Abyss Modified Session 15: Off Pudding

*OUT OF THE ABYSS SPOILERS AHEAD* 

Our party made plans with the deep gnome council and it was decided they would sneak in and take out the Pudding King and hopefully with his destruction send the oozes into chaos. The rest of Blingdenstone would attempt to fight the oozes in the tunnels. They were granted the use of an earth elemental as a reward for clearing out the deep gnome temple, and with it the party made their way into a secret tunnel section the wererats knew about, coming out near to the Pudding King’s sanctum. 

Dinak scouted ahead of the group and found a larger mass of darkness in a small side chamber and two oddly placed small pools. He cast dancing light on the darkness, which turned out to be a black pudding and the two pools and they turned out to be gray oozes. The ooze slowly rushed the party, attempting to lash out with pseudopods, but the party was too dexterous. Within short order Orion destroyed one of the gray oozes and the party took out the rest. 

They listened the way they came and could hear more things moving in the dark and headed the way the wererats told them to go, Dinak quickly finding another ooze, a gelatinous ooze. He ran back to the rest of the group, letting Godric know about it after placing a few arrows into it. Godric attacked the cube, retreating back into a previous chamber, and from above him dropped another cube from a chute. Godric became incased in the second cube but Thelrum was able to teleport himself along with Godric away from the ooze, leaving a loud blast of thunder where they had been standing. Xanaphia blasted the other ooze with rays of frost, reducing its movements. They made quick work out of both of the cubes, having had previous experiences fighting such a monster, their elemental companion just stood back and watched in reserve.  

They crept along unnoticed by most of the tunnel oozes preparing for war and eventually made it to a chamber that the Pudding King was standing in the center of. his two children dropped from the ceiling and he laughed manically, taunted the party, and slipped through a crack in the floor, leaving the party to deal with his strange ooze children. His daughter attacked Orion with mental magics, but was mostly resisted and his son was instantly engaged by Orion and the earth elemental. The battle went south pretty quickly for the ooze siblings and victory was won for the party. 

They followed the tunnel leading to the Pudding King’s inner sanctum where he was waiting, cackling behind a slime covered throne. With a ramped pit between them and the king they launched a few ranged spells and attacks his way, a couple finding purchase. They sent their elemental across the room and it battered his throne away. The king dropped a cloud kill spell on the party while slithering across the floor as if his bones had become ooze. Hacking and coughing the group ran out of the cloud. Godric got off a hold person on the Pudding King and noticed an ochre jelly approaching him, slowly. The elemental brought down two dense fists against the small delusional gnome. 

As the elemental lifted its hands away black ichor followed, the king had transformed into a black pudding in death and started attacking. Xanaphia noticed a strange dark cloud drifting like mist around the room heading towards the elemental, and recognized Ogremoch’s bane for what it was, casting warding wind and approaching to cut it off, not expecting the wild surge. A new found doubled height came to Xanaphia, as well as reach. The elemental became possessed and the party was now fighting two oozes and the elemental. The oozes were quickly defeated and Ogremoch’s bane driven away and defeated as well. The party returned to town and found only a few gnomes fell in combat, the oozes were driven off when the Pudding King died, and peace for the moment had returned to Blingdenstone. 

Abyss Modified Session 14: Snakes For Nothing

The party returned to the Foaming mug after collecting their rewards for completing a few of their missions. They met up with a few other surface folk travelers and set out on the next leg of quests. Dinak the drow gloomstalker ranger, Orion the tiefling monk of the long death, Xanaphia the human bard/wild mage sorcerer, Godric the half elf swords college/hexblade warlock, Alcione the tiefling undying warlock/cleric of death, Church Mouse the halfling druid of the moon, Syre the yuanti bard, and Thelrum the turtle abjuration wizard made their way back out into the broken areas of Blingdenstone to bring justice to a medusa that had been killing gnomish scouts. They traveled quickly through the tunnels of Rockblight, trying to avoid any other entanglements, following a map they had been given by Henchie, who chose to stay home. 

They passed two huge statues roughly hewn from stone and entered what they new to be the district the medusa called home. They found dozens of broken drow and gnome statues in a courtyard and snake arrow was shot at them, the medusa was using live snakes as arrows! The party leapt into action, Dinak returned fire, Syre turned invisible, Alcione cast bless on the allies closest to her, Xanaphia launched chill touch the medusa’s way, Godric cast hex on her, Orion got closer, as Church Mouse turned into a dinosaur and charged up to her. the medusa struck out at Church Mouse, biting him with her snake hair. Poison coursed into his veins and his form dropped out of dinosaur and into a halfling again. Thelrum make his way closer to the conflict. The next few rounds went quick, even with Church Mouse conjuring large spiders to help combat the medusa. The party was able to knock the medusa out of the conflict quickly, Dinak scoring the final blow, but not before the medusa called for help, whistling to her unseen children, and calling for them to avenge her. 

The two statues the party had seen while entering the area made their way to the battle ground, as the medusa bled out. The group noticed the medusa had a holy symbol of Ogremoch on her belt, the same symbol that was glowing on the statue’s foreheads. Alcione cackled as she flew into the air and launched a shatter spell at the now identified oversized stone golems. The group worked on blasting away at the golems, Orion getting pummeled into unconsciousness by one of them. Xanaphia used her ice knife spells to great effect and ended up with two different wild surge events, one granted a feathered beard that fell off when sneezed, the other stole hit points from Syre and granted them to Xanaphia. As the party felled the constructs and pulled Orion free from the rubble, Thelrum pulled the symbols from the golem’s foreheads. The magical auras on them detected as conjuration and transmutation and while he studied them the air around them grew cloudy, the essence of Ogremoch possessing them was free. Xanaphia used a gust spell to drive the angry cloud away and into another chamber. Dinak tore apart the home of the medusa, finding some simple gems and five drow dresses that might be worth something. Alcione traded Dinak some coin to keep one of the dresses for herself. They took their findings, consisting of both the drow clothing and the medusa’s severed head back to the gnomes and gained a hefty reward. Syre also befriended the snakes the medusa had been using for ammunition. 

The next morning the group decided to head out and investigate why ooze monsters were attacking more often as well as where they were going. As the group enjoyed their early morning café drinks in tiny cups, they noticed a small gelatinous cube about the size of basketball slithering and rolling very slowly deeper into the city. They decided to follow it, which was not difficult, it only moved about half the parties speed per minute. They followed it for about seven hours, only walking a few miles as it led them deep into upper Rockblight area. Eventually they came to an area with a larger basin, that seemed teeming with oozes of all shapes and colors, and in the center of the cluster was a deep gnome. The deep gnome was lost in conversation with his oozy subjects and took no notice of the party. Church Mouse made the decision to approach the gnome in is court of ooze and ask him a few questions. They had a conversation about goals, life, loss, and Church Mouse tried to talk some common sense into this Pudding King, but the voice of Juiblex rang out across the chamber, reminding the Pudding King of his goal. The Pudding King let Churchmouse go back to his friends and the group ran back to the city to talk to the elder about what had transpired here. 

As they were approaching the tunnel that led to the main gate Dinak spotted something. He stopped the party and pointed out a halfling or gnome sized rat creature on the cavern ceiling. He looked around seeing close to fifty other wererats approaching with crossbows drawn. Goldwhisker, the leader of the wererats asked the party why they were in the tunnels, more out of curiosity than anger. Godrick took point, telling Goldwhisker about the ooze problem and how they were hired to solve this. Goldwhisker told the group the non-wererat gnomes did not trust them because of the blessing/curse of lycanthropy, and the wererats had been fighting off the oozes for a much longer time. The party acted as intermediaries for the two groups, the non-wererat gnomes and wererat gnomes, and managed to get the two groups to work together. Having a momentary stable peace, the groups plan their assault on the oozes, where will the party fit into this? Find out next week in the Battle for Blingdenstone!

Abyss Modified Session 13, Many Missions

Spoilers for Out of the Abyss 

The group was led to a small tavern called the Foaming Mug within the city to recover from their travels, both food and bed was provided for free with Xanaphia preforming music for the owner. The group was watched by a guard that was assigned to them, having only a sketchy magic item vendor vouch for them. The group noticed outward distrust towards Dinak, the gnomes did not care for having a drow in the city, but if Keg vouched for him, they would tolerate it. Dinak also saw a ghost while they were walking. In the morning they were led to the Mattocks, the rulers of the city and were given a slew of quests from various figures important in the city in exchange for transit towards the surface. The gnomes had history with some of the surface folk of Mithril Hall and the like. They were tasked with sanctifying a temple, deal with some of the restless undead in the area, kill another medusa, find out where the ooze creatures were coming from and where they were going, and possibly destroy the wererats.

They purchased some potions, realizing they had little in the way of money or things to trade, and went off to save the temple. They had a guard that traveled with them that was nicknamed Henchie, he proved to be useless in combat. They traveled into more dangerous parts of the city, eventually finding the desecrated temple. When they approached, an earth elemental attacked them as well as two gargoyles, all with strange runes across their brow. Slim Jim almost was flung from the platform into the city below and the combat was fierce. The elemental was eventually brought down and both gargoyles crushed. The temple became sanctified and their goal complete. 

On their way back to the city proper they encountered a specter, which was destroyed by Orion rather quickly, and a ghost, which almost killed Slim Jim, aged Godric forty years, and it fled. The ghost was strange and looked like an elderly gnome clutching its chest. Silm Jim caught up with the ghost, not sure where it was leading him and found some treasure and the ghost’s body, which they are taking back to town to properly bury.

Abyss Modified Session 12, Gnomeward Bound

Out of the Abyss spoilers ahead

After their nights rest the party went to leave their hiding chamber and found a random surface gnome with a poorly drawn map standing in the hallway, very confused. Her name was Thistle and she was very lost. Greetings were had and the group made their way closer to the deep gnome city of Blingdenstone and found a large chamber of murdered mushroom people. As they investigated the mushrooms, they found many of them were crushed and others were cut by some form of freezing blade. They noted none of the mushrooms were edible. 

They made their way to what seemed to be a small outpost of many different underdark outcasts, from orcs, dwarves, gnomes, to elves all living within a small community. The people here also were murdered by something, which the party found out was a drow wight. Battle commenced and the wight called out to something the party could not see. The party charged the undead, the barbarian Kalie threw a wall of water up between herself and the wight, giving the creature a shield against Dinak, whose arrows would have difficulty passing through the wall. Suddenly, a few of the closer buildings exploded as ogre zombies under the wight’s control burst out and started attacking the casters and less protected party members. 

Godric stuck the wight in a holding spell as the ogres tried to muscle down on the rest of the group. Orion leapt through the wall of water to vex the wight. The party made very quick work on the hobbled wight, Orion, Dinak, and Godric ruined his day. The rest of the group worked on the ogres, finding them slow and easy to hit, but they refused to go down. Thistle landed dagger after dagger into the brutes, Xanaphia took a few hits from one of the zombies but filled him full of magic damage. It all came down to one ogre left, and the entire party focusing every attack against it, but it refused to succumb back to death. Eventually a critical hit knocked it down. the party, exhausted finally made it to Blingdenstone, finding a closed gate and disembodied voiced greeting them. Keg vouched for the group, even Dinak the drow, the party was allowed to enter but would have a guard assigned to them while they were in the city. They were led through the tunnels and found themselves finally in a place of safety, but knew the drow behind them were only a few hours away. 

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.

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.

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.