The One Where Everyone’s Socks Get Wet
Iliana surfaces and yells to the party that one of the “mermaids” managed to escape. The party all dives into the pool, except for Purple. Purple being a sentient piece of candy cannot go into water (Player was absent from session), so he decided popped into a pocket realm and told us to call to him when we’re no longer “swimming”.
Swimming down into the pool and through the tunnel that Iliana saw the “mermaid” go through, we can only faintly see a blood trail, as its mostly dissipated in the water. The tunnel leads to a junction of multiple tunnels, one heading straight upwards. We investigate that tunnel first. Upon surfacing in a pool in there, we discover a collection of armor, weapons, gold, and gems. Linzu and I climb out of the pool and start going through everything. The rest of the group swim back down to the junction of the tunnels to try and find the remaining “mermaid”.
They enter another tunnel that no one noticed earlier, as it was in a darker corner of the junction room. This tunnel is much more narrow and can only fit a single person at a time. While they attempt to navigate the tunnel, Belladonna has a mild panic attack which causes her to exhale her held breathe and she starts to panic even more. She manages to find a small pocket of air at the top of the tunnel and is able to regain her composure and continue through the tunnel.
The party all manage to navigate the dark tunnel and surface in another pool in a large room. Faint, ragged breathing can be heard off in the darkness. Garian lights a torch, Mitsuku starts sniffing the air for the scent of blood. The sound appears to be coming from another tunnel in the room, thankfully this one was not underwater. The party starts to slowly approach this tunnel and enter it in single file. Mitsuku hands Belladonna an end of her rope and tells her this way she’ll be able to follow, as she was having trouble seeing in the dim light being towards the end of the line.
As they make their way through the tunnel, suddenly something quickly slithers past everyone’s legs, heading towards the end of the tunnel they just entered from. It bumps into Belladonna’s legs, which knocks her off balance. This does cause Mitsuku’s rope to get tugged, which gives Mitsuku an idea of where the creature is. She quickly draws her bow and fires off a miraculous shot that manages pass through the space between everyone and sink deep into the tail of the creature that was trying to flee and into the cave floor, causing the creature to become pinned right as it entered the large room with the pool. The party heads back into that room to see what it is.
The creature was the “mermaid”, but was now in its true form of being a siren. The party realizes that it cannot escape, so they start to interrogate it. The first thing they do is tie her up in ropes so that no one has to worry about her taking a swipe at them. The siren refuses to talk to us and wails about all of her sisters being dead now. Garian attempts to console her, and heals her slightly as a show of good will. Explains that the party was only protecting themselves, as her and her sisters were the ones who attack us first.
The siren, in response to being “consoled”, replies “Have any of you had your sisters brutally murdered in front of you?!”, to which Mitsuku replies, “Actually, yes.” Mitsuku gives the siren a piece of Turkantor meat to see if that calms her down at all. The siren sees it and very quickly reaches out and snatches it and starts to gnaw on it. In doing so, she drops a small amber pearl which Mitsuku quickly picks up. She starts to inspect it and notices what looks to be a small humanoid figure inside it. Thaskagh says “Does anyone here do magic?” to which Iliana sighs and said “Fucking bird…” as she dives back into the pool and starts swimming back to the treasure room.
While all this was going on, Linzu and I are still going through all the piles in the treasure room. Linzu pockets as much gold coins as he can find and comes across a large ruby. He presents it me, and I take it and put it into my pocket. I later find out that he was expecting me to check to see if it was magical in nature, not just giving it to me as a gift. While searching the room, I do find a pile of scrolls. I shove all of them into my bag. One of them does appear to magical in nature. Happy with my find, I start heading back towards the pool in the center of the room, while Linzu is still trying to find anything else that looks valuable. He does find a ornate letter opener with a sigil on it. He asks me if I recognize it, this time keeping his hand FIRMLY on the item he’s showing me. I tell him that I can detect some magic come from it, and that the sigil does look vaguely familiar and I think I saw it on a bottle recently. He tosses it in his pack and goes back to searching.
Iliana suddenly pops back up in the center of the pool as a giant octopus again and just grabs the two of us and pulls us into the water. She quickly brings us to the rest of the party. Once we are all back together, Mitsuku hands me the pearl and asks me what it is. I take a close look at it and start to remember Zesjra talking to another Drow about containment spells, which this appears to be. Looking very closely at the figure in the amber, I recognize it as Small, one of the leaders of Troupe De Termina. We question the siren about this and she says that she was not the one who trapped her, but her and her sisters were given the amber pearl to protect by “The large one, the one who laughs”.
Iliana says “We should kill her.” while staring directly at the siren. Garian replies, “There’s no practical purpose in killing her…”, to which Iliana quips back, “There’s no practical purpose in not killing her…”. We come to the decision to leave her alive. We toss some more food down by her to keep her distracted and loosen her robes a little bit so that she can eventually escape.
The whole group heads back to the treasure room together, and start inspecting the piles again. The druid manages to find an ornate dagger. Everyone in the party takes a few handfuls of gold coins that none of us recognize the sigils stamped into them. Hopefully the guild hall has a currency exchange. We dive back into the tunnels again and head back to the main pool and then head back out to the faire grounds.
We decide we should head to the bathroom area to see what is going on there. Mitsuku notices a small out of order sign near the entrance to the tent and gingerly places it on the corpse of one of the pirate guards who was at the entrance before we head off. We notice that the faire grounds seem to be more open at this point, and can now see the main, very large tent in the center. There are 5 lines of “Huzzahmbies” waiting to get into the main tent. We’re able to see the bathroom area and the entrance to an area that appears to have games and stages with entertainers. Thaskagh can hear a laughter coming from the main tent that sounds like the same voice he heard earlier when we were attempting to use the “staff portals” and he ended up in front of a red locked door. We make our way to the bathroom area.
We see three doors, labeled “He”,”She”,”Them”. Mitsuku goes into the one labelled “Them”, Iliana and Belladonna go into the one labelled “She”, and Garian, Thaskagh, Linzu, and myself go into the one labelled “He”. Inside all the bathrooms, there is wooden looking arm with a wooden looking hand. It also has a very fancy looking cufflink on. We recognize this as “Petyr”, the bathroom attendant. Mitsuku shakes the hand. Garian shakes the hand, but also tries to pull it “up, out into the open”, but all that happens is the arm gets longer. Mituku asks Petyr if its aware of the issues going on with the rest of the faire. It shakes in a “shrugging” motion. Mitsuku asks if it knows where Small, Medium, and Large are and it shrugs again. Garian ask if it knows anything about “the one who laughs”, and it withdraws a little bit and appears to be afraid. It withdraws back into the ground and comes back with a parchment map. On the map, there was a red arrow pointed at the main tent. Petyr pointed at it and made many “No” gestures, trying to warn us to stay away from that tent.
Thaskagh tips Petyr a gold piece. Petyr then goes back into the ground and comes back up and gives a fragment of a map, much like the others we have found already. Mitsuku asks if anything recently was added to the lost and found. He disappears and comes back and hands Iliana Peblet again. We decide we should head back to see Errrtor. We wander back to his tent with no interruptions. When we enter and walk up to Errrtor again, I noticed that one of the Huzzahmbies was watching us very intently. I point this out to the rest of the group, and when we all look back, a group of 10 of them stand and start to leave. In order to slow them down, I cast mold earth to cause the ground in front of the exit to become muddy and difficult to walk through. We hurry over to the group leaving, and I point out the one that was specifically watching us. Linzu sprints ahead and puts himself between the door and this specific Huzzahmbie and prevents him from going any further. The Huzzahmbie shoves Linzu down, but before he could exit, Garian grabs him. During the commotion, one of the laundry ladies comes back out from inside Errrtor and tries to hand something to Mitsuku, who stayed back by the stage. As she tries to do this, a ring of fire appears around Errrtor, trapping him and the laundry lady, and starts to burn impossibly hot. The mud golems all start to cry out and their bodies start to harden. While this is happening, every Huzzahmbie in the tent starts to laugh and their eyes turn red. The laughing picks up speed until eventually their heads explode. The ring of fire disappears, and we can see that Errrtor has been completely baked into extremely hard stone. The laundry lady is still partially sticking out of Errrtor, but in her last moments, clutched whatever she was trying to give to Mitsuku to her chest. It takes the combined strength of all of us to pry her hand away so we can see what she was trying to give us, and we only managed to break the hand off. The hand was still clasped closed, but we are able to just barely see that there is another amber pearl inside the fist. We take the hand with us.
Iliana, trying to bring Errrtor back to life, creates some water and mixes it with some of the dust near the bottom of Errrtor. She tries to smear the mud on the hand, but nothing happens, however, the mud starts to burble and forms into a small round mud golem. We name this one Mudlet and Iliana sets it on her shoulder and we take it with us.
We leave the tent, and head to the Games area that we saw earlier. We notice that there are more Huzzahmbies actively watching us now, opposed to earlier when they were just going about to the attractions. We see that all the games are run by goblins, and Mitsuku goes up and tries to talk to one of them in their language. They speak for a while, and when he tries to flirt with her, she flashes her smile of shark teeth. The goblin she was talking to completely changes his demeanor towards her and is much more rude. Thaskagh notices an axe throwing game and wants to give it a try. I follow him over to the booth, and while he’s getting ready, I detected that the axes are enchanted so that they always miss their target. I modify this enchantment so that they never miss their target and always hit a bullseye. The goblin running the stand doesn’t notice, and Thaskagh throws the first axe and buries it deep in the bullseye. The goblin running the game is shocked and says “Beginners luck, I bet you can’t do that again.” Thaskagth throws the second axe and it also hits the bullseye. The goblin is annoyed and shoves the third axe at Thaskagh, who throws it and gets a third bullseye. The goblin, who is angry at this point, looks over at me. I look at him and say “Magic is fun, isn’t it?”. The goblin tells Thaskagh that he needs to actually make 4 bullseyes to win a prize, and gives him another axe. The goblin and I are both trying to maintain our enchantments on the axe, and I manage to keep mine in place and Thaskagh gets the fourth bullseye.
The goblin, visibly pissed off, trys to leave, but Thaskagh picks him up and says “I believe you mentioned a prize.” The goblin gives up and says, “Fine, what do you want as a prize?”. I pull out the small amber pearl that has Small in it and ask “Got any of these?” The goblin is visibly startled and demands to know where we got that from. We explain that one of the “mermaids” “gave” it to us. The goblin runs off before anyone can grab him and yells back “I’m getting security!”. Thaskagh smiles and leans on his weapon, waiting.
Mitsuku chases after the goblin and eventually finds where he stopped, and he’s talking through some sort of device to another goblin explaining what he just saw. Mitsuku sneaks up on him and grabs him by the ear and says “We’re still waiting for that prize…” as the goblin yelps and squirms in pain. We notice a commotion near the entrance and can see Huzzambies being thrown into the air as something very large and mechanical is heading towards the games area. Mitsuku drags the goblin back to the group, and we threaten him to call off security. He does so, and the large mechanical creature starts heading back towards the entrance, throwing the same Huzzambies back into the air as he makes his way.
Terrified for his life, the goblin tells us that he doesn’t know anything about the pearls other than “some of the attractions were told to hold onto them and to protect them”. We believe him, as he does not seem to be lying. Linzu steals the goblin’s wallet. When we ask where he would suggest that we look for one of these amber pearls, he mentions that the joust is about to start and its a show worth seeing. We leave the goblin and head that way.
When we enter the joust area, we see a very large arena with four knights fighting in it. The knights are massive, over one hundred feet tall, and mechanical. All four of them keep crashing into each other as the crowd cheers. We notice that each of the seating areas have specific color banners that match the colors of the knight’s armor adornments, which were Red, Red and Yellow, Green, and Blue. All of the Huzzahmbies in the seats all have little pennants that match the color of the section they are sitting in. We notice that there is a box with a shaded window overlooking the arena, so we head to that way. When we get to the door to it, we see a large knight guarding the door. The knight is about ten feet tall, and there is a glow coming from the gap between the helmet and the armor. I notice that these appear to be enchanted somehow, but am not sure if there is anyone actually in the armor or not. I use prestidigitation to create a small pennant that is black, instead of any of the existing colors. I walk up to the knight guarding the door and ask “What section do I sit in for my pennant?” The knight takes the pennant, examines it, and snaps it in half and goes back to guarding the door. Iliana wildshapes into a giant owl and flies up and tries to look through the shaded window. While she’s trying to look in, four faces press up against the glass looking back at her. Mitsuku approaches and asks how to get inside, and the knight points at a sign that says “Season Ticket VIP Members Only”.
Thaskagh quickly heads back to the games area, finds the goblin from before, and shouts at him, “I WANT SEASON TICKET VIP MEMBER PASSES AS MY PRIZE”. This almost scares the goblin to death, but because this is something he can easily give as a prize, he does so. Thaskagh comes back, hands out the passes, and we approach the knight again. The knight sees the passes and allows us to enter one by one. As we enter, we see another knight inside, and a single chair facing the window. We can see that the window can easily be seen through from inside. When we approach the chair, we see a very strange looking creature. It has four heads, an egg shaped body, four arms, and two legs. Each head is wearing a small crown that has the colors of one of the knights on it. All four of the heads appear to be arguing about which knight they are and that they never get to win. All four of the arms are flailing around slapping the four heads. We notice each time one of the heads is slapped, one of the knights outside in the arena falls. Eventually, the creature notices us, stops bickering with itself momentarily, and introduces itself to us.
“We are Gretta, and welcome to the joust! What knight are you all cheering for?”, after it says this, it goes back to focusing on the knights while slapping itself. We tell Gretta that we don’t have pennants, and it gestures over to a box of them in the corner of the room. Everyone grabs a pennant, except I create another black one for myself. We show Gretta what knights we are cheering for, and I show my black pennant and say that I’m cheering for the black knight. One of the Gretta heads exclaims that the black knight is their favorite, while another slaps him and says there is no black knight. They get into an argument over this, and one of the heads exclaims that “We would know if there was a black knight, we made all of them!”.
Garian approaches Gretta and pokes one of the Gretta heads wearing the green crown with a Red pennant. This causes the red knight in the arena to knock down the green knight. I poke one of the Gretta heads with the black pennant, and it causes all four knights to fall down. Garian asks if he is able to control one of the knights, and Gretta explains that since he is a VIP member, he absolutely can. Gretta hands one of the crowns to Garian, who puts it on, and then Gretta slaps him across the face. After much back and forth between the party, we finally realize that in order to “win”, we needed to be wearing three of the crowns, and Gretta only could be wearing one of them. As we did this, Thaskagh had the crown of the green knight and stood off to the side, while the Garian and Mitsuku and Gretta all slapped each other. This caused all the knights except the green knight to fall down, making the green knight the winner.