The line-up for this game was three people. Sir Clinkerton, a Gnome Artificer with an Eldritch Cannon, and a Cockney accent. A bronze Dragonborn paladin/Storm Sorcerer fashioned after Beta Ray Bill, named Battle-Bay Bail. Finally, there's me, Lana Buckwheat, a female Halfling Ranger, and her beast companion Corvis, a bull wearing scale male.
We went to this small village around Hallow's Eve. This village holds this holiday sacred, for a morbid reason. Each year, one nail per family is driven into an old tree, and left there until the next Hallow's Eve. On that day, the village seer removes the nails, and catches the sap in individual buckets, one per family. Once the lifeblood of the old tree is gathered in each bucket, the village seer carefully weighs each bucket, and whichever contains the most sap, that family is the most Hallowed of all. It is not a good thing to be pronounced Hallowed, however. As is tradition, the pronounced family must then choose one of their children, and that child has one year to stay in the village. At the end of that year, the Hallowed child is taken into the forest surrounding the village, to a stone well. The children are then lowered into the well in the woods, and left there as a sacrifice for the dark powers that threaten the village. With each sacrifice, the village is protected and spared for another year. Thus has been the deal for many years.
Here's where the party comes in. At the start of all of this, we're level 6, and each with max health and one magic item. Sir Clinkerton and I have Luckstones, and Battle-Bay Bail has a Cloak of Protection.
We were drawn by stories of the well in the woods, and came to investigate on our own. This year, instead of sending a child to be sacrificed, the village sent our group to look into the well. We arrive at the well, and the surrounding forest is dark, and does not seem happy with our presence. As we watch and examine the well, the sun touches the horizon, but is stopped from setting. As we notice this, we see a door appear at the bottom of the well, a door made of old wood and decorated with gold filigree. Sir Clinkerton spots a form off in the distance, and identifies it as a centaur. I look over to it, and notice that the centaur is corrupted, its form plagued with wisps of shadow. The centaur ignores any attempts to talk with it, so we lose interest and decide to go down the well, Sir Clinkerton fashioning a harness and pulley-system to get Corvis to the bottom.
We examine the door, and discover that it is not trapped or locked, but it is quite heavy. Battle-Bay Bail manages to open the door, with Corvis helping, and we enter a long dirt tunnel that stretches for roughly 200 feet. Sir Clinkerton and I are able to move without issue, the tunnel is a bit of a tight fit for Battle-Bay Bail, but poor Corvis was a large creature, and had to squeeze through the tunnel.
Our progress was stopped when we heard what sounded like a waterfall down the tunnel. I made a Nature roll, and discovered that the noise wasn't a waterfall, but hundreds of small scurrying creatures. Sir Clinkerton, the only one who had darkvision, was able to look ahead and see that the scurrying was caused by hundreds of rats heading right for us. The four swarms of rats ended up looking more intimidating than they ended up being, and after two rounds of combat, we had defeated the rats and continued down the tunnel.
We came to a room with a giant hourglass in the center, a ragged carpet in front of the hourglass, an old vanity with a broken mirror, and a window with a curtain covering it, and a sign saying "Fortune, 1 silver". Along with all of this mysterious furniture, there were also several small bushes in the room, but we were too distracted to question these.
I went to investigate the vanity, Sir Clinkerton looked at the hourglass, and Battle-Bay Bail checked out the window. Sir Clinkerton succeeded in an Intelligence roll to examine the hourglass, and deduced that it was magic, and that we had two hours before it was empty. We theorized that we only had two hours before we were trapped in this dungeon, as Sir Clinkerton had figured out that the well in the woods had transported us into the Feywild, so we started to feel pressed for time immediately.
At the vanity, I discovered that the broken mirror was enchanted to show, not the true image of whoever looked into it, but the person as old and decrepit. This gave me the morbid thought that this would be the only time the poor sacrificed kids would be able to see themselves grow old, but I pushed off the thought and ended up finding two cards, one under a table leg and one in the vanity drawer. The cards were made of ivory, and decorated with gold. Sir Clinkerton cast Identify on them, and we discovered that they were cards from the Deck of Many Things. This immediately made us wary of the cards, and we decided to not risk activating them.
Unfortunately, before we could go any further, Battle-Bay Bail got curious of the rug in the room, and poked it with his glaive. Immediately, the DM called for him, myself, and Corvis to make Con saves as a cloud of yellow spores erupted from the rug. Battle-Bay Bail and Corvis failed, taking 17 poison damage and gaining the poisoned condition. I passed, due to being a Stout Halfling and having advantage on the roll, and only took 8 damage for the same reason. Right then, four of the shrubs in the room suddenly revealed themselves to be Twig Blights, ambushing us and getting in a few good hits, and even knocking Corvis unconscious. I managed to heal my battle-cow with a level 1 Cure Wounds, and due to some horrible rolls on the Twig Blight's end, we defeated them in one more round.
Finally, after all of this, Battle-Bay Bail decided to pay a silver coin to the window, which ended up being like those fortune-teller kiosks at carnivals. The window slid open, revealing a small skeleton lit by a ghostly white light, the skeleton slumped on a table. As the window opened, the skeleton took the silver coin, and straightened up, giving a creepy laugh. It looked right at Battle-Bay Bail, and it said in a creepy high-pitched voice:
"If you die here, your soul will be trapped here forever. Don't die."
It then slid a familiar ivory and gold card to Battle-Bay Bail through the window, before slumping back onto the table, the curtains closing over the window again. The DM told him that, because he got it from the fortuneteller, he could roll a d10 twice to see what he got, and choose which result he wanted. This player was always the risk-taker, so he excitedly used the card and rolled his dice. The results of his rolls was Balance and Key, and he chose Key. After a moment, the DM gave him a Dwarven Thrower, but because he wanted to complete the Beta Ray Bill look of the character, he was negating the part about how the hammer was only attunable by dwarves. Thus, the Battle-Bay Thrower was born, and immediately attuned to its weilder. Encouraged by this, both I and Sir Clinkerton decide to use our own cards. I also ended up with Key, and after the DM asked me my weapon preference between melee or ranged, I obtained a Vorpal Scimitar, which was a nice complement to my shortsword and my Two-Weapon fighting style, as Lana was a melee Ranger. Vorpal blades have a +3 to attack and damage, and ignore resistance against slashing damage. On top of that, if you roll a Natural 20 against an opponent with this blade, you immediately chop off their head. If they only have one head, and they need it to survive, that's an instant-kill. If they don't need the head to live, than they still take about 6d8 additional damage.
Sir Clinkerton was the last one to activate his card, but instead of another magic weapon, he ended up rolling the Fate card, which allowed him to reset a single event that happens to us. We were all happy with our rolls, and with this room cleared, we decide to move on through the only available door left to us, as the one we had come through had shut and magically locked.
Before we could continue, the ghost of a little girl phased through the door we were about to open, a large hole in her chest and her white satin nightgown stained with blood. She saw us and immediately began this very creepy laugh, and the DM called for me alone to make a Constitution save, as Battle-Bay Bail's Paladin abilities kept him immune to disease, and this apparently didn't affect Gnomes specifically. I passed just fine, and we moved past the girl and into the next room.
In this room, we were standing in front of a massive ball pit that took up a majority of the room. The massive ball pit was filled with baseball-sized wooden balls that were painted different colors, there was a curtain of vines that partially blocked our line of sight to the other side, and in front of the pit was a sign. "Ball Pit. Enjoy at your own risk."
We were immediately suspicious of a trap, and the Battle-Bay Thrower was thrown into the vines to test for ambushes or traps. As luck would have it, the Thrower struck a hiding monster in the face, and a large plant monster became visible to us, angered at the sudden attack. We roll for initiative, but again, it was all over in about a round or two, due to good rolls on our end and terrible rolls for the monster.
Because the ball pit was 3 feet deep, Sir Clinkerton and I hopped onto Corvis and rode into the ball pit while Battle-Bay Bail waded in ahead of us. I fired an arrow into the second curtain of vines we found, finding no monster on the other side, but Battle-Bay Bail ended up sinking into some quicksand that was hidden by the balls. He didn't manage to roll high enough to get himself out, so I threw him my rope and tied the other end to Corvis, the bull managing to roll a high enough Strength check to pull the Dragonborn to solid ground.
Since the area of quicksand stretched across the pit, there was no way to get around it, Sir Clinkerton cast Spider Climb on himself, got out his climber's kit, and began making us a line of rope secured to the wall, so that we could pull ourselves along the wall without falling into the quicksand. As he got halfway across, another plant monster burst from the ball pit, having avoided my arrow because it had hidden under the balls. Despite setting a good ambush, and me being reduced to my much-less effective bow due to the quicksand, the battle was once again over in one or two rounds, due to good rolls.
Full of confidence, we managed to cross the pit, with Sir Clinkerton rolling a 30 on his tinkering tools to fashion a zipline to get Corvis across. As we were about to go through the door, a little ghost boy stepped through it, and his creepy cackling caused me to make another Con save. This time, the dice weren't on my side, and I contracted something known as Cackling Fever. It was a disease that affected all humanoids except for Gnomes, and the infected person took one immediate level of exhaustion, and if they ever came under stress, like entering combat or taking damage, they were incapacitated by fits of giggling. Thankfully, Battle-Bay Bail cured me of the disease with his Lay on Hands, just as he had cured his own poisoned condition earlier, and while the level of exhaustion stuck, the disease was purged from my system.
After infecting me, the ghost boy turned into a will-o-wisp and began to float to the ceiling. Battle-Bay Bail and Sir Clinkerton attacked it quickly, and it faded away. We then went into the next room, which had a screen covering the left side of the room, and a ladder leading up to a catwalk where we heard more children giggling. I, being the only one that can get infected with the Cackling Fever, decided to stay behind while the boys investigated. While they were gone, I looked to all of the shrubs around the room, and shot an arrow at each one to test if they were a monster. Yes, the DM had managed to make the Ranger distrust plants. None of the plants were monsters, so I investigated the screen. On the other side was a room with two wardrobes, a wooden stool, and a Dunce hat on the ground next to the stool. To my left was a sliding door, which is what I went to investigate. I cracked open the door, peeking in to see a dressing room. The mirrors were all cracked and covered in cobwebs, and there was a necklace on a peg. I didn't want to potentially trigger any traps without some back-up, so I returned to the main room and waited for the boys.
The boys had gone up the ladder to find that the spot closest to them had a long, solid-copper slide, and the catwalk led to a loft bedroom with two ghost girls playing dress-up. Sir Clinkerton managed to get their attention and asked them about what was going on. The girls didn't know much, but they told him that they were taken care of by some woman they called 'Nana', a thin older woman with a satin gown and with long nails. When asked where she was, the girls pointed to the slide, and the boys nodded in understanding. That was where we needed to go next, but first, they searched the room. They found three potions of healing, two of them Greater, a wreath bracelet that had three charges, each charge granting the wearer the benefits of a short rest immediately, a vial of basic poison, two masks, and another ivory card. This one, we didn't activate, and the boys came back downstairs to meet up with me.
I told them of what I found, and Sir Clinkerton went to investigate the room. As soon as he stepped into the dressing room, he activated a pressure plate, and a loud bang sounded out. We all expected a trap, but instead of an explosion, confetti rained down from the ceiling. Oh, by the way, through this entire dungeon, the ceiling was covered in hundreds of will-o-wisps, which simply drifted along across the ceiling and never bothered us, but each one of those was a sacrificed child's soul…
With the confetti-bomb triggered, Sir Clinkerton examined the necklace, which was a mundane item, but it was worth 250 gold. Sweet! He took the necklace and left the room, only to hear the pressure plate reset itself. Excited to trigger the confetti-bomb again, he stepped on the plate again… only for the DM to call for a Dexterity save from him. He rolled poorly, and the DM described how the glass from the broken mirrors suddenly extends on mechanical arms, slicing him up for 32 slashing damage. He limped out of the room, hearing the plate reset, but wasn't keen to step on it again.
With that done, Sir Clinkerton went to investigate the wardrobes. In one, he found a pamphlet, and upon reading it, it told him of a specific blade, just before exploding and dealing a bunch of electricity damage to the whole party. We all recovered from that, and he went to the second wardrobe, which ended up being a secret door to a small room with a Potion of Magic Resistance. He took the vial, triggering another trap, but this one simply poured harmless green slime on his head.
Just before we head to the slide, we decide to investigate the dunce hat. After putting it on a mannequin we found, we discovered that the hat was enchanted so that, if you wear it and are not sitting on a stool, the hat envelops your head, suffocating you while also grinding you up. We left the hat behind and went back to the slide, again fashioning a pulley-system to get Corvis up the ladder.
Sir Clinkerton attempted to use the last of his Spider Climb to scout out the slide, but the DM told him that the slide was too long and he'd run out of his spell before then, and then said that the slide is roughly a mile long. We all decide 'fudge it', and we all slide down the slide. About halfway down, the DM calls for a Dexterity save from all of us, with disadvantage. We all make our rolls, and the lowest is a 5 by Battle-Bay Bail, but we hear the DM breathe a sigh of relief. He then describes how, as we travel down the slide at full-speed, we see a flash of what looked like a piece of the copper slide broken above us, and informs us that if we had rolled a natural 1, that the broken piece combined with our speed down the slide would mean an insta-death by decapitation. Thankfully, we reach the end of the slide without any further issue, and we get a look at the final area of the dungeon.
It was a large, haunted carnival. The ground was divided into two colors, green and black. On the left was the remains of a knife-throwing stand, with ghost-children playing hopscotch among many abandoned weapons. On the other side was a carnival stand, like where one would buy tickets for the various games. In the center of the area was a large orb that looked more like a black hole, with ghost children and will-o-wisps circled around it, the children playing Duck-Duck-Goose. On the other side of the orb from us was a large mechanical spider, which had a string on one of its legs that it was using to slowly lower a hog-tied dryad closer and closer to the orb while she screamed in terror. As we watched, a Gnome in a jester outfit suddenly lifted up from the ground and turned to us. The left side of his head was black, and held the same empty void as the orb before us, and he had an insane cackle as he greeted us to the carnival.
I ignored the jester and set about trying to find a way to free the dryad, but the boys stopped me. They had kept the masks they had found earlier, and the masks gave them True Sight, which allowed them to see that all the carnival stuff was an illusion. The gnome jester was an illusion, all but one of the weapons on the ground were illusions, and the dryad was actually a Night Hag readying an ambush. When she saw that they could see through her illusion, she dropped it and went ethereal, giving us two rounds of prep.
Sir Clinkerton attacked the spider with Firebolts and his Eldritch Cannon, discovering that the creature was resistant to magic, while Battle-Bay Bail and I went after the hag. I let off my held Hunter's Mark on her, and charged in on Corvis to attack her with my blades while Battle-Bay Bail throw his Battle-Bay Thrower at her. We managed to do some damage to her, but then she sacrificed one of the children's souls to cast a 4th level Lightning Bolt, hitting all three of us. The blast hurt us a good chunk, and Corvis was unconscious again, but managed to get back up by rolling a natural 20 on his death save when our turn came around. On Sir Clinkerton's turn, he went for the one non-illusion sword on the field, which was a greatsword. Immediately, the hag sacrificed another child's soul to cast a fourth level Hold Person on all three of us. Sir Clinkerton and Battle-Bay Bail failed their saves, rendering them paralyzed, but I passed, and Corvis was immune since he wasn't a humanoid. With Corvis back up, I instructed him to take the Dodge action, and then dismounted him and circled around the hag to flank with him. Then, I unleashed three melee attacks on the hag, all at advantage, and even managed to crit her on one hit. Sadly, the crit wasn't with my Vorpal Blade, but between the blades and Hunter's Mark, I did an even 50 points of damage to her in that one round alone.
She was heavily injured at this point, and as I had gone weedwacker on her back, she had lost concentration on Hold Person. Clearly, she was afraid of this blade, so Sir Clinkerton continued on to the sword, grabbing it and pulling it out of the small skeleton it was imbedded in. The second he did that, the hag suddenly got a terrified look on her face, and she actually turned and ran for the orb, intending to kill herself. Battle-Bay Bail and I cut her down before she could get there, and we turned to watch what had scared her take form.
As it turns out, that sword was keeping a very powerful entity pinned and imprisoned on that spot, an undead Gnome wizard named One-Eyed Jack. He was a 15th level spellcaster with Disintegrate, Hold Person, Feeblemind, Otto's Irresistible Dance, and other powerful spells. By pulling the sword free, we had freed him to return to the realms, and he was not a merciful being, aside from his intention to save Sir Clinkerton for last, because he had freed him. This was who the hag had been terrified of, to the point that she tried to kill herself so she wouldn't have to deal with him.
The party was panicking at this point as One-Eyed Jack rolled initiative and readied a Disintegrate for one of us. We were level 6, and there was no way we could fight someone this powerful! I was completely convinced that we were about to TPK, and braced myself for it… before Sir Clinkerton suddenly cried out "I use my Fate's card to make it so I never pulled the sword free!"
We were all stunned for a second. We'd completely forgotten about the Fate card he'd pulled at the beginning of the dungeon! The shock wore off quickly, and the DM described how the card suddenly reappeared, and time slowed down and stopped, before going in reverse back to the point that the sword was pulled free. The sword was imbedded in the ground again, having never been pulled, and One-Eyed Jack was imprisoned again.
With that heart-attack dealt with, we made quick work of the giant spider, and the DM read us our Good Ending epilogue: where, for a time, we thought that we were forever trapped in this realm, which was a blend of Feywild and Shadowfell, and how we awaited insanity and death to take us. After a moment, we heard something coming from the slide, and we went to investigate, only to find a dwarf decked out in climbing gear staring back at us. He helped us out through the slide, which opened back up to the well, and the villagers gathered around us in relief. It was the dead of night now, and the once-hostile forest was now peaceful and calm. We learned that it had been a full year since we had gone down into that well, and after many thanks from the villagers, we collapsed into beds, and we ended our adventure on watching the sun rise over the horizon, and having never seen such a beautiful sight.
[zombify_post]
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