Where the party purchases a Lawn Ornament

As the party leaves the collapsing Tunnel of Love, we spot a mechanical monkey. He was obviously suspicious, so we followed him. Turns out, he was just leading us back to the Toymaker.

In the Toymaker’s tent, we meet a garden gnome, painted blue, posing in such a way as for people to throw rings over its head. As we arrive, it moves, and turns out to have a pretty foul mouth on it, too. It complains to the Toymaker about working conditions and how it is taking a break - it could obviously do with some help from a professional work and safety crew. The gnome’s name is Tilly, and it practically begs us to let it come with us. Sigh. OK.

The Toymaker explains to us, through his interpreter, that we next need to get the Icky Bit. The Icky Bit is with the Myrmidon in the Naughty Corner, which is underneath some trap doors in the Food Court. That’s all we needed to know, so off we went. As we were leaving, Esmerelda (where did she come from?) hands over some scrolls that she had finished making: Haste, Heal, Greater Restoration, and Death Ward.

Return of The Monkey

We go to the Food Court, and straight to the Snow Cone house, because we hate that guy. He’s asleep with his monkey (pervert), so we quietly raid his shop. Louie makes some snow cones that allow Raymond to breathe ice. Dennis steals the liquid out of the “Boot of Hecna”, which gives him advantage on saving throws and ability checks until his next long rest. I think Ethan forgot he doesn’t need to sleep. The Captain moves boxes in the storeroom, looking for a trapdoor, and Tilly “helps” him, but doesn’t do it very well, so it only slows him down a bit.

Once he finished making snow cones, Louie helps The Captain, and the boxes get moved. Revealed is a trap door in the floor, locked. For a little while, anyway. The party heads down the trapdoor, Tilly bringing up the rear. Just as she is about to descend, the Monkey appears! Tilly gestures toward it to be quiet, but massively fails the persuasion check. Just as it was about to bang its cymbals together, Tilly panics and casts Dispel Magic. It works! The Monkey is - at least temporarily - disabled.

At the bottom of the ladder is a passageway, leading to a door with 3 Hecna masks on it, each with a different expression: happy, sad, and neutral. The Captain touched the happy one, and it asked “How many months have 28 days?” Without missing a beat, The Captain replies “All of them!” The mask fades away.

Tilly touches the neutral face, and it asks “What is blue and smells like red paint?” “Blue Paint!”. The mask fades away.

Louie touches the last mask, and it asks “What sounds like a sneeze, but is made of leather?” “A shoe!” (Louie totally got that one on his own, with no prompting from anyone). The last mask fades away, and the door unlocks. Dennis pushes the door open and reveals a 100’ long corridor. There is a cord across the corridor, 30’ in and 2’ above the floor. There is a limbo bar across the corridor, 60’ in and 2’ above the floor. There are mountain climbing handholds all along the walls.

Never split the party

They do say never split the party. Does this count? Tilly (who turns out to be a druid!) Wildshaped into a giant ice spider or something, and crawls along the ceiling of the corridor. Dennis, being lazy, flies down the middle. Louie and Raymond climb along the climbing holds on the wall, which led to the discovery that Ethan wasn’t aware that frogs had thumbs. The Captain brooks none of this nonsense, and walks straight ahead, limboing under the rope and bar - 2’ isn’t hard when you’re only around 3’ tall.

It was while limboing under the bar that The Captain put his foot into the floor trap, which closed a guillotine blade on his foot, chopping off part of his ankle. He took 34HP of damage, and his movement rate was significantly reduced for 6 minutes.

Now we can’t move - fight!

At the end of the corridor is a giant storage room with a ball pit in the middle. There is a glass ceiling, through which we can see the Food Court above us. There is a small child in the centre of the ball pit, crying and wailing for help. The party, being the kind hearted heroes that we are, were instantly suspicious.

Tilly the Spider webs the kid and tries to pull him out. Something has hold of the kid, and pulls back. Tilly is being pulled in - The Captain and Louie (who have strongth) Help Tilly to pull back, while Dennis (who has knife) stands by to cut bait if it looks like Tilly will get pulled in. For a moment, the party is winning the tug-of-war, and we see a grey, scaly thing holding on to the child - but then the web snaps! (very convenient, I must say)

The Captain responds by shooting one of the balls in the pit, which breaks and starts leaking goo. Ewwww. The Thing In The Pit responds by spraying the entire area with acid. The Captain had already retreated outside the AoE, Louie saves with a Nat 20 and avoids all damage, Dennis has Evasion (did you know that, Ethan?) and doesn’t fail DEX saves. Sorry Tilly. Dennis, remembering the last combat he was in with the Vampires, agonizes over going the ranged option again, but does anyway, and does a bucket of damage to the balls in the pit. Tilly the Spider tried to bite the balls, which turned out to be a mistake - something grabs her and tries to pull her in, but she resists! Immediately, the Thing in the Pit hits her back, and does pull her in. She disappears into the ball pit, where she is disoriented and blinded.

Then the Thing in the Pit (it’s the Myrmidon, OK?) attacks Louie, does lots of damage but doesn’t grapple him, and takes damage from his poison. Louie responds by casting Moonbeam on the centre of the pit, and Raymond bites some balls. The Myrmidon then hits Louie for big damage, and follows up by hitting Tilly for big damage. Tilly flees the pit, somehow, heals herself, and is then stealth healed by a potion crossbow bolt from the shadows, fired by Esmerelda (seriously, where is she coming from?) The Captain Mind Blasts the pit for 9 psychic damage.

The Myrmidon then has a go at Dennis, doing 45 HP (Dennis redirects 25), but it pisses Dennis off and sends him into a blood rage. He flies to the centre of the pit and dive bombs, hoping to find the Myrmidon, and he does! He bites the Myrmidon, rolls a crit, spends a Ki point to do Hand of Harm, and deals out 45 HP to the Myrmidon, simultaneously healing himself for the same amount. Tilly drops Wildshape so she can summon a Giant Constrictor, which then has a go at the Myrmidon and does a Crit squeezing it. Nice! Tilly then Wildshapes into a Giant Scorpion and stings the Myrmidon to death.

Esmerelda bolt-heals everyone in the party (except Tilly, who catches the bolt for later use). Where the hell is she coming from!?

Pillage, THEN burn.

Through the skylight, we hear Hecna scream and see the sky change to blood-red, and there is a general wailing and gnashing of teeth. From the people in the Revalia - the party wasn’t overly concerned. We wanted LOOT!

We spent an hour searching the place for the good stuff. In addition the the Icky Bit (which was disguised as the child decoy all along!), we gathered:

  • 500 GP
  • An exotic insect that will allow Dennis to (once only) bypass immunity to Paralysis for his poisons
  • An enchanted Sandstone, which can be used to cast Shield 3 times.
  • Silk threads worth 1000 GP
  • Bottled Sands of Time, which can be used like Portent, 3 times. The rolls are 7, 8 and 16.
  • 235 Red Tickets
  • Barding and false teeth for Raymond. AC 15, +8 to hit, 3d6 Piercing damage. Raises Raymonds hit points to 54. If Raymond dies wearing it, it will return with him when he is re-summoned

Gnomes… gnomes everywhere!

Dennis is first to exit the tunnel and the first thing he sees is that damn Monkey! He didn’t know it was disabled, so he threw it down the pit, where The Captain hit it like a baseball into the wall of the tunnel. Hopefully that damn thing is dead for good. In the corner, Dennis spots the Snowcone guy, sleepwalking. The party sneaks past without waking him.

As we exit his shop, we see Billy the Gnome (who looks exactly like Tilly, but with a luxurious beard) being dragged away by a monstrous clown. When we find him in the alley, he was bleeding out to make a dramatic inspiration to get us angry. What it actually did was cause a race to see which one of the party healers (3 of 4) could heal him the fastest. Crisis averted.

Then we were attacked by Werespider acrobats. To be precise, Wolf Werespider acrobats. This will become important later.

The combat was long and grueling, and the party started to run out of time (we had a curfew of 01:00), so I’ll summarize:

Dennis ran around like a lunatic paralyzing and stunning things. The rest of the party decided that concentrating fire wasn’t for them, and each went after different targets, often ones that Dennis hadn’t got to, so no advantage to hit or automatic criticals for them! At the point in time when we killed the first Werespider, it respawned into 4 more (told you the Wolf Spider thing would be important). Billy was being all bardic, but I didn’t see him try to seduce any of the spiders, so he wasn’t very good at it. Raymond was swallowing spiders as fast as he could, but there were just too many! Tilly cast Wall of Fire around the group, which turned out to be awesome, because if the spiders died because they were thrown into the flames, they didn’t spawn any children. Fucking Gnomes kept appearing until they out-numbered the party. Esmerelda (where did she fcking come from?*) throws a grenade into the centre of the group with the cryptic instruction “Cast what you can into it an RUN!”. We cast what we could, but then it didn’t seem to do anything, so we just beat the rest of the spiders to death.

Dennis and Tilly had both been infected by Werespider lycanthropy during the fight, and it was mildly useful, but we healed ourselves of it afterward anyway. Tilly took her Clan of Clones to go and do Instagram model things, or something. I’m sure that’s the last we’ve seen of them!

Finite