This is a continuation of the previous session of a somewhat chopped down D&D 3.5e game run by my friend.
Our heroes:
- Pesu Lappu, a bald, androgyne half elf sorcerer with a deadpan voice.
- Blue the very average male Human Cleric joined his order to dodge the draft and remained ever since.
- Ali the female Elf Rogue.
- Azalea the snarky, ungovernable, bratty female Halfling Rogue who ran away from home at the age of 21.
- Lulu, the 70 year old female human fighter.
- And a major NPC, Baskerville, who organized the mission. An irish-ish old man with magic powers. Along with his dog.
Further down the boardwalk the massive sundew plants make travel hazardous, and we don’t know how far we’ll sink in the mire if we try to go around. We waste a good half hour of real time debating how to ride the Troglodyte prisoner through the sundew, or use him as a sled, or make a skin suit out of him because his skin can slide through the sundew without getting stuck.
Lulu gets frustrated and uses her last flask of oil to burn one of the plants. There’s still too many. Eventually we just go for it. Everyone carefully tries to walk past, leap over, or sidle around the sundew. Lulu gets stuck and the acid burns her for a couple turns until someone pulls her out. On the far side a blob oozes up through the boardwalk and is massive: at least fifteen feet high. Someone hurls a torch into it but it goes out. Baskerville tosses a fireball and cuts it down a bit, but it’s still too big.
Lulu leaps off the boardwalk and decides to brave trudging through the mire, hoping her armor doesn’t cause her to drown if she falls into a deep spot. It’s only waist high. She gets to a tussock of grass with a birch tree and is out of the way.
The blob advances. Azalea shanks the trog prisoner uses his twitching body as a decoy for the blob and everyone swims or trudges off the boardwalk. We get around as the blob devours the trog and ignores us as we move on.
The swampy nastiness clears up a bit, leading to a little meadow with rapidly descending and thickening fog. There’s the howl of an owlbear coming from all directions. Blue determines this is a magical effect and it’s probably not a real owlbear. Something feels wrong as the characters look about and listen in the thick fog. Then they notice two glowing red eyes. Save or possibly die from death gaze. All pass except Azalea, who rolls for effect. Azalea is shaken, and has a dice roll penalty.
Abi takes a shot at the hag that’s staring down Azalea and scores a nat 20. The hag takes a nasty wound but still presses on and closes on Pesu Lappu, who barely dodges her blow. Old Lulu takes a swing and hardly wounds the creature. Blue stands there holding his torch, not wanting to be in the fight.
Next round Azalea hides in a bush. Lulu finishes off the hag before she can claw the eyes out of Pesu Lappu. We roll the body and find a scroll and a silver necklace. We decapitate the hag and discuss trying to pass this head off as the hag queen’s head instead of having to find the hag queen.
Then comes the scream of a displacer beast. It’s magical like the owlbear before it. Some shadow darts by in the fog. Pesu Lappu pops a magic missile at the shadow, and scores a hit. Now it comes into view as another hag. Everyone misses, and Azalea’s bowstring snaps. Now the terrifying hag is on Lulu, clawing at her armor and shield. Lulu looks to Blue who has been watching the fight so far and begs him to take that piece of iron off his belt and pound the hag! Instead he casts dispel magic, and the fog lifts, and the hag disappears!!
With the fog cleared we can see a wooden throne made of little trees all twisted together and the hag queen is there in all her hideous glory. Azalea tries to act cute and asks the queen to change the head we have to look like the queen, so we need not fight the queen. The queen is unmoved, and Azalea dives back into a bush. The Hag, sensing we’re going to fight, also dives into some bushes. Baskerville takes a drink from his flask. Pesu calls out to the hidden hag. Lulu’s move is to watch for any minions that the Hag Queen might have coming out of the bushes, because in her past experience these kinds of baddies will have minions.
The DM asks for Lulu’s backstory. I ask if I could have told a story during the river trip, and he says yes. [I break out my voice acting here for two characters] Lulu was once married to a gentle man named Stanley who had a magical talent to eat anything: Tree branches, shoes, coins, just about anything. They had a little house in the woods. So on their wedding night Stanley had eaten a particularly poisonous mushroom that didn’t kill him but caused him to hallucinate a bit. He mistakenly thought he killed Lulu during the consummation of their marriage, and from that point on thought Lulu was just a ghost haunting him. He became so angry he told Lulu to leave and never come back, so Lulu left.
After a bit she tried to find him again, but the strange man and his little house were gone. So Lulu, trained in the sword, did the best she could for an average fighter with no Dexterity or Strength bonus doing wagon escorts, raids, guard duty, and the like. She’d raid a king’s convoy one week, only to get hired on as a guard the next. Nothing fancy. When time allowed, she followed rumors of the strange man who could eat anything into the wilderness, only to come up empty handed. If Lulu had one desire, it was to see Stanley again before she dies.
Back to the game. The DM gives me a coupon for my performance I can cash in to boost a die roll. Lulu observes nothing of interest however when watching for minions. Just frogs peeping and crickets. The Hag Queen emerges from hiding to fight. Azalea shoots and scratches the queen. Baskerville’s dog starts barking like crazy. The Hag closes on Abi. Abi stabs her. With the Hag Queen wounded, Pesu Lappu tries to negotiate again.
The fight stops while we negotiate. Baskerville shows the drawing of the artifact we’re collecting fragments of. She agrees to come back to the troll kingdom. The troll king never said we had to bring her head without the body, so we figured this would fulfill our contact.
The Hag Queen is named Kermilla. Pesu Lappu befriends the queen, who gives her a magic scroll. We reach the sundew flowers again and Kermilla casts a spell to rot the flowers and we pass through.
Back at the raft we start rowing up the river. A giant lamprey attacks the boat. Baskerville’s dog jumps in and starts fighting this fish in the water. During the commotion Abi lifts a magic dagger from Kermilla’s pocket. It is a dagger inscribed with “Equal Punishment, Equal Reward”. It is a torture dagger, which heals the damage inflicted after one pulls it out of the victim.
Blue uses a boat hook to snag the fish and hauls it on board. There’s a chunk of flesh missing where Baskerville’s dog bit it. Pesu Lappu sticks her hand in it’s mouth and casts Ray of Frost, freezing its brain and ending the battle.
Eventually we make it back up the river to the port, and travel to the Troll City. We’re ushered in to meet the King, who upon seeing Kermilla (nat 1 reaction roll) is both scared and acknowledges we did bring the Hag Queen’s head back and gives us the artifact fragment.
Baskerville says the next artifact fragment is in the Dark Forest, where we’ll resume next Sunday.