Session 2.6

It has been decided that it’s about time to know exactly how big this Hole to the South is, and what surrounds it on all sides. The group prepares for this ambitious undertaking by getting the Bag of Holding for emergency supplies, and filling the BETA Bag of Holding with supplies for Grandl. After all, Grandl and his crew have been waiting for months, and might be getting in a tight spot by now. Sarat is asked if she wanted to join, which she refuses. She’s comfortable in Hardholme. Seems that a year-and-a-half of being stuck in a mine was enough for her. I suppose that’s good news for Gramarsh, the smoothest Half-Orc this side of the Five Year Voyage. They then check up on Vera and Fitz, to see if they need more Grandellium from the mine. They both respond with a resounding “YES!” Apparently, Grandellium is very light and strong, a good combination.

There are still a bunch of mysterious eggs in the BETA basement. And they’ve started to smell... badly. These eggs are the size of a hefty Halfling, too. Aequitus attempts to convince Gramarsh to smash the rotten egg against the Reach. There was no need though, as Carric is up for it immediately. Of course, Aurelae immediately takes to the BETA roof for an elf’s eye view. Aequitus watches from two blocks away; despite his own penchant for mischief and radical behavior, he must keep his distance for this one as a Councilor can not be seen egging a building. Gramarsh couldn’t care less about appearances and gleefully joins Carric at the intended target.

Carric gives the giant egg a good push, and it starts rolling unsteadily towards the front of the Reach. With a crash and rotten egg bits flying everywhere, the Reach turns into a smelly postmodernist painting. Newman comes dashing out, both flabbergasted and profoundly dismayed. He shouts at Carric “the Duchess will not be pleased!” Apparently, Newman is going to tell on Carric to Meera. What a little bitch.

### Day 1

The first day they travel out to “Softholme.” Carric and Gramarsh keep making fat jokes at Aequitus’ expense. The 40 lbs he gained recently due to his own Wild Magic have a profound impact on a formerly 113 lbs sorcerer. Soon enough the group gets distracted from Aequitus’ protruding gut however, as they come up to Rockador. In classic Rockador style, he immediately starts throwing shade at Gramarsh. Carric uses his wiles to charm Rockador, and they share a moment of kinship. Carric mock-decides to kill Celador, something which makes Rockador very happy. Especially since, according to their tempestuous stone friend, Celador is stalking them through the forest as they speak, ready to murder them all.

Aequitus then suggests to Carric to plant the last bean in the soil at Rockador’s feet. Everyone starts running. A few feet in front of Rockador, just outside the stone circle surrounding him, a beer geyser erupts! It goes on for a solid five minutes, before dying down. Everyone is brave enough to give the liquid gold a sip. The beer tastes pretty good! They drink and revel, and fall asleep soundly. They awake with a start in the middle of the night; apparently, every five hours the geyser spouts beer again for another five minutes.

In the morning, Aequitus convinces Rockador (who now wants to be called Champ, because at least that’s not a derivative of Celador) to work with him as a bartender in the Kill Celador bar. It will be a bar established right around Rockad- Champ’s stone circle, with funnels leading the geyser beer into vats. Champ has no use for money, but Aequitus reminds him that being a bartender gives him the opportunity to tell tons of patrons about killing Celador all the time (hence the name of the bar).

### Day 2 to 6

The group marches alongside the northern edge of the Hole to Grandl’s mine, getting there by day 6. Aequitus and Carric use spells to distract the Quakesnakes from attacking or chasing them. The group exchanges pleasantries with Grandl and get to learn the names of all the other people of the 70th working the mine: the Dwarves Gemma, Oris, Winter and Bavara, and the Humans Arx, Deerdrell and Ro. So far they’ve been quite bland NPCs. There is an exchange of goods for Grandellium, which stirs up some resentment from the mine workers, which Grandl quickly and gruffly quells by reminding them that they would have a hard time surviving there without the supplies the group brought.

Grandl is very pleased with the ore being named after him, but doesn’t understand what “scientists” need from it. As far as he’s concerned, there is only one mineral property they need to know about, and that is that Grandellium’s AWESOME. Aequitus is in a bad mood due to the week of relentless fat jokes which causes him to be curt with Grandl, earning him the name “Sparky Bastard”. Carric’s outfit gets singed by Aequitus after the gazillionth fat joke of the day.

The group eats super mega awesomely tasty Quakesnake steak, and drink to their heart’s content. Unsurprisingly, Aequitus gets incredibly drunk and looks like he’s joined the undead come morning. The rest have a significantly better grip on their consumption that night, and wake up more refreshed and ready to scale the southern-most ridge of the Golden Mountains.

### Day 7:

The climb starts early this morning, and it’s a daunting task right from the start. Everyone’s mettle is tested:

- Aurelae uses her knowledge of mountain climbing to find the right route

- Aequitus uses his nimbleness to get a good footing, despite his bulging gut

- Carric uses his persuasive powers to keep everyone motivated to drag his ass up there

- Gramarsh is simply ridiculously strong and athletic

- Ulrich finds all the cracks in the mountain side and makes it up safely

They get to the top of the first ridge at the end of the day. Another, larger mountain range with frost at the peaks awaits. Everyone is tired, ready for some good rest. The watches are uneventful. No Wngas up this high either.

### Day 8:

More climbing and marching ensues. It is a day of backbreaking travel, and by nightfall the group finds themselves stuck against such a steep cliff that sleeping there would be highly dangerous, if not downright impossible. The group opts to keep going throughout the night.

### Day 9:

By morning of Day 9, they are all significantly exhausted (+1 Exhaustion). The mountain range is not planning to let up anytime soon. They find themselves unable to rest anywhere comfortably enough to shake off the weariness. Somewhere during the day they reach a high point which overlooks the Hole. It is a magnificent sight, stretching so far that the other edge of the hole slips away beyond the horizon. At least this proves those stupid flat-Hardholmers wrong.

It is absolutely freezing up here, and the winds are whipping so hard it’s difficult to hear one another. The miserable day ends in a miserable night, where everyone is huddled closely together in a tent in order to not succumb to hypothermia.

### Day 10:

The cold march continues. Only Gramarsh seems relatively jovial, having grown up in a tundra environment. Carric shares stories of his march through the cold north of Davros on his way to become part of the 71st voyage.

Somewhere during the day, they find a stream of crystal clear mountain water gushing out of cracks in the rock, making it a few feet in liquid form before blasting off the side of the mountain like a snow cannon. Ulrich wants to drink some, but is lacking utensils to catch it with. Aequitus hands him a pewter jar. Unfortunately, there is a lot more force behind that stream of water than Ulrich anticipated, and the jar is lost to the mountain. Now a prepared Ulrich, he manages to catch some water in Aequitus’ soup bowl the second time. All drink from it, except Carric who wants to be doused in it on top of a frosty mountain peak with chilling winds for some godforsaken reason. Aequitus’ travel flask gets filled as well, and they move on. Night on the mountain is once again cold and unpleasant. They can’t seem to shake the exhaustion that marked the start of their climb.

### Day 11

At some point during the morning march, the sound of the wind blowing through the mountains starts to change. At first it seemed like nothing peculiar, but Carric and Aurelae’s keen ears seems to recognize it as a harmony. They follow the sound to the source, but stop abruptly a hundred feet from it. There, in the middle of a plateau on the mountain, stands a giant, 4-story high, grey-skinned humanoid creature. He is barely dressed apart from a loincloth that seems to be Quakesnake skin. He’s deeply focused on painting what seems to be a mural of Kazzaran’s Valley… Except it has a sun.

Weirdly enough, Ulrich’s first instinct is to see if he can spot a giant dong hanging between the giant’s legs. He does not succeed. Carric decides to take a more bold approach, walking up a few feet and very charmingly and ambassadorially (as he put it himself) scream “HEEEEEEEEY!” at the top of his voice; the giant moves his head ever so slightly, and returns to his painting. Ulrich casts some of his angelic light in the periphery of the giant’s vision; as before, the giant is unabashed and continues painting. Carric ups the ante by casting a giant projection of himself waving and smiling on the giant’s left-hand side. Once again, no dice. The giant keeps humming his tune, which was recognized by Carric and Aurelae as a harmony. Carric pulls out his guitar and starts to strum along. This finally grabs the attention of the giant as he turns and looks at us.

The giant takes off an equally giant pair of glasses, and starts mumbling. All wave at him with severe apprehension, as the giant starts firing off language after language, all equally unintelligible. At some point, Aurelae tries engaging the giant in Abyssal, which he luckily happens to speak as well. Aurelae decides to make nice with the giant by first inquiring about the painting. He calls it “the waking world”, as opposed to this world, which he considers a dream.

Aurelae asks his name. It’s “Garoon”. Garoon decides to examine the group a little further by brushing and poking them and their equipment. He’s not being malicious in any way, just curious and unaware of the concept of personal space.

He concludes they are all part of the dream; it is becoming increasingly clear that this giant might be a little off his rocker. Aurelae asks him what he is, and he answers with “Master”. He does not seem to consider it his race though; instead, “Master” is his people. He points to the general direction of the Canar forest as his home, then to his painting and reaffirms “I’m Master”. He considers all the other creatures they ask him about (Hyla, Nartox, Canar) as simply dreams, just like them, the mountain, and everything else.

Carric wants to let the giant know that he likes the harmonious humming, which Aurelae translates to Garoon. He starts humming happily, and he gets even more excited when Carric starts playing along. Ulrich decides to start beatboxing, which was the wrong move; Garoon puts his face really close to Ulrich and screams “NOOOOOOOOO!” Hot breath blasts Ulrich in the face, his hair waving about frantically.

Garoom says they’re the only ones to visit him here on the mountain. He has no idea how long he’s been here, because “how can you tell in a dream?” According to his perception of time, the giant Hole to the South appeared just a few days ago. Carric decides to gesture for a hug, which results in him gently getting picked up, hugged and then kissed on the head by Garoon. A gentle giant indeed. He motions to Carric to play more music. Aurelae decides to make good use of the generally pleasant mood, and ask Garoon if he can help the expedition get down the mountain. He is willing to do this for them, which is a huge boon as this damn mountain range just doesn’t seem to end.

Garoon seems quite interested in quality craftsmanship, taking a liking to Gramarsh’ ornate sword. Apparently, Garoon used to craft swords in this “dreamworld”, too. At long last, the giant unveils the source of his odd state of mind; there are certain mushrooms that he’s very, very fond of. As the group is smart enough not to instigate anything with a drugged up 4-story giant, they simply high-five him. They ask him again what he knows about the Hole, to which the odd response is him visibly being startled and exclaiming “HOW DID THAT GET THERE?” He admits to Aurelae that he has no clue what is going on basically all of the time.

At this point, Garoon pulls out a satchel the size of a small house. Apparently, he’s getting tired and wants to help the ensemble down the mountain before he goes to sleep. They get put in the satchel, and can just make out he’s marching them southeast before their entire world changes into being bounced around like a Halfling playing rugby with Orcs.

Days seem to pass, and they’re not able to sleep a wink in their current predicament. Hopefully they get out before they die from exhaustion.

### Day ?

Garoom finally takes them out of the bag and puts them down on the ground. It is light again. They have Exhaustion x2 now. The group finds itself in a giant mushroom forest. Some of these mushrooms are even taller than Garoom. They do not see the hole anymore, but can still see the mountain range.

Gramarsh and Ulrich start randomly trying to take bites out of mushrooms.

Garoom teaches them that they can only eat the smaller green ones, the rest are highly dangerous.

Garoom says “goodbye”, picks up Carric, kisses him again, and walks off up the mountain.

There are six different species of mushrooms. Everyone collects a bunch of mushroom bits. Aurelae and Aequitus collect samples of each of the six types of mushroom. Carric stocks up on quite a bit of green mushrooms, but he’s not really letting on how many. Gramarsh and Ulrich eat the green mushrooms; who knows what’ll happen.

Garoom dropped them off close to the eastern-most end of the Hole. They start walking southward. The mushroom forest seems to have kept on growing into the hole, sticking out horizontally on the edge of the hole.

It has become night, and Ulrich and Gramarsh are tripping balls. Carric, Aurelae and Aequitus divide watches, as the other two are about as functional as a newborn baby. Ulrich is disgusted with how he feels due to the tripping. He’s very sour about it. Gramarsh can only moan, laugh and weep. During the night, giant firefly-like wildlife starts flying overhead. There is also a perpetual whisper coming from all sides of the forest. It doesn’t seem threatening, but definitely disturbing.

During the night, Aequitus walks out and uses Detect Thoughts. He senses innumerable intelligent creatures under the soil. They seem to be discussing who the strangers are. He decides not to try and invade their thoughts more. With two companions incapacitated by shrooms and everyone Exhausted, it was too risky.

### Day ?+1

Everyone loses one point of exhaustion, even the strung out shroomheads. Aequits tells everybody about what he learned during the night. Then, all of a sudden, two more crazy giant humanoids come running up, punching giant mushrooms out of the way and screaming at them all. They are smaller than Garoom, but definitely similar. Aurelae tries to talk to them in Abyssal, which prompts them to call a third one. Aurelae them mentions Garoom in an attempt to find common ground, which pisses them off because they “hate dreamers”. Combat ensues.

Combat summary:

The guys are about 2.5 stories tall, and seem to look much younger than Garoom. They are now called Moe, Larry and Curly.

Aurelae fires 20 damage worth of arrows at Curly.

Aequitus blasts all of the giants with a Fireball, doing 35 damage per target, for a total of 105 damage.

Gramarsh gets Orcishly pissed off, and slams Moe for 16 damage.

The giants’ clubs seem to be petrified giant mushroom.

Gramarsh get slammed for a massive 25 damage. This is not looking too good.

Carric uses his Cloak of Dramatic Action to mesmerize everyone that comes after him this turn. Two giants and Ulrich are in awe.

Aurelae pierces Curly for 25 more damage.

Aequitus hits them with a twinned Scorching Ray. Larry suffers 31 damage; Curly suffers 20 damage.

Gramarsh does 18 damage to Moe.

Gramarsh gets punched back by Moe for 36 damage. He should be dead! BUT NO! Instead, Gramarsh gets a surge of adrenaline, keeping him from cardiac arrest. But as a Half-Orc he has the power of Relentless Endurance, getting him off the floor again at 1HP.

Carric blinds Moe, and inspires Ulrich. Ulrich feels the need to show his chest hair because of this.

Curly runs up to Ulrich and Gramarsh, and swings widely. Ulrich nearly gets hit, but in the end it’s a critical miss. Curly then trips over himself and starts falling on Ulrich. Ulrich makes a DEX save, dodging it narrowly and only suffering 12 damage as a result. Curly breaks his own club during the fall (with his head) and dies as a result.

Ulrich stabs Moe twice, for 18 damage.

Larry throws a heap of soil at Carric and Aurelae. Neither gets buried, but Carric ends up with -4HP.

Aurelae administers a Potion of Superior Healing to Carric from the Bag of Holding. He heals back to full health.

Aequitus shoots another Empowered Scorching Ray at Larry, causes 22 more damage.

Gramarsh scores a critical hit! 34 Damage on Moe!

Moe waves around enraged, still blind. He misses Gramarsh, but manages to hit Ulrich for 18 damage. He’s still standing, but barely.

Larry charges at Ulrich too, but doesn’t hit.

Ulrich strikes out for 14 damage against Moe, killing him. Ulrich’s second wind heals him for 6.

Aurelae shoots a destructive volley at Larry, piercing him for 26 damage.

Aequitus scorches Larry for another 29 fire damage, killing him, thereby ending the encounter.

Aequitus takes a pinky toe (which is the size of an arm) and three teeth (each the size of a small stool) with him. Gramarsh is also interested in a tooth

### Day ?+5

The ensemble reaches the body of water at the south of the hole. It is gigantic, seemingly more like a sea or an ocean than a lake or river. They decide to make a raft out of of giant mushrooms

### Day ?+6

They set out on what is presumed to be the ocean. Aeq reaches out to the creatures under the soil with Detect Thoughts again, to no effect. They seem to only reside under the mushroom forest floor.

### Day ?+11

This ocean sucks. Everyone is going a little insane.

Aurelae gets partial amnesia, forgetting who she’s on the raft with. Minor paranoia creeps in.

Aequitus is hallucinating vividly. At least this affliction keeps you entertained.

Gramarsh is unconscious, and not looking so good.

Carric is 75% deaf. What a fate for a bard.

Ulrich suffers from an overpowering urge to eat something strange. They have to work hard to keep him from chewing on the raft.

There is general chaos. Aequitus sees a technologically advanced vessel flying low over the ocean, going south. Or… Did he? Don’t worry though, he drew it on Gramarsh’ face. To remember. Very important. They see land… right? Over there? Two more days?

### Day ?+13

The group makes landfall. Sanity returns. That vessel Aequitus saw seemed much clearer than any hallucination…. If only someone else had seen it too, then it would’ve been for certain...

### Day?+16:

Three days of walking through the marshes. They spot Green Hyla, finally, and after they evade the expedition warily for a bit, the Hyla realize they’re Hardholme people. They have a chat, and are flabbergasted that the group came from across the ocean. The Hyla take them to Viven. After crawling through a dank tunnel in the swamp, the team arrivals in Viven’s portal room.

The group goes to the bar there, the Davros, and feast after 28 days in the wild. They meet with Marius and Link who serve them and help them out

### Day ?+ A little more

Marius chats with them and shows them around. They spend about 3 days here. Aurelae is insistent on naming Garoom’s mountain Mount Aurelae (the highest peak in the Golden Mountains). Carric introduces himself as Ambassador Carric everywhere. There is no chance of getting to speak with the leader of Viven anywhere near soon, so the group sets out towards Hardholme again. Upon returning, they learn their entire voyage lasted 40 days.

And thus concludes the journey, now renamed to “Around the Hole in 40 Days”.