#hoo boy writing up the more RP-heavy ones makes it so looong

[jennifercrowart]

D&D Diary - The Yawning Rodent, 12

Refresher: Our adventurers Lugs (grung barbarian), Lurk (grung rogue), Aelia (tiefling cleric), and Valas (drow sorcerer) with tagalong Deku (ratfolk cleric) and rescued noble Chadley continued exploring the Sunless Citadel, defeating a fire snake and finding a small offering shrine with a statue of the red dragon Ashardalon, once worshipped by the resident cult. They found a bugbear guard on patrol, but captured her, and took her and all of the other goblin interns and bandits they'd scared into submission in the laboratory as prisoners. There are lots of arboretums around here, growing plants for experiment ingredients. Lugs also found a second fire snake, and fed it pet treats and a goblin corpse to try and befriend it.

As most of the party members were hurt and exhausted, they decided to travel back to the Rat's Nest, lying to Yusdrayl when they ran into her on the way to say that they think her stolen dragon wyrmling must be with Belak - the person who runs the lab and has been controlling the Goblin Gang from the shadows.

Sunless Citadel spoilers!

The party leaves the Sunless Citadel, passing through it easily now that it's been cleared of the hostile giant spiders and the Goblin Gang. By now, the way back to the Rat's Nest through the Underdark tunnels is pretty easy, and night is starting to fall outside.

Suddenly, they're attacked by twig blights, who camouflage in with the thick tree roots lining the tunnel walls and tear themselves out to attack. The prisoners and Chadley all scurry back, avoiding the danger. Lugs goes to rage, but hesitates, and in Grung, tells Lurk to ask Valas - the one ally in range of him - if it's ok that he uses his Storm Herald abilities and hits him with the area effect as well. Lurk just tells Valas, "Valas: incoming!" and gives a thumbs up back to Lugs. Lugs grins and gives a thumbs up to Valas, who, confusedly, sputters, "wait, what?" before Lugs rages and a wave of swamp water erupts at his feet. Valas gets hit by the strong, thick torrent of muddy water, while the nearby twig blight digs in its roots and shrugs off the damage.

The rest of the twig blights are defeated easily, especially when Aelia uses a big Fireball spell to start incinerating them. Deku recalls that the twig blights tend to only come out and attack at nighttime.

As the party and the prisoners calm down and continue on, Chadley starts rubbing his eyes. "Is there a hole to the surface open around here? I can see much more than I could the first time I was here - like, even past the torches."

Valas cringes inwardly, knowing that humans don't usually possess darkvision, but thinking that Chadley must have developed it as part of the transformation experiments Belak conducted on him. "You've probably just grown accustomed to it, after being down here for so long."

Chadley believes him, thinking that sounds about right.

After another hour or so of travel through the cave tunnels, they reach the Rat's Nest. Unlike the previous time when they arrived at night, all of the lights in the shops, church, and library are off, closed at this hour. Peach's pop-up tent shop is also gone.

Lurk tells the others that he's going to get the new enchanted Ring of the Flock that he ordered from Boak, the blacksmith, as he's eager to try it out before resting tonight. Deku tells him that the shop is closed for the night, but Lurk is insistent, and Deku shrugs and guesses that, since he'd already paid for the ring, maybe it'd be ok if he goes in and takes it. Valas just turns around and wordlessly leaves for the elevator to the tavern. Lurk takes out his lockpicking tools and sets to work on the door, but just before he's about to set all the pins, a contraption that resembles crocodile jaws pops out from either side of the lock and clamps down on his lockpick, snapping it. Lurk is incredulous that it broke his equipment, when suddenly an alarm bell starts loudly ringing from inside the shop.

Deku flinches, knowing that the alarm system travels back to the cave where he and his brother live, and will surely wake Boak up. As Boak is an armourer artificer, this was probably what was going to happen. He tells the party that he'll be off to go sleep at home while they stay at the tavern tonight, and that he has to go and sheepishly explain to Boak what happened to his shop.

The party goes up the elevator to the Yawning Rodent tavern, where Valas is already waiting for them at the bar with a look on his face that's reminiscent of a disappointed parent. The tavern restaurant has passed rush hour for the night, but there's still a few full tables of travellers finishing off their drinks.

After another two elevator loads, the goblin prisoners - including Grimwarg the bugbear - come up to the tavern as well, starting to talk amongst themselves about how nice the Rat's Nest is. Beni, bartending tonight, cocks his eyebrow and looks back and forth between the adventurers and the large group of 11 goblinoids tied together with ropes. The party tells him that they're bandits of the Goblin Gang in the Sunless Citadel, and they've brought them here to release them on the surface as long as they promise to not go back to a life of crime. While Beni is, at first, hesitant about the situation, all of the goblins but Grimwarg are unhurt and would be fit to travel to the next city over for jobs if they wanted to. For now, they can all sleep in the basic rooms of the Yawning Rodent, especially since the party gave them each 5g to start them off. The goblins awkwardly and sheepishly thank Beni, and shuffle onto the elevator to go up to their rooms once they're untied. Grimwarg does the same, but stays silent and unreadable.

Meanwhile, Lurk approaches the bar and asks for a glass of water in the crystal goblet he took from Calcryx's trophy room. Lugs sits on one of the stools and, with a big and relieved sigh, un-tenses himself and just starts bleeding all over the furniture and the floor from all of the wounds he'd sustained from earlier today. Aelia sighs, annoyed by the troublesome grung brothers, and pays Beni for a single room. She just goes up the elevator to begin changing into sleep clothes and drop her swampy dress off at the tavern's laundry station.

Without even batting an eye at Lugs, Beni just takes out a rag and starts cleaning the bloody counter, before calling out to the rest of the restaurant, "hey, Meepo! We've got a clean-up over here!"

"Yes, Mr Beni!" Weaving out from in-between the tables with arms full of stacked up dirty mugs is the familiar kobold, a delighted grin spreading over his face when he spots the adventurers. "Oh, you're all back already!! Huh, Lurk, were your eyes always purple?"

Lurk looks him straight in the eye and tells him that Aelia was killed in the Sunless Citadel. Meepo immediately gets distressed, tears welling up in his eyes. Valas quickly cuts him off, telling Meepo that she didn't die, and that Lurk is just lying. Angry, Meepo tells Lurk that he's terrible, and starts grumpily mopping up the blood around Lugs' stool.

Lurk takes out 50g - covering him and Lugs at 25g each - for the 100g four bedroom. As Aelia's already booked her own single room for the night, though, there's only three of them sharing it this time. Valas rolls his eyes, not going to cover the remaining 50g by himself, and hands Beni 33g for his 1/3 share. Eventually, Lurk gives in and pays 67g for himself and Lugs.

In the morning, the party meets up again with Deku in the tavern for breakfast. Grimwarg and the goblins are still sleeping in. With Baba working the morning shift at the bar, Lugs buys more packs of cider to take with him back to the Sunless Citadel, and Valas buys a healing potion.

Meepo, waiting tables for the breakfast rush, runs over to Aelia and gives her a big hug, relieved that she's still alive after all. He tells her that he thought about what she and the others told him about finding a less hurtful path in life, and has been helping out Candice at the church while Lulu takes care of Calcryx, and working a shift at the Yawning Rodent since they left him the previous morning.

The party heads back down the elevator to the Rat's Nest. Lurk immediately heads over to the blacksmith, with Lugs in tow. As soon as they arrive, Boak puts down his work tools and puts his hands on his hips, angry at Lurk for trying to break into his shop last night. Deku had told Boak that it had been Lurk trying to break in, once Boak had woken up from the security alarm in a panic.

Trying to appease him, Lurk piles on all the basic weaponry he took from the Goblin Gang onto the counter as a gift, and offers to sell Boak the gemstones and the gold sapphire ring he found in the Sunless Citadel. Boak doesn't forgive him, but reluctantly accepts the deal. He then fetches the newly-enchanted Ring of the Flock and the 20 Alchemist's Arrows Lurk had had on order.

The party then head to church of the Rat King to have Chadley seen to. Inside is Candice, reading a book while she's had nothing to do. She greets the adventurers warmly. When they say that they need Lulu's help with healing, Candice goes to grab her, as she doesn't know any of that magic herself, and Lulu has been looking after Calcryx. Before she goes, she does ask Lurk, "hey, did your eyes change?"

Lurk throws up his hands, incredulous. "Why does everyone keep saying that?" He hasn't seen a reflection of himself since gaining his psychic powers, which turned his large frog eyes from black to purple.

When Lulu arrives, she's not sure what kind of ailment is afflicting the human-turned-plant Chadley. She has him lay down on the cushioned floor so she can do a basic examination, and he explains how he broke his arm after falling out of the well shaft in the Sunless Citadel. However, when Lulu removes the sling, she finds that the arm isn't broken at all, and Chadley is equally surprised that it doesn't hurt anymore and moves fine. Valas wonders if Chadley had been lying to them just so they'd give him special treatment on the way out of the citadel, but he appears genuinely shocked and confused.

She tries to cast Remove Curse on him when Chadley says he can afford her healing magic services with his family's money, but it doesn't do anything. Chadley's dismayed that he's not cured, but Aelia, Valas, and Deku reassure him that it's good he's not cursed.

Lulu takes some holy water and sprinkles some over his head, but he winces and complains as it starts burning his scalp. The party grimaces, as reacting badly to holy water is usually not a good sign. Valas thinks about it, and thinks the reaction Chadley showed is similar to that of undead creatures in particular.

Chadley says that he at least has his family's private medical team that he can go to, and asks if there's a messaging service in the Rat's Nest or Yawning Rodent. The party recalls that one of Peach's magic services was casting the spell Sending, but her tent is gone for now. Deku also knows that the Yawning Rodent does get the postal service, and has messenger pigeons in case of emergencies.

Chadley also mentions that they need to rescue Bradley as well as his sister, and that Belak - the person who experimented on him, took McKennedeigh and Bradley, and had been controlling the Goblin Gang from the shadows - is an 'old man' - a human. When Valas asks who Bradley is, Chadley says that he thought he'd mentioned it to them before - that he and McKennedeigh hired two mercenaries to help them explore the Sunless Citadel: Bradley and Reignbow. Aelia and Valas recognise the name Reignbow immediately, and Aelia bluntly says that she has Reignbow's ring, taken from her corpse that they found at the giant spider mother's nest. Chadley grimaces, recalling that they'd begun exploring the citadel, but Reignbow had been killed and dragged off by the spider mother shortly before he, McKennedeigh, and Bradley had been captured by the Goblin Gang and Belak.

The group leaves Chadley with Lulu for now, as they plan on returning to the Sunless Citadel to find his sister.

As with the previous day, the party of adventurers has no trouble getting back to the Sunless Citadel through the few hours of Underdark tunnel travel, and through the first floor and down the well shaft of the large building. Yusdrayl greets them as normal, her guards still spread out through the citadel's first floor.

On the lower level, they move through the laboratory, but Valas doubles back and frowns. He calls back, "someone's been through here!", after noticing that some of the lab equipment on the tables have been moved around, and the notes on Chadley that the goblins were working on before Lurk killed them yesterday are now missing.

Lugs checks in on the fire snake he left in their arboretum, and pulls out some more pet treats he bought from Clara's general store. As he enters, the fire snake slowly emerges from their nest, with a huge lumpy shape in their stomach from their goblin meal the previous day. Not recognising that they must be full, Lugs crushes the pet treats in his hand and eagerly offers it to the snake again, who just stares at him.

As his companions go to continue down the hallway according to Grimwarg's directions to find Belak, Lugs opens the door wider and motions for the fire snake to follow him. Understanding his intent and getting used to his scent after he left his scrap of fabric there the day before, the fire snake slowly begins to follow him, staying 20-30 feet behind him as he trails behind the rest of the group.

It now becomes apparent that, when Lugs had asked Lurk to tell the rest of the party, "don't come in here, I'm feeding my snake" the day before, Lurk hadn't done so. Deku notices the fire snake and runs away in fright towards the front of the group, panicking because he's so small that the snake might think him good prey. Taking a better look, however, he realises that the snake's eaten a large meal recently, and shouldn't be hungry again for at least another week.

Aelia turns to Lurk and just says, "what the fuck."

Lurk sighs and rolls his eyes before walking back down the corridor to his brother, wanting to have a proper look at the fire snake "if it's going to be a part of my life from now on." From what he can tell, the fire snake is an elemental, and probably at least understands Ignan - the fire elemental dialect of Primordial. No one in the party knows how to speak it, though.

Continuing on, they pass by another arboretum, this one with the door missing off its hinges for some reason. Aelia spots at least one skeleton gardener inside, tending to the shrubbery. They briefly discuss if they should go and kill the creatures in there and torch the plants again, but decide to move on for now.

The last arboretum is the northern room that Grimwarg told them to go through. This one is empty of workers, and just has different saplings growing in the garden beds. Through the next door - the only door out of this room - they find a short corridor leading to what looks like a larger version of the small offering room they'd found yesterday. The statue of Ashardalon, the red dragon, is much larger, and a red light illuminating the room in front of it glows out from the eye sockets while a deep shadow is cast behind it.

Like before, there's a circular tile in the floor with Draconic writing on it, meant to be the place where the person making the offering would pray. Deku translates it as, "let the sorcerous power illuminate my spirit." The group turns to look at Valas, the one sorcerer in the group. Deku teaches him the Draconic words, and he stands on the tile and recites them, just as Lugs had the previous day when he received the boon of advantage on constitution checks. Similarly, Valas is quickly enveloped in a torrent of a harmless blue flame illusion jetting out of the tile, and he's granted advantage on charisma checks for the next 24 hours.

Lurk inspects the next door, and, like the arboretum doors and the door to this room, it's not trapped or locked, and looks like it's passed through regularly. Stepping inside, Deku finds that it's a ruined library, with shelving that's falling apart and books and scrolls scattered all over the floor as though from an earthquake. With a start, he realises that he still hasn't found his library book that the Goblin Gang stole from him, so he calls out to the others that he's going to take a look in here for it. He starts rummaging through the piles of papers and finds a few enchanting recipes they can give to Boak later (the Epistemological Recipe, the Lunacy Recipe, and the Shadow Recipe), as well as a scroll of Acid Arrow, a scroll of Scorching Ray, and a book written in Draconic called Future of the Ancients. Unfortunately, he doesn't find his book Cults Around The World.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party has stayed in the offering room, watching Lugs lure in his fire snake through the previous door. Lurk, having a poke-around, jumps up onto the Ashardalon statue's back, jovially acting like he's riding it as a mount. Suddenly, the inky black shadow behind the statue shivers and pulsates before stretching upwards from behind the dragon, a physical manifestation of a dark void towering silently over Lurk. Everyone's shocked, and Valas recognises it to be a dangerous undead monster simply known as a 'shadow'...