Adventure Brunch #44 - 8/8 - Curse of the grotesque!

General Summary

As our heroes pressed on from the Temple of Cinders, they noticed a long ribbon of flames flying in the distant horizon around the tip of the spire they had noticed earlier. It made several circles before breaking off into a dive, barrel rolling, and making sharp turns. The tail of the burning ribbon left an afterimage of an arrow pointing down at the tower.
Zura was really concerned about the f-bombs, and the party pressed on into the second area of “blighted” woods that looked similar to the first they had traversed, with thickly planted, extremely thorny brambles, bushes, and small trees. They attempted to once again sneakily stealth about but were discovered midway through and attacked by strange looking red-eyed shadow hounds!
The hounds bayed fiercely and cast a spell of fear on half the party, causing them to run in different directions. Meanwhile, a loud cracking sound could be heard in the distance, followed by silence, until... BOOM! One by one the adventurers were struck with stones the size of a grown man's chest, hurting them greatly and knocking them onto their backs if they were not careful. They were all stuck and some people (Jingles and Cyrus) multiple times, making fighting and getting through the terrain even more difficult… Zura was sure this was finally the f-bombs she was seriously concerned about, and became even more concerned.
Zura pressed forward towards the likely hiding place of the f-bomb while her party defeated the remaining hounds, prioritizing stopping the bombardment and ready to confront her dreaded f-bombs. Finding her way to the base of a steep, stone stairway, Zura saw that, inside an etched diamond in the floor and surrounded by four huge buckets, stood THE F-BOMB!
She was sure it was the real deal this time; the monster was fourteen feet tall, grotesque and misshapen, with some limbs longer and some shorter than they should be, and a distorted, horrendous face with one much larger eye staring balefully at her. The Real F-bomb was also holding a war sling and launching large carved stones pulled from the floor at her and her friends. As Cyrus was knocked down by one for the nth time, Zura tried to distract the much-dreaded foe and shot a beam of radiant energy at it with her eldritch bow…but the radiant beam hit an invisible wall around the f-bomb and sizzled out! Everything she tried failed (though she did punch holes in two of the buckets, from which leaked a disgusting, black ichor to cover the ground.
The remaining two hounds ran off, and the rest of the party eventually made its way to Zura, seeking partial cover around the stairs so as to avoid getting hit by more huge rocks. Zura passed her crossbow bolts covered with sleep poison to Jingles. They were taken from a Black Court Drow she defeated a few days earlier and she had witnessed the powerful effect they’d had on Shakkax (knocked out snoring, immediately! hopefully they would work on this f-bomb… AND THEY DID!
Jingles hit the f-bomb on the first try and it fell like a tree, snoring. Zura immediately ran up and SMACK! into the invisible wall that had stopped her previous radiant blasts. The force field came up from the etched diamond in the ground and nothing worked to let her pass through, including blinking past it from the ethereal plane! It turned out Cyrus could not pass through either… but everyone else could?!
Unable to move the f-bomb out of its Sun Elf-protected field, the party hatched a crazy plan (after debating for a very long time!): Jingles placed a stick of dynamite on the f-bomb’s face and scattered caltrops around it, and everyone backed away to the stairs except Panthro, who hid on the other side with a bag of Cough & Sneezing Powder. Zura lit the fuse, and BOOM! The fight started! Unfortunately the f-bomb’s head was not blown off, and the fight continued longer than our heroes had hoped. While the f-bomb got to its feet, Panthro threw the bag of dust that Zura wasted 500gp on because it had no effect… then Jingles hit it with a second sleep bolt and successfully put it to sleep again so the party could re-plan… but when it hit the ground, the f-bomb fell onto the caltrops and immediately woke back up again. Oh no!
Zura didn’t know what else to do, so threw her last stick of dynamite at the monster. Razana made it so the next hit would make it take double that type of magic damage and helped Panthro deal an impressive 41 points of shadow garrote damage to it, but then the f-bomb got really angry. The monster manipulated the black ichor as an additional shield then started teleporting around the stone platform before grappling Jingles and beginning to crush him to death! Jingles got free, but then the f-bomb appeared in front of Zura and stared down at her from his huge, gruesome eye… dealing psychic trauma and causing her flesh to convulse and reform her features and limbs into a disgusting resemblance of his own! The f-bomb also stuck Jingles with a fatal blow killing him at least temporarily as Razana the cleric of the grave was able to stabilize him and bring him back from the netherworld.
“Don’t look at me! I’m SO UGLY!” cried Zura, as she tried to use Dawnbreaker and held her action for the next time the f-bomb appeared in front of her, outside the protective barrier. Before she could try, Panthro got in another epic sneak attack on the f-bomb and dropped it. The party was victorious!!?
Our exhausted but triumphant heroes climbed the rest of the stone steps and reached the base of the gigantic and glorious eldergleam! They found that while the top of the tree, which they had seen from miles and miles away, was healthy and bright, the roots and base of the trunk were covered in more of the black ichor that the fomorian had kept in buckets. They also spotted a figure, oozing more black ichor, nailed to the trunk!
Cyrus used his newly bequeathed Circle of the Sun powers to burn away the nails, and Shakkax caught the figure, which upon closer scrutiny looked like a male fey being with gossamer wings. No matter what the group did, he did not wake up and continued to ooze black ichor.
TO BE CONTINUED...

Report Date

11 Sep 2020