Heather Under Moonlight

Session 21, 28/10/2025

Last session for a little while. It's a good one, and I've got some schemes when we're back, which you may be able to guess from the description of this session.

Last time, the party were standing in a doorway, opposed by a gaggle of ghouls held back by their paladin. Her player wasn't here today, but we let the situation stand as it stood at that time; the party waited and threw rocks and darts at the ghouls until they fled, unable to fight them.

They loot the temple ruin the ghouls were hiding in, seizing a few hundred gold pieces but leaving a statue in place; then, searching the rooms around, find a cannibal "larder" of human corpses hung up by chains for the ghouls to eat later, as well as an old storeroom with a couple hundred gold pieces and a Grey Ooze. The ooze fails to ambush Celebrindel and, slowly moving forward, the party kills it; most of the gold is destroyed, but the party still get some.

Finally, having cleared out the entire area not overrun by the Jubilexites, the party go to oppose the Jubilexites. Relimi has Animated a number of kobold zombies (only 1 HD!) and given them boxes with Glyphs of Warding on them; the party, with these creatures following them, advance against the Jubilex cultists. They cross the dungeon, avoid some giant ants, and come to a great pair of double doors at the corridor where they fought with the Jubilexites last time. The kobolds are sent forward with bombs in hand, and the party closes the doors behind them; the Jubilexites, formed up for battle, are torn to pieces by the explosions.

The party waits a little while on the other side of the doors. Hearing people moving around beyond them, they set Alamut and Celebrindel behind each door, and wait for their foemen to come through.

A pair of Slime Children (Olive Slime Creatures originally, but I forgot my Fiend Folio the first time the party came this way so had to make some shit up lol - they're 4HD creatures which do 2d4 damage each round they grapple you) emerge from the doors and are swiftly backstabbed by the two killers. Seeing more Jubilexites beyond the door, Nissa Webs the passage to dissuade pursuit while the party finishes off the Slime Children - then they run like hell back to Hydra Lake and the boat.

The party returns to Tor through the swamp. On the last day of travel, they're ambushed by Holdmen raiders - just a bunch of zero-levels, and they hack through the bulk of them quickly enough. Seven skirmishers off the right bank flee into the swamp. When the party returns to Tor, the assassin realizes that he's undergoing a dreadful transformation, his skin turning grey and clammy; the mermaid statue that we determined he probably took last time was cursed! He turns into a fishman, requiring a pint of water each hour to avoid land-drowning and being able to breathe underwater and resist greater pressures in the ocean.

That's where we left things last time :) Exam season for me, so the first session back will probably be on the 18th; and then the university we're playing at locks all the buildings during December, so we might take an extended break then. Thank you to everyone who has read my session reports, all the RPG spaces I hang out in, my players for this group, and of course my much-beloved Sunday Night group, heroes of the First Battle of Kelling (where Lucius held, against the odds, his bridge to the death,) slayers of General Sextus, and liberators of the great Needle mountain from demonic evil.