Bog Butter Bonanza

and

Justin as the DM

"**Bog Butter Bonanza**" is the seventeenth episode of Rise of the Arcane, the third season of Tales From Del'nasra

An illegal toll road now having been taken out of commission, the party takes what supplies they can find and prepare for another day on the road.

## Episode Synopsis

#### **Previously on Tales from Del'nasra**

*"You all set off to your own various threads within the City of Embers. Vonkar and Grin accompanied Torger while he picked up the glovels he had commissioned from the Grimshade Armory. Doe and Hopper traveled to the Brightstone Institute to meet with Guardian Peshan, but instead were intercepted by the duergar Thrammarn who revealed that they had yet to return from their meetings at the Soulspyre Academy, but agreed to relay Hopper’s message about the party heading towards Drowned Maiden Reef. Thrammarn warned the two of them that the swampy jungles of that region were home to some not so friendly monsters and told a story of tolling church bells in that region with no sign of where the tolling ever comes from.*

*Antyr and Lionel made their way to the Quill and Tome where Antyr picked up some spell supplies, and the duo also visited the Eidolon’s Labyrinth library where Lionel discovered most of his bloodline were dead or missing, with the only living member serving as the political figurehead of the continent of Ipshire within Dawnbreak Cove while Antyr discovered some history on immortality, dark magic and vampirism, learning that the founder of the Soulspyre Academy, Kendar Eylas had been rumored to lock up some of his “experiments” in the undercroft of the academy and had also been rumored to keep some in the now sealed off undercity of the City of Embers.*

*You all met back up in your private suite at the Crystal Palace Inn and decided to make way for Drowned Maiden Reef that day, but not before picking up some potions for the road. You then traveled west out of the city, passing by the Thunderfall Raceway, where some dinosaur races had been going on, mentioning possibly visiting it on the way back. You saw a herd of strange animals that resembled massive, shaggy pronghorns with hallucinatory waves of colours shifting between their horns and capped your first day of travel off after witnessing a strange mint-green energy coalesce and repair a portion of the moon before you all set up camp and slept.*

*You awoke the following day and continued down the road, coming across a ruined fort built across the road and had been turned into an illegal toll gate. The bandits tried taking gold from each of you, but while feigning to hand the gold over Antyr attacked and you all quickly and ruthlessly ended the bandits. You looted the bodies and discovered that all the wealth had been on the ogre’s person with everyone walking away with 110 gold pieces each."*

#### The Episode

The fight with the toll road bandits proved incredibly easy for the party and they began scouring the bandit's camp for any valuables, finding only the gold on the ogre and the strange love poems they wrote in Giant. The bodies were each dragged to the campfire where strange meat was cooking and the bodies that were intact were placed upon the fire and burned, using remnants of the gate that Vonkar had shattered to fuel the flames, including the ogre's love poems being used as kindling. While they burned the corpses, Vonkar began writing a warning on the remaining gate saying that the toll road was now open to the public for free, and added "Bandits beware" in the hopes that nobody would try what this gang had done.

During the search and gathering of the bodies, Antyr found a spell scroll of *Barkskin* but being unable to add it to their spellbook as it wasn't a wizard spell they instead fed the scroll to Ciphersworn while Grin and Hopper explained that somebody could have used it while Antyr said the spell wasn't that great and was better served as food.

After the cleanup and warning message was left, the Fonkey Casuals continued down the road and a few hours later the environment of this tropical rainforest began to change into a dark, gloomy, swamp-like jungle known as the Emberfall Wildlands. This region was filled with towering, skyscraper sized mangrove and cypress trees while the road became a soft, wet dirt. The party also saw strange, large hairy lumps submerged in the mud with the occasional bubbles surfacing as they slowly moved about the mud. During their travels in this new environment they encountered strange mosquitoes which proved more troublesome for both Lionel and Hopper as they were the only fur covered members of the party, so their fur had been covered in various flies and buzzing insects.

The day eventually came to a close, with the party pulling the wagon over to the side of the road. As they did this they got a better look at their surroundings and as far as the eye could see on either side of the road was a deep, viscous, quick-sand like mud where Grin almost lost their sword when testing out the depth of said mud as it immediately began sucking the sword down into it. Doe cast *Tiny Hut* while Hopper cast *Alarm* around the wagon and everyone did their best to get as comfortable as possible in the back of the wagon. Nearing the end of Antyr's trance they got out of the wagon to gather some of the wet dirt from the road and felt like they were being watched from somewhere above, hearing the creaking of branches. They looked around but didn't spot anything, so they decided to get back into the wagon in the safety of the Tiny Hut.

As they got comfortable in the back of the wagon they could see two large barefoot humanoid footprints with extremely long toes standing directly behind their footprints in the road. This seemed to slightly frighten Antyr and they finished their trance with everyone successfully sleeping through the night undisturbed and somehow whatever had been standing behind Antyr had not triggered the alarm spell.

The party continued their travel the next morning with Grin starting to play a song on their accordion, with Antyr pleading that they wanted just one morning without any travel music. As the day progressed, they found themselves moving into a graveyard of large, animal skeletons that had gotten stuck in the mud and died while a large, eight legged reptile had fallen across the road and perished. Some of this skeleton's ribs had been removed so road access wasn't blocked as the creature's skeleton was far too large to move. Perched and feeding on these skeletons were strange crimson coloured birds that resembled toucans with serrated, saw-like beaks and tendrils of light atop their heads that blinked like a firefly. Continuing through this skeleton graveyard, the ambient sound of this swampy jungle seemed to vanish and was instead replaced with dead silence. The silence was quickly broken by the sound of large impact tremors coming from the right side of the wagon, followed by a guttural, croaking roar that caused the birds to take off in a panic.

Feeling the impact tremors getting closer and closer the party began taking cover inside the large, reptilian skeleton draped across the road. Nobody worked on getting Cornelius out of his bit and bridle that connected him to the wagon making it difficult for him to move or hide while under this skeleton. Everyone began hiding within the skeleton, while Antyr, Lionel and Doe covered themselves with blankets in the back of the wagon. The impact tremors got closer, and the gurgling, croaking roar caused the ground to shake as emerging from the swamp and trees to the right was a 25-foot tall towering creature resembling a strange mixture between a tyrannosaurus and a toad. It approached the visible wagon and began to sniff it, with Antyr getting a very good view of this creature while they were peeking out from the blanket. While it was sniffing the wagon, Grin cast *Minor Illusion* and manifested a woman's scream 30-feet away, which seemed to momentarily distract the creature as it lifted its head in that direction. However, while it was looking in that direction, Hopper cast *Catapult* to throw a small bone in that very same direction, with the creature seeing the bone come flying out of the skeleton.

It peered into the skeleton and saw Hopper and Cornelius inside, and it let out a bellowing croaking roar. Thus, a fight ensued with Lionel remaining invisible in the back of the wagon. Vonkar enlarged himself and ran up to the creature while still invisible and punched the creature twice, with the second attack bouncing off of its pebbled hide. Grin flew out of the skeleton and cast *Bless* as they did targeting Hopper, Torger and Vonkar before they flew 40-feet up into the air out of this thing's possible reach. Choosing to remain hidden in the wagon and under the blankets, Antyr subtle cast a *Haste* spell on Vonkar and continued to remain hidden. Hopper got up around this creature's large feet and began dancing about hoping to distract it while summoning their protective eldritch cannon granting those within ten-feet of them some temporary hit-points. Torger leapt out of the skull, bounded off the wagon and delivered a couple of blows with their shovel gloves, attempting to blind the creature's one eye. They walloped the creature a few times and were able to embed themselves with the gloves into the creature's orbital bone and eye socket.

Doe, seeing that this creature may be distracted by the three people attacking it, crawled to the left side of the wagon, and crawled under the wagon to continue hiding from it. While under the wagon they cast *Vicious Mockery*, but the creature resisted the spell's effects. The creature (now revealed to be something called a toadrehdon) bit down on the now huge sized Vonkar and dealt some serious damage, and swung its tail up at Torger to try and knock him off, and while Torger was hurt he had remained clinging to the side of the toadrehdon's eye socket.

Deciding to prove his worth, Lionel revealed himself by subtle casting *Bleating Bombardment* on top of the creature which caused a 30-foot radius of bleating sheep to begin falling from the sky, exploding on impact into fireworks. The toadrehdon resisted the spell, but was still damaged by the exploding sheep, however this caused a wild magic surge in which a fireball detonated on Lionel causing severe damage to himself, Antyr and destroying the wagon while slightly damaging the toadrehdon, Hopper and Doe.

Angered by the careless casting of magic from Lionel without knowing the potential of their powers, Antyr cast Motes of Eclipse and directed one dart towards Lionel and the rest towards the toadrehdon. The one dart that hit Lionel brought him down and caused him to start dying. While they were covered in burns, with the blanket they were hiding under melted to their face, Antyr also cast *Misty Step* to get as far away from Lionel as possible.

Eventually, Torger dealt the killing blow to the toadrehdon and with continued attacks directed at the eye socket, dislodged one of its eyes as the body fell into the mud and quickly sank beneath the surface while Doe cast *Cure Wounds* on Lionel to prevent him from dying.

#### After the Break

Torger slung the forty or so pound eye over his shoulder and brought it towards Antyr and dropped it on the ground in front of them. Antyr attempted to harvest materials from the eye, but only succeeded in finding large parasitic worms living within the sclera (the white) of the eyes. They took a few of these worms and placed them in a vial.

Doe and Hopper spent an hour repairing the wagon via *Mending*, however in this new state it was slightly more rickety and bumpy due to having been destroyed from the fireball and some of the pieces having been obliterated in the blast. While the party continued down the road Grin approached Antyr about what they had done to Lionel in regards to shooting him with one of his motes, with Antyr's explanation being that Lionel was being reckless with his abilities that he had no control or real knowledge over and that recklessness almost killed Antyr and that out of anger they attacked Lionel to take out a potential threat during the fight.

Lionel piped up that he would do better on not being so reckless, but just wanted to prove himself and apologized to Antyr who seemed to accept the apology. Torger also chimed in saying that if they became a threat or was taken control of something and weren't in control of their actions that he'd want to the group to "put him on ice" and kill him. Grin didn't seem to enthused by the outcome of the conversation, and asked that Antyr not attack him, with Antyr telling Grin not to give him a reason to.

As the sun began to set, the party passed by an abandoned town built upon docks and piers rising up from the deep mud, a nearby sign naming the town Fannen. Portions of the town had sunk beneath the mud and the town seemed abandoned. Antyr summoned Endylus and had them scout the town seeing that it had been abandoned in a hurry with any standing buildings fully furnished and wagons left all over the town filled with personal belongings. In the centre of the town was a massive, 600-foot radius sinkhole that consumed the rest of the town, with Antyr theorizing that is why everyone left in a hurry.

Seeing that it was getting late, the party decided to enter the town and camp out in the remains of an abandoned tavern. A few members of the party began cleaning up an area to sleep, while Grin scouted the place out looking for any bodies or unsavoury creatures with their Divine Sense. While scouting they didn't find any corpses but did find some items in the pantry that had not perished, specifically two jars of honey and a clay pot filled with bog butter.

Hopper found bottles of rum and began pouring shots for everyone but Vonkar while Grin attempted to cook a warm meal of jerky softened in bog butter. The food was absolutely vile, but for some reason it was enjoyed by both Vonkar and Doe who gorged themselves on the food while everyone else spit it out or threw it up. With warm food in some of their bellies, as well as rum the party decided to sleep for the evening while Hopper took first watch.

Their watch was uneventful, but near the end they felt like they were being watched and heard creaking coming from the roofs of various buildings in the vicinity. As they peered off towards the stable they saw a pair of glowing white eyes in the distance on the roof of the stable, but the eyes vanished as soon as they put on their *Goggles of Night.* Removing the goggles, the eyes re-appeared and then completely disappeared. Hopper decided to leave a note on Antyr's person saying "I saw it too." Antyr was then woken up from their trance, and found the note, thinking that Hopper meant they saw what Antyr had done to Lionel.

Their watch was also uneventful, but they too heard the strange creaking and felt the familiar feeling of being watched that they had felt the night before as well as seeing the same footprints on the porch of the tavern, realizing that Hopper meant that they had seen whatever Antyr had the night before. They stuck their head of out Doe's *Tiny Hut* and called out, saying "Hello" and a few moments later and eerie voice called back, mimicking Antyr's voice also saying "Hello". This spooked Antyr and they immediately went back into the Tiny Hut, laid down and had Endylus lay across their face to cover their eyes.

Grin stirred in the early hours of the morning and began cooking a breakfast of bog butter infused with honey and spread over some toasted hardtack. The food came out better than their previous attempt and everyone woke up to the smell of Grin's cooking and those that chose to eat more of Grin's bog butter experiments had a warm breakfast with some added rum to start their next day on the road.

## Featured Characters

### Player Characters

* Antyr Xiloscient
	+ Endylus
* Doe
* Grin
* Hopper Thimblefoot
* Lionel
* Torger Otrson
* Vonkar Eldsaga

### Returning

* Ciphersworn, the Page Eater
* Cornelius

### Mentioned

* Beiro Peshan
* Kena Peshan (unnamed)
* Leek / Ernest Stiltwhistle
* Lord Oberon
* Rowan Buxton