240827

Murdery Wyllow, Stove Hobbits & Horny Cloakers

Locations Associations

OPEN QUESTIONS

FOR THIS GAME

GAME NOTES

We first encounter a black stone ball with a scrying eye that is watching us from the ceiling of the cave. We drive it off with an arrow and land on a beach. The beach is like a clean forest and there is an autumn sky above. We are not sure how this is happening, but we are unable to detect it as an illusion.

We find graves among the trees, some are fresh, and all but one unmarked. The marked one is "Chrissann." Mira lays magic flowers on the grave and a voice begins talking to her. She gets angry when Mira mentions Wyllow as it was her who killed the owner of the voice.

We head south and find a disused gate, guardhouses and elevated walkways. Ceol breaks into one of the guardhouses, it smells like death. There is an arch/gate on the wall that leads nowhere. It has a dead tree on the keystone, and Jitters recognizes it as a Magic Portal. We find a small boot behind the stove and footprints that are about a week old, -and a dead halfling attached to the boot.

The Stove_Hobbit appears to have been blighted to death. He has typical stuff on him plus a parchment that is a flyer for the Dweomercore University featuring Wormriddle.

Arin decides to speak with the dead hobbit:

Speak with Dead

  1. Who killed you?
    Wyllow the evil druid
  2. Where does this gate go?
    I do not know
  3. How can we go deeper into Undermountain?
    I do not know
  4. Why did she kill you?
    I hunted and had a meal in her forest
  5. How do we activate the gate?
    I do not know

In the second guardhouse we find a Rusty Magic Lantern and some moldy beds & bunks.

We run around the elevated platforms and find a tower shaped like a squat, stone tree with giant bats hanging from the upper branches. Seeing no other way forward, we drop back to the ground and head around the tower.

We encounter a female, elf -its Wyllow!

"I am Wyllow, welcome to my forest! Take only what we need and don't be greedy."

She seems aloof to Mira, kind of 'off.' We question her about Wyllowwood. She warns us of spiders in the north forest, and forbids us to go in her tower. She also explains that Valdemar a green dragon & her friend, guards a gate to the 7th_Level Halaster Blackcloak.

Per Wyllow, the guardhouse portal gate goes back to 2nd Level.

We ask about the moaning gate and she says it is beset by monsters who look like cloaks & smother you. We offer to destroy them and she promises to reward us with the knowledge of how to activate the guardhouse gate if we defeat them.

We force the portcullis on the cloaker gate, and the moaning stops. Inside we quickly encounter our first cloaker. We lay into it, and it begins moaning which frightens Arin. A second cloaker comes from the north and wraps itself around Arin's head biting him. A third comes from behind and attacks Jitters who is quickly engulfed.

A proper melee ensues and they prove to be tough monsters, but we kill all three after several rounds of fighting & several party members getting their heads chewed upon.

TREASURE

FOES

SESSION MAP

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NEW QUESTIONS

  1. Why does Wyllow seem to be evil and in league with dragons & Halaster?
  2. How do we know this is actually Wyllow and not some imposter?
  3. Does anyone in the party have any way to tell if Wyllow is under some kind of charm or mental influence spell?
  4. Is Wyllow mixed up on the Waterdeep Conspiracy?
  5. Wyllow killed the Stove Hobbit, but why was his body left in a stove vs being buried like Chrissann?
  6. If the guardhouse was barricaded from the inside then its logical that Wyllow left via the portal to the 2nd Level, -but wasn't she a little vague and uninterested sounding when we asked her about that gate & level?

CSI_Undermountain Analysis: Stove Hobbit hunts in the Wyllowwood. Wyllow attacks him. Hobbit runs into the guardhouse, barricades the doors and hides in the stove. Wyllow teleports or ghosts through the walls or floor (or blights him dead from outside) and leaves the same way without using the gate. Lack of burial may just indicate her kind of vacant state of mind.

SYNOPSIS

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AI Transcript