Expedition 3: Arha's Pass

Bluewood

### Summary

We find an entrance to the fungal caverns underneath the Inkwell Mountains, and decide to swing by the Bluewood in which our compatriot Arha is taken by Umber Hulks.

### Detailed Writeup

To prepare for the expedition, Jamie and Marzipan bought miner’s picks and everyone chipped in a bit to buy climbing equipment for the group.

Mountain climbing took a toll on Tolyr and Marzipan, who each took a level of exhaustion. Upon reaching the top, they looked around for the hole, but couldn’t find it. Marzipan instead found a bone dagger, though an identify ritual proved it to be non-magical. Once they realized they were on the wrong mountain, it didn’t take too long to head over to the correct mountain and find the hole. The filaments in the hole seemed to have retracted into the hole since the last time they were there.

Marzipan found another reservoir of ink, allowing him and Tolyr each to fill 3 jars. Looking out into the valley, Arha saw a mountain pass, which now allows passage from Port Vrall directly into the Bluewood without having to climb the Inkwell Mountains.

Once Jamie had mined around the hole, looking in showed larger filaments than had originally been in the entrance. The small hole continued into the wall, but showed a faint light. Tolyr sent Annie through the remaining hole where, after wriggling a bit in her smaller size, she was able to reach the end of the tunnel. Tolyr watched through her eyes as she looked out from above upon a massive cavern with huge glowing mushrooms in different colors. On the floor of the cavern were smaller mushrooms which dripped a dark, inky liquid. Far on the other end of the cavern, four massive chains, each as big around as a medium humanoid, hung from the ceiling ending somewhere in the depths of a deep pool of inky liquid.

The pool showed signs of some movement beneath the surface so Annie flew down to skim the surface about 15 feet up. She was stopped in her tracks by the spore cloud of a myconid which sprang up out of the liquid. She drowned.

The party noticed the whispering from Marzipan’s robe and struck up a conversation with it. It was delighted to meet so many new friends who would be able to show it new things.

From Tolyr’s knowledge of the cavern’s layout, he was able to determine where on the mountain a tunnel could access the ground level of the cavern. When the party looked at about that altitude, they found a cave. In the cave were two massive bears, the size of elephants. The party attacked them and successfully took them down, gaining bear pelts, bear meat, and bear bones as resources. At the back of the cavern, they found small mushrooms, from which they took samples.

Arha and Jamie mined at the wall until a small trickle of inky liquid came through the rock. This allowed Tolyr to guess where the ground level of the cavern was. Mining continued about a meter up and Arha and Jamie successfully created a hole into the cavern, though they each took a level of exhaustion. Tolyr used a mage hand to fill his remaining bottles in the pool of inky liquid. The party had now discovered a new location, the Fungal Caverns.

Not desiring to encounter myconids, as they were tired and had recently fought bears, the party decided to begin their return home, planning to do some research before returning. Since they could return by Arha’s pass, and since Marzipan remembered Lamont and Delphi’s interest in the Bluewood wood, they decided to return via the edge of the Bluewood and try to bring back a sample of the trees.

At the edge of the Bluewood, they saw that the trees of the Bluewood seemed to be made of stone. Jamie gave Calliope a boost up and she worked on punching a branch until it fell. Unfortunately, this made a very loud noise, she fell, and both she and Jamie took significant damage from the falling shards of the glass leaves of the tree.

Summoned by this noise, two Umber Hulks charmed Arha and Jamie, who began walking into the woods. Thinking quickly, Tolyr did his best to put them to sleep but was only able to affect Jamie because of his low health. Marzipan cast Protection from Evil and Good on Arha to no effect. As Arha continued to walk toward the Umber Hulks, various members of the party tried to hurt her enough to shake her out of her trance but she couldn’t fight it off. Scooped up by an Umber Hulk, she struggled in its arms but with two blows it knocked her unconscious and the Umber Hulks faded back into the trees.

On waking, Jamie tried to run after her but Tolyr—who was shaking and clearly upset at the sight of the large insectoid creatures—and Marzipan attempted to dissuade him. Realizing they had no hope against the unknown dangers of the Bluewood, the party returned to Port Vrall, Jamie dragging the massive petrified branch which they had acquired at such cost behind him. They were ten times less by one (1:35), having lost a valued teammate, and they swore that the pass she discovered should be henceforth called Arha’s Pass.