Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Abyss Modified session 11: Fish, bridges, and radishes


Our session began with a new adventurer making their way into the underdark, a triton storm herald barbarian named Kalie had accidentally made her way into the depths of the underground and ran across the party. Slim Jim, Xanaphia, Orion, and Kalie made their way along Keg’s path and came across a chamber with strange splashing sounds, a moving light, and harsh voices speaking in a language they did not know. The party recognized the language as something their old companion Buppido would speak during his mumblings. They looked around the corner and watched a group of derro, strange underground twisted fey dwarves. There were four less important looking ones and one with a long pliable pole with a light on the end of it, swinging it back and forth causing fish to leap out of two small pools. The derro would catch the fish, bite off the head, and put the rest in their pockets. After watching the derro at this for a few moments the party was noticed, Xanaphia tried to persuade the derro to let them pass and Root, their kobold child companion, translated for her. They realized the derro were mad and combat was had. Kalie made good use of her trident, impaling on of the derro and flinging it at its allies and disturbing the fish. Orion decapitated a few of them, Xanaphia threw necrotic energy at the others, melting one’s flesh and exposing its lungs. Slim Jim attempted a few shots with his bow, but the derro were evasive. Kalie stabbed the derro with the lung problem, ending him there. the group turned to the leader of the derro in time to be hit with a lightning bolt from the mad derro. No one likes being hit with a lightning bolt so they returned the attack tenfold, breaking his body and looting the corpses.

They made their way further into the tunnels, eventually hitting a chamber with a vast cavern with a single long bridge spanning the gap and hundreds of stalagmites and stalactites filling most of the chamber. The bridge had no rails, and seemed to be way longer than they could see, even with special dark vision and other sights. They started their long trek across and started to hear strange buzzing and saw something strange at the edge of their vision, a large horse sized fly like creature known as a chasme. As they observed, it clung to the side of the bridge and another creature, a large red gorilla with metal bracers on its arms approached from the far side of the bridge. The two demons conversed in a strange language and they both noticed the party. The group descended on the strange chasme and Orion stunned it with stunning strike, letting the rest of the group team up to hobble it. the strange ape creature ran up and bit Kalie, then smashed both fists into her. It continued its wild bite and smash combo but fell to the party’s onslaught of attacks, in the process knocked Kalie unconscious. The Chasme died terribly still gripped to the bridge and did get to make one good attack on Orion, dealing its normal damage as well as necrotic damage, draining Orion’s vitality.

The party made the rest of the way across the bridge and Keg took them to another on of his hiding holes. They slept the night, their allies watched for trouble while they slept. The next morning Eldeth and Roke had difficulty waking, they both had become dreadfully exhausted from nightmares they had and were unable to travel. Keg remembered they were close to a place that had magic panacea radishes. The group left their allies to rest while they took a few hours to make their way to a dead underground city that was supposedly uninhabited and had no guardians according to Keg. When they arrived, he led them to a large broken church with a large fountain in the center of the courtyard. Water from the surface fell here as well as long vines from above. As they took one of the radishes, which were moonlight pale, with mage hand the doors behind them slammed. A strange figure to them, a human looking woman with a lion’s body where her legs should be accused them of stealing her wares. The party all gave Keg a stink eye and explained their friends were sick. They traded with her for some of the radishes. They had tried to offer her the medusa head but it had started rotting and when Orion pulled it out the thing was dripping on the church floor. Strange gremlin adjacent creatures came out and started cleaning. One gave Orion a bucket so the head would not drip on their floor. The party was happy with their transaction and left to return to their friends and saw hundreds of small gremlin-ish creatures play acting being peasants in the broken city, pretending to be vendors and patrons. They made it back to their friends and gave them the panacea, healing them of their exhaustion. The party had a pile of extra as well as seeds for hopefully making more plants on the surface.

Monday, April 15, 2019

Abyss Modified Session 10, the Silken Path


Spoilers for Out of the Abyss Adventure

The party continued further into the tunnels and ran into two new companions, Syre the snake folk bard and Thelrun the Tortle abjuration wizard. They had been hired to accompany a merchant and became separated from their charge on the Silken Path, a giant cavern full of webs acting as a highway through the underdark. Their path behind them became treacherous, blocked by rocks and debris, and they joined with the group for safety in numbers.

Mild introductions were made and the group followed their guide, Keg, as he retraced the steps he had taken many times before. They eventually found the tunnel he normally took collapsed and ruined, but another path existed on the right. They continued, eventually finding a chamber with odd statues with minor transmutation magic emanating from within as well as faint tendrils that led deeper into the chamber. A voice called out asking their intentions and demanding tribute, the party thought about leaving an absent companion or two for the voice, which revealed herself to be a medusa with control over her statues, which also attacked. Syre used bane on the statues, causing them to be a minor nuisance. The medusa launched poison arrows into Godric, her closest foe and her proximity caused her foes to have to resist her stone gaze. Xanaphia, Orion, and Godric dealt with it the most until Syre caused the medusa to flee with dissonant whispers. The medusa eventually attempted to flee, jumping back into her tent and Xanaphia blew the tent up with a thunder wave, finding it empty. The medusa had pulled herself into a secret tunnel and the party made quick work in foiling her escape. Once dead they removed the medusa’s head for a trophy, finding her paralyzing ability only worked while alive in this case. Her statues also stopped moving once she died.

Healing up a bit first they continued on their way eventually finding themselves on the Silken Path, finding their feet sticking just enough to be annoying while they walked the webs. They ran into two goblins who seemed to know their way around and told them not to mess with the ettercaps, strange spider people that lived in the webs. They could see these creatures approaching so they used rope and magic to get onto another strand of webs and evade any pursuit. They continued on, finding signs that pointed in the direction of Blingdenstone and showed Keg, the kobold how to foil trackers, by turning the signs to point the wrong way. The next signpost they got to Keg grabbed and tossed into the abyss below them. His larceny stoked he wondered if the webs could burn as well and the party talked him down from madness. While traveling they also noticed whale sized spiders just within view spinning strands of the web super structure and quietly passed unnoticed. Eventually five drow descended from above and stopped the party, informing them they had magically received word a group of escapees from a drow outpost had been causing trouble and matched the description of the party. They bluffed their way into friendship with the drow, Thelrun having cast see invisibility and noticing a large eye patched cat person with an oversized crossbow with the drow but levitating about ten feet off the web and up in the air. As a group they made it to one of the crossways and could feel the web bouncing under them, the drow cut the strand, watching as a charging troll fell into the abyss.

The group parted ways with the drow and eventually found the other end of the giant web chamber that Keg knew was close to their goal. They cut one of the strands behind them. A little way into the new tunnel they entered what seemed to be a crypt, Keg showing the party a secret chamber where they and their numerous allies could rest for the night. While they slept horrible murmuring filled the air, strange unknown voices echoed and terrible dreams and visions were had by a large part of the party. They all awoke covered in sweat and heard something huge moving through the tunnel, smaller creatures screaming, and eventually something plummet in the distance. They opened the secret wall to find about six or seven dead drow splashed over sixty feet of tunnels, different drow then they had seen before.

They followed the path of carnage back to a large iron door, it seemed since the last time Keg had been this way something had carved out a small fortress within the underdark. Past the iron door they found a gore splattered room with a summoning circle, dead drow, and one dead dark dwarf, his body on the floor, his head within the circle. Huge bloody and burned foot prints lead out the tunnel the way they came. They found there was a dwarf clan, the Gold Shields, that tried to make this an outpost for their city but it seemed something went wrong in their dealings. The party started turning the place over and found out a little about the clans and the fort, confirming everything they already knew. They grabbed odd building supplies from the court yard and a spiked chain from the torture room they found. As they made their way out of the keep we ended for the night, the party has now reached level five.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Abyss Modified Session 9, It's raining Flumphs

After a few weeks of sickness, I was able to run an adventure again, con crud Influenza sucks. 

Also these write ups will contain spoilers to the Out of the Abyss adventure

We were down a few players due to schedules and picked up a new friend. Our adventure picked up where the last one ended, two dead drow, the corpse of a gibbering mouther, and no sign of the rest of the ambushers. Godric returned to the chamber, having scouted back the way they came and found Keg the kobold merchant and an aasimar cleric named Malva in the tunnels. Keg had been harassed by drow and Godric and Malva helped him refill his cart with the spilled wares. The rest of the party was resting in the cave when they got back. Telegar asked the party about the rod they were given by the Companion and realized that the drow they had escaped early on might actually still be trailing them and were about a day behind them. Telegar informed the group that the leader of the drow took his earring and they could use the rod to keep an eye out on where the drow squad might be. 

Keg hired the party to help him navigate near the city of Blingdenstone, knowing the way he could guide them and knew what was ahead. He also paid them in advance, giving everyone a magic item to help on their journey. Keg also bonded with Root, their orphaned kobold friend, Root showed Keg the bag of holding he kept sleeping in and got to ride in Kegs wheelbarrow of items. The first chamber they found had three ogres that usually made travelers pay a tribute if they wanted to pass, if refused the ogres would eat the travelers. Keg mentions he had more apprentices that usually would help make the trek easier but the tribute is high. The group saw the ogres eating a huge sized beetle, ripping through the carapace with their slime stained hands and eating sinewy meat. 

Xanaphia dropped an ice knife into the beetle, stabbing out shards of ice into the ogres. Combat was had, Orion approaching one ogre and trying out there new sword, Godric threw up a hex on the same ogre while getting rushed by the other two. Slim Jim took advantage of the melee and launched a few arrows into the fray while riding on the wheelbarrow while keg made haste across the chamber, trying to avoid the ogres. Slim Jim noticed in the back of the cave by the exit there was purple mist they knew to be the Faerzress, the Underdark wild magic permeating some areas. Malva made good use of her mace as well as her spiritual weapon, bashing away at the ogres. Two of the ogres ended up falling after hitting the party a few times and Slim Jim tossed a silent image of an orc into the mist, causing six fearful Flumphs to fall out, confused and scared they started screaming while flailing about the chamber. Their flailing caused the mist to spread in the chamber. Keg got his cart halfway across the chamber before Slim Jim tried to case disguise self while engulfed in mist. 

The explosion shook the cavern, the secondary blast from the cart full of magic items shook it again. Keg was thrown from the blast, Slim Jim was on fire, and in the space of the cart was the amalgamation of the wild magic and chaos, a large purple gelatinous cube with the five remaining flumphs trapped within its mass. Keg shakily got to his feet and ran to the pile of characters not there, represented by one figure instead of eight for sanity sake and was healed by Telegar. The party panicked realizing that Root had been on the cart when it exploded. The remaining ogre was shocked by what had just happened and fell quickly to the redoubled efforts of the party. They refocused the efforts on the cube, fearful to use magic on it knowing it was created by wild magic. Orion got stuck within its form and Slim Jim kept evading its advances. Orion was very close to dying but was saved at the last moment by the efforts of the party. The cube fell, and silence permeated the cave. They searched the rubble and only found a ten-foot pole and eventually saw the wheelbarrows wheel rolling back towards them. Before they could start mourning the loss of their tiny kobold friend, they noticed a tail wagging out of the bag of holding on Keg’s side. 

Their companion was safe… for the moment.