Session 68 - The Party Loses A Tug Of War With A Plant. Twice.
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Ches 2. End of session: 1490DR Ches 9
Our Heroes are waiting for Jeep and his mechanical friends to fix the clockwork mechanism using the special cog recovered from the body of Jarvis. Karoshi throws a piece of random metal upwards to test the limits of the 'time freeze' that Iwee seems to be stuck in. Derrick, bored, throws a cog at Iwee's head. Luckily both pieces of metal stop in time and space before causing any damage.
After a couple of hours, now with less than two hours before the tower is due to be transported into the Nine Planes of Hell for a week, Jeep lets them know that the cog has been repaired and is ready to be inserted into the main mechanism in order to restart the main clocks.
This is done without incident, and, after 300 years of being stopped, the clock mechanism in the upper tower restarts smoothly.
At this point, Iwee, who is completely unaware of being frozen for the past two hours, is surprised when a metal cog seems to appear from nowhere and hit her in the shoulder! It does no damage, but does surprise her to such an extent that she falls from the ladder to the hard floor below. Karoshi glares at Derrick, not for the first time.
Brushing herself down, and glossing over where the mysterious metal cog came from, Iwee is surprised when the others explain that she has been frozen in time for the last two hours. Pressed for time, and not wanting to pay the Nine Planes of Hell a visit, Iwee manages to persuade a now alive-and-well Azkael who is up in the rafters, to come down to talk to them.
After some explanation, and persuasion, about Azkael's time freeze for the last 300 years, the group try to 'encourage' him to give them Angelica's bones, which he says he does still have and, as far as he is concerned, he only recently received in payment for the construction of the clocktower in Settlestone. Azkael is a little confused, perhaps understandably, by the whole situation, and Iwee resorts to lying about the current market price of Siren's Bones, something that makes her, and Jaxii, quite uncomfortable.
Eventually, and after a chat with Jeep, Azkael starts to understand what has been going on, and the extent to which the party of "Heroes" have helped him out and rescued him. At this point he is happy to hand over Angelica's bones to the party, and also throws in a portable brass brazier, which Derrick is very happy about - he may now be a bit more willing to risk Owl Pacino's life. Pacino is less happy about the present - or would be, if he had the intelligence to know what it meant.
With only an hour to go before the tower is due to disappear, the group hurriedly leave the tower and decide to camp on the salt flats for the rest of the night. Their nights are disturbed, and they get very little sleep and equally little rest, though they are still happy with their decision to leave the tower when they see it completely vanish on the stroke of midnight.
Keen to get off of the haunting salt flats, they start the journey back to Mistloch as soon as it gets light, arriving without incident a few days later. They arrange for another trip to The Haunt and, after meeting Glisten again, they re-bury Angelica's bones beneath the standing stone with appropriate reverence and ceremony. As Karoshi talks to Angelica he feels inspired when the spirit is finally able to leave this place.
Glisten is pleased that Angelica is finally at peace, but saddened at the implication that this means she and Kai will be asked to leave their home in order to prevent further problems with the rising waters. However, she promises that she and her water elemental friend will leave as soon as he shows any signs of continuing to show the mood swings that are believed to be the cause of the local problems.
Our "Heroes" pause to take a breather and decide upon their next actions. With six days lost from their travels to Azkael's tower, most are keen to get the ceremony to link Iwee back with Kardreth - for which they need some bluecap mushrooms.
And so they quickly head straight towards the entrance to the land of the Myconids - The Sporerealm. With the directions provided by Silvermoon previously, they find the entrance quickly, though it does take them a couple of days to get there. They also decide to purchase their mount - Thumb - as it is probably cheaper than to continuously hire him every day.
The entrance is a mineshaft, disused and apparently infrequently visited. After a number of weeks spent above ground, the party prepare themselves for descending into darkness once again. After a number of hours following an old mining tunnel lower into the ground, they arrive at an underground river, with large caverns illuminated by fluorescent fungi. Calling out to any myconids in the area, their calls go unanswered and, indeed, there seems little movement in these caverns. They do spot a trail heading across a ford in the river and onto the other side, which they follow carefully.
On the other side of the river, Iwee spots what looks to be a small body hidden beneath some green moss growing on the cavern wall ahead. She approaches the body to see what it could be, though takes the precaution of having a rope tied around here, with the other end held by Karoshi.
At this point the moss that is covering the body suddenly lashes out at the approaching gnome, striking her with great force. Reeling from the vicious attack, Iwee finds she is caught by the moss and is unable to move!
Pleased with their foresight and planning, Karoshi and Derrick pull on the rope to try to pull Iwee away from the clutches of the moss. Unfortunately the ground is slippery and rough, and the two of them don't manage to extricate the gnome from the plant.
Unable to escape, Iwee surrounds the moss in Faerie Fire, but her efforts are rewarded by more hits from lashing out tentacles of moss, causing great wealds to form on her body. Derrick lets go of the rope and decides to run in and attack the moss with his sword. Jaxii joins Karoshi and helps him pull the rope again, but once more the slippery ground (or perhaps their incompetence?) means they are unable to pull Iwee out from the moss. Jaxii runs in and uses her sword against the moss, damaging it more, but it still looks very green!
Iwee, worried that another hit from the moss would down her, decides to Misty Step away from the grapple and appears behind the tiefling paladin, taking a potion of healing to recover some health.
With no one in its tendrils, the moss attacks Derrick and slashes him through his armour, grappling him tightly and causing him to gain a level of exhaustion. Derrick tries to break himself out of the moss, but fails. Jaxii decides to cast fireball at the moss, and at Derrick, and damages both. Derrick is not looking very healthy.
Iwee slows the moss, trying to ensure it is easier to hit (though it means dropping the faerie fire, so attackers no longer gained advantage). As the moss tightens its hold on Derrick, it squeezes him enough for him to lose consciousness. Things are looking dire for the fighter. His unconscious body remains grappled, and another hit from the plant would bring him very likely close to death. Our "Heroes" have only a few seconds to save him.
Our battle-hardened group decide to go in hard and try to take out the moss before it has a chance to finish off Derrick. The paladin runs in and smites the plant for considerable damage and tries a second time, for less damage, but it is enough for the moss to crumple and the tendrils around Derrick to retract as he sinks to the floor, unconscious. Karoshi transfers 10hp to Derrick to bring him back to consciousness, though now he has two levels of exhaustion.
And so we leave our "Heroes" in the dim, humid atmosphere of the caverns, nervous of all the surrounding moss and plant life, exhausted and low on spells. Perfect for further exploration!