Auntie Bloat's Lair

Cleared

Where the fog was made, and where the first planar anchor was broken.

The way in

They didn't use the front door.

The runoff pipe is the secret entrance, and something was waiting in it: a venom elemental, three shadows, and a shambling mound.

The elemental's damage resistance cost the party tempo, which let the mound close to melee before anyone could react. It engulfed Fenro and Gerald. Fenro escaped with misty step. Gerald went down.

Krunk finished it with Hew.

What they brought with them

• The fog reduced, thanks to the brass valve
• The Saint's Splinter
• Gas masks from Chuk
• Beads of protection from the Frog Choir
• A long rest, taken at a bonfire in the swamp before going in

The rooms

Room	What was in it
The drainage sump	An otyugh, the lair's original resident. Paid off with pig meat.
The cage room	Something invisible, crying in a locked birdcage. Freed with a key from the shelves.
The harvesting room	Villagers strapped to beds, tubes at both ends. Boloti overseers and a mudmutt.
The pantry	Hundreds of jars, each labeled with a small kindness she could not digest.
The sorting room	Bullywugs counting thunder-root deliveries. And an ogre at the main door.
The distillery	The still itself, guarded by a vapor lynx and four steam mephits.
The holding pens	More captives, not yet hooked up to anything.
The dining hall	A poisoned banquet, and a painting of each party member with her laughing behind them.
The anchor chamber	Her, the pillar, ten gremlins, and a pit of sludge.

The doors that moved

Three times, the party opened a door and found somewhere they hadn't been — and each time it happened immediately after they'd cost her something.

The pattern

Freed the harvested villagers → a buzz of electricity, and the pantry appeared.

Sabotaged the distillery → the same buzz, and the way back became the holding pens.

Emptied the pens → the door opened on the dining hall.

Nobody has explained the buzz. Each room was reachable exactly once.

What the pantry gave them

Each party member took one jar. Fenro's held invisibility, which is how he walked into the distillery unseen and threw the sabotage lever with mage hand while a vapor lynx failed to notice him.

Another held a small mercy — the ability to jump the initiative order — and it is the reason anyone walked out of the anchor chamber.

The kindness in the cage

Whatever was locked in that birdcage was warm, gentle, and invisible. Freed, it brushed past the party and left them one piece of advice.

"She eats shame. Laugh at her and she hates it. Forgive yourself and she starves."

That earned them advantage on an attack against her.

The fight at the anchor

Ten gremlins with bows, a pit of sludge as difficult terrain, and a walkway around the outside.

Gerald's fire arrows cleared several gremlins immediately. Arthas raised two skeletal minions. Vashkultha made good on her promise — one of her wyrmlings came up through a vent and joined the fight.

Then Bloat turned around and released a cloud of noxious gas that dropped Gerald outright. The surviving gremlins put two arrows into Niko, in retribution for an earlier fireball, and he went down as well.

With a second cloud coming, Krunk used the pantry jar to jump the initiative order, raged, and finished her.

What was found here

Two of something

The Crooked Molar was lodged in the planar anchor itself.

Pulled free, it began resonating with the Saint's Splinter.

• 16 villagers freed across the harvesting room and the holding pens
• The distillery sabotaged — the swamp's fog has no source anymore
• The first planar anchor destroyed
• An ogre looked at the room, looked at the trap, and left

Maps