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Session 35 – 2021-09-11

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Session Summary

Tonight, we began where Haldar left off last week, near the bottom of a 300 foot spiral and gently sloping tunnel. Misty was a little ways behind him and the rest of the party was quite a bit further behind, not wanting to hinder his ability to sneak around in the dark. All the while, a constant thrumming sound droned on around him. Something akin to a heartbeat. He slowly made his way into a large cave with some sort of pool of liquid on the far end and root tendrils hanging down from the dirt and rock that make up the ceiling. These must have something to do with the Guilthias tree somewhere above us.

While he was looking around, the rest of us got closer and entered the room behind him. Rinn used a mage hand to touch the tendrils, wanting to see how they would react to being touched. When nothing happened, Misty braved moving forward and pushing the tendrils out of her way with her hands, getting the gooey mess on her skin. Haldar moved forward with her and the rest of the party followed close behind. After some 30ft or so, a larger root reached out from the tendrils and attempted to grasp Haldar, it succeeded but not for long. A battle ensued and very quickly Haldar was able to free himself.

He put some distance between he and the root and launched a barrage of arrows into it. Misty, moved in to hand-to-hand combat with it and the rest of the party moved forward to attack. While we were focused on this one root, and hearing some blurping sounds coming from the pool, another root attacked Haldar from behind. It attempted to pull or draw him into the pool but he escaped it’s grasp. After a moment, a black pudding creature came out of the pool and moved on Haldar. This battle was growing quite quickly. The party split and focused on the roots, Dain recognized the black puddings and made it a point to let everyone know to put away their slashing weapons, this is a job for bashing and piercing weapons.

From the pool rose a large creature that seemed to be responsible for the thrumming sound that was pervasive in this area. The party turned it’s attention to that creature next and wailed on it. The creature, after taking a good beating, shrank back into the pool and vanished from sight. As it did, more black puddings came out of the water. We turned back to the roots that were before us and the puddings. As we took down the first root, Adrian got too close to the other root which took him and threw him into the pool which turned out to be acid.

Rinn threw the end of a rope to Adrian but before he could reach it, he was pulled under. We continued battling the root and the puddings and eventually wiped them out. Rinn, not being sure if Adrian was alive or dead, opted to attempt to save him. He threw his end of the rope to Dain and holding the other end, jumped in to the acid. He managed to grab onto something that was moving and tried to move toward the shore. Dain and Misty pulled them ashore and Rinn started using Prestidigitation to remove the acid and prevent further damage, although, at this point, they were both near death. Some energy from the pool hit them both again but Kyana had applied just enough healing to keep them alive. Rinn grabbed Adrian and carried him even further away from the pool, and the additional damage they were taking stopped. He kept cleaning them both while Kyana applied healing across the party.

Snoggly started throwing fire bolts into the pool but nothing emerged to retaliate. Kyana used the Amulet of Raven Kind to bring forth sunlight. Seeing how this creature existed in darkness and even displayed some of the characteristics of vampirism, she thought it have an impact. She moved around the pool from one side to the other until the creature was finally forced to surface to deal with it. It didn’t live long after that. After it’s death, the pool stopped generating Black Puddings. The thrumming stopped as well. The party healed and did a short rest rest before continuing on. Searching the cavern, they found nothing else. They determined that killing the roots was going to be an impossible task and Zanfyr stated that if we are successful in returning the light to this land, after ending Strahd, then the Guithias tree would likely no longer be a problem.

We backed out of this cave and made our way back to the main room where we turned our attention to the only path left: we made our way down that path to a room with piles of individual animal bones placed around the outer walls and a pedestal with a gleaming cup on it. After looking at it from a distance, we backed away and spread out and Rinn attempted to use his mage hand to retrieve it. A noise grew and three of the bone piles rose up and became flaming skulls. It was at this time that we stopped.

Next week, we will be roasted!