D&D Diary - The Yawning Rodent, 10
Refresher: Our adventurers Lugs (grung barbarian), Lurk (grung rogue), Aelia (tiefling cleric), and Valas (drow sorcerer) with tagalong Deku (ratfolk cleric) continued the battle against the hobgoblin leader of the Goblin Gang, Durnn, and his gang members. Suddenly, Yusdrayl, leader of the Kobold Gang, joined the fray with her elite guards, providing backup to the party. After the Goblin Gang was defeated, Lurk made Durnn lie to Yusdrayl and say that the Goblin Gang still has Calcryx, and that they moved her to the lower level when they heard the adventurers coming - when, in reality, the adventurers had already knocked her out and spirited her away to the Rat's Nest in the previous days, rather than returning the dragon wyrmling to Yusdrayl.
The party levelled up to 3, and climbed down the vines lining a well shaft in Durnn's chambers to descend to the floor below. They landed in a room lined with garden beds, and Aelia called out to two animated skeletons tending to them - but, when she did so, the skeletons and some twig blights attacked! Valas also spies a bugbear and two giant rats by a fire in the adjoining room...
Sunless Citadel spoilers!
The robed skeletons, armed with gardening shovels and following the lead of the twig blights, attack!
Lugs recalls how he spent his recent short rest soaking in his barrel of water, thinking about home. He's sick of this place, and wishes he could return to his cosy hometown, where he can take a swim whenever he likes. As his rage builds, he reaches out to the element of water that he misses so dearly - he shouts (croaks) in Grung, "I call upon the powers of the swamp!", and a torrent of muddy, brackish water erupts from the ground at his webbed feet, bowling into everyone around him. The rest of the party, as well as the skeletons and twig blights, get hit with this barrage of swamp water dealing bludgeoning damage, as Lugs surges forward and completely obliterates the closest twig blight with his club. Lugs is now a storm herald barbarian - a storm herald of the swamp! Ribbit!
In the adjoining cavern, the bugbear - dressed and equipped like a hunter - notices the battle breaking out, and begins charging into the garden room with his two giant rats, Grip and Fang.
Aelia panics when she sees the giant rats, asking Deku, "what happened to them??" This implies that Aelia doesn't know what regular rats are, let alone giant rats, as though they're cursed ratfolk?! Deku doesn't know what to say.
Lugs runs over to meet the hunter and, with another loud croak, he refreshes his torrent of swamp water. The wave pushes the bugbear against the wall, hitting his head with a yell. Aelia follows up with Toll The Dead, hitting him back against the wall with the force of the magic and making him look a bit concussed.
As the party turns their attention to the bugbear hunter and his giant rats instead of the weaker skeletons and remaining twig blight, Valas uses his Metamagic to shoot two Chaos Bolts, with one boosted by his Tides of Chaos, hitting each giant rat. Grip and Fang fall unconscious with little squeaks, and, without him doing anything, Deku's amulet of the Rat King begins to glow, quickly and automatically teleporting the hurt giant rats away.* The bugbear curses in anger, mentioning that rats are very naughty and that it took ages for him to train them.
After using so much of his magic at once, Valas feels the wild magic surge bubbling up once again. Suddenly, his skin tingles and sparks, and powerful arcs of electricity suddenly burst out of him and strike one of the skeletons, the bugbear, and Lugs. The bugbear is electrocuted, killing him, and he hadn't even had the chance to make a single attack yet. The skeleton is easily killed and turned to ash. Lugs gets zapped too, his silhouette showing his froggy skeleton, but is still standing, thanks to his strong constitution - though he's looking much more worse for wear.
Stunned by all of this, Lurk just stabs the air next to him without even looking, and kills the last twig blight.
With the battle over, the party has a look around. Aelia, disgusted and furious, points at her swamp-soaked dress - once white but now mud brown at the ends - and says that she'll be sending Lugs her dry-cleaning bill. Lurk sees that there are four well-tended garden pots around, each with a strange mushroom in it. Three of the mushrooms are withered and dull, dead as though they had just failed to thrive, but the fourth mushroom is glowing a vibrant purple. He picks it and shows Lugs, musing about what it could be for, when Lugs just says it's a funny mushroom and jovially slaps his brother on the back. Lurk gulps as he lurches forwards from the hearty blow, and when he turns back to Lugs, he's accidentally swallowed the purple mushroom. His eyes grow wide, and the colours invert so his sclera are black and his pupils are white. Suddenly, he collapses.
Deku panics. He'd cast Detect Poison And Disease just earlier, to check the mushrooms and garden, but the only things that his senses had picked up on were Lugs' and Lurks' inherent poisonous skin secretions, normal for grungs. He tries to wake Lurk up, as Lugs gets concerned for his brother.
After a moment, Lugs hears Lurk's voice in his mind, telling him "ah, my brother, I have not seen you in quite some time." Though Lurks' lips aren't moving, Lugs is relieved and thinks he must be ok and awake. Lurk does open his eyes, with the white pupils now an unsettling purple, just like the mushroom's colouring. He stares wide and unblinking.
Aelia asks what happened to him when he ate it, and Lurk pauses a moment. Telepathically, he asks, "what mushroom?"
After a beat, he smiles. "...oh, that?" He shakes his head. "Heh. That was so long ago." Lurk's mind has been awakened to all of space and time in just an instant. He has mentally transcended this mortal coil. Normally, grungs can only use 10% of their brain power at any one time, but Lurk? Lurk has now unlocked 100% of his brain power, expanding his mind's reach to the cosmos and beyond, and tapping into psychic abilities that regular folk could hardly even comprehend. He is now a soulknife rogue!
The group continues looking around, venturing into the cave where the bugbear came from. It's a large earthy cavern with a tunnel curving out from the back wall, and there's a fire pit, a bed, two rat nests, and a rack of weaponry. After checking the bugbear's body, Lugs takes his flail, which has runes written on the chain links. He swings it around in glee. Under the bed, Aelia finds a little box with about 780 gold in it - she pockets 200 of it in secret (though Valas notices, and Lurk does too, staring at her unblinkingly - neither says anything) and then evenly splits the rest of it amongst the whole party.
The group doubles back to the garden. There are two more doors: one on the eastern wall, and one in the southeast corner. Lurk checks the eastern door for a lock or traps, and then sneaks through.
Beyond the door is a large laboratory, with three more doors on either side of it and one at the end. All but one of the doors on either side of the room are ajar, and they hear squishing noises from one of the closest rooms, as well as the sounds of soft conversations. Lurk continues to sneak around, and finds that the room where the squelching is coming from has two goblin interns in it, squishing fruit into goon with their feet as part of a big wine creation and straining process. They don't notice him.
He peeks into another room, and sees a goblin bandit and two interns standing around a table in a room with more lab and medical equipment, as well as dry blood splatters on the floor. The goblins are doing busywork around the room, and there appears to be a near-naked human strapped spread-eagled to the table, not moving.
Lurk uses his new abilities; he sees a cross-section of the goblin bandit's body, and sends a small blade of psychic energy cutting through the spinal cord. Without a physical wound or the noise of a weapon, the goblin collapses, killed instantly. The two interns spin around at the sound of him hitting the floor, and rush to his side, confused and trying to rouse him. One of them gets up and says they're going to get some help. Lurk waits around the corner as they step out of the room, before he silently closes the door behind them and stabs them from behind with another psychic blade. The intern yelps and falls to the ground, dead.
Hearing the remaining intern inside get up to check out the noise, Lurk presses his back against the door to keep it closed. Soon enough, he feels a pressure on the other side of the door, and his feet start to slide as he gets pushed along with it. Concentrating, he uses some telekinetic energy to reinforce himself and overpower the goblin, keeping the door closed. The intern mutters, "hey, what the fuck?" and rattles the doorknob.
Lurk spins around and opens the door, staring the surprised intern dead in the eyes for a beat, before a purple psychic knife phases out of his head and shoots straight through the intern. Lurk drags the two bodies back inside the room, and takes a cursory glance at the human on the table - their eyes are closed and they're not moving, so he telepathically communicates to the rest of the party that they're obviously dead, before he goes to check out another room.
Lugs starts creeping towards the wine-making goblins when Aelia, behind him, accidentally trips on the wet and muddy hems of her dress. The goblins notice the noise and freeze, slowly drawing their clubs. Lugs, staring at them, walks up to the door and closes it. Deku, also trying to sneak into the lab, accidentally makes a loud clang with his heavy armour, and Valas yelps as he almost slips on the mud from Aelia's dress as well. A goblin intern walks up to the door from inside one of the rooms, where they and another intern were patching up some damaged leather armour sets, to check out the noise, but stops dead in their tracks when they notice the party in the laboratory. Terrified, they close the door on themselves. Lurk walks straight up to it and knocks, telling them that they'll be killed unless they open up. They oblige, and he then demands that the two interns go stand in the corner and just quietly stare at the wall, mentioning that the other goblins here are all dead. He closes the door on them.
Aelia goes to the human on the table and sees that they're still breathing; not dead at all, but unconscious or asleep. They're covered in cuts and bruises, and their skin looks like thick, ghostly-white bark. Roots grow out of their feet and toes, and moss, mushrooms, and branches grow out of their back and shoulders. Their fingers are long and knobbly, like twigs, and their hair looks more like thin leaves. Aelia casts some healing magic on them, and when she's done, their eyes snap open and they start straining against their bindings, panicking and screaming. She calms them down, and sets to work on untying the restraints. "Who are you? How did you get here? If you were a human before, you don't look very human now."
Insisting he's human, he begins to talk, shaking. He tells her that he's Chadley Hucrele, who she recognises as one of the people they were hired to find - the noble Kar'yn's son. Chadley explains that he and McKennedeigh - his sister - came to the Sunless Citadel with their two hired helpers to find treasure and glory, but, after exploring a bit of the citadel, they were captured by the Goblin Gang and held in a cell for a while, their belongings confiscated. The hobgoblin leader, Durnn, then told them they were being taken to 'the boss', and they were forced to climb down the well shaft to the lower level. While climbing, Chadley slipped and fell, and he suspects he broke his arm. After that, they were taken to the laboratory, where an old man called Belak met them. Belak took McKennedeigh and Bradley away, and kept Chadley here, where he'd occasionally return to feed him a vile potion that made Chadley feel seriously ill. Horrified, Valas wonders aloud if the people here are turning prisoners into twig blights. Chadley says he thinks he's been unconscious most of the time, as he doesn't remember much after that.
Aelia finds his belongings like some under-armour pants and a shirt - though Valas realises Durnn must have been wearing Chadley's armour - in the corner, including his Hucrele ring. She hands it to him. "Your mum was going to pay us just to bring back this ring."
Chadley takes it, downcast. Aelia puts together a makeshift splint and sling for his broken arm, and he pulls on his pants, but can't wear his shirt because of the growths on his back and shoulders.
Lurk also finds a crystal vial of cloudy white liquid amongst the laboratory equipment. He asks if that's what Belak made him drink, and Chadley confirms it. Deku puts it in his pack for safekeeping, as well as a strange stethoscope Lurk also found.
Lugs has a look in two of the other rooms: one is empty but has the back wall caved in, opening up to a rift that continues on into the darkness. The other room is a weapons storeroom, with a short 10ft little entrance hall attached to it. He peeks out the door of the entrance hall, and finds that it opens onto the side of a much bigger hallway, complete with artwork of dragons on the walls. Another bugbear - this one seemingly dressed more like a gardener - walks away from him down the hall. Quietly, he closes the door again and goes back to the lab.
Valas uses mage hand to open the remaining unchecked door. Inside are three goblins, sleeping in bunks in what appears to be a break room. As they haven't woken up yet, they leave them be.
Lurk tells Lugs that Lugs will be the bad cop, and Lurk will play good cop, as they enter the small room where the two interns had been making wine. Reminded of the sour goon and now faced with the image of the goblins' bare feet squishing the fruits to make it, Aelia goes and pukes around the corner. The two goblins are terrified, and beg Lurk and Lugs not to hurt them, as they aren't fighters. Lurk tells them that if they leave this room, Lugs will smash them to a pulp, and they believe the threat as Lugs croaks menacingly and busts his club into a nearby barrel, spraying goon all over himself while he stares the interns down. Sufficiently terrified, the two grungs leave them in there, blocking the door with a chair.
Valas and Aelia double-back to the garden they first entered after their climb down the well, as Valas wants to confirm something. Using one of his daggers, he saws off the branch-like arm of a dead twig blight, and sees that it's wood and bark all the way through. He sighs in relief, having been worried that there'd be some kind of flesh inside that would confirm that they were transformed people.
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* = the rats are always gonna be ok, folks, don't worry
