Episode 167 - A Fungal Fright

The party enters the Underdark, have an encounter with some mushrooms, and Mike Bachmann finally has to reveal a secret that had been kept between himself and Michael DiMauro when he finally fails a secret saving throw.

## **Story**

The party follows the murderer into the lower tunnels of the Mining District of Deephome. Jaela and Aludra can handle themselves in the pitch black tunnels with Darkvision, however King Titus Harper uses *Prestidigitation* to make the tip of his staff glow so he, Nyx, and Jett don't wander around blind. They proceed into the tunnel and pass through the recently opened doors. Dwarven tunnels transition into the unworked stone of the Underdark. Piles of bones scattered about helping to mark where Deephome ends and the Underdark begins. Nyx helps herself to broken skull among the piles to use as a cap, and the party goes deeper.

At the first branching point, Aludra is able to spot tracks heading off to the left. Tracks of a humanoid, wearing a heeled shoe, longer, but narrower than Aludra's own foot. The murderer of Baldur Oakback. The go to the left for long while, seeing mushrooms growing in the tunnel, and the further they progress, the larger and more frequent the mushrooms. They walk until the reach a point where mushrooms completely fill the entire tunnel. They pause and probe at the mushrooms and for a second they wonder if they'd still on the right track, but Aludra is confident and Jaela notices some bruising where the murderer must have forced his way through. Harper casts Shield on himself before they squeeze in through the giant mushrooms, with no telling how far they'll need to go before getting through to the other side.

Jaela leads the way, with her halberd probing out in front of her, and for a few minutes the party pushes their way through, barely being able to see in front of them. And then the point of Jaela's halberd solidly stabs into one of the giant mushrooms and a black liquid oozes out. Jaela pulls the halberd out and the black ooze sprays onto all of them and floods the tunnel, harming all of them a corrosive effect. Harper and Aludra realize they've stumbled into a Black Pudding and the party enters combat.

The initial surprise takes the entire party off guard, with all their initial attacks doing almost not harm at all. In fact all they seem to do is split the ooze apart into multiple, smaller oozes that all attack the party. Embracing her regained warden abilities, Aludra uses the **Aspect of the Forest** to transform into a treelike figure and is able to rally the party who then bounce back and are able to dispatch the Black Pudding before any major injuries occur.

During the trip through the tunnel, everyone in the party noticing something going on with Jett. And when the weary Jett was first struck by the ooze, they all heard a straining in his voice and saw one of his legs turn completely into goo before he was able to regain control of his body and reform it. With the battle over, they confront Jett and ask him to explain. He simply tells them that he's a changeling, but not a very good one. Harper questions the validity of this, but he struggles with what he actually knows of changelings versus what he needs to relearn due to an upbringing that taught him to distrust anything non-human. Something he's actively been trying to improve upon. And the Underdark is not the best place to work through this, and they still have a murderer to catch.

The party continues on through the mushrooms until the the tunnel clears and opens up into a large cave lined with bio-luminescent vegetation on the walls. Down below is a subterranean lake so still the surface looks smooth as glass. And a few hundred feet away they see the silhouette of a figure down by the lake.

## **Trivia**

* The flow of the black good is only up to Aludra's waist so her monkey skin remains untouched.
* Aludra is non-longer a Paladin and has become a Warden sometime after coming home.
* Jett's British accent changes to a Russian accent while he loses control of his body.
* Harper's dope-ass clothes look shitty now because of the pudding.
* Images for this episode (Officially image of Deephome) and for the previous episode (Officially of Harper in the Underdark) have been swapped. It is assumed that the images were accidentally attached to the wrong posts of this dual episode recording session.

## **In This Episode...**

### **Cast and Player Characters**

* Michael DiMauro - *Dungeon Master*
* Timothy Lanning - King Titus Harper
* Nika Howard - Jaela
* Jennifer Cheek - Aludra Wyrmsbane / Nyx
* Mike Bachmann - Jett Razor

### **Locations**

* Deephome
	+ Mining District
		- Lower Tunnels
* Underdark

### **Inventory Updates**

* +1 skull broken in a way that it would work as as cap

### **Quest Log Updates**

* [Active] - Prevent the impending dwarven civil war
	+ [Active] - Clear Jaela's name
	+ [Active] - Find Baldur's murderer
* [Active] - What are birds?

### **Quotes**

**"I'm sorry, friends. It is time you knew truth. I am... I am a changeling. But am not very good at it."** ~ *Jett Razor*

## **Rolls**

* **Recap**
	+ Tim - 16
	+ Nika - 11
	+ Bachmann - 8
	+ Jennifer - 2

* Harper - **Arcana Check** to investigate the opened door to the lower tunnels
	+ 19 - The door is warded, but it has only been opened in a mechanical way.

* Jett - **Secret Saving Throw** vs a 16 DC
	+ (9+3 from Jaela) - Failed - Result to be revealed

* Bachmann - **Investigate Check** to determine if there any scapulas among the piles of bones
	+ 15 - Yes. Several.

* Harper - **Arcana Check** to look for evidence for which tunnel to go down
	+ 12 - He can sense magic down both directions.

* Aludra - **Survival Check** to try to track the murderer
	+ Nat20 - It's very dusty and she spots some fresh footprints going towards the left. A medium sized creature with a heeled-shoe of some sort. With a bad right knee maybe from a horse riding incident. Not as wide as Aludra's feet, but larger.

* Jett- **Performance Check** to convince the party he knows how to track as well
	+ 19 - He says Aludra's doing great and the party believes he could have done it

* Aludra - **Survival Check** to determine the type of mushrooms
	+ 9 - Think they're not poisonous but not sure. Pretty sure, but not completely sure.

* Aludra - **Perception Check** to see if there's anything strange with Jett Razor
	+ 25 - He looks fine.

* Jaela - **Nature Check** (with Disadvantage to see if knows anything about the rumbling
	+ Nat20 (canceled) and 5-1 - She can't tell what the rumbling might be.

* Aludra - **Survival Check** (with Advantage to double check the path after seeing so many undisturbed mushrooms
	+ 4 & 10+3 - As far as she can tell they should be going in the right direction. There tunnel hasn't branched since.

* Harper - **Arcana Check** to study the mushrooms filling the tunnel
	+ 21 - They're not magical.

* Jaela - **Investigation** to see if there is any bruising on the mushrooms filling the tunnel
	+ Nat20-1 - Someone has squeezed through recently.

*Combat Begins*

* **Initiative** vs Black Mushroom Liquid (essentially a Black Pudding)
	+ Nyx - 14
	+ Aludra - 12
	+ Jett - 11
	+ Jaela - 9
	+ Harper - 5

* **Nature Check**
	+ Jett - 10
	+ Jaela - Nat1 (?)
	+ Harper - 15
	+ Aludra - 16
	+ Nyx - 12
		- Aludra and Harper both recognize the creature to be what amounts to be a Black Pudding that is already touching then with it's Corrosive Form.

*Round 1*

* **Nyx** vs Black Pudding
	+ Corrosive Effect - 4 damage (acid) to Nyx
	+ Uses 2 Ki Points for four attacks - 12+9, 12+9, 13+9, & Nat1
		- Hit, Hit, Hit, & Miss - 10, 12, & 9 damage
		- 4, 4, & 4 damage (acid) to Nyx

* **Aludra** vs Black Pudding
	+ *Crackle* with Dex save and lightning damage
		- Black Pudding is immune to lightning damage and splits in two.
	+ 4 damage (acid) to Aludra
	+ [Aspect of the Forest] - Aludra becomes a tree and the party has 9 temporary hit points

* **Jett** vs Black Pudding
	+ 4 damage (acid) to Jett
	+ Detect Thoughts with a 17 Spell Save DC
		- It has a one intelligence so doesn't have thoughts

* **Jaela** vs Black Pudding
	+ Melee Attack - 13
		- Black Pudding is immune to slashing damage from the halberd, but the half that was attacked has split in two.
	+ *Polearm Master* Bonus action uses shaft of halberd for bashing damage rather than slashing.
		- Melee Attack - 21
			* Hits - 9 damage (bashing)
	+ 4 damage (acid) to Jaela

* **Black Pudding** (medium) vs Harper
	+ Melee Attack - 19
	+ Misses - Bounces off Harper's magical Shield

* **Black Pudding** vs Jett
	+ Melee Attack - 18
		- Hits - 6 damage (bludgeoning) & 18 damage (acid)

* **Black Pudding** vs Aludra
	+ Melee Attack - 23
		- *Nature's Vigil* ability from Aludra - 4 - AC becomes 25
		- Miss

* **Harper** vs Black Pudding (medium one) & Black Pudding (largest)
	+ *Fire Bolt* - 21 vs AC
	+ *Fire Bolt* (with Sorcery Point) - 22 vs AC
		- 16 damage (fire), Black Puddings are on fire, the medium sized one is dead

*Round 2*

* **Nyx** vs Black Pudding #1 and Black Pudding #2
	+ Staff, then Staff and Punch attack - 14, 16, & 12
		- 8, 9, & 9 - Both Black Puddings are killed.
		- 4, 4, & 4 damage (acid) to Nyx

*Combat Ends*

* Jett - **Performance Check** to see how terrifying his true form is.
	+ 19+13 - He's terrifying... maybe he doesn't know his true form anymore.