Episode 16: Near death experiences

After dealing with the two phase spiders, we formed back up into our scout/main party routine and continued exploring the drow fort. After awhile Malek/Meghan came to a room with a set of wide stairs so we stealth up the stairs to find a drow wizard and 2 drow fighters. The wizard had a portal open, and there were phase spiders coming through.

Note: Paul, Meghan's hawk companion, usually flies up and perches somewhere to do "overwatch" and warn if more enemies are incoming. He's far superior at that than most of us, and he's not that good at fighting.

So Malek just straight up shot at the wizard, starting a combat. At this point I can not remember the exact order of events as this is another catch-up post but wanted to share some highlights. The scout part of the party got into combat before the main party got to the fight, probably not the best situation. Meghan went full combat mountain lion mode.

Everyone was fighting well, even with the drow poison in play (they're known for it after all) but then a few things happened. First, the drow fighter Meghan was gnawing on scored a critical hit on her, and sent his poisoned rapier straight through her left lung. She's bleeding to death, and will die in two rounds (a round is 6 seconds, so this is not good). She immediately starts doing the cat tongue out choking cough.

Paul left his perch to start harassing the drow that stabbed his friend. Thankfully Fizzledorp was literally right behind Meghan and figured out quickly what was going on and healed her.

After the drow that stabbed Meghan went down, Vohn walked up to the drow and shot him through the left lung.

The other big thing that happened was the big guy, Thonk, failed a poison save and instantly became sickened. Keep in mind he's a half-orc barbarian, physically he's a big guy. So he starts projectile vomiting on bad guys. A lot. Meghan elected to do claw-only attacks. Not going to chew on a creature that's been vomited on :P

But we were successful in taking out this trio of drow, and all of the phase spiders insta-died once their connection to their plane of existence ended. And at this point, we all leveled up. Fizzledorp the Paladin now has his holy mount. And to keep up the hilarity of this game, his holy mount is a ... reindeer. Named Silver. Because of his deity. Yeah. Anyway ... also of note, Meghan remained in mountain lion form. Paul landed on her back/scruff and proceeds to berate her for awhile.

So after we caught our breath for a few minutes and healed and such, we continued exploring the drow fort. After some exploration we came to a series of rooms. The first room had just a very large square indentation in the floor, but there was an opening off to the side. So we went through that opening to find a series of cubbies with ponchos in them, and a ramp down into a liquid. Some investigation determined that the liquid was acidic.

Of note: when Meghan is in cat form she can't talk. So she has to communicate by head nods/shakes, and in the case of the acidic liquid she backed up laid back her ears and hissssssssssssed. Luckily the party is figuring out her non verbal communications.

At this point we all put on ponchos, though Meghan had to have help. And Paul is still on her back so they kinda just draped it over him. So now she looks like a camel under a poncho.

Going into the next room we find the air to be super clean and fresh, odd under ground like this. There's some mechanical fans going and some squid like creatures up near the ceiling, probably the source of air refreshing. There's also a wall of mushrooms that we investigate. Turns out its another source of poisons for the drow, it puts people to sleep. How do we know it puts people to sleep? Vohn fell asleep. So we strapped him to the back of Fizzledorp's reindeer.

Continuing on to the next room in the series we find another ramp down into acidic water. We also find a pair of mini-mechanical lobster like contraptions that are submersible. There's a bridge over the acidic water to an island, and there's a large stone on that island that appears to be the same size as the indentation in the first room.

Thonk then sets about trying to move the stone himself, but is unable to do so. So then a couple of party members try taking one of the mechanical lobsters over the wooden bridge to the island, but the bridge can not hold the lobster's weight and collapses, sending the lobster and the occupants into the acid water below. Luckily the lobster is water-tight so they just pilot it up the ramp and out.

Then a few of us get into the other lobster and go down the ramp to investigate, see if it connects with the ramp in the room with the cubbies. Turns out there's a grate across the river, so we use the lobster's claws to disassemble the gate and continue on.

In there there is a large coiled eel in the corner of a room filled with this acidic water -- or as Thonk puts it, spicy water, after he got a little dunked -- but there is another grate across what appears to be the river leads back up to the room that had the cubbies. This group then returned to the main party.

At this point we somehow manage to shove this stone into the river, and everyone gets back across semi safely, and a pair of us walk a lobster into the river and picks up the stone. The two in the lobster carrying the stone elect to go underwater through the room with the eel to the other ramp up into the room with the cubbies. At this point Vohn wakes up and is removed from the reindeer.

Unfortunately, the arms of the lobster weren't quite strong enough to lift the stone high enough to clear the ramp up into the room with the cubbies. The stone dragged on the ramp making a horrific sound ... waking the eel.

The pair in the lobster manage to get up into the cubbie room as the very giant eel comes flying up the ramp and smashes into the far wall. This ramming attack demolished one of the lobsters we were using and damaged Fizzledorp and Thonk.

This eel is 10' wide, and we've yet to see the end of it. This is not good.

Vohn scampers off into the first room with the indentation and shoots at the eel. Thonk, Lutor and Fizzledorp are on one side of the eel, Malek and Meghan are on the other side. Our attacks do not seem to be doing much damage to the thing however. It then pulls back a little and does a flying ramming motion into the room with the fans, damaging Malek and Meghan.

Meghan, not really thinking this through as she knows this is the source of the acid, runs and jumps up on the back of this thing, striking at it with her paws. She didn't do a lot of damage however and took a lot of damage in return. Between the acid of the eel and she jammed a claw while striking it, she's in very bad shape.

And that's how we left the game, and with that we're officially caught up.