Abomination Vaults

Well kids, it’s been a long road but here we are at last, about to send Velcro’s ghosty ass back to the afterlife. We have made anti-ghost preparations: ghost-touch runes in armour and weapons, ghost charge grenades, holy water arrows and crossbow bolts, Dispel Magic scrolls (Divine versions), etc etc. Velcro is aberrant, and when she casts a bloodline spell she can add two to her own saving throws, or the saving throws of anyone else she designates. I doubt she’ll choose to bestow that on any of us.

More last minute prep. Nadia makes a fake Fulcrum Lens, and gives it to Jorg’ath in hopes of drawing Velcro’s fire. We need to hit her with each of the lenses - we do this by holding a lens and landing an attack on her. We can give all of them to one person and put them in the lattice, or give each lens to a different person. Once we reduce her to 0HP, if we have hit her with all the lenses, it will draw the attention of Nimboloth who will then kill Velcro forever.

Easy, right?

Sprocket, Hartvig, and Skabb each have a lens, and Jorg’ath has the fake one.

We’ve been doing this campaign for nearly 2 and a half years. The DM points this out to everyone, and we decide - well that’s enough fucking around. Let’s go.

Jorg’ath boots the door open.

Moats and a big pool in the middle. Island in the pool contains a holder with a black, fist-sized lens. Velcro is standing on the island, which is surrounded by a ring of black stones that crackle with energy. We go in.

Jorg’ath, unimpressed: “She looks distinctly medium.”

There is energy crackling between her and the lens, and she looks furious.

Skabb, Hartvig and Luna notice something off about the moats. There is some sort of nasty energy about these rivulets of swamp water running between them and the pond in the middle. They warn the rest of us and we roll initiative, for the last time in this campaign…

Hartvig gives his Lens a good rub before we go in, and activates it.

Are we ready? Chorus of “No”. Let’s go then!

A soul-feeder goes first, attacking Jorg’ath. It misses its attack; a good start. Another runs up to Hartvig. We are now all under the effects of this:

Skabb starts her turn with a saving throw against the dread flickering - she fails and is Frightened 1, but she has one of the Fulcrum Lenses. She gets a +2, but it’s still not enough to make the save. “Maybe I’ll just run away.” She also activated her Lens before she came in, so she goes for the soul feeder.

They are like will o wisps, but worse. They are aberrations, so she crawls under Hartvig’s legs and gnashes at the soul feeder in front of him with her Grill. 25 misses. Hero Point 30 - hits, but only because it is flanked by Sprocket. 14 damage.

Sprocket’s turn. He also activated his lens, so it’s good to go. He uses Force Barrage for a guaranteed hit! 30 force damage, and she is imbued with a shard from the Emerald Fulcrum Lens. She takes all of the 30 damage, as an aside. Sprocket makes a belated save against the soul feeder’s effect, and passes.

Jorg’ath next. He holds sustained eye contact with Velcro, and bonks the soul feeder in front of him - and misses. He is enraged so he is immune to the Frightened condition! He does miss all his attacks but one, however.

Velcro’s turn…

We wait in slightly terrified silence for a moment to find out what she is going to do.

Black Tentacles spell at all of us, the soul feeders aren’t affected because of course they aren’t.

Nadia whips out Bluebird and Lyrebird, and crits against the soul feeder in front of Hartvig! It makes its save and is not stunned, but takes 42 damage. She misses her other attacks, and fails her save against the Frightened effect. She drops Bluebird as a free action.

Luna is stuck in tentacles, so attacks with her rapier, but misses. She hisses and spits and bites as a free action.

Hartvig fails his save and is Frightened 1. He can see Velcro, can he shoot her with a spell? His lens is activated so he gets a bonus to attack. Needle Darts! Red 17, Hero point. Green 36!!!!!! 18+46 damage, and he got her with the Ochre Lens! The bad news is, she has some resistances…. but still takes 54 damage. Jorgy nominates Hartvig for a Hero Point, it is granted. Now, he has to do something with this wisp. Sprocket: “Disrespect it! Show it your tummy!” He decides to raise his shiel - wait, hold on. Is it a living creature? It’s not undead, the DM tells him. He casts Rip the Spirit, which will do negative damage if it lands - which it does! 14 damage, nice. (It has negative healing, but will still take negative damage, which is different.)

(Luna and Sprocket’s cat comes through on their mic. Skabb: “Shut up, Luna!”)

Soul feeders next. One casts Feed on Despair on Hartvig. He Hero Points his save and takes no damage - and the Soul Feeder doesn’t regain any hp. Nice. It attacks him again with Draining Touch, crits, and does 65 damage and causes him to be Drained 1. Ooof.

The second one attacks Skabb. “Does 30 hit you Skabbins?” “Yeah, obviously.” Draining Touch, and it does 21 damage. Second attack goes to Jorg’ath. “No, I don’t think you should.” 26 misses. The Soul Feeder goes invisible…

Skabb and Grabby. Will save first. 26 is a fail, so she has recovered from Frightened but it is immediately re-applied. She uses her Force Barrage wand on Velcro to get her Lens Shard in there. That’s all of them! Now we only need to get her to 0HP, and we’ve got her!

Sprocket next. His wand of Force Barrage goes off, shooting whatserchops again. Augustus moves out of the range of the tentacle spell and does a Fist Slam, that misses. He has one action left, so he casts Phase Bolt on his tentacle - it drops him. He can’t move as he has no more actions, so it’ll probably grab him again.

Jorg’ath will attempt to bonk his tentacle. DM: “Nasty!” 28 misses. Hero Point 22… He aces his Athletics check to escape, however, and moves to get out of the range of the spell. Still maintaining eye contact with Velcro.

Speaking of eye contact, Velcro moves up and casts Corrupting Gaze at Jorg’ath - he aces that save as well. “There’s a spark between us.” He seems to have forgotten about his crow wife, but he said goodbye to her already so he's a free man technically.

Nadia has a bad round, remaining Frightened, but moves out of the radius of the soul feeder's effect so it won't get her next round. She recalls Bluebird (it reappears in her bandolier and is reloaded), and fires with Lyrebird, but misses. She only has one Hero Point and wants to save it just in case.

Luna tries to wriggle out of her tentacle, but just fails the roll. She attacks it instead, but that misses as well. “Sorry, I’m useless.”

Hartvig now, and he had a question - can he tell if the soul feeder is nearly dead? Jorg’ath: “You could ask it.” The DM lets him make an Occultism roll, but the result is a red 14. He Heals himself instead.

The Soul feeder moves and tries to hit Nadia but misses. “Ha-ha!”

The doors to the north of us open. (I had been considering going up there for another angle and am now glad I didn't.) Jorg’ath is hoping that Augie will arrive! Another soul feeder hits Nadia, this time doing 24 damage.

Skabb is Frightened and Grabbed. Can she cast spells? No, but she could wriggle out of her tentacle. She casts Dispel Magic on them instead and manages to get rid of them entirely! Everyone who was Grappled is now free, and this also unblocks the door so everyone outside (Nadia and Grabby) can now come in.

Sprocket’s wand goes off for 5 more damage to Velcro’s face. He and Augustus Move Together, and Augustus goes right up to Velcro herself. Sprocket casts Boost Eidolon, and Augustus does a Ghost Punch - 31 hits! 11 damage!

Jorg’ath -still maintaining eye contact with Velcro as he moves to flank her with Augustus - gives her a "severe bonking". Green 40! All red damage, but still 27 total. 26 misses, even with the flanking. He checks his Hero Point total and uses one to kidney punch her, but 27 still misses. DM: “28 would have done it, if that helps.” We blame Hartvig for not casting Guidance.

Velcro absorbs one of her soul feeders and gets some HP back. Then she does the second one. (Sprocket: “Augustus absorbs the third one.”) She then disappears… Good news is that we are all free of the Frightened condition, but Hartvig is still Drained.

Nadia runs into the room, and holds an attack with Lyrebird. Velcro went somewhere to the south west, but none of us can see her. Luna is similarly devoid of targets, all of a sudden. Can she hold a shot with her bow? “When I do see her I’m going to shoot her right in the face.”

Hartvig asks if anyone wants healing; he wants some, but the rest of us are actually OK for right now. He Heals himself again. He moves, so we’re not all bunched up if Herself reappears. “That’s me.”

Skabb will do the same and Heal herself with a potion.

Sprocket’s screen has gone black apart from the turn order. He reloads. “I’m back!” He and Augustus Move Together to try and find Velcro. Quick question. If he has Ghost Touch does a tree he might summon also have it? Well, it’s magic so it will hit her either way. Hartvig: “Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me.” Sprocket: “I’ll keep that one in the back pocket.” Hartvig: “Chambered and ready.” His Wand of Force Barrage goes off, bends around one of the black stones, and hits Velcro! So she’s still in the room, ha.

Sprocket stumbles into one of the rivulets of swamp water, and has to make a save. He makes it, though he can feel it tugging at his soul. Shiver. Good news is he can see her. He casts Phase Bolt, Hero Point, and hits her for 21! “Bitch is over here!” he shouts as a free action.

Jorgy next. “Oh, hellow.” He stomps his way over - and has to make a saving throw. He makes it. “And now we bosh!” 31 hits, 10 plus 7 damage. “Hmmm.” He wants to grapple her but can’t because she is incorporeal; his weapon can hit her but he can’t. He goes again with the greatsword, but misses.

Okay, it’s been a couple of weeks, but we were investigating this sort of underground sewer type place, on the orders of our new “friend” who is forcing us to complete some sort of trials. We’ve survived so far but we’ve had a few hairy moments. The latest is that our good friend Jorg’ath has been attacked by some sort of… frog? It’s called an Isqulug, lately christened Mildred. Skabb of course wishes to befriend it.

Sprocket recalls knowledge. Occultism check: 6. “Yup. Sounds about right.” He tries to Enthrall it by throwing down some wicked rhymes about our current situation, but it almost critically succeeds its save. “Well, that was my one shot.”

Jorg’ath has a question. Is the green stuff around him the monster as well? No, which means he has to walk over to it to give it a greatswording in the face; 29 misses. To DM: “Why are you like this.” His other two attacks miss as well… When he’s dead, Skabb wants to make Jorg’ath into jerky.

It Controls Water and drags back all the swamp water we just drained out of here. Sprocket: “I can’t swim and I’m eleven inches tall.” The DM cares not. Mildred then tentacles Jorg’ath in the face, almost critically. 27 bludgeoning…

Nadia finds herself swimming in ten feet of horrible stinky swamp water. Delightful. “Unless I can crit, I feel like I’m not going to be much use in this fight.” She then crits! Doing 40 damage, and 6 persistent bleed damage with her crossbow. “I take all it back, you guys are lucky to have me.”

Skabb does an Occultism check - green 35! Aberration (“Yummy!”), Virulently Diseased (which reminds the DM… He makes Jorgy do a Fortitude save, which fortunately he aces), not associated with Velcro or any of her ilk, speaks Aklo, is like a hive-mind creature. It contains larvae which it will exude when it dies, so it counts as a colony rather than a creature per se. Resistant to fire, weak to cold. Skabb: “This is like my dream date.” Lastly, they were exiled by the fae from the first world to the mortal plane for being too awful to endure.

She shouts all this information to us; Jorg’ath starts insulting its mother in Aklo. Is she still on her dog? Yes, but it’s as bad at swimming as she is. She checks his sheet for a swim speed. He has to make an athletics check to move. Skabb misses her attacks.

Luna is away tonight so Sprocket is running her in the fight. Does she get sneak attack if she’s hidden or…? He can’t remember. The DM is over this campaign so he rules that she does, whether she does or not. Is it dead? No. Okay.

Hartvig next. He will - Will save is its weakest, right? Yes, good - he casts Impeding Doom! At the best level. 5th!

IT FAILS ITS SAVE!

Hartvig: “That’s literally the first time that’s happened!” The DM gives him a pity Hero Point, and the creature is flat footed. Next round it will be Frightened 2, then stunned 1, then takes 6d6 on the round after that. He moves, making an athletics check to see how far he can swim; not good. a quarter of his walking speed. “…rounding up??”

Sprocket wants to bring something into existence next to Mildred, to flank her with Jorg’ath. Hartvig: “It’s already flat-footed! I did that. Don’t take this away from me.” The summon is immune to disease! It bonks Mildred twice, but misses.

Jorgy now. “Prepare for a turbo-bonking.” He misses. Hero Point 31 is a hit! 15 + 7 Force damage. 31 hits again, 23 HP 13 misses.

The monster submerges itself, and tries to escape; Hartvig feels something brush past his leg. We are out of initiative, as the water drains away.

The doors open, and we see our ‘friend’ The Lady’s Whisper. Jorg’ath runs up to him; he walks slowly to meet him. “I know that you are pretenders. You should not be here. Nimboloth thinks you have some purpose; I disagree.” He attacks us…

Nadia goes first and crits again! He isn’t interested in her 30 or her 27, however. He also doesn’t take her bleed damage.

Hartvig next. He draws himself up and shouts “Tell me your secrets, you withered husk!”, casting Whispers of Weakness. He learns all sorts of stuff - weaknesses, lowest saving throw, movements, and gets +2 to his next attack against it. It has no weaknesses, lowest save is Fortitude, and the DM will tell him this: if it claws you, it can teleport you against your will… You get a save to resist it, however. Jorg’ath, who is in melee with it: “… Oh no.”

Hartvig casts Spiritual Armament, but the attack misses. He is now Cursebound 1, and can be hurt by good and evil damage. (Not the actual terms, but you get it.)

Skabb has, in a stupor perhaps, walked into the wrong room; the DM lets her have a move action to get where she’s going. What do we know about this fucker, she wonders. Is he undead? Does Hartvig know, since he has more than a whiff of the grave about him himself? It’s complicated, the DM says. “Alright, I was asking about his undead nature, not his bloody Grindr profile.”

Skabb, continuing her turn, debates her options. Lightning? Lightning. DC27: and he meets it and beats it. Still half damage though, so not nothing. She whips a sling bullet at him as well for good measure but misses.

Sprocketseses turn, and he genuinely doesn’t know what to do. He and Augustus Move Together, and Augustus runs up to give him a good old Thunder Punch. 24 misses.

It moves and does a cone template to get Nadia and Hartvig; both fail. Nadia takes double damage as she crit failed in spite of her Grit and Tenacity feat.

Jorg’ath fails a save and is Frightened 2… Hero Point and he succeeds, and is immune to that effect for a minute. Jorg’ath wants to put his lizard nose into the Lady’s Whisper’s mouth; presumably to gozz into it. He decides to go for the greatsword instead, but misses.

Big Lunes has a go but misses. She decides to get out of dodge by hopping over a stream of what we presume to be effluence; she aces her acrobatics check because of course she does.

Nadia fails her Will save and is Frightened 2. “Hooray!” She misses all her attacks.

Hartvig next. He points his finger. “DOOM! Additional doom. Have a taste of my Doom Finger.” It makes the save, chooses to be undead, and doesn’t take his damage. Well, he said it was complicated. Well, Hartvig knows a few songs from that hymn book too, as it happens. Hartvig runs away giving him the V’s. “‘chooses to be undead’,” he mutters.

Skabb will Blazing Dive at The Lady’s Whisper, landing between him and Jorg’ath. She manages to do more damage to her friend, unfortunately, as he fails the save and the LW makes his. She then casts Mycological Malady:

LW is immune to disease, sadly. “Is he though??” Yes. Yes he is. The DM even told us that. “Well that’s my punishment for not listening.”

Sprocket has had enough of this bullshit; he becomes a black ooze? I think? A Huge Black Sprudding! He pseudopods the LW, misses, HP, hits! 2d8 acid damage, nice. “I bludgeon and dissolve him. Over the course of thousands of years.”

The LW walks up to Skabb and casts Crushing Despair in a cone at Skabbins and Nards. They both critically fail in spite of various boons. Slowed 1 for 1 minute… No reactions for 1 minute, have to reroll at the start of our turns. We are both puddles of weep.

Jorg’ath hits it with a 39! Flanked, that makes it just a crit! 46 damage, nice. Plus 7 Force! Secondary bonking: a miss. Hero Point Green 35! 30 more plus another 7. He puts his nose back in the LW’s mouth. Any somatic spells will fail, Jorgy announces, apropos of nothing in the rules that would back this up. DM, of course: “Absolutely not.”

Big Lunes next. Sprocket goes through her inventory, desperate for something that will hurt the LW. She goes for a basic shot, hits it - Howdy Doodis! He is about to scold Jorg’ath starting with “How dare you deign to - ” and then there is an arrow in his brain. Hooray!

Skabb Nadia and Luna see a weird damp door shaped mark behind the skull to the south of the room. Skabb decides she’s had enough of adventuring and she’s off to start a whore house. Sprocket moves to absorb the LW’s corpse, and ejects the bones; Jorg’ath takes the skull and fixes it to his belt.

We start to discuss the lenses. Should we put them all together before we face Velcro? Probably but we’re not sure how.

We push the wet door and it caves in revealing a passageway. Sprocket senses evil magic coming from the east, but none from the one to the south behind the skull. We follow the passage and find a corpse and a pit. There was supposed to be a monster that attacked us with 265 HP, but the DM decides that it runs away.

Jorg’ath investigates the corpse; it seems to be full of gravel? It is holding (I think) a torc worth 500gp which Luna graciously does not squirrel away without telling the rest of us.

Velcro is behind the next door… Can we go back to town before next week? Yes, and any preps or shopping we want to do, we can do that at the start of next session.

Velcro is undead, right? Yeah, she must be, right? We know she is CURRENTLY undead. Incorporeal. Ghost punching runes, then. We also know that she’s a sorcerer, so probably anything could happen.

We go back and stock up on Ghost Touch runes (75gp each, 60 since we saved the blacksmith) and Nadia can fit them to our weapons.

We want Dispel Magic scrolls, divine versions, Ghost Touch runes, Holy Water, Nadia wants to make some Ghost Charge bombs. Nadia finds a way to craft some Holy Water arrows for Luna, and 10 crossbow bolts for herself. And 9 moderate ghost charges!

We do some rolls; from what the villagers know, Velcro’s bloodline is Aberrant… Good news for those of us with Aberration Bane Grills. When she casts a bloodline spell, she can add 2 to hers or anyone she chooses’ saves. It also gives her some nasty magic, tentacles and such.

Okay, we were fighting some fish, let’s go!

Nadia stabs with her bayonet, but 25 misses. She steps away, seeing what almost happened to Hartvig last week when he tried to move further than that.

Luna repositions so she is flanking with Nadia, and “gives it a little stabbing”. 22 misses. Hero Point 35 hits! So does 29, and she gets sneak attack damage on both.

On their turn, one of the dhuthorexes swims under us toward the room we just came from. It wants to bite Sprocket, and then Skabb, but they are airborne; it goes for Hartvig instead. 39 is a crit… 101 damage and he’s out.

It crits against Jorg’ath as well, for 84 damage, then 19 more. Jorg’ath: “… Okay, thank you.”

Sprocket next, and he flips through his summoning options with barely concealed panic. The DM takes pity and reduces the fish from Elite to Regular, and lets anyone who took damage this turn reduce it by half. This means Hartvig is alive…? Maybe? Yes, he’s good.

Right, Sprocket. He summons a living waterfall, and has Augustus fly up another 25 feet in case the fish “start getting nippy”. The waterfall punches the closest fish, but critically misses. Hero Point for the other crit, the good one!

Skabb is next, and she had plans but the fish have moved so she has to change tactic. She casts Slashing Gust, and a 28 hits now that they are no longer Elite.

It’s Bonkin’ Time, according to Jorg’ath; 35 definitely hits and is now a crit! 31 also hits, 17 misses. Hero Point: 23 is just a miss.

Hartvig, with a new lease on life, takes a turn instead of making a death save. He casts Enfeeble, and should have a Spell Save DC higher than 14 so the DM takes a look to see what’s gone wrong. Hartvig fixes it himself and wins a Hero Point for doing so! Also, 34 definitely hits, but the fish rolls a 37 Fortitude save. Hartvig can so nothing but laugh. Earlier he had said he would only use cantrips as everything saves against him; he broke his own rule and is now paying for it.

Nadia shoots with Alkonost, but misses even though she and Jorg’ath are flanking it.

Luna next and she is AFK, please wait… She returns, and stabs at the closest dhuthorex. 23 is just a miss, so she uses her last Hero Point - 28 hits! 16 plus 12 sneak attack, max damage all around.

There is a lot of blood in the water now, some ours, some theirs. That the DM remarks on this is worrisome. The dhuthorex bites at Luna, then Jorg’ath, then Luna again. The first attack is a crit… 19 plus 64 damage to the cat. The second hits Jorg’ath but is not a crit. The third one misses the cat, fortunately.

Sprocket maintains the waterfall, then has it attack a fish. DM: “East or south?” Sprocket: “South.” DM: Are you sure you don’t mean east? That one’s flanked.” Sprocket: “… East.”

Immune to acid, weakest save is reflex, no weaknesses or immunities, have an opportunity attack. Also they have wavesense so they can tell where we are in the water. From on high, Sprocket casts Blazing Bolt from his staff, and hits!

Skabb next, and she will cast Sudden Bolt at the flanked one, it makes the save with a crit… She casts Clinging Ice instead, and it saves that as well but takes half damage - howdy doodis! “Without even looking, and in a pissed-off mood.”

Jorg’ath next. “Big fishy!” He pulls out a javelin of Lightning, and wangs it at the remaining dhuthorex. He Hero Points his miss AND the fish fails its reflex save! “How does he feel about electricity?” He isn’t weak to it but he doesn’t love it. Jorgy tries to swim away, and get attack of opportunity’ed, and it’s a crit. “I am dead,” he announces calmly.

Hartvig Heals Jorgy for 49 hp, noting that it’s a good thing the DM can’t save against that. Jorg’ath: “I’m back!” With his last action, he Guides Luna.

Nadia shoots twice and hits once with Alkonost, for 10 damage.

Big Lunes, once she’s sorted out which mouse she’s using, will shoot as well. Red 20… And she’s out of Hero Points. Then a 13… “Sorry, I’m shit. Somebody’s been tampering with my bow, obviously.” As a wet cat, she was unhappy with all this from the start.

Fish next, and it casts Mariner’s Curse on Skabb - no, she’s still in the air, so it’s Jorg’ath. Will save DC25, he rolls a 22, HP 17… “Oh no. This is terrible news. I have been curse-ed.” He is Sickened 1. “Does anyone have any curse removing spells or other magic?” Chorus of ‘no’. “Fantastic.” The fish bites him for a cri- no, not a crit, he’s still up.

Sprocket maintains the waterfall, which punches the fish with a watery fist, misses, hits. He casts Frostbite from his staff, but it doesn’t appear in the chat. Hmm. “I definitely did it.” Ah, it’s the internet. He and Luna are using too much of it, clearly, either that or BWJ’s 1 and 2 are farming bitcoin. He tells the DM the results of his rolls out loud, and he ends up dealing 17 damage. Noice.

Skabb wants to cast Blazing Dive, but she will burn her chums so she decides to keep that one in her back pocket for now. She uses her Force Barrage wand for 5 damage. Howdy Doodis! She blasts it into chunks, and a bit goes into everyone’s mouths.

We sit down for a bit of a Heal. Almost all of us need it, except Nadia, Skabb and Sprocket. Fuck it, we skip back to town for a quick heal and removal of curses and Stupefactions and such.

There are three islands and three metal boxes on each with gears on them; Jorg’ath investigates. Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey is all he manages to discern with an 18. He turns one of them and takes a listen; nothing audible or visible happens. He turns it clockwise instead.

Nadia turns her gear clockwise, then anticlockwise, and hears a subtle click. She communicates this to Jorg’ath and the others; Jorg’ath does the same with his, then scoots across the water to do the third gear. Perception checks: Sprocket hears a rumbling coming from the south - the swampy smell gets worse, and the water level has risen. Maybe the exit is on the ceiling, Skabb suggests? Well, that’ will take a while.

Jorg’ath goes back to the chamber to the south to see if anything has changed over there. We have lowered the dam! “Everybody!” Jorg’ath shouts with his big lizard voice. We join him at the far end.

When we opened the dam, the next room has drained. “I bet it smells delicious.” There is a pool, which flows out. Thick knot of reeds in the pool. Jorg’ath strolls in for a squizz.

There are doors to the west; Nadia can’t hear anything so Luna has a listen, and Skabb at the ones on the southern end of the west wall. Luna rolls the same as Nadia and can’t hear anything.

Jorg’ath investigates the weeds. He is attacked! Initiative!

We will call it there, and have the fight with Mildred next week. The DM shows us a picture:

Birthday celebrations done, we are back for a big fight this week. Our new “friend” has bamboozled us into doing his stupid trials, the latest of which seems to involve going through a grubby water pipe and fighting a mirelurk or three. Last we left off we had just begun the fight; Sprocket fell asleep so we called it where we were. Some people had gone down into the room below where the pipe ended, including Skabb and Jorg’ath, the latter was grabbed and punched for a whole lot of critical damage. Nadia was last in the order before Sprocket, so it’s his turn first.

The DM kindly puts him in the end of the pipe so he can see and maybe be able to do something without wasting all his actions on movement. He starts by casting Boost Eidolon on Augustus and having him attack the legs of the mirelurks. This flanks it, as Skabb is sitting on its head! He does a Thunder Fist instead of an Electro Fist, as we’re in water. Wise. His attacks miss, even the 24, and even though it's flanked…

Moving on to Jorg’ath. He and Skabb are in the kitchen, one moment please… The DM warns him that the mirelurks will be trying to eliminate him first, as they’ve already started the job.

They are aberrations, which is why Skabb’s grill is doing extra damage. The mirelurks are immune to poison, have an attack of opportunity, have a paralytic venom and tentaclé mouths that can drag you in. Jorg’ath is reminded that he’s grappled; he is less than amused. 28 hits, as the thing is flanked, and he does it some extra force damage. Is it dead, as he’s boshed it now? Sadly no. Second attack misses, even with a Hero Point. He would like, very much, to free himself from the tentaclé. He can choose Acrobatics or Athletics, both are very good, 28 frees him! He flips the mirelurk off as a free action.

(Sprocket, suddenly, looking at Jorg’ath’s name in the chat: “Why are you the Gizzfather?” Jorg’ath, who hasn’t spotted that Skabb changed his name: “…GOZZfather? Oh you son of a bitch.”)

Hartvig next, and he will try a level 5 spell! “So prepare your critical save, as tradition dictates.” He will try to rip the creature’s spirit from its body. DC27; it rolls a 37. Naturally. Needles! 33 hits for 10 damage.

Skabb can see that it is starting to ooze something; not blood but it’s clearly injured. The chuul’s dinner has escaped, but it also has a goblin bonnet that it probably needs to do something about as well. It makes a grab attack at Jorg’ath, and the DM has found a gross thing it can do if it succeeds. 35 definitely hits, so now it passes him from its claws into its tentacles. Jorg’ath: “I don’t consent.” It does a Draining Venom attack, forcing a Fortitude save. 27, which is a fail, and Jorg’ath is Drained 1. Then it gives him ten mental damage and tries to eat his mind… “That’s not going to be a particularly hearty meal, I’m afraid.”

Another one claws at Augustus - it’s a miss until Sprocket points out that Augustus is flanked. 60 damage to Augustus - and Sprocket by extension. The last mirelurk submerges itself under the water.

Skabb wanted to do an electricity spell but has no wish to fry those of her friends who are in the water. She bites her mirelurk but the attack misses - Hero Point for a 37 which is a hit. Almost a crit, even with the flanking. She has cracked the carapace and considers pouring oil in there and setting it alight, but it could submerge itself pretty easily. She bites it instead. “I’m shit out of ideas.” Wait she has an acid flask! She pours it in for 13 damage every turn. Technically the flask was stowed so she shouldn’t be able to do that with one action, but the DM has taken a benevolent fancy today.

Luna next. She wants to aim an arrow as a chaser for Skabb’s acid vial. 36 is a critical! 48 damage plus 8 sneak attack. She thinks the acid will finish that one off nicely. She takes aim at the other still visible one. 29 hits for 10 (3 is persistent) and 7 sneak attack. 26 is just a miss.

Nadia flies out into the room, and moves to flank with Augustus, taking aim at the one Luna has just targeted - a hit and a crit! 49 damage, and 2 persistent bleed damage. Noice.

Sprocket next. “Oh yeah, we’re in water, aren’t we?” He casts Spout, the chuul saves but takes half damaged.

Jorgy is damaged quite badly, so does a cone of - jizz? Well that backfired. He tries not to hit Skabb which is generous considering. It dies! “Yeah, jizzed to death!” The DM points out that we are now all in a bath of Jorg’ath jizz; Nadia: “[DM], please don’t ever say those words in that order again.”

The two we could see are dead, but there’s the third one under the water. Hartvig raises his hands, sparkling with fell magics - and heals Jorg’ath for max healing! The DM calls time on all the jizz talk as it’s getting out of hand. Someone draws a dick on the board, which is the third of our three dick limit. We're in trouble now.

The mirelurk reappears and claws at Skabbins. 29 hits and it tries to eat her, and gives her a dose of Draining Venom. It then drags her off across the water. She casts Elemental Breath into its mouth, and chooses fire to try and cook her dinner. Since it has her in its tentacles, the DM rules that it can’t dodge out of the way of her attack and has it take the 36 damage. Yeah!

Luna shoots at Skabbins’ dinner with a 27 which misses - Hero Point for worse. 23 also misses, as does 11. Nadia does the same, but manages to hit twice for 15 and 19 damage. Sprocket Boosts Augustus and has him Fist Slam the chuul for 13 damage.

Jorgy next, and he does the old Splash ’n Bash, swimming over to introduce the chuul to his club. He manages 15 plus 4 Force damage, second attack is a miss.

Hartvig checks the range on his spell, it is 120 feet. “I don’t even have to get my toes wet.” He casts Spiritual Armament, it takes the form of those tools you crack lobsters open with, which earns him a Hero point. A hit and a miss, for 12 damage.

In response the chuul Constricts Skabb for 19 damage; each of them is trying to eat the other, which is a pretty amusing visual. It feeds on her mind as she fails her Fortitude save… She is Drained.

She casts Blazing Dive, which at least gets her out of Dodge. Wait - no. She bites it in its mouth, but misses. “I am resigned to my death. I’m very tired; I’m waiting for the Light.”

Luna next - 25 hits, and she gets sneak attack. And Enfeebles the chuul! 29 hits and Howdy Doodis! “He turns into a husk. Perfectly cooked.”

Hartvig: “I cast Garlic Butter on the remains.”

We are out of initiative; Skabb dives for some yucky silt so she can use her Healing Mud ability. Nadia has a squiz from the air while the others are healing. She investigates the boxes, which are just out of the water. She makes a Crafting check - they connect to the controls which are to the north. She thinks we could open the dam to the south using these controls. She goes back to the party to report all of this rather than just cracking on, as that “doesn’t historically go well for me.”

We do that, and swim to the north to get to the controls in the next chamber. There are three islands with rusty controls on them. We sneak in; Jorg’ath is swimming like an alligator. Augustus is floating on his back, with Sprocket sailing on his belly. Jorg’ath makes a perception check as he was underwater - it looks like this is a continuation of the swamp, but it isn’t. He thinks he can make out something big and dark in the much deeper water in here. He wants to get closer and see what it is; he makes a Stealth and then a Perception check. 9. Hero point 13. Peceprtion 26, so he can see it - them! - as they turn to start eating him…

Initiative!

Nadia goes first, and the DM catches her right in the middle of googling whether or not crossbows work underwater in 2e. It doesn't say, so he rules that they do. Next question, what is a creature’s swimming speed if it doesn’t have one on its sheet; he rules 2/3 of regular speed with a successful Athletics check. She swims for an island and shoots. 39 hits for 10 damage, but she used two actions for her movement so that's her turn.

Luna next, and her bow doesn’t work underwater so she has no choice but to get out first. She also does an Athletics check but fails, so can only move half her walking speed. She is far enough away that she can’t get to dry land even by using all her actions. “Sorry guys.” She doggy paddles as far as she can, furious because she hates being wet.

And here come the fish. One does an area of effect type thing, getting Jorgy, Hartvig and Skabb. Will saves all around, DC27. Hypnotic Pattern, nasty. Anyone who fails is fascinated by the pattern; they all fail. They can’t use spells against anything but the pattern.

One heaves itself up onto the island where Nadia is standing, between her and Luna in the water, so it can try to eat us next round.

Another one goes to take a chunk out of Jorgy. It misses! Sprocket next.

He is not fond of being in the water, least of all because he can’t really swim. He casts Evolution Surge on Augustus, and gives him a flying speed. The two of them take to the skies! Augustus grabs Skabb on the way. (This will last for a minute. The DM asks me to make a note that they are 25 feet in the air.)

Skabb has Grabby float up 25 feet, dry her hand on her fluff, and slap Skabb repeatedly while calling her names in Raccoonish. Skabb gets a +2 to her roll to recover - 34 (plus 2) will make it! She is now un-Fascinated. She splats Augustus on his wooden head in thanks, and casts Worm’s Repast. DM, mildly: “That’s unpleasant.”

Jorgy next and he wants to know if the fish in front of him is available for a beating? It is, but he crit fails. (Which is somehow a 22. Which means he adds 21 to all his attacks. Holy fuck.) He uses No Escape to keep it from running away.

Hartvig will scooch around to get them both in a line (which also flanks them) but triggers an attack of opportunity because he moved too fast. The DM takes pity and lets him retcon and take the Step action instead, which does not trigger the reaction. Doom Finger! (Sung to the tune of Goldfinger). The fish (which are Dhuthorexes) both ace their saves. Hartvig: “As a free action, Hartvig drowns himself.”

We go through the south west door in the room, after passing the Lady’s Whisper’s first trial last week. As Nadia walks in, the copper bathtub in front of her looks… off. She takes a closer look. The wall behind the two tubs looks like a false wall. She goes to open it and it falls away to reveal a pathway. She calls the others and moves quietly down it. She finds a room - as she walks across the floor something clicks and gas starts to pour from the ceiling…

She is Stupefied 1, and must roll initiative. She goes first, and decides to try to disarm the trap. 33 Perception. She tries to disarm the trap she finds, rolling 31 for Crafting. Not good enough. Shit. More gas pours out of the holes.

The others roll initiative and join in, and Luna goes first. She ponders what to do; Skabb, dismissively: “Ah, just leave her to it.” She enters the room and sees the gas, and hears Nadia giggling and swearing. She can’t get to the trap, however.

Skabb rides her goblin dog but also can’t get close, so she gives her bottled air to the rogue so she can try to disarm the trap next round.

Sprocket next. “I am… largely useless in this sort of circumstance.” Perhaps a little air elemental? It might knock everyone about, though, he warns. He summons an Air Mephit instead, with the intent to have it blow the gas away. He can keep it away from Nadia at least, since it’s coming from the ceiling.

Jorg’ath next, and Skabb is controlling him since his player has a race tomorrow morning and has to go to bed early. He picks Luna up and strides into the good air section of the room with her.

Nadia explains to Luna what she’s tried, which gives her a +2 to her Thievery check; Luna rolls a 37 and the gas starts to be sucked back into the trap, phew!

The healers take a look at the poor dribbling fool in front of them; Skabb, Hartvig, and Sprocket all know that the way to remove the Stupefaction is a restoration spell. No one has that, but Sprocket might have a healer he can summon who might. Hartvig: “Do you have the spell Summon Competent Adventurers?”

Luna spots another fake wall to the south. The corridor beyond runs left to right, white walls with colourful images. A doors stands at each end. The patterns start to form memories as she looks at them; things she’s never told anyone and wouldn’t share with us. Sprocket has a look and casts Detect Magic. His entire month of life flashes before his eyes. He remembers the biscuits his mummy used to make; the memory makes him sad. The walls are humming with illusion magic. Skabb remembers the Gert Squiggler and how she had to throw some of it away. Hartvig sees the chains lady from a few floors above, and is sad.

Steven wafts in behind us to rub it in. This is the Corridor of Despair, he tells us, seeming happier than he has since we met him. Hartvig: “Joke’s on you, this is just a Corridor of Tuesday to me.” He is nominated for, and granted, a Hero Point.

Augustus sees a shipwreck, lots of splintering wood; he also feels sad. No wait - he sees the future, in which Sprocket comes unravelled, and he understands that one day Sprocket will die.

Nadia sees guns being destroyed; it saddens her at first but then it flips over to amusing. Possibly a side effect of the Stupefaction; a stupid side effect, if you ask Skabb.

Jorg’ath sees his crow wife, and is confronted with her mortality.

There is a door at this end of the corridor; Skabb listens but can’t hear anything.

Luna and Nadia both spy a weak spot on the illusion wall; Nadia won’t go near it after what happened last time. Luna gives it a shove, and it opens. A corridor, and she finds another of the weak walls. She makes a Perception check. There are pictures on the wall - as she looks, she sees herself growing older and diseased and dying. In another she sees herself losing to Velcro; the thought occurs that we might not be able to defeat her...

Skabb follows, and makes a Perception check. There’s magic here that could be dispelled. Cue ten minutes of looking up counteract rules in Pathfinder and trying to figure out what they mean.

Upshot: she has to make an Intelligence check (as that is her Spellcasting Ability). Or cast Dispel Magic? We call Hartvig in; the DM says there’s a workaround we can use. He and Skabb make Occultism checks. It doesn’t work but the DM is bored of this so he rules that it does work. Hooray!

Luna has a look around, possibly for a scroll of restoration or something.

Nadia spots something on the right wall, but refuses to go near it. She’s learned her lesson, for now at least. Skabb has a look instead, with Jorgy behind her for protection. Another corridor, and another door. Skabb sends Grabby to have a look. No traps, so she tries to open it.

A room with a big stone blocking the door to the south, and some pipes. Grabby flies around for a look. She hears water rushing through the pipes, and hears a voice behind her. “Oh good, you’re still alive.”

Grabby makes a Perception check to Sense Motive. 29. Grabby thinks Steven is angry that we’re still alive… And that he might be considering betraying us. She sends this to Skabb, as Steven tells the rest of us that the way forward is through the pipes. Uh huh.

Hartvig has a spell that lets him walk on water, leaving a trail of waterlilies that we can also walk on. “Not to brag.” That might well come in handy. The rest of us trail into the room.

“Oh good, you’re all here.” Steven locks all the other doors, and tells us we have to go through the pipes. He walks through the rock to the south and disappears. We decide to double check all the doors to confirm Steven’s statement. As Skabb looks at the keyhole, it melds with the rest of the door and disappears. “I SAID, the doors are LOCKED.”

We send Jorg’ath up the pipe.

At the end of the pipe there is a 15 foot drop and water at the bottom. A dam and some gears, which are rusty.

Jorg’ath ties a rope to the end of the pipe. A voice in his head says “The dread swamp. The challenge here is simple: survive, and find the way to open the dam to the next area.”

Jorg’ath makes a Stealth check. Oh, also, there’s a massive creature as well. The token in the turn order looks like a mirelurk.

Initiative!

Sprocket has fallen asleep, so we will say that one of us stuffs him in a pocket. We’ll do a round and then call it, so Luna doesn’t have to puzzle out how to work a Summoner.

Jorgy goes first. He finds a box with a twisty bit on it. He knows he should wait for Luna and Nadia, and he does. To everyone’s surprise.

Hartvig goes down the pipe and spots a wrong’un. “Do I have the Dispel Crab spell.” He casts Enervation - wait. No. Yes. Yeah. Doom Finger! The Voidbracken Chuul (the WHAT) aces its save.

The mirelurk (I won’t remember voidbracken chuul) hits Jorg’ath for a bunch of damage, but he has a whoooole bunch of HP. It does grapple him though, so that might be an issue. Then the other one critically hits him for 60 damage…

Skabb’s turn. Her steed stops at the end of the pipe and refuses to go further, throwing her down onto the back of one of the mirelurks. She bites it with her Grill - and it’s an aberration, so she does extra damage.

Luna goes into the pipe and gets ready for fighting next round. Nadia follows, and busts out her wings at the end of her turn.

We are back from the dead! All of us but Luna; she doesn’t need to be resurrected as she’s the one who killed all the rest of us. Well, she was the last survivor anyway. Runner up was Skabb, with Nadia a close third. A win for the ladies all around.

Right, what the hell were we doing two months ago? My notes say we found a Cauthooj, which we did not fight, and then we found a door that Jorg’ath failed to open, in spectacular fashion, and then a statue attacked us. Then we rested and got attacked by a Haruvex - the name told us it was something to do with Velcro. Luna had a think and remembered that it is a Grave Knight… This meant that among other things we had to sanctify its armour after we killed it, or it would be resurrected again. It had a bunch of stuff, including the armour (the DM tried to get one of us to put it on, but we aren’t stupid enough for that. Nadia took the rune out of it instead, and puts it on Sprocket’s adventurer clothing). Also some keys, which might be relevant soon.

We found some research journals of Velcro’s. There’s a diagram that shows how to fit the fulcrum lenses into the Fulcrum Lattice, but having all four imbued at once will attract Nimboloth’s attention as the lenses contain her essence. Also a ring of lies, which Skabb wants immediately; we give it to her. It’s faster that way.

Sprocket found another teleportation ring and activated it so we can go back to town. Instead we chose to rest where we were, not in the room with the books as Skabb is still allergic.

The DM tells us where we’re heading; “I’m sure there are important story reasons why you should go that way but for our purposes that’s where the stairs are.”

There’s water outside the door. We can wade or swim. Sprocket: “If other people are wading then I’m definitely swimming.” He rides on top of Augustus.

Northward we swim and or wade.

(Roll20 suspects that all might not be well in its marriage to the DM; he has come home with Foundry’s lipstick on his collar. It takes its revenge by kicking him out several times and generally fucking around.)

Nadia does a Perception check; she can smell something unnatural decomposing. It has a chemical odour. “Something I could use to make stuff, or…?” Potentially yes. Also she sees that all of the fungus that is present in the cave system we are in has been stripped from the passage ahead. We sneak forward. The DM lets us do our own sneak checks, mostly for his own convenience.

The source is the remains of a black pudding, that has been eaten by something else. Do we know what might have eaten it? There are no markings, it’s just sort of dissolved, so no. No tracks either. Skabb thinks about it, but she doesn’t know of anything that would eat a Pudding other than other kinds of ooze, and they wouldn’t leave a body. Maybe it was the dragon we killed?

Jorg’ath finds a door - we found a key! I get called a NERRRRRRRRRRRD for remembering that.

When Jorg’ath put the key in the lock it was shaped like a skull, when he withdraws it there is moss coming from the skull’s mouth. He assumes this is normal as he’s never used a key in his life before, preferring to use his boot.

We ready attacks. How does Skabb ready a Blazing Dive, exactly? “I do a little fart and I keep it going, and then I light it.” … Well that answers that.

Eight alcoves, four on each side side, each has a jade statue, all defiled. One just a pair of feet. Domed chamber opposite us, in which there is a throne. This sits upon it:

It stands up, holds up both its hands gesturing for peace and points to the east, then calls us out one by one, by name. It walks toward the door and gestures for us to follow. Jorg’ath boops it on the snoot; no response.

Skabb asks it what it is pointing us towards. “I am the Lady’s Whisper.” Is the lady Velcro? No. How about Belcorra? No. Who’s the lady? "My mistress." What does the lady want with us?

This is the testing grounds for the acolytes of the lady. Do we submit to the trial of the lady?

Do we have to, Skabb asks.

“You don’t have to, Skabb. I could just kill you where you stand.”

Well that’s fighting talk. He leads her to the western door. “If you are not up to the challenge, you can pass away peacefully here in the Garden of Failures.”

Occultism check from the Cloracle. 16. Hero Point 31. “Much better.” Skabb does Nature 29. Hartvig knows the splashes of blood in the chamber were from sacrifices. Nobody passed away peacefully in this garden.

Jorg’ath sizes up the draugr. He reckons he could take it. It looks a bit like Withers from Baldur's Gate 3.

We decide to see what this trial malarkey is all about. Sprocket gives the draugr some hard tack and tells him to go find his mummy-daddy. The draugr doesn’t take the food. “Oh Sprocket. Your mummy-daddy has already passed on. Like everyone else, it has left you.”

WOW RUDE.

Skabb cuddles Sprocket; Sprocket accepts it fully and just goes limp. If he could sigh he would; he just wants to be cuddled, he’s a soft toy. It is, perhaps, almost worth it to have been insulted like that.

Jorg’ath asks what the test is about; he is told that if he dies then his worthless life will have been useful after all.

Hartvig wants to give this dude a bloody good looking at, from a magical perspective. Religion check 23. He thinks it might be distantly related to the Lesser Deaths that serve the Grim Reaper. They aren’t remains of something that once lived, they came like this. Though Withers is undead, he can choose to count not as undead (for the purposes of positive and negative magical damage).

Whatever he is, he’s in dire need of a bludgeoning. We decide to do this trial and then come back and knacker him.

We descend to the FINAL FLOOR!!

On the way, Nadia asks him to do her next. “I could give you some pointers for keeping some of your clothes on for once, but of all of them you are the least deserving of my time.” She is delighted.

We find ourselves in a room with a tiled floor. There are doors but none of them can be opened except one. There are pipes with strange iris openings, that we can’t see any way to open. Boney Claws points us at the openable door. Hartvig casts Light on the tip of his staff. (Not a euphemism on this occasion.)

Now that there’s light, we think that this room has very Boss Battle vibes. Do we have to fight Gannon?

Jorg’ath pushes open the door. Long room, jade statue, skeleton. Narrow slits in walls. “I can see a dickhead over there.”

There are skelly bums behind the wall slits. Hartvig has a look at the statue. Some sort of death deity maybe? Sprocket has a go; a 5. DM: “It might be Jeebus?”

Jorg’ath rolls a 6. “Could be Buddha?”

Skabb: 8. “They’re all wrong. This is obviously Lord Krishna.”

Skabb asks Grabby. Her Patron’s voice answers: “Nimboleth.” So, the big bad death God. Hooray. Hartvig knows that Nimboloth consumes ghosts; the souls are destroyed and do not move on. She is the enemy of the Goddess of Death, (Pharasma?) and of Gosra and Desna. In a sudden burst of character development, Hartvig decides that his life’s work is to destroy Nimboloth.

The spectres behind the slits turn and tell us to kneel and pray to the Lady. We think our new skelly-friend might have meant Nimoloth when he spoke about his Mistress…

Initiative!

Nadia goes first and crits against one of the spectres. Not much damage; and her other two attacks miss.

Jorg’ath uses a Ventriloquist’s Ring to throw his voice behind the Nimboloth statue to tell the spectres to sacrifice themselves; they pass the Perception checks and know it’s a trick. He wiggles his greatclub through one of the holes and bonks one instead. 36 is a crit, it takes 23 initial and 23 of 28 critical damage, plus some force damage.

It’s the spectres’ turn. Jorg’ath’s friend reaches a finger through the slit towards him but 26 misses. “You keep that shit away from me, boy!”

One comes out from behind the wall with the slits in, and twats Hartvig. He takes 20 negative damage. “Every time. Every time I follow Jorg’ath into a room.” He can choose to ignore negative damage, but he has to take an action on his turn to shift to undead. For now, he has to make a will save to avoid corruption - green 34. He is now immune to Spectral Corruption for 1 minute. 28 also hits him. “No means no!”

Another one floats over to him as well. They really don’t like him; they can tell he’s Godly or something. Two more join them and he is surrounded. Then another one. Luckily they have arranged themselves conveniently in range of Jorgy’s gozz attack for next round.

Hartvig’s turn. “I’ve got a really cool spell that won’t work on them, because that’s how this character works.” Are they perhaps damaged by healing, Skabb asks? Hartvig is allowed a free Religion check; 14 HP 15. “Brilliant.” No it’s okay, 15’ll do it! It is a spectre, and is therefore undead - one of your incorporeals to be precise. (As opposed to wet-undead and dry-undead.) As such, Healing will in fact hurt them. He casts Heal, but we’ve all forgotten how Roll20 works so he has to roll the damage manually.

The spectres get fortitude saves. Hartvig wants them done individually. DM: “This is so cumbersome! Stupid Roll20.”

25 damage to those that failed, 50 to the one that crit-failed. Hartvig raises his shield and gets as much of his body underneath it as he can, like a little turtle. Skabb: “Aw, that looks very heroic.”

Luna starts out hidden, so she takes aim from the shadows. A hit and a miss, and she melts back into the darkness.

Sprocket’s turn, and he’s within the Frightful Presence aura so he has to make a save. 35, and he is immune.

We have to start killing these guys because if we don’t, Hartvig is toast. Sprocket and Augustus Move Together, and Augustus moves to flank the spectres with Hartvig. He casts Eidolon’s Wrath, choosing Positive Damage getting all but one in the blast. Most make the save and take half damage.

Skabb’s up, and she enters the aura and makes the save. Pass, but not immune. She wants to know what will work better, Healing Hartvig or taking one out? He says take one out, so she goes for the one with the aura with a Vitality Lash. 15 HP 16. Yikes. Doesn’t matter, that was the damage, and he’s dead! She takes a free action to cackle.

Nadia shoots the next most damaged that she can see, hits and does some damage. Second attack misses, and she reloads her crossbow.

Jorg’ath tells Hartvig to duck, and does a great big gozz with all the sounds. Skabb, who is physically in the room with him: “It’s not just the noise, it’s the face.” 30 damage, and 60 to the one that crit-failed (dead). Nicely done! He swivels around to bonk the one behind him again. 24 hits for 13 plus 8 force damage. Still alive.

His friend comes wafting out to join his buddies still surrounding Hartvig. “Awh, really??” More fingering. He stinks of another god, they’re not having it. 45 damage, and he’s dead. Well not dead-dead, but dying. They start wafting at the rest of us; Sprocket is first, gets hit with a 37. 22 negative damage. That’s a crit. 48 damage… “Now I have to do maths. You’ve made this happen.”

Another flanks him; 29 to hit. “Hold on I’m learning maths.” And another one. 30 for 26 more damage. “That… really did not do me any favours.”

Death save from Hartvig: He chooses to use all his Hero Points so that he can come back not wounded. He opens his eyes to see one of the spectres look in his direction.

Luna is AFK so Sprocket takes over. Sudden Bolt is an electrickery one, according to Skabb, and is quite good, so he decides she’ll do that. Wait, are she and Skabb working together?? I think her arrow will take on Skabb’s spell somehow? It kills the one, so Luna can nominate another spectre for the bolt to jump to. Another one killed and Luna can have a Hero Point! Oh it was the spell storing arrow! Neat. She wants to use a wand to Heal Hartvig, but he’s too far away. She uses a Force Barrage wand instead.

What’s Sprocket gonna do about his new mates? Well his only options really are to turn into an ooze or summon a dragon. He and Augustus switch places and Augustus punches one in the gooch. Kills one and crits the other! Augustus has had ENOUGH! And with that we have passed the first trial!

Our skelly-mate wanders in, going incorporeal to walk through Nadia and insult us some more. Hartvig gets up with his one hit point. Skelly points to him and tells us we “ought to fix that” before we continue.

Hartvig busts out his Pocket Spa! We can all have a mud bath, with relaxing music, and heal 43 hit points. Our skelly friend, whom Sprocket has christened Steven, is pointedly not invited.

The spellcasters notice that Steven starts to cast Dispel, then stops. When we have finished defiling this temple, we can continue, he sniffs.

We will pick up next week…

Skabb and Jorg’ath are ill thanks to Baby Skabb, but not ill enough to skip a week of Pathfinder! Also the DM has found a way to hide all our cursors from each other, so there shouldn’t bet be any more metagaming. Hartvig is annoyed that Foundry requires the use of both mouse and keyboard, which hampers his painting toy soldiers while he plays. He won’t be here next week, so we immediately all plan to kill him first.

Off we go!

Jorgy is allowed to rage as a free action. Luna, currently being beaten to within an inch of her life: “I don’t think that’s necessary…”

Nadia sets Sprocket on fire with one of her bombs. Nadia: “Sorry Sprocket!” Sprocket, who is vulnerable to fire: “… Apology not accepted.”

Luna wriggles free and disappears.

Sprocket goes on the offensive and summons a whirlwind behind Nadia, which punches her in the back of the head, while Jorg’ath hunts Luna. “Where cat.” He spots her! He has no actions left, so he waves at her.

Hartvig and Skabb both move, and remain hidden.

Jorg’ath can’t see Luna but goes for a gozz, hoping he’ll hit her. L: “Missed me, bitch!” They both win hero points.

Hartvig gets the first crit against Sprocket with his Spiritual Armament!

Nadia schemes, and teams up with Jorg’ath…

Jorg’ath: “Oh, there’s Sprocket.” Sprocket: “Wha- oh, bollocks.” He takes Sprocket down… First death goes to Jorgy. “Maybe I’ll wear you as a prize.”

Hartvig finds Jorg’ath and hits him with his Spiritual Armament.

Skabb listens for nature; she mostly hears Sprocket lay down a thick guilt trip. “I thought we were friends… I made you huuuuge…”

Nadia shoots a blight bomb at Hartvig and hits! She shoots again and misses, and runs away. She finds Jorgy. J: “Ou est le cloracle?” N: “Le Cloracle est north of us.”

Luna holds an arrow attack…

Jorgy moves toward the Cloracle and gets hit with Luna’s arrow.

The DM may have doubled Jorgy’s damage twice when he killed Sprocket… meaning Sprocket might still be alive after all… He will go back on the board next week!

Hartvig hits Jorg’ath with his Spiritual Armament, and then spends the rest of his turn Healing himself. J: “65 Healing?? Now I have to beat you all over again.”

Skabb has Grabby search for treasure, and then hides. And we call it for the week!

Lot of getting used to Foundry. It’s slow going, because we’re all learning and the DM is ironing out kinks.

We took a vote, and ended up choosing to do battle in an abandoned village. We all creep around for a while, terrified to get out of cover. Nadia gets first blood on Sprocket, and Luna follows quickly with a hit to Jorg’ath, causing persistent bleed damage.

Jorg’ath quickly finds Luna, who didn’t save an action to hide after her attack.

Sprocket: “Are you still getting persistent bleed, Jorg’ath?” Luna, who is currently being smashed with Jorg’ath’s greatsword: “I fucking hope so.”

Last week: We finished off the urdefhan from the week before, and found a deep gnome who was horrified to discover that the rest of his clan had all become undead. The urdefhan leader had the emerald fulcrum lens, so we’re another one down, hooray!

Sprocket is back and feeling much better, and is joined by Luna! Their Discord is working again, huzzah! Jorgy wants some health-stabbing; Skabb offers to do him a bit of mud. Katy Perry does him some healing as well, before she vaporises. And on we go!

We’re level 9 so we calculate our HP back from resting as 9 x (Con mod). You can do that by cheating with your fingers; Sprocket says he can do 9 x 2 =18 which is all he needs. Hartvig: “How’d you get to 18 on your fingers??”

“You have to use your toes as well, you dumbass.”

We move north toward the bird, and find ourselves bottlenecked. Sneaking! We’re sneaking, we say, possibly belatedly. Can Jorg’ath see anything with his incredible lizard eyes? Not yet. We continue on to the crystal shore. Pale green, from ceiling and walls and stretch toward the water. Could we chip some out of the wall for use in magic stuff? No, but we could sell them to the sweaty hippies in town.

Jorg’ath and Nadia start to hear the bird; it’s now to the east of us. Skabb and Luna do Nature checks, and Jorg’ath looks for footprints. Skabb says it can sense thoughts, it collects shinies, it can’t speak languages but understands Fey. They’re clever and quite evil. Jorg’ath and Skabb look for footprints. Green 32! He can see scratches on the ground that look like claw marks, and he sees crystals and mushrooms on an island in the lake - the mushrooms seem to have been moved, and looks to him like a nest. He and Skabb swim over and find themselves face to face with it.

Skabb wants to convince it to leave rather than kill it. She checks her inventory for shinies to bribe it with, and we all check our pockets as well. Luna: “I’ve got a gold tooth!” We all bring out our shiniest shinies. Silver bullets, a gold paperweight, a gold key. Skabb tells the Cauthooj that we don’t want to hurt it; this place is about to get a lot less peaceful. If it agrees to leave and go somewhere safe, we will give it the shinies. She gets a +2 to her Diplomacy check. Well, Jorg’ath does Survival in the absence of an Animal Handling skill.

She gets an image in her head of eggs in a nest, covered with dead bodies. It seems to want ideas for a safe place to relocate to? It sends an image of a black dragon and a sense of fear; Skabb tells it that the dragon is dead and that might make a good nest? It seems impressed. It doesn’t seem to want to leave because the Udrefhan are plentiful and delicious. Skabb warns it that the supply chain might be a touch interrupted. Luna sidles up to be an intimidating presence, as an addition to the persuasion. It seems to want more shinies. We exhibit our treasures.

It doesn’t care about the eggs and lets us know that they are valuable if we wanted to take them. There is a fish in the water that it seems to be afraid of, it tells us about it. (Skabb wants to eat the eggs. Hartvig: “I roll for omelette.”) The hippies in town might know where to find a buyer for the eggs; we think they might be worth about 400gp to the right person. Skabb briefly considers eating one anyway. Sprocket wants to make a big dippy egg.

Jorg’ath wants to recover the shiny in the water. If only we had a way to detect magical items… Jorg’ath ties a rope around his waist and waits. If we can’t figure out a way to find magical things, he will dive in and look himself, in spite of the big scary fish.

Sprocket casts Detect Magic! He guides Jorg’ath to the Ochre Fulcrum Lens - we have already killed the big scary fish, hurrah.

We give it to Hartvig, it seems right up his alley.

Skabb and Jorg’ath have spotted a sloth-looking thing; she makes a Nature check. It’s not a naturally occurring creature, so she doesn’t know what it might be. It’s likely magical in nature; Hartvig “will have a bloody good look at it” with his Occultism skill. Green 34!

IT’s called an Oaf Elf (I feel like that can't be it, but I have no idea what else it could be); it’s an aberration, spawns from decomposing organic matter, like to catch living creatures and slowly eat them alive. It has a stench if you get close to it, has fast healing, carries Wretched Weeps disease. Lovely. Immune to disease and poison, no resistance or weaknesses. It can fling offal, and that also carries Wretched Weeps. Keep our distance then. Jorg’ath can hold his breath almost indefinitely, so he can get in its face.

Jorgy wants to have a peek at a door he’s found. He makes a Perception check: 21. He hears nothing so he comes back.

We position for an attack on the oaf elf. Seems to be our schtick after all, finding things that are minding their own business and murderising them. There is a way to get around the other side of it, through some caverns, the DM tells us. Luna wants to scurry around - Skabb casts Darkvision on her before she goes. (She’s still disappointed that she doesn’t get it anyway for being a cat. Seems like an obvious mistake on the part of both WotC and Paizo if we're honest.)

Skabb starts by casting Ice Storm, and we roll initiative.

(Oh, it’s and Ofalth! Not an Oaf Elf.)

Jorg’ath chucks a javelin of lightning and Hartvig does Spiritual Armament at it.

Nadia crits twice with her crossbow! Total damage was 105! She wins a Hero Point for the colossal damage. (Nadia, pleased: “I’m catching up to you, Luna!” Luna puts her bow away and sneaks off.)

Luna shoots, but misses, she is perhaps intimidated by Nards’ incredible round of damage. She gets the Howdy Doodis! “Nards defintely loosened the lid on that one.”

There is a bridge behind it, connecting the horrible decomposing mushroom island of the oaf elf (I'm renaming it) to the main land. The DM saves us sludging around in filth and tells us it has no treasure.

We investigate Jorgy’s door - he opens it and makes a Fortitude saving throw. Oh dear. He fails. He reaches out a distinctly average-sized claw and turns the handle, and a cone of Force explodes from it for 55 Force damage. He is pushed ten feet back into the water and bounces off the island behind him. “… Ow.” Sprocket, from a distance: “… Glyph of Warding…”

We wander over to join him. He can see the door isn’t locked, but it is still closed. He has one more thing to try before we send forth the cat - he jams a fist down his throat and gozzes on it, with all the associated noises. It swings open and then closed again. “I hate this door.”

Skabb casts Detect Magic - there is something magical about the door, it’s an Evocation spell. Skabb wants to Dispel it, but the DM warns that a level 2 won’t cut it.

Can we slip a little Sprocket under the door? DM, breaking in: “What if you tried a Rogue??” Luna is reluctant, what with all the gozz, but she inspects and attempts to disarm it anyway. With assistance from Skabb, they work out that it will take a Master at Thievery to disarm it. Luna goes for it. 32! Which is exactly what she needed. She now knows what a Blast Tumbler Trap is, for future reference. Nadia can take the trap, and apply it to something else if she wants. She does!

Door finally open, we can toddle on in. Luna assures him it’s safe, but Jorg’ath won’t go near the thing until someone else has opened it. Skabb lends him Grabby as a support raccoon to help him with his door-trauma.

There are more doors that look just like that one, and a statue of Velcro. Jorg’ath stands in a corner, still traumatised. Grabby rolls over and shows him her tummy.

DM, out of the blue: “Does 40 hit the lizard?” The statue has hit him! The initiative order appears…

Hartvig, who went last in the last fight: “Woohoo, last again!” He writes some poetry while he waits, and considers growing a moustache.

The statue slams Jorgy again with its sword, and he was already at half HP from the door and the surprise attack. It slams Skabb as well.

Grabby feeds Jorg’ath two potions as part of Skabb’s turn - 2d8+5 twice for 17 total. Skabb transforms into something that will give her more HP… loading… Skabbasaurus!

Sprocket crowds the room further by summoning a carrion golem, for some golem-on-golem action. Fight golems with golems. That’s what’s written on Sprockets t shirt, in elvish, in a black metal font. Augustus moves up to engage the statue. The carrion golem claws the statue for 9 slashing, but it takes none of it. The carrion golem bites and crits - of the 44 the statue takes 34 damage. The carrion golem makes a Fortitude save: 31. Hartvig: “Fortitude, ha! More like FIVE-titude!”

Seeing that the statue doesn’t seem to take full piercing or slashing damage, Nadia swaps her crossbow for Lyrebird to see if Bludgeoning damage does anything, but misses her attacks.

Luna recalls knowledge on the statue. Magical, created as guardians, constructs, arcana or crafting checks to investigate, cursed so that if it takes damage it curses you. Also if it damages you, wtf. Immune to magic with exceptions - this one is weak to water and ice, as well as the Disintegration ray. Resistant 10 to physical damage except caused by Adamantine weapons. Extremely helpful!

She shoots even though she has no adamantine weapons, and manages 9 damage. Nice.

Jorgy winds up another gozz attack - DC26 Reflex save. It rolls a 33 so takes half force damage - it takes all of the half. He rolls an Athletics check to grapple, fails, Hero Point, crit! Hartvig: “This batch of Hero Points has been quite spicy.” It’s immobilised! Jorg’ath: “Quick, kick it while it’s down!”

Hartvig can’t see what’s going on but is now quite versed in the sounds of lizard violence. He enters the room and surveys what he sees; “Yeah, that seems about right.” He could heal Jorg’ath, but he has a chunk of Adamantine so he could cast Needles on it - 34 hits for 20 damage! He wins a Hero point.

The clay golem breaks free - and the DM wants Will saves from Hartvig and Jorg’ath, who both damaged it this round. Hartvig succeeds, which is lucky because he’s already cursed, being as he is, an Oracle. (Or... Cloracle.) Jorg’ath fails. The DM will tell him if and when it comes into effect. Not ominous in the slightest.

It splats the lizard but misses, and then the carrion golem, and crits for 77 damage. The carrion golem disappears. It slaps Augustus with its last action and hits.

Skabb drops dinosaur form. She uses an action to Freeze It:

Then she changes her mind, believing the statue’s Athletics might be quite high. She casts Clinging Ice instead. 25 damage with the vulnerability! Then she casts Frostbite, trying to lower the statue’s resistance to Bludgeoning, but misses - she Hero Points for worse.

Sprocket next. Carrion golem gone, he wiggles his paddle hands and summons “this guy”. (No idea what it is. Oh, Ice golem!) Breath weapon forces a Reflex save, statue makes it but takes half damage plus 5d10 vulnerability damage! 11 plus 19 damage! He wins a Hero Point.

Augustus does a Thunder Punch - because it is flanked, he crits! Howdy Doodis! He punches it in the tummy and it crumbles to dust.

We pause to catch our breath and Heal each other. When we start casting Healing magic, something undead catches wind of it from behind another door. Jorgy is up, so he readies a gozz attack and holds his turn in case something arrives.

Nadia spots its name in the chat - it’s a Haruvex, so it’s related to Velcro… It opens the door so Jorgy uses his gozz attack. With all the sound effects. It makes the save. DM: “No.” Jorgy: “Son of a…”

It shoots him with a longbow - one misses, one hits.

Sprocket thinks it looks undead. He summons his Divine Warden of Nethys… it’s Big.

He thought it did Divine damage, but apparently not. “It’s gonna bonk it with its staff.” It misses. Goes for a light slap, and hits! No it doesn’t, 28 misses as well.

Skabb casts Vitality Lash and Haruvex attempts a counteract, and the spell fizzles. Hartvig: “Not only is it undead, it’s a rules lawyer as well.”

Luna next. She’s asleep so Sprocket takes her turn for her. She shuts the door and polishes her shinies. No! She recalls knowledge “on this jerk”. It’s a grave Knight, undead, cursed suit of armour, unholy. Has Sacrilegious Aura for 30 feet which counteracts Positive damage, has Reactive Strike (attack of opportunity), has a Cone effect (cold damage), Immune to a bunch of shit, weakest save is Will. When killed its armour will bring it back to life unless sanctified. Luna shoots it in the face and crits.

Hartvig next. He uses one of his curse-bound things to do Debilitating Dichotomy:

Haruvex crits its save, and Hartvig fails - but he gets one degree better than he rolls against his own ability, so he succeeds and takes half damage. The DM lets him round the damage down to 13 rather than 14, but he is now cursebound 1. He stinks of the grave, too; Skabb does a sympathy fart to help cover it up. We nominate him for a Hero Point - it is granted. He raises his shield.

Nadia shoots her last two bullets from Lyrebird; a hit and a miss. She reloads with her last action.

Jorgington will move to flank Haruvex with the Divine Ward, and does a turbo-bonking. Critical hit! 64 damage. “That’ll do.” Another crit and a Howdy Doodis! He hammers its helmet off its head. Luna darts in and pours holy water over the armour, and walks out of the room.

He had composite longbow, 19 arrows, +1 resilient full plate (DM, trying not to giggle: “Feel free to put that on.” All of us immediately: “Absolutely not.”), greatsword, and some keys.

The armour is cursed, but the rune can be removed - Nadia does that.

(Jorg’ath wants to crush bone dust with water and feed it to Skabb to see if it makes her undead. Sprocket: “Are you making undead creatine protein shakes? Jorg’ath’s Fight Milk.” She gobbles it out of the helmet.)

He had a Resilient Rune in the armour; Nadia pries it out and scribes it into Sprocket’s adventurer’s clothing; he stands in front of her and sticks his little chest out.

Hartvig opens the door behind him and finds a coin vault! There is a mass of treasure accumulated by Velcro for her assault on Otari.

8000sp, 500gp, 100 platinum pieces! Skabb wants to go back to town, buy the mayor’s house and kick him out.

Jorgy gets the next door, inside has been warped by an explosion. Another room contains weapons: standard grade adamantine war hammer (Jorgy), +2 striking battleaxe, fallen armour stand with +2 resilient chain shirt. We would give it to Hartvig but we aren’t sure he has the upper body strength or the knees for it.

Books - research journals written by Velcro. Crimson, Ebon, Emerald and Ochre lenses. Fulcrum Lattice fits the lenses, there’s a diagram. Each lens contains nimboloth’s essence. Having all four imbued at once will attract nimboloth’s scrutiny. She kept the Ebon lens in a vault under the lighthouse, and gave the others to the denizens of the lighthouse for safe keeping. The Fulcrum Lattice is in the room; we take it. And a skull shaped key. 2 signet rings - tentacle and a skull. Sprocket identifies key: 20 Hero Point 19. Jorgy Nat 20: Ring of Lies.

We give that to Skabb as she really, really wants it.

Greater Pendant of the Occult - 650 gp. Tentacle shaped. We give that to Hartvig.

More books of occult knowledge - if perused for 1 hour, will give +1 on Recall Knowledge checks. Hartvig volunteers, since that’s his wheelhouse.

We then find a teleportation ring, Sprocket reactivates it. We hole up (not in the room with the books - Skabb is still allergic to reading) and take a well earned rest. Sprocket wants to check out some footprints he found; Skabb keeps an eye on him. She wouldn’t put it past Velcro to control someone who has read one of her books…

Hartvig has had a weird week; Is he OK? “Yeah…” He is about 30% successful at sounding convincing. It’s mostly due to awful people at work and battling the NHS as well as the hot weather and some beer. Skabb has been kicked in the face a lot this week - not by Jorg’ath, he is quick to point out. Sprocket has a lurgi and will not be able to join us; Luna will be here as soon as she’s finished child-wrangling. I will take Sprocket for the night and dungeon-roomba my way around the map for him. Big Lunes goes to Jorgy until she arrives in person, and we crack on.

More Urdefhan, since the DM spilt the fight in half last week to make it easier to manage.

Sprube goes first, and crits with his face! He then kills and absorbs his target.

An Urdefhan tries to paralyse the Sprube, but Gelatinous Cubes, including Sprubes, are immune to paralysis! Another one goes to attack Jorg’ath and bites him.

Luna misses with her bow, then hits. 4 persistent bleed damage on top of the big 8 damage. She hits again but doesn’t increase the persistent bleed damage unfortunately.

The custard demon slashes at the Sprube and deals 10 damage and 1 evil; he takes the evil damage only because he is resistant 10 to slashing damage!

Nadia moves to get the custard demon out from cover to her, and shoots it twice, hitting with both attacks.

The urdefhan warrior attacks the Sprube with his longbow and hits, then tries a Ray of Enfeeblement - but the Sprube makes the save handily. Another attacks Extra Medium Jorgy but misses. A second moves to flank him, and his attack misses. Then another shoots and crits but gets shit damage. Jorgy, unbothered: “That’s a real shame.” More go on to attack him but all miss; the DM is having a bad day.

It’s Little Jorg-Jorg’s turn, and he would like to offer one of his new friends a slicing. The first doesn’t kill him so he goes again and crits for 50 damage and it’s still up. “What the fuck is this guy made of??” Miss, Hero point, worse miss. The crit-victim is flat-footed to him for the round.

Skabbins next. She flings an ice spell into a crowd of enemies to include the custard demon. Reflex saves all around: Custy crit-fails and takes 48 damage (sadly not bothered by cold, even though he comes from hell). The urdefhan mostly fail as well. She wins a Hero Point for her strategic placement.

Hartvig was thinking of healing himself but decides to get crazy and start fuckin up some fools (direct quote), earning himself a Hero Point. He does actually heal himself though, for 63.

Sprube attacks the custard demon and crits, killing it, and absorbs its body. He then squidges over to an urdefhan and hits it as well.

One of Jorgy’s new friends tries to bite him, misses all three attacks. “Shameful.” The next can see the writing on the wall, and makes his way south away from the fight. He goes through a door, the same door that the DM tried to tempt Hartvig into opening on his turn…

Luna moves to flank one of Jorgy’s friends, and it takes a rapier in the back. Crit! 46 damage total! According to the DM, that ain’t nothin or nothin, he ain’t bovvered. How about a dagger of venom? That’s the howdy doodis!

Nadia crits against an urdefhan and kills it - she is annoyed, because she wanted to see the crit specialisation damage. She consoles herself by shooting another one.

Another urdefhan takes the place of Jorgy’s recently-deceased new friend, and attacks him but misses. Then one more tries to flank the cube but only does 9 slashing damage which the Sprube negates. A third comes up and shoots the cloracle.

One attempts a tricky shot at Nadia but fails miserably.

Tiny wee little Jorgy next, and he swings at his new-new friend, and hits. 32 damage and a howdy doodis! “In the most painful way possible.” It does unfortunately explode in his face, forcing a DC17 fortitude save, which he aces. He then makes his way south for more urdefhan victims. A hit and 66 damage, and it’s flat-foot- er, well, no, because he’s fuckin’ dead. He explodes. and Jorgy aces the save again.

Little Skabbins! She wants to do a clinging ice, but it requires some calculation first. “Oh, wait, 30 feet, bollocks.” She does a slashing gust instead. She crits! Howdy doodis! “Whilst cackling.” She slings a bullet at another and kills that one! The bullet goes through its eye and out of the back of its head. The Sprube makes the save and takes half damage for the resulting explosion.

Hartvig next, and there are no more enemies in sight. He is reluctant to open any doors, being as he has a phobia of being unexpectedly stabbed. He holds a Needle Darts cantrip for in case something happens.

Sprube headbutts the last one three times and hits once. It goes to shoot the lizard but misses. ‘Barrassin’.

Big Lunes sidles down along the stalagmite and shoots at the last urdefhan. Howdy doodis! She pins him against the scaffolding on the west side of the cavern. And we’re done!

We sit down for a little heal. Hartvig does a Heal and Skabb slaps some mud on some people.

(IRL Luna is battling with discord, it keeps giving her pipe puzzles to solve. Exhausted, she gives up; we promise to keep Luna-avatar safe for her for the week, and tell her to open a bottle of wine.)

We gather around the door and push Luna forward to investigate it, with Nadia covering her. Skabb goes to the next door down, and sends Grabby to the third.

Luna can’t hear much; she thinks she can hear rhythmic muttering - not quite chanting. Grabby has a listen at her door - she hears snoring. Hard to tell if it’s a small or large beast. Skabb listens at hers as well, and the Sprube squidges down to help her. She hears a tummy rumbling; there’s a non-zero chance that it’s her own. She comes back to us.

We don’t like this chanting; Nadia thinks we should sort that out first. Skabb leaves Grabby at the southernmost door as an alarm in case anything happens down there. Jorgy boots open the north door and we roll initiative!

There is a metal box against the wall in here, surrounded by runes. It seems to be keeping something inside it. Are these guys necromancing? Jorg’ath thinks the room smells of blood… It’s enough to turn his stomach which is just as well, as he was planning a gozz attack anyway. DC25 and the urdefhan fail. 9d6 damage and poor old Jorgy rolls five 1s and nothing above a 4. He shoots at the blood mage, 29 hits for 16 damage, nice.

Hartvig next, and he provides his own introduction by chanting his own name. He turns heroically, notices he’s still bleeding and drained, retcons that as he would have sorted it at the break, and decides a course of action. He does a 2 action Rip-The-Spirit-out-of-That-One. It makes the save, taking half of 10d6 negative damage. 33, halved to 16, but the blood mage doesn’t believe in death effects. It doesn’t get healed, though, so that’s something. Hartvig resolves to be a person with a stick, possibly a spear, in the next campaign.

Skabb next. She casts Elemental Breath with Earth effect, so any that fail will fall prone. The blood mage saves, but she kills one outright and knocks another over. Nadia nominates her for a Hero point for tactics; it is awarded.

Nadia shoots and only hits once, to the DM’s relief. Augustus, sharing a hit point pool with the Sprube, gets amongst it and parks himself in the middle of the urdefhan to play damage sponge.

Lunes will Recall some Knowledge on the Urdies. With a 28 she can tell us the blood mage is the same as other urdies in most respects - immune to the same things, explodes when killed. It uses blood to augment its magic, and is kind of vampiric. Also has some pokey-bad spells.

The urdefhan next, and one will waste its action standing up thanks to Skabb. Jorgy and Hartvig are in a convenient line, so it casts Grim Tendrils at them. Hartvig gets some persistent bleed damage, to replace what he just got rid of. They both hero point their rolls, and both roll the same number they did before.

Another casts a 2 action Harm on the blood mage, healing it. Now it’s the blood mage’s turn…

It casts Phantom Pain on Jorgy, who gets a Will save. Red 15, Hero Point, another 15. We’ve got another bad batch of Hero Points. He takes a bunch of mental damage and is Sickened 2. “I feel poorly!” In his head, he can feel his scales and fingernails being pulled out. Yikes. Hartvig: “Or you're being measured against another lizard and finding out you’re an inch shorter.”

It’s Jorgy’s turn, so he moves to flank the blood mage with Augustus. “Now I’m going to persistently murder him with a greatsword.” 15 damage, then a miss, Hero Point, hit for 18 damage.

Hartvig next. He shuffles forward and casts Heal on the Blood Mage. Quote: “Parry this, you fucking casual.” Hero Point nominated and awarded. Howdy Doodis! Bits of flesh all over all and sundry. Cheering!

Skabb has been booted, bear with… She weighs her options. “Hmmm… I might do a Blazing Dive.” She places herself at the back of the cavern, away from Augustus and Jorgy. Howdy Doodis! Cackling, with her mouth wide open “for bitses”. She uses her last action to use her caterwaul sling on the last one. 28 to hit? DM, exasperated: “… Yes…”

Nadia moves to shoot the last one, crits, and kills it, to the DM’s extreme annoyance. Her crossbow bolt ricochets off a wall in another dimension, and hits the DM in the forehead. She wins a Hero Point for sass.

We clean ourselves up, and then hear muffled cries from the metal box. This is the sacrifice the Urdies were going to… well, sacrifice. Jorgy opens the box:

It’s a deep gnome called Calinth; we help him out of the box. He is extremely grateful. HE came down here after rumours that an offshoot of his people had survived down here. He came to find them and learn more about their history. He has found nothing so far, but was captured by an Urdie raiding party. They have a pact with demons and have been torturing and sacrificing people to them. The blood mage we just killed is the only mage he’s come across so far. They put him in a metal box to prevent him from melding with the earth and escaping, which is apparently a thing deep gnomes can do.

He asks if we’ve seen evidence of his people? Jorg’ath looks at Nadia, who refuses to make eye contact. “Nope. I’m not telling him.” Skabb: “I’ll tell him.”

She breaks the news as gently as she can (for Skabb, anyway) that his people are all undead now. He looks distraught, but thanks her and says he will try and go and see for himself. Is it safe to go back there? Skabb offers to accompany him up there, if he will wait until we make our way back up. Or we could ask the drow to help him; Skabb says she doesn’t much care either way. Jorg’ath hands him a picture of himself slaying a black dragon; the gnome looks impressed. We must be mighty warriors. Jorg’ath agrees, and points to his name badge: The Gozzfather.

He will brave the surface world later to thank us properly with a gift of a board game worth 120gp.

The Sprube wants to squidge under the door and see what’s in the next room. The DM is as fed up of Abomination Vaults as we are, so we all agree that we just killed the urdefhan in there. We want to push Sprocket under the next room instead; the snoring has stopped and the door is locked so we can’t go under the door. The DM, over it, tells us that the leader of the urdefhan is in here - he’s the warlord.

We take a long rest, locking ourselves in the blood mage room. Nadia makes some healing grenades and redpitch bombs, Skabb puts a healing potion in both of Grabby’s hands, and Jorgy kicks the last door down. Initiative!

Big Lunes is up first, and she will go shortbows for the middle guy. 38 is a crit! 38 damage and 6 persistent bleed. Nice. 27 misses. Oh wait, there’s sneak attack damage on the first attack as well, and it’s doubled because of the crit! 3 more damage, and she ducks behind a rock for cover.

Nadia shoots with her new redpitch bombs in her crossbow, hits, and rolls max damage for the persistent fire.

Sprocket summons Katy Perry, and she casts Heroism on Jorg’ath.

The Urdefhan Tormentor casts Harm on the warlord, healing him for 27. The warlord shoots Jorg’ath, then strides up to get in his face and slashes at him with a sword. Both attacks hit.

Jorgy's turn next and he misses even with Heroism, Hero Point, hit, miss. He then uses his Tongue Disarm attack on him - athletics versus the warlord’s reflex DC - meets it beats it! “Gimme that sword, dammit.” DM: “You absolute stinker!”

Hartvig next, and he casts Heal on the warlord, name of Khurfel. Khurfel rolls a green 40 and takes no damage, and Hartvig raises his shield, earning himself a Hero Point for cowardice.

Skabb has Grabby fly over Khurfel and drop a healing potion on him. 13 damage! He now knows she can do that and will get a Reflex save moving forward, but she wins a Hero Point for cleverness. Skabb does Positive Attunement, forcing a Will save - just beats it, and takes half damage.

The other urdies do a 2 action Harm on the warlord to heal him for 22.

Luna starts pegging arrows at the healer. 29 hits for 9 damage. Then 5 more. Then a crit! 30 and 2 persistent.

Nadia and Sprocket use a combined turn to do exactly what they did at the start of the last fight - Nadia scoops him up and stuffs him into the crossbow and shoots him at the healer, and Sprocket transforms into the Sprube in mid air. Success! And he’s in the room.

The Urdefhan healer casts Harm to try and hurt the Sprube and Grabby, and heal the warlord. Sprube makes the save, and Skabb Phases Grabby out of the room so she doesn’t take the damage.

Khurfel picks up his sword (presumably while glaring at Jorg’ath), and does a Frenzied Attack against his new best lizard-friend. Two crits and a miss… 119 damage total.

Jorgy hits right back, with a retconned re-up of Katy Perry’s Heroism (I forgot to have her take a turn). Bunch of damage.

Hartvig next! Sarcastically: “Well, Id Heal you Jorg’ath, but I’d probably miss.” He does it anyway. 63! Jorgy: “That’s my guy!” He does Skabb a Guidance.

Skabb next, and she casts electric arc to get ‘big-bollocks’ and his healer. 9 damage for big bollocks and 18 for the healer. Howdy Doodis! She zaps it out of existence, and she insults it further by refusing to eat the remains. Grabby drops her other potion on big-bollocks. 25 damage, nicely done.

Big Lunes will keep blasting. And the DM adds all the persistent damage he forgot to give big-bollocks.

Sprube gets the Howdy Doodis! And he engulfs the big bollock, spitting out the sword as homage to Jorg’ath’s earlier disarming attack.

The last Urdefhan tries Grim Tendrils, but both Jorgy and the Sprube make their saves.

Jorg’ath next, and he gets the Howdy Doodis! He pokes the corpse into the Sprube to be digested. Hooray!

We have wiped out the horrible urdefhan! Inside the cavern is treasure:

180gp, 1320sp, 5 moonstones worth 10gp each, 2 chrysoberyls worth 20gp each. Big Bollocks has the following on his person (what's left of it): suit chain mail, heavy crossbow, sword, emerald fulcrum lens!

It’s fuckin hot. Utah and the UK. Luckily for me I have air con…

You guys we killed a dragon! An adult one too, proper like, none of your baby dragon bullshit. We were divvying up the spoils at the end of the last session. I have made a note that Nadia wants a Ghost Touch Rune, something that will cost her 75gp when we go back to town.

Jorg’ath has a new name for himself to replace Skabb’s nonsense: The Gozzfather. Approval all around.

I’m in charge of Sprocket for a minute so he goes fuckin' mental with his scalpel and stabs us all to wellness. Then we wander around looking for urdefhan, lenses, birds, and undead gnomes. Off we go!

Well, we rest first, so the others can get spell slots back and Nadia can make some glue bullets and redpitch bombs. Skabb assists with the glue bullets, as Nadia only rolled an 18 which is juuuuust a fail. Her help turns the roll into a success! Skabb proceeds to make some potions as well. The DM shows us her cauldron:

Hartvig refocuses to get his focus points back by writing some edgy poetry in a dark corner.

Luna and Sprocket arrive just as we’re ready to set off; Sprocket has some preparations to do as part of our rest. Luna has some spell storing arrows, so the mages discuss what would be the best thing to give her. Hartvig does her a Vampiric Touch, and Skabb offers Sudden Bolt and Worm’s Repast. The DM takes Sprocket and Augustus away from Nadia, and puts Nadia herself back on the map as I deleted her by accident.

Okay really off we go this time! … After a long discussion about Augie, everyone’s favourite pet ghoul. The DM has come up with several creative ways of offing him, all of which we protest vigorously.

The urdefhan are south west of us, we are told. Jorg’ath, incredulous: “… Are you making us walk??”

He is, so we sneak and check for threats and bad mushrooms as we go. We find some urdefhan in a handy dandy little funnel of death! There are a shit ton of them, and a big red boy as well. One of the demons from earlier in this room, like Delulu’s summoned guardians. Custard demon, that’s the one.

Luna does a recall knowledge on the urdefhan, as it’s too far back in my notes and I would be searching forever. She sneaks up to use Jorg’ath as some kind of crocodilian shield, and takes a peek. urdefhan are violent warmongers, occultists and poisoners. They were created to be agents of the end times. They want to kill things in as gory and painful a way as they can think of. They are humanoids, and have transparent skin. We’ve met them before; they are straight-up wrong’uns. They have Greater Darkvision; if we can see them, they can definitely see us. Immune to death effects, disease, and fear, immune to negative and weak to positive damage. These are the things that emit a foul damage dealing gas upon death. Delightful!

Before we go into a fight, Skabb want to look further south and check they haven’t got another exit. She doesn’t want them to surround us. Sprocket wants to know how far someone could throw him; Jorgy reckons he could get him pretty far.

Sprocket has an idea. He wants Nadia to tie him to a crossbow bolt and fire him at the demon; DM permitting, she’s game to give it a try. He suggests all this in his Danny Glover voice.

Nadia ties Sprocket to the crossbow bolt and takes aim. 23 just hits the demon! He turns into a gelatinous cube: “Smile, you son of a bitch!” He wins a Hero Point and the demon is engulfed in dungeon roomba. Surprise attacks…

Jorgy crits against one of the urdefhan with a shortbow and pins it to a tent, and Skabb shoots a lightning bolt. One fails its save, the other meets the DC. Lunes and the Cloracle to go, but Hartvig isn’t in range. Not of the ones we know about, anyway, ah fuck. There were two more hiding and guarding; they would have jumped us had we gone in but we haven’t so the DM puts them on the board so we can see. Hartvig is now in range! 17 misses with his Needle Darts. Oh well. Big Lunes. “I would like to shoot somebody please.” She goes for the outer guards. “In the face, please.” Hit! They can bleed, which is wonderful news as it means they can and will take her persistent damage. “Hooray!”

There are a lot of enemies on the board, so the DM shuffles some things around to make the fight a bit easier to manage. He shifts the one Jorg’ath pinned to a tent with his bow and he notices; “you put that back right now.”

Initiative! Luna has a feat that lets us all add 1 to our rolls; she can sense threats and warn her teammates. She expresses this warning by making a noise like she’s just seen a bird through a window. “Ekekekekekekekek.”

The DM draws a line; we are not able to target anything south of the line, because it’s too hot to deal with this many enemies and his brain is boiling in its case. Skabb is annoyed by this and draws a dick on the map, which is one dick of our usual three-dick limit. (We get half a dick each, as there are six of us; she’s used up her own half of a dick along with someone else’s.)

Sprocket does a cube face attack on the custard demon which is an automatic crit as it’s inside him. Augustus advances and casts Shield, just as well as an Urdefhan wanders up and bites him. He blocks the attack and takes no damage. Another bite; 26 still hits. That one does hit. Another one runs up to Hartvig and bites him.

One chucks a necrotic bomb at Augustus - but Sprocket remembers that because they share a hit point pool, and because Sprocket is currently a gelatinous cube and therefore has temporary hit points, Augustus cannot lose hit points until Sprocket returns to his normal form. Complicated but yay!

Jorgy next. He turns to Skabb and gets her to spit in his open mouth; holding back the vom he walks forward until he can’t hold it back any more, and does a HUUUUUUUGE gozz over 7 of them; they all have to make a check. The DM starts retching by way of reply. The longer this goes on, he warns, the worse Augie’s demise is gonna be. (We might even decide it’s worth the sacrifice.) 46 damage for all the Urdefhan who failed the save! He wins a Hero Point, in spite of the DM’s obvious disgust.

More death scouts next. Bite attack of 23 misses Jorg’ath, as does 19. But he is now flanked…

Skabb does a Blazing Dive! Jorg’ath also has to make the save, as she’s aimed herself at the ones flanking either side of him and one behind. 17 damage, and one is killed. The death gas effect doesn’t affect her as the range is five feet and she’s just outside it. She casts Clinging Ice on one of the ones still flanking Jorgy.

Luna will scoot forward and hide among the mushroom-wood palisades and stab the one nearest to her. 37 is a crit! Howdy doodis! Er… it explodes into death gas at her. Fortitude save DC 24 for her and Jorg’ath; ten damage each. She shoots an arrow for her last action. Nope - she hides.

Warriors next… DM muttering… One takes the place of the one that was killed flanking Jorg’ath, so he’s surrounded again. Uh oh.

The custard demon wrenches itself free from the gelatinous cube. It breath-weapons him with fire…

Sprocket: “On the plus side, I’m no longer vulnerable to fire [in this form].” It sets itself on fire! The wording of the ability states that it has to make a save against its own breath weapon, but there’s no save DC to meet so the damage just happens. Stupidly worded and hilarious.

Hartvig next. He gives his Urdefhan an open handed slap, with a Heal in it. It meets his save DC, unfortunately. He hits it with his staff, and it connects, taking 5 bludgeoning damage.

One of them runs up to Nards - but the DM retcons it. Hmm. He goes towards but past her, and it has lined up a shot at a bunch of us - Gusty, Luna, Skabb, Jorgy and Grabby. Grabby is floating so it misses her. No, not any of them - the DM changes his mind. Nards and Hartvig instead - we both make the save and take 3 and 1 persistent bleed damage.

Nards shoots a redpitch bomb at the cluster of urdefhan next to Jorgy and Skabb and crits! She also gets the five Urdefhan around it with the splash damage, yeah. She shoots again, crits again, and kills her original target, and wins a Hero Point.

Sprocket has Augustus cast Eidolon’s Wrath; that does positive damage so it’ll hurt the Urdefhan and heal his friends! Most of the baddies make the save, unforch. He hits a lot of them, so even with the saves he still does over a hundred damage!

Hartvig’s new friend bites at him and misses all three attacks. Barrassin. One casts Enfeeblement at Jorgy and misses. One does a bite at Skabb and hits. It turns her skin translucent around the bite… Fortitude save, which she aces. She don’t give no shits. 24 misses her. And then it takes 2 persistent fire damage.

Jorgy next and he crits against his with his Greatsword - howdy doodis! Head’s coming off. He makes a Fortitude save against the necrotic decay as it dies. Next attack - 29 is another crit! Howdy doodis and another save, another success, and the third is a red 12. Hero Point - 14. All three attacks were one great big swing, he tells us, and is awarded a Hero Point for killing two of them in one turn.

One moves to flank Jorg’ath, and bites him, misses, misses. He takes 2 fire damage at the end of his turn from Nadia’s bomb.

Skabb will bust out a 3-action heal, hurting them and healing her allies in range. 9 health or damage, depending on how you feel about the party. She wins a Hero Point for cleverness.

Luna is still hidden, so she will stab the Urdefhan next to her. 36. “Pazam!” That’s a crit… 13 plus 27 damage, and it’s off-guard (flat-footed) to her until her next turn. AND 2d6 sneak attack damage, doubled for the crit! 15 more damage. Howdy Doodis! “I stab him right through the head.” She makes a Fortitude save against the necrotic gas… 20 is a fail. She can reroll a save with a feat and crits! Jorgy also makes the save and neither take any damage. Luna re-hides at the end of her turn. Oh she has another action! Because all she did was stab and kill her target, she didn’t need to hide again. She recalls knowledge; no new information, but she gets precision damage next round.

More move up and bite at Jorg’ath but miss. Another tries to enfeeble him but fails. One dies after taking its persistent fire damage from Nadia, hooray! Jorgy takes 4 necrotic damage from the gas.

The custard demon pats out its own flames, embarrassed. It fails the check to stop drop and roll, and is still on fire! It doesn’t take an action to stand, just bites at where the cube’s ankles would be if it had any. 29 is a crit - well it would be, but cubes are immune to crits. Ha! It has another go at putting its own flames out, and fails again, as Sprocket looks on with faint disappointment. If the cube had a head it would shake it.

Hartvig is still in a slap-fight with his; he’s wearing his fighting trousers. He busts out a Heal, and then whacks it with his staff.

One does Grim Tendrils at Nards and Hartvig again, and we take 2 more damage each. Oooohhhhh noooooo.

Nadia finds herself flanked and runs for it, hoping they won’t hit her; she raises her crossbow at the weaker looking one and crits, killing it. She shoots for the other one, and misses. She wins a Hero Point for her massive damage.

Sprocket is next; the DM begs him to put the custard demon out of its misery. It’s brought shame to itself and its family. He will stab - well, he’s a cube, "so it’s 'spludge' more than 'stab'." He and Augustus Move Together, and he casts Boost Eidolon. Augustus then crits against an Urdefhan and gets the howdy doodis! He punched him in the spine, so it comes out of the top of his head. He and Skabb make Fortitude saves - Gusty crits and takes no damage, Skabb takes half so 8. “Fine. Yum yum.” Sprocket-cube (Or Sprube, as the DM christens him) headbutts the custard demon but misses.

Hartvig’s slap-fight buddy bites him, and hits. Irritated: “For goodness’s sake.” The flesh around the bite goes transparent… The DM doesn’t think that Enfeebling him will hamper him in any way so the urdefhan will do something else instead. Rude! “WOW. HOW DARE YOU.” Hartvig fails his save and is Drained 1 instead, and his friend regains 5hp. “… I’ll remember that.” It bites him again, misses, misses. Hartvig turns his head at the wrong moment and it turns into an awkward kiss.

Jorgy. He apologises to Luna in advance, and kills the urdefhan next to them both. He crit-succeeds his save and Luna only takes half damage. He trundles over to the awkward kiss situation; it’s nice to see Hartvig connecting with someone so he hates to interrupt. He slashes a different urdefhan instead - 18 slashing damage, and he’s done.

Skabb does a Blazing Dive at the custard demon and the Sprube. The demon is right at the end of her range and the Sprube is closer, so she's forced to hit them both if she wants to get the demon. Reflex saves: custard demon just makes it, the Sprube fails. 6 bludgeoning and 8 fire. She busts out her sling and aims for the demon; 31 hits for 6 bludgeoning damage.

Big Lunes takes aim at the urdefhan next to Jorgy - a hit and some sneak and precision damage. 24 damage and 6 persistent bleed, and she goes again. She hides for her last trick.

The demon is done trying to put itself out. Sprocket shakes the top of his cube form in disappointment. The DM can’t be bothered to deal with the demon again next week so he doesn’t Dimension Door him; he has him attack Skabb and Sprocket instead.

Hartvig has a lot of things that deal negative damage, but the urdefhan aren’t bothered by that so he casts Heal instead. It fails the save and Hartvig gets a Howdy Doodis! He heals him to death, and reduces him to the consistency of porridge; as the urdefhan is collapsing to the ground, Hartvig hits him with his stick. Fortitude save for the death gas - 29! Yeah, boiii! Half damage.

We’re down to one tormentor and a demon, and Hartvig has an action left. He gives Nards Guidance. “Because it’s been so useful in the past.”

The tormentor bites at Jorgy and misses, bites again, misses, bites again, misses. Fourth action - it takes its persistent damage from Luna and dies! Jorgy crit fails his save against the gas twice in a row.

Nadia shoots the custard demon and crits, killing it! It does an overly-theatrical death, clutching at the crossbow bolt in its chest. Dungeon Roomba goes over the corpse, leaving enough for Skabb to gnaw.

If Skabb makes a Nature check she can help Sprube put out his own fire. She is granted the power (via DM benevolence) to bounce on the cube a few times without taking any acid damage.

Right. Us and the caligni don’t trust each other, mostly because we murdered their guards. But they do need our help so they’re offering us a place to stay - in a different, locked room.

They are refugees here, and are trapped. Half broke away to become a cult on a previous floor and seem to want to stay, but Delulu’s group’s exits are blocked by monsters. Delulu wants us to clear them out for her. Demon to the south and a dragon to the west, we can choose, and we think Jorg’ath will probably not want to leave until we’ve smeared both against a wall.

Jorg’ath himself is sparko having spent the day wrangling Baby Skabb on his own, so the DM gives Skabb his character sheet and we agree to help her decide what actions he’ll take. She immediately renames him “Dumbass Motherfucker Jorg’ath, the Gozz Princess”.

Hartvig shares what he had for dinner; a salad that everyone apparently tells him is disgusting: Italian leaves, chopped tomato, tuna, baby potatoes, pickled eggs, slices of gherkin, and a garnish of sauerkraut all covered in salad cream. In spite of considerable negative feedback from us on the eggs, he will continue to make his cursed salad. It just means he doesn’t have to share.

For helping, we are given a Wand of Continuation - essentially it gives you Stone Skin. It was for killing the demon for Delulu, which apparently we already did and the DM only just realised.

Jorg'ath arises! And joins us, hurrah.

The dragon is black, but other that that Delulu knows nothing about it and neither do we. Okay awesome!

We move on to look for the dragon, tippy-toes style. Sprocket sings the Mission Impossible theme. DM, suddenly: “Luna - see this water? You can hear something echoing across the water. It sounds almost like a bird.” Sprocket wants to know what kind of bird. “Like a pigeon, or…?” Luna’s ears go flat. Skabb sends Grabby out for a squizz. She sees a big square building with a door, stops, and makes a Perception check: 17. No - 30. She sees over on an island in the undergrowth, some crystals. She spots this among them:

It’s a Cauthooj. Grabby has a think but doesn’t know what they are. Skabb isn’t sure either. It seems to be behaving naturally, not aggressive. None of us know either, even Big Lunes with her 28. The DM takes pity and tells us anyway. It’s known as a puppet master bird, which has a song that drives its prey to attack each other. They are intelligent and prefer humans as prey… It’s medium sized, so Grabby couldn’t grab it. Hunting parties gather together to hunt them.

Nadia watches for threats as we move on, and Skabb looks for bad mushrooms. Nadia feels a breeze coming from the southerly corridor which likely to lead to the Darklands (where Delulu and her pals have just gone), and she thinks the northerly one might be where the dragon is. Skabb does a Nature check - recent prints. We all take a look; Luna has some scouting experience. Skabb gorges herself on the grubs and maggots that are feasting on the dragon’s scraps, while we wait for Luna:

This is an Adult Dragon, from the size of the footprints. She feels less bad about killing it, then. Skabb asks if there is evidence of scorch marks, or acid burns or something. She sees some corrosive damage to the surrounding stones, and she thinks it might have acid breath. We all win a Hero Point for Skabb’s clever question, which is probably a sign that we’ll need them.

It appears and does a breath weapon attack at us! Even though we were sneaking. It’s an 80 foot line, we wait to find out who’s been hit: Everyone but Luna. 38 damage, half on a save, DC 30. Yuck. Grabby crits and takes no damage, and flips the bird at the dragon.

Initiative…

Ravirex goes first, and approaches Jorgy who is at the front. 44 with his claw is a crit… 17 plus 46 damage… Shit. Then 28 more. The last attack misses, leaving him with 23 hit points. Luna wants to run up and dart part the dragon and get behind it. Acrobatics 31. She makes it! It’s now flanked, and offguard against her. Hero Point! She stabs it a couple of times, while she’s here. Her attack misses, unfortunately.

Nadia was considering running away a bit, but after seeing Luna heroically dive right at and past the dragon, doesn’t feel she could get away with that. She shoots and misses a couple of times and runs for the spot where Luna just was, hoping she’ll be shielded from any future breath attacks.

Sprocket and Augustus Move Together, and then turns into an ooze and climbs up the wall. No wait - he summons Katy Perry instead, because a lot of us need healing already and we’re not even through the first round. Hartvig magnanimously offers to stand at the back and do healing, since this is a fuck off great big dragon. Skabb feels we’ve reached a milestone in Hartvig's character development. With this in mind, Sprocket uses his stone skin wand on Jorg’ath, very sensible.

Skabbins next, and she will have Grabby fly over to Jorg’ath with a potion. Only 10 hp back for Jorgy, Skabb is disappointed. She does a Blazing Dive at the dragon, forcing a Reflex save. The dragon makes it, but we know that it takes Fire and Bludgeoning damage as normal.

Jorgy next. He peels off his glove, spits on his hand, and does a gozz right on the dragon. It makes the save and takes no damage… Jorgy opts for a good old fashioned bonking, but 28 misses… Only just though, as the dragon is flanked, 29 would have hit. Hero Point? Yes, but it’s worse.

Jorg’ath: “… We gon’ die.”

Hartvig does a Heal on Jorg’ath, as without him, we really will all die. The number is red, but it is 56 so that’s not too bad. And that’s his whole turn.

The dragon roars, forcing a Will save from everyone. Regardless of the roll, we are immune after this. Nadia uses her Grit feat, rolls the same number, and is pissed off until she remembers to actually look at the wording, and discovers that in fact she passes this time because the feat lets her add 2 to the new roll!

The dragon sees that the Cloracle keeps healing everyone. It disengages, flies over to Hartvig, and bites him.

Luna moves to get cover and shoots the dragon “in the arse.” 33 hits! 25 misses. “Rats.”

Nadia moves to flank the dragon, and shoots with one of her bombs attached, but misses even with a Hero Point.

Sprocket and Augustus Act Together. Sprocket curls into a ball and summons a dragon of his own! It makes two fang attacks and a tail strike. 30 hits! 18 damage, nice. 32 hits too! 26 more. The tail misses. Sprocket wins a Hero Point for being fucking cool and doing a bunch of damage. Sprocket states that he is very afraid.

Skabbins has been doing secret measuring - she does another Blazing Dive. It makes the save and takes half damage. Then she does Mycological Malady in hopes of Enfeebling it, and wins a Hero Point. The dragon crit-saves.

Skabb, enraged: “Oh. FUCK off!”

Extra-Medium Jorg’ath whacks it with a club and hits, then busts out his Javelin of Lightning! Ravirex fails the save and takes all 48 damage!

Hartvig enquires as to who’s hurt; the DM tells him that the dragon is. Probably Jorgy, if he only means our team. He needs to get away but doesn’t know if he’ll get Attack of Opportunity’ed. He decides to Heal Jorg’ath, and then fuck around and find out. As he turns to move -

The dragon does nothing.

Skabb: “That was an asshole move, [DM].”

The dragon, seeing another dragon all up in its business, does something about it. One of its attacks crits, doing 84 total damage in one attack, and Sprocket’s dragon disappears. It turns to Jorg’ath for the horn attack and crits, doing 49 damage. Then it bites him… Oh wait stoneskin! Each time he’s hit, it removes 5 of the damage he takes. So he’s owed a bunch of hp back!

Luna next.

Nadia switches out for Alkonost. She shoots, hits, Risky Reloads, and misses. She drops the gun in disgust.

Sprocket resummons his dragon! It hits with one of its multi attacks.

Skabb has just discovered that the DM has put all her forms into her journal, so she wants to bust one out. … Can she use her grill in her new form?

DM: “Absolutely not are you supposed to, but yes you can.”

She changes her mind and casts Lightning Bolt, Ravirex saves but takes half damage.

Jorg’ath hits with his club and gets the howdy doodis! He smushes it to a paste, leaving a nice chunk for Skabb to chew on.

Luna remembers suddenly that dragons have hoards, and slopes off to check for treasure. She gets first dibs.

260gp, 1412 sp, 4303 cp, golden goblet 200 gp, +2 striking mace, iron medallion, scroll of spirit blast, mummified bat talisman. Skabb wants the bat. Luna takes the mace, and will ask Nadia to remove the rune and put it on her bow. Hartvig takes the scroll. Nadia scoops some acid out of the dragon for making bombs, and some more plus some teeth for Skabb (who will probably use the acid as a condiment). Greater Acid Flask!

We were in the middle of a fight let’s go! Well, once everyone has put various toddlers to bed. While the rest of us wait, we complain about the heat and the DM shows us a handout of Sprocket’s latest summon, Jan:

We begin a collaborative backstory for Jan; she works in Tescos stocking shelves and has some sort of keratin issue which causes her to have extremely long and gross toenails.

Oh shit Nadia’s dead. Sprocket’s turn!

Jann gets the howdy doodis and runs the undead gnome through! Is it an action for her to change weapons? DM: “Not today!” Not sure if it’s a good sign that he’s letting that slide.

Weak to good, immune to death effects, no other weaknesses or immunities, Reflex and Will are weakest saves on the custard demons. All Hartvig’s spells are Fortitude. “Why do I even bother." He goes for Spiritual Armament and hits!

Now it’s the Custard demons, and the DM starts measuring how far it is from them to Jan. Sprocket: “Noooo, not Jan!” It does a breath weapon and gets a bunch of us. Then another moves up and does the same.

Big Lunes - and she crits with her bow!

Jorgy warns Jan to duck, and does a gozz at the demons. Two fail their saves, one crits. Then he busts out a javelin and gets a howdydoodis!

Nadia skips her turn but is stable. Skabb next and she can sustain her ice spell if she wants but there is only one custard demon still in the area so she drops it and does her own Elemental Breath spell instead! She catches Jan in the cone and wins a Hero Point for not giving half a wet shit about it. She then uses her wand to get Nadia up.

Sprocket does some staff work, and Hartvig does a big 3 action heal, giving us all 18 hp back. His spiritual weapon disappears. The last demon tries to fly off to get its mates, but Luna shoots it out of the sky. Hooray! Final Fantasy fanfare.

We heal up and move on.

Jorg’ath leads us into the boathouse and looks for treasure - he finds a chest inside a little rowing boat, which still looks seaworthy. Swan boat feather token, a +2 armour rune, +2 striking dagger! The swan boat token will transform into a boat that will carry up to 32 medium creatures!

We ready attacks for when Jorg’ath opens the door, but the creatures on the other side have done the same so nobody gets a surprise round. Big Lunes goes first.

“What can I see? I shoot it!”

They are light blind, weakest save is Fortitude, some other stuff. Luna wants to inflict regular blindness as well, so she goes for the eyes. These guys are more Caligni (I think? It’s something we’ve fought before anyway).

Jorgy sidles on in. “Stomp stomp stomp.” He goes for a traditional bonk, and crits with a green 40! 51 damage, and a Hero Point for the barbrian. The secondary bonk misses so he uses his fresh new Hero Point and crits again with a green 35 and 38 more damage. He has bonked him into the ground, and howdy doodises him by fully hammering him down like a nail.

It does explode a bit, however. Luna and Jorg’ath have to make saves, but both succeed.

Hartvig is next, and saw the tongue of flame come shooting out the door. He casts Sanguine Mist, and can get both the remaining Caligni. He crits! Oh wait it’s a save. DC27, and the first gets a 32. The second fails, however. Half and full damage respectively.

Nadia hits, then two misses.

Skabb next. She does a Blazing Dive, both save but take half damage. She bites one with her last action, but misses.

Some stuff happens but my dog starts yelling so I miss it.

The caligni take a turn, and do some stabbing at Augustus and Skabb. Jorgy does some bonking.

Hartvig runs in screaming and bites one in the face!

Nadia nominates him for a Hero Point, it is granted.

Nadia switches out for her Liar’s Gun and does an Annie Oakley pistol twirl - the caligni fails! She crit fails her attack, so uses her last Hero Point - it hits, phew.

Skabb does an Electric Arc but they make the save, so she goes in with the teeth as well.

Sprocket Boosts Eidolon on Augustus and does a Phase Bolt.

The Caligni attack Hartvig, who is now up in their faces. They stab at him with a sword, only one attack lands. He uses all his temporary hit points from the vampiric touch spell, and then three of his own real ones as well.

Big Lunes does a big hide for herself, and debates whether to run and stab or shoot from her position. “I’m gonna do something stupid and run in there and give them a stab.” She crits! And crits her damage! And somehow manages to sound disappointed. And genuinely is disappointed when her caligni explodes, causing Reflex saves all around.

Jorg’ath wants to pin the last one into a corner. How would he achieve that? DM research... Please wait... Grapple and then Move, which would leave him with one action. “Let’s do that.” 26 athletics, a success! He shoves the caligni into the corner away from the rest of the party. If he uses a natural weapon (teeth, claws) he can make an attack and shield his friends with his body from the resulting explosion. 21 misses, Hero Point… 26? Hits! Kaboom! 68 damage to Jorgy alone.

Skabb suggests making a candle from Jorg’ath’s corpse’s fat, and lighting it in his memory. Jorg’ath: “Hang on, I’m still half alive.” He wins a Hero Point for being a hero.

There is a pit in the middle of the floor here I think? There are more doors leading out, and no items of value. Only empty tankards and plates.

We need Jorgy in door-kicking shape, so we heal him up. “There’s no treasure in this room, but there’s something far more important - the power of friendship.”

Ah something appears in the room?? Another caligni, apparently alerted by the noise? She enters the room, sees the remains of her friends, and looks furious. “Why have you killed my brethren?” Hartvig points out that they started it. She looks sad, and says they have escaped calamity somewhere (The Dark Lands?) and this is what they’ve found.

She assumes we’ve come from the surface? Did we pass her lost brethren on the floor above? They’ve formed some sort of cult. Um… Yeah. There are two exits from here, one blocked by a dragon, one by a demon. She saw us tangling with demons earlier, and would have sent aid but was unsure of our intentions.

She can offer us sanctuary while we recover; she will also offer a wand if we get rid of the demon and/or the dragon. What that wand doooo? DM research… please wait… Cool stuff, including resistance 5 to all physical damage, I miss the rest.

(Dungeons and Dragons main head writers have left WotC and joined Critical Role, according to Hartvig. 'Ave that, ye bastards!)

She shows us into the room behind her, and points out some woodlices to Skabb who is delighted.

Nadia asks the caligni her name - It is Galudu, which we immediately decide is really Delulu. She hasn’t seen any lenses lying around, has she? No. Nadia wins a Hero Point for remembering about the lenses.

The lenses are magical, right? Skabb wonders how far Detect Magic will go. If we go out on the boat, we could ping the whole lake maybe?

Nadia makes a perception check for the guys to the north of us:

These custard demons seem to be guarding something and if they are aware of our presence then they haven’t shown it. Nadia sees a building behind them.

Luna Recalls Knowledge on the demons. They have otherworldly senses and make good guardians, in fact are often created for such purpose. Weak to good damage, immune to death effects, weakest save is Reflex and Will.

Skabb has spotted a masked figure and wants to know more about them. It’s an other caligni… Sneak attack damage, light blindness, weakest save is Fortitude.

Is there another lens? We were told there is, and that it’s in a building. (...?) Skabb has a nasty feeling it’s here; she checks her notes. No, it's in water. There are horrendous fish that can pull themselves up on land, and the lens is in the water with them, perhaps. We have a new erdofan friend whose father was killed by the fish, and he had the lens at the time. I think? Ochre lens is in a dark wet place.

We discuss using Jorg’ath to distract the fish. If only we had a bard, they could play the Benny Hill theme. Skabb makes a nature check on the fish. It sounds like a deep water dutharex (sp?). They only go on land to chase easy prey. Weakest save is Will, immune to acid.

Tired of all this talk, Jorg’ath bombs it to the lake and we follow. Skabb, Grabby and Luna sneak. Someone’s tickling Jorgy’s toesies! Also there are some figures on the western shore. The big fish tries to swallow Jorgy whole. He takes 19 piercing damage and is asked what his Reflex save is… Some DM maths happen… And he is swallowed.

Can we shoot into the water? Yes, even though we can’t see it - it’s obscured. We need to roll a flat d20 check and get a 10 or higher. Luna hits, Nadia misses, Skabb hits. Initiative!

Luna misses all her attacks, thanks to having to roll the flat d20 check in addition to the attack roll.

The one that swallowed Jorg’ath swims off with him, and another leaps out of the water at Nadia who is standing at the edge.

It swallows her... The good news is that it is on the land still so air is not a problem.

She shoots and auto hits, doing some damage, and Hartvig does Needle Darts and hits (without getting Nadia!) and Guides Sprocket.

Sprocket summons a living waterfall! It strikes with a mighty watery fist, and misses. Then crits, pushing the fish further onto land so it can’t swim off with Nadia in its belly.

Jorgy does a gozz, it crit-fails its save and burps him up. Oh wait, no it doesn’t??

Skabb takes a chunk out of it with her grille, as this fish is an aberration! Nadia feels the temperature drop as Skabb casts Clinging Ice.

Luna’s streak of bad luck continues…

The one full of lizard enjoyed none of his shenanigans and spits him out, but he’s still underwater. It proceeds to bite him, and that might very well be a crit. Jorgy checks his sheet and yes it is. 23 plus 48 damage… “Ow.” It then tries to swallow him again. Annoyed: “This fuckin’ guy.”

It fails!

The other one tries to eat Skabb as a nice little chaser for Nadia. 36 hits and is a crit… She is alive but only just. It fails to swallow her, tries again, fails again.

Nadia shoots her last crossbow bolt and kills the fish! Like truth emerging from her well to shame mankind, she rises up, covered in slime.

Hartvig heals her and Skabb and Sprocket for 24 points.

Sprocket’s waterfall goes again at the one next to Jorg’ath and hits. He then casts Thunderstrike from his staff! It saves, booh. But takes half damage, yay!

Jorgy next. He has a number of questions about water-based combat. At the end of it all he crits and kills it! He drags it out of the water "looking all heroic and shit".

We do some healing and move on.

Jorgy goes right back in the water to look for the lens. Sprocket casts Detect Magic into the lake! It returns nothing. Jorg’ath can’t find anything either but he spots some green crystals. Nadia takes a look and makes a crafting check to see what they are - resonating crystals that can be used in alarms. Skabb has a piece of a different crystal; that could be used to make electric ammunition…

Skabb sends Grabby up high for a recce of the building, looking for an entrance that will help us avoid a fight with the custard demons. She finds a room with a column - Nadia wants to know what it’s made of and if it’s load bearing, but with a very good Perception roll Grabby thinks it might be magically reinforced. Explosives probably no use here then.

Grabby moves to the main building and has a listen; the voices inside seem to be chatting, relaxed. Skabb wants to have her squish her way through the splatty mushroom door, the one to what seems to be a boathouse. Then this happens:

Grabby makes a Will save - 29. She hears a voice in her head and is cut off from Skabb. She flies back to her. No ill effects, and after a minute their link is reinstated.

Luna thinks she sees a frightening little thing on the top of the boathouse for a second, before it disappears again. It has a shock of white hair and red eyes; Skabb immediately wants to be friends with it. She rushes over on her goblin dog. What languages does she speak? She hears a voice in her head in a sing-songy, melodic tone, but it sounds angry. She doesn’t understand it, however.

Does 32 hit Nadia? Yes, ow! She takes 24 slashing damage, and this appears:

It’s another bloody undead gnome! She shoots at it but 27 misses. Initiative…

The thing runs up and claws at Nadia, then tries a Drain effect but she makes the save. Luna next. 37 is a hit with her bow! 29 and 22 are misses.

Jorg’ath next, and he will stomp up and grapple it. Nadia goes for a headbutt but misses, Hero Points, misses, and the DM takes pity on her and lets it hit. She stabs it with her bayonet but misses again. “I hate this gnome, someone kill it.”

Skabb goes for a Force Barrage from her wand, 3 actions, 9 Force damage.

Hartvig Heals Jorg’ath and Nadia and hurts the gnome with the Heal spell - it takes half damage.

Sprocketses! He and Augustus Act Together, and Sprocket casts Phase Bolt. Augustus does a Fist Slam, one hits and one misses.

What is Jorgy’s Athletics DC? 29; the gnome tries to get free and rolls a natty 20. It drops out of his arms and claws at Nadia - it crits, taking her out, spits on her body and claws at Jorg’ath. It misses. it seems to really have it in for the devil in the party for some reason.

Big Lunes is next but is AFK so we skip to Jorg’ath. “I would like to pummel him and murder him. Bonk.” 38 hits for 13+7 damage, 30 also hits for 22 plus 7 more, and he wants to pick him up and sling him at something. He can only pick him up with his remaining actions, so Athletics check, but misses - Hero Point, much worse. The gnome spits at his feet.

Luna is still AFK so Sprocket takes her turn. We are all doing very badly today. Nadia rolls an 18 Death Save and becomes stable.

Skabb has just seen her friend clawed into unconsciousness. The goblin dog licks Nadia comfortingly, in a non-disease giving way, as they go past her. Then Skabb casts Mycological Malady:

It’s Enfeebled 2 and Slowed 1! Jorg’ath, rubbing his hands together: “He’s gonna get slung.”

Hartvig does another emanation Heal, bringing Nadia back to 12 hp and damaging the gnome for 6.

Sprocket and Augustus Act Together and summon Jan. Jan is “some kind of spirit”. It’s an elemental, and his name is literally Jan. He’s a sort of Genie? He’;s made of all six elements apparently. Jorg’ath, impressed: “Multi-Jan.” Augustus misses, so Jan is up. Scimitar! 24 to hit. Sprocket: “That’s terrible, Jan.”

The gnome hits Nadia again and she goes down, again. Then it tries to devour Jorg’ath’s soul. There’s a save; he rolls a 22. Hero Point: 30! Shame he needed 31. He takes 30 Negative damage but fortunately doesn’t die as if he did it would devour his soul.

Luna next. 26 is a miss, 32 hits! For the lowest possible damage. 11 also misses. “Done.”

Jorgy will do a bonk, first off, 31 hits for 19 damage, and then he wants to pick him up and throw him at one of the demons. 28 Athletics, and that’s a miss. Hero Point another worse miss. Greatclub - 28 hits. 12 damage and he hears bone crunch, but the gome is still not dead.

Nadia makes a death save - another 18, she is stable.

I missed last week so Skabb’s notes will be incoming soon! We are fighting one of these things, so Nadia better hit the ground running:

There was a recall knowledge: We know that it’s a fiend, it’s got Divine Innate spells, immunities are confusion, death effects, and swarm attacks, it is weak to good damage, weakest save is fortitude, has an AoE attack with its rotten limbs, also it pukes something horrible. A swarm of stuff.

Also Sprocket has summoned something, some sort of dragonkin. Stormsnake!

Right into the action, we start with Nadia who uses a bomb and then misses with a Risky Reload so her gun jams. She sets the monster on fire, it tries to put itself out but doesn’t manage it. It does cauterise its own wounds, however. It reaches up to claw at Augustus, who is good-aligned and therefore takes 22 damage.

Luna leans out from behind a rock and shoots, but 27 misses. So does 28, so she hides again with her last action.

Skabb. “Oh, shitcakes.” She wants to do something new; much cryptic talk between her and the DM, positioning herself and Grabby. We move to Jorgy as Skabb’s laptop takes a shit. He, even with his actual real life mother in law on the sofa behind him, does a gozz attack with all the associated foley work. A hit! It saves, but still takes some damage. 16 delicious Force damage. 38 hits but hold on, he’s changed his name…

He’s done Luna as well:

Skabb gets her shit together and turns into a scorpion!!! It has a little grill on its mandibles. That’s her turn.

Sprocket and Luna arrive! Long discussion about cats.

Hartvig’s turn, and he’s stable at 0HP. He rolls over from his back to his front so he doesn’t choke on his own tongue, and dribbles a bit. The DM allows him a free Perception check, which he uses to see how dead our enemy is: about halfway.

Moving on… Sprocket! He uses an action to keep the stormsnake up, and runs to Hartvig to jam a potion down his neck. Via an impromptu tracheotomy he makes with his scalpel. “You gonna be okay!” 18 HP back for Hartvig. Augustus does a fist slam but misses. The lightning snake does a lightning strike at the Derghodaemon, but it saves.

Nadia drops her jammed gun and pulls out her crossbow; the first attack misses but the second does it 19 damage.

The demon takes its damage from the bomb but then puts the fire out on itself. It then tries to stop the bleeding from its wounds but fails! Out of rage it swings at Augustus and hits for 26 slashing and 3 evil damage. (Short discussion about the party’s alignments. Jorgy and Hartvig are the only goodies. Wait, Nadia is chaotic good too; Jorg’ath always sort of assumed she was what the kids would call A Baddie. She is that as well.)

Big Lunes is up, and she’s AFK because her sister is visiting so Sprocket takes over for her. How many cloaks is she allowed to wear at once, he wants to know? Skabb notes that she should not be able to hide at all, what with all the shiny shinies she’s carrying. She shoots with her shortbow, miss, hit, miss. She hides, and is supremely confident that she’s hidden.

Skabbulon. “Er… Do my Hero Points stay with me as a scorpion?” They do. She has another go at that attack and does it worse. At least she looks cool. Grabby does a Stitching Strike:

The monster rolls a 38, her spell DC is 27 which makes the save a critical. Can Skabb-pion fart on it as a free action? Obviously.

Jorgy. Scythe 36 hits! 9+7 damage. 32 also hits! 11+7, and then he would like to tackle it. Grab its spindly little legs and take it down. Athletics vs. its Fortitude: 28, but there’s always time for a Hero Point. 29.

Hartvig. “Ahhhh I live!” He stands up and staggers about for a bit. He casts a fancy new spell called Rip the Spirit:

The monster critically succeeds. “That’s fine. I’ll just cross the fifth level spell slot off, that’s done.” He sits down on the floor to consider his life choices.

Sprocket is covered in barbecue sauce. No, hoisin sauce. Skabb: “Is this what happens when [Luna] goes out?” Sprocket: “… I heard what I said, and I stick by it.” He uses an action to keep his snakey-fella going (Skabb bites her tongue hard), and Boosts Eidolon. Augustus fails to Fist Slam and uses a Hero Point - 35 hits! 19 plus 4 damage. The Storm Snake does a tail attack, 27 misses.

Nadia hits it with another bomb, but her other attack misses.

The monster takes 8 damage (4 bleed, 4 fire), then tries to kill Augustus. 42 hits him for 20 slashing and 4 evil damage. That’s for sure a crit… 42 more damage. Augustus winks out of existence, and Sprocket falls to the floor. Jorg’ath: “Be safe in the knowledge that you will be avenged.” Then it savagely assaults as many of us as it can reach. Just Jorg’ath. and Skabb-pion. 21 misses Jorgy, and 27 just hits Skabby-claws. 25 slashing damage to her.

Big Lunes is next. Sprocket is dismayed to discover she doesn’t have any poisons. She shoots anyway - 36 hits for a Howdy Doodis! It erupts into chunks, and all of the chunks are Enfeebled 1. Skabb starts picking up the bits with her grabbers and feeding them into her mandibles. Skabb-dibles.

The passageway behind Grabby leads out of the vault, the DM kindly tells us, so we don’t need to waste time exploring it. We decide he’s hiding treasure and that means we should DEFINITELY explore it.

Hartvig casts Heal on Sprocket. 49 HP back. “I’m alive!” He does one for everyone that needs a big Heal as well. “Everyone have 32.”

Fungal canopy up to 50 feet. As we move about we must move on our turns now. Skabb can’t see any fungus that would produce spores that might be dangerous. Some areas might be difficult terrain.

Jorg’ath goes first and whispers back to the rest of us that there are some ‘red boys’ up here. Nadia follows, looking out for threats and bugs that Skabb might like. Above the canopy of the mushrooms she sees two more guys; she points them out to the others. We fought these a little while ago. She is confident that they haven’t seen us, but they seem to be wafting toward Jorg’ath…

She chucks a little pebble at him and points up. He doesn’t seem to understand what she means. “Okay, well I tried…” They look close on the map, but are a long way up.

Luna next, but she has no darkvision and doesn’t know about the puffballs. She moves up next to Nadia and follows her gaze - she sees the puffballs. (Nadia also found some juicy slugs, and pockets them for Skabb.) Luna’s ears go flat and her tail goes poofy.

Skabb hasn’t noticed the puffballs or the shenanigans; she has been scanning the ground for grubs. She finds a squiggler and a legses. Legses goes straight in the mouth, bum first.

Hartvig is part Duskwalker on his father’s side, so he has darkvision. He has spotted the puffballs. What hurt them, when we fought them before? He does a recall knowledge (not a high DC as we’ve fought them before). Weak to fire!

Sprocket last, and he has Darkvision as well. “I am also weak to fire,” he points out. He also sees the puffballs. He has a digwidget, he tells us. … A what now?

Oh. one of those. It’s a construct, and can be used to pick locks or dig holes, and has a burrow-speed.

He uses the mushrooms as cover; the DM rules that they are not difficult terrain for him as he can move between them on account of his small size.

The puffballs get a turn. Big Lunes, Nards, Sprocketses and Hartvig see them sneaking towards Jorg’ath.

Initiative:

Nadia goes first and crits with her crossbow and a redpitch bomb doing 42 damage (12 of which is persistent fire damage) in one hit. She uses her last action to shout at Jorg’ath to warn him; Skabb hears that as well so they can both roll initiative and join in next round.

Luna shoots with a 31, a hit plus her sneak attack. No bleed damage as they don’t bleed. (Skabb remembers that these things do something nasty when they die, explode into spores or something.) She hits again and then repositions herself, minding out to stay near enough to Jorg’ath (who glows) that she can still see stuff.

Hartvig next, and he will shoot the other one. Can we tell how close they are to dying? Yeah, but it’s an action. He perceives for 25; the second is showing no sign of wear, but the other has some splits in its sides. It doesn’t look about to split all the way open, but has taken heavy damage. He shoots for that one. Needle Dar- oh, Hero Point. Needle Darts! 21 piercing. Noice.

Sprocket next. How far above us are they? The mostly intact one about 20 feet, the damaged one about 10 feet. He does a Blazing Bolt from his staff, to hit both of them. 18 misses. Sprocket, being vulnerable to fire himself, hates using fire. Even so he does it again, 29 hits! For his last action he hunkers down in the shrooms.

Nadia hits three times with the use of a Hero Point and kills it - it explodes, doing 40 damage to everyone in 20 feet. We all fail our saves, Nadia even though she uses Grit and Tenacity AND her Devil’s Luck contract.

Lunes was about to do a murder but having seen the other one explode all over us, thinks twice. This one isn’t as damaged so she goes for it and crits for 47 damage, nice. Now she’s more anxious, because she doesn’t want to kill Skabb. She does a bit of hiding.

Hartvig. “It’s me!” Wait, no, it’s Jorg’ath, we’re out of order for some reason. He shoots his crossbow at it but misses, then hits. 7 piercing, for 17 because it’s vulnerable to that as well. And 7 Force. “Exquisite.” He misses that time.

Hartvig will now take his turn and administer Needles again. 24 misses, Hero Point, even worse. He runs away a bit.

Sprocket flips through his ever-growing spell book. “I will… No wait, it was 30 feet… Yeah that’ll do it.” He hits with a Phase Bolt for 15 damage. The next one is a miss. He also does some repositioning, hiding under a mushroom.

The remaining one hasn’t seen Skabb yet, so it wafts at Hartvig. It’s right up in his grill, but it’s shit out of actions.

Skabb next. How far is its blast radius? 20 feet. She will put herself at risk to do a Breathe Fire at it. Ballsy if nothing else. “Get away from my friend, you bitch!” Nadia nominates her for a Hero Point.

Nadia does a Perception check in order to use an action so she’s less likely to be the one to kill her friends. She shoots, hits for 25 damage, and then reloads her crossbow, relieved that she won’t be the one to get the howdydoodis and plaster her friends to the floor.

Luna next with the hot potato, is there any way she can stuff it into a bag of holding with a grenade? 30 hits for 23 damage; it looks like a balloon that’s been overinflated. There are thin patches. Bad news; she gets sneak attack damage as well - it doesn’t explode. She breathes a sigh of relief.

Jorgy next. Blast radius is still 20 feet. Could he dive-tackle it and take it away from his friends? Does he have an attack with the Shove trait, the DM asks? He hasn’t seen one on his sheet. He can Shove as part of a movement. He can move 30 feet. If he moves twice and critically succeeds, the DM will let him move it 20 feet. He crits! 39 Athletics!

Having successfully jumped on the grenade, he attacks with his claws and the puffball explodes doing 15 damage. He is nominated for a Hero Point by Nadia, and a fungal infection by Skabb.

I am away this week, so Skabb takes over note-taking!

We go down to the next level. Medussa has fecked off. We have Drow friends Haribo and her ppl on this level and 1 we saved in a previous level (in the tavern).

There are green crystals in the wall (the tunnels were dug out by an ancient worm). Skabb pries two out, they glow and vibrate with faint leccy - doesn't hurt) gives one to Nards to make something out of and keeps one for lighting up her gob for shits and giggles.

Leader in yldaris is Koala. (cue lengthy chat about koalas, chlamydia etc…)

Its blummin dark. some of us are stuck in walls/cant move/cant see (not intentially)

we are led through tunnel by drow. Guard sat carving mushroom wood. Curious but keeps whittling and acknowledges our guide. Head west to Yldaris. East - where we keep mounts and caravans drop off from "Darklands". The "mounts" are like monitor lizards but huge.

Skabb goes and asks if she can sit on a lizard. The Drow are respectful and allow it. Skabb is overjoyed :)

WE head west, our escort does a fancy knock on a door and we are let in by another guard. This one introduces itself as Catlitter. Jorgarth likes his hat. He opens a door to a room with chairs. Jorgarth recognises someone playing cards at the table - we saved him from being eaten by folk in the pub. He smiles warmly at us and motions at others and tells us their names and welcome us to Yldaris.(had other things happened in previous levels they would've attacked, but they like us…they really like us!). escort leads us to meet the leader.

Nards tells us writing in elvish are aphorisms saying to stay alert and stay alive, the marks underneath represent every time yldaris has been attacked and defended.

Skabb finds a room with Drow shootists working on their crossbows JOrgarth finds a room with folk aiming at targets. He flexes at them. They look curious but are unfazed. Jorgarth finds sleeping quarters and our guide tells us to head southwards through double doors to find their leader.

Koala (Quara) is in the room. Jorgarth starts curling her anvil to try to impress her?! 2 strange looking drow (Cavern Seer) are at the end of the room. Jorgarth licks one of the cavern seer. It is disgusted.

Koala thanks us for saving her cousin from the pot. She says she has never met surface dwellers but we are less ugly than expected.

she wants to know about us. we ask if she knows vecro - she is familiar, not particularly pro Velcro, her predecessors worked for her but not through choice. She has no ill will towards the surface dwellers.

She smiles and says she has a lot to think about. She wants to speak to her advisors and come back rto us. They will put us in an overflow area to wait. Sends us away and we are called back. Can leave things in the room

Says I believe you have been honest with me and I will be honest with you. Yldaris is only here for Velcro. Ochre fulcrum lens which manipulates . I was never meant to lead. Father was leader and went

erdofan leader caught and murdered father and sister perhaps to get the lens. Velcro came to me as a ghost. For good of yldaris I renewed vows. Not bound by words. Will side with us be loyal to us.

Velcro befriended drow, erdofans to the west and the deep gnomes above who have embraced death. Each had a lens.

Seers speak: There is more (they move mouths in unison) The ochre lens lies in a dark and wet place. He died attempting to know more of its purpose. He hid it from the erdofans. The ERdofansThe stones empower the ghost queen and are poewr to defeat. together they gather the attention of the empty death Nimboleth. The answer is in the old treasure vault overlooks the lake (on this level). She cannot withstand its power if they are all together. WHISPERING REEDS BOOK - has more info on these lenses. This should be in AugClem but we arent sure. Not one that we have written down in AC. DM said we can assume that we have it as was in upper floor.

The book is cursed and will turn whoever reads it into a ghost that is then cosumed by Nimboleth Lenses will allow velcro to come back But if you use them against her you can destroy her. Hartvig has Crimson Lens in his inventory. Emerald Lens to the west with the erdofans (transparent, can see their organs, we thought they were vampires - is what jorgy was before he becams e aghol) they feed off of blood and vitality - Ochre lens is the one with the drow to the east -

south, what appears to be a dead end is the entrance the hunters use to come in and out to pass into caverns and then head west to find the lake. erdofan are enemies to the drow cultists to north have been summoning demons There are horrendous fish said to live in the lake - large predatory fish that can haul themselves up on land More chance of reasoning with mushrooms than the erdofans

Tells us that erdofan have negative healing and when they die their flesh quickly rots and turns into a gas that curdles flesh and makes it rot - advises killing them from afar She would like us ti kill the one who killed her father and sister (bring back the sword of Khurfel) and we will get a reward including a lizard steed…!! Way through goes through lizards pasture, don't be alarmed if dead, as sometimes murdered by the local creatures.

Jorgart found a dead drow in a spiders web, moved a lizard out of the way to get to him. Cloak of elvynkind which he passes to Luna (get invisibility when draw up hood, plus 1 to stealth checks, cast ghost sound) and healers gloves (plus 2 bonus to medicine checks, as a 1 action heal can do 4d6 plus 15hp once a day- which he passes to the Cloracle.

Hartvig is surrounded by fog and biting mouths, which seem to be a magical effect bite him (really hard) he critically fails, but then rerolls using a HP and only fails so takes 27 instead of 54 damage.

Skabb dispels the magic and gets a HP. good news biters are gone. Bad news a spiderdemon thing arrives (derghodaemon) and fucks Hartvig up (42 to critically hit and does 76 damage as Hartvig is good). We all roll initiative…

Hartvig is down. Sprocket has a go and I don't know what happens cos my laptop dies Luna critically recalls knowledge - its immune to swarm attacks, confusion and death effects Its weak to good (only paladins do this) Weakest save is fortitude Dot all cluster in one place as it has aoe attacks FIEND/DEMON Big Lunes then enfeebles it and hurts it some (my laptop had died so missed details)

Skabb uses her new elemental breath attack and summons a portal to an elemental plane in her gob and breathes fire all over it for 42 damage. Then runs over to Hartvigs body

Jorgarth uses his javelin of lightning but it makes the save. He moves to goad it into attacking him.

Hartvig "casts imitate corpse". He death saves and is stable. Wounded 1, 0 hit points.

Sprocketses - takes his 12 persistent bug damage. Then Summons a mighty dragon (of level 5 or lower - flame drake or storm snake) chooses storm snake - it is surprisingly ickle on the map. It has 2 actions so it lightning strikes, and deals 7 damage. target is dazzled until end of next turn. Then attacks with its tail but misses. Then augustus clementine moves to flank with jorgarth.

We are IRL this is not a drill! Notes minimal, and probably a good amount incorrect.

Skabb found some blue flowers, what were they? She can use them for potions. The pollen inflicts -1 to Will saves… Nadia might be able to make a bomb with them for her.

The medusa’s real name is Miriam (now), and she would follow us around for a while but the DM is traumatised after Augie. He relents after we refuse to let it go, and Jorgy gets control of her.

Hartvig takes some mushrooms to dry them out. We go back to the cultists to deal with the wisps for them. We have a rest, and Nadia charges ahead.

Stairs leading up, basins with muddy water. These wisps are Dread Wisps…

Initiative! I will document the outcome only, rather than the whole fight. The casters feel a pulse of magic when we win…

The cultists are delighted and run past us, on their way to see their holy one…?

Skabb follows them. “Oh, no, it’s one o' them neck-fannies.”

Also we get shot at with arrows, but they all miss. It’s the undead gnomes! “We are leaving, ya pricks, I love you,” Sprocket calls as he runs past.

Pile of carrion that was once an aquatic reptile, Skabb can tell us. Stinks worse than her.

We have a fight with the gnomes while Skabb engages the ‘God’. It tells her Velcro is back and ain’t nothing we can do about it. It’s one of those Gug things! It seems very calm.

Skabb has to make a Will save, 16. Hero Point? 19. Stupefied 1. She has been hearing whispers; “The lenses. She knows the secret of the lenses. 3 within reach. One held by the blood eaters, one lost, one very close." (I think?)

Skabb wants to recall knowledge; she doesn’t know. There is a thing in its hand that seems to be calming it, she knows she wants it but not what it does. She fails another save and is Stupefied 2. “She keeps them apart but the essences will become one.” It’s nice in this cave, Skabb thinks to herself. She eats a slug, picks her toes.

We hear a faint chanting, farting and water splashing. Nadia runs in and grabs Skabb before her brain entirely melts. She can remember what the voices were saying; she tells us. Oh the thing in the gug’s hand is a lens! She wants to grab it.

She goes back in. She hears further messages: Find the lenses and place their essences together within a host. Join the essences within Haruvex and she can fall again. (Nadia wins a Hero Point for remembering that Haruvex is Velcro...)

Nadia charms the "god" (“Well hi, Sugar!”) while Luna’s Mage Hand tickles it, Sprocket’s Mage Hand grabs the lens! The DM would have let Nadia have it for the successful Charm spell, but this is more fun.

The lens does a bunch of stuff! We give it to Hartvig.

Can we do anything to figure out where the voices were coming from? Hartvig makes a Religion check, Skabb an Occultism, and Sprocket an Arcana check; they think this was a meditation chamber. Skabb mentioned The Empty Death, something Velcro worships. Its will seems to be what the whispers are.

Time’s getting on so the DM zips us to the boss of the level. There is a pier ahead of us in the river. This is the Shadowed Dock… We have managed to miss several story elements so we don’t know much about the boss here. It’s in charge of getting the farms up and running again. Jorg’ath, having been promised Trayyyysure, charges ahead.

The dock has been recently repaired. Strange shadows on the stonework and a single iron-bound door. Behind is a room filled with mud. Jorg’ath sends Cannon Fodder ahead, and four more little stinkers appear. They say in Gnomish “Don’t open the door, Boss Lady is sleeping!”

Sprocket, in Gnomish: “Go home, I love you.”

He makes a Diplomacy check. Green 36! They take him to one side and say she is sleeping, and crotchety if awakened. "When she asks for tea make it quick and don’t tread mud on her pillows."

The next room is filled with soft furnishings stained with mud.

She is still asleep. Surprise round? Miriam sees some of the cushions float into the air and seem to be cleaning themselves. Sprocket makes an Arcana check. It’s an Unseen Servant spell, originating from the sleeping Naga. Skabb does a Nature check to see what she knows about beasts like this. She and Luna both know that this is a spirit naga, aberration, powerful spellcaster. Poisonous, has blood (Hartvig takes note). They like to form covens but this one is alone. Anyone have any Will debuffs? It has no particular weaknesses. Skabb, looking up from typing this out: “And does it taste better cooked or raw?” Neither but its strongest save is Reflex, weakest is Fortitude. Skabb does a Detect Magic; Invisible Servant is the highest level magic currently active. Steal and stab and bonk then?

We push Luna to the front, but as soon as Miriam enters the room the naga spots her - she wasn’t asleep at all! Lying bitch!!! We leave Mirabelle in there and Jorg’ath shuts the door for the sheer pleasure of booting it open again.

Nadia gets the howdy doodis, after not even a whole round - mostly thanks to Miriam (the DM definitely regrets giving in on this one). Skabb spots a wall hanging hiding a door. She picks the lock herself!

Glittering mass of traaayyyyyysure!

Perception 26 for Skabb; she spots a porcelain teapot tainted with poison. She could clean it (40gp) or harvest the venom. 130gp, 310sp; Augustus sighs, rolls his eyes and opens his mouth. Greater bracers of missile deflection! Wand of Fireball, 3 murderers' knots, a potion of quickness, a javelin of lightning and ten salt water pearls worth 90gp in total.