Session 62: Perchance to Dream

## Key Plot Developments

As another, larger wave of the Demogorgon’s army bears down on Dulcinea’s grove, she reaches out to Bogtooth, seemingly terrified of the consequence of him wreaking havoc. Bogtooth and the other goblins are spirited back to her inner sanctum. Dulcinea appears panicked, just like she was in the previous session, but Trix intuits that she’s putting on a façade of despair to see if Bogtooth, her champion, will behave as heroically as he’s been trained to do. Bogtooth reflects on his incredible journey—from being a brash, isolated outcast obsessed with goblin fundamentalism to a fearless hero willing to lead a multi-species army against a demon lord.

Dulcinea asks the team to buy her one hour. Tremble is transported via one of Dulcinea’s vines to a high vantage point, where he sees an incoming force of 70 monsters. Dulcinea offers to put the group in stasis and keep them out of the way of the army, playing on Pyrite and Glyn’s selfishness and desire to abandon the team, but Bogtooth passes her test when he refuses on the team’s behalf: he’s not going to back down, no matter what.

Pix remembers her conversation with Vinethra, the Shire Knight of Autumn Winds, who explained the archfey Hyrsam’s goal—the Prince of Fools wants to remove all undesirable creatures from the Feywild and Elysium. She explains how Hyrsam is working with the Demogorgon to give the demon lord safe passage through the Feywild so he can destroy all Hyrsam’s foes in Elysium. The spirits of the goodly dead, including Grandpappy Droop, are at stake.

Dulcinea is testing Bogtooth as part of a greater purpose, Trix can tell, but she also does fear for her immortal soul in the face of a demon lord. Nonetheless, she summons all the remaining battle-ready creatures of her grove to aid the goblins in their resistance against the Demogorgon. Bogtooth commands all ground troops, while the centaur archers are put under Tremble’s supervision.

Unfortunately, the Demogorgon’s armies are just more powerful and reckless. The swelling, undulating kuo-toans function like suicide bombers, spreading their rot across the outer barriers of the forest. The gobs stop a chunk of ravenous fishmen from breacher the inner sanctum, but enough of them can reach Dulcinea’s central tree that they do 266 damage in a single, explosive turn.

The goblins adapt against the next wave, blasting them with sickening radiance and sunbursts. When the enormous tree is hit again, its structural integrity is failing—a devastating explosion knocks Tremble and Pix off its branches. As the group falls, they see a horrific sight: the Demogorgon is flying in a second, demonic tree—twisting, snake-like branches, wicked roots—to supplant Dulcinea’s. The group helps Dulcinea stabilize her first tree.

A squadron of goristros arrive and begin to trample Pix and Tremble (on the grove’s floor). They avoid being pancaked. The rest of the group remains within Dulcinea’s inner sanctum, debating how to deal with this new threat and destroy this wicked tree before it gets here.

Then, the Demogorgon arrives.

During their previous encounter, the prince of demons wasn’t serious. Now, he is.

During their previous encounter, the left head was in control. Now, they meet the right.

Demogorgon’s right head bellows maddening nonsense as the monster tears through the forest on the opposite side in a pincer attack, disorienting the heroes. The centaurs rain down arrows, killing some of the Demogorgon’s spectators, but it’s not enough.

Dulcinea drops her fey façade and speaks plainly to Bogtooth: she was not prepared for this level of an onslaught. She expects to be killed here. If she’s killed, she’ll regrow as a plant in the Feywild—but that won’t mean anything if the Feywild and Elysium are taken by the demons.

She knew Bogtooth would become powerful, but the fact Bogtooth has wielded this power in the defense of the innocent—even becoming wise and gentle enough to not take vengeance on Maerad for what happened in the Sunless Citadel—proves that he’s become a true hero.

Dulcinea dismisses Bogtooth and begins to teleport the goblins back to the Underdark, where they can regroup. She urges him to break through to Glyn, because, though he is nearly lost to the demons, there is good yet that he can do. She tries to tell Bogtooth one last thing, but the Demogorgon has arrived. The billowing wave of madness overwhelms Dulcinea, killing her.

The group is safe. But the grove is lost.

## Memorable Quotes

* **Dulcinea:** Bogtooth, I don’t know what to do! Please, stay with me! Maerad is here! Everyone I care about will be safe here!
* **Pyrite:** Isn’t it your grove? Shouldn’t you know what to do?
* **Dulcinea:** My power is dwindling--I am being attacked! We need to stop whatever is happening so I can regrow. And I need your help!
* **Bogtooth:** Well, we have to make the choice together or else it won’t be the right one!

* **Dulcinea:** All I need is an hour. Buy me just an hour.
* **Bogtooth:** An hour? We could do that, right?
* **Glyn:** Have any of you fought for an HOUR?
* **Trix:** Yeah.
* **Tremble:** Multiple times.
* **Glyn:** When?
* **Tremble:** Blingdenstone. It was a whole war, so we couldn’t stop.

* **Dulcinea:** Bogtooth…there’s always another option. You and your friends could be like Maerad. I could put you to sleep until all of this over.
* **Bogtooth:** My lady, I’m sorry. I’m not willing to put my own safety above the safety of all these other people.
* **Dulcinea:** Bogtooth, you’re no longer a child. You’re an adult and you are the leader. Not just of these goblins, but of all of us. You have passed every test. Even Garl’s. I want you to know that all of us will be fine. If we die here, we will just go back to the Feywild and become plants. But if we die in the Feywild, we die forever.
* **Bogtooth:** Yeah, that sounds like a better option.
* **Dulcinea:** What? No… Bogtooth, that’s not…. We don’t want to die forever.
* **Bogtooth:** NO, I MEAN BEING A PLANT SOUNDS BETTER!

**Bogtooth:** Alright! I need your best archers! You guys are at Trembles command! He’s your eyes, okay? Satyrs, you’re tricky, right? You get in there and trick! Use all the tricks you got!

**Unity Sterling (a centaur):** Of course, we shall! Starburst Solstice is your new name, Bogtooth! And Tremble, your new name shall be….Sunshine Mystic! I am Unity Sterling! And I am your steed!

* **Unity Sterling:** You are Chipper Willow!
* **Pyrite:** ……Sure……

**Glyn:** I am Moonlight Sparkle! Representative of the grove and embodiment of nature! And you shall not come into this grove! You shall NOT come near me with your disgusting explosiveness!

* **Pix:** They’re little fuckers!
* **Glyn:** Indeed, they are! And they have no business here! Grovel, beasts! Grovel, I said!! ON. YOUR. KNEES!

* **Pyrite:** Why don’t you do that brrrr thing!
* **Bogtooth:** What? Sickening Radiance?
* **Pyrite**: Yeah! Get em with that!
* **Bogtooth:** Alright! Well, that’s the call then?
* **Pyrite:** Glyn’s got one next to him so make sure to get that one too .
* **Trix:** Maybe center it on Glyn!

**Pix:** You may have mashed my guts to mere flatulence, but the stench that you’ll return to when you get sent back to the Abyss is what you’ll be smelling back where you belong, bitch!

* **Pyrite**: What is your name, centaur?
* **Mahogany Window:** Of course. My name is Mahogany Window.
* **Pyrite:** Alright, Window… um…..I need you to deliver a message and I’m going to go elsewhere.
* **Mahogany Window:** What is the mess-AGE?
* **Pyrite:** Go tell Tremble to blast the bastards.
* **Mahogany Window:** It shall be done. AWAY!

* **Trix:** THERE'S ANOTHER PROBLEM OVER HERE, GUYS! I THINK THE DEMOGORGON’S OUT THERE!
* **Glyn:** FUCK!
* **Trix: F**UCK!
* **Tremble:** I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS BUT FUCK!
* **Glyn**: FUCK THAT SO HARD. AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY!
* **Tremble:** IS THERE A GOOD WAY TO FUCK SOMETHING!
* **Glyn:** Now’s not the time to talk about that, Tremble.
* **Bogtooth:** We’re not out of it yet!! NO WAY!

* **Bogtooth:** Alright Dulcinea, Demogorgon’s coming in hot! What do we do?! Lots of darkness!
* **Dulcinea:** Bogtooth, I think I’m probably going to die here.
* **Bogtooth:** What? Hey! Even if you die here and turn into a plant, we’re going to make it out alright?
* **Dulcinea:** You can’t die. The prophecy still needs to be fulfilled. You’re needed. And you need Glyn. He’s a demon, but he’s still goblin. You just need to keep him doing the right thing. Bogtooth, if you were able to change then you can change him.
* **Bogtooth:** Alright…
* **Dulcinea:** Maybe a hundred years from now, I’ll take you to the library. With Garl and Kurtulmak. Have you ever heard of the four temperaments? Bogtooth, I think you’d be the choleric—the leader.

* **Dulcinea**: Bogtooth…you have to win.
* **Bogtooth:** Anything for you, Lady Dulcinea.
* **Dulcinea:** I expected that I could die here alone. Thank you for—

**The Demogorgon**: Who would fardels wrong, the spurns, and may we have, and the us coward this ressor's wear the name of the rub; for no more; and that the pale consients that we know not that fled o'er with a sea of that dread off the dreat sleep; to suffer regardelay, the with and that we have, or wish'd. To dreath, to die: that under 'tis make cast give spurns, puzzles, puzzlesh is nobles, and the mind more; and to sleep to sling a life, or insolution delay, the dreath, to disprises us pause. Thus against a weat--