see her getting nervous underneath as Cypress descends from the ceiling and watches intently (an Insight Check with DCs at 5 and 15).
Ari, simply: “It needed to die.”
Rae: “Uh yeah, it was about to die. tZulèe was eating it.”
Ari, angry, baring her teeth and pointing at herself: “I needed to kill it. It hurt. ME.”
Rae, backing up and shaking her head: “What’s really going on with you?”
Ari, looking around in a panic: “Okay, fine. We need to have a talk. But later.”
Rae, going back in: “Uh, no. Not after that, we’re gonna talk now.”
Ari, getting skittish: “Look, just, not with Sorin around.”
Sorin: “Hey!”
Rae: “Come on, Ari.”
Cypress, realizing something is definitely going on: “Ari what is…”
‘Oh no, shit, wait!’ Bostra thinks. He is watching Ari starting to panic in a tableau he’s seen played out in oh so many back alleys. Ari is pressed up to the wall now. Rae is on one side holding her staff and pointing at the gargoyle, Cypress is on the other reaching out towards her, and – of course – Sorin’s demonic familiar hovering over a rock in the middle, right in front of her face, grinning at her. His cop brain calculates quicking, tallying up her rogue personality into one simple sentence. ‘She’s gonna run.’
“Stop. Cal-” Bostra tries to shout.
He tries, but darkness floods the room, imitating Ari's panicked frantic beating heart, and his words, “-m down,” are muffled in the thick shadow.
Bostra tries a few simple tricks, but stops when he recognizes the Darkness spell.
Everything is muffled but he can hear the sounds of panic.
Rae swearing.
Ari crying out.
Sorin saying something.
Akris hissing.
Ari’s boots on stone.
A grunt.
Rae’s hands clapping.
A fall.
Cypress hitting the ground.
Ari rolling.
Silence.
Ten minutes later as the black demon fog lifts he can see the rest of the cave with the calm waters and the bend in the tunnel up ahead.
Cypress is on the ground (sitting up now) over there by the next stalagmite, rubbing his back. Sorin is off to one side with tZulèe and Akris, biting his nails. And Rae is standing in the same spot, one arm outstretched against the wall, her knuckles red and skimmed with bits of rocky dirt in them.
Ari is gone.
Okay, so uh… hey… yeah… Reader, this is gonna be a bit strange. You see… the thing is… I had already written this great funny outro for today, thinking we’d end on a high note with a funny thing. Of course, I was basing that off of where the players said they were going, and what i had planned, and a quick easy fight, and Ari not disappearing after being cornered by her friends and having a panic attack… But it's the only outro i have so, uh… here goes.
It’s the tail end of sunset on the 17th of Kythron. And like every seventh day in the city, there is a man in a familiar spot in the square, barking out for his business. This is a little confusing, i guess, because that happens constantly everyday in every square and street in the city. But this time we are focused on one man in particular.
He is standing in the shade of a building with a broad hat calling out from the side of the square like a living billboard.
“Haf you veen injured doing your daily vork? Haf you or a loved vone veen in un accident und you know it vas somevone else's vault? Haf you tried going to de court, but you got novhere because your legs vere broken und you couldn’t shout loud enouv?”
“Talk to me, Drake U. Law, clerk in de small courts. I reprevent de little man und i vill bring de sharp vooden spike of justice down on those vho haf vronged you!”
“This is the eternal quandary of wise DND play: do you get the item that lets you communicate with each other no matter where you are in reality, or a bundle of dynamite to blow up Dracula's ass?”
—Griffin McElory, “The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula – Episode 3”
Table talk:
Yeah, uh sorry for that, the quote was all also planned for that fun, quirky, easy, comical ending…
What I didn’t put in this narrative, but will in the next one, is that when Ari cast Darkness i took her outside with me and we had a brief talk. I explained some situational things for only her to know right now. Then, i asked her a few questions. She decided to make some in-game action, and we went back inside. She rolled a dice. I made a note. No one else knows what’s happening with her. And we’re keeping it that way.
As such, next time we’re gonna take a page out of the show “Community”’s play book that i’ve always wanted to do. I won’t put her completely outside (probably… unless it's a problem), in case they use their Sending Stones to talk, but they will all be separated from her. That way i can go over to her table and get her actions and play, then go back to the others without them knowing what happened (this will be extra fun because Brooke just got a nice dice tower the others will be able to hear). Along with that, i won’t be publishing her side of things until everyone is back together. I’ll still take notes and write them up – i might even publish the main story following the others – but what happens to Ari will remain a secret.
Like i said at the top, please scroll to the bottom and leave a comment regarding your thoughts on this one being from Bostra’s perspective. I’m hoping this is received well because it was fun and i’d like to do it again sometime. Also, i’m hopeful that this flushes Bostra out a bit more in our minds and – especially for the players – and makes him a fuller character in our heads that we think more about as we go forward. Helping us imagine what he might be doing or thinking as we go about the adventure.
