Run 4 - 20210316

Once we sort of recovered from the fuckery of the fights, I figured it might be a good idea to go scavenge the stuff in the gelatinous cube room. When we head down, we see what looks like a bunch of coins, swords, arrow heads, the metal remains of a suit of plate mail. First we let Nyla mage hand a bunch of the little shit out.

We also see a wooden rod with a slightly flanged end sitting in the pile of metal stuff; we grab that and put it with our other wooden rod. This one’s different; has a few stains on it, and it … smells good. Smells like curry. This might have been the goblin’s grandma’s spoon. 

[We have recovered a Pile of Metal Crap and a Questionable Wooden Rod.]

Then D.va tries to go in and get more stuff, but trips over herself. The cube wakes up and slurps her up; we end up running in to try to save her.  D.va manages to squirm free, I go in and punch it, and it doesn’t do much and I end up getting nearly burned to death for my trouble. Nyla hits it with an eldritch blast and summons a tentacle behind it. Chad runs in, smites it, runs back out. Caleb runs in with his maul, hits it, gets back a bit but isn’t able to fully leave the room.

[By the way, we’re hitting AC 6. on 2s and 3s.]

The cube, chilled by the tentacley grasp, moves about 5 feet towards Caleb, but doesn’t make it to him. D.va hits it with a bolt of lightning. I slump against the wall and pull out a cigarette, try to heal myself a bit. Nyla hits it with an eldritch blast and a tentacle hit; Chad slashes it; and then Caleb puts his maul allll the way through the cube. I scrounge a bit of gelatinous cube acid as D.va gets the plate armor from the pile of stuff in the corner. 

In the room beyond the gelatinous cube, there are some several-century-old supplies and another set of machinery for a winch/portcullis. 

We lift the portcullis to get out (that the lifestealers dropped) and stop for a little bit while D.va tries to figure out what the curry-spoon wand does. Turns out this wand flavors things perfectly. She thinks it’s a wand of prestidigitation.

We head out without lifting the next portcullis, figure we should go deal with the goblins before continuing, redeem some ears. The four? two? lifestealers on the bottom that we killed first have been mostly consumed by voracious crabs. There are some crabs in the corpses still. We decide that those bodies belong to the crabs now and go meet the goblins, who have sort of set up shop.

We hand over the ears and, reluctantly, the spoon, when talking with the goblin that comes over to us. He’s cool, says that Grandma might be able to make D.va another wand of prestidigitation. 

Goblin’s name is Falaariel. We talk a little bit, have some tea that’s made better with the wand. Talk about going to meet Grandma. D.va tries to teach Falaariaal how to use the wand, but he’s, uh, bad at magic. 

This world sucks, there are too many stupid monsters with the wrong organs and ovipositors and magical fuckery. We get told all about this shit while we take a nice long feast (with travel rations and such, but still), and then we end up heading to the “goblin” village. I’m starting to get the impression these ‘goblins’ got hit pretty hard with the lifestealer effect, because this ‘village’ is a stereotypical elven glade - beautiful trees, houses in harmony with nature, etc. Falaariel leads us to one house with smoke coming from the chimney, smell of spices, and so on. We meet “Grandma”, there is an extended introduction, etc. 

We get 17gp for ears. I sell some of the gelatinous cube ooze and some of the clear glass flasks in my alchemy kit for 12 gp and a few pottery flasks.

Chad, being a paladin of capitalism, starts talking to Grandma about setting up a trading post and what sorts of things they need and want to buy out here. They talk about some stuff; she definitely wants him to show back up with merchants and such. Conversation with Grandma is fine; we have been made welcome here in the village and Grandma seems to like us. 

When Grandma was a little girl, her grandma told her stories about how the wizard who lived there threw parties with the strangest people. They were always led in through the moathouse by his guards. The captain of the guard would walk them down to the forcefield and … open a little loophole in the forcefield and they could walk right through. And when they came back out (hm. lots of people went in, not many came out - interesting) … they would be met and the captain would let them back out. 

The captain probably used that tiny wand to create the loopholes.

“Galarus” - Grandma’s great-great-uncle. Really liked magic, in a bad way. Could have been behind whatever magical attack/disaster aged the gatehouse by several hundred years at a whack. 

Wizard in the wizard tower used to be able to make gelatinous cubes - captain of the guard should have been able to control them too. Probably also a use of the captain’s “rod of office” (which is what Grandma called the captain’s rod).