Session 45-A: Time Is of the Essence

## Key Plot Developments

The team of Pelek, Finn, Tremble, Trix, Briar, and Bogtooth were able to escape from the purple worm nests with an egg. They say goodbye to Zhora, Hanne Hallen’s mother, on good terms.

Briar is obsessed with taking vengeance on the demon lords by gathering six goblins and jump-starting the prophecy of the Fury of the Small. Tremble wants to reconvene with the ingredients at Vizeran’s tower. Trix suddenly panics: he receives a sending from Pix asking for help, but only receives static when he replies. He assumes Pix is dead is and needs diamonds to resurrect her

The group tries to teleport back to Vizeran’s tower, but in Trix’s panic, the teleport fails. They emerge in an unknown corridor of the wormwrithings, where they’re ambushed by black buddings. The smell of death, consumption, and slime—the stink of Juiblex, the demon lord—has reached the Wormwrithings. The team dispatches them, but Trix remains unnerved. He tries to reach out to Grazilaxx, to no avail. In desperation, he asks his old friend Shuushar for support. Shuushar responds; the city of Sloobludop has been rebuilt since the Demogorgon’s rampage. Shuushar, who has remained in touch with his master (a member of the Society of Brilliance), also communicates that Glyn and Pix emerged from the mind flayer lair and decided to recruit their uncle Rotgut, the final living member of both the Cragmaw clan and the Society of Brilliance.

The group convinces Vizeran to leave his tower and help them travel to Sloobludop. Vizeran complies.

Trix and Shuushar reunite. Trix finally processes that, if Pix and Glyn died around the time Pix sent him that call for help, they’re likely too late to revivify them. Vizeran suggests the use of chronomancy—the Maze Engine in the middle of the Underdark’s labyrinth—as a potential solution. Regardless of whether they want to use this powerful time magic, Vizeran insists they remove the machine from the maze before the demon lords can use this.

Tremble doesn’t know what to do about the loss of his sister. He commiserates with Bogtooth on the Darklake’s docks. Bogtooth suggests they can take revenge. Tremble questions the point of so much bloodshed. The weight of the trauma inflicted upon these goblin children begins to sink in.

Trix catches Shuushar up on some of his journey, including winning his soul back from hell. He asks Shuushar for his advice on Vizeran; Shuushar intuitively doesn’t trust the drow wizard.

When it’s time to eat, Shuushar displays his power when he uses the javelin of lighting to blast (and fry) several fish from the Darklake.  Trix and Tremble share a conversation about generational trauma during their meal.

Vizeran, paranoid, creates a telepathic link with the group to explain what he’s discovered from Graz’zt’s horn. He concludes it’s a powerful demonic artifact that may grant the user some meaure of control over the demon lords in the ritual. He is unsure of Graz’zt’s purpose in sharing it with Glyn.

The group, after resting, decides to trace Pix and Glyn’s steps to discover what happened to them (and hopefully find Rotgut). Shuushar introduces the group to his mentees—a group of Kuo-toan recruits he’s training for battle. Trix suggests Shuushar can begin trading with Blingdenstone to expedite rebuilding.

Vizeran tries to teleport them to Pix and Glyn’s location—but something goes wrong. As the group forces their way into a chronomantic bubble, the team takes a massive amount of damage. Pelek is destroyed, Lemon explodes, the purple worm egg shatters from the damage, and the team is splayed across dimensions. A dice of fate roll takes them to where Pix and Glyn were TRYING to go—uncle Rotgut’s location.

Trix immediately revives Lemon and heals everyone. The group takes in their surroundings. What seems at first glance to be a normal cavern quickly appears to be a space outside the flow of normal time. Vizeran is in awe of the chronomantic bubble.

But just like Pyrite before, the group experiences the bubble’s time loop. Uncle Rotgut is running from a time eternal—and he recognizes them!

## Memorable Quotes

* **Trix:** Briar! Do you have any healing magic?
* **Briar:** Healing? Nooo. There is only one remedy to that: time.

**Lemon:** I don’t really know what’s goin’ on, but I’m my own ooze and I like myself!

**Briar:** There, there. Calm down. We’ll figure it out. We’ll have cake afterwards. It will be joyous.

**Bogtooth:** Trix, you can’t do this--not right now. If you don’t have a sturdy mind on you, there’s no way we can get through this.

**Finn:** Cast a sending to master Vizeran. Better coming from you than me. First, because I can’t cast sending. Second, because he doesn’t value my opinion.

* **Vizeran:** Looks like the gang’s all here.
* **Briar:** Not quite. There are goblins missing.
* **Vizeran:** I’m sorry, who are YOU?

* **Trix:** That’s stupid.
* **Vizeran:** Why is it stu-peed?

**Shuushar:** As I have always said to Trix, “Blooloolooloolooo!” And I stand by that.

* **Trix:** Yeah, Pelek’s nice.
* **Pelek**: Pelek’s nice.
* **Lemon:** Pelek’s nice.

* **Tremble:** What’s even the point if everyone I know and love is just gonna die?
* **Bogtooth:** Tremble, remember when Pyrite was here and she hit the Demogorgon? Tremble, we’re gonna find them. And if we can’t find them, we’ll find whoever did that to them. And with their help from heaven, we’ll send him back to whatever hole he crawled out of. We gotta stay resolute.
* **Tremble:** It doesn’t mean anything, Bogtooth. If we can’t bring them back, all of this means nothing. How is that fair?
* **Bogtooth:** It’s not fair. It’s really, really not fair. I don’t know why this stupid destiny idea was built on the backs of six goblins. I looked at those books, all those great things that all the great goblins had done. We’re always a bit player in someone else’s story. Lying and stealing and fighting all the time. I don’t know why it had to be six goblins. The lowliest creature on this planet. But maybe I just really wanna fight to keep the things that they loved alive. Even if they’re not here.

* **Shuushar:** Are you familiar with the Demogorgon?
* **Briar:** Uuuh, yeees.
* **Shuushar:** He tried to break us, but we are rebuilding.
* **Briar:** He broke us…

**Shuushar:** One of the safest places to be is a village after a demon lord has been through it.

**Trix:** I wanted to spend more time with them. I wasn’t there when I needed to be. And I need to get them back.

* **Trix:** If Misu is dead…well, she wanted to go to hell, right?
* **Shuushar:** Well… it IS hell. They could have pulled the cruelest trick of all and put her in a simulation of heaven.

**Shuushar:** That drow…he is fighting a war. It has entirely consumed him. I think he would accept his own destruction if it meant his enemies were destroyed.

**Shuushar:** I think you have dealt with more demons and devils than many ever will. You know their game. You dealt with Ichabod. If you can deal with demons and devils, surely you can deal with one drow.

* **Briar:** Does anyone have any berries?
* **Shuushar:** I have no berries. Would you like some fish? TICKLECORN!

**Trix:** I almost gave up on all of it. If Shuushar wasn’t there…but just when I thought everything was useless and everything that I love was gone…that was when I knew that there was someone else to help. There was a chance for me to make things right again! And it started to happen! And I found Glyn again, and I went to hell, and—we’re not stuck like this, is what I’m trying to say. We can get out of this whole thing together. We can do anything.

* **Trix:** All the way back at the beginning, I thought it was best to get way from everyone…forever. Not because I wanted to leave you, but because I had to even though I knew it would destroy me. Tremble, there’s nothing any of us won’t do to help you.
* **Tremble:** We’re gonna do it. Not cause some prophecy told us we had to. We do it on our own! I don’t wanna be part of someone else’s game anymore! I wanna do this ‘cause it’s the right thing to do. Because people need it! Because it’s the only way we can protect the people we care about. When all this is over, I don’t ever wanna pick this up again! You gotta promise me, bro! We have to do it!
* **Trix:** No matter what. We’re gonna do it.

* **Vizeran:** Knock knock. It took me a little while, but look what I found: fish eggs. And I also have spider eggs.
* **Briar:** What does that do?
* **Vizeran:** Let me elucidate, my friend, on the importance of spell components.

**Vizeran:** The horn will do more than just bring the demon lords together. It will grant the caster a degree of control over them! The horn seems to have some seductive essence of Graz’zt in it.

* **Briar:** I have…this leather.
* **Tremble:** What is THAT?
* **Briar:** Leather.

* **Shuushar:** Trix, nothing makes me happier than to know you are well. I will pray, of course, for many of the ones we lost.
* **Trix:** Misu wasn’t that bad.
* **Shuushar:** Misu was the worst. I blame Misu for everything.
* **Trix.** We’ll talk about it later.
* **Shuushar:** Whenever you need gills brimming with pride for you, know that I will be there.

* **Lemon:** I think I felt pain for the first time.
* **Trix:** Hey, you’re with us so I’ll keep you safe, alright?
* **Lemon:** Thanks, I love you.
* **Trix:** I love you too.

* **Lemon:** I’ve never been dead.
* **Trix:** Oh, you were dead for just a second there.
* **Lemon:** WHAT?! I was DEAD?!
* **Trix:** We brought you back, though.
* **Lemon:** Oh! it wasn’t so bad, then.

**Rotgut:** Heeeeelp! These things are tryin’ ta kill me! What a minute, is that—?