Session 49 - Wipe 'Em Out! Normal Service Is Resumed
Wed 27th Oct 19:45 - 23:15
In-game timeline: Nightal 16 - Nightal 17 DR1489
Our "Heroes" arrive at a vast underground cavern at the end of a relatively recent mineshaft that had been closed up. The cavern is wider and taller than the eyes can see, and is filled with a great variety of mushrooms - some giving out luminescent light which enables the whole party to see, though the slight fog of spores or similar is a little restrictive to seeing any great distance.
The party follow a relatively obvious path ahead of them, heading towards the growing sound of running water, trying to avoid destroying any fungi in their path as they go. When they reach a flowing river, they decide to stop and camp for the evening. While resting, a couple of our "heroes" think they spot some movement from the bank on the other side of the river, and while Devon is on watch he sends Nige a-scouting, and the owl comes back reporting only the mysterious word "legs".
After a relatively decent night's rest, the group have some breakfast and head across the stream together. They decide to head south-west, towards the yellowy area. Drogan leads the way and he heads into a small cave that seems to be covered in a brown-yellow mould. He moves cautiously into the room and kicks up a load of brown spores from the mould covering the floor. His dwarven resilience prevents the spores from having an adverse effect on him, but he decides it is probably worth backing out to avoid kicking up more of this mould. Unfortunately there is more in this cave than just the mould, and Drogan doesn't get a chance to retreat!
A few small, fungus-based creatures run over to Drogan and try to slash him with their claw-like appendages. Drogan responds, somewhat reluctantly at first, by cleaving them with Cleave. His reluctance rapidly disappears when a small stone flies through his mohican and he rages!
Drogan is set upon by a number of these small fungus-humanoid-creatures, and a larger, thorny plant-beast. Their attacks are slight, but numerous and Drogan gets a little swamped. But that's how he likes it!
The rest of the party keep their distance but fire off ranged attacks at the pygmy fungi, who focus their attentions on Drogan, who is in *their* cave. Drogan takes numerous hits, but responds in kind and the fungoids start to fall to the floor, seemingly dead.
"Seemingly" is an appropriate word to use, as the fallen mushroom people seem, after a short time, to get up again and re-enter the battle! This is a worrying turn of events, as Drogan continues to get battered, and some of the "resurrected" plants start to attack Dwarrow, who is conveniently blocking the passageway preventing Alwaith from fully entering the battle, which I'm sure he would have otherwise done.
The poison resilience of the dwarves help them fight off any spore attacks from the fungus-people, and from the brown mould-like stuff in the cavern. The creatures are fairly easy to kill, but the fact that they keep getting up again means Drogan's health is being slowly whittled away.
When Dwarrow, and later Alwaith, manage to hit them with Toll the Dead spells, or Spirit Guardians from Dwarrow, the group notice that the plants don't get up again after falling, hinting that necrotic damage is one of the more useful forms of damage in this battle. Unfortunately the rest of the group don't have access to this form of attack, and no one wants to switch to alternative weapons, so there continues to be a lot of yo-yoing plants being knocked down and getting up again, until eventually all is still.
The entire clan had been wiped out.
Drogan immediately looks for treasure, but didn't want to venture into the cave, given the nasty effects of the brown mould, and sees nothing obvious. The group, having potentially cleansed the area of the only clan of this particular sentient fungus, moves on.
They approach the river at a higher spot than before and this time Alwaith presses forward to scout. He spots a floating ball, with a big eye, a big mouth and lots of 'tendrils', or maybe eye-stalks? The word "Beholder" is mentioned a few times, and, unsurprisingly, the whole party backs away, quickly.
Still nervous, Alwaith fires an eldritch blast at the floating creature as it comes round the corner. It immediately explodes in a cloud of tiny spores, but luckily the whole party were far enough away for the spores not to reach any of them. Convinced that it was not a beholder, and that they should be careful of getting too close, Drogan ran up to check out the body, only to find another one floating around the corner! It bounced into Drogan, but the dwarf's resistance to poison helped him not to take any significant damage from it, and the barbarian was able to run back to the others as they hit it from a distance, bursting it in the same way as the first.
Slightly more cautious now, they find a third such creature, but are able to once again burst it from a distance and avoid any issues. Devon scouts ahead and reaches the stream. He can spot a path on the far side of the stream, but he follows the track he is on downstream, keeping an eye out for floating spore-mines as he does so. He eventually spots a pair of legs sticking out from some moss near to a side wall, and Nige's earlier comment finally makes a little sense!
Without approaching the 'legs', Devon backtracks to the rest of the group and fills them in on what he has seen. They all follow him back to the area where he saw the legs.
It looks like some form of humanoid body is beneath the moss. They don't want to get too close, so Drogan requests that Ropey goes and hooks himself around the unmoving legs, with the intention that he can then pull the 'body' towards them. Unfortunately Ropey is a little spooked by being underground in a mushroom-filled cavern and misunderstands the request - instead looping around the moss itself.
Dwarrow randomly fires a Toll the Dead into the moss. Just in case. It hits. The moss doesn't react.
Devon uses his mage hand to correct Ropey's mistake, and wrap the rope around the legs. Drogan proceeds to pull the legs towards them, but the moss seems to be attached to the body and it comes with it, meaning they cannot see any more of the 'body' until it gets a lot closer.
Unfortunately getting a lot closer to the moss seemed to be a bad idea. It turns out the moss is indeed a creature and as soon as it gets hauled close enough to Drogan, it releases the body that its tendrils were grabbing on to and lashes out at the dwarf with the same tendrils, smashing into him for a massive amount of bludgeoning damage. Dwarrow responds with a sweep of Traxiil but misses. Drogan is meanwhile grappled by the tendrils of the moss, which squeezes him so tightly that the dwarf gains a level of exhaustion!
Drogan quickly rages and breaks free from the grapple, which is fortunate as the moss then has another attack against Drogan, but the dwarf is able to dodge the incoming swipe from the tendrils.
Dwarrow swings with his sword and hits for good damage, but misses with his summoned sickle spiritual weapon. The rest of the party lays into the moss, with Alwaith and Devon attacking from distance. Devon makes an interesting choice in trying to cause the moss to laugh, but then realises that moss has no sense of humour, so the spell is wasted.
The group weigh in on the poor moss, and it seems to take quite a lot of damage, but it reciprocates by hitting Drogan again, but the barbarian's rage this time helps absorb some of the damage. Dwarrow heals Drogan with a spell and between them the group finally manage to take down the moss before it can hit the dwarf again. The moss releases its hold on Drogan and sinks to the ground, unmoving.
They check out the body - it looks like a small dwarf, though close inspection shows some differences - it's smaller, paler: not a dwarf, but perhaps a distant relation. Its body seems to be sprouting some small, purple mushrooms. A mouldy satchel around its shoulder contains a few goodies that the group snap up quickly before Devon can get a chance to take them for himself.
Alwaith checks out ahead, and spots another of the moss creatures. He manages to spot it from afar, and the group is able to take it out before it is able to reach them. It seems to have been digesting one of the plant monsters that the group wiped out earlier.
At this point, the group decide to take a short rest - Drogan is pretty beaten up and needs to heal himself a bit.
And so we leave our "Heroes" having a short rest by the river after a morning of battling fungi and plants and being thankful that some of them are resistant to poison!