Thug Muggers in the Cave 8/25/25
Table Talk:
That last fight was an Easy CR at 2,900. –EXCEPT the fight ended early, so you only get half. That’s 1450 for the incomplete encounter.
This past week i taught myself the very primitive basics for making a .ttf font file. Why? How is this relevant here? Well, one file will be just a standard font with a few added special characters for the symbols and monograms we’ve been encountering in the world. My hope is that uploading this to the website will allow me to include those symbols like ToTKoA’s and Devin’s marks into the actual text of the summaries. The second project is more ambitious and if it works out, i’ll be giving it out online. That will have a basic type font for the lowercase standard 36 characters + some punctuation, and then all the uppercase and symbols will be a pictographic alphabet for TTRPG notes. For instance; A would be a reticle ⨁ for attacks, C a check ✔ for passing, X an ⊗ for failing, and several basic shapes like a lock, snake, spider, crown, door, and coin. The goal here, of course, being to make a simple emoji-style typeface that GMs can use for typing notes, and i can use when typing up my own notes.
Last, Nymbus gets a point of inspiration. I decided this last week as i was writing the summary. The way he fully volunteered wanting to be an Octopus but not having a way to rationalize it in game was commendable and a good example to us all. Being willing to accept limitations and vocalize that absent need is something we should all strive for.
Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole
Until he wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave
-Mother –Colin Meloy “Mariner's Revenge”
🛡️🎲📿✨🌿Chapter 21: Separated (cont.)🗡️
🛡️🎲📿✨🌿Chapter 21: Separated (cont.)🗡️
Butcheries are still pretty rare here in a city where more than half the population was raised vegetarian in the ways of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Still, in a land prizing itself on diversity, the few butcheries that are here do a swift business with the newcoming groups, and the people looking to try something new.
The north Butcher mostly works with venison and hare from the forest druids and the mountaineers. The south butchery (often called the Meat Tower) is mostly livestock – hog, mutton, and hen – meat from the farms in the city and near the outlining township south of the wall. The east butchery – well, to be honest – it doesn’t do much in the way of butchering. Most of the meat they get comes in on wagon wheels instead of legs. Packed in ice or snow or thick wax canvas, it comes from the ranches and villages two or three days east of the forest edge. They cure and treat the meat chunks more than they cut and flay any dead animals. They’re known for thick and stable salt cures and smokes, tough ration jerky, clay baked cuts (a very old form of roasting that lets meat keep longer; you mold a clay shell around it and then fire it in a kiln until the acids stop breaking down – it’s a kind of a pre-cooking which leaves it mostly flavorless but well preserved).
In the south butchery in the evening on the 18th of Kython, the owner – a tall orc named Yago-mitanis, is called to the front. A couple of friends are standing and smiling at the counter waiting. Yago-mitanis’s face – still speckled with blood – breaks into a smile. “Todlin, Frenshilor, so good to see you!” He embraces the two humans in a wide strong hug before they can back away, unconsciously smearing their clothes with fresh blood. “How long has it been!?”
While Frenshilor tries to whip away the blood, Todlin laughs, “Days, weeks even. That’s why we came. We haven’t seen you in church for quite a while and we wanted to check on you and Denna.”
Yago-mitanis managed to hold back the flinch at the mention of the church and scratched a knuckle against his protruding tooth. “That long? Well we’ll have to make some time to come over for dinner… The truth is we’ve been very busy lately…” He smiles. “I have some wonderful” his pause is so brief that only the audience notices the ominousness, “fresh cuts I can bring over.”
There's really no good intro to set the stage here, because everything is rushing by so fast. Or rather, everyone is rushing by the scenery fast.
Underground, under a city, under sewers, under caves, our brave heroes – or at least the party we’re cheering on – are zipping through a twisting turning winding bumping river which is pulling them along at bruise-neck speeds (it’s like breakneck speeds but a single hit won’t insta-kill you).
Rae is unconscious.
Cypress the Squid (actually i think i’m gonna go with “Cyp-ward”) is chasing after her, but is hampered by the 5 pound wooden gargoyle child latched onto one of his longer tentacles.
Sorin is being pulled backwards after turning to grab his demon snake familiar; as the police guard turned diplomat, Bostra, dunked him in the stream to avoid splitting the party again.
Bostra himself is in his tightly closed oilskin cloak bobbing in the current like a bean pod or a submarine canoe.
Let’s start rolling some dice!
Rae, give me that Death Save.
Hey, that’s your second success, and now an Athletics Check. Awe, too bad, so sad, moving on.
Cypress and Sorin i need Athletic’s Check from you guys too. Woo, both pass, awesome. Give me quick Perception rolls.
The weight of tZulèe bobbing along behind him jerks Cypward’s tentacles down, and –like the other end of teeter totter – his head crests out of the water in a stone pool. He sees a place in a cave he recognizes, but this time, he’s seeing it from the reserved angle. There is a large stone next to the pool his head is coming up in. It’s in the middle of the tunnel just past a curve, and a spot where he was knocked to the ground in Ari’s darkness. Cypward narrows their eyes and quickly dives back in, quickly chasing after Rae.
Right behind his friend’s tentacles (there’s a lead in i never expected to type), Sorin pokes his head up and out of the water to gasp for air. He looks around and sees the spot where Ari disappeared. “I knew it!” He screams, about to get out of the water. Then he remembers Bostra’s invective not to split the party, and with a grumble and with crossed arms, he lets himself go back into the current.
Rae, i will need another Death Save.
Sarah: “Yes.”
Hey, good job (even though the dice did all the work there, not you). You’re up! Now give me an Athletics Check with disadvantage.
Okay, that's a pass. So you will wash up in a stop here in a second, but i am gonna say you’re still unconscious.
Sarah: “You know what, totally fair. Honestly I’m just happy to be alive.”
Cypress and Sorin, you’re Athletics Checks? Great, and Cypress, roll a D6 really quick. The lower the better.
Nymbus, confused: “1?”
That’s just to determine how far away tZulèe is when they come up with you.
Rae’s body sloshes up on a slippery rocky bank, and a second later we see a squid roll out of the water next to her. The squid blinks at the dry air and then a foot or two away, a wooden gargoyle with green glowing cracks all over its body crawls up on shore after it. After the gargoyle we see a young wizard thrashing about and floundering. His hand finds the rock in the open air and we watch him heave himself – gasping – out of the water with a snake clenched in his fist. A moment later a dark pod, like a sleek banana, gently beaches on the shore and Bostra undoes the clasps of his cloak.
Now, we find ourselves in a tube shaped cave, like the inside of the worm calcifications you find mixed in with seashells. We’re on a bank where the river curves with the walls as the softer limestone hits up against some harder rock (dammit Jim, i’m a DM, not a geologist). The shore is a little bank of sloped limestone at a one to eight degree angle banking like a beach. The rock is smooth except for the layer lines where fast water has cut away material and slow water has deposited material. In the middle it is speckled with lots of little bumps and dots of baby stalagmites like pimples where the spray of the stream has left mineral heavy droplets. It gives us enough of a grip to stand on, but not much, as the rock itself is slippery with thin algae mucus and the water on the limestone floor. The river cuts and twists its way through this little shore making a zigzag that leaves patches of dryish ground on either side so that someone walking back or forth would have to jump over the river from bank to bank to progress in a single direction through the tunnel.
The tunnel runs nor…sou… Wheast? We can’t tell the direction too well after getting tosses about in the river. Downstream from us, the river keeps flowing and winding away in the dark, but upstream from up are two splits, forking off from the tunnel. One goes back into the same wall we find ourselves against, and one has its own flow of water moving at an angle away from where we landed.
Okay, you all take that in while i go see if Ari is dead yet.
Main table and Brooke’s table at the same time: “What!?”, “Hey!”
Okay i’m back. Ari is… she’ll probably be fine. What’re you all doing?
Cypward turns back into Cypress and kneels beside Rae for a Medicine Check. There’s a strong heartbeat, but almost no breathing…
They turn Rae onto her side and a thin line of water leaks out of her mouth. Then Rae lets out a hiccup-burp combo and her nose dribbles out a line of bubbly water as she blinks her eyes. Go ahead and clean up there Rae, i’ll check in with Sorin.
Sorin looks over at Bostra and - oh mine gods! He’s soaked! He’s so wet he’s dripping! Completely covered in… wait a minute. As Sorin’s eyes adjust he can see that the gnome is actually completely dry, minus some of his hair. The reason he looked wet at first, is because he does indeed have water running off him. Bostra is using the back of his hand like a squeegee on a car window to run lines of water off his cloak leaving it dry.
‘Well, Bostra’s fine,’ Sorin thinks, ’what about Akris?’ He turns around looking for the snake.
He turns around again.
Turning around a third time and not finding his familiar, Sorin starts to panic.
He can even feel the panic now. A physical feeling in his hand like a writhing, wriggling-
Sorin looks down and sees his familiar turning white and spasming jerkily in his clenched fist. He lets go instantly. “Oh gods, Akris are you ok? I didn’t mean to grab on so tight! I was just, I mean I didn’t want to lose you, but I was also almost drowning. I swallowed so much cave water when I hit my head and - oh god are you okay?”
The demon spirit snake manages to croak out two husky words. “So… Thirsty…” Then he goes to the edge and submerges his entire head in the stream.
Nymbus, impressed: “You know, I can’t tell if he’s just being a dick or if he’s serious.”
Once Rae’s Ki is flowing again, the invisible swirling vortex it makes around her Ring of Regeneration picks up speed again and pushes 5 HP back into her. Rae sighs and relaxes from the healing. Then she and Cypress panic in a scrabble as she starts to slide back into the water.
With nervous half laughter, they both roll high Strength Saves over the DC 8, and they pull her back from the edge of the ledge.
Back to Ari.
Okay, back to you guys, god this moving back and forth all the time is getting tiring.
Cypress makes another Medicine Check, this time on tZulèe to see how it's doing after the water. Did it float? Bang on the rocks? Get too much water inside its…its… do wooden gargoyles aspirate? I never expected to ask that question. With a nat’ 20 Medicine and then a 22 on a Nature Roll, Cypress gains a lot of insight to gargoyle anatomy and development. Insight which is well explained in “Insert clever made up book; but i’m too exhausted” by Fantasy author name:
“It is still unclear to modern naturopathics how exactly Gargoyle young are born to the world, but we have learned much on their youth and growth. The gargoyle starts in relatively soft materials at a smaller size; some accounts of so-called ‘sand mice’ have indeed been found to be hatchling gargoyles no larger than a fist and composed of shaded sands clumped together. They then progress through a preliminary pupation to a mostly solid body by going through stages of clay like bodies. The urban and rural Wooded Gargoyle is estimated to be in the first adolesicentary post pupa stages of the species. It moves through the stages of light and airy floating woods to the dark and heavy so-called ‘iron’ woods, gaining density and increasing its vast constitution. The iron woods stage of hardening lasts quite some time before the – perhaps embarrassing – specklation of stone spots like the human acne. These spots first grow in abundance and then in size until the gargoyle's skin is covered in a shell of livingstone. At this point the…”
Thinking back to when they first met in the crumbling basement of the Rat King attack, Cypress can see how the lightish wood with tan-brown lines has shaded now to a tan-brown wood with darker lines. And soon he’ll most likely be a dark brown wood with black lines.
While Cypress is bonding with their familiar and assessing the 1 HP damage it took, Sorin is looking for any footprints.
Yes.
On the slimy wet rock.
I double checked.
He rolls a 6 on a DC 30 Investigation.
I think we can skip that.
Rae is actually following Ari’s actions if she only knew it, and checking on her gear, especially her staff. With a 19 on a Constitution Check (that i explain in Ari’s story), her staff is fine. She thinks for a minute about tossing sticks into rivers, streams and even waterfalls as a kid, and watching them come out fine from the other side of the bridge. She gets a little embarrassed for being worried, but continues checking it over anyway.
Speaking of Ari.
Okay, back to you guys, at least you all get to stay in one stop and chat to each other, i have to move around and keep going with both stories.
Nymbus, pointing at a scrap of paper on the table: “I remembered I have this!”
Oooo you’re DM Hint! Okay, are you using it?
Nymbus, nodding: “Yes.”
Okay check your phone.
Cypress can see Sheela in his mind again. Unlike every other time, it is not Sheela standing at her meadow cottage, reminiscences of his childhood shiries. Nor is she standing in her Great Garden of Life when all things bloom and creatures’ souls are born inside the pollen of their buds as her ethereal Angel Bees carries them to our world. Instead, the goddess is standing with dusty gray bare feet outside the tall mouth of a cave. She smiles at Cypress before she turns and he sees the cape she wears is made of deep-moss – that special lichen so dark green it’s almost blue which is found only in holes and burrows underground. As she walks away, mushrooms at her feet glow and bioluminesce at her approaches, then fade as she walks into the darkness.
Her message to him is clear.
Rae sits down to mediate and regain some of her health. She’s been practicing this trick ever since she was a child watching the older monks, but only recently (at level 6) has it begun to work for her. She enters the meditation called “alca-celumë-líco” or ‘shine, flow and glow’ to open her eyes to the flow of her Ki around her. Then as she always watched them do, she steeples her fingers, spread apart with a space between her open palms. She lets her fingers begin to flick and dance, tap dancing against each other on the current of Ki between them. When she does, the Ki is pushed together and compressed in little tiny balls which pop in tiny hair-sized explosions and spark when her fingers back away and pull them apart. The little sparks ride the current of her energy for just an instant before arching back into and under her skin and giving her life (restoring HP with the Wholeness of Body Feat).
Sorin looks nervous as he taps on the empty air above Cypress’s shoulder, “Hey, Uh, um, Cypress,” He gets up the courage to actually touch the little cleric’s shoulder as they stare unblinking at the cave downstream, “Do you think we should go that way? Orr…. are you just zoning out for a minute and having a moment?” Then, pulling his finger back and putting his hands up and out in placating gesture, “Imeanifyouarethat’sfine,ImeanIgetitItotallydothattoosometimes,solikenoworries,justasking,hahayouknow?” He asks, somehow managing to pronounce the 😖😓😵💫emoji combo.
“We need to go that way and let the river take us.”
“Oh.” Sorin starts walking. “Okay, cool.”
Without turning his head, Cypress’s hand whips out and snatches the wizard’s wet robes. “Raelle, our party member, teammate, companion, and friend, is still meditating.”
Sorin nods and walks back slowly. Then, with Cypress still looking down the tunnel, Sorin starts making faces, bunny ears and lewd childish gestures, behind Rae’s glazed expression.
In her haze filled cloudy vision, Rae sees Akris’s giant face slowly rise up in front of her and whisper, “Sssomeone isss making fasssesss atch you…”
She reaches an arm back and flicks out her fingers.
“Ow, my shins!”
Rae stands up, gives Akriss a gentlemanly thank you tail-hand-shake, before walking over to Cypress and looks down the tunnel, “So what’s the plan?”
Good question, why don’t you all decide on a plan while i move my chair over to Ari.
You know i wouldn’t have to do this back and forth so much if she dies… I could just stay at one-
All Players: “Hey! No!”
Okay, I’m back, Ari is probably still alive.
Brooke, from across the room: “I am!”
Hey! No spoilers! Anti-inspiration!
Brooke: just sticks her tongue out.
Okay, so what’s your guys’ plan over here?
Nymbus, mischievously: “So uh, what’s the biggest aquatic animal you like i’ve ever seen? I’ve totally seen a crocodile right?”
Oh boy…
There is some long discussion, which i’ll mostly skip, where i decided Cypress’s best Wild Shape options are a large Salmon (halfling size), the cryptozoologic mythical ‘grandfather bass’ (Sorin size), or a large Catfish (a fish knowing for being a submarine and doing what it wants even in rough currents). Then Ashley tries to use the Water Walking spell before being gently reminded that some of the water is completely submerged in the rock with no opening – and then being more forcefully explained to, that that means there is no space to walk on top of the water.
Eventually everyone decided on Cypress the Catfish holding rope in his mouth to guide Rae and Sorin with Sorin casting Alter Self with Water adaptations so that everyone has advantage on the upcoming rolls.
The last bit of rolls here, i’m gonna zip through, because it’s getting close to my self-imposed deadline and – as the squirrel said to the donkey – “it’s been a ruff week” (as evidenced by that being my best line for this).
Passing 3, Athletic DC 9 - Cypress passes (2 damage), Sorin fails (16 damage), Rae succeeds (4 damage).
Passing 4, Athletic DC 8 - Cypress passes (2 damage), Sorin succeeds (2 damage) and sees the underside of some sewer bricks around Krubos’s lake, Rae passes (2 damage).
Passing 5, Athletic DC 10 - Cypress passes (1 damage), Sorin fails (now unconscious), Rae succeeds (3 damage).
Landing 6, Athletic Save; this is the final landing and the roll will be minus any failures along the path of the river, so Rae and Sorin each have -2 to their rolls. The DC is dynamic, under 10 they will come out unconscious but stable, under 15 they’ll be fine but prone, and over 15 they come out with no penalties (the same as something that happened to Ari actually, hmm… interesting.)
Rae and Cypress emerge from the water onto another – though much less smooth – slab of rock, panting. They lay there prone, catching their breath while Bostra lifts Sorin’s unconscious body further away from the water.
We find ourselves in a large open cave with the ground rising and dipping in swelling bump humps and lovely cavey lumps. One thing we notice right away is that this area is smooth. No craggy cracked rocks or stippled rocky ground icicles, no big stalagmites or a crusty ceiling or dripping stones and stalactites. Everything here is a little damp and humid, but smooth. The stone floor with its mounds and counter mounds is worn down to an almost satin finish.
The whole room of the cave is shaped like a rectangle with the short sides caved in a ways – or like a bow tie turned on its side and stretched.
We hear the rushing cave waters and turn to look.
Along either of the long sides of the room there is a miniature flowing river. The water is only a rough yard across but the current is moving at a high clip leaving the top of the water a bubbling veiny mass of turning spray. The river path to the north has two strange waterfalls that stick out to us. Nearest us, the waterfall seems mostly normal, just slightly too uniform as it pours out from the hole in the cave ceiling. The water flows down this spout in the open air, across the stream there and… up the other waterfall. On that side, the water is still a nearly uniform tube of fast moving water, but we can see the flow moving up as if pulled or sucked by a god through some gigantic glass straw or alchemical steam funnel, but without any hard barrier to be seen.
We can see the same thing going on with the other stream on the far side of the room. On the one side a uniform path of water getting sucked up into the ceiling, and on the other side a tube of water falling down, with something hanging inside it. Wait… no someTHING, someONE. Someone with a tail and horns clinging onto a rope in the middle of the waterfall and- uh oh.
Rae and Cypress step forward as they hear a gurgled scream and See Ari tumble from the waterfall out into the open air and into the stream on the other side.
So that’s where she's been? Hanging inside a waterfall this whole time?
A little while minutes later, Yago-mitanis is back in the cellar, alone except for his wife.
She rolls her eyes to look up at him and smiles weekly. He strokes her cheek and gives her a gentle kiss – making the chains clink against the hooks as she winces. His wife, the frail hobgoblin, is the centerpiece of a sprawling altar.
Her bones are broken through her skin.
Her insides are stretched apart by chains, hooks and twisting screws.
Her body is compressed and stretched to the shape of a red ball with only her face left in the middle. All around her is a dark red mist of blood hanging like a fog in the air. Bones from hundreds of dead things cover the wall in an unfamiliar pattern. They rattle in harmony to her voice when she tries to speak. “You must do it, my love. Do not let your love of me be your weakness. I was weaker and this is the way. The right way. The true way. Make me your cattle, dear husband, make me—”
The knife slides through her easily.
Soon Yago-mitanis is holding her head. “Our friends wish to see you dear,” he says, bringing her face over to the work table. “We all want to have you for dinner.” He begins the process of peeling back her face with a toothy kiss.
Martin: I-I’ll start. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… T–
Archivist: Tombs.
Martin: Cheater.
Archivist: [Indignant] I did not!
Martin: Your turn.
Archivist: Fine. I spy with my little eye… Literally everything.
-Martin & The Archivist —Jonathan Sims, "The Magnus Archives: MAG180 - ########-20 - Moving On"
Table talk:
The section we are in now is in the third underground level, the first level of the caves, and the beginning of the underdark! In more mundane terms, that means i had only finished making that room about a week ago and haven’t gotten the maps printed for it yet. So we’ll be on printer paper for a bit, and someone will have to whip Kai into action to get him to finish making my maps so i can get them printed – he’ll probably stream some of the making of them on his twitch again for anyone interested in that.
Reader, if you’re wondering, the text i sent Nymbus was “Go with the river.” It was entirely up to him to incorporate how that narratively came out and he decided to have it be a message from Sheela so we built that vision a little bit together.
