Session 17: The Plants are Watching

General Summary

3rd of Drawingdown, Dawn-Midmorning

The group awakens from their nights' rest and breaks down their camp. Leaving the corpse of the Dog behind them, they continue their walk in the direction of the Dwarves' settlement.

Although the sun is shining on this bright, clear winter day, a thick fog soon begins to form. It grows dense enough within moments to obscure the party members' vision entirely past a range of a few feet. Kaiess makes out strange, bulbous forms moving towards them through the mist. Then, all at once, Kaiess, Conor, Claire, and Flacor feel their muscles lock up as they become stunned. The figures move closer and the group is able to recognize them as Myconids, and they realize that the fog was actually a spore cloud. The group does their best to appear nonthreatening, and are eventually able to shake off the effects of the spores. The Myconids release a cloud of their Rapport Spores, allowing the party to temporarily enter the fungal colony's telepathic hive mind and communicate with the creatures.
This also allows the group members to share their thoughts with one another. They are able to experience the excitement and joy Falcor feels as a dog, and also to hear the song that's stuck in Claire's head (the theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air").

Kaiess attempts to access Conor's memories of the Dwarves she lived with so he can show their faces to the Myconids. As he gets close, though, Conor's consciousness recoils and pushes the intrusion away with a wall of static. It seems to be instinctive on Conor's part rather than an intentional act. Conor realizes what Kaiess was trying to do and calls forth static images of certain members of her tribe as the remembers them, specifically the two mentioned by Peronell Ashglade: Tierney Marblebelt and Quinn Beastfeet.
The Myconids respond to the images of the Dwarves, replying to Conor with images of Quinn and Tierney, now apparently older, as well as images of other Dwarves Conor recogizes. Most of the images are blurry and out-of -focus, but the clearest two are of a heavily scarred warrior missing an eye and an arm and a nervous looking dwarf with curly brown hair. Conor recognizes them as Eamon, the man who trained the youngest generation of the tribe in combat, and Aran, one of the tribe's hunters. The Myconids also share with the group the exact location of the Birch Grove, which is about five miles further away than indicated by the crude map Conor saw in the Archives.
Seeing Conor's memories of Tierney cooking for the tribe, Kaiess involuntarily thinks of memories of cooking with his own father back home. Claire tries to take advantage of the telepathic link to try to figure out Kaiess's thoughts about her, but he is able to conceal those ideas from her.
The Myconids let the group pass and retreat back into the forest.

For the next hour, the group walks in the direction of the birch grove while still under the effects of the Rapport Spores. Kaiess uses his Primeval Awareness to detect the presence of any nearby beasts. He is alerted to a pregnant brown bear up ahead, gorging herself on the last bit of autumn forage buried beneath the snow. She becomes aware of the group's presence, and Kaiess communicates to her that they mean her no harm. He has the others walk on past and conjures a pile of Goodberries to leave for her before he, too, passes by her. The telepathic connection fades.

As they walk on, Kaiess continues to use his Primeval Awareness feature to scan the area for threats, allowing the party to skirt a nest of giant wasps blocking the path.
They come across the footprint of a massive, ruined temple. The weather, along with roots, vines, lichen, and moss, have eaten the columns and flagstones almost completely away. A spring bubbles in the center of the space, and the surviving carvings around it indicate that it might have once filled a ceremonial pool. Conor investigates the stonework and sees that the temple is Giant in origin. Kaiess and Conor investigate the water in the pool and find it to be magical and extremely cold, but are unable to learn anything more about it. They refill their waterskins with the spring water and continue their journey.

After another hour and a half's trek through the forest, the party sees the glint of metal overhead: a suit of plate armor suspended in the air between two trees, vines filling the inside of the suit and spilling out of the face mask. Conor, Claire, and Falcor hang back while Kaiess ties his rope to one of his crossbow bolts, approaches the suit of armor, and fires into a gap in the plates. The bolt finds purchase on a mass of thick vines and Kaiess pulls hard on his end of the rope. He is able to yank down some of the armor plates which clatter to the forest floor below, along with a few dry bones. The vines, stripped of their armor, continue to writhe overhead, assuming a more humanoid arrangement of limbs.
The group attacks the mass of living vines, Conor with Flaming Sphere, Claire with Sacred Flame, Kaiess with his crossbow, and Falcor by bounding up to Kaiess's side to bark at it. More vines burst from the ground and attempt to entangle Falcor and Kaiess, but both of them manage to break free. Eventually, Conor drains the last of the life from the vines with Chill Touch and they watch it and the remaining pieces of armor slough off of the tree branches above and fall to the ground.

While the party is occupied with the vine blight, two small, wood-bodied Children of the Briar execute an ambush. One fires thorns at Claire, but misses. The other rushes Conor, slashes at her, and wraps its long, thorny arms around her in a painful grapple. She loses her concentration on her Flaming Sphere and it vanishes. Kaiess fires at the Child of the Briar from a distance, as does Claire.
The second Child of the Briar creeps closer to its companion, and in tandem, they cast a wide-area Entangle spell to trap Kaiess and wrap even more vines around Conor, who is still trapped in the thorny grapple. She turns into a black bear to try and escape, but its sharp little fingers still dig into her furry hide. Kaiess shoots the Child of the Briar in front of her, causing it to break its concentration and drop the Entangle spell. In a panic, it opens its mouth and vomits a spray of thorns into her face.
The Child of the Briar hidden in the underbrush peeks out of its hiding place to fire thorns at Claire. She sees where the shots came from and casts Spirit Guardians in a wide enough area to encompass both it and its companion. The sphere of angels erupts into the world, filling the otherwise quiet glen with dissonant whispers.
Conor reaches down and grabs the Child of the Briar in her jaws. She bends down and rips its body in half with her paw like it was a salmon. She and her friends bound over to the other surviving Child of the Briar's hiding place. Claire smashes it with her Spiritual Weapon, but Kaiess finishes it off with a crossbow bolt to the torso that cracks its little wooden body open.

With the threat now gone, the group takes a moment to figure out what these strange little creatures, with their sharp fingers and black glassy eyes, might be. They seem to have been speaking a quiet, clicking language none of the party could understand. Kaiess is completely unfamiliar with them, and never encountered anything like them in the Farflung Forest in Ostabek. Conor hasn't ever seen one in person, but knows just enough about them to know they are called the "Children of the Briar", and are plant-creatures from the Feywild. Claire thankfully never drew their attention, but she remembers seeing the creatures in the Silverstrike Mountains when she first arrived from the future. She was unaware of their name, as she's reasonably confident that they do not exist in her time, but she observed that they live in massive colonies and sometimes send small parties like this one out ahead to scout. It is probably a good thing that they managed to kill both Children of the Briar, rather than letting one escape.

Rewards Granted

Kaiess: knowledge of songs from the future, respect from a bear, water from the Giant temple Conor: knowledge of songs from the future, hope, water from the Giant temple
Claire: more unsettling memories from her time lost in the wilderness
Falcor: love

Missions/Quests Completed

Mind Meld
Stop and Ask for Directions
World's Best Dog Award (Falcor, reigning champion)
Touch the Water in a Ruined Temple in the Scary Woods
Make Friends with a Bear (Kaiess)
Be the Bear You Want to See in the World (Conor)
Don't Tangle with Me (an award for killing 3 vine based plant monsters, gg guys)

Character(s) interacted with

PCs

Conor Oakenriver
Claire Blackwell
Kaiess Knolltun

NPCs

Myconids
Fat Bear
Two Children of the Briar

Notes

It is 11am. Conor is still a bear. No healing has happened yet. Spirit Guardians is still up, and Spiritual Weapon might be, too. 35/45, 3h

Report Date

05 Jan 2019

Primary Location

The Darkwoods