5E (Take 2) Recap #3: Grungeons and Dragons (Day 2 of 2)
Alright so if it wasn’t apparent by the “Day 2 of 2″ above, the party got done with this conflict pretty quick in game time (but fuck if it ever took forever in real time. I think even I, the person who came up with this shit, was sick of these little froggies by the end of it. But let’s break down what happened.
I think I’ll start with the green group (even though when we played we started with blue, and we actually held different sessions with only the players in the group present, which now that I think about it was better than the two alternatives which were either one group doesn’t play and just sits there or I bounce back and forth and go insane. So yeah, different sessions).
Oa, Thespin, and Debbie all followed Ea to a hunting party and introduces them to Snuck, the de-facto organizer for dividing up hunting groups and explains that this is their first day out. He divides up the other groups, then takes the four greens (get it? cuz they’re newbies? green? I love hate myself)
Side note: you might be thinking,
“In a closed society of grungs surely they all know each other and an outsider would be really fucking weird and unusual. Also how do they continue to find stuff to hunt in this forest? Wouldn’t there be a case of overhunting? This world and society are not sustainable. Obviously not much thought or effort was put into the creation of this world. In this essay I will...”
In response to that: I honestly didn’t think of it, so fuck you for asking. DMing shit is hard. I forget stuff. Remember that time I forgot to mention a very crucial detail that would tip @baumguy off to the fact that a door might be trapped? It happens.
Back to the action
Snuck shows them the territory they hunt in, bringing them all the way out to the edge of the treeline on the northern part of the forest. Stretching out in front of them, and in an arc to the east and west circling back towards the mountain is that giant gorge Oa spotted from the cave at the top of the mountain.
Up close, this gorge is massive, even for the party at their normal sizes concealed by Bahamut’s magic. It’s easily 100 feet across and so deep that the bottom is indiscernible, the shadow of the far wall casting its full blackness before the bottom is visible.
The only interesting feature this gorge contains is veins of a red, clay-like material woven into the grey stone composing the walls of these cliffs. The only thing Snuck can tell them about it is that it’s in the wall all the way around the gorge.
The party then engage in some hunting themselves, and whether it was due to their larger size, good rolls, luck, or a combination of the three, both Thespin and Debbie brought down a large buck each, easily meeting the green grungs’ quota for the day.
Back at the green camp, the grungs all celebrate the good haul, some going to bed early for probably the first time in awhile, others enjoying some of the meat from the previous day’s job Tak’erak and the other guards didn’t bring back with them. Around a campfire as the sun began to set, Thespin plays a tune as bards tend to do, and Debbie and Thespin settle in for the first (relatively) calm evening both of them have had since this whole thing began.
Oa had other ideas. Using his aasimar ability to grow wings for a short span once a day, he decides to make me as the DM improvise shit as he flies across the gorge.
Which is great, it’s honestly fantastic when my players do that, because I think it helps me to get better as a DM (and it definitely helped prepare me for something coming up soon). And it plays into why I love D&D so much. Sure for a lot of people, it’s just a game, something to do that’s a little more involved than a board game or even some video games. But as a writer and a storyteller, the allure of D&D to me is to be able to tell a story collaboratively, and I think the collaboration aspect only makes the story better because it gives my players a sense of agency that it’s really, really easy as a DM to take away out of a desire to control the story, and I try my hardest to refrain from doing that.
Sorry, tangent, I know. But it’s an important tangent for me. But moving on
In my design of this world, I did not have anything important across the gorge, and I think in hindsight, the only thing I was thinking there was, I didn’t want my players to think that they had to search an entire world to find what they were looking for, just search the area I presented them with.
But, having to think on my toes, I think I came up with a way to give my player a clue without feeling like I was trying not to reward a good solid play. On the other side of this gorge, Oa found a bit of that red clay, kind of balling it up in his fingers a bit. After feeling the consistency, he dropped a ball of it, deciding to move on until he heard a sort of sizzling behind him, followed by a loud “POP,” and where the ball of clay fell, a small crater lay smoking in the ground.
With this strange discovery, Oa pressed on, until he reached where the gorge intersected the mountain. The gorge didn’t pass through, but rather just ended, with a sheer cliffside preventing any discernable way to climb up to the more snowy region down which the party sled after their entrance to this world.
He did however see a small square hole that he couldn’t quite see into, but he could see a faint, flickering light inside. And then another hole, twenty feet away, and then another hole twenty feet away from that hole.
These holes continued a good way down the side of this cliff face at regular intervals until for about sixty feet there were no holes. Then the holes began again, and just as Oa was about to turn back, he realized he could hear voices. Very faint ones, but voices nonetheless. And the voices were quite familiar, because they were the voices of Sunflower and Ramen. But we’ll get to that in a sec.
Our other grung friends, the blues, which
Another side note: the SECOND I divided them into two groups, they each started talking shit about the other group SO hard. Which like, was perfect because that’s literally what both groups do anyway when they’re not trying to meet their quota so their groups don’t fall apart
Anywho, Ramen, Riker, and Sunflower made their way with the blue grungs to the mining camp, where they talked to the grung in “charge,” Ragga-Bom
Another side note, I say like “leader” and “in charge,” but really there is no top dawg on either side. Every grung is just as likely to be picked for each day’s Weigh-In, except for the elders. Any grung who lives to a certain age (I can’t remember the actual number, but just think senior citizen but in grung years), is exempt from being chosen. The only other way to gain immunity is to either win the Rite of Ascendency (something I’ll get to), or be directly related to someone who did.
Ragga-Bom doesn’t question the blue grungs he’s never seen before rolling up because I’m a dummy, but he gives them a tour of the mine, which consists of a long straight tunnel into the mountain, with side tunnels to either side every 20 feet or so.
The three follow past some of the tunnels deeper where it seems the majority of the grungs are working, then they come to a tunnel that has been closed off with rubble making any attempt at passage almost impossible. Ragga-Bom explains that there was a mining accident that caused the tunnel to collapse after an explosion, and they decided to refrain from digging in that area.
Past the closed tunnel a little ways, the mining tunnels start back up again. Riker pops inside this one to investigate while the other two make their way towards the current back of the main shaft. Inside, he sees torches casting flickering light on the walls, and he can see veins of red clay snaking across the wall, something that was not in the mine tunnels close to the entrance.
Before he gets the chance to investigate further, an explosion from a few tunnels back from the closed shaft shakes the mine, and running back with his party members and Ragga-Bom, he and the others can see two blue grungs limping out of the tunnel.
Ragga-Bom orders an evacuation until they can get a handle on the situation, and when everyone is outside, Ragga-Bom asks one of the injured miners where the third member of their three-man party is (grungs always mine and hunt in threes), and the two just shake their heads.
With that harrowing note, the party are horrified to see the uninjured grungs make their way back into the mine because, despite the tragedy that just occurred, they know things will be much worse if they cannot make up for the lost time and resources caused by this accident before tomorrow.
Sunflower and the others decide to make their way back into town, and when they do, they see a curious sight. A blue grung, but hunched over with his fingers drumming against his lower lip beckons the party to follow him.
They do so, cautiously, and he takes them to a tent, ratty and probably insufficient cover for any rain or any other sort of force of nature. But he darts inside and rustles around until he finds what he’s looking for: three round balls, probably the size of golf balls, of that red clay.
He tells the party with a crazed raspy voice that his name is Taka, and these things he is holding are called Taka Bombs (a very clever and original grung, this Taka), and when the party asks him what they are, he giggles excitedly and jumps up and down then throws one at a tree not far from where the party stands.
At first, it doesn’t seem to do much, sticking to the bark, but other than that appears to be a ball of clay sticking to a tree. But then the clay starts to fizzle, spreading out until the clay itself is almost paper thin wrapped around the trunk, and then the clay explodes, knocking down the entire tree in the process.
The party, absolutely gobsmacked (gobstopped? idk, their gobs were doing something that means they were blown away (heh, get it? no, I won’t stop, you can’t make me)) immediately want to purchase a million of them, but Taka explains he only has the two now, and demands a million gold for each. Ramen explains to the crazy little fella that he has a “special gold” worth all that and more, and he’ll give it to him for the balls of clay
The small blue grung mulls it over, stroking his chin and muttering to himself before finally grabbing the “special” gold excitedly, and stowing it in his tent, the party carefully storing the bombs in their pack.
Sunflower takes Taka aside and asks him about the Weigh-In ceremony, and his eyes kinda light up a bit, before looking downcast suddenly, muttering to himself again, mentioning how “you can go up, yes, up. but you can also go down, down, down....” and kind of trails off, looking dejected.
Sunflower then cautiously asks, “Did you come down, Taka? From the trees?”
Taka spasms and yells out “I was red in the trees but now I am blue on the ground” and howls, sounding absolutely heartbroken.
The party seem genuinely concerned for this little frog, but he runs inside his tent and closes the flap, and they can hear him muttering softly. They decided to head back, the sun quickly setting behind the trees.
Before they go to sleep, Sunflower tries to speak with one of the grungs just beginning their shift about Taka. He tells Sunflower that he personally didn’t know him that well “before the accident,” but they could talk with “the twins” when they got off at midnight. And with that, the grung walked into the mine, and Sunflower and the others went to sleep.
At midnight, Sunflower catches the twins, who introduce themselves as Ching-a-Ting, and K’Boom (don’t roll your eyes at the names, the MM literally says that grung names are onomatopoeia for various things, so bite me lol). She asks them about Taka, and they kinda sigh, telling Sunflower that Taka had been brought down from the castle, transforming him from a red grung to a blue, and the process had driven him a little insane.
But even that did not result in the way he was today. After weeks of trying to adjust to life as a blue grung, he finally decided to start mining. But he refused to work with anyone else, and no one really wanted to work with him anyway. They explained that they had kind of taken him under their wing and genuinely grew to like the guy.
But then he had a major accident when the shaft he was mining exploded. He pulled himself out of the rubble, but from that day he was completely batty.
Taking all that in, Sunflower asked about the bombs Taka had “sold” them, and when they saw the clay ball and confirmed that she knew just what that did, they tell her that she needs to speak with Ragga-Bom immediately.
Sunflower wakes Ramen, but is unable to rouse Riker, and so the two party members followed Ching-a-Ting and K’Boom to Ragga-Bom at the mouth of the cave, who looks absolutely exhausted. But when the twins explain what Sunflower has, he instantly is wide awake.
He explains that he’s been trying to keep his miners away from the stuff by having them dig in the tunnels closer to the entrance as that area seems to be more free of the stuff, saying that the explosion today should be all the explanation he needs for that. But he also motions for the four blue grungs to follow him into the mine.
They pass the main area, pass the closed off tunnel where they now know Taka had his accident, deeper a ways until they reach one of the deeper tunnels. This one is lit with only a few torches and inside is a single mine cart. But the walls of this shaft are filled with the red clay, which the twins explain that they have called tak after the grung who essentially discovered how it works.
Inside the mine cart are small balls of the clay that the grungs have seemingly taken great caution to gather. Ragga-Bom explains that when tak takes nearly any physical force, either colliding with something or being hit with something, it reacts by spreading to nearly flat, then causing an explosion. The larger the surface area after it spreads, the larger the explosion.
Ragga-Bom gestures to the mine cart and chuckles, saying that if anything will destroy the Weigh-In and the grungs who oversee it, it’ll be this. The party are horrified for a second, but slowly come to realize that this might be the only way to get to Nangnang, and the two present slowly begin to work with the twins, who despite having just finished their shift, seem eager to fill this cart and gain a second wind.
And it is these voices that Oa hears as he is making is late night stroll past what you all now know are air vents for these mine tunnels (if you didn’t figure that out, don’t worry, my party didn’t either).
Oa takes a good bit of the tak and throws it against the outer wall of the tunnel and the explosion blows the tunnel right open. Ching-a-Ting and K’Boom are speechless, and Ragga-Bom instantly steps in front of them and the mine cart as he witnesses an absolutely confusing sight: a green grung entering from outside of the cave, where the grungs cannot go due to how cold the mountain is where the tunnels end.
(See, sometimes you just gotta accept that there are rules about a world that make no sense. Like gravity! Ask any scientist how gravity works instead of what it does and they’ll throw their hands up in the air. Why don’t grungs mine through? Maybe it’s cuz there’s no ore out there! Maybe it’s cuz it’s too cold! Maybe they don’t want to! Mystery hour)
Oa basically pulls the, “it doesn’t matter how I can do what I can do, I can do it. Next question” and I honestly don’t know if they stayed and helped mine out more tak or if they went somewhere else, but they were doing something until dawn which is where we catch up with our other two favorite half-elves.
Thespin and Debbie wake up and decide to take their remaining time until the Weigh-In to talk to some of the other green grungs in the camp, specifically a very elderly couple whose names were Hooel and Cricka. They ask about the Rite of Ascendancy, and the couple explain it only happened once in their lifetime. An aunt of theirs, Thwippip, went out and killed a bear and brought it back, and the purple grung was so impressed, he invited the green grung up with them back to the castle.
Cricka explains that they never saw Thwippip again, but that she and her family were granted immunity from the Weigh-Ins, allowing her to grow as old as she has, her husband Hooel surviving on pure luck.
Debbie instantly decides that they have to go get a bear, and she and Thespin remember exactly where they found bears: on the mountain. Debbie’s enthusiasm was matched in equal measure by Thespin’s incredulity, but when Debbie met the rest of the party coming back from the tunnels, all six of the party got on board
I’ll save you the literal HOURS of combat this fight took (literally I think it spanned two sessions), but the party got some bears, the Weigh-In started, they dragged out the bears, and Tak’erak looked amused, but invites all six of them up to the dais where the ceremony took place. Before they could leave, the twins and Ragga-Bom shout to hold the show and bring up their offering, a mine cart seemingly full of gold from a “vein they just hit last night”
Tak’erak, perhaps in an attempt to avoid any confrontation, allows them to bring the minecart up, and leaving the bears and the minecart on the dais, knowing no grung would dare touch them, the six party members, three blue gruns, Tak’erak and three orange grung guards ascended the tree on the spiders that bring them up and down (yeah I think I forgot to mention these. If I had maybe the party’s not immediately attacking the grungs at the Weigh-In day one would have made more sense)
And from THIS point on, I fucking pulled everything out of my ass because I honestly genuinely did not think we would make it this far in the session we did so I had not planned it yet because I was busy as hell and just assumed it would take fucking forever to do the shit leading up to this. Like I said, DMing is hard
BUT, like I also said before, improv only gets better the more you do it, and I am pretty proud of how the entire rest of this arc went down.
Tak’erak brings them into a hanger of sorts where the spiders going up and down are kept, and explains to them that before they can see Nangnang, they need to go through the transformation ceremony, as Nangnang refuses to see the lower castes.
He then takes them into a large chamber with a long desk with three chairs facing the entrance, behind which are five large tubes of liquid. The first and second tubes have quite a bit, blue and green respectively. The next two have less, being red and orange. The final tube has very little liquid, but the liquid is purple.
The party soon realizes that the liquid drained from the grungs at the Weigh-Ins is what is in these tubes, but they don’t have time to process this thought as Tak’erak clears his throat and announces, “Welcome to the transformation chamber. I, as you probably know, am Tak’erak, and my fellow grungs here, Captain Brack,” gesturing to the orange grung to his right, “and Master Soong,” gesturing to the red grung on his left, “are here to realize your true potential. Obviously you all are very qualified to bring in the work that you have. Soong and Brack will explain to you their castes so that you can make an informed decision.”
Soong explains that the red caste is in charge of the arcane, dealing with various magicks and the like. Brack tells the group that the orange grungs not only protect the Weigh-Ins, but are the militia should any of the lower groups revolt.
Tak’erak gestures to the assembled grungs and says, “There you have it, you may choose, otherwise a caste will be chosen for you.”
The three blue grungs instantly request orange, while Thespin, Oa, Sunflower, and Riker each pick various colors (tbh I don’t remember who chose what because it isn’t important after what happens next).
Ramen and Debbie haven’t chosen, and when Tak’erak sees this, asks, “Are the two of you wanting us to choose for you? We can conduct a short assessment to see which would be the best fit.”
Both Ramen and Debbie find this agreeable. Ramen goes first.
Brack approaches Ramen and asks: “Would you rather lose a battle but have no casualties, or win and have your forces be nearly destroyed?” Ramen answered the second.
Soong approaches Ramen and asks: “Which appeals to you more, knowledge or power?” Ramen answers power
Tak’erak approaches Ramen and asks simply: “What does it mean to rule?” (And now I don’t remember this word for word but I think his answer was along the lines of:) To be the strongest of all those around you
The three take a seat and inform Ramen that they believe the orange class would be the best fit for him, and he undergoes the ceremony
Finally, they come to Debbie and ask the same questions.
To the first she answers that she would rather lose and have no casualties, to the second she answers that power appeals to her more. And to the last question, she answers (again, paraphrasing to the best of my ability): to have unquestionable authority
Now as another aside, I would like to remind everyone that this ENTIRE interaction was improvised. Transformation room, grung leadership, the damn questions, all of it. So like if you take ANY issue at all with this making sense or being cohesive or whatever I don’t wanna hear it lol. Flying by the seat of your pants is terrifying and once you say something those vocal chords don’t unvibrate.
The council take a seat again, and Tak’erak clears his throat and says, “This is something that has not happened since I took over my predecessor’s position many years ago taking this very assessment, but I believe it is time for me to pass the torch. We are giving you my current position as Nangnang’s voice by proxy, the highest position that can be afforded a grung of our standing. No one else can bear this title,” he says the last part looking right at Debbie, his purple eyes unblinking as he finishes this sentence
Every grung in the room save Soong and Brack are stunned. The party is horrified at the prospect of having to spend any more time in this wretched plane of existence. The three (formerly) blue grungs are furious that this grung they have never met has just taken something they didn’t even know was a choice and that their one opportunity to bring this whole caste system crashing to the ground seems to be quickly fading
Tak’erak does not take in any of this however, as he requests all of the assembled grungs to give him a moment with Debbie (who had a different grung name, I just can’t remember it). Once the doors close behind the grungs though, (and Debbie’s player and I walked where the rest of the party couldn’t hear) Tak’erak turns to face Debbie and says simply, “You can drop the disguise Princess Debdelaena”
I’m pretty sure Debbie’s player squeaked. But Tak’erak continued, “No? I can always drop them for us.” And when Tak’erak waves his hand, Debbie’s grung form disappears, along with Tak’erak’s. And standing in the room before a very half-elf Debbie is Frulam Mondath.
Now you may be asking yourself, who the hell is that? It’s been like a million years since we’ve even read that name it’s taken so goddamn long for you to tell this stupid frog story. Well, my rude obnoxious reader with a terrible memory, Frulam Mondath is the lady Sunflower witnessed disappearing through a portal in the temple devoted to Tiamat’s black dragon head
Frulam blows right past Debbie’s gobstamped (at this point I don’t even wanna know what the real word is) expression, and tells her that Nangnang isn’t here. She was looking for her as well, but for the months that she has spent ingraining herself in this society of frogs, Nangnang has not once been here.
She also tells Debbie that despite the fact that she knows Bahamut is trying to stop her, she doesn’t see Debbie or the others as enemies. She tells her that as long as she and the party stay out of her way, she doesn’t need to have anything to do with them. She even offers Debbie this world to rule now that her chance at royalty in Thultanthar is impossible. Her offer to be a purple grung and rule Niik still stands.
After all of this, Frulam waves her hand again and their two grung forms return, this time both of them purple. When the doors open again, Debbie fervently gestures the party over and explains what she was just told. While this is happening however, Tak’erak, quietly slips away.
When the party realizes what has happened, the dash through the castle to the hanger where they see two spiders missing, one of which was just starting to descend with the orange grungs on it.
The party rush into the hanger and Debbie, now a purple grung and in charge, grabs an orange guard and orders him to have all the grungs assemble at the base of the mountain, wanting to make an announcement. Then she runs after the party who all descend down to the ground.
On the ground, Thespin works with the guard to get as many grungs as they can to the mountain for the speech, Oa and Ramen look around furiously for Tak’erak but cannot find him anywhere. Also, the bears are still on the dais, but the minecart has disappeared and the orange grungs are nowhere to be seen.
In the throng of grungs making their way to the mountain, Sunflower spots Taka and scoops him up onto her shoulders and everyone makes their way to where Debbie has set herself up on a rock to be fully visible to everyone.
When all the grungs have arrived, the party is still looking around for Tak’erak, but still see nothing as Debbie begins her speech:
“As you may know by now, I am your new ruler. And as your ruler I want to make a very important announcement that all of you deserve to know: Nangnang, your god, is dead.”
Almost as if timed by a very dramatic DM, there is an absolutely massive explosion.
Grungs run everywhere, not knowing where to go. Taka wriggles off of Sunflower’s shoulders and goes dashing for the mine. Riker and Ramen run after him as Sunflower runs, scoops up Debbie, and grabs Thespin and begins to run up the mountain. This mission is over.
Oa, seemingly unfazed by the events around him, just takes a seat at the base of a tree. Ea (who I definitely never forgot about), walks up to him, sighs, and just says, “You guys should probably get out of here. I’ll stay and run damage control as best I can. But y’all’s job here is done unfortunately.”
Oa kind of shrugs his shoulders and begins walking up the mountain.
Meanwhile, Taka bolted into the mine, dodging the grungs running everywhere, trying to figure out what made that explosion and what needs to be done to fix the damage. Riker and Ramen have a harder time getting through, and when they finally make it into the mine, Taka is a good deal in front of them.
He darts into a tunnel, and when the two pursuers reach that tunnel, they realize it’s the closed off tunnel where Taka had his accident. The two of them have to clear some of the rubble away, being bigger than grung sized. When they do, they run after the little grung who is now almost at the end of this tunnel.
As they do, they almost trip over something, which on closer inspection, is the shriveled up body of a dead grung. And this grung is wearing a cloak and underclothes identical to the Taka who has now turned to face Riker and Ramen, and they realize this is Taka. Or at least it was.
And they know this for certain when they see the figure at the end of the tunnel begin to transform as they shout a single word: “Nikek!” And as white flames begin to lick up the body of this changing form, they realize the Taka they knew is becoming a woman with dark purple robes, jet black hair, and purple eyes. Taka is Frulam.
Right as Frulam is about to disappear, Riker charges after her and the two of them disappear in a bright light, leaving only a rune that Ramen recognizes as the same rune they used to bring them here.
Ramen drops to his knees, his world shattered. And he probably would have remained that way for a good bit longer, were it not for the fact that the rune began glowing again. But it wasn’t taking anyone away this time. It was bringing something back.
That something was a giant wave of water that nearly washed Ramen out of the tunnel, and in this water was a giant orange shark, which snapped at Ramen until the water settles and the shark flops helplessly until it cannot anymore. And Ramen cries.
Ramen and Oa march back up the hill together, and when the party is together again, they say the command word to bring them back to Bahamut: “Nogoorsa.”
So now we’re all caught up! This post alone literally took me uhhhh 3 hours to write, but now y’all know what your favorite characters have been up to. We’ll be starting back up again very, very soon, so stay tuned for the recap of our first session back! Till then, I’ve got a few more posts planned. Ciao for now!
P.S. Thanks to my handy dandy queue schedule, I know this will post on my birthday!! Now if a police officer busts down our door while we’re drinking and playing D&D all he can do is say “fucking nerds” and go away instead of arresting me!
