Mombarian - So Family Drama and Side Trip

You may remember that we were in a house of horrors in my last entry. While we were going to push through since we were down a Cleric, our Ranger had healing (he has never used) and our Fighter back and try and finish out that mission a last minute sickness knocked our Rogue player out of the game. So you'll just have to wait to see how that ends up next time, I'm sure you can't wait to see how we deal with those other 3 rooms.

But in the meantime the trio that was left once again got yanked somewhere on an unintended journey. Now for those who remember we... actually I don't think I ever ended up writing a diary post about that so MINOR DETOUR!

So during our time in the mines where we fought a Cave Dragon we were also down just to myself, the Fighter and the Ranger. Our DM decided to have fun with a side quest that would help us out in the campaign as a whole instead of cancelling game. Argenta, Goddess of Healing, appears out of nowhere freezing time for everyone but us as we are yanking side ways into a weird glowy place. Now obviously we are very wary of the sudden appearance of a Goddess since last time that happened our minds were seriously effed with to the point where the Ranger killed their own companion and the Rogue killed their love interest. So we question and talk for awhile before we come to an agreement of sorts - we will go retrieve Valcanous, the God of Blacksmithing, back from Tale'a'an (Goddess of Magic who has gone crazy and is now trying to destroy all magic) IF she heals us AND IF she provides us each with favor we can call on in the future. What we then find out is that Tale'a'an's manor is in the Fey Wilds and all the fun rules that come with that like not taking anything...good thing our Rogue isn't with us. We get the floor plan for the first floor and magically teleported there with a magic GTFO card set up as a return portal that will activate when we enter it. Now as a reminder we are on a stealth sneak and snatch mission... we as in a Barbarian, a Fighter and a Ranger. Not the stealthiest bunch. Long story short we eventually find it on the 2nd floor, I grab it and freaking Nat20 my swan dive out the window and go out it Matrix style and Nat20 my Athletics check for the landing. The Fighter and Ranger follows, we run for the portal where red caps and other fun things pop up to try and stop us we take the hits instead of engaging and run for the portal. Why would a Barbarian do this even while raging? Because we were given strict rules not to kill anything while there. We zip back, give back the Hammer, get healed again and poof we are back like nothing happened and no time has passed.

BACK FROM DETOUR! So you can see the three of us have a history of getting yanked places. This time the room glowed blue and we were teleported to somewhere where a blue glowing barrier surrounded us in a circle and an Elf on a podium was looking down at us clearing haven been the one to work the spell. He spots me and his brilliantly violet eyes go wide and he calls me Legu. These facts are important cause ya'll about to find out some serious backstory and juicy family history.

I play an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, I happened to roll well so I'm average or +1 in stats not needed by my class and BAMF in expected ones. I have chosen to play her in a way that the other cultures see her and her people as savage and barbarian, but that is just them looking down on a society they don't understand. Nakon's people have chosen to live simple lives in harmony with nature, practice ancestor worship and use relatively simple looking items because they believe in skills over tools. (Meaning that even with a shitty knife you should be able to kill and skin game etc) She comes off calm, intelligent and polite most of the time as she tries to herd the rest of the group away from being murder hobos and burning everything to the ground. But she has a temper, hence the rage ability, because of a traumatic experience involving the death of her sister. (Lots of things to unpack there) Her people also didn't always live where they do which is a massive valley nestled in the mountains. The tribe hunts and lives in the area between the 3 small lakes in this valley, as they call it the Homeland. A place that they found and traveled to when the place of their origin became hostile and to harsh to live in. Why am I telling you that? Because it is said that my Great great great great great great great great great Grandmother Legu Rockrunner Apuna-Miano was the scout that traveled across vast endless lands of blue to find the Homeland for us.

To be exact the backstory I gave for this ancestor to the DM when he asked was - It was said she was quieter than a shadow and able to scale the sides of rock faces with no purchases. Around the campfire it is told that a long time ago before this land became our home that we were in constant threat and the lives of the Tribe were short, hard lives. Grandmother Legu saw the death and sadness of her Tribe and disappeared one night, she was gone for 3 moons. It is said that when she found this land that she beseeched and that for 7 nights she spoke more than she ever had in her life to convince them to let her people come here. At the end of the 7th night it is said that the sisters were so moved by her love for her Tribe that they agreed as long as the Tribe pledged to protect them. When she came back she told of a place far away that was nestled in the mountains and safe. Leading our people through rough terrain and endless seas she lead us to our home between the three frozen sister lakes.

Now I have an Elf named Thiren, a High Elf as our Elf Fighter pointed out, looking at me shocked saying my dead ancestors name at me with the same eyes I have.... Yup~ .... yuuuuuuuuuuup~... Anyway I talk to him in Giant, tell him I'm not Legu but her great x9 granddaughter, chat about how we got there. He had apparently been trying to summon a Vrock but ended up with us three instead much to his confusion. We explained the situation with the Goddess of Magic and her trying to do bad things so he thought it might have been that and then we got to the part in our initial encounter with her where we killed a Vrock and I took its feathers, claws and beak. That shocked him and made him decide that it might have been a combo of the spell getting messed up AND the fact I had all the Vrock parts in my bag. I offered 5 feathers to him for his experiments as I was still iffy about him and doing a quest to get more stuff for him to send us back and try his summoning again. Since we didn't fly and none of us could sail he gave us this little 3 foot tall mechanical buddy (everyone freaking loved him) named Jeffery who wore a pirate outfit and saluted all the time to navigate us to the islands we needed to go. Oh yeah cause I forgot to tell you that not only were we only other side of the world but we landed on a giant ring of islands making up a bunch of mini countries.

While on the boat our Elf works on summoning a familiar in a brass brassiere, oh I did not say that wrong brass brassiere is what he asked for from our buddy and that is what he got, and I go into a meditative state to talk to Legu and find out about our new buddy Therin. She become all mushy~ at the sound of his name and asked a bunch of questions about him, I shared my memories of seeing him with her but cut that off quick with some colorful comments from her about him cause nope. I asked her when they had met, who he had been traveling with, what kind of person he was like and a whole bunch of things avoiding the issue. Finally I asked her if he was the reason I had bright violet eyes because only one branch of our whole family did. She admitted that she had gotten pregnant with her first daughter by Therin but that Grandfather had always treated her as his own, at which point his spirit interrupted and what I can only describe as a Telanovela began between their spirits and the spirit of their first daughter as I backed out of that meditation.

It would probably be good to tell you what exactly we were questing for to get home at this point since we are almost to the island but first Imma talk about the familiar that ended up happening. So since it wasn't the components called for in the spell instead of the owl he wanted the Elf Fighter got a weird brass colored pigeon. But back to the quest - we had to get 5 young saplings of witchgrass and put them into these spelled terrarium things given to us and we also had to try and find a seedling from a Bloodsuckle. Now if you think that sounds like a vampiric like plant you would be right. It has a ton of vines with these hollow thorn like things it uses to drink the blood but it doesn't drain its victims all at once. Instead it makes them more like an enthralled using them as a continued food source over a long time until they are almost sucked dry and are close to dying. Then it implants them with a seed and tells them to walk and keep walking until they die, at which point the seedling uses the host body as its starting nutrient source to grow a new plant. So not exactly the most pleasant thing to have to deal with.

As we are approaching the shore in about 3 ft of water we get hit with something from under the waves and capsize, roll for initiative. So close to being scott free and safe on this trip yet so far. Now we are facing off against a Strangleweed, does exactly what you think it does, and 5 Gillmonkeys. Those also sound exactly like what they are. Monkey's that live in the sea and have gills. Our Human Ranger finds out he isn't into breath play at the hands of the Strangleweed and the Elf Fighter and I slice through Gillmonkies like its our damn jobs...which I mean it kind of is at the moment. A reasonable fight, a frantic search underwater for Jeffery and a power word to collapse the boat later and we are on the shore. Just as we take a breath we hear rustling from the jungle in front of us and Nakon nopes out of there and starts walking down the beach as the others job to catch up.

A little girl around 13 or so comes out of the jungle, hits the waters edge, looks confused and then turns and starts walking the way we did following the water. Now would be a good time to inject that we were told these islands where the witchgrass grows is also used by the local tribes as their trial by fire to become adults. Also to avoid the locals because we clearly aren't from around here, don't speak the language and would probably end up in a fight. So we naturally keep walking instead of interacting with this girl. Our Elf Fighter is sending his accidental pigeon out into the jungle in a grid to find breaks in the canopy that would mark the grow conditions for the Witchgrass we were told about. Nakon is being twitchy about this girl seemingly following us while Jeffery rides on her shoulder. The Human Ranger is also being twitchy but seems absorbed in his new puppy in its Bjorn made from the previous wolf. Don't ask.

Eventually our mission pigeon comes back and lets our Elf Fighter know that up ahead is river that cuts up into the jungle that if we follow leads right to a clearing with the witchgrass. Now this is a point that I'm going to speed walk us through cause the post is getting a little long even for a campaign diary. We turn and follow the river, little girl turns and follows the river, we hit a spot that a log crosses over the river that we don't take but the girl does. It is at this point that I remember something as a player, shout "have your pigeon follow that girl" and proceed to remind the group the signs of a Bloodsuckle seedling in someone. The girl has seemed confused and lost, walking with no aim, and just picking a random direction once she hits an impassable obstacle. Bird goes off following her and we continue to the clearing. Mixed in with the witchgrass are 3 large tree like plants that the good Therin told us nothing about. We are suspicious as alot of plants around here seem to want to kill us. Elf Fighter through a bonded blink hand axe at one and lo-and-behold its fronds unfurls and reveal some sort of cobra/viper tree thing. We all agree to nope, go to the furthest corner of the clearing with the plant we can and spend the next several rounds gathering young plants. When we have cleared that corner and still need a few we make a large circle around to the opposite corner and begin there. Where in the Human Ranger's puppy starts making noises and we figure out that these plants can't see well but they sure can hear and also move! Nakon shoves a bone from a skeleton she killed and kept part of in her bag of holding at the puppy, shushes it as everyone scrambles to get the last plants. As soon as they are in hand we wide berth and nope out heading back to where we branched out from the girl.

Cross the log over the river and a quick Survival check has us following the girl's trail as she was obviously not trying to hide it and kind of just busting her way through. We reach a point where two close islands kind of form a sand bar at low tide and book it across, so as to avoid any more Strangleweed or Gillmonkies, and pick up the trail again. Once we reach the other island the Elf Fighter finally gets a ping on his pigeon and relays back that the girl has collapsed. We pick up the pace (Nakon bolted and Nat 20s a check so parkour parkour parkour, Elf Fighter tries the same and does not) and enter the clearing she is in, prod her a bit with no movement and perform a Medicine check on her. She is just barely alive and the seedling is pulsating in her chest just below the surface. Nakon pauses for a moment and asks if the Human Ranger had anymore healing left and when informed he had exactly one left laid out a plan. As surgically as possible make a slit just large enough to get the seedling out, pop it in the container, heal the girl, and run to the nearest beach as she wakes up, hop on the boat and GTFO back to Therin. Not the best Medicine check later the seed is out of the girl and will have a wicked scar even after healing to tell her family about, who thankfully doesn't really have anymore blood to lose, and the Human Ranger heals her and we nope on out to the sounds of her groaning as she comes to.

Quick travel back and one "Hi Grandpa we got everything!" (He was shocked) later and 85 more Vrock feathers to him since Legu vouched for him and we were ready to go home. Now before we get to this next example of how things go for our group, on top of giving us a collapsible boat for the trip he also gave us a magical rope that was somewhere between a Rope of Entanglement and a Rope of Climbing. This is important because as Therin was casting the spell to send us back and the blue barrier was rising around us the DM had our Ranger make an animal handling check for the pup. He Nat 1ed it followed by a fail confirmation. So as the puppy leaps from the Ranger's arms over the barrier, Therin's eyes going wide cause he can't stop mid spell, Nakon grabs our new rope and tosses it at the pup as she shouts the power word. The rope wraps around the pup and Nakon yanks them back into the circle just as the spell is cast and they all warp back to where they were.

Yup...so that was a fun side adventure thing that happened. I have High Elf blood in me enough to get his eyes, the Fighter has a pigeon and the Ranger almost lost the replacement pup he just got. That's pretty much how we roll. Tune in for the next campaign diary where hopefully we won't die as we finish the House of Horrors.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.