20220913 - Run 31

So we’re in this cave, up on the wall on a walkway, about to get fucked by frogs. Chad shouts out in a religious fervor that these frogs are either communist or socialist, so OK, they’re probably going to attack us then. It’s unclear whether the ritual that summoned the Deep Croak was more Liberation Theology or just bog-standard cryptoanarchist trash. Chad starts ranting about ‘hit point inflation’ and the markets collapsing. Nyla thinks the Deep Croak sound came from the wall to our left. 

I suggest we keep moving, and we start up again. D.va requests Nyla to send Pedostache Ticklebangers forward to scout. The imp is already scouting around us, invisible, however, and hasn’t provided any of what he calls ‘actionable intelligence’ yet, but he assures us that any information of note will be relayed in an expeditious manner. Meanwhile, Chad listens to the frog croaking again. 

At this point, Tricky M. Rodmanglers flies up to me and tells us there’s a creature lying in wait ahead of us. I peer ahead and there’s this huge fucking scorpion-crab thing with a bunch of tongues hanging out of its mouth, across the path, clearly lying in wait, except it’s apparently this world’s stupidest scorpion-crab, because it’s sitting right on top of some kind of light, so it’s backlit while waiting for us and seems to not even notice this. This looks about the right size and shape to be the kind of thing that ate that lemur earlier, when it ran by that ladder very early on. Nyla suggests we go around instead of trying to kill this thing, D.va replies with a casting of faerie fire on the cavesquid instead.

Chad then goes up to spear range and stabs at the thing. (“As they taught us in Paladin school: Always Be Closing.”)

He fucks up one of its three hanging tongues. I move up, stab a second to shreds with the Quivering Stun Spear technique, stunning it, and then slapped the third tendril with a Poisoned Backhand, disrupting the thing’s qi while removing its last tendril. Caleb is kind of put out by this since I got rid of all his targets, and then Nyla does a whole ‘stand back, i’ve got this’ thing and just starts blowing chunks out of the thing with eldritch blasts. Caleb throws a pair of handaxes at the thing, having one lodge in the scorpion-crab and losing one into the water. D.va finishes the thing off with a pair of lightning blasts and it falls down the wall to our level.

Chad, Caleb and I get splashed with some kind of liquid from this thing when it hits the ground. It feels like getting splashed with high-grade moonshine, and it actually tastes pretty good. We see 2 tiny Tricky-sized footprints in the puddle of crustacean alcohol and hear him pronounce it to be of high quality. I strip the crab down into alcohol-blood, meat, and carapace ‘bundles’, and we grab the bundles and start moving. This is good, because we can hear the frog chanting continuing, and another huge CROAK. The frogs are closing on us. We keep going.

We move on and we start closing on a wall. Nyla sends R.M. Knucklemonger up to see if all of the walkways in this ‘stack’ have the same problem, and indeed, all of the walkways end at the wall. President Phalanges informs us that there is a slow whirlpool in the pool below.

Nyla starts figuring out how she can go swimming. We head down, checking for doors, but get to the bottom level without finding one. Chad can hear the chanting generally getting closer, and possibly submerging intermittently as it does so. 

After the fact we learn that Nyla can hear and understand the frog chanting while underwater and decided to troll the chanters while underwater. But we just hear some grunting. Caleb’s on ‘shore’ holding a rope, when Rear Ensign Knucklemonger lands on his shoulder and states that he has ‘found the door’. There’s some discussion about whether Nyla should be retrieved that ends with Milhaus stating that he has never partaken (‘of what’ is unclear) and Caleb asking if he can telepathically contact Nyla, that’s how that works, right? The chanting continues to get louder and closer. Chad helps Caleb drag Nyla out of the water.

Chief Executive Ticklebangers sends us back towards a ladder, up to the second level. There’s a huge CROAK and at this point I’m just hoping we don’t end up having to deal with this fucking frog. Nyla reports that she can see a gigantic frog in the water. We keep going up the ladders heading to the door Tricky is sending us to. Meanwhile, the huge frog surfaces in the middle of the whirlpool (and not caring), and continues to try to get up to us. It slams its tongue into the bottom of the walkway as we’re getting up on the top level. Richard M. Phalanges continues to try to herd us towards a small doorway … somewhere in this complex. We head for the door and get out instead of playing with the fucking frogs. Nyla keeps talking about how she just wanted to say hello and the frogs wanted to take all our stuff and eat us and I guess it’s so unfair or something, and Chad counters with “Yes. Communism.”

We get through a door we think is The Door to Gina’s weaver friends, and there’s a hallway that extends past the door. After the outside chasm this feels claustrophobic, but we adapt to it and move on. The hallway goes for quite some ways, and has a slight upward incline. I’m in the lead and manage to see a tripwire before I step on it. The tripwire is connected to a bell. We just hop over the wire and keep going, without destroying the noisemaker. The end of the hallway opens out into a large artifical cavern festooned with mushrooms and a bunch of lights that look like stars, some places where beetles and grubs are being raised amongst the mushrooms, some walls built from rubble acting to subdivide the space… and a pair of tall, not-actually-very-surprised insectoid guards, one holding a spear, and one holding a noisemaker.

We try to establish communications despite none of us knowing Iklik. Chad gets a little ways with this, and also holds out his holy symbol. We hold out some meat, they take a piece, have a bite, they hand it back to Chad, he takes a bite, and the rest of us are not really sure if any communications are happening or not, but at least the soldier guard non-linguists of the insect persuasion are just as confused and not interested in fighting as we are. Guess we’ll see how this goes.