Session 168

General Summary

• The party found a dead-end room swarming with ravens and a single undead "patient" in the middle. They took some potions and moved on.
• They doubled back to the room with the chanting cultists. The "cultists" turned out to be more undead, puppeted by cloakers.
• The cloakers were trying to appease an otyugh, which also joined the fight when Theran Shooty Blam-Blam'd a cloaker into it.
• With a hint from "Jahdzan" / "Argon", they saw the next goal: another bubble, unlocked by a key in the form of some kind of crab. The key was in two halves.
• The halves were encased inside of barriers, one in each of a pair of chambers with identical layouts. One chamber was filled with some foul-smelling glittering green fog, so they started with the chamber opposite that one.
• Along this chamber were several crab-like entities, each of which burst into many tiny crabs when its needs were satisfied. The tiny crabs helped free the half of the key on their side.
• The fog switched to the other side, and the party hopped over to the mirrored chamber, which had crystals in locations that corresponded to the crabs on the other side. The solution was to interact with the crystals consistently with how they handled the crab counterparts, which freed the other half of the key.

Full Recap

Just What DID The Doctor Order?

Dazki (Strength 12) rolls the door to the side. Dwardazik holds it open while Dazki blocks it open by wedging some pitons into the mechanism. (Strength Tinker's Tools 24) It only takes a couple, and it's perfectly stuck open.   The door leads to a secondary pipe with several other smaller offshoot pipes sticking out into it. Dwardazik looks through one of them to see what's through it. (Perception 18) They're completely dry inside, though it smells of something slightly sweet but fermented. Not too far after the wedged door is another seemingly identical door. Dazki starts to investigate it, (Investigation 31), and just as he's about to investigate the door, something starts whirring to life from the pipes along the side. Dwardazik impatiently just pulls the door open. (Strength 25) It tries to resist him opening it, but it does roll open, and his strength seems to have disabled the mechanisms that would allow it to close again of its own accord. The wedged door behind them tries to close, unable to do so. Some sort of "greenish, sweet-smelling gas" oozes out of the pipes, thicker than air.   The room is filled with "over a hundred birds". A cry for help from within the room: "I need a doctor!", which the crows echo. There are two levers across the room. Dazki complains that there probably isn't anything directly needed for them in this chamber, remembering what Baxton's room ultimately had in store for them, but the others want to see what might happen, so they step inside (though Theran does so transformed as a crow to help blend in).   (Wisdom Save 9) Dazki feels compelled to help the patient in the room. (Medicine 14) The patient is "no longer of the living, but that doesn't mean that he can't be helped". Dazki "helps" it by stabbing it with his rapier. A voice echoes throughout the chamber:

Voice: I mean, it's not exactly the way I would've gone about it, but you are the doctor, right? So... I can get more patients, if you need practice? Not that I'm judging or anything, just... I didn't think... I thought it would take a lot longer?   Dazki: No, no. That was good. He was helped. That's all we needed to do.   Dwardazik, impatiently: Remember the objective.   Voice: I mean, there's really — we can just — we can get more patients, you know!   Dazki: We don't need more patients, thank you. Just had to help the one. We're good.   Voice: No, everyone needs your help! You're so good, doctor!   Dazki: Nope. I'm good. That's it. Thank you, though, I do appreciate it.

Marvin goes to pull the levers on the far side of the room, and Dazki breaks off to investigate the rest of the room to see what supplies he can scavenge. Marvin finds some unlabeled potion bottles, which he scoops up indiscriminately. Dwardazik moves further into the room and pulls the grating off of a downward-directed pipe. Peering down, he sees a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back up at him. He convinces Dazki to send down the Driftglobe to put more light down there and see what's down there. At the bottom of the well is a layer of "brownish-red mud". As soon as the light goes down there, a pigeon emerges, flapping furiously. Dwardazik puts the grate back on after it flies out. They don't go out of their way to stop the pigeon from hopping around and following them. (Perception 28) Other than the potion vials that Marvin nabbed, there doesn't seem to be anything of value in this room that might have been overlooked, so they leave the bird-ridden room.   Six potions, two of them are definitely Potions of Greater Healing, and the nature of the other four is unknown.   (Nature 12) The pigeon is undead. Its eyes never both seem to focus on the same thing at once, it's missing a few feathers (but it still seems to be able to fly), and it's twitching and squirming in odd ways. Dazki concludes that it must be destroyed, and Dwardazik agrees, counting to three and attacking it. Several blackened worms burst out of the pigeon, though the gas on the floor makes quick work of them. They double back around to the room with the tooth-like rocks.

The Greatest Cape

Dwardazik investigates what appears to be some debris between two of the tooth-like rocks. (Investigation 20) there's a platinum piece in there, wouldn't ya know. They discuss some plans for how to deal with the cult. They decide to let Marvin sneak his way in there with Comprehend Languages up, as he tries to imitate their Deep Speech chanting the best that he can. (Deception 25) Nothing comes of it immediately, though he is approached by some of the cultists who reach out their cloaked hands to him. Marvin is wary of this, but they insist... he furiously tries to pull the cloak off, revealing a zombie underneath it that collapses to the ground, and the cloak itself wraps around him, trying to suffocate him.

Combat Summary

• At the beginning of the fight, the cloakers seemed mostly interested in trying to appease the otyugh, though they peeled off towards the party once Marvin (Strength 22) freed himself and the others moved into the area.
• Theran timed his Shooty Blam-Blam spell so that it would hit one of the cloakers directly into the otyugh, which brought it into combat.
• Once the cloakers were down, Dazki shouted for everyone to get to the other side of the "teeth", since the otyugh probably couldn't fit through. The others mostly ignored his suggestion the first time, which started to frustrate him a little, but they eventually heeded the plan, taking shots at the otyugh from the outside, killing it.

The cloakers — which Theran (Nature 27) determines to be from the Underdark, as with the otyugh — are "cloaked" by some interesting hide that the party decide to spend a few minutes to skin off before proceeding.

Even the Crabs Are Evolving Into (Smaller) Crabs

In the next area, the walls and floor undulate in a steady rhythm, and a strong wind blows through it that carries warmth and humidity. Objects and trinkets are scattered throughout the floor. A large worm watches from the wall. Around the corner, another plasmic guardian watches them from near a large stone doorway. It tells them (or nobody in particular, as it seems to address the room) "please keep your voices down" / "keep your breath to yourself" / "silence is key".   Theran spots another crystal formation, which he touches. "Jahdzan" and "Argon" appear. The small dwarf has difficulties catching his breath, though he makes no noise. He huffs and puffs, leaning against the bird as if to steady himself. Clinging to his form — including one that appears to have attached firmly around his neck — is a large crab-like individual. On the center of its shell, this crab has a hole that goes straight through it, shaped like a keyhole. "Jahdzan" stumbles into the door and disappears without saying a word. The plasmic guardian responds to it, "do enjoy your stay, cancerous one".   Continuing down, there's another wind through the chamber that smells of a combination of fruit and sulfur. The path splits into two chambers, the wind mostly coming from the one to the west and the smell mostly coming from the one to the east. A crystal is already activated, and they see "Jahdzan" and "Argon" once again as they walk further down. "Jahdzan" is hacking and coughing, as if the chamber is filled with a horrible smog. He ties a handkerchief around "Argon"'s beak to help it breathe better. He turns around, just in time to see a large crab attack into the side of his neck, causing him to stumble and fall out of range.   Dwardazik takes a few cautious steps further down, seeing several more crabs like the one that attacked "Jahdzan" in the illusion. Dwardazik breaks off a piece of the crystal, and he throws the piece over close to the crab-like entity, which picks up the crystal he threw. Dazki proposes just ignoring the crabs and whatever's up with them, seeing if they can just make it through the barrier with a more mundane sort of silence.   They double back around to the bubble by the plasmic guardian. Dwardazik tries to walk through it holding his breath, to no avail. (Perception 10) he does see a marking of a crab with a hole in the center of it, as a symbol etched on the bubble. When the dwarf tries to quietly explain this to the party, the plasmic guardian chides him, saying "your lack of cancer is like a plague upon these sacred halls, I'm going to need you to keep it down!".   Back to the room with the crabs, they decide to have Theran scout the foggy side, with his necklace that protects him from harmful gases. He scouts ahead, and — after an almost-too-uncomfortable amount of time — he returns, covered in a fine green mist that makes him glow slightly.

Theran: There is an abjuration bubble sort of thing that has half a crab skittering around inside of it. Figuring that's probably half of our key. The clue that's etched on the outside of it: lots of little, tiny crabs.   Dwardazik: So, what, do we go to the east to get crabs, so that we can go to the west to get crabs, so that we can go north and... get... crab?   Marvin: I don't want to get crabs!   Dwardazik: Not those kinds of crabs...   Theran: I also ran into, like, a black crystal growing out of the ground. I thought I saw another one in the distance, but it was really hard to make out. Either way, it's hard to navigate in there, so we should all hold hands or tie each other together.

They carefully make their way through the west side of the area, finding another one of those bubbles with the half-crab inside of it. Exploring the tunnels a bit more, there are several little pockets with "crabs" in them. The "crabs" here, once the party can take a good look at them, actually only have crab-like legs: the actual bodies are teeming with strange crystals.   They pay closer attention to the crabs: the crystals that make up their bodies seem to betray unusual desires. Going from crab to crab, the party doesn't seem to have any trouble at all matching each crab to something that it desires. Each time they do so, the crab shatters into hundreds of tinier crabs, which rendezvous at the half-crab bubble. Once every crab is satisfied, they make their way to the half-crab bubble, which has since shattered. Dazki reluctantly picks up the half-crab, and they quickly leave the chamber, which is quickly beginning to smell. Conveniently, by the time they make their way to the junction point, the green smoke cloud has completely switched sides.   On the other side are crystals, one in each of the spots mirroring where a crab would have been previously. They work out that they need to interact with each crystal in a way that's related to how they interacted with the corresponding crab on the other side. Slowly but surely, they work through the crystals and release the second half-crab. Dazki places the two halves together and creates a crab with a conspicuous hole in the center shaped like a keyhole.