BQ-106: I Have No Brain and I Must Think

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FEATURED ADVENTURERS:

• The Great Klardini - High Elf Wizard - Level 3: Septa-centagenarian older than many cities. Slowly going senile while remembering his old wizard spells.

• Afik Bonefinger - Mountain Dwarf Fighter - Level 3: Trauma-afflicted former boat captain who saw his whole crew drown. Recently obtained fear of bright lights.

• Varian Bloomstrike - Eladrin Paladin - Level 3: Knight of the Feywild, this fairy-aligned frontliner almost had his brain eaten by another brain while in the dungeon.

• Uther Valens - Aasimar Warlock - Level 3: Harnessing the power of electricity, this celestial magic user solves (and causes) most problems with lightning.

After cementing their deal with the representative of the Zhentarim, Davil Starsong, the adventurers gear up to descend into the dungeon once again. Their last trek ended with a harrowing encounter with a bugbear—a hideous, brawny, furred monster with gnashing teeth and a violent attitude.

Also, the bugbear’s brain was replaced with an intellect devourer—a maddening brain-monster that infests its victims heads, eats their brains, then takes control of the host. Varian Bloomstrike felt the mental arsenal of the intellect devourer’s influence.

It made him, like, super stupid for a while.

But that’s okay, because all of that’s over now!

Foreshadowing! We love it!

The rope-guided platform lowers down the well-like entrance. Patrons of the Yawning Portal cheer them on—any time adventurers descend into the labyrinthine dungeon beneath the tavern, prayers and cheers rise from the patrons. It’s nice to give false hope!

The owner of the bar, Durnan, gives a sly grin over his bristling mustache—not often do adventuring parties charge back in after only a day or two of recovery. These guys must be pretty brave, he thinks. Brave or downright dumb.

Both, Durnan. Both.

They land on the familiar stone floor—the hanging shields of previous adventuring groups cover the circular walls leading up to the well’s entry. Maybe one day they’ll hang a shield among the many… but shields are for bitches! Varian wields a two-handed greataxe! Afik dual wields axes and swords!

The singular hallway from the entry point extends deep into the dungeon…

Klardini waves his hands and casts a spell, armor of Klardini. A magical sheen of protective armor manifests over his casual clothes. No he’s kind-of protected!

“Look at my new chest plate! It’s so glowy!” he says, showing off his magically summoned armor. “This spell took me four years to create. I like the color because it’s my favorite color!”

“What color is it?” Varian says, staring at the armor.

“It’s the color that you see!” Klardini snaps. “It’s everyone’s favorite color!”  Not like those fake spells called ‘mage armor,’ where it’s just a dull gold color. This one is artistic!” he keeps rambling, caught up in a senile rant against the world. He stumbles down the hallway. “Just steal my spells and make them crappier… what’s down this hallway? Lighty-light child, come!”

Uther turns at the sound of what might be his name. “Do you need light?” the electric warlock says, then casts the spell light on Afik’s sheath. It glows bright… so bright…

Just like before…

… in the crate…

“NOOO!” Afik shouts, remembering his terrible encounters with light magic. Uther keeps touching Afik’s stuff, making his armor, sword—everything glow. “WHYYY?” he cries.

They venture down the hallway and pass the secret door that leads to the room where they found the fighting dummy with the cursed, glowing light sword stabbed into it.

“We’re not going in there!” Afik shouts.

“Maybe there are more cursed swords!” Varian offers.

“NOOO! I think the bugbears were here last time guys. All I remember was that light!” Afik cries, the trauma resurfacing.

They come to the room with the pillars where they first encountered the bugbears. No corpses lie around the room—someone has cleared them out already. Corpses just don’t get up and walk away… in a dungeon… in a fantasy world…

Well shit…

“Weren’t there vampires or pretend vampires?” Afik says, then sees a goblin poking its head out of the south corridor. It disappears, fleeing away.

Just like the bugbear from before, who was also spying on them…

Klardini spots a strange symbol on the north corridor—it wasn’t there before. It’s fresh—a day old—painted with black and red in the shape of a fanged mouth. Somebody’s out here painting mouths!

“What’s this big mouth thing right here?” he mumbles, then turns to see two other symbols—circles with eight stalks sticking out of them. They mark the west and south corridors.

They stand in the room with the pillars and asses the situation: they entered from the east corridor, the south and west corridor are marked by the circle with stalks. The north corridor is marked by the fanged mouth. Neither of the symbols were there previously…

“These delinquents! Graffiti everywhere! Officer!” Klardini shouts, ripshit mad at the state of today's youth.

No officer responds. They’re in a dungeon, and they’re also, like, part of two-and-a-half gangs, right?

Uther decides it’s time to summon his familiar, Imp E. Dimp, who is an imp. He readies the ritual for the next ten minutes, and soon the little critter pops into existence.

“Impi-dimpi!” Imp E. Dimp shouts, and it immediately goes invisible—time to scout with this busted-ass familiar!

Klardini ignores all of this and goes trouncing down the south hallway where Afik saw the goblin spy. As he rounds the corner, the goblin lunges out holding a shortbow and fires!

Klardini raises his hands and casts don’t touch Klardini, a spell that conjures a magical shield to defend him—the arrow bounces off of it. “You villain!” Klardini shouts, having specifically casted a spell to not be touched, then lobs a freezing spell at the goblin, holding it in place.

Uther steps up and vanquishes the goblin with an eldritch blast of lightning—zapping the goblin into an explosion of blood, spraying Klardini.

And that, kids, is why you don’t spray graffiti! Someone else might get blamed for it and killed.

“He got what he deserved!” Klardini grumbles.

“There might be interesting metals in that blood!” Uther says, eyeing the goblin smear.

“… What!? That thing just exploded!” Klardini says.

“Anyone do blood magic?” Uther says.

Klardini thinks for a bit. “Actually… yes! I do, but I have to kill him to do it!”

Everyone stares at Klardini, shocked. Nobody knew he was actually a necromancer.

Klardini shrugs, then holds up his reconstructed spellbook, showing it’s covered in undead, necromantic scrawl. You know, skulls and voodoo nonsense. “Why do you think I’m so old? I’m basically a lich with skin on top! Let’s see what that little blood splat was carrying!”

He begins to dig through the dead goblin’s stuff, finding poorly drawn charcoal pictures of his adventuring party! He holds up the picture of himself.

“So they have heard of me!” he says, then sticks the picture to the wall using the goblin’s blood as glue. He ignores the pictures of the other party members.

“Impi-dimpi! Dimpi!” Imp E. Dimp shouts, invisibly.

Uther shouts at the invisible mass like a crazy person, “You don’t keep saying impi-dimpi, Imp E. Dimp! Be invisible!”

And so he be’d invisible.

Since the adventurers chased the dead goblin down the southern tunnel marked by the circle symbol with eight stalks, they decide to keep going that direction. Uther recalls chasing a creature down this pathway the last time they came in, and they find the familiar cave-in from before. The stone tunnel had collapsed, with several shovels and pickaxes around, but a five-foot diameter tunnel had been carved out.

But not by them.

They crawl through the tunnel with Imp E. Dimp leading the way, flapping its invisible wings and channeling what it’s seeing back to Uther since holy cow where the heck is this imp familiar? They find that the tunnel empties into another square-shaped stone room–and a bugbear is waiting around the corner!

The bugbear quickly darts through a set of double doors on the eastern side. Another door leads to the west–but most peculiarly in the room is a pile of rubble. Buried in the rubble is a headless, stone statue of a nude woman.

With boobies!

Uther cares not for boobies, only for loot, so he digs through the rubble and finds the statue’s severed head. The head is less woman-with-boobies-oriented and more cobra-with-fangs-oriented.

Surely there’s something amiss about a naked lady statue that has a cobra head for a regular head–Uther reveals that he is a skilled researcher, and will bring this knowledge back to a knowledge reliquary in Waterdeep. Klardini steps up and also reveals that he is a skilled researcher, who can reach into his delirious brain to learn about the naked lady stone face. Afik shoves them all aside since he has the stone cunning ability and immediately begins to study the heck out of the statue with the boobies.

“Ah yes!” Afik begins. “Many years ago, my Nana would tell me stories about Dendar the Night Serpent! Dendar in people’s dreams and haunts them in their nightmares–the goddess keeps trying to re-enter the world. I can tell this is Dendar the Night Serpent by the fat tits! Nana died pretty gruesomely… And that’s just how my Nana would tell me every night before she would tuck me in… on the boat! She was the first to go over.”

They decide not to chase the bugbear through the double doors–maybe scout through the western doors first. Imp E. Dimp opens the door and they cross a hallway until they find a room with the skeletal remains of an unfortunate humanoid chained to the wall. Its legs are missing. Uther reads the blood-scrawled text on the wall above the adventurer. It says, “TALK TO ME.”

“Imp E. Dimp, talk to this thing. Ask it where its legs are,” Uther commands his imp.

“Imp-i-dimpy! Dimpy! Impi-impi!” Imp E. Dimp says.

Nothing happens.

Uther ponders. “Imp E. Dimp, take one of its arms and put it where its legs should be and see if that works.”

The imp plucks a skeletal arm off the corpse and shoves it into one of its hip sockets.

Nothing happens.

Uther leans in and sees that the skeleton is a tiefling. He casts light on its horns, which then begin to glow.

Nothing happens.

At that point, a series of slow, increasingly louder thuds echo from the hallway they recently came from. The sound is like stone scraping across stone–heavy stone! On also-heavy stone! Like floor-ish stone!

Uther sends Imp E. Dimp to check out what’s going on. The devilish familiar flutters back to the hallway between their current location and the room where the titty snake statue was. Speaking of statues, lumbering down the hall is a large, stone, armored humanoid–the same one they saw the last time they were here! No boobies though.

The giant locks eyes with Imp E. Dimp, able to see through the fiend’s invisibility. The monolith raises its hands, waves them around, and Uther realizes its casting the spell fireball!

Nothing happens.

“It’s because you took the tiefling’s horns and made them glow!” Varian shouts to Uther, who immediately turns off the light.

The stone creature waves its hands again, a sign that it’s casting magic missile. Again, nothing happens.

Afik hears that there’s a giant walking man made of stone–and Afik loves stone! Stone is his favorite rock! He waddles quickly down to the hallway and catches sight of the stone creature.

“This is a shield guardian!” he says, pointing at it. “They’re big bad sons of bitches! Wizards build them to protect themselves–and they can cast spells stored by the wizards!”

Klardini hears this and gets the first boner he’s had in about 300 years.

The stone guardian sees Afik, then waves its arms as through it’s casting invisibility. It then turns around and lumbers out of the hallway back into the room with the headless statue with the boobies.

“It probably went through those big double doors!” Klardini says.

Afik thinks of big double other things in that room.

Klardini doesn’t like the idea of creatures coming up behind them and getting all up in their business, so he casts Klardini’s alarm clock as a ritual spell and places it at the door. If someone comes near, it will go off and let him know there’s an intruder. It looks like an old fashioned alarm clock with a little train horn on it and a sign that says “Push me”

They all marvel at it.

Afik pushes the button and the clock goes off, ending the spell.

Klardini glowers at the dwarf, then spends another ten minutes casting the spell again. “Don’t push it!” he says, creating another sign that says “Push me.”

They decide to keep going forward–their mission is to eliminate the presence of Xanathar’s Guild on the first floor. They leave the legless corpse behind, attempts to talk proving fruitless, and end up in another room with two pillars propping up a high, vaulted ceiling. Skeletal bones of two orcs are scattered around the pillars, and the hall continues to the north.

Afik examines the stone pillars, but he can’t quite figure them out. “Yes, I remember hearing stories of pillars… they were used to hold up roofs. Must be a roof nearby.” He then examines the orc skeletons. “I think these guys are dead.”

They are.

The pillars give off a weird, slightly magical vibe. The spellcasters in the group, Uther and Klardini, definitely feel the faint, magical fragments.

Afik pokes his head around the pillars again, stepping between them. He then disappears, going invisible!

“Can you guys hear me?” Afik shouts in a panic.

Klardini walks between the pillars as well and also goes invisible.

“Where is everyone?” Varian panics.

Klardini waves his invisible hands. “How will everyone know how great I am if they can’t see me!?”

They decide to use this to their advantage. With Imp E. Dimp, Klardini, and Afik being invisible, they can scout ahead stealthily!

Afik and Klardini head north, both invisible, and both being terrible at scouting. Mox really, really, really needed to be with them.

At this point, they realize that when two people are scouting ahead while invisible, it’s impossible for one of the scouts to know where in the hell their partner is.

“Can you hear me?” Klardini says, realizing he’s unable to see his partner.

“What!?” Afik shouts.

“You’re not deaf–you’re invisible!” Klardini shouts back, stepping down the hall, feeling for Afik.

“What!?” Afik says, also stepping down the hallway, feeling for Klardini.

“Impi-dimpi!” Imp E. Dimp adds.

Afik blunders down the hallway. “Klardini! Where did you go!” he shouts.

“I’m invisible!” Klardini reminds him.

They cross down a hallway and find two doors. “Open this door, Klardini!” Afik shouts, pointing at the door with a hand… that nobody can see.

At that point, both doors slam open–behind each door is a horde of goblins and a couple of bugbear leaders. They’re all armed with swords and bows. They’ve all been hearing Afik and Klardini shouting at each other the whole time about how they’re invisible and can’t be seen.

“I’m invisible!” Afik shouts at them. “I’m invisible! You can’t see me!” He then draws his battle axe and his sword and hacks at the nearest goblin, leaving a cut on it. His invisibility goes away–and there’s Afik Bonefinger standing in the middle of over fifteen goblins and two bugbears.

Every. Goblin. Attacks. Afik.

Every.

Single.

One.

What proceeds to happen is a dogpile of goblinoid mayhem as a sea of goblins and their two bugbear lieutenants hit Afik with every scimitar, arrow, and morningstar they have. And somehow, after one solid round of getting teamed on–Afik is still standing.

Varian tries to close in, but a flurry of arrows launches his direction and he takes a hit in the shoulder. A pair of goblins blocks his way, and he hacks one down with his greataxe while Klardini some cantrips on the ones keeping them separated from Afik.

One of the goblins stabs Afik in the side, and he responds by hacking its head clean off. He parries at another goblin coming for him, then takes an arrow in his back. Uther tries clearing out the goblins separating them from Afik as well, critically exploding one with his lightning-themed eldritch blast, eviscerating it into a blasted puddle of blood that bathes the whole room.

Varian can’t get the goblins out of his way, so he points his finger at Afik and mutters a magical spell, calling forth the power of the Feywild and casting shield of faith, which increases Afik’s armor score by 2 points, up to 19!

“Thank you, even though you can’t see me!” Afik says, completely blocked off by the goblins.

Klardini does his best by casting chilling touch, pecking away at the goblins the best he can before they drag Afik down. Another goblin clobbers Varian with a scimitar, but he manages to keep his enchantment up on Afik to protect him.

After finally catching his breath, Afik uses his second wind ability and restores a large swathe of missing health, then he burns his action surge to make four attacks! He swings with his battle axe and short sword, slaying three of the goblins and buying a bit of space around him.

“This is easy for me compared to the box!” he shouts, goblin parts strewn around his feet. “I’m actually bored right now!”

The goblins swat at him again, slowly chipping away. Uther snipes another goblin to smithereens with his eldritch blast, but gets a return shot with a bow that makes him back up. Another goblin sinks its weapon into Afik’s leg, and Varian slays one of the goblins separating him from Afik. Its goblinoid friend retaliates and slices at Varian, causing him to lose his concentration on the shielding spell–Afik’s chance to repel attacks dwindles!

Klardini scans the battlefield, looking for any goblins that look hurt. He picks out two of them, then raises his fingers to cast magic missile as a second level spell, two missiles firing at two goblins each, slaying both of them outright.

The adventuring party is bloody and bruised, but they’ve made some headway with the goblin masses. Afik’s biggest problems come from fending off the two burly bugbears, which keep pummeling at him with their morning stars. Afik slices at them, chipping away at them but having better luck dropping the goblins.

Uther kills another goblin with an eldritch blast, zapping away the monsters one at a time–slowly but surely.

Varian summons the Feywild powers again and chants, “Bring light against the darkness!” and rejuvinates himself for 13 extra Hit Points as he restores his life force with lay on hands.

As the goblins keep slicing at Afik, he’s then dropped down to a mere 4 Hit Points. Klardini lays covering fire with a 1st level magic missile, punching a bugbear for 7 damage. The creature stumbles, and Afik follows up with his sword and axe–crittically striking with the axe and chopping the creature in half at the torso! It’s top half tumbles over, and the bugbear partner next to it grimaces as its companion dies.

Uther blasts away another goblin as they’re about to bring Afik down. The living bugbear swipes at the dwarf who keeps parrying, but then a familiar monster appears–crawling from the dead bugbear’s skull is a small, brainlike creature with four tiny feet.

An intellect devourer!

Varian shrugs off his fear–having fallen victim to one of these before, he doesn’t want Afik in his weakened state to suffer the same! He charges forth, his path cleared from the goblins eliminated one-by-one by Uther’s magic. He grabs Afik, then conjures his paladin powers to cast fey step to teleport Afik 30 feet back with the spellcasters. He then hacks with his greataxe to keep the foes back.

Klardini aims at the intellect devourer and pelts it with a magic missile, knowing that he can’t let it fire off with its psionic attacks. Afik lobs a handaxe using his quicktoss ability, missing.

“I’m going to need that back!” he shouts.

One of the goblins skirts around Varian, finds an opening, then shanks him from behind. The eladrin paladin stumbles, then drops to the ground unconscious.

The intellect devourer creeps up to his head, then tries to eat his brain and take control of him! The two roll opposed Intelligence checks–Varian rolls his with a -1 modifier while the intellect devourer has a +1 modifier.

Varian wins 15 vs. 13! He doesn’t die yet!

Klardini tries casting chilling touch on the intellect devourer, but he chilling misses.

Afik steps forth, his eyes glazed over in pain. He raises his axes. “Where go you, Klardini? Have you forgotten yourself again!” And he topples into a goblin while Uther continues to launch eldritch blast after eldritch blast at the intellect devourers.

The remaining bugbear grabs Afik by the beard, then he pummels him with his morningstar, dropping the dwarf to zero Hit Points–with two heroes down, the intellect devourer tries again to crawl into Varian’s brain!

Varian rolls a 19 and the intellect devourer rolls a 6! Again, Varian has cheated stupidity for life! Boo stupid! Yay life!

Imp E. Dimp knows that Varian’s luck is running low, so he flitters to Varian and plucks a greater potion of healing from the paladin, dumping it into his mouth–the paladin is healed for 13 points of damage and wakes up to see a brain with spooky legs standing on his chest!

Ew gross, chest brains!

Varian uses his feywild powers to teleport out of brain-range and next to Afik. He slams a potion of greater healing into Afik’s mouth, healing the downed dwarf for 12 Hit Points.

Afik is awake!

“I SHALL SAVE YOU, UTHER!” Afik shouts, waving his battle axe and cutting into the bugbear. The bugbear has no time for Uther-saving, critically striking Afik with his morningstar and once again sending the dwarf careening back into the floor.

Afik is having a bad day.

But that’s okay, because it will soon be worse! The intellect devourer that tried to eat Varian’s brain skitters over towards Afik–it rolls for brain damage!

Afik rolls a natural 20 against the intellect devourer’s 8!

Imp E. Dimp, the porter of potions, plucks a potion of healing from one of the party members hell don’t remember and slams it into Afik’s mouth. He stands back up with 6 Hit Points and a second level of exhaustion!

Klardini raises his old hands and rots away the intellect devourer with chilling touch, causing the the brain-critter to wither away into nothingness–just like all good brains do before they go bad.

A goblin shoots Afik and he falls back to 0 Hit Points again.

The bugbear duels with Varian, but Varian keeps the upper hand with Uther’s backing lightning attacks–soon an opening appears, and Varian charges up his next swing with the power of a smite as the bugbear drops to the ground, slain.

“The light of Spring!” Varian shouts, victorious.

Imp E. Dimp, its purpose now known, crams the final potion of healing into Afik’s mouth–bringing him back up with three levels of exhaustion. The dwarf is a babbling mess–everything hurts! Life is pain, and pain is life!

A goblin critically strikes Afik with an arrow and drops him back down to zero hit points.

PAIN!

Uther blasts back the goblin, but the second dead bugbear’s second head rumbles as a second intellect devourer crawls out of its host and sets is mind on…

The dwarf…

Everyone freaks out, focusing all fire on the intellect devourer. The creature grabs Afik’s head, pulls open his ear, and tries to force its way into Afik’s dwarf head–Afik rolls a 4 on the check!

The intellect devourer rolls a natural 1! Crit fail! Shit for brains!

Klardini reveals to the invisible imp that he still has holy water from their adventure into Mox’s dead broke-ass ancestor’s tomb, and each vial heals for 1 Hit Point. He throws one to the imp, who isn’t a fan of holy stuff, but never-the-less dumps its contents into Afik’s mouth.

Afik wakes up.

He’s at exhaustion level 4… life is terrible… everything is terrible… this is the worst day ever for the dwarf, and this particular dwarf saw everyone drown on a ship one time.

Everyone blasts, kicks, chops, and hacks at the intellect devourer and final goblin until all are slain–the hallway is an eviscerated mass of goblin parts, bugbear limbs, and brain matter.

“I can barely walk right now!” Afik cries, curling up into a ball–which is easy to do because of how I drew him. “I need someone to carry me!”

“Not it!” says everyone.

They instead choose to take a short rest and cry a little bit over all the murder that just happened.

Afik breaks the silence, “... that was rough, guys.”

They pilfer the goblins and bugbears, finding 215 copper pieces, 137 silver pieces, 134 gold, and a small chest with 35 platinum pieces tucked in the bugbear’s bugbag. They stuff what they can of scimitars, shortbows, arrows, and other weapons into their bag of holding, then decide to grab the naked statue lady’s naked snake snaked nakesd head snead snake nakead.

They trudge back to the Yawning Portal and signal to be lifted up–they’re greeted to cheers from the patrons. Four of them went down, and four of them came out. Not bad!

Davil and Yagra see them and smile.

“Get this man to an inn!” Uther shouts, rolling Afik onto the floor.

“You’re in an inn!” someone shouts from the crowd.

“Impi-dimpi inn!” Imp E. Dimp says. Stupid, just stupid.

“While I’m sleeping, y’all should discuss our bureaucracy…” Afik mumbles.

They lodge Afik up for the rest of the day and have a meeting to discuss where they’ll finally hunker down and establish a base of operations. Mox takes the head of Dendar and fences it for 250 gold pieces, not telling them where he took it.

After perusing different locations, the adventurers decide to hole up in the Dock Ward–it’s close enough to the Castle Ward, and it’s just seedy enough to get by with an adventuring guild while not being too poverty-stricken to worry. They’ll get first looks at newcomers arriving in the city by boat, and since the Dock Ward is an industrial hub, business should be fine.

“Here–near Presper Street,” they point at a map. Presper street is near one of the main roads in the Dock Ward, close enough to catch passersby, but off the beaten path to not draw too much attention.

They decide to sell of the rest of their loot and pool their petty cash to find a real estate agent–at a little over 3,000 gp, which can afford them something close to a two story building, around 1,200 square feet.

While debating their real estate, they receive a letter from Davil Starsong. They put a huge dent in the Xanathar’s Guild forces in their last trek–but his presence still exists in the first floor. Davil will pay their next trek down.

One more should do it…

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