1st day of Annotide, 12th Year of the Reign of Empress Sorsasta, 5728
From the Journals of Brother Xindge
Tonight, it is just Jonathan, Rankhum the Really Shitty Mage and Xindge. We mull over our options and decide to go after some bandits instead of going after the Baron’s son’s signet ring. These bandits have been harassing ships coming up the river. Nope, the bandits have already been dealt with. So we are going to the swamps to see if a couple of potion dealers (the Bubblepots) who disappeared two months ago are still alive.
It’s called the
Murkdeth swamp. And before they go, they head to the
Waters and Potions shop, where the Bubblepots’ daughter runs the shop in her parents’ absence.
Dorsa Bubblepot by name. It’s exactly what you would expect a potion shop to look like. Our heroes ask her questions to elicit the possible whereabouts of her parents. There is a farmer at the edge of the swamp who boards them at night before they go into the swamp. They stopped there on the way out but never came back. Henfir Bubblepot wore a large green floppy hat and Griselli Bubblepot was wearing a blue dress. The farmer’s name is Gorby Bessel. He farms cabbages. He lives with his wife Veronica. They have a dog named Dog. The Bessels are halflings. Dorsa hands each of us a healing potion.
We head out the south gate. The
Morass of Dorghulal is the official name of the swamp. We get to the farm as the day comes to an end. Veronica goes inside, Gorby holds a spear at us. Rankhum explains to the nervous farmer our purpose at his farm. He invites us to spend the night in the barn. We get a glass of lemonade. The Bubblepots were looking for mushrooms on rotting logs and yellow flowers on high points of land in the swamp. There are many dangers in the swamp. There are giant lizards, amphibians, gigantic walking mushrooms and strange lights at night. Torches, 3 or 4 of them, in a line, 200 yards from the farm. We stay the night in the barn. We ravishes the cabbages.
The next morning we get up, and are breakfasted by Veronica. Then we head off into the swamp. The ground is wet in some spots and dry in others. We slowly trudge our way through the muck. Though it is closing in on noon, it’s rather dark. Jonathan and Xindge notice, as we make our way up a small rise, the remains of a fire pit. We moved up to investigate. Next to us there is evidence of a camp made. Xindge hears a splash at the water’s edge. We go to investigate. We stand there, Jonathan throws a rock into the water. He critically fails. It hits the water and nothing happens. Xindge notices some old nonhuman animal tracks, on the larger side. We decide to leave whatever is at the waters’ edge alone.
Half an hour later we come across a smaller island with trees down with fungus growing out of it. Evidence that some of it was picked at some point in the past. The new growth is not harvestable. There is a boot impression under the log.
As we look at the log, Animated mushroom creatures rise up out of the ground with weapons and move to attack us. They communicate in a mushroomy language. Jonathan attacks with a javelin, he hits for minimal damage. Rankhum tosses magic missiles at them. Xindge splatters one. He avoids the spores that the creature gives off when killed. The remaining creatures let out a wail. Jonathan attacks, then Rankhum. Damage is attained. Xindge tries to heal himself but fails catastrophically. Two more of these critters appear and do damage to Xindge and Jonathan. Jonathan kills one, but the cloud of spores surrounds him and he starts choking on the spores. Rankhum kills another and Xindge destroys one more and avoids the spore issue. Three more appear, including one large one. The large one looks around and casts a sleep spell. Xindge and Jonathan both fall asleep. Rankhum is understandably panicked. One of the critters goes to Jonathan and breaths spores into his face. Rankhum casts a sleep spell of his own. One of the critters falls but two remain upright. Then Rankhum tries to wake up Jonathan. Xindge gets breathed on, the Big Shroom casts a spell on Rankhum and it backfires and he loses the spell for three days. Jonathan is on the ground and can’t attack, so he stands up and swigs his potion. Minimal effect but something. Rankhum backs up and fires magic missile, burying three in the mushroom man. It poofs. Xindge still snoozes. He dreams of stuffed mushrooms. Jonathan opts to kill the shroom breathing on Xindge. He misses. Rankhum fires at the last remaining little shroom over Xindge and fails spectacularly. Lots of natural ones being rolled today. Jonathan tries to wake up Xindge. He succeeds. The big mushroom dude melts into the ground and disappears. Rankhum fires up his magic missiles again into the one remaining and poofs it. That’s all for that.
Jonathan tries to rid himself of the spores. Xindge and Rankhum remain unaffected. We decide to press on.
It turns out that the mushroom folk seem to have worn bits of blue fabric, maybe from the dress of Mrs. Bubblepot. Oh, not good. Rankhum stabs a dagger into the ground where the big shroom guy popped back into the ground, the soil is loose. Xindge jams a spear into the ground and it goes 2 feet easily. Rankhum begins digging. Xindge assists him. We expose a tunnel underneath. We drop down into it. Xindge notices that the passage slopes down in either direction. We hear some shrieking from one direction so we head out that way. We continue down the passage several hundred feet. We are in a subterranean world. A mushroom man steps out from around a corner. Jonathan stabs at it and misses. Rankhum attacks it a sleep spell and misses. Xindge misses as well. The shroom shrieks and swings his stone mace at Jonathan and misses. Jonathan swings his axe and hits! Rankhum kills it with a magic missile. Poof!
We continue on into a large chamber, which ends the corridor. A large number of Shrooms occupy the room. Jonathan hits one with a crossbow bolt. Rankhum casts a sleep spell and scores big. All four in his range fall to it. Xindge cashes in all of his options and scores huge…natural 20, with a 50% extra damage card and brings the large Shroom to his last hit point. He melts into the ground to get away.
Jonathan is attacked with two spears, which both miss. Xindge is missed by a mace. Jonathan misses with his axe. Rankhum throws another sleep spell and succeeds, one falls. Xindge shoots a guiding bolt into another Shroom. It drops into the ground. The other is also gone. The sleeping ones Jonathan slaughters. One is wearing a green floppy hat. Well, that answers that.
We examine the chamber. We find the Bubblepots' satchels plus four potions. We make haste to get back to the farm. It gets dark shortly before that happens. So, in the dark we notice a disturbance in the water moving towards us. We brace for combat. Two of us make land, Jonathan does not. He gets bitten. The thing tries to drag him down. Jonathan prevents it from doing so. He tries to attack and barely misses. Rankhum tries to cast a light spell on it and it backfires, he loses the spell for 4 days. Xindge does decent damage with a a guided bolt. Jonathan is able to withstand its attempts to wrest it beneath the water. Jonathan hits it and does some damage. Xindge is unable to hit the thing, as is Rankhum. Jonathan sustains enough damage to go down and the creature drags him off quickly. Rankhum sleeps the monster and we go in to rescue Jonathan. Xindge finds him in the sludge and hoists him up. Xindge and Rankhum move to get out of the water and we heal him up. Whew. We race towards the farm, we make it back to the farm.
We knock on the door and Gorby answers. We tell him what happened and we get some tea and food. We check out the potions. One is water breathing, one is lesser restoration and two cure light wounds. We give the lesser restoration potion to Jonathan and he is cured of his fungal infection.
The next day we head back to town and explain to the daughter what happened and she confirmed the fabrics. We have brought closure to a grieving family. She gives us the remaining three potions for our use.
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