Castle Whiterock 8 May 2023: Never fight while thirsty or sober

The murderhoboes

Garreth, half-orc swordsman
    Bleu, droning elf wizard
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
    Logan, wolverine
Polly, cute and deadly elf archer

(Stonemaul, dwarven cleric of Danethar)

And our helpers:

Elweiss, ghostly guardian

Fthirya, aka Erica, ghaele eladrin

Galdiera, kobold who thinks she's an elven paladin

What they did

We go back to Castle Whiterock, and Elweiss, Erica and Galdiera link up with us. After finding out that Galdiera and Erica drink elven wine and elven brandy, respectively, I bring along some good elven booze with for the trip.

This amazes Galdiera. "You intend to drink while battling the forces of Darkness and Evil?"

Garreth shrugs. "Makes it hard for the bad guys to figure out what I'm doing."

We go into the lair of Baghanaya and Scithia. They are amazed that we bring along backup, but I give Baghanaya a bottle of good scotch and we go past and into the tunnels.

We wend through the tunnels, and it looks like it is going down. I can smell the sulfur and feel the heat, but there is no flame yet.  The tunnel makes a sharp turn, and goes into a wide room. To our left is a wrecked mural of a dragon setting fire to a village, while to the right is a toppled statue of a dragon, which would have been about twice my height when whole.

Polly glares at the mural. "So. Not. Nature."

Garreth asks Bleu about the mural, and she starts her babble: "Oh, look. There is a head. As you can see the head has a pronounced scar, and a distinguished jawline, as noted in Waffston the Crispy's posthumously published tome, Who's Who of Evil Dragons. It is none other than Benthosruthsa."

I roll my eyes. "Brevity is the soul of wit, sweetheart." Bleu goes on about looking dragons in the teeth and the bicuspids of dragons that feed on tender children or something.

Garreth grips Scalemar and thinks. "That's the same dragon in the mural in the Audience Hall of the Thane in Narborg!"

Galdiera sniffs. "Clearly the beast is possessed of a great ego and hubris. Look how vain it is with monuments to its greatness!"

Erica adds, "If I had a jawline like that I'd smash the statue too! Or I'd have children with myself. That's really rugged!"

Say wha? This puzzles me as much as anyone reading this. I swear to you that I'm not high, that I've had maybe one shot of whiskey after a beer, and that she really said that. "… children with myself?"

Erica beams. "One of every color!"

I bump into the wall, then put my hand through the wall. "Whoa." Then I step through. After some running into the illusionary wall, everyone else makes it through as well. Bleu scans the wreckage  for any hint of working magic items.

I put on my ring and scout ahead. The tunnel reaches a T-fork. To the right, I can feel a light wind, but to the left, it's still. I can make out some ghostly faces hiding among the rocks at the fork, and shiver.

I go back to warn the others. "Elweiss, do you have any friends down here?"

Elweiss shakes his head. "I don't think so. I mean, I kinda play cards with the lich every so often, but most of the restless dead here aren't friendly."

Galdiera looks warily at Elweiss. "Undead? As the wisdom of Brother Elias says, suffer not the undead to live."

I throw up my hands, though most cannot see this. "Well, there are some ghostly faces up ahead. They hang out in rocks and stuff."

Galdiera narrows her eyes. "Brother Elias spoke of this lich."

Uh-oh. Elweiss might have spoken too much, so I have to say something. "Elias has been drinking too much communion wine. He never could hold it. That's why Garreth and I always drank it for him." This isn't wholly a lie, of course—Elias isn't a strong drinker, and Garreth and I always did drink his communion wine for him. Serves him right for saving it—we had to drink something when our stronger stuff ran out. That communion wine isn't the best, but sobriety is even worse.

Galdiera goes on. "Sounds like dread wraiths. They are cowardly bound servitors or haunts that cannot pass on due to chains of loyalty. Their blows can sap vitality as well as deal wounds. Mere steel is not proof against them nor does it hurt them." She stops, then adds, "But I have a Ghost Touch sword, so, bring it!"

Garreth asks, "Is there a simple way to release them, or shall we just cut them down?"

Galdiera chuckles. "I find that the time way to reason with evil is once the evil has been cut into very small pieces. But perhaps there is a way to help them move on." She shrugs, then looks skyward for a moment. "Divine Guidance speaks that this is a DCC module, so …"

Castle Whiterock 11 October 2021: Inky, Inky, Inky, no Clyde

The murderhoboes

Garreth, half-orc swordsman
    Bleu, droning elf wizard
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
    Logan, wolverine
Polly, cute and deadly elf archer

(Thrognar, half-orc holy warrior)

(Stonemaul, half-orc holy warrior)
(Mikal, human holy warrior)

What happened

Now that we've checked out the area with the inferno cats, we're ready to look around elsewhere. After some chatting, we walk right, beyond where we fought the cats, and when it branches, we keep to the left. However, something about ten yards down the tunnel stops my darkvision. "Garreth, can you ask Droning Booty what's making my darkvision to fade there?"

Garreth asks Bleu, who says, "Might be more spellruin ivy."

After some chatter, we learn from Blah that smoking it ruins magical aptitude and likely won't get us high, and it would dull non-orichalcum blades trying to cut it. This means that spellruin ivy sucks, so we choose to go another way.

I lean down to Logan and ask, "Hey, boy, smell anything?" He makes honking sounds and looks down a hallway to the right of the one with the spellruin ivy. We hear unhappy honking sounds coming from there, and I put on my ring. "Not more of these guys."

Bleu also hears the sound. "Ah, it sounds like destrachans, and also a certain squishy sound that reminds me of the Myrtatum Maximum Nigrum from the cafeteria. The destrachans sound rather frightened." We step a little farther down, and find four destrachans and the biggest black pudding I've ever seen.

Polly, as always, starts shooting, taking down two destrachans with head shots. Garreth starts trying to speed himself up, and asks Bleu about this black pudding. Bleu says this is like a normal black pudding, but it's as big as a big dragon, and thus has a hunger at least as big as a big dragon's. Its acid could eat up our weapons, and, if we hit it hard enough, it will bud off smaller puddings. The last two destrachans flee, honking at Polly and Logan, who get away from their cone of sound. Logan slams into the one by him, knocking it back.

That's the best thing to happen to that destrachan today, since right after that, the black pudding's pseudopods reach out at the destrachans, Polly, and Logan. Polly and Logan get out of the way, but the pudding slurps back the destrachans into its body after the destrachan that Logan hurt bursts.

I yell at Garreth, "Garreth, something tells me this is the wrong way!"

Garreth yells back, "I've been telling you this isn't the way."

Bleu casts Great Haste on herself, and Polly shoots three arrows at the big pudding, which does nothing other than making the pudding drop a few destrachan bits. "So, uh, back to the start?"

Garreth nods, then lets out a roar. The pudding stops, stunned.

We fly away. Bleu says, "With us flying it probably can't actually track us, the Myrtatum Maximum Nigrum hunts by taste of the ground when it cannot directly sense its prey."

As we fly away, we chat about now needed it is to kill the pudding. Bleu and I say that it likely has no treasure, which makes Polly sad, and deem it truly evil. Garreth agrees with Polly: "Loot destruction is evil."

I say we have to find other ways of killing it besides hitting it with weapons. Bleu says it can see, that slime-affecting spells work on it but are tiring to cast because it's so big, and it has magic resistance. I suggest luring it into lava, and Bleu says it's as smart as a wolf, so won't fall for that trick. We all do think that getting it into a pit would slow it a little, letting us drop big things onto it.

I look down the other tunnels to the right. One has more spellruin ivy, but another leads us to a statue of a broad-shouldered, tiger-like creature stands in the middle. It has top-notch craftsmanship, and looks ready to pounce. This worries me greatly, so I ask Blah about it. She says that it looks like an inferno cat under the effects of a Flesh to Stone spell or something like that, which is pretty much what made me worried.

Garreth says I need to check this out. I shake my head. "Logan, keep Garreth and Polly company. Pee on Bleu's robes if I don't come back." With that, I put on my ring, and fly a little farther.

Rising like an ill mist from the floor are three shapes of what I think are big men made of shadow. I fly backwards, and take off my ring. I'm pretty sure they saw me even with it on. "Looks like Nazgûl."

Other stuff

"Myrtatum Maximum Nigrum" is indeed Latin for "biggest black pudding." Kalzazz didn't do a bad job picking words, getting the last two right. I checked and found that "pudding" in Latin is "myrtatum" or "murtatum" (it's an obvious Greek loanword); "nigrum" might be redundant, since myrtatum is already a sausage with myrtle berries.