Session 9 — Showdown with Auntie Bloat¶
The party took advantage of a peaceful bonfire in the swamp to rest before committing to the lair. Then they went in through the drainage tunnel, and did not come out for a long time.
The Otyugh¶
The first room was a cesspool fed by the runoff pipe. Almost immediately the party felt something trying to open a telepathic link into their heads.
An otyugh rose out of the sludge — a mass of tentacles and teeth, and by its own account the resident of this lair right up until Auntie Bloat took the place over. The change of ownership hadn't much bothered it. Nothing about how it lived in this little section had changed.
It asked for meat in exchange for safe passage.
The party still had pig meat from the thunder-root boars out in the swamp. The trade was made, and they walked past it to the door beyond.
The birdcage¶
Crying, from somewhere in the next room.
The sound came from a birdcage in the center of the floor, surrounded by hundreds of jars of ingredients for witches' brews. Whatever was crying inside it could not be seen.
Among the shelves: a key. The cage had a lock. Fenro used mage hand to work it from a safe distance, and the door swung open.
The crying stopped. Something warm and gentle brushed past the party on its way out, and left them a piece of advice.
What the presence said
"She eats shame. Laugh at her and she hates it. Forgive yourself and she starves."
That earned the party advantage on a future attack against Auntie Bloat herself.
The harvesting room¶
The next door opened on the worst thing in the lair.
Villagers strapped to beds. A feeding tube at one end of each, a gas collection tube at the other. This was where the abductions had been going — where the fog actually comes from.
Standing over them: a cadre of overseers. Boloti, lizard-like things each wrapped in a shell of moving water, and above them a squat frog-cat-dog thing — a mudmutt — whose vocal sac was swelling larger by the second.
The party had to move fast. They threw an illusion into the middle of the room, and the distraction bought them the opening they needed.
Arthas was caught in the watery grasp of a boloti and began drowning inside it. The team cut the overseers down quickly. The mudmutt opened its mouth and released a sonic croak that sent everyone diving for cover — and then it went down too.
Niko healed the villagers. In thanks, they promised 100gp each on the party's return to Bellhollow.
Something else happened
The moment the prisoners were freed, a buzz of electricity shot through the air. Just for an instant.
The party felt it. Nobody knew what it was.
The Pantry of Small Mercies¶
Behind the next door: hundreds of jars, each labeled with a small act of kindness that Auntie Bloat had been unable to digest.
Holding the door. Giving up your seat.
She feeds on the negative. These she could take, but never swallow.
Each member of the party chose one jar, and each one carried a benefit they could spend in the fights ahead.
The door that moved¶
Leaving the pantry, the party stepped back into the room with the captives — as expected.
Then they opened the door they had just come through, and it no longer led to the pantry.
It led to a room full of bullywugs sorting thunder-root deliveries.
Where did that door come from, and why did it only appear once?
The party charged. They lobbed a thunder root into the room, detonating a crate and killing three bullywugs outright. The rest broke ranks and fled to the far wall, where they were quickly cut down.
The ogre at the door¶
Then came a heavy knocking on the large door at the end of the room — the lair's original main entrance, which the party had bypassed entirely.
They prepared for the worst and set a trap, stacking every thunder root they had against the front door.
The door broke open. An ogre stood there, looked at the dead bullywugs, looked at the trap, and made a decision.
It chose to live another day.
The Souring Still¶
Backtracking to the captives' room, the party found a small service door set into the gas-collection machinery.
Behind it: a room heavy with fog.
Fenro went in alone, invisible from his pantry jar, and found the source of everything. Distillery equipment condensing the harvested gas into the poison smog that has been blanketing the entire swamp. A lever sat within reach that would sabotage the whole apparatus.
He also found he wasn't alone. A vapor lynx and four steam mephits were in the room with him, and none of them could see him.
The dilemma: shut the still down without drawing attention.
Fenro used mage hand to throw the lever from across the room.
The still is dead
The distillery stopped. The poison smog has no source anymore.
And the party felt that same electric buzz, just for a moment.
The holding pens¶
The doorway into the distillery was no longer a doorway into the distillery.
It opened instead onto a holding pen — more captives, these ones not hooked up to the collection equipment. Bloat's reserve.
The key from the birdcage room opened their shackles.
Sixteen people saved.
The dining hall¶
Leaving the pens, the door didn't go back where it should have. It opened into a grand dining hall.
A long banquet table, fully laid. Food set out. And Auntie Bloat's voice, somewhere in the room.
"Welcome, I've set the table just for you..."
Each member of the party felt themselves called, quietly and persuasively, to sit down and eat.
Every one of them resisted.
What would have happened
The feast was poisoned. Nobody at the table ever found out.
The hall was also hung with paintings — one for each member of the party, each showing them going about their business with Auntie Bloat standing directly behind them, laughing.
Arthas took particular offense and destroyed them with eldritch blast, much to Auntie Bloat's disappointment.
The anchor chamber¶
Through the grand doors at the far end, a vast cavern.
At its center, a giant pillar pulsating with power. The planar anchor.
Auntie Bloat floated beside it in all her grotesqueness, wrapped in a noxious aura, with ten gremlins ranged around her, each carrying a bow. The middle of the room was a pit of sludge — difficult terrain — with a walkway running safely around the outside.
The fight¶
The party charged. Gerald's fire arrows burned several gremlins off the board immediately. Arthas summoned two skeletal minions.
And Vashkultha made good on her promise — one of her wyrmlings came up through a vent to join the fight.
Bloat closed on Arthas and began hitting him with a ladle the size of a greatclub. The party focused everything on her.
Then she turned around.
The gas
Auntie Bloat released a cloud of noxious gas from her backside that covered the entire party.
Gerald fell immediately. Niko was in grave danger.
The surviving gremlins then took aim at Niko, in retribution for the fireball he'd thrown earlier. Two arrows found him, and he went down too.
Two party members unconscious. Bloat winding up for another cloud that would almost certainly finish the rest.
The jar¶
Then somebody remembered the pantry.
One of the jars held a small mercy: it let a character later in the initiative order jump the line and attack immediately.
Krunk took it. Raging, axe out, a flurry of attacks — and Auntie Bloat went down.
The Molar, and the deal¶
With the dust settled, the party found the Crooked Molar lodged in the planar anchor itself.
They pulled it free, and it began resonating with the Saint's Splinter.
That meant something. It also meant a problem: the Molar was promised to Vashkultha, and it had just revealed itself to be part of something larger.
They destroyed the anchor and left the lair.
Vash was waiting for them — her wyrmling had already reported.
She asked for the deal to be completed. Arthas parleyed: a portion of the party's own gold as a deposit, in exchange for holding onto the Molar a while longer, with the tooth returned once they were finished with it. He argued the Molar might be the key to something bigger than Bellhollow.
He was convincing. Vash took the money and agreed to the new terms.
Still owed
The deal isn't cancelled. It's deferred, and now partly paid.
The mayor of two swamps¶
Before leaving, Fenro returned to Bellhollow to confirm he was still mayor.
He then travelled to Mirewick and collected that town's rather less impressive sash as well.
De facto mayor of two swamp villages.
Back to the temple¶
The portal that brought them here was open again. They stepped through and found themselves back at Urmon's Temple — a sight none of them had seen in months.
Urmon had news. Two additional portals had opened while they were gone.
One showed a town beneath a volcano, which the party identified as Emberdale from the documents recovered in the Surveyor's Sepulcher. The other was Fetchford, a seemingly idyllic farming town.
After some debate, they went head first into Emberdale.
Arrival¶
It felt warm as they stepped through.
Then they came out the other side into freezing cold.
Snowflakes fall in symmetrical patterns — the same geometry the party last saw in a Phandalin turned white.
A path leads up the volcano, lined with lanterns.
Halfway up, the lanterns stop being lit.
Where does the planar anchor hide in this land? Will they enter the town and look for clues?
Next time on The Lost Realms of Mt Prospect.
What changed¶
- Auntie Bloat is dead.
- The first planar anchor is destroyed.
- The distillery is sabotaged — the swamp's poison fog has no source.
- 16 villagers freed. 100gp each promised on return to Bellhollow.
- The Crooked Molar recovered, from inside the anchor itself.
- It resonates with the Saint's Splinter.
- The Vash deal renegotiated — deposit paid, Molar retained for now.
- Fenro is mayor of both Bellhollow and Mirewick.
- Two new portals are open: Emberdale and Fetchford.
- The party is in Emberdale, and it is snowing.
Loose ends¶
- Doors moved three times, each right after the party cost Bloat something. Nobody has explained the electric buzz.
- The Molar and the Splinter react to each other. Two of something. How many are there?
- Vashkultha is still owed the Molar, and now has a financial stake in it coming back.
- The ogre walked away and is still out there.
- The snowflakes in Emberdale are Diamabel's geometry. He was here before the party arrived.
- The lanterns up the volcano stop halfway.