D&D 5E Tales From The Awning Pothole

[BoldItalic]

Reassure your random player friend that we haven't reached Chult yet, and we might never get there ...

Realising that a succession of random encounters wasn't going to be very satisfying, the players put their heads together and brainstormed an adventure that they thought they could play without needing a DM. This is what they came up with:

On arriving on Corsair Island and letting it be known that they are seeking the Orb of Imflas, the party is approached by a 5th-level Cleric called Cope who says he can lead them through the dungeon where the Orb can be found but warns them that it will be dangerous and they may not all come out alive - the dungeon will be guarded by undead and vicious traps.

If they express interest, Cope will tell them that he is the servant of a powerful entity called Abishpor who resides in the final chamber of the dungeon. Abishpor possesses the orb and is willing to trade it, with some treasure thrown in, for the life of a PC. One of them must leap, or be pushed, into a pit of boiling magma but it is up to the players to decide who. If they do make the sacrifice, the others can leave freely with the Orb, a 1000gp diamond, a Druid Scroll of Reincarnation, and the proceeds of one roll on the Treasure Hoard Challenge 5-10 table. On leaving the dungeon with the Orb, they get a milestone and can level up. Or they can opt out at the last minute and leave with nothing.

If the victim wishes to, they can chop off a finger first and leave it with the others before leaping into the pit. A druid (e.g. Adeliva) can use the scroll of Reincarnation to attempt to reincarnate the finger, so the player gets his character back with a possible race change, but there's a chance of spell failure if the Druid is less than 9th level (Adeliva is 7th becoming 8th). If it fails, or they don't do that right away, the player who has lost his character can opt to play Cope the Cleric. Abishpor will release Cope from his service if they want to do this, otherwise Cope will stay behind in the dungeon when they leave and the player can roll a new PC starting at level 5, the same level as Cope. The player's new character, either Cope or a newly rolled one, will be eligible for the milestone level up.

If a player does adopt Cope as a PC, he will find a letter in his inventory from an Archpriest who is willing to perform a Resurrection (e.g. on a finger) in exchange for performing a quest on his behalf, but of course he will need to use the 1000gp diamond, which is why it is there.

Of course, it may not work out like that ...

As the Leaf neared the Island, Adeliva, who kind'a already knew what they were going to do gave the order to Captain Oakheart............................ to put them ashore in the port of New Bloodskull.

 

[BoldItalic]

As the ship prepared to dock itself, Tasha was standing with the others gazing at their destination. "I don't like it," was her verdict.

Albert agreed with her. "We could just skip this and go on the Chult," he suggested.

Inannyunot looked up from reading the complimentary copy of New Bloodport Gazetteer and Visitors Guide that he had found in his cabin. "Or anywhere else, really," he suggested.

"We have to go to Chult. It's ..."

"Remind me why we said we would all go there?"

"Huh?"

"Because of the rock giant called Emmy. The one that Claw and Ha! and the baby beholder encountered. She sent Sergeant Jones a note. Surely you remember?"

"But they all went back to Southborough with Tippy. Isn't Chult their problem?

"It's my destiny," said Adeliva, a little too quickly.

"Is that what the Norns told you? We've had trouble with them before."

"Destinies are for Heroes," suggested Albert.

"I should write a book called that. Makes a good title," mused Inannyunot. "I could write a book about our adventures in Chult and just make it all up. Without actually going there."

"But it wouldn't be true. Books are supposed to be true, aren't they? Isn't that the whole point?"

"Not really. Books about Myths and Legends don't have to be true. They just have to be pretend true. We could all be legendary heroes just by writing it down and not really doing anything dangerous."

"But that's silly."

"Could be fun, though."

"So, the general feeling is, let's do the Orb, then go home and write a book?" suggested Tasha

"Works for me."

"And me."

"But, I have to go to Chult," insisted Adeliva, who was beginning to feel she was on the back foot. "I have to. It's my destiny."

"What happens about your destiny if we throw you into the lava pit?" asked Albert unkindly. "Someone's got to be the victim."

"Well, then, you would be destined to Reincarnate me. With the scroll."

"It's a druid scroll. We can't."

At this point Adeliva burst into tears. "Well, then, I come back as Cope and the Archpriest does a Resurrection and ..."

"And then you are two people. One of whom isn't destined to go to Chult. This isn't going to work, is it?"

"You're just being horrid! I hate you, Albert, I hate you! I'm going to throw you into the pit! I mean it!"

"And then will you reincarnate my finger?"

"No! I'll throw your finger in too, you horrible man!"

"Well," interposed Tasha, who was supposed to be the leader, "You've been very quiet, Footnote, what's your take on all this?"

"Writing heroic legends is bard's work. We can't have wizards doing it."

"You could do it together? We could all throw in ideas?"

"That works for me."

"I know this story about a Tome of Annihilation, we could work that in somewhere," offered Albert.

"How does it go?"

"There's this terrible curse that affects everyone who's been reincarnated. They just waste away. But the legendary heroes go to Chult and, after many exciting adventures, locate a necromantic tome called the Soulmonger and then they destroy it and save the world."

"See, that's why we have to go to Chult," cried Adeliva, "After we throw Albert in the pit and I reincarnate him as a kender or something, he starts wasting away and we all go to Chult to destroy the Tome and save him. In the book. Not really. Really, I'm gong to throw his finger in the pit."

"I like it," decided Inannyunot. "This promises to be a really good book ..."

"But none of us has ever been to Chult. How can we write about it if we don't know what it's like?"

"We make it up. No-one will know."

"Someone who has really been to Chult would know."

"Good point. Alright, we won't call it Chult. We'll call it Grolt. It's a completely different island, far to the south of Chult in the Terrible Archipelago."

"Does it really exist?"

"No, I just made it up."

"You're good at this. Have you done this before?"

"That would be telling ..."

 

[rgoodbb]

The Storm was furious. It had gotten all the way across the Romantic Ocean to meet up with Hurricane Hermione and it had forgotten to bring flowers. It was livid. It was now belching all of its ire and anger upon the leaf. Rain and sleet spewed and hurled down from all compass directions. Waves rumbled and rolled raggedly fifty feet high and the leaf desperately skittered and skimmed the surface skating and skirting disaster every few seconds. As it crested the cream before the crashing crescendo as it troffed and tossled and jostled and it was struggling and it was staggering sideways and leeward and windward.

The deafening roar of the wind and thunder. The crackle of light and lightning. The darkness of the deep blue below and the ever increasing walls of savage saline above. The Leaf was a river craft. A Leaf on the Wind. Not designed as a tree in a typhoon. It spaffed and it spleaned and it sagged, and submitted to the storm until eventually it succumbed with great sadness and groaning, resigning itself to its sinking submerged solitude.....






Crash-Flumph-Shreeeeeeeee, Crash-Flumph-Shreeeeeeeee, Crash-Flumph-Shreeeeeeeee

.....The Sea-Stirges were out in numbers today. The bright sunny morn and the gentle crash-flumph of the waves behind and the shreeeeeeee of the receding water taking the sand back with it, all fused into a meditative rhythm. A finger moved. Then a hand. It gripped a fistfull of sand and relaxed again. As if it had taken a lungful of air and exhaled it all out. The hand was curious colour. An azure hue that was slightly more blue than green with the mildest tickle of purple veins at the wrist.

Tasha arose, loosening kelp and sand as she did. The turquoise tank turned and took stock of the shore and the land around. There was naught else in sight. The beach did not even provide any prizes of debris from the Leaf. Nothing. She was alone. She wandered and waned astride and aside the shoreline. With each step another firm affirmation of her solo survival. She was half orc she said in her mind. She was tough. She did not need friends who would easily perish. The half orc side of her told her to calm down and not be so angry, but the other side of her; the half orc was miserable, drenched in sorrow and down to the ground sad. She would prevail. She was a fighter. She would go on, alone.

...."WOOOOOHWOOOO! Hand me another piece of roast dumb-bird will you. And some of that lemon sauce. This grog is fantastic" said Albert, dancing in the cove to the music of Footnote, and wiping gravy from his chin in a haze of alcoholic buzzing bliss.

 

[BoldItalic]

"Any sign of the others?" called Tasha as she plodded up the beach towards the smell of food.

"Goat and Liva have gone for a walk," replied Footnote, weaving the words into a song.

"To look for coconuts, they said," added Albert. "They have this scheme whereby Liva will talk nicely to a palm tree and Goat will fly up and collect the coconuts. They should be back soon."

"You look terrible, Tasha. Have one of these steak pies. They're good," offered Footnote.

"Where did all the food come from?" she wondered. It was very tempting.

"Don't know. It was just here."

"What??? You find hot, tasty food on an apparently deserted beach and it didn't occur to you that it might be a trap?"

"Er ..."

"Leave it. We need to go and look for the others. Which way did they go?"

"Er, along that way, towards those palm trees."

"Right. Weapons ready and stick together. They may need rescuing."

 

[rgoodbb]

"Right. Weapons ready and stick together. They may need rescuing."

Tasha led the way and realised that the other two weren't with her. She looked back just as both Footnote and Albert hit the ground in a snoring stupor. She had been right. This was a trap. She did a medicine check. Realised that she knew nothing of Medicine. They seemed to be in an unwakeable sleep. She quietly forged ahead down towards the palm tree beach until she realised that she knew nothing about Stealth. There she looked for the others until she realised that she knew nothing about Perception. The obvious Druid sat with her back against a trunk and the Wizard slumped up in the tree. They too were both asleep.

Tasha took some time to carry and drag them back to the other two where she could defend them all at once. After an hour or so with no change, She un-proficiently stealthed further into the cove/cave to explore with an un-proficient eye. Feeling hungry, she delved into her pack and found and ate a Good Berry. Blandberry more like it. Armed with two coconuts and a sack full of sand, (all of which she was definitely proficient in), she delved further in.

At some point, Tasha began to hear crackling sounds and she smelled wood smoke. She slowed as she advanced and eventually ended up in a large cavernous chamber. There was indeed a fire here. It was alluring in a way that only flames can be. It was warm. It was comforting. It was inviting. It was................

 

[BoldItalic]

It was .....
.... being tended by a strange creature, the like of which Tasha had never seen before. It was vaguely humanoid, in the sense that it had arms and legs and a head in roughly the right places, and vaguely reptilian in the sense that it had green scaly skin, a pointed snout and a thick, muscular tail. But it was about 15 feet tall and heavily built and it definitely didn't have wings.

It looked up as she cautiously approached, and called out to her in impeccable common. "Come on in. You must be from the shipwreck. Welcome to the Isle of No Return. That's what I call it, anyway. My name is Overweight and I am, like you, a survivor of a shipwreck on these shores."

"I'm Tasha. My four companions have been overcome by a mysterious slumber. Do you know how I can wake them?

"Have they been eating the bait-food? If so, that is bad. It is very dangerous. It is exuded by a psychic fungus that is native to this island. The exudation takes on the shape of whatever the victims most desire to eat but once inside them is starts to grow into the body tissues until the victim eventually explodes and spreads the fungal spores into the wind. It is a horrible way to go."

"Can it be halted? I left them down on the beach. I didn't want to leave them but I needed to find help."

"If it is not too late, I may be able to cure them. Can you bring them here? I will need to prepare an antifungal broth and we must force it down them. I must warn you, though, every minute counts and it may already be too late."

So Tasha toiled to and fro to the beach, carrying her inert companions up to the cave while Overweight busied himself with boiling up a noxious brew in a large cauldron. They tried it on Inannyunot first. It was risky, getting broth into an unconscious man without choking him but Overweight seemed to know what to do. After a few minutes, Inannyunot went red in the face and belched out a great quantity of black bile which smouldered where it fell. "That is good," said Overweight re-assuringly. "Quickly, let us treat the other three the same way."

While they waited to see if anyone would survive the treatment, Tasha asked Overweight about the island. She learnt that is was habitable, with freshwater springs, and there was food if you knew what to eat and what to avoid, but there were dangers, of which the bait-fungus was one of the least deadly.

"I lost my magic halberd in the shipwreck," Tasha confided. "It's probably buried on the seabed somewhere. If the wizard survives he may be able to locate if for me, using a special spell that he knows. Then I could maybe dive down and get it. It summons dragons. I may be able ask a dragon to carry us away from this island."

Overweight was surprisingly negative about that scheme. "You'll never find it," he asserted forcefully, "No dragon will help you. You cannot leave this island." It was hard to read expression into the lizard-like face and the emotionless eyes, but Tasha thought she detected a hint of hostility as he said that. She began to regret letting him treat the others, but what choice did she have?

After a while, the four victims started to come round. But .....

 

[rgoodbb]

After a while, the four victims started to come round. But .....


But ..... something was very wrong. Their eyes opened as one but they were all milked out. They were blind. Spores started bubbling on the surface of their skin and small roots broke through the soles of their feet and entered the ground. The spindly spores grew and reproduced until the four victims were covered in a foggy, milky white web-like fungus. Their throats let out an awful choked rasping cry, and then.......Nothing. They remained still, motionless, inert.

Overweight let out a throaty, slow, booming chuckle (along with a little fart/gas/wind squeak), and shuffled over to his stirring stick. He withdrew it from the boiling cauldron and planted it on the ground like a staff. He lifted his scaly chin, inviting challenge. Tasha obliged. She opened the bag of sand and threw it at the fire. A high roll ensured that it was snuffed. Next she took the coconuts and smashed one in a show of force, of intimidation. The Half-Orc side of her loved this, however that was balanced by the Half-Orc side's need for tactics.

Overweight closed his eyes and started mumbling behind his impressive teeth, Tasha took this opportunity to quickly rummage through Adeliva's pockets. Maybe the DM had given the new Druid a starting Magic Item or something. The Half Orc/Half-Orc Fighter felt something solid and gripped her fingers around it. In a sneering show of chest-pumping triumph, Tasha pulled out................

 

[BoldItalic]

Tasha pulled out................

.... Sergeant Jones'es requisition pad. Somehow, when ex-DM Jones had rolled up Adeliva as his new character, their inventories had got mixed up.¹ Wasting no time, Tasha requisitioned a +3 Vorpal Double Halberd of Dragon Summoning, just like her old one only better. Now she felt complete. With a snarl, she swung her new halberd and - chopped the staff in twain. The creature was now unable to cast spells and was at Tasha's mercy. With her Extra Attack she swung the halberd again and ... and ... it was a crit! Overweight was now Underweight, by the weight of one head. Green ichor spewed from the severed neck in a thoroughly gruesome way and as the smell reached Tasha's nostrils she felt as thought she had gone up a level and gained the Remarkable Athlete feature.

Pausing only to draw breath, and before she even thought about searching the cavern for treasure, Tasha requisitioned four jars of military-grade Universal Anti-Fungal Ointment which she started rubbing on the recumbent forms of her companions. Slowly, it began to take effect ...

---

Tasha (Half-Orc/Half-Orc Fighter-7 Battlemaster; 81hp; Vorpal Double Halberd +3 of Dragon Summoning, Sling, 17 g.p.) Alert, Heavy Armor Master

---

¹ He used a character-building app, mixed up two buttons and imported his previous character's inventory instead of making a new one. It's easily done.

 

[rgoodbb]

As the transmetamorphmogriphallalisational effects took place and reversed the process, the white dusty spore-like fungus blew away, in their absence they revealed a crystalline resin substance that had crusted and solidified surrounding each PC's head.

The resin cracked, shattered and dusted away:

Inannyunot's head was no longer human, but goat.

Albert's left arm was no longer human, but tentacle.

Footnote's right leg was no longer human, but hooved.

Adeliva's ......................... was no longer human, but...................

 

[BoldItalic]

Adeliva's ..... skin .... was no longer human, but....... resembled the bark of an alder tree ............

which gave her a minimum AC of 17+Dex. Adj., regardless of what armour she wore, which is good, but Vulnerability to Fire, which is not so good.

Albert, who had got used to having two left hands since Glibblefleep the Ghoul had sewn one back on backwards (remember Glibblefleep?) now had a left hand on his right arm and a tentacle in place of his left arm. This would have confused a lesser man, but Albert took it in his stride (he was okay with strides, he still had two normal feet). He now had Disadvantage on Picking Locks but Advantage on Sleight of Hand checks. Also, he would be a demon at the three cups scam if he ever needed to make a living on street corners.

Being now half-satyr, Footnote instantly acquired proficiency in the pan-pipes alongside his many other other talents and he found he could cast Conjure Woodland Beings by playing the right melody on them and Inebriate Self with a different one. Also, he would get automatic Advantage on checks involving the Tap Dancing skill.

Adeliva gazed thoughtfully at Goatee, as ₼₼₼₼₼₼₼₼ would henceforth be officially called. "I like your beard," she said, reaching up tendrilly to stroke it, "Wood you like me to comb it for you?" Goatee rather thought he did and wondered what hugging a tree was going to be like and if he had a book about it.

Tasha laughed. It was a big, deep, belly-laugh partly from relief and partly because she had her friends back, more oddball than ever. She was still chuckling when she started to search the cavern for treasure. "Hey, guys, look at this!" she called ...........

---

Tasha (Half-Orc/Half-Orc Fighter-7 Battlemaster; 81hp; Vorpal Double Halberd +3 of Dragon Summoning, Sling, 17 g.p.) Alert, Heavy Armor Master
Goatee (formerly Inannyunot, true name ₼₼₼₼₼₼₼₼) (Half-Goat Wizard-7 Conjurer; 37hp; 3x/day headbutt attack; books, clay tablet)
Albert (Sinister Octo-Thief-7; 45hp; 3 daggers, +2 Club of Bluntness, 26 g.p., TotM pole, funny bone) Dungeon Delver
Adeliva (Half-Alder Moon Druid-7; 59hp; Requisition Pad, 100 g.p.) Mobile
Footnote (Half-Satyr Bard-8; 43hp; Pan Pipes)