DND Blog

A place to keep DND session recaps, from various campaigns.

The Thirty-Fourth Session

November 14, 2020, Campaign: As the ground quakes, evil wakes

We leave Zelrathi and Moon behind at the Temple of Ioun in Quadroads. Viroth Aiodon, a Blood Hunter, joins the Party. A night in a spiderwebbed village reveals giant spiders full of pink flesh and strange crystals.

Table of Contents

  1. Last session
  2. Morning in Quadroads
  3. Zelrathi, Moon and the Library
  4. Leaving Quadroads
  5. On the Road
  6. The Webbed Village
  7. The Night in the Webbed Village
  8. Next steps

Last session

We arrived in Quadroads and found an inexpensive inn.

Those who said they were going though all (400+ in the bag of holding) books from the Ice lord's Lair learned the following:

Morning in Quadroads

We spent the night in The Random Inn, which is a "perfectly normal" inn in a seedy part of Quadroads.

So we're discussing what the next few sessions will entail. Because Zelrathi will stay in Quadroads with Moon, we might need someone to replace him, suggests Jerry. Healing is a major concern of the Party. Zelrathi says we don't need him for that; the Party can just stock up on healing potions, and use Bugfood's Cleric healing in a pinch.

Bartimeus, the Regular Inn's ale-house drake, is having some trouble at the next table over. He wants something to eat, but the inn doesn't have any more of the good meat that he likes. The other folks at that table believe that he should go work at the Coinflip or the Death's Door, a themed bar which is notable for the "murder hallway" in its basement. Those bars would probably have the good meats. The Drake says that it's not fair; those bars should've fallen on hard times instead. In retrospect, this feels like we had an opportunity to adopt a powerful NPC as an ally, but failed.

Bugfood overhears this conversation, and goes outside to Sky Write: "Free beer, tomorrow night at 5 at The Regular Inn!" He leans over to Vurguron, who followed him outside, and confides that these folks will have lots of business tomorrow. Then he goes back inside to tell the barmaid and the owner about tomorrow's business bounty. They look at each other skeptically.

And then it's time to leave. Bugfood doesn't want to be in town when The Regular Inn is deluged by patrons expecting free beer.

Rather than spending half the day searching for a reputable alchemist, Zelrathi leads us to someone he knows. An alchemist who he got on the wrong side of by fucking the alchemist's sister. Zelrathi says that we need to not know him when we go to visit the alchemist. He leads us to the street that contains the alchemist's shop, and leaves us to continue on to Glassmore's. The alchemist is a red-haired dwarf, who sells us some potions. We buy every healing potion there.

We ask the dwarf for advice on other healing items, and he suggests a place to buy a Scroll of Revivfy

As we are about to leave, a male Elf with a fancy silver pauldron walks in. Brian's new character, replacing Zelrathi!

Ryltar pats the Elf's shoulder and says, "I'm sorry, we bought him all out." We get the strange feeling that something is not right with this Elf.

At Glassmore's recommendation, we go to Dee's Goodbarrel and Goodmagicks. At the back, standing menacingly in a flower-print apron is an Orc. Salris introduces himself, saying, "I take it you're Goodbarrel?"

The Orc is not Goodbarrel. From behind the counter comes a squeaky voice of a knee-high, elderly Gnome woman, who says she's Goodbarrel. We inquire after a Scroll of Revivify. She ducks back into the store curtain.

The Elf has followed us, it seems, and so we talk loudly about needing another companion.

Goodbarrel doesn't have anything that we're interested in buying, so we go off in search of Zelrathi.

Zelrathi, Moon and the Library

The library is a grand building, a quiet temple to seekers of knowledge and the goddess Ioun. Zelrathi asks the desk clerk for information about certain celestial things, and reasons of star disappearance, and so on. The librarian has a fancy Book of Google, but the search interface isn't very helpful. With a 10 gold donation, he gets access to a private facilitator, and they disappear into the stacks to do research.

The rest of the Party shows up at the library-temple a few hours later.

Bugfood sidles up to the desk to ask if someone can "fix this Tabaxi."

The desk clerk is nonplussed, saying it's Moon's choice whether to get fixed, but Bugfood explains that she's under a curse. The desk clerk says we'd need to leave her with a facilitator.

Zelrathi returns with a facilitator and a huge stack of books, and we catch him up.

An old Elf walks up, saying he was in the middle of a lecture, but that he heard that there was someone who wanted to cast off the shackles of an oppressor. So we transfer Moon to his care, and she says we can keep her Hat of Disguise.

As the Party is about to leave, Moon remarks on her ability to pay for things, so Bugfood gives her all his gold: 99 gold. She thanks him, but Jerry gives her 10 platinum. She stutters that she meant components, but lo and behold, she's probably good now. Salris keeps her components.

Ryltar asks Zelrathi for a Spell Scroll of Revivify, but it'll take a week for him to make, and we want to leave town before tomorrow.

Zelrathi follows the acolyte back into the temple, passing a big stained-glass window of Ioun.

As the Party leaves, the same Elven male passes us heading in. Ryltar asks him if he's following us.

"No," he says, continuing: "Why are you here?"

"We're saying goodbye to some friends, who we're leaving in town before we're going to go on an expedition where we'll get paid a lot."

"What are you doing? Where are you going?"

"We're going to retrieve a thing from a tree." Ryltar is being very deceptive.

"You're going to get the Sky Staff?" This High Elf has dark brown hair, lime-green eyes, a dark green cloak, a silver pauldron depicting a bird wrapped in thunderbolts, and a big-ass bow.

We tell him what little we know of Kerjes and her habitat, and he facepalms. "Tell you what. I'm going to go collect my bounty. You stay here, and then I will accompany you, because you will be killed otherwise."

This fellow is a Blood Hunter, Viroth Aiodon, of the Order of the Thunder Bird. He is primarily a ranged fighter. His bow lights up when he draws it, and he takes some damage from activating his Crimson Rite to make it light up

Leaving Quadroads

Once we're out of town, Salris drops his Leon disguise, which provokes a "Hm!' from Viroth, who had noticed that something that was off about Leon but wasn't sure what. Salris explains.

On the way out of town, Jerry remembers that she has 400+ books in her bag and so she and a couple of the Party go back to the Temple of Ioun to donate books and give them to Zelrathi, in the hopes that he will find them useful.

Bugfood remains outside the town, attuning to his Hat of Disguise. He's wearing the two halves of the weird mask, and the hat, talking to himself.

And then we leave again.

We don't hire horses; so we head out on foot, with Bugfood in the form of a warhorse.

Our course will take us to the east-northeast around a lake, and then to the east into the woods of the Elven wild.

On the Road

The first day's travel goes without incident, though we notice a lot of spider webs in trees to the east.

The second day passes without incident, but at night we hear many feet approach and pass us. Jerry's hearing thinks it's about a dozen spiders.

The third day happens under heavy rain, following a makeshift stream down the edge of a lake, where there is a small village named Renewal, encased in spider webs.

The Webbed Village

The village of Renewal is right against the edge of this lake, northeast of Quadroads. It would be a small fishing village, a waypoint on the road to the West Haven. Instead, it is quite silent.

There's lots of tracks of octopedal beasts all over the town, and some humanoid footprints leading to an untouched cabin. This cabin is set away from the rest just a little, and is less webbed.

Bugfood's Clairvoyance looks at the house and sees that it is empty and barricaded. But he doesn't understand what a barricade is or how it works, so he says that it is barricaded. We go up to the house and knock on its door.

From inside comes a muffled "Hello?"

Bugfood explains, "Hello! We are travelers coming through and we saw that your town is destroyed. Do you need any assistance? We are looking for a cup of sugar and a place to stay the night."

There's some discussion inside the house, and the door opens to reveal a blonde-haired female Halfling, and six children from ages 6-13. They didn't know to evacuate until it was too late, but this one grabbed some kids from her family and others. The adults fought the spiders but were eventually taken. She points out a direction through a cracked window: this is the direction that the spiders took the Hendersons a couple days ago. And the spiders came from the East.

The kids appear to be out of good food; Ryltar gives them each a trail ration and Bugfood casts Goodberry to feed them for tonight. He also decides to Conjure Kittens.

We decide to take the children under our wing with us to the Sky Diamond Academy.

But first, we stay the night.

The Night in the Webbed Village

During the second watch of the night, Jerry and Viroth see four large spiders come into town. Each is mutated in some way; all have two legs replaced with extra-long tentacle-legs; sometimes those legs are on the same side of their body and sometimes not.

The cyclops spider's eye falls upon our house, and it and the split spider walk over and start webbing our house up.

The fight opens with Viroth launching a magical arrow at one of the spiders webbing the house. Various spells are used, but Jerry tries to stab one through the wall and succeeds only in opening a larger hole in the wall. Viroth shoots at the acid spider, and hits once, successfully holding it in place for a term until the spider can make another strength save. Vurguron shoots his crossbow at that spider for some small damage.

The spider that Jerry tried to stab attacks the wall with her hole in it, breaking a large hole in the wall. Then it tries to attack Jerry with a tentacle-leg. One leg connects for for 13 damage, wrapping around and restraining her. Salris' held Eldritch Blast hits that spider for 18 damage. The second spider crawls up on the roof, out of sight. A third spider tries to break through a window, loosening it in the frame.

Across the street, the restrained acid spider struggles, as the house it stands on begins to collapse from acid damage.

Ryltar tries to Slow the visible spiders, but fails. Bugfood's summoned Quicklings attack the spider restraining Jerry , and they do some little damage against the spiders who seem curiously impervious to damage. Salris slashes at that spider twice, dealing some significant damage, before shooting two Eldritch Blasts at the roof spider. Bugfood directs the Quicklings to free Jerry. Jerry tries to get herself out of the tentacle, but does not succeed in freeing herself. Viroth succeeds in several attacks against the window-breaking spider, and Vurguron shoots at the dissolving spider some more.

The tentacle wrapped around Jerry loosens and squeezes her again, for 19 damage this time. The second tentacle from that spider bounces off Salris' shield, and then that spider, halfway through the wall, tries to bite him, but is again deflected by the shield. The roof spider attacks the roof.

Across the street, the dissolving spider falls into the dissolving house, and is buried under its roof.

Ryltar attacks the window-breaker. Bugfood's Quicklings saw at the tentacle holding Jerry, dealing 5 cold. Some of the tentacle's spider skin freezes solid, which falls off to reveal more of the pink flesh. The Quicklings free her, and the tentacle begins to heal in more of that pink flesh. Salris hacks at that spider, dealing 31 damage, and his pact khopesh's necrotic damage burns away the growths of the spider. Bugfood casts a third-level Inflict Wounds to attack the spider, but trips over his own Quickling. He then instructs the quicklings to go for the spider's eyes. Jerry cuts the spider attacking her in twain, revealing that this spider was no longer a spider: its internal organs had homogenized into an otherworldly aberration.

Viroth shoots some arrows at the spider attacking the window, but does little damage. Vurguron advances on it and stabs it some with his sword.

The roof spider finally crashes down through the ceiling. It tries to attack the Quickling it landed on top of, and fails. The window spider retreats, and Vurguron attacks it as it flees, but it escapes down the road.

Ryltar sticks his head out the damaged window, and uses the Wand of Magic Missiles to shoot at the fleeing spider. The retreating spider takes 11 damage from 3 missiles, exploding like a cantaloupe. He then turns the wand on the spider that made it into the house, and it takes 24 force damage from 5 missiles, but doesn't die. With four eyes, a vertically-split abdomen, and feet down below its knees, this is the spider known as Tails.

The Quicklings stab it in the eyes.

Bugfood casts Tongues to see if he can learn any languages spoken by the spider. His hand touches it on the leg, and he says, "Hay buddy," but his hand cuts through the leg like butter, and he learns no language. Bugfood then uses Balm of the Summer Court on Jerry for half of her damage, and Jerry's follow-up attack almost cuts the spider in half. Her glaive sticks in its head. Viroth shoots it with a bloody arrow, popping the spider. The rooms are splattered in pink flesh.

This encounter is not yet over; Viroth tells everyone that the dissolving spider is still alive in the building opposite. He steps to the Ethereal Plane (once per short rest), phases through two houses, and then shoots the spider from the Ethereal Plane, for 14 damage (and it's slowed anyways).

The trapped spider can't call for help, but it shoots his ethereal form with web, and he takes 21 points of acid damage, and is temporarily restrained. The spider frees itself; Ryltar escapes the children's house and then shoots into the spider's house with Ice Storm. The spider's skin falls off, revealing lots of pink flesh. Salris comes out of the house to join Ryltar. They ogle the spider through a window.

Bugfood dispatches his Quicklings down to the village to go look around and report back.

Jerry steps out of the children's house through the hole she made, and sees nothing of interest outside the house in that direction.

Viroth uses his last Blood Maledict on the spider, and then escapes the house and venomous webs via the simple expedient of walking through the wall in Ethereal form.

Vurguron comes through the broken house window to try to join in the attacks against the spider, He punches through the window and climbs into the house to attack it, but he exposes himself to the immobile spider's attacks. It attacks him twice with its tentacle-limbs. His Shield spell deflects its attacks.

Vurguron's fat ass blocks the window, and Ryltar can't see through it to cast into the room. He pushes him into the room, saying "Good luck, Buddy." Vurguron lands prone inside the room, clearing the window. Salris fires two Eldritch Blasts through the window, boosting them through the Ring of the Arcamag, popping first the spider's eyes, and then the rest of it.

Bugfood's Quickling returns to report there's a lot of spiderwebs, but nothing moving in town. Bugfood slaps himself and releases the spell.

The spiders finish dissolving, leaving behind some obsidian pumice with green crystals. Bugfood determines to cast Detect Magic in the morning.

Ryltar heads back into the house and explains to the children that they did the right thing in staying hidden and silent.

Next steps

Next session:

Ongoing questions: