Session 42: WWE Radro

Nan needs time to recover from her resurrection, so she stays at the inn while the others depart. There, she meditates to get in contact with Faranehou. She manifests in his domain of richly decorated marble buildings, where he sits on his giant throne. She pays him 100 gold to get a new ring, since hers broke when she died. She asks him about the aboleth. He says that this one has left the plain of water some 2000 years ago, and that its soul will return there when killed. It will hold a grudge against its killers, but its return to the material plane will take so long that they will surely be dead by then.

Grombrin goes to the Namos forge to work on his new maul, while Arran, Cho, and Vojta go to San’edhe. Cho goes to the ship of the Yane priests to assist them with loading cargo. He asks them about the owners of the Staff of the Mother, to which they say that their caravan travels around a lot but is easy to recognise. Arran and Vojta buy 800 gold worth of diamonds from a jeweller. Arran considers stealing something using the aarakocra disguise amulet, but Vojta talks him out of it. In the evening, Vojta teleports them back to Namos.

The next morning, Vojta spots a wanted poster in the inn, depicting a white dove aarakocra wanted for thievery, matching Arran’s disguise from the amulet. He ignores it for now and the group heads back into the swamp, with Vojta pulling the boats in walrus form. They go underwater to find that the illusion hiding the entrance is back. Nan breaks through the repelling effect, and Vojta casts dispel on her position, removing the illusion. Grombrin pushes the stone door open and the group moves inside.

The trapdoor rattles as black goo once again rises up. This time, a huge, vaguely humanoid monster made of magma with obsidian skin emerges. Arran and Cho jump into action and hack at it with their weapons, splattering lava from its wounds, but the monster grabs them both and charges to the side of the chamber, smashing them into a wall. Arran teleports free from its grasp, while Vojta attacks the monster with frost, which turns out to be useless against its molten body. Nan shoots holes into its body with her eldritch blasts, while Grombrin summons a floating ethereal hammer to smash through its obsidian shell. Cho chops at the monster with his glaive, but is repeatedly smashed against the wall, then swung like a weapon to whack Arran off his feet. Arran recovers and stabs his rapier through the damaged shell into the monster’s eye, causing its body to fall apart and the lava to evaporate.

Grombrin holds onto Nan’s ring while the others go inside to rest. When they finish, they go down the hole that the monster came from, which contains a ladder. It leads about 60 feet down into a large cave with three passages. One passage has several five-foot holes in the wall, another has pieces of chitin and giant cocoons on the floor, and the third has a big pile of dirt that smells like rot. On the back of the pillar are three slits that Arran identifies as keyholes.

The group goes into the biggest hole in the wall. Arran steps on something squishy and is immediately attacked by a large tentacle that constricts him and pierces his mind with a psychic attack. A huge tentacled worm-like creature emerges, spewing a wave of acid at the group. Cho charges through the splatter and starts slashing at the monster, while Vojta heals the injured Arran. Two umber hulks then emerge from the tunnels, one pouncing on Vojta while the other confuses Nan and Grombrin with its magical gaze. Nan retreats in a panic, while Grombrin wildly swings his hammer around, whacking Cho in the back. Cho ignores it, as he and Arran continue slashing and stabbing at the monster’s tentacles.

Vojta turns into an earth elemental to fight off the umber hulk, but the worm spews spores at him that drain his intelligence to the bare minimum. With animalistic fury, he still clobbers the umber hulk into submission, while the recovered Nan flies overhead and hails down Eldritch blasts upon the second one. As the umber hulks are suppressed, Grombrin recovers from his confusion and summons his ethereal hammer. As he witnesses the injured worm about to bite down on the equally-injured Arran, he launches the hammer into the creature’s mouth to burst out of the back of its head in a bloody explosion, killing it. On its last legs, one of the umber hulks pounces on Grombrin, crushing him under its weight, but Cho spins around and quickly finishes off both umbers hulks, cleanly cleaving through their damaged carapace.

To the others’ confusion, Vojta doesn’t respond to being addressed and wanders off, still in elemental form. Cho brings Grombrin back to consciousness with a healing potion, and Grombrin cleanses Vojta’s curse, restoring his intellect. They then find a green crystal shard in the molten remains of the worm. Grombrin identifies it as a magical key that is divinely consecrated. When put into the lock, a partial image of Saralya, the alternate identity of Turagh, appears. The group rests in a corner of the cave. They hear skittering in the tunnels but nothing disturbs them.