Favor, Episode 14: Slime Time

## Starring

Sage Stafford as Aoife Flannery
Naseem Etemad as Fittonia 'Toni' Silvertail
Katie Budabin as Lluvyras 'Lu' Ssath
Celeste Conowitch as Dungeon Master

**Episode 14: Slime Time** *(2x14)* is the fourteenth episode of the first arc of the the second Venture Maidens campaign. It was originally published in two parts.

## Synopsis

*This week we travel down*

*To the sewers under town*

*Hope our heroes don't puke*

*As they venture towards the duke*

*Further down we must go*

*No spare time to be slow*

*As we head to the beast's belly*

*And confront the lord of jelly*

### Smells Fishy

Toni wakes up immediately from her brief episode of unconsiousness. A waiter is leaning over her and fanning her, ensuring that Toni is okay before the half-orc heads back upstairs. She finds her two friends donning their armor and informs them that she has had another dream.

She explains that the Wierd Sisters want to talk and she owes them some favors, but she doesn’t want them to be surprised if she falls unconcious on them. Lu questions the favors that Toni owes them and thanks the fighter for letting them know. Aoife suggests that they take care of the current problem, and then they would check in on the Sisters.

They all finish getting ready and step out into the night air of Chasiana. The temperature has cooled to a pleasant breeze, but the streets have gone quiet in the late night. They head towards the nearest sewer entrance that Bartleby had pointed out to them.

A tall figure stands in the middle of the road, draped in a long overcoat with a fedora festooned upon its head. Aoife calls out for Mr. B and the figure turns to reveal an ashen skinned elf that nods his head and greets them in return. Bertleby asks if they are ready and directs them to lead the way as his bodyguards.

Lu and Toni lift the sewer grate out of the way and they stare down the metal ladder embedded in the wall that leads into darkness. The smell of trash, mold, and fetid water wafts from the hole, resulting in Lu asking Aoife for spare scrap fabric to use as noseplugs. The satyr happily obliges, producing fabric scraps from her bag and fastening them into place.

Aoife casts *Light* on her rapier so that she can see her surroundings as they all descend into the hole. They find themselves in a sophisticated tunnel. Much of Chasiana is made of manmade canals, so the sewer system is an intricate puzzle of locks, reservoirs, and aquaducts that make things run smoothly in the waterways.

### Which Way?

Bartleby gingerly climbs into the hole and joins the group at the bottom. He pulls the fedora from his head and his form immediately reverts to the demonic features they have seen before. He tells them that he can lead them to the lair of the Duke, but he has not been given specific instruction on what will happen when they arrive.

Aoife reasons that the Duke must hold some power if he can shield all of this information from Bartleby. He explains that the Duke of Pudding is one of the courtiers of the Slithering Court and has a significant amount of power, standing just below a Monarch.

He points them down a tunnel and calls directions as he leads them into the sewer tunnels of Chasiana. If not for his knowledge, the Maidens would surely be lost beneath the canals of the city. They eventually come to a crossing point of three dead end walls that Bartleby recalls as the place.

### Putrid Warnings

Lu spends a minute examining the walls and finds a can at the base of the right wall. She pulls it away to reveal a foot pedal that she pushes. The wall rattles and rolls out of the way as a deeper, more putrid, stink washes over her from the revealed entrance. She immediately pinpoints the source of the smell as she stares at a rotting humanoid head impaled on an iron spike set within the entrance of the tunnel.

Toni asks if Lu knows who the head is and the drow gets closer to take a look. Based on the bone structure and the one remaining ear, she can tell it was an Eldrin man, but nobody she knew personally, guessing that it is a general warning.

They proceed past the warning with Lu keeping her eyes peeled for any possible traps. Toni has seen scouts use a similar tactic in the Army and recognizes what Lu is doing, pulling Aoife behind her and out of any possible harm’s way.

They begin to pass an alcove when a mouth appears within the stone. They all hear it screaming at them in common, imploring them to make peace with their gods and accusing them of trespassing. Toni raises her hands in a show of good faith and says they have an appointment. Aoife calls out that they are meeting with the Duke of Pudding and the mouth freezes in a smile.

They continue along and pass another alcove, triggering another screaming mouth that warns them that traspassers will be maimed. The voice doesn’t sound quiet human. At the end of the hallway rests a heavy iron door with no visible handle. An alcove is set just before the door and a mouth whispers for a password.

Lu leans in to hear it better and it again asks for the password. Bartleby steps forward and puts a hand over his mouth to whisper the password he was given. The mouth frowns and the door opens. Lu leans into the doorway to get a better look inside.

The room is eighty feet across, and is a little louder than it has been. She can see grated pipes higher up on the wall that dribble water into the room below, where the floor is covered in a foot of fetid water and rotting detritus that forms large piles. On the far side of the room is a balcony with another close iron door.

Lu pulls her glasses from her bag and pushes one of the rosebud buttons to activate X-Ray vision so that she can look beneath the water and trash for pressure plates or wires she wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. She spots a large circular grate in the center of the room that the water would eventually drain into, but no traps. She suggests they avoid the center of the room while they pick their way to the far balcony where they find a large padlock barring entrance into the door.

### Tricky Locks

The drow produces a set of lockpicks from her boot and half-heartedly makes the excuse of living in an old house with tricky locks in an attempt to explain why she has them. She quickly gets to work on the lock, but realizes that if she unlocks this lock without its designated key, she will set off a trap embedded within the mechanism. She asks Bartleby if he has a key, but he says that he only had a location and a password.

She informs the group of the situation and Bartleby and Aoife back thirty feet away. Toni steps forward and braces to protect Lu from whatever trap is about to be set off. Lu runs her picks across the tumblers and feels heat coming from her hand. She looks to see that the lock is melting as a green fluid seeps down. Lu snatches her hand away and cradles it, crying out momentarily from the pain.

Toni opens the door to show a hidden apartment full of furniture, graffiti, and posters. They all frown and look at each other in confusion. Toni enters to search the room and notices it is almost a shrine to the Duke of Pudding. A box rests on the table and is full of mostly empty bottles. Toni rummages through the box and finds two small vials of green liquid and a clay pot with a pattern of decaying leaves and animal skulls.

Toni shakes the pot, and can hear a sloshing sound inside. She opens it to see a green film, similar to algea, that has begun to decay the masses of leaves and dead things. Aoife, being naturally nosey, begins picking through the belongings lying about, discovering that the area functions as a bunkhouse of sorts. She looks under a pillow and finds a scrap of paper containing three lines of text:

***S We? ?***

She pockets it for later investigation and then turns to take the vials of green liquid from Toni. She pops the cork on one and tastes a fingertip’s worth of liquid to find out that they are *potions of acid resistance*. Lu takes one and stashes it in a side pouch before dipping her finger in the clay pot and testing it. She immediately spat out the taste of decaying leaves and bile. Aoife takes the pot and tucks it into her bag.

### Splish Splash

The drow searches the rest of the room quickly before turning her attention back to the previous room. Aoife can see the pipes imbedded above them and guesses the distance to be about forty feet, far beyond their reach. They all resign to lifting the grate in the floor and kick a rusty helmet down to see how far it drops.

They can hear it splash and then an immediate second splash. Looking over, just in time, they see a tendril of grey slime coming out of the grate, followed by a mass that disappears into a pile of trash, quickly followed by another on the other side of the grate.

The trash piles bulge and move towards the group and one swings at Aoife, slashing at her with rusted metal. She dances back out of its reach, but it caught by surprise with a gauntlet to the face.

Lu, jumping into action, lunges towards the ooze that attacked Aoife and draws her butcher knife, chopping at the creature. She attempts to dig a second knife in, but it scrapes off the trash.

The second ooze goes for Toni, faking her out with a tendril before uppercutting her. Aoife pulls her rapier and tries to gain purchase on the trash armor of the ooze that attacked her, but it brings a metal plate up in time to block the assault.

Toni draws Clyde from its sheathe and brings it down through the ooze, severing part of its body.

The first ooze turns its attention to Lu, but she ducks under one of its swinging tendrils and rolls out of the way of a second. She comes back up and immediately begins stabbing into it once again, but it manages to shift a rotten carton of milk in the way. She follows the first stab with a second and takes the back of the blade to pry the other pieces of armor from its body with a flourish.

The second ooze brings down a tendril on top of Toni, hitting her in the shoulder and Aoife, seeing that Lu is handling the first ooze, rushes to the orc’s side, but she slips on some trash and is unable to stab at the creature.

Toni swings Clyde again, sheering through the ooze in front of her and knocking the exoskeleton of trash from its body.

Lu continues facing off against her ooze, knocking one of its psuedopods aside. The air around her fist vibrates as she activates her Sonic Blade and vibrates it into a mass of sludge that slowly begins to knit itself back together and head for the grate.

Toni catches a psuedopod across her chest, sizzling the minor bits of metal holding her leather armor in place. Aoife reaches out her hand and sends a magical needle to sew Toni’s wounds closed with casting of Cure Wounds.

The fighter, now recognizing the corrosive nature of the ooze, sheathes Clyde and draws her leather whip, cracking it across the body of the ooze, sending pieces of it scattering.

The other ooze makes a break for the grate, but Lu is prepared and snaps out her Sonic Blade and ends its feeble existence before turning to block the other ooze from retreating into the depths below.

The remaining ooze, sensing its own demise, attempts to launch itself over Lu into the grate, but Aoife whips her rapier through it. She pulls it back to see that her rapier has been damaged by the acid of the creature’s body. Toni flashes her whip, barely missing the ooze as it disappears into the grate, followed by the distant splash into the water below.

### Crowbar of Cooking

Bartleby reappears from nowhere and informs them that he is glad that they are still alive, but they really should be moving on as he checks his non-existent wrist watch. Lu asks if anyone has any other options, since she does not want to jump down into the waters below, and Bartleby says that it is the most likely course of action since the Duke of Pudding is a type of Ooze.

Aoife asks Lu if she has a “crowbar of cooking” to jimmy the grate open for them to jump down, but Lu denies it, even though she does, indeed, carry a crowbar in her bag. They open the grate once again and Aoife casts See Invisibility before returning to the problem of getting down the hole. Toni drags over a moldy mattress and tosses it down before Lu jumps into the hole. The mattress folds in half as Lu hits it and she treads water, waiting for the others to join her.

The room is the same as above, and they can see the tops of four tube-like tunnels in each cardinal direction with a portcullis blocking each one. Lu refuses to put her head under the disgusting water.

Aoife pulls her rapier and lights it up before swimming below the surface. She finds a lever near each portcullis and pulls the one to the east. The passage opens for them, leaving a 3 inch gap of air for them to catch their breathes as they swim along.

### Dunked

Lu takes the lead, still refusing to dip her head below the edge of the water. She feels something drip on her head from the ceiling and realizes that a green snot-like goo is dripping onto her. She can feel it crawling up into her nose, mouth, and eyes as it clings to her body which tingles and burns from the acid this thing secretes.

Toni rushes forward and puts her weight on Lu, dunking her below the surface and scrapes at the goo to get it off of the Drow, who screams that Toni should have just let her die as they realize that they have come to a dead end and must turn around.

They swim back and head into the south entrance, eventually coming to another identical chamber with the same lever setup. They head west after consulting the note they had found and wind up in another identical room. Toni suggests they head south and as they are swimming, they feel that it has been a long time since they had left the previous room.

Finally, they come to a nearly transparent blue wall. They quickly come to the conclusion that it is a cube that has been compressed to the size of the tunnel and it comes zooming towards them. This is where our journey comes to an end, until next time! -Venture Away!

## Featured Characters

### Player Characters

* Aoife
* Fittonia 'Toni' Silvertail
* Lu

### Non-Player Characters

* Frida
* Mr. B
* Rook

## Locations

* Eldrin Empire
	+ Chasiana
		- Bucatini

## Inventory

~~Two~~ One vials of *Potion of Acid Resistance.*

Pot of decaying leaf sludge.

## Quotes

“That’s the grossest welcome sign I have ever seen in my life.” -Lu

“Everybody speaks Knife.” -Lu

“Its like a trash hermit crab.” -Sage

“Do you have a Crowbar of Cooking, Lu, so we can jimmy this thing open?” -Aoife

“They already know we’re here, they already know we’re coming, its not a fecking surprise Mr. B.” -Aoife

“You should have let me die!” -Lu

## Trivia

Bartleby owns a fedora that allows him to take on the image of a dusky skinned elf.