Session 27

We continue our journey down into the caves, which turn into a perfectly square tunnel with steps carved out of the stone. We walk down in twos, Maggie and Ejholan, Xia and Trip, Eva and Melchior, and Telmund and Coda. The steps get larger and larger as we go down, meaning that the smaller members of the party are having difficulty navigating their way down, butt-shuffling themselves down as safely as they can. Trip throws a Molotov down to see how deep it goes, but it turns dark after 30 feet. There’s a suggestion to do Operation: Dog Balloon 2.0, and Xia summons Rae, but Trip feeds the flying potion to Maggie who flies down the tunnel. Maggie comes across a left turn and investigates, finding some kind of hive-mind mushroom colony. She places her hands into it, and she has to make a save. She sees a ghostly face and hears a voice that asks her to ‘surrender herself’ to it. She also sees a skeleton in armour kneeling with a big ominous mushroom growing from the skull, and the mushrooms are speaking to her in Sporadic. A nice mushroom fella appears behind her, introducing himself as Sylfur, the King of the Myconids.

He tells Maggie that he’s there to make sure she doesn’t do anything silly. The old Mushroom King says something about protecting travelers from Zuctomoy, Demon Queen of Fungi, and Harbinger of Rot, and says he can see through all mushrooms. Maggie comes back to find the rest of the group and leads them down to show them what she found, but when we arrive the room is empty, except for the skeleton. Xia does some inspecting and finds a gold rod that can turn into a ladder and the group decides to give it to Ejholan. We also find a small amount of the mushroom hiding beneath the armour, and deduce that it was left behind. Trip collects some in a jar.

The group continues heading down. Many conversations are had, and it’s RP central. We come to a river of blood, and Friedel asks if any of us are Vampires, before dipping his claw in the river and drinking some, telling us that it’s something to do with his blood curse. He also gives us a bit of a lore drop about Banehold, telling us rumours that the Blood River could be the blood of Bane’s victims, or perhaps the blood of Bane himself. Trip pitches an idea to make a big jar that we could use to sail across if Xia uses gust, but also offers the bear a potion to grow wings, so the bear proceeds to just carry us all over one by one, instead of doing the jar idea. Out of courtesy, he does ask Trip if she would like to be carried over in a large jar.

We settle down for the evening, and Trip takes a solo watch, spotting absolutely nothing. Coda and Ejholan take a watch together and have a conversation about Hoar, and Coda’s current God situation. Coda reads a little more of her book and discovers that Bea is called Coco. The wallaby reacts well to this name, seeming extremely happy. Coda spots some ghostly white faces whilst she watches, but doesn’t think much about it. Maggie and Xia take the next watch, and they realize that Coco is speaking Sporadic, making the smell of chocolate. Maggie also sees some skull faces and tells Xia that she’s gonna nap for a couple of minutes so Xia can see if the fireflies around her head have changed. Maggie proceeds to nap for 3 hours. Ejholan also has a dream during the night. He dreams of the lady from the Soul Bag, and Coda sitting at a table, smiling and drinking together. There are many empty chairs still at the table.

We wake up and start walking down the cave, noticing some holes in the walls. Further into the cave, we can see white lumps in the rock. Xia identifies one as a human skull, also detecting some necromancy. We move on and begin to hear the scraping of metal against stone. We see some black toes in the darkness behind us. Stepping out of the shadows is a man with a horse's head and a human body. He summons locusts and skeletons. Ejholan picks up Maggie and starts running, with the rest of the group following behind. A few members stop to throw spells and try to reason with the man. Eventually, Coda stops the skeletons with holy magic and the scary guy keeps slowly, but very consistently, following us. He tells us that he is Seth, Lord of the Underworld, Bringer of Judgement and Death, and Lord of Darkness.

We approach the end of the tunnel and can see Hoar kneeling. His flesh is torn across his chest and his armour has corroded. He walks past us all towards Seth, and stops him in his tracks, telling him to go away. Seth responds ‘I will claim them.’ Hoar raises his sword and Seth catches it between his hands. They stand, evenly matched for a moment, before Seth bows and turns back towards the way he’d just come. After Seth leaves, Hoar falls back to his knee and Xia rushes over to help him and asks the group to help heal him. Begrudgingly, Ejholan offers 10 hit points to him in the form of Lay on Hands. Hoar tells us he needs to rest for an hour, and once again declines Xia’s request to rest in the dome.

There’s a storm of black swirling smoke and locusts outside the mouth of the cave. Hoar rests for an hour and awakes as Trip tells Friedel that we have a way out, but he can’t come with us. The bear is, understandably, super bummed out, and we decide to pass the time in the cave by performing Maggie’s Birth Story once again. Coda pulls Xia for a chat about Hoar, where Xia explains that she doesn’t think he’s a bad guy, he’s just a guy who’s been stuck in a bad place for a long time. Coda tells Xia that she’s got her back and that she has been making her own decisions, rather than relying on the coin. Meanwhile, the play is still going on, whilst members dip out to have private conversations. We thought it might cheer Friedel up and entertain Hoar (neither of them liked it really). In a heart-breaking turn of events, Friedel asked for one of the mushroom hats so he could be a part of Maggie’s family, and Maggie told him that he would be her wife. So I think Maggie is engaged to the bear now. Maggie asks Trip to make her some special arrows, which she is more than happy to do. Ejholan and Xia sit by the entrance to the cave having a chat, and Ejholan writes in the sky ‘Esse I foraime, ilqua na vana’ in Elvish, which means ‘In the right light, everything is beautiful’.

The storm finally clears, and we leave, making our way down to a battlefield filled with armour,  weapons, and bodies. Hoar explains that there was a war when people found themselves here, but they stopped fighting because what were they even fighting for? Who wants more of hell anyway? So we camped out, ending the session here.

### Quotes:

‘Oh, I never make silly mistakes!’ - Maggie

‘Yes, fair play.’ - Sam, as Sylfur

‘Not an evil God though, Ejholan…’ - Coda

‘It’s always your choice to flip the coin, Coda.’ - Ejholan

‘So then I told Hoar that Telmund shit himself’ - Ejholan

‘Did that wallaby just steal my best friend?!’ - Xia

‘Esse I foraime, ilqua na vana’ (In the right light, everything is beautiful.) - Ejholan

### Pont of Inspiration:

The point of inspiration for the week goes to ...