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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ant" data-source="post: 3528428" data-attributes="member: 17627">Today's Menu: Tenderised Bas on a Bed of MushroomWhich is how the latest part of the adventure began. Our intrepid heroes found themselves on the floor of a 100 foot wide chamber. They were in the center, directly below the hole they just entered. A forest of giant mushroom encircled them. While everyone clambered to their feet, there was no sign of pursuit. There was sign of precedence however and there was a dead orc on the ground with the party. Bas wasted no time in robbing the body of the several hundred gold pieces it had. Mailcon climbed back up the rope to retrieve as many floating rods as possible (except for the top one, which had the rope tied to it). Unfortunately, testing down below determined that the rods wouldn't reactive again, much to Mailcon's disappointment.The group moves to the northern edge of the giant mushroom forest. Bas's cautious nature comes to the fore. He pulls his axe out and starts chopping his way in. Tyrant follows until they realise that it would be a lot quicker if they just push their way through the fungi stems instead. Meanwhile, Mailcon remembers he's a tracker and could probably track stuff. Or something. A few rolls later finds some giant insect prints on the ground. That being it, Mailcon decides to follow the other two. He discovers that Woodland Stride also works in mushroom forests and glide through with ease. Much to the disgust of the long suffering wolverine that is quickly left behind. Mailcon quickly reaches the northern wall and discovers that Bas and Tyrant had gone left. So he decides to go right and soon finds a passageway in wall. He shouts to Bas and Tyrant to tell them and discovers they have found one as well, and that Bas has already gone in. Mailcon shrugs and goes to join them.At the same time, Bas was busy discovering a giant bug and was proceeding to be eaten by it. He'd been investigating a giant chamber which had a giant refuse pile at the far end and 5ft wide hole in another wall that was letting in light. When he wandered over to the refuse pile a giant bug thingy erupted out of the ground and tried to bite him with acid dripping mandibles. An axe to its head showed it what Bas though of idea. This swift counter-attack so intimidated the bug that it reduced Bas to zero HP with its next attack.At that point, Tyrant and Mailcon enters the fray. Mailcon has his usual success with a sling stone. Tyrant just wanders up and smacks it to death. Bas backs up in the meantime and collapses against the wall.Mailcon fails to notice Bas's zero HP status and goes looking at the treasure pile. He notices something in the middle of the pile of rusted and acid eaten junk. Unfortunately for Mailcon he is weak, apparently, and can't pull the object out of the pile. He calls over Tyrant, who is not weak, and he manages to pull a mace out of the pile. He also releases a cloud of gas from the middle of the pile. Mailcon maybe weak, but he is well Fortified and shrugs off its effects. Tyrant doesn't do quite so well and, thanks his failed Fort save, takes damage.At the back of the chamber they notice a square pillar that descends from ceiling to floor. The pillar is about 20 ft on a side and has about a 5ft gap between it and the walls, so it is possible to circle the pillar. A horizontal crack runs all the way around it. Tyrant and Mailcon check it out, then move over to the hole in the wall. The passageway is about 5tf off the ground and angles steeply up to the surface. At that point they decide to check out the other passageway that Mailcon had found and move out. Bas slowly follows them, at which point Mailcon notices his condition and uses a couple of wand charges to heal him. The other passage leads into a low ceiling rough cave that fails to turn up anything in a search.  At that point Mailcon decides to search the rest of the walls of the mushroom chamber. As they aren't as fast has him in the forest (manfully resists a 'because you are like, slow' comment), Bas and Tyrant retreat to the center of the chamber to wait.In the southern end of the chamber, Mailcon notices a pair of mushrooms that are different from the rest, and they are flanking a passage in the wall. He calls over the others and they join him. The mushrooms are recognised as screamers that will go off if you get within 10 feet of them. A brief discussion reveals that the mushrooms are far enough apart to move between them, although the dense growth of other fungi requires balance rolls. Naturally one of the group fails (Tyrant's turn this time) and they start shrieking. Mailcon and Bas rush on, headfirst into a pair of whippy attacky type mushrooms. Mailcon and Bas tumble successfully between them. Tyrant follows them but, not having a Tumble option, successfully fights his way defensively between them. Coming last, Logan uses Tyrant as spam shield (meatshield in a tin) and avoids being attacked.On the other side of the 'shrooms, a new chamber is found. Its empty, except for the gelatinous cube quietly sitting in the middle. Tyrant was lucky to spot the reflection of the torch on its surface and recognise it for what it was. So the party searches the chamber, carefully avoiding the Pioneer Jelly Monster, and finds nothing of interest. The Cube sits quietly, until Mailcon decides to entertain himself by taunting it with some beef jerky. He decides to make a food trail from the Mushrooms of Slaying to the Cube, to try and lure it out.Unfortunately the DM was having none of that kind of rot, and the Cube only went to the entrance of the tunnel and refused to go any further.Eventually it returned to the center of the chamber.With no other options, Tyrant pulls out his trusty fall back trick.  Flaming arrows. And it works quite well, with the two guardian mushrooms bursting into flames and collapsing into piles of cinder. Once they were dead however, the Cube shudders to life and proceeds up the now unguarded passageway. The group looked at each other, shrugged, then made use of the new passageway that the Cube was eating through the forest for them.The Cube hung a left as it entered the forest and dissolved its way along the wall (a clear sign of the DM trying to hurry things along if you ask me). The group follows the new path but finds no new chambers until they reach the acid bug room (which sounds like a Naked Lunch quote).Anyway, we decide to have another look at the pillar in this room. Bas chips at the crack in it and manages to open it enough to see all the way through. Bas's player realised the pillar is hollow but, alas, Bas himself is too dumb to realise the same thing and the rest of us weren't really paying enough attention.What we do notice, thanks to some Listen checks, is that somewhere the Orcs are digging a hole. When we realise it is happening right above us we fall back on the usual plan and decide to go kill them.The 5ft wide hole that leads to the surface from this room is shallow enough of a slope to be worth climbing. At least for Logan and Bas that is. Tyrant and Mailcon managed to get stuck part way up. Bas throws down so rope to help and eventually the party makes it to the surface. The find themselves in the forest a small distance away from the ruins. A brief moment of preparation and they return to the ladder down into the ruins and clamber down.Once down there they listen around and hear the Lizard man roaring in one direction and the digging happening in the other. The party heads towards the digging and find themselves in the room with the prison cells. The door leading into the chamber where the 3 legged thing died has been closed and the digging can be heard here. We form a plan.The bow wielding Bas and Tyrant aim at the door ready to fire when Mailcon bursts it open. Which he does, then rolls into the chamber and dodges to the right. Bas and Tyrant sees two big orcs attacking the left wall with picks, 2 smaller orcs just standing around and the Mage at the far end of the chamber. Mailcon merely sees a pair of boots.Some advice to Tyrant about Magic Missile spells results in him firing 2 arrows at the Mage. One hits, one misses. Bas shoots at the smaller orcs and sends them running away. The orcs with the picks drop their picks and move towards Mailcon. Mailcon in the meantime was fighting a big orc and would have been doing a lot better if he remembered that it was his favored enemy. Logan also runs in and bites it.Tyrant decides to shoot another couple of arrows and rolls 3 20's in a row while he is at it. The mage goes down with an arrow in each eye. The 2 orcs that had been digging decided to attack the only enemy in the room - Mailcon. He is flanked by them, but assisted by his trusty sidekick Logan. Logan turns and bites one on the newcomers on the groin.This is a good thing for our side, with the sole exception of the unfortunate side effect of triggering a Barbarian Rage in both of these orcs.Tyrant to the rescue however. He drops his bow and bullrushes one of the Raging orcs. And does so beautifully. Bas also rushes in to attack the orc trying to deal with his new wolverine sporran. A flurry of dice, swings and blood results in: a bullrushed orc on the ground; a criticaled defense roll (from that showoff Tyrant again naturally) translating into a fumbled attack for an orc, now swinging a handle minus an axe; a wounded and Raging Wolverine and Mailcon killing his first opponent for the dungeon.One mop up round later and the room is quite and empty of living orc (well, Logan is savaging one of the corpses but its quite other than that).We do the usual 'rob the surprisingly rich orcs' thing again then go to look at the wall they were attacking. Realising that there is a secret door in the wall we attack it with the picks, and break one while trying to open it. Eventually the door is sprung and we discover a secret stair leading down (incidentally the same size of the pillar we found below. Who would have thought it?).The group descends (about 70 feet from memory) and at the bottom we find....To be continued (note we are entering the annoyingly stupid part of the classic dungeon design, which meant I started to lose interest in the events - despite Ant's and everyone else's cool antics. Believe me Don, there is a very awesome Bas and Tyrant bit to come <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. Will try to remind myself what happened and finish it either lunch today or tonight.</blockquote>

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