Expedition 44: Not Mushroom for Mushrooms

### Detailed Writeup

We make our way with Fern and his men carrying lamps on posts. We go fairly early, heading through Arha’s Pass. Fern tells us that the best way to go about this is for us to make a bunch of ruckus and clear out what comes, then Fern and his men will enter and build the structure. We acquiesce to this and enter the fungal caverns. Tolyr lights up his shield. Marzipan climbs up on Jamie’s shoulders. We make our way to the spell circles without issue. Marzipan begins singing.

Despite the fact that we are on the lookout, we are ambushed by gray oozes. They hit Jamie and Tolyr and hide. Jamie kills one and Marzipan kills most of the others with Spirit Guardians. Tolyr kills the last one with a magic missile and his wand turns to gray-brown glass. As we think about this, a hulking mushroom dripping a veil of ink heads toward us but stops 60 feet away. We approach it and it inches back away from us. We discuss if we should follow it, but decide not to. Marzipan goes back to singing. After Spirit Guardians fades, three of them show up. Tolyr casts faerie fire on two of them, but they succeed. They push towards us, then wait. They suck up ink and shove it toward us, pushing Marzipan and Tolyr off the platform.

Tolyr reups Bless. Marzipan spirit weapons and hits. Jamie is completely blind without darkvision though. He dodges. Arha moves up on one and misses with javelins. The mushrooms run in. One of them slams down on Arha, though she manages to not get grappled. The other two shoot watery ink at Marzipan and Tolyr, dropping Bless. Tolyr wipes off his shield, lighting up the space again. He then polymorphs Jamie and Marzipan into triceratops. The two dinosaurs charge and gore two different mushrooms, doing a lot of damage. Arha keeps plinking away too! The mushrooms fight back, doing their own high amounts of damage. One of them charges right up to Tolyr.

Tolyr tries to Shocking Grasp the thing next to him, failing. Marzitops fails to gore. Jamietops does do more gore damage. Arha plinks away! The mushroom knocks Tolyr unconscious. Marzipan and Jamie are normal again. One of the other Mushrooms hits Jamie. Marzipan Spirit Weapons and then tolls the dead. This bloodies it and its ink fades. Arha runs back to the platform and heals Tolyr for 30. Tofree puts an Otilukes sphere on Tolyr. The mushrooms are doing damage. Tolyr heals more. Marzipan misses. Jamie kills one of the mushrooms. Arha misses.

The next attacks from the mushrooms are rough. Tolyr shocking grasps one then heads up to the other. Marzipan keeps dealing damage. Jamie moves closer and throws javelins. Arha does some damage on the very injured one. The poison spray of one is very damaging. The injured one flees. Tolyr polymorphs Arha into a triceratop. Marzipan hits the healthy one with a spiritual weapon and heals himself. Jamie reaches the group and attacks hard. Tofree kills the injured mushroom. Arhatops attacks hard. The mushroom attacks Jamie. Tolyr misses a shocking grasp. Marzipan keeps doing damage with Spiritual Weapon and Toll the Dead. Jamie keeps doing a ton of damage, and he kills the last mushroom.

Marzipan casts prayer of healing with the orb. Everyone then climbs on Arhatops and searches around the cave. We find nothing else in the cavern. We bring in the workmen and they set up, building up the structures, pacifying the Fungal Caverns. They bring us to a doorway just above the waterline. It is a simple stone threshold though with no handle, just a series of faintly ingrained arcane runes with some text in stonetongue. It says, “I was born with the world and I will die with the world, but If ever I am four weeks old, I turn blue as frost on a lover's lips. What am I?”

We save that for later. As the structure is completed, we head home.