Bath Imaginable

A party of seven Level 3 Player Characters (PCs) fight for their lives within the Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub!

Session 3 picks up in the black cells beneath Bittermold Keep, where the air tastes of iron and mildew. The PCs free a pair of manacled and mud-caked Howlers with festering wounds. Ignatius and Bron. Ignatius has a third eye in the middle of his forehead. No one asks him about it.

In the next cell is Leledish, recently captured, but so far unharmed. He had come to Bittermold Keep to investigate ululating cries from deep within the natural caves and after hearing the Howlers hoot and the Bittermolds die, he’s found his answer and joins the PCs in their efforts to stop Mugdulblub.

Ignatius and Bron beg to return to their fountains. They put a dead catfish in the clear water to remember which one is safe and restorative. The other fountain made Bron spill his guts.

The door won’t open. Something heavy presses against it from the other side. A faint hiss. The gelatinous cube the party had avoided earlier now blocks the corridor, slowly digesting the wood to slurry.

The PCs must choose between pushing through the gelatinous cube or sneaking through Mugdulblub’s chamber.

Hald Frogley, halfling wizard, volunteers to scout ahead. “Halflings are practically invisible,” he says, and creeps toward the chamber where Mugdulblub waits.

A starry void fills the centre of the chamber. A bottomless, pulsing in the centre of the room. Impossible to tell where the stone ends and the dark begins. A telepathic voice inside Hald Frogley’s mind as he creaks open the door.

Welcome, Hald Frogley. Come in, I can offer you great power.

Hald Frogley closes the door.

The PCs decide to push through the GC. First they burn the door and upon discovering the gelatinous cube is moving toward heat, Trogrug uses his lantern to lure it into a nearby quicksand trap. The cube quivers, shudders, and slips into the muck, vanishing beneath the surface with a single wet sigh.

The wounded Howlers limp toward their fountains while the PCs march on Gordrock.

Trogrug and Leledish–each familiar with Diabolic–attempt to copy the inscriptions actively being destroyed by the Howlers.

Gordrock greets them warmly. He’s pleased. Not only have they delivered the bodies to Mugdulblub like he asked, they rescued his captured Howlers. He is ready to forge an alliance. He wants to join the characters and kill Plogrina Bittermold, but in his visions her magnetic lodestone causes his death every time. He invites the PCs to strategize.

The PCs try to trick Gordrock into accepting Wrath Bolt but he slurps toxic algae from his pocket and sees through their scheme. Trogrug and Leledish fail to gain insights from the pillars, the Howlers are unrelenting.

The PCs keep pushing their luck, and it’s initiative.

Hald Frogley burns half the room with his outstretched hands while the others attack Gordrock. Gordrock dies with the taste of algae still on his tongue. Ipshroom pockets what remains and the surviving Howlers flee into the mist.

The PCs regroup at the fountains, drinking deeply from the pearly basin. Trogrug’s tusks lengthen, curving like ivory blades. Hald Frogley grows an extra, blinking eye on his forehead.

They push into the caves beneath Bittermold Keep, where mutant catfish slither through the mud, allowing them to pass through an illusory, shimmering wall. Beyond it lies the crypt and the tomb of Lord Reginald Bittermold himself.

They smash the glass coffin and find the desiccated corpse within, its ribs split wide around a pulsing red glow. When they cut open the body, the wounds close almost instantly, slurping shut as if the flesh were alive. Auglud hacks the corpse in half, and Leledish snatches the Cloven Heart and presses it into his beard. A surge of power courses through him. His voice deepens, his presence magnifies.

Leledish reads from a scrap of diabolic parchment, invoking Tzakoru, the demon once deceived by Lord Bittermold. The air splits; a horned figure steps forth, smoke pouring from his mouth. An alliance is struck. When Mugdulblub is destroyed, Tzakoru will take Bittermold Keep and turn the catfish into river demons.

One problem at a time, the characters figure. Together, they march to confront Mugdulblub.

But when the demon meets the elder ooze, the chamber erupts in chaos. Mugdulblub’s tendrils lash out, dragging Tzakoru into the dissolving void. The PCs fight through the madness, their bodies mutating under Mugdulblub’s influence. Ipshroom eats a fistful of hallucinogenic mushrooms, chases it with toxic algae. He stumbles backward into a hallucinogenic trance. He dreams of stars and rot. When he wakes, he runs.

Trogrug is seized by a tendril and pulled screaming into darkness. Hald Frogley, his insides liquefying after waves of psionic onslaught, gathers his strength for one final act. He drinks a potion from his bag. His muscles bulge. He lifts Tzakoru’s axe and cleaves Mugdulblub in two.

The darkness collapses inward, a whirlpool of black ooze and starlight imploding.

The survivors flee the collapsing Keep as the Bittermolds rush in, too late to save their beloved ooze.

Marin’s Hold awaits.