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Session 19 & 20 Recap and Take:

The party departed from the village of the chittering masons, intending to lend aid to the mole rats in their struggle against the encroaching hybubs, boneless guls inhabiting adjacent warrens. The Viscount LeGrande welcomed them warmly, and called a council with Queen Bethanie to discuss a raid on the warrens of the hybubs. The council did not go well. LeGrande’s rival the Duke Malroi exploited LeGrande’s disastrous loss of his retinue to the Empty Witch to turn the queen against the raid. LeGrande was able to secure agreement to have the party shrunk by magic so they could enter the warrens, and was allowed to gather volunteers, but that was all.

Luckily, the party had been joined by one Regimund Cruft. Having transported himself to Wishery from Earth in an opium daze, he found himself able to use magic. Arranging a meeting, Cruft charmed Malroi and convinced him to bring his stoutest fighters on the mission. As a result, the party set off, shrunken to three feet in height, accompanied by 12 mole rats, LeGrande, Malroi, and the opium fiend.

Upon questioning, the party learned that the warren complexes the two groups inhabited were built by the Drave, an ancient race that had succumbed long ago to “some creeping doom”. With such a large force (22!), the party chose the most direct route, marching down a central corridor connecting the two warrens. They slew many hybubs and pressed their way forward into their area. Using various long stored magics, they drove back and routed all opposition, suffering only a few mole rat casualties, and recovering a strange golden staff that sent out waves of destruction when struck against the floor.

Forcing open a sturdy door again opposition, the party once again slew a group of hybubs only to have a glass sphere hurled at them that shattered releasing a whirling screaming ball of porcine death—a VORPAL SWINE! The beast tore through the party, wounding several party members and braining mole rats, before it was drugged and cut down, ultimately by a blow from LeGrande who fought valiantly throughout the session. Pressing forward, the party came upon a room where engorged roots fed from a glowing stone pool. Slaying waves of hybubs and fighting off swarming animated roots, the party used the golden staff to destroy the roots that fed off the pool. When they did so, ominous screams came from a passage to the Northwest, from whence the engorged roots flowed. The ranger Aisling recovered a glowing blue-white sapphire from the bottom of the pool wrapping it carefully in cloth.

Following the screams Northwest, the party came upon the chamber of the Quickened King. A huge root peeled back to reveal his sickening wooden personage, seated on a throne, and wearing a wooden crown set with a monstrous lustrous pearl. After claiming dominion “wherever his children the roots flow”, he demanded the party submit to his authority. The mole rats cried that the only queen they knew was Queen Bethanie, and the fight was on. Highlights included an exploding root striking Sir Tresken for high damage, and Salinger getting sucked back into the wall by animated roots when he snuck out of the paladin protective sphere. In the end, oil to the face and Dozar the Gross’ spiritual axe slew the Quickened King.

As the party cut off the Quickened King’s crown with its enormous pearl, curiosity got the better of Aisling, who removed the sapphire she had taken from the pool from its wrappings and grasped it with her bare hand. Her face was illuminated by its strange, cold light, and as she touched it, she felt cut by a cold and howling wind that portended winter frosts and took with it all hope of warmth and hearth. Suddenly Aisling’s mind reeled as she found herself split in two, somehow simultaneously confronting two scenes. In the first she remained in the chamber of the Quickened King with her compatriots next to the fallen monstrosity’s body. In the other she stood in what appeared to be the same chamber, but now empty and devoid of the slain root king and her companions, with a rude earthen floor of the natural cavern rather than the Drave tiled mosaics. Frightened and disoriented she withdrew her hand form the sapphire, returning to her single existence with the party, and fainting.

Having found the source of the trouble with the Hybubs, once the ranger recovered, the party beat a hasty retreat back to the warrens of the mole rats. There they were received as victorious heroes with a grand celebration in the subterranean ballroom of the mole rat warrens. Queen Bethanie granted them each the title of Knight Errant, and bestowed numerous additional titles on the surviving mole rats. The wild revelry that followed lasted into the dawn hours. LeGrande repeated the tale of his slaying of the Vorpal Swine many times to rapt crowds of swooning rat maidens, and wept as he told the tale of the many mole rats who fell bravely in battle—most of all his squire Renauld. Malroi accepted with grace his new status as hero, and danced arm in arm with his former rival. Staying another day at the warrens to recover, the party resumed their normal size, LeGrande bid them adieu, promising that one day he would come with them on their great adventures. The group headed back through the White Jungle to the pagodas of the hanging merchants, arriving without casualties.

Creatures Slain

28 Hybubs 700 XP
1 Vorpal Swine 300 XP
The Quickened King 400 XP
3 Fine Earthenware Jugs 225 GP
Golden Staff (spent) 700 GP
Root Pearl 2000 GP
Glowing Sapphire ?
12 doses hybub poison

XP per player (counting 7.5 total including Selwin, Malroi, and LeGrande): 577
GP per player: 390

Gus L Joshua Blackketter Aleksandr Revzin Chris P. Eric Boyd Dave Sealy y