Puddle

Puddle (nicknamed Pud) was an oozemorph Shifter created and played by Zerxrez (and then later played by Looweeja for a session) in the Demon Slayers campaign.

## Backstory

Pud started out his life working in a circus with Chuck Bunting, eventually they both escaped and became pirates for a short while before starting the Demon Slayers campaign.

## Campaigns

### Demon Slayers

#### Session One

The campaign started out with Pud and his companions deciding to attack a gathering of undead as well as a leader who was carrying a weird Box that seemed very evil. They quickly got into an attack formation and Pud and Torako Naida rushed forward. Tora almost instantly went unconscious to the many attacks of the zombie horde. Pud thinking quickly formed around her to protect her from incoming damage. After she regained consciousness from Rocc Hamptin's wand of cure light wounds. Pud quickly raced over to Chuck Bunting who went unconscious as well. realizing Chuck was too grievously injured for the wand to be of any use Pud quickly healed himself and formed his body around his to keep it safe. After a volley of arrows from Rocc cleared the way Pud and the rest of the group quickly hightailed it away from the zombies.

After they found a nice place to rest for the night the gang once again set off to the clearing where the zombies were. once there they see a bunch of burial mounds with axes laid across them, along with a rather decadent one for the leader. The rest of the group, especially Yurina Sellenor and Rocc wanted to keep the axes to possibly sell them at a settlement not far from there near some mountains. Pud was morally against this and convinced the rest of the group to leave the weapons where they belong, even though he admits, someone else would probably take them once they were stumbled upon them. Rocc however was not convinced and Pud had to use some of his own funds to buy the axes from him and to place them back where they belonged.

The group proceeded their way up the mountain, their only obstacle was a giant herd of goats, which Pud just slid past. They finally managed to find a sentry posted at the front of the disguised city, a monk named Senjin. After pretending to be a mindless ooze to avoid scrutiny, Pud and the rest was allowed into the city. Which was named "Ratpack".

#### Session Two

During this session after the group left the nice city the group ventured forth to deal with some evil that was near the town. Pud and the group found a small cathedral, in which was a tiny knife Yurina picked up. While leaving the group got attacked by a shadowy blast of dark energy which Pud dodged.

A little while later they stumbled upon a field of flowers that were radiating an evil aura. There was also some gold in the middle but seemed to be an obvious trap. Pud wanted to quickly get thrown into the center to trigger the trap so some passer by wouldn't get tricked in, since Pud would scoop up all the gold, leaving it barren of traps. After taking a couple of steps in Yurina threw Pud into the center, where he instantly fell through and held onto the roots of the flowers. he was fine hanging and told the rest of the group of the situation, they quickly threw a rope to help save him, leading to an epic tug of war between all the flowers and the party, sadly Pud fell down into a side tunnel leading deep underground. Tora quickly jumped in to save him, while the others were still battling the flower.

Deep down in the earth Pud and Tora found a violet ooze that seemed very one track minded. After Pud conversed with it (in the native language of oozes, Druidic) and found out there were no dangers the two proceeded ahead, once they told the group to come follow. In the next area of the cave was countless oozes that called themselves the Bubblegum Oozes. After once again talking with them and making sure they weren't dangerous the oozes told Pud of some evil beings in the next room. There the whole group sees some of the cultists from the first session mining something further on in the cave. The group then ambushes the five cultists defeating them swiftly. However Tora accidentally alerts the three heads of the organisation to come in and battle as well, Pud only had time to hide on the ceiling when they burst in. the battle starts and they call in some Valets which is where the session ends.

#### Session Three

This session started mid battle, Pud quickly dropped down and attempted to latch onto the head of one of the leaders, who quickly batted him aside and summoned a valet to assist in the battle. The was a bunch of back and forth with the valet and Pud especially when the Valet pulled out a vacuum cleaner, forcing pud to hold on with all his might in case he was sucked in.

The adventurers were going quite well, until the cultist Pud was fighting cast a spell that sucked Pud into a pocket dimension where Pud was hurtling to the ground. The opening of the portal was still there however, so Pud quickly shape-shifted wings in order to fly back up and re-join the Frey. But, do to a string of notoriously unlucky rolls Pud couldn't get enough lift off to fly back up to his dimension. So while Pud was flailing down in his impromptu prison the battle raged on. Eventually the pace slowed to allow Rocc to fly down and rescue Pud. During the fight Tora apparently broke her sword and it fell into the portal, which Pud collected in his fluid body. During his time in the pit his fellow members vanquished one of the three spell-casters, as well as the rest of the Valets and an undead mine worker.

Back at the action Pud attacked one of the undead spell casters using Tora's broken sword and landed a huge critical with it. Unfortunately as retaliation the remaining wizards cast two portals in retaliation and Pud was caught in one of them again, and to make it worse Tora accidentally combined the two portals causing it to become a huge loop, which in turn forced Pud's heavily malleable form to become a long rubber string. Eventually Pud managed to shape-shift his way out of it (though first becoming a tesseract then a möbius strip) which led to him not participating in the rest of combat, beside throwing a single gold coin at the single cultist. But then after minimal effort the battle was finished. The group decided to go back the way they came as most were fairly injured and were out of healing spells.

After getting back up to the surface the gang quickly found a place to rest for the night, and then went back to the Ratpack. There the group decided to go after the cultists from before as they believed the Box held something far too evil and powerful to unleash unto this world.

So the group packed up and off they went. They quickly got to the ruined village where Rocc believed the Cultists were headed. By the time they got there it was very dark, but they saw some torches in the distance, it was the cultists and they seemed to be in the middle of enact their twisted ritual. Pud and Yurina sneak up to get a closer view, and that is where the session ended.

#### Session Four

This session started with the group ambushing the group of cultists while they were chanting inside a ring of torches. Pud and Tora rushed forward killing a couple of them each, with Rocc barraging them with his arrows from the back lines. the fight seemed to be going well, but then Pud was affected by a magical aura inside the ring of torches, forcing him outside their diameter.
Pud quickly went to work on the torches themselves, but when he attacked one it suddenly burst into flame! Luckily being an ooze he was fairly resistant to the heat. The battle was slowly continuing, with the crew taking too much time attacking the torches; when some spirits were summoned out of the box and flew at each of the group, Tora and Rocc successfully evaded the floating black tar, while Yurina due to her bulky armor got possessed as the sludge invaded her mind. Pud, instead of attempting to dodge the spirits, simply moved into the fire since it seemed they were purposely avoiding the pillar of fire.
Even though most of the group managed to escape the tar Yurina still posed to be a problem as she struck Rocc so fiercely almost knocking him unconscious in one stroke. Tora them proceeded to use her fire breath directly at the biggest gathering of the tar which was above the box, it seemed to do the trick, making sure no other evil spirits would affect the battle, as a final act however the rest of the tar grouped together and possessed Tora's mind as well. With Rocc fleeing, Yurina turned her attacks over to Pud, who opted to back away from the Bot in hopes that the grip on Yurina's mind might weaken and have her return to her senses. As this was happening the cultists, still chanting, managed to move onto step two of the ritual when a big marble pillar started rising above the battlefield from the box. This massive surge of dark energies snapped Tora to her senses, when she used her magic sword to charge at the pillar, ripping a sizable chunk off the ever-growing tower and hurtling 50 feet towards Pud and Yurina.
Yurina having supernatural mobility from the shadow spirit, effortlessly moved to the side. Pud wasn't as lucky and was completely floored by the heavy paladin, now on the brink of death. Pud, seeing the pillar for the first time, however, toughed it out and went back to the matter at hand: Killing the remaining cultists. Eventually, the group managed to slay the remaining ones just in time.

After recuperating from the battle and some investigating of the obelisk, which was around 40 feet tall and *very* evil. Pud sensed that the tower was waiting for something, so Pud wanted to wait as well. The other members of the group wanted to press onwards instead in order to find some recruits to watch the place in their stead which Pud agreed to only if Tora's tiger would remain to watch while they were gone, to not leave it undefended. this is how the session ended, with the group traveling northward in search of some outposts where they hope to find some people. That is where the session ended.

#### Session Five

This session started off with the group at the Ratpack preparing to head off, Rocc went over to Pud and gave him a magic skull, which after placing it inside Pud the baby fire demon took it and placed it onto his head, granting him the ability to speak. The baby introduced himself as the Oracle of Flame which gave some sage advice about Yurina's knife and demon mark (which the baby remarked, was 'well crafted'),and generally being helpful. Then Tora the paladin was complaining a bunch and being salty as all hell people weren't obeying whatever she said then threw the innocent baby out of the town, along with Pud. then they both rejoined the group after they leave the town to go on a recruiting mission.

[1]

Once at the decrepit town the group decided to head into the caves where they found an oddly hunched statue in the middle of an underground lake that the group (Pud included) felt rather familiar to them, after some snooping they found an old woman who apparently was there for over 150 years. Pud with some help from the rest of the group took the lady back to the town in the sunlight, when there the lade said she remembered way more people down there. So when the adventurers went further into the cave they eventually rescued more than 60 people all told. The gang was feeling rather pleased with themselves, that is, until they woke up in a building inside the town that they didn't sleep in. Thoroughly creeped out the group went outside to a newly refurbished town with only the adventurers being suspicious. That is how the session ended.

#### Session Six

The session started of with the group heading into the cave to investigate the strange refurbishing the town went through, and the group thought the weird statue and the underground lake was involved. Once down there Yurina quickly chopped the statue into several pieces and threw them into the lake, which caused the pieces to form a cocoon of sorts where living versions of the statue was being created. Which were then dragged out of the water. Tora and Rocc instantly wanted to dissect them in order to figure out what was inside them. But since Pud didn't want to stand idling by while the group killed several babies he quickly placed them inside himself, just like the flame oracle. However Pud managed to quickly take one away, and quickly started cutting off limbs, but as it turns out the fetus couldn't die, so Pud allowed the rest of the group to experiment on the other babies, since it seems they can't be killed. However none of their experiments on the babies turned up any info. They then moved their focus onto the lake itself so Pud was instructed to function as a sponge and try to absorb as much of the water as possible, which didn't amount to much except to turn Pud into more of a milky white colour.

Since the party ran out of leads they decided to stay in town for a couple of days while Rocc scouted the surrounding area to see if anything else changed while they slept. Pud spent his time slowly emptying the lake of its contents little by little, and at the end of the third day the lake was around a quarter gone.

Rocc then returned with news about the Obelisk was being surrounded with members of the demon kings army, like the cultists and more undead minions. And so the group wanted to be off Just then however a group of three witches were talking nearby urging them to stay for one more night in the town. With a little apprehension the group nervously waited for the rest of the day, until they see a bonfire up the mountains, Pud and Yurina went to investigate to determine if it was safe or not. After a little talk with the witches it seems they were sent to give the party a gift and so Pud went back down the mountain in order to bring Tora and Rocc up to the mountain.

When they arrived back the party was in full swing with muffins and a cauldron in the middle. The witches then started chanting but instead of words it was instead weird trippy music echoing out. The group joined in the chant and was soon lifted off the ground and spinning. During this time the witchs were throwing things into the cauldron. With the Group members unwillingly following suit, with Pud throwing in some gold, and most regrettably, the flame oracle which cased a huge blast of fire to issue out of the cauldron. Everything really got out of hand however when Yurina threw in one of her fortune cookies, causing the party, besides Rocc and the witches to be taken up into a U.F.O..

The group then found themselves in a strange room with turquoise windows looking down to the ground below. Tora knew of a prophet who spoke of this land. That person was in fact: Reuben. After a few minutes of deliberation a bright light appeared at the top of the room, with Pud going into the light thinking that he died.

They then came into a room where a humanoid made of light approached them, and proceeded to take of their hands and head. It said that we were the chosen heroes meant to restore balance disrupted by the demon king and his forces. The figure even provided contracts for the group to sign granting them an aura of lawfulness which Pud and the rest signed without hesitation. It then made Pud into a perfectly square individual, instead of his rather rounded form before. The negotiations were going quite well, but once again Yurina threw a fortune cookie at the being, which caused all of us to return to where we were, next to the witch and the cauldron, with Rocc nowhere to be seen. Pud then demanded Yurina to hand over her one remaining fortune cookie, as they have caused too much destruction in her hands.

Back near the witches they proceeded to conjure a portal, saying that wasn't supposed to happen and that they were hired by Tora's dad to assist them in this way. They also granted each party member 3 questions about the future that they could ask. Pud's three questions were: 1. Without our interference when will the obelisk do anything/what it was meant to do, anything like that. To which (haha pun) the witches responded with barring your interference, two weeks. Pud's second question was much the same: What is the maximum amount of time that if we haven't stopped the demon king by that point, all hope is lost and the king is unstoppable? The witches replied with two years. Now with what Pud thinks the important questions out of the way, he asks what will the fortune cookie do when he cracks it open? As he witnessed firsthand how chaotic and unpredictable they are. The witches told Pud that breaking open the cookie it would bring a noble named Dicnhorse back to life. Having answered all their questions, the witches gave them one more gift, they used a paintbrush to write a marking into the groups hand (or body in Pud's case) which gave them a free hex from the witch class. Pud could now talk with all animals. That is where the session ended.

#### Session Seven

The sessions started out with the group meeting up with Rocc and filling us in on his adventure in which he stole from the witches hut. The group then discussed what to do next; since they had around 2 whole weeks before the obelisk would do anything the Tora convinced Pud to go dragon hunting, as she was oh so hungry, Pud relented, as since she was hungry her killing dragons is akin to the circle of life. But however to only kill one dragon, which Tora readily agreed to.

The trip took a little bit, but Pud and friends found themselves at the lip of a cave which was in dragon territory, Pud, Yurina, and Avaa (Tora's tiger) snuck up ahead while Tora and Rocc stayed further back. After the entire group was fully inside the cave, the dragon, which was on the clif face waiting for it's prey to go inside fired a frost... bomb(?) at the adventurers, dealing cold damage. Now having a clear foe in sight, the gang sprung to action, with Pud quickly scaling the outside of the cliff to reach it safely, Yurina and Tora launched themselves at it, grabbing onto it making the dragon, and themselves, plummet to the ground far below. Killing the beast and heavily damaging Tora. (Yurina floated down with her cape. and Pud latching onto the tiger which had featherfall.)

After swiftly dealing with the dragon, the group retreated into the cave, where Tora and Pud quickly found a cave-ful of gold which Pud was to hold onto. The drake's stash also contains some magic items, a dragon sword that Pud was rather enamored with, but then gave to Tora after *constant* complaining. He also found a hat of disguise which was useless when compared to Pud's natural shape-shifting abilities, was rendered moot, it was given to Yurina. He also found a neat golden rod, but had no clue to its purpose. After figuring out what the magic items went, Pud bought a cloak of resistance from Neb with his newly acquired funds. That is where the session ended.

#### Session Eight

This session started with Rocc convulsing on the ground from a disease he picked up while raiding the witches house. Because of that the group swiftly departed from the dragon cave and departed to go to the Ratpack. The decided to travel through use of Tora shooting them through the air using her magic weapon, but that plan quickly went wrong with both Pud and Yurina both blasting off into different directions.

Pud found himself in a scorched forest with hardly any life around, besides a column of purple fire shooting up from the ground, that when Pud went through found himself surrounded by a lilac magic aura that allowed him to stride very quickly not even touching the ground. Figuring out where abouts Ratpack was in location to him, he started steadily heading in that direction.

After a while traveling through the wasteland Pud found the devastation raked by the Rubis Flow, (a moving thorny bush discovered previously in the campaign) functioning as a river, but instead of water, was filled with a bunch of tiny golden seeds that, reacting on Pud's lilac aura started circling Pud. Now nearing the Ratpack, Pud continued on.

Pud, after around a day of travel found a semi-petrified semi-corpse of a man holding a rainbow wand, Pud went up to the man, and after saying simple words, "Sorry...but thank you" pried the wand from his grasp and finally made it to the Ratpack. Being the first one there he made a deal with a shadowy figure, that awarded him with a fully detailed map of the area. (A meta deal involving the transfer of a ticket)

After waiting a couple of days the rest of the group managed to get to the underground city as well, sans, Yurina, who apparently became a shadowy wraith and flew away from the group, because of a new member from her past joining the group, Ronnoc Darkflame. That is where the session ended.

#### Session Nine

After two days of rest, the party headed back out into the danger zone towards the obelisk. A nasty storm caused them to fall behind, as it took another two days to get anywhere near close to the obelisk. They were stopped however stayed by a couple hundred undead who were gathered around the obelisk. The group hid and camped out. At noon on the fourth day, the undead cheered and the group realized they should've chased the other box, as it too had become an obelisk.

Pud was eager to stay, fight, and kill the undead, but unfortunately, the rest of the party was against him. It was here where he had his first real clash with Ronnoc Darkflame, someone he would come to absolutely despise.

The group ventured out. Along the way, they came across a gnomish wizard, and stuck to him was a rude note to Ronnoc from Ryoma.

The next day the party came across of seven dwarfed, hairy, foul-mouthed humans stuck in luridly colored leotards and dosed with a potion of lust, and there was another note for Ronnoc. Ronnoc and Rocc decided to kill all of them, which caused Pud to become as infuriated as an ooze could be. Tora agreed it was not the right thing to do. Pud managed to save only one, with Tora's help. Pud stored the survivor in himself, and where the dwarfed human went unconscious due to his severe injuries, (a broken legs, broken arm, and missing ear).

Pud and Ronnoc got into a heated argument where he squarely blamed her for all these problems, and that she leave and go back to Ryoma, and stop the death of living creatures. Ronnoc called Pud hypocritical, which only further fueled his dislike for her.

The next day the party came across another grisly sight: a clone of Ronnoc, positioned on a table in multiple hovering pieces, every piece unfreezing from time one minute after the last. Rocc and Tora tried to hide the final note, but Ronnoc was able to read it anyways. The note said that Ryoma had recently been to Earth and was apparently inspired by the Saw franchise. The group summoned Neb Aslo, bought two wands of cure light wounds, and tried to heal the clone, but at the end, the clone's chest caved in, revealing that it had no heart, just a particularly nasty note left where the heart should have been, remarking on Ronnoc's heartlessness.

Pud, now fed up with Ronnoc and Ryoma's messed up relasionship and the death of the living, had an idea, even if Ronnoc manipulated the poor ooze into thinking of it. Ronnoc had noticed a pop moments earlier that meant Ryoma was no longer watching the group with scrying, so Pud turned himself into a duplicate of her, had her hide, and Pud-Ronnoc called out to Ryoma to take 'her' back.

Ryoma portalled in, and after a conversation in which he made fake Ronnoc beg, fake Ronnoc leaned in for a kiss and smashed a fortune cookie on the back of Ryoma's head.

Ryoma became an exact duplicate of Dickenhorse, and after a lot of cussing, froze Pud-Ronnoc in time. For Pud, that was all folks.

## OOC

Puddle was made using the Pathfinder system, this is his character sheet at level 6.

Because of the events in City of Mutations Puddle gained a level

### References

[1] lotta stuff happened not concerning Pud, read the other character entries (that are *definitely* filled in) for what happened on their way to the town