S05E11: Consensual Touches (And Gas)

Carlos impersonates a god (again). Doctor Snuggleface doesn't like Carlos' "God voice." Nissa talks to a dead cultist. Satura pets a Chimaera.
The gang enters the lost pyramid of a mad wizard. After escaping from a maze by convincing some poltergeists they're forest gods, they find themselves fighting a group of cultists separated from the main group in the maze. They narrowly escape the cultists only to be confronted by an angry Chimaera, too large to escape the room. While Nissa scouts ahead in gaseous form, the gang negotiates with the Chimaera to let them pass in exchange for shrinking it so it can leave.
== Background ==
We were previously sent out to retrieve the Forest Psalm, which was thought lost for centuries, after rumors have surfaced around its appearance in the Pyramid of Peter the Perturbed. Kentucky Bourbon, the scholar that had made the (potential) discovery, was freed from a closet after we went to get more information from him.
When readied, the group teleported to the island surrounded by a river polluted by wild magic, originating from the giant silver pyramid to the North. When we approached, we had a brief altercation with the Wood Elves guarding the entrance (and the area in general).
We were able to convince them we weren’t part of the previous group that had arrived, and gained permission to enter the Pyramid where we found a maze on the first floor. This maze had a ghost beckoning the group further in, as well as poltergeists moving doors around and changing the layout of the scene. Um and Averlyth had followed the ghost, Nissa and Carlos had gone down another route and found a body to potentially talk to (although a Poltergeist had immediately thrown the body down the hall in anger).
Satura is here so she has materialized by the body, with Nissa and Carlos.
== Session ==
=== Trapped in the Maze ===
Averlyth manages to open a recently closed door in her attempts to resume following the ghost.
Carlos had called Nissa to see a dead body and then began pushing on a wall that’s not moving. Nissa draws an arrow on the ground indicating the direction she just ran rom and then casts “Talk with the dead” on the corpse of her choice within range. (It must have a mouth and she can ask it up to 5 questions in 10 minutes if it doesn’t recognize her as an enemy). Upon closer inspection, the body looks a little cult-y and recently-deceased (like 24 hours). Nissa casts the spell anyways.
Nissa asks the body how he died, and he just says in the maze.
Nissa asks the body why he’s here, and he says “the master brought us here, he’s after something, he didn’t tell us why”
Nissa unfortunately informed him he was dead.
He gives her an address to write home to his mom to tell her he died bravely.
Nissa asks how many went with him, and he mumbles a little confused, saying something about not being good with numbers. “I dunno, a few dozen? There’s a lot of us…”
Nissa asks when was the last time he saw his fellow cultists. Apparently a wall slid shut in front of him and then he hit the ceiling - it’s suddenly noticeable that his neck is at a bit of an angle.
Nissa quickly consults with Satura and Carlos to figure out the last question to ask the dead body. She asks if he saw the ghost - he says yes, and that the master thought it was trying to trick them. The body now falls down onto the ground and all the air goes out of it.
Satura joins Carlos in pushing on a wall and it seems like it might just be a wall.
Um cautiously follows Averlyth, taking the same right then left down the hallway that the ghost has been trying to lead them down.
Averlyth and Um hear the unnmistakable sound of a rock wall moving somewhere down the hallway, although we can’t see exactly where it is. Nissa, Carlos and Satura see doors slammed around them. The blue ghost pokes his head around the corner to make sure Um and Averlyth were still following, then heads back down.
Averlyth takes off after the ghost, but then slips on some gravel while going around a small corner. By the time she picks herself back up, there’s a wall at the end of the hallway.
Carlos attempts to rob the body again out of habit, just in case he regained more loot during his brief reanimation. Then he goes up to one of the wall-doors that had recently closed on him and re-opened it.
Nissa leaves another arrow on the ground before walking down the opened path to the original T junction. Satura chases after her - both of them very strategically not stepping on any of the rails where the doors go. Um follows Averlyth around, more carefully after seeing her slip around the corner.
The ghost pokes his head through the wall in front of Averlyth and Um, once again motioning for them to follow.
Nissa and Carlos go down a hallway and sees an arrow facing her despite that not having been the direction she came from, then exclaims “HEY THEY MOVED MY ARROW”. (Looking closer, the arrow was actually drawn as little differently. They were pretty unprofessional, actually). Satura, following the other two, starts to notice the track marks on the floor, and is reasonably confident she’s seen a new wall-door.
Averlyth and Um push the door open together, revealing the rest of the hall and a nodding ghost. Continuing around a corner, we see multiple twists and turns, and the ghost goes down one.
Satura suddenly feels spectral hands grabbing her, dragging her a few feet down the hallway. Within moments, she has a flashback to her training in the monastery and braces herself, lowering her center of gravity and hunkering down on the ground. She suddenly also hears violent cursing in her ears as the poltergeists are pissed they can’t mess with her.
Nissa notices Satura getting “ghost-handled” and begins singing a discordant melody, but the poltergeists seem unaffected. Satura swings around to punch a poltergeist.
Carlos doesn’t really want to bad touch the poltergeist.
Carlos touches a ghost, casts Tongue, and goes: “LISTEN UP! SPIRIT! I don’t know what your deal is, but me and my group are divine gods of the forest. We have the ability to put you to final rest and out of this limbo misery that you’re in once and for all. You would be wise to unhand my friend and we will grant you this favor. Or we can do things the hard way.”
This is not the first time Carlos has pretended to be a god.
Doctor Snuggleface is hanging back (he doesn’t super like the angry “God” voice, it’s the same voice Carlos uses to scold him), mainly just licking his balls. He actually grabbed a finger off the dead cult and has been gnawing on it.
Quick editorial detail, we have established Snuggleface is a brown mutt
An oppressive feeling in the hallway has suddenly lifted. We can no longer feel where the ghosts are, but they don’t seem to be directly fucking with us. We also get a feeling they aren’t going to wait SUPER long.
Carlos loudly questions Nissa about the current date (the group briefly is confused about what calendar system is used in D&D) and then announces that the “ritual to release the poltergeists only works in a few midnights, under some specific time”. Nissa even pulls out an Almanac to talk about the moon. They can feel the poltergeists somewhat shrugging in agreement.
Um and Averlyth follow the ghost into a dead end, push against the wall, and then find themselves back in the original hallway. Averlyth leaves Um to do most of the pushing, and then notices with some certainty that the wall to her direct right - originally the dead end of the hallway - seems to actually be a door as well.
Flashback to before the mission, Carlos is telling the group that if anything happens, we’ll just pretend we’re forest gods
Carlos jumps on the fartie talkies and communicates with the “fellow forest gods” about the status of the poltergeists as well as the info from the dead body.
=== Freeing the Ghost ===
Now that we’re out of initiative, both groups open up the “wall that appears to be a door” by them and find themselves in the same hallway. Finally reunited, the party walk into a small room without any noticeable features except for dead body in the corner. The body is desiccated and much older than the other body we had found, and the ghost is hovering over it; Satura observes with relative certainty that the body belongs to this ghost.
Nissa goes to cast the same spell on the body, but notices a journal on the body. The last page is noticeable, with just the words “escape” over and over again. She peers through the contents, learning that this body appears to belong to an adventurer that was trapped by the poltergeists and then died.
Averlyth, with her familiarity with religions, is aware that this adventurer’s ghost is here because his body is still within the maze.
Carlos, bored with the situation, has seen another secret entrance. He opens up the door and sees a new hallway - what he doesn’t yet know is that Averlyth and Um had actually passed by what should have been the hallway outside that planar space.
Averlyth lets the group know that removing the body should let the ghost rest. Carlos picks up the body and places it at the entrance of the Pyramid; the ghost looks relieved, and then dissipates. The Wood Elves look a little confused.
The group realizes that ghost was probably pretty pissed after discovering how close he was to the entrance.
Carlos, imitating the ghost: “I’m at peace, but also… fuck”
Um and Averlyth look at the doorway suspiciously after realizing the hallway past it doesn’t make sense specially. Um puts his finger through the doorway. Satura just walks through it.
=== Cultists vs Firebull ===
The group goes into the hallway - it curves around a bit, but then eventually opens up into a large area. There’s a small group of cultists (with 4 living cult members, a Dragonborn and a tiefling) in the room that appear to be resting. There’s also a large skeletal serpent (like a larger than usual Naga) with 5 dead cult members around them.
There’s an unusual large puddle of water on the ground - it seemed like the room was flooded a few more inches until recently, so the water must be draining somewhere.
Um tries to hide and eavesdrop on the group. He’s able to hear confirmation that some of the doors are magical portals, that the purple worm was supposed to knock down walls but it in itself triggered some magical trap and thereby separated the party. The cultists haven’t seen us yet.
Carlos pulls out the Ring of the Grammarian and casts Firebull.
The spell conjures a gigantic iron bull construct (a Khalkotauroi), terrifying Doctor Snuggleface. Carlos gives Snuggleface back the finger to distract him, and then directs the bull to stomp into the room and breath fire on the group.
The tiefling scout and 2 cultists dive out of the way. The Dragonborn mage and the other 2 cultists are caught in the full blast. It appears that everyone might be dead.
The bull busts on through the hallway at the end because Carlos never told him to stop. There are six new sizzling corpses in the middle of the room.
Averlyth notices that the water appears to just be draining through cracks in the ground. Um does not perceive an obvious water source (but there was also very recently a mage in the room).
Carlos goes to loot the mage and finds 115 gold as well as his spellbook, plus a scroll of gaseous form. On the other bodies he finds a total of 50 gold and 2 potions of healing. The scroll of gaseous form is given to Nissa.
While everyone else is looting bodies, Averlyth suddenly notices a faint thrumming sound that is growing louder and the water is vibrating a bit. Right as she gets the idea to do something about it, the noise is getting louder and closer. 
With an increasing sense of urgency, the group makes their way towards the hallway where the bull went. All of a sudden, a purple worm bursts through the wall behind them, followed by what appears to be cultists and a dragon born.
=== That Floor is Obviously Trapped ===
The gang proceeds to run down the hallway after the bull (who has definitely disappeared by now).
There is a shout and a chase behind them as they run down a curving corridor that eventually emerges into a new room with a checkered floor and dead reptilian bodies along the walls swarming with tadpole-like creatures that Nissa recognized as the larval stages of Slaadi.
The shouting is getting closer.
Averlyth keeps everyone from stepping onto the floor, confident it’s trapped.
Carlos steps onto the floor, confident it’s not trapped.
Suddenly a lightning glyph carved into the gray square triggers below his foot - which is soaking wet from the previous room - and zaps Steve.Steve: “7!”DM: “I need you to make that roll at disadvantage, but you’re probably not going to get worse than 7.”Steve: “.... 6!”The shouting is even louder now. Um climbs up the wall. Nissa decides to voluntarily touch herself and cast the gaseous form spell. Carlos is about to do the same but then decides spiderclimb would be dope and he follows Um up the ceiling.
Averlyth grabs a willing Satura and teleports the two of them to the other side of the room.
Not a moment later, the cultists have arrived in the room. The first one attempts to stop them, but then the rest fill into the room and start triggering a lot of glyphs.
They would’ve been fine, but all of a sudden the purple worm comes barreling into the room and gets fried as it makes contact with multiple glyphs at once. The cultists are yelping around the room as we leave and proceed down the hallway.
=== The Chimaera ===
The hallway curves around a few times, and we now notice the familiar sensation of an arcane portal as we pass into a new room lit by an unnatural, otherworldly scintillating light.
Carlos immediately recognizes these as wild magic rifts - bad news for everyone else- and a monstrous chimaera swoops down in front of the group.
Nissa is still a gas so she just floats over to the other side of the room to see what’s there.
Satura thinks the Chimaera is cute and tells Um that it could be a cute pet. Averlyth and Nissa are wary because it’s a monster, but notice it doesn’t immediately attack. Carlos has an insightful conclusion that the three heads of the monster probably have three separate opinions of us.
Carlos suddenly recalls that he has a draconian ancestry and asks the dragon head “what is up”, claiming we are cool and just want to go by.
The goat and the lion head don’t really react, but the dragon head immediately eyes Carlos with interest and responds to him telepathically. He admits the lion wants to eat us and the goat wants out. He also wants out, but doesn’t want a concussed goat head. If we can get them out of the room, he’ll give us his modest hoard.
Carlos tries to propose that we go on ahead, let the Chimaera feast on some incoming cultists (that are actually a little “fried”), and then we’ll save them on the way back. The Chimaera doesn’t even let him finish and hisses at him, asking if we think it’s an idiot.
Satura wants to pet it and the Chimaera is insulted.
Carlos changes his tone and says we’ll let our leader (Nissa as a gas) go on ahead while we wait here - the Chimaera approves of us leaving “hostages” here - and we sit obediently around, trying to look as unappetizing as possible.
=== Nissa's Exploration ===
Nissa floats up the stairs at the end of the room and sees a set of double doors directly in front of her and hallways to the left and right. Behind the double doors, she hears an argument in a guttural tongue, occasionally punctuated by a clashing of a weapon on a shield. They sound like lizard people.
She floats through carefully and sees a tribe of lizard folks surrounded by weapons. In addition to a large group, there appears to be a shaman and a queen. The lizard folk are currently lathering themselves into a frenzy and appear to be hyping themselves to attack the “Red Men” (the cultists have been wearing red robes).
No one has noticed her yet, so she leaves to investigate the hallway down the left instead. The long hallway eventually terminates into the backside of a secret door. Nissa finds a crack to slide through and finds herself in what appears to be an alchemy lab. A row of tall stone urns are along a wall, there are rusted boxes and empty shelves. There’s another door and another room just like this, and then another door going to another room, and there are voices that can be heard speaking in Common on the other side of the wall.
She mists minimally through the door to find herself in an open area containing bodies of dead mutant lizard folk and a single human. There’s also cultists here, including one that appears to be searching for secret doors like the one that she just emerged from. The walls of this room appear to have also been permeated by the wild magic that affected the river and wildlife outside - they’re shifting constantly in ways that seem unnatural but not easy to pin down at a glance, sometimes breathing and sometimes furry, sometimes just a little bit off.
Nissa retreats again to go down the hallway in the right, and finds what appears to be a storage room with items stored haphazardly. Floating through to a last room, there is an impenetrable empty room filled with an incredibly dense fog.
=== Don't Pet the Chimaera ===
Nissa goes back to the room with the Chimaera, reveals herself and yells “Behold!”. The Chimaera hisses at her while Carlos goes “Oh, it’s our Party leader”.
Nissa offers to “shrink the Chimaera” so that it may escape, and after thinking about it a bit, it accepts. Nissa turns it into an adorable baby Chimaera.
Satura attempts to pet it. It breathes fire on her and she takes some damage. It was totally worth it.