Session 28
OOC: This was from two weeks ago. Last weekend will be up next.
Spring, Months 6, 7, and 8
Hex Management
The population of Galaufabonne tops 12,500 (including 3,600 in Bone Temple City). This was a fast-growing season!
Aella pays back her loan. She also sends Chlodomer two sets of extremely realistic and attractive statues. When he asks about them … some vassal of Aella’s did something that merited punishment, so she took away the vassal’s harem. She also writes that he is free to keep them as statuary or a harem - she doesn’t care.
The Grim Fist realize at this point that they are committed to breaking free of Iamanu’s realm.
Shadagrunde continues his Harvest research until he doesn’t. Merideth begins researching the Lady’s Cane magical weapon Shadagrunde gave her.
Research: Mace +2, cure disease once per day. Base costs are 15,000/15,000 gp, research time 75/75 days, throw 11+/11+ (Merideth has a +3 workshop and sufficient divine power to provide another +3). Final roll 5+/5+. Because she has a sample, the actual cost and time is 7,500/7,500 gp and 38/38 days.
Galswintha begins researching a horrible thing: a choker necklace that grants the wearer the ability to breathe dragon’s fire three times per day.
Research: Base cost 30,000 gold, research time 250 days, throw 12+ (Galswintha has +2 INT and +3 workshop). Galswintha had a platinum torc (twin dragon heads with flawless facet-cut black sapphire eyes) worth 30,000gp, which grants another +3 on the roll, for a final roll of 4+. Half of the research will be required before she can distill the magical essences.
Vulfelind petitions for more funds to keep up with the city’s growth, and continues to lavish design love on “her” city, and initiates some hijinks to spy on other kingdoms.
The rust monsters continue to hold back the mushroom forest in Red Meadow, but the larger problem remains. Lacking a better option, the party loads up the canoe and returns for further invisible scouting.
… and manage to ignore at least two signs of an impending horrible monster before blundering face-first into a central domed room with a sponge-like, fungus-festooned brain-thing floating over a large, open pit with a scattering of corpses impaled on spikes below.
Fungal Brain
Fungal Brain: AC 6, Move fly 30', HD 20 (90 hp), attack smash 3d6, cast as mage-10, telepathy as helm of telepathy, SV F10, ML +2, AL C. Immune to gas, poison, sleep, charm, and hold. Has 1d12 stalks growing from it (below).
Fungal Stalk: AC 2, Move 0’, HD 2 (9 hp), attack one spell, SV F1, ML +4, AL C. Immune to gas, poison, sleep, charm, and hold. Can cast a single spell (determine randomly as for a scroll) at the minimum caster level for the spell. The stalk can cast the spell with a frequency determined by spell level: 1 (once per round), 2 (once every 1d6 rounds), 3 (once per hour), 4+ (once per day). A stalk glows when it casts, and can be interrupted just like a mage.
A non-fungal mage who casts a spell within 30’ of the fungal brain must make a save vs. Death or suffer 3d6 damage. If a caster drops below 0 hp from this damage, a new stalk grows on the fungal brain based on the spell that killed the caster. The fungal brain heals an amount equal to the damage dealt (a healthy fungal brain gains no further benefit).
The party’s invisibility is dispelled as they enter the room, and a telepathic voice resonates in their minds: SHALL WE PARLEY?
Galswintha recovers her voice first, “Yes, please?”
YOU WISH TO PROTECT YOUR LANDS. BUT YOU LACK STRENGTH.
Chlodomer: “We do wish to protect them. We would rather you went elsewhere.”
YOUR LANDS ARE RICHER. MAGIC FEEDS THEM. I WANT THEM.
Vulfelind: (sotto) “Friggin’ efreet wish …”
Chlodomer: “Our lands will be a lot costlier for you to acquire than others.”
I THINK NOT. YOU ARE WEAK. I COULD DESTROY YOU NOW.
Shadagrunde: “Then why aren’t you? Why parley?”
TO BUY TIME.
And with that, the telepathically-contacted storm giant down the hall reaches the dome and attacks.
Vulfelind, suspicious of the technicolor stalks sprouting off the fungal brain, decides to put a flaming crossbow bolt through one of them. It makes a hissing, screaming noise as it burns and falls off, and the remaining six stalks pulse like a neon rave party.
Vulfelind shakes off three simultaneous charm attempts; the brain splits into three identical images; and a web spell engulfs the party (missing Chlodomer).
Shadagrunde casts true seeing on Chlodomer, who spots the non-illusory brain and charges, leaping across the pit, cleaving through four glowing stalks … and then falls short of the other lip of the pit and tumbles into the pit, barely avoiding impalement on the spikes.
The storm giant puts the hurt on Vulfelind, and Galswintha conjures a wall of stone, shaped to provide a spiral staircase from the bottom of the pit to the top of the dome. … and blood begins running freely from her nose, as the spell opens her life force to draining by the brain.
Vulfelind casually and methodically ignites the web, loads her crossbow, and fires into each visible fungal brain, destroying the illusory duplicates.
Webbing catches Chlodomer in the pit, and the brain hits the main party with Confusion and Vulfelind with another Charm. She resists the charm, but not the confusion, and she stares blankly for a round.
Meanwhile, Shadagrunde tries to get the storm giant’s attention off Vulfelind by wailing away at its knees with his hammer. It works: and the returning axe blow very nearly kills Shadagrunde.
Galswintha, ignoring the pain, casts Dragonbreath and suffers another bout of drain. Still, she smiles, if bloodily - once cast, dragon’s breath lets her deal damage without further casting.
Vulfelind, confused, still manages a coherent realization: the brain’s stalks are casting spells, but so is the brain itself! When a moment of clarity arrives, she shoots the brain’s central mass, ruining whatever spell it was planning … and steps sideways just enough to prevent another area spell from catching most of the party.
She manages coherent thought long enough to interrupt it once more, and then avoids it when it attempts to smash her in person … and Chlodomer finally manages to make his way up the stairs, where he chops the remaining fungal stalks off.
Shadagrunde heals himself in time to barely survive the next axe chop … And Galswintha unleashes flaming draconic death at the storm giant. Then Shadagrunde gives one final chop before the giant takes him down, and Galswintha ends the fungal collosus’ life with a second blast of breath.
And then, while Vulfelind and Chlodomer tag-team the brain, Galswintha removes a diamond from her necklace of resurrection and shatters it next to Shadagrunde’s mangled, chopped corpse. Once he stands up, blinking in confusion, she breathes her last dragon fire at the brain, and the Grim Fist dog-pile and stomp into pieces the enemy brain.
… and the fungal bloom does not shudder, wither, or die. They can hear more monsters responding to its telepathic distress call in the halls outside. They are no longer invisible, and no one has much in the way of hit points.
They flee for their lives, although Chlodomer wists tearfully in the direction of the pit of dead adventurers and their gear and treasure.
Unfortunately, Shadagrunde did not make it out unscathed … his heart beats and blood flows, but something is not quite right (OOC: WIS -4, CON -4, and dropping total hp to 16.).
The impact on his Lady-granted intuition is too much for him, and he decides to retire. After some heartfelt discussion, he asks Chlodomer to take on Merideth le Chocolat as Matriarch of Galaufabonne, and with that agreed to: Galswintha provides Merideth with a full membership Grim Fist ring; Shadagrunde leaves her the gear he no longer needs; and Chlodomer presides over a small, informal initiation.
Shadagrunde leaves for the Thervingi Great Library, where his frail health and reduced wisdom will not impact his duties as severely: the Lady’s Church accepts his presence there as the immense boon that it is. (OOC: Indeed, he eventually becomes the primary ruler of the library sanctum, as its needs are more political than physical or spiritual.)
After the fungal brain was killed, the fungal forest ceased its outward growth, but did not die … and some additional research has yielded a possible answer: it is expending its growth to produce a new fungal brain, to direct its actions.
So they stage a series of raids and searches in the fungal cavern complex. And rather than make one major assault per month (OOC: stringing it out for the population boost of adventuring each month, heh), they murder their way across the entire hex, wiping out all of the fungus-infected animals the fungal bloom is using to defend itself. They also hit upon the idea of wearing masks to protect them from the fungal breath weapon, and it works!
With that in hand, they target and kill the remaining storm giants, wipe out the fungal roc’s hideout, kill off a series of deer herds, wolf packs, horrible zombie-fungus rabbits, a flight of hawks, and a fungus-infected bandit camp. (They also grab the pit adventurer loot, dig through twenty feet of mushroom flesh to find the roc’s treasure, and search high and low until they dig out the storm giant’s treasure room. Let it not be said that they forgot priorities.)
One interesting bit of treasure is a platinum skullcap with a black sapphire “third eye,” which turns out to be a helm of language comprehension. Galswintha begins wearing her hair in a braid.
Without protectors, and facing fat rust monsters along its southern border, the fungal bloom begins to constrict inward somewhat.
And then Vulfelind takes her canoe up into the sky with a surveyor and mapper … to identify the center toward which it is shrinking.
With a decent idea of where the center of the mushroom forest was, the party piled onto pegasuses and canoe … and hovering high above it, Galswintha summons an earth elemental to begin rending the earth looking for entrances to a deeper cavern, and once that is found, has it spend some time shattering tree-sized mushrooms in an orgy of destruction.
And then they retreat and amass their army … for next session.