Session date: Monday, January 28, 2019
Game date: Saturday, March 12, 211
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 7, hp 41, xp 71740/140000
Caryatid, Magic-user 5, hp 24, xp 20855/40000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 4, hp 15, xp 9645/16000
Adrien, Fighter 4, hp 16, xp 8526/16000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 5, hp 17, xp 17006/32000
Father Chase Pike, Cleric 3, hp 13, xp 4531/6000
Orin, Elf 1, hp 4, xp 2237/4000
Jack, Thief 3, hp 10, xp 2913/4800
Two weeks had passed since our last session, and Simon managed to fail both saving throws, remaining charmed by the cultist on the third level. This was really rather funny, as objectively it is an easy saving throw for a halfling. In the Rusty Lantern, the adventurers met a frail old antiquarian named Elberic who was going from table to table trying to interest adventurers and other regulars in a few magical scrolls he possessed. He had scrolls of Detect Magic, Shield, and Growth of Animals. He was asking 250 gold darics for the first two scrolls, and 750 darics for the Growth of Animals scroll. Adrien begged and pleaded with Caryatid to buy the Growth of Animals scroll so that Father Chase could cast it on her "pet" giant ferret Norman and double his size. Caryatid thought this was a horrifying idea, but somehow went along with the plan. Caryatid offered Elberic the rather offensively low amount of 100 darics for the scroll, turning on all of her charm to lowball him. She aced her reaction check, so what could I do? Elberic blushed furiously and explained that he couldn't possibly let the scroll go for such a low amount as he would be losing money on it, and that he was already heavily discounting the scroll from what it would cost to hire a priest to prepare one, but that he could possibly go down to 500 darics. Caryatid haggled further, and managed to sweet-talk him into taking 300 darics, plus she bought him a nice lunch and a bottle of wine. SOLD! Elberic sat down to his lunch, looking quite overwhelmed and unsure of who had got the better side of the deal.
They went below, and headed down towards deeper levels. When they entered the hall with the living crystal statue that guarded the stairs down to level two, they found the hall crowded with more than a dozen giant rats. Norman strained against his leash, and Adrien let him go. He pounced on the nearest rat, snapping its neck instantly and worrying its head in his jaws ferociously. Adrien drew forth the "disco sword" and sliced another rat in half as multicolored lights streamed across the walls. Norman was attacked by two other rats and bit twice, and had to retreat, tail between his legs. The party quickly killed rats left and right and soon the survivors fled the hall through a hole gnawed in the bottom of one of the doors.
Down to level three they went, and as they entered the first room on the third level, they were surprised by Elfstar and two other black-robed cultists! Elfstar murmured words and a strange feeling came over Gulleck for a moment but then passed. Elfstar smiled sheepishly and waved at Gulleck.
"Now, sugar," said Gulleck primly, "you want to be real careful who you're casting spells on. Someone might take offense."
Simon intervened to make excuses for the behavior of his "best friend". Yes, they were heading out to find a bugbear right now! Come on, everyone let's go!
And as the adventurers marched down the dungeon halls in search of a bugbear, the table broke into song, disturbingly in unison:
"Come on, vámonos! Everybody let's go!
Come let's get to it, I know that we can do it!
Where are the bugbears? *clap clap clap*
Where are the bugbears? *clap clap clap*"
Yep, it's that kind of D&D game.
The funny thing was that even though they had just told the cultists they were off to find a bugbear, that pointed avoided the Queen of Nightmare's palace and went further north, along the wide "Halls of Pleasure" with its faded carpet and large ornate painting depicting the ultra-rich of Ancient Idalium feasting, dancing, watching arena fights, etc.
They rounded a corner at the end of the hall and found themselves in a large, square room, larger than their light could illuminate. They walked carefully round, exploring in the light of Simon's sword. All around the perimeter of the room, a gallery balcony overlooked the room. Steep stairs led up to this gallery at intervals. In the center of the floor, a thirty foot square was marked off with a thick line of red paint. This square was dusted in old sawdust. The walls below the galleries were covered with racks of all sorts of weapons: swords, polearms, maces, nets, spears, bows, etc. At the eastern wall of the room they found, between two racks of weapons, three metallic sashes hanging on pegs. One was made of bronze, one was silver, and one was gold.
Jack's eyes grew wide at the sight of the apparently solid gold sash, and he took it from the wall and placed it over his shoulders. Then he decided to walk across the room.
"So, Jack is crossing the red line and walking across the square?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"Okay..."
There was a sudden rush of wind and a brief flash of light and suddenly inside the square with Jack was a hideous lumpy black blob of indeterminate composition, rippling and bubbling. It seemed to sense Jack and surged forward, engulfing his feet with the edge of its pulpy mass. He screamed in pain as the meaty blob's acidic secretions burned into his legs. The blob was slowly creeping up Jack's legs as he thrashed his arms in panic.
Caryatid made a cold and calculated decision. Jack had never been revived in the resurrection pool, so as long as they could retrieve his body, he could be restored. So she dropped a fireball on the blob. Jack saw what she was doing and with a look of sheer horror on his face attempted to cover himself with his cloak and avoid the worst of the inferno. Caryatid tried to target the spell so that it would hit the blob but not Jack, but this is a difficult thing to do in the heat of combat. I think I spitballed some odds of missing him, or perhaps had her make a dexterity check. Either way, her roll failed. Jack did make his saving throw for half damage, but even so he still died screaming as the flames erupted around him. The air was filled with the unmistakable smell of sausage frying as the black pudding sizzled and sputtered in the flame, large chunks of it melting away from the main mass. The blob was clearly significantly injured, but certainly not destroyed, and it started to creep further over Jack's burned and blistered body.
Caryatid sent a Magic Missile at the pudding, which did nothing except chip a chunk of the blob off and it wriggled away with a life of its own! Gulleck crossed over the threshold of the arena square to engage the pudding in melee, but discovered to her dismay that neither her magical axe nor a mace tossed to her by Father Chase did any damage to it. In fact, like Caryatid's, Gulleck's attacks merely split smaller hunks of the pudding off from the main blob, which oozed around Gulleck's boots and burned at her shins, causing her severe damage.
Adrien uncorked a flask of oil and splashed it over the pudding, with an aim to setting it aflame, but the party consensus quickly turned to simply retrieving Jack's body and abandoning the fight. Caryatid sent her magical animated silk rope into the arena to tie itself around Jack's body. Gulleck disengaged from the blobs and backed out of the arena, and she and Adrien heaved on the rope. Jack's body broke free of the engulfing blob with a horrible hollow sucking sound and they pulled him towards them. Alas, as his body touched the threshold of the square, it met with some invisible resistance and they could not pull him across it. Gulleck stepped back into the square and tried to push from within, but something was preventing Jack's body from leaving the square. Gulleck guessed that it must be the gold sash Jack had donned, and tried to take the sash off, but it would not lift off of Jack's shoulders no matter how hard she pulled at it. Meanwhile the lumpy black pudding was wrapping itself around Gulleck's legs, searing her with its toxic juices, to the point that she nearly passed out from pain. (Gulleck was actually down to only 2 hit points here!)
Accepting defeat, Gulleck rolled the Big Green d30 to win initiative, and abandoned Jack's body, pulling herself free of the blob and backing away. Everyone fled the room, and the pudding went back to slowly digesting Jack's corpse in the darkness.
It was a demoralizing episode, and the retainers did poorly on their morale checks, having witnessed Caryatid fireball one of their co-workers and then abandon his body. Meat left for two weeks, and Orin decided to take a full five weeks off.
