The party takes a short rest while discussing how in the hell they are going to deal with having a brontosaurus for a guide, which is strange since the only answer to such a question is "HELL YEAH!"
But seriously, Eku can't cast spells as a brontosaurus, which means her only abilities are "tail whip" and "stomp." Without her spells, the party has no guaranteed supply of fresh food and water without having to rely on 🌱's goodberry and purify food and drink spell, as well as fresh water from the alchemy jug.
"I want to make it known," Zanzibar says, getting ready to teeter morally on his alignment chart. "The next time we see a humanoid creature nearby, I want to keep at least one alive to see if we can interrogate it about the presence of a shield guardian."
Now that they have Vorn's amulet, the PC's debate whether or not they need to go ahead and use it. Zanzibar is worried that the shield guardian is somewhere far off on the island, and he doesn't want to risk any danger happening by activating it when it could be hidden up the ass of some monster.
"So what if it's in danger. It's a shield guardian! It's going to be fine!" Valour says, pointing at its stats in the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Monster Manual.
"I don't want to risk it falling into a volcano!" Zanzibar says.
After debating volcanoes, shield guardians, Valour's promise to kill nine trickster gods (one of them being Dur-Dur-Dur's deity), and tales from Dur-Dur-Dur about a race of froggy people called Grung who live in a hidden village called Dungrunglung, the party camps out for the night, eating some of the salted fish and meat from the goblins' larder while "Ekusaurus" chomps down on leaves from the nearby trees.
Speaking of trickster gods...
🌱 casts his Doctor Dolittle spell and goes to Eku and says, "Hey Eku, do you know where the trickster gods are so that we can go murder them?"
Eku tells him that they are in Omu.
Success! The PC's already want to go there!
Eku them says that Omu is hidden somewhere within this red circle on their world map, which the DM draws for them.
The PC's then gather around and question Eku about the weird ass creatures that the trickster gods are named after. They've figured out what grungs are, but other animals like "jaculi" and "kamadan" are too strange for them.
"Jaculi are dangerous serpentine monsters," Eku begins speaking to 🌱. "They can alter their appearance to look exactly like a rock or tree. They're super dangerous and they could be lurking anywhere. Kamadans are basically giant leopards but with medusa hair who like ripping faces off of—"
"Let's go to bed!" Zanzibar says, shutting up the scary ass stories.
The PC's decide to sleep the rest of the night, choosing to investigate the wreckage of the Yellyark village that Dur-Dur-Dur hurled into the jungle the next morning.
Speaking of the next morning, it arrives.
The party grabs some food from the larder tent and starts looking for the catapulted goblin town, finding it after immediately.
Eku and Zanzibar's familiar peek into the leaf-nutsack that's been scattered among the trees, and they see that it's full of juvenile goblins! The little goblins are cowering, so Valour and Dur-Dur-Dur climb the nearby trees and step inside the tree village.
The goblin children freak out, one of them stepping precariously close to a precarious edge, so Valour leaps to save the kid, tumbling out of the tree in the process and taking 3d6 Lawful Good damage.
"There are some tiny goblin kids in there," Valour says, rubbing his head.
"Did they beat you up and throw you out?" 🌱 says, being an asshole... Well, he probably doesn't even have an asshole, being fungus and all. Heck he probably just reuses his poop and fertilizes himself, like a dookie elemental.
Oh god now he's getting ideas...
Dur-Dur-Dur throws some orc food to the kids to shut them up, then asks them if they have seen his daddy. They don't answer, probably because thanks to the PC's, the goblin children will be wondering where their daddies are too.
"Hey Dur-Dur-Dur, is everything okay up there? They threw Valour out," 🌱 says.
"These little guys are a little aggressive if you don't talk to them right, but I got them!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"Ask them if they've seen the shield guardian," 🌱 says.
"I'm asking them if they've seen my daddy!"
"Why?"
"MY DADDY WAS MY GUARDIAN!"
Dur-Dur-Dur proceeds to tell long stories about his daddy to the now daddy-less goblins, then tries to get them to leave, but he's dumb and they're dumb so nothing really happens. He reaches out to snatch up one of the goblin kids and misses, then laughs, rolls a 5 on a Persuasion check, scares the goblins shitless instead, and eventually shepherds the kids by scaring them towards the exit so that they can shimmy down a rope.
One of the goblin kids lands on the ground and Zanzibar shoves a drawing of Vorn the Shield Guardian into the stupid kid's face and says, "VORN!!1?"
The kid tears the page out of his book and eats it. Then runs away with the other goblin children. The party learns nothing from any of this.
Zanzibar puts a 9th level spell slot into his fuggit spell and decides to activate the shield guardian remotely. They wait, but no shield guardian approaches, so Zanzibar foretells the future and the party makes some acid.
They go back to Yellyark, steal the goblin canoes, then paddle down the stream back to the River Shoshenshsahtr, and they encounter a statue of Pretzelcoatl on the side of the stream.
The statue is covered in vines and refuse, to they clean the statue off, which cheers up Eku. "There are still treasures and offerings here," Eku says, admiring some little bone trinkets left at the statue's base. "People still care for Pretzelcoatl."
While that's going on, 🌱 finds DRUUUUUUGS! He comes back with 11 ounces of menga bush leaves, which can be ground and diluted into a powder, mixed with liquid, and used to restore hit points at a rate of 1 hit point per ounce, but more than 5 ounces in a setting and you risk overdosing.
The next day arrives and the party is back at the River Shishkebab, which Eku is able to navigate by just kicking debris out of the way because: brontosaurus. Then it begins to rain! Dur-Dur-Dur gets naked and starts bathing, and Zanzibar accidentally bumps into him, getting a faceful of orc wingwang.
The rain is solemn and peaceful, as though the PC's are now experiencing Chult in its purest form. Not much happens during the trek down the river, and as the sun rises the following morning, the party arrives at the shores of Camp Vengeance!
The camp is a regular fortress: walls of pointed tree-trunk stakes, a trench filled with muddy water, and scavenged dinosaur carcasses mixed with slain zombies littering the outer area. Atop, the banners of Tyr, Torm, and Helm waft in the wet wind.
The party, which includes a frog man, naked orc, and a brontosaurus steps up to the front gate!
The camp captain, Niles Breakbone, sees the symbol of Tyr on Valour's shield and lets the PC's enter. Within, the camp is a damn-near disease ridden outpost which does well against the undead and carnivorous dinosaurs, but not so well against bugs and coronaviruses.
"This place is pretty terrible," Captain Breakbone says. "We were overrun at Camp Righteous, so we had to fall back to here. Soon we will run out of abstract nouns to name our camps after, so we can't lose our fortifications here."
Valour says that he sees eye to eye with the captain, then mentions that they saw cannibals at Camp Righteous.
Breakbone speaks of no sanctity for cannibals, stating that they are allied with the Heretic, Ras Nsi. He's bad! Also, Niles just sucks at this Vietnam jungle shit. He's all about battle lines, banners, sieges, going "Doo-doo-doooo" on a trumpet, etc. So Camp Vengeance is super overburdened, mainly from sick people illnesses that pop up when insects descend upon them from the Aldani Basin to the south.
Sick people!?
Dur-Dur-Dur doesn't fuck around with sick people, so he hides.
Valour volunteers to use his lay on hands abilities on the sickly people after Captain Breakbone asks the party to escort some sick folks back to Port Nyanzaru. After healing the people, Valour impresses the shit out of everyone.
"Remember that these are desperate men. Be careful of what promises you make to them," Zanzibar says to Valour.
"I make no promises to them... but I will help. Yet I'm not here to stay."
🌱 keeps his fever-curing beetle a secret and doesn't use it to heal anyone. Later that night, there is a great party with lots of drinking (provided by the alchemy jug) to celebrate the arrival of the PC's who bring good tidings of healing and such!
In the midst of it all, Valour performs a dedication ceremony to Pretzelcoatl and says "No good god should have their reputation dealt a blow like this. If you come across anything dedicated to Pretzelcoat, set it right." Then he tells the soldiers that he and his party have been tasked by both Tyr and Pretzelcoatl to cleanse the jungle.
During the festivities, Dur-Dur-Dur tells all of his conspiracy theories to anyone who will listen to him, which includes anyone too weak to pull away from his grasp. Zanzibar gathers knowledge about the nearby area, hearing that the Aldani Basin is named after the Aldani lobsterfolk.
Dur-Dur-Dur immediately takes interest in the lobsterfolk story, then starts scribbling down information about it as people start passing out drunk. Zanzibar later hears about the "Heart of Pretzelcoatl" that hovers over the Aldani Basin. Meanwhile, 🌱 goes around asking people where Omu is, but they're like "Ain't nobody here named Omu!"
Before the night ends, Zanzibar starts challenging people to an arm wrestling match, using his nat 1 and nat 2 portent rolls to be a sneaky little snake. Zanzibar damn near breaks some arms as he beats some seasoned veterans, winning Valour some money.
"You think this guy is tough?" Valour says, pointing at Zanzibar. "That guy over there is the true warrior!" he then points at Minion, who is just being a frog in a puddle of water.
As the party winds down, Valour brings a barrel of dried fruit out to the front gatehouse for Eku, since she is a brontosaurus and can't really fit inside the camp.
The next day, Valour uses his remaining lay on hands ability to heal the other sickly people. As the morning dew settles, a watchtower guard shouts that there is an encroaching enemy!
The party readies in the ramparts, but they rejoice as a moss-covered shield guardian comes stomping out of the treeline! The PC's tell everyone to stand down, and Dur-Dur-Dur is ecstatic since the shield guardian is his buddy Steven that he has been looking for!
Zanzibar greets the shield guardian, then declares himself as the hulking monster's new master. They bring the shield guardian into Camp Vengeance, then debate taking him on further quests before bringing him back to Port Nyanzaru. Dur-Dur-Dur and 🌱 want to use the shield guardian to hurt some foes first, but Valour and Zanzibar want to turn it in for the reward and not risk him getting hurt.
As they set out from the camp, Captain Breakbone rushes out with a full plan about how the PC's and his eight best warriors will head eastward into the jungles, mowing down any undead they find on a two-week long sorties for JUSTICE!
Valour calmly tells the captain that they have other important deeds to carry out, and that the people of Camp Vengeance have their own power now since they have proven their strength. In return, Valour gives the captain a +1 yklwa and leaves a massive supply of anti-bug incense in the camp.
As they leave, they turn around to see the rainbow flag of Pretzelcoatl rise up with the other three banners, causing Eku to smile a dinosaur smile. The PC's get some XP, 🌱 and Valour reach level 4, and everyone remembers that Minion is still at level 1 and should be at level 3, so they crank out some extra hit points and abilities for him to make him a helluva lot more badass than before.
Yorumlar