The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 69

Attending
Tarvinir – Lvl 5 Magic User
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 5 Flying Dampyr Head and zombie body.
Greed – Lvl 6 Homanculus
Tysis – Lvl 5 Fighter

Henching
Srehn – Lvl 5 Barbarian
Ritzy – Lvl 6 Homanculus

Monsters Mashed:
8 Bugbears – Sliced, diced, backstabbed, and generally murderated.
800 EXP/5 Players = 160 apiece

1 Troll – Magic missiled and coup de graced by Tysus’ acid sweating sword.
600 EXP/5 Players = 120 apiece

1 Giant Tarantella – Whacked like a gruesome, hairy piñata.
135 EXP/5 player =  27 apiece

TOTAL EXP: 307 apiece.

Items acquired:
Granny’s giant cleaver.

Current situation:
Ritzy and Greed squared off with the fearsome Granny Maw, finding her the toughest of tough old broads as she effortlessly parried their attacks with her giant cleaver.

Eventually, she decided the cleaver was slowing her up, so she cast it aside and transformed into the grisliest, biggest monster wolf creature and started attacking with her slavering bite and iron like claws. Greed landed a hit with the big red d30 and did 31 pts of damage, causing the monstrous hag to reconsider her options.

“Gotta go, kids on the stove.” she demurred, and vanished in a puff of blue flames.

 

“Smell ya later, chumpenstiens.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the party, forced downstairs by Granny’s antipathy spell, were met by a squad of bugbears led by a wild eyed troll hopped up on fungus. The magic users blasted it and then Srehn proceeded to do her Xena, Warrior Princess thing on the rest. Tarvinir managed to disarm one by accident, but was protected by his Mirror Images.

The homanculi came barreling down the stairs to join the fight, prompting a cry of “Oh no! Dey got monstas!” from the bugbears, who turned tail and fled at ½ their original strength.

Srehn pursued with the rest of the party in tow, and was jumped by the giant guard spider watching the wine cellar downstairs. After shrugging off the horrible (and potentially hilarious) effects of the creature's bite, she killed it with extreme prejudice and the party finished off all but one of the bugbears.

They pressed the brute for info but didn’t get much beyond knowing there were a couple of nasty giants in the complex as well as an awful thing known as “Bitty Bitey”. Srehn shanked him, then drank a draught from one of the elderberry wine bottles laid in in the cellar, and is now a bit tipsy (instant fail on surprise and last on init for 4 turns)

High on life, and booze, the party charged down the next set of stairs, and found some human prisoners in the cells in the bottom level, plus a bugbear jailer with a mancatcher and a bunch of gnolls chained up to a stake driven into the stone coffin. And that’s where we left off.

Commentary:

Another more in depth recount once again doesn't leave me with too much to comment on. 

Granny Maw started out as one of the lurking villains in the original sandbox campaign I started this whole blog over back in 2009. She was a critter I first encountered in the 3rd. Edition called a barghest, essentially a fiendish goblin/werewolf thingy, although I guess they go back to the original Monster Manual II, which is a book I never owned in the olden days of AD&D. 

She was the leader of that campaign's goblinoid presence, surrounded then, as here, with a brute force of bugbears who she treated like her grandkids. Bitty Bitey (a.k.a. "Pookie") was another, younger barghest who played the role of the spoiled baby of the "family" and ran with a pack of goblin wolf riders. 

The only other bit worth mentioning is that I greatly regretted that Srehn made her save against the spider's bite, as it was a Tarantella, and the resulting dance party would have been epic.

Tune in next week for more sturm and drang.