Prison. NPCs! Lots of NPCs. Holy crap, that's a LOT of NPCs. Shitty breakout. Guard complacency. Looted weapons. Sent the changeling, got more stuff. Got spotted. Jumped a waterfall. Hit the water, spooky talking ooze. Run away! Heading to Kuo-toa city.
Travel. Nothing first day. Second day, stream with water orbs. Set lookout, something dangerous. Fishing and gathering. Later day, ochre jellies. Easy defeat. Loot! Two acid, 2sp47cp, some paper shroom things, and some tongue shroom things.
Details on companions. Shoushar sleepwalks with eyes open. The kids just want to get to safety. Dwarf lady is as straightforward as she seems, wants to get home. Sarith scratches himself like he had fleas.
Arrived at lake. Head to Kuo-Toa town. Confronted by goons, wearing some strange patch on armour. Talked to them, discovered religious schism. Daughter of priest seeing visions, hearing voices, thinks she's prophet of new god. Convinced the goons to go after the drow chasing us. Faked two extra Kuo-toa to get past gate guards.
Headed to old shrine, son of priest led us to priest. Got more details, sent scouts to other shrine. Ohshit, wacky fake god Leemogoogon is Demogorgon. Fucking demons. Had chat with daughter. Obviously crazy. Back to sane priest. Go with his plan.
Sane priest fake-bound us, while two of us pretend to be Kuo-Toa. Sane priest, Shoushar, Lore and Nix all acted as guards, claimed sane priest had an epiphany, and rest of us were a sacrifice. Got taken to altar for sacrifice ritual. At key moment, Lore dropped the weapons Disguise Self was hiding, rest of us slipped the 'bindings' and attacked.
Kill the evil Kuo-Toa. Don't kill the evil Kuo-Toa! Stop all the killing! Daddy Issues gets tied up and arrested safely. No demon invasion today! 225gp gained, plus an azurite gem, silver choker, and two potions of healing. Also, LEVEL UP!
Ditched some people. Gathered our party. Ventured forth. Boat to the trading post on the lake. Narrow passageways, bonked hears. Fished a bit, mostly just days of travel. Grell in a narrow pass. Kar'i'nas goes full anime. Gets rekt in response. Party pull through.
Arrive at trade post. Cave and a beach. Beach has Crazy Lady in a tent. Traps galore! She's mad from demons. Ritter cures her for ten minutes. Get the password, promises he'll fix her for good someday. Head to the cave, and on to the trading post.
Into Mantol Derith. Broken crystal elevator. Working cheap ones. Head up to the market. Four sections, Drow, Duergar, Svirfneblin, and Zhentarim. Split up. Selling/Buying. Lore and Nix being spies.
Check in with NPCs about what they want.
Spy shit from Nix leads to demon stone. Intercept it at the jewelers. Githyanki hazmat protocols and Paladin hazmat spells. Take stone to Sirak Mazelor, she confirms big demon inside. Fraz-Urb'luu. Cryptic poem from Lolth. Next day, able to banish him back to Abyss. Yay!
Spy shit from Lore led to Tongue mushroom in the food. Get the bigwigs of the Zhents and Drow talking. Chaos. Lore got a job offer, the head Zhent human trying to kill him. Head Zhent beholder wants him to succeed. Job is in Gracklestugh.
Party had stuff to do nearby (Serith/Stool to Neverlight), so everyone caught another Kuo-Toa cab to Gracklestugh.
Caved in section on the lake. Investigated, ancient tomb. Portaged the boat, then checked it out. Magic crap going on. Half-elf tomb. Disembodied voice!
Sarcophagi. Opened, ghosts! Turned, defeated. Wild Magic! Loot. Retreat, heal. Headed back, found trapdoor. Scary ghost. Ambush! Dawnbringer found. Necklace of Fireballs, too.
Back on the water. Stirges. LEVEL UP. Ixitxachitl, useless. Gumming the boat. Arrive at Gracklestugh!
Split up. Lore met up with Thieves' Guild. Looking for a red dragon egg. Disguise, headed into tunnels. Spiders!
Backed off, rested up. Headed back further in. Room with stairs to dais. Crazy spy shit, hear the city.
Patch of fungus with snakes. Tried another path. Room with an obelisk, and Derro lady. And a red dragon egg! Faerzress-heavy. Fight! Spectator. Fog Cloud shut down casters.
Left egg. Took book. Exposition! Backed off, rested. Messaged Themberchaud. Got a meeting. Made a deal, deliver egg to dragon. Went back, swiped it. Seen on way out, but bluffed past the Derro. Egg wasn't seen. Took it to the docks, turned it over to the dragon.
Got loot, needed to leave town. Dragon helped get outside city limits. Traveling to Neverlight. Mind Flayers? Beetles! Arrive at Neverlight. Thanked for returning Stool. Festival. Festival! Festival?
Head in. Hunters returning. Lead hunter chats. Has side jobs and info. Basidia is one leader, still sane. Phylo is the other, obviously demon'd, leading the local cult. Talk to them, talk to other leaders. Not sure who to trust. Leader of explorers is especially twitchy.
Hunting for cash! Otyugh fight. Easy find, easy kill. Shambling Mound, not much worse. Short rest, heal up people who caught diseases.
Saerith remembers! Was spore-poisoned all along. Local spores cause demon madness. Yay. He shares some info on the locked-off spot with the demon goings-on.
Head out to kill Grick Alpha, ambushed by a Vrock. Nasty poison, but fine. Head to the Grick, get ambushed, but prevail. Return. Potions of Greater Healing all around!
Gathering intel. Speak with Animals, then BatCat. Guards on the way to the back cavern. Spore Servant'd Chuul. Circle of Myconids, garden of corpses. Biiiiiiig shroom. Zuggtmoy!
Long rest, plan to pull off shenanigans next day. Before trying to assault, Ritter cures Phylo of the spore madness. Success! Two leader allies!
Get help from other leaders by curing. Skip the guards, explore the cavern. Dying drow helps, get their gear. +2 sword, +2 armour, bag of holding, scrolls. Giant Slug fight!
Small back cave. Wedding rehearsal. FIREBALL! FIREBALL! No more rehearsal. Return to main cave. Not dealing with Zuggtmoy now. Place will be evacuated, adequately labeled as a biohazard site, and boarded up. Help evacuate the Myconids.
Leaving Neverlight Grove. Head to Mantol Derith again. Not taking the taxi. Dragon hatches!
Traveling to Mantol. Stalagmite area. Shadow Demons! Dawnbringer ends them.
Tremors in area. Tunnel collapse. Purple Worms! Don't care about us. Head forward, oozes. Sentient Ooze! 14ep, glow mace.
Further on, temple ruins. Black Pudding fight. Hallways. Fountain, side rooms, area is flooding. Worms cracked it? Oblex!
Further Loot: 42s, 41g, three emerald bracelets, +1 dagger, Potion of Greater Healing, Oil of Slipperiness.
Sloopidoop. Society of Brilliance. Friendly chat, hang out.
More travel. Ambushed on waking. Drow assassin. Sun Blade and Leomund's. Get Rekt.
Loot a map. Assassin's been searching. For us? Map doesn't show some paths in full. Investigate, find secret entrance to Mantol. No password, but not needed. Leave evil note.
Loop around, head in door we know. Pointedly ignore looking at crazy lady. Sell emeralds, pool cash, get Umixit to scribe Remove Curse. Will be available after preparing in morning.
Head to Lore's thing. Stick together, since someone in town does want him dead. Ambush, another drow assassin. Rooftop this time. Nearly one-shotted Lore. Didn't survive to take a second shot.
Guards talked to. Cleared to enter Zhent area. Head on in. Trade the eyestalk. Ghazrim already dead. Mangle corpse, swipe head. Feed body to Glabagool.
Grab some stuff; loose books on magic theory, botany, local history. Jewelry and change, total value 37gp12sp.
Remove Curse copied into Umixit's book. Cure Rystia. Cure Derendil. Yay!
Next plan: Track down a Mind flayer. Head across lake, water is being fucky. Ambushed by Merrow. Glabagool engulfs one. Tasty! Duergar trading ship, peaceful encounter.
Island of mushrooms. Food. Spice. Poison confuse gas! No poison gas harvested successfully.
Large Drow ship. Ignored and ignored us. Get to land, start tracking. Local wildlife says Cranium Rats to the north, Ilithid tracks south.
Head south, follow tracks. Illithid located. Ambush it. Fucking plants! Killed everything.
Loot! Suit of unknown magical breastplate made of unknown weird metal, ring of pointing to probably-Gravenhollow, and a Bag of Holding with books and a symbol of the Society of Brilliance.
Take the Illithid's head, burn the rest of it. Head to Blingdenstone hoping for a way to the surface. Meet some Svirfs along the way, riding lizard-things.
Another Svirfneblin, with a cart drawn by lizards, and goods to sell. Help him repair the cart in exchange for info on the cranium rats. He mentions an Illithid lab nearby. Leads us there.
Get to lab. Rough climb up the rubble to the entrance. Weird Illithid experiments inside. Cranium rats pour in while Svirf dude oozes through the wall. Oblex!
After fight, loot everything from the cart including our money. And keep the cart. Head into Blingdenstone. Glabagool feels drawn to the city. Fucking Juiblex.
Lore and Jimjar talk our way into the city. Get a spot at the Foaming Mug, plan for figuring out about Juiblex and a way to the surface.
To shops. Attacked! Cubes ambush. Guards also attacked. Cubes easily killed. 12gp and a sword from the cubes. Shopping time!
Blingdenstone is divided. Wererats in W. Slimes in NW, all heading that way. NE has a sentient cloud-thing controlling elementals.
Criminal underbelly is also wererats. They hate the slimes, too. Likely not a wererat Juiblex cult.
Take a night to sleep everything off, then head to Clan Diggermattok, get permission to go poking around places, and a deal to get surface access.
Three main goals: Ogremoch's Bane, the sentient cloud. Clan Gold Whisker, the wererats. And the slimes.
To Rockblight and the cloud! Ghosts. Lots of ghosts. One is angry. Surrounded, slaughtered. Quick paladin double-tap.
Houses. Bodies. Find angry's body. Dismantle a bet, find 100gp in gems and a potion of invisibility.
Head up behind a waterfall. Gargoyles and an earth elemental. Firebolt! All go down. Corrupted earth elemental gem inside the elemental.
Next section of rockblight. Statue. Very lifelike statue. Petrified. Explore a cave. Yep, Medusa. Fucking drow Medusa.
Last cave checked. Full of statues. Statues can move! Can't leave cave. Back up, start blasting. Clear the place out. Head in, Ogremoch's Bane. It's useless. Won't talk, can't hurt us without an elemental to control.
Head back to town. Bane follows. Lore fast-talks the guards, gets 'em to grab us a priest, rather than arrest us for bringing it back. Local head priest shows up, banishes the elemental.
Get priest to join us. He un-petrifies the dude from before. Vort is saved!
Priest gives us a spell gem of Hallow, wants us to resanctify the old temple. Go there, easy fight with the Bane gone, quick job. Blessing from a god!
Done with elementals. Head to the Warrens. Lots of traps, then guards. Go Go Gadget Eloquence Bard! Chat with lead wererat.
Infodump. "Pudding King", lol
Recon. Slimes. Slimes! "Throne room".
Head back, get gem, unite forces of Blingdenstone for war!
War. War never changes.
Attack main area, party heads off side path to throne room.
Ambushes. Black puddings, Ritter got armour acided. Cube + Ochre. Just left the Ochre behind.
King attempted to ambush us, drop enemies, and ditch. He got held and FUCKED UP. Throne room was empty, and war was largely won, with army falling back already.
Problems all solved. Head to surface. Drow bitch! Fucking hell. Kill her, kill fuckboy, scare off former fuckboy, and kill some random priestess chump with them. Surface, FINALLY!
Everyone heads to Gauntlgrym.
Get to Gauntlgrym. Letters arrive for people, armour gets repaired. Meet King Battlehammer.
Get rooms. Set up alarms, rest a bit. Nyx does some spy shit.
Head to a feast. Lots of VIPs. Servant is a drow in disguise. Poison! Servant was a yochlol in disguise!
Talk to VIPs again. Get some loot and orders. Lore now has a Shield Guardian!
Into Underdark again. Trying to find Gravenhollow, get info. Random encounter of gricks!
Random encounter of chasmes! Rest up.
More travel. Spot tracks across path. Umber hulks? Follow the tracks to a side tunnel. Injured carrion crawler. Mollified it and passed by. Split in the path. Used pass without trace, stealthed down.
Large area with weird hybrid enemies. Ambush them, quickly clear out room. Back to stealthing, head further down path. Evil island of Doctor Moray shit. Chat with the doc, get close, then attack.
Loot the doc, get a key, surgical tools, a magic scalpel, a music box. Loot his room, get two potions of healing, one of greater healing. Feed the doc to his own carrion crawler.
More travel to Gravenhollow. Ambushed by shadows with some frog demons.
Heading further, run into more and more Faerzress. Find a big slime Benny Hilling around. Fucking Juiblex! Call in his location to Bruenor.
Moving on past the Demon Lord, head further to the library. Hear a song. Set up ambush in case, and confront the singer. Basilisk?! Paranoid, but follow it. Enter Gravenhollow!
Galeb Duhr shows us around a bit. Get rooms, talk to some giants. Learn the basics of the place, and get a stone. Time for visions and research!
Lots of useless visions, but find out some details.
Plot wizard demands we visit his place. Gives us scroll of Teleport Circle to get there.
We check visions looking for places to raid cash/supplies, and find out about a Fey kingdom inside the underdark, with river of gold. Easy money to steal. Head there, distract 'em, sneak in, and we completely CHEESE the heist. 18,800gp per player!
Once we have the cash stolen, we use the scroll, port to Araj, the plot wizard's tower. He explains plot. Hammy as hell. Turn out, some wizard in Menzo that Plot Wizard has beef with, fucked up a summoning ritual.
Blah blah blah, we have a series of fetch quests. Purple Worm Egg, Beholder Main Eye, Angel Feathers, Goristro Heart, 'Devil's Mushrooms', Ichor, and Gromph Baenre's Grimoire. Means we need to hit up the Worm Writhings, the Labyrinth, and Menzo, and also find the ichor and fucky mushrooms somewhere.
After Plot Wizard, we head to Blingdenstone. Get Purple Worm hunting tips from a hunting party along the way!
Blingdenstone! The rats have integrated into things while we were gone! Sell our gold for coins, go shopping!
Head off to Graklestugh; we're gonna rob a dragon's hoard! Some slapstick dealing with the guards, find our way to the stone giants. They lead us to Stone Speaker Hgraam, who explains they're being fucked by what is obviously Demogorgon shit.
We head into the deeper caves, find a derro dude who was talking to one of the giants that grew an extra head. He's a courier, so we track him down. Ambush him after he delivers to a cult, swipe his boots and then raid the cult. They're definitely Demogorgon worshippers, responsible for the giants' heads. Kill 'em all, take or smash their stuff. Cult Purged!
Cult had Keoghtom's, cash, potion of invis, culty ritual crap.
Head to Themberchaud's minders. Negotiate with them about killing the dragon, replacing it with Vignaroth, who was smuggled in as a black dragon, and is now red. They agree to help us with killing it, and we absolutely wreck the thing. Legendary Reactions wither to repeat saves and bad dice!
Get the hell out of town, head to the Labyrinth!
Wandering around near the entry, we find some glowy crystals, and take a bunch!
We head to the one entrance, there's a tower over a cliff just outside. Bunch of gargoyles are hanging around, obviously elementals since they're stone and the tower's metal. We negotiate with them; they're bound to attack invaders but we screw with that and get inside.
It's a Daern's Instant Fortress. Lore's tracking two living things, neither of which is the wizard who owned the place and summoned the gargoyles. Find out, they're both Shadow Demons. We kill 'em, and take the fortress.
Head onward, find the entrance to the Labyrinth proper. It's covered in gnoll skulls. Baphomet-worshipping minotaurs have been busy.
Turns out, the first section of the Labyrinth is pretty much entirely minotaur-run. A gnoll who's enslaved by minotaurs tries to lure us into a trap, but since we figure it out, we're able to just pay the dude for real intel, and then send him away, with notice that he's dead if we ever see him again.
Trying to head into a corner where he says the minotaurs and demon lords don't go, we find some minotaur goons, but convince 'em that a group of gnolls just went the other way, and they ignore us. Exiting, we encounter another gate decorated by gnoll skulls on the other end of the minotaur territory. Fun!
We hit an encounter with a Modron. It wants Primus overthrown. Party Member Get! Nordom joins us!
We reach part of the labyrinth where demons don't go. Find a big cave in the area. Full of Flumphs! Sitcom arguments ensue. Flumphs point us to a Mind Flayer with some Quaggoths. Easy kill.
Poke around the safe area more. Find some statues of petrified angels. Basically statues. Leave, hoping to come back with Greater Restoration.
Back into demon-heavy areas of the labyrinth. Search for a Goristro, since we need one's footprints for the shrooms. We find one, being killed by Yeenoghu. No shrooms. Stay back, let the demon lord do the hard work, then wait until Yeenoghu leaves. Kill the gnolls that remained.
Gnolls are dead. Get some demon blood from the goristro. Head to the center of the labyrinth, see what this 'Maze Engine' is about. It's guarded by a Nalfeshnee with Vrock backup. Ritter turns them, easy cleanup.
Find the engine itself, it's obviously broken. Hook Nordom up to it, and turn it on. Free Mantle of Spell Resistance. Green Slaad!
Clear out the Slaad. The Maze Engine keeps doing wacky shit, starts shaking, then drops into the lava below. Ghazrim is somehow back, and all non-native outsiders in the labyrinth are banished.
Baphomet Eliminated! Yeenoghu Eliminated! Fuck Yeah!
After the engine's lost, we head back to the angels. Ritter touches one, turns out these things are cursed as FUCK. Not restoring them. Githyanki Hazmat Protocols let us grab the feathers we need.
We spend a couple days growing shrooms in the Goristro's footprints. Good enough!
Before leaving the labyrinth, we head to the Filthriddens hoping to do some shopping for bolts, rations, etc. Lore starts a fight with the local cult head, we end up slaughtering them, and Ritter lays some undead to rest.
Sending message comes in - Zuggtmoy is on the move towards the megafungus. So, we head off towards that same target, hoping to cut off her plans.
While traveling, find some myconids. Cure 'em all, lead 'em to where we were meeting the Neverlight group. We get a feeling of being watched, probably a beholder, but we're kinda on the clock.
Neverlight group tells us about Araumycos being largely asleep, and Zuggtmoy's plan to mind control it and take it over permanently. Everyone but Ritter huffs communication spores.
Slime spies ambush us, but get dispatched quickly. Juiblex is apparently keeping an eye on things.
Head to edge of Araumycos where Zuggtmoy is arriving. Get there just ahead of her wedding procession. Everyone who huffed spores gets sucked into Astral Plane. Split the party!
Astral-side group wake up Big Fungus. Convince Araumycos to wake up, work to shrug off Zuggtmoy. It gets us to cut out some of the bits of its own brain, that have already been demon-corrupted.
Material-side group is just Ritter and an inactive Shield Guardian. Ritter strides forwards to engage Zuggtmoy alone. As he shows up, Juiblex hits her from behind.
Ritter charges in, uses Dawnbringer to shut down Juiblex's regeneration, keeping the fight between the demon lords more evenly matched.
Araumycos shrugs off Zuggtmoy's influence, kicks the rest of the party to Material. Juiblex kills Zuggtmoy.
Ritter goes down. Ritter pops back up on his own. Ritter goes full Badass, gets the killing blow on Juiblex. Party is now up to five demon lords banished!
Port back to Araj, drop off more components. Head into the Writhings. Find more Flumphs, sitcom it up again. Get past them, and run into Troglodytes.
Troglodytes are arguing. Lore steps in as a mediator. Fight Club, disguising Nyx staging a heist. Steal the Trogs' sword.
Moving on, find a Beholder lair. Try to lure it out. Head beholder cultist comes instead, gets rekt. Approach the beholder. Beholder v. Fog Cloud fight. Fog Cloud wins.
Looting beholder's place. Get the eye we need, a Robe of Eyes, a Necklace of Adaptation, a Gem of Seeing some potions.
Also a duodrone. This one's still loyal. No Nordom II.
Release the Duodrone. Head further into the writhing. Lots of worms, but they mostly ignore us.
Find a collapsed section. Drow Girl tries to scare us off. Calm her down, Ritter gets her story. Family are Purple Worm Egg hunters, were here on a hunt, and the girl got separated.
Smell some trolls. Try to ask them for directions to a nest, but they decide we're tasty. Acidball and a black dragon fuck 'em up.
Find our way to a worm nest. Send Vignaroth to grab one, stay out of tremorsense range of the worms in the large cave. Vig hovers with the egg while Umixit casts Teleportation Circle.
Drow Girl splits from the party to grab her own egg. While she's doing that, her family show up. Quick Message spells point them out to each other, and we wash our hands of the whole situation. Teleportation Circle finishes, and we get the hell out to Araj again.
Plot Wizard gives us the basics on the Menzo infiltration. We need to get the book. We try to negotiate things to ensure he doesn't fuck us over and set off the kaiju fight on our heads.
Plot Wizard's apprentice then tries to convince us to WMD somewhere not Menzo. Turns out, it doesn't need to be set off there, Plot Wizard was just making us think it had to.
We argue a lot about where to set it off. Umixit blows his chance to convince the party to blow up people he hates. Back-and-forth ensues, and we ultimately settle on "We'll figure it out after we've gotten the book back to Araj".
Plot Wizard turns out to have a secret tunnel to Menzo. We use it, get into the city. Nyx is pretending to be a low-ranking noble full of herself, from some smaller drow town outside Menzo proper.
Encounters with Drow Stasi. The ruse works. Head to the area where the mage academy is. It's a Drow-only section, so we have to get everyone but Nyx in somehow.
Head to meet up with some drow wizard people who're anti-establishment, that Plot Wizard had told us to get in touch with. They agree to get us maps of the inside of the mage academy, and help us get people past the guards, golems, etc.
We bluff our way to Tier Breche. Easy enough, pretending to be there specifically to deal with some dumb wizard summoning a demon. Isn't even really a lie! Get inside, head to Baenre's tower. Scare off a drow wizard in the halls.
Big magic-locked door in our way. Dispel! Also clears a trap. Head inside. Big golem guardian thing is standing there. Attack it from outside, draw it to the doors, so we can Shatter without damaging the room.
After clearing the first room, there's a bunch of crap involving a Maze spell in the way, which we only barely figure out. Nevertheless, it sends us upstairs to the other room of the 'tower', where we find a Yochlol. Also where we ignore a Yochlol.
Searching the room, we find the dude's spellbook, and quickly Teleportation Circle out. In Araj, we get the ritual focus ready, and then it's back to Menzo to fire it off.
Using largely the same disguise and excuse, Nyx plants the ritual in Tier Breche, inside Baenre's tower. We signal for Plot Wizard to set it off, and the ritual draws through the remaining demon lords. Quickly, there's only Demogorgon left.
Ritter wasn't willing to let this go un-dealt-with, shows up to personally solo Demogorgon. It goes surprisingly well, until the demon lord stuns him, dropping Protection from Evil, and then dropping Ritter. Vignaroth swoops in to save the wannabe-martyr (and Dawnbringer).
Campaign Ends.