The party wakes up to a rainy day on top of Firefinger. Dur-Dur-Dur is naked now.
They have not had a long rest yet, so they are tired.
🌱 casts goodberry and passes them out to the rest of the adventuring party.
The party asks Azaka about some of the nearby stuff in the area since they held up their end of the deal and got her a weird mask. Speaking of weird masks, the party asks her what the deal is with the tiger mask and why it’s so important to her. Azaka explains that the mask is cherished by her people, but mostly it lets her cast animal friendship.
Which is great, because animals are about the only thing that will ever spend time with this weirdo.
The party can’t see shit because of the rain, and they’re worn out from searching all night for treasures, so they decide to camp out on top of Firefinger until the next morning
They do that.
The next day is a clear sky, so the PC’s scan the area from their 300-foot-tall perch, seeing lots of mountains and jungles and other hex-shaped areas with dominating natural features. Specifically, they see a gnarled tree to the southwest and a strange structure to the south where they originally thought Firefinger was.
The party realizes they have a broken spyglass in their inventory from nineteen episodes ago that’s just been sitting there getting all fungal with 🌱’s gear. They also have a scroll of mending, so 🌱 uses the scroll of mending to restore the spyglass to its pristine shape. 🌱 also drinks a Soren potion because "We've been on top of old smokey all day! I want to see this tree! I'm bored! Let's do drugs!"
"I draw my sword!" Valour says.
"I am the second closest person standing next to this," Zanzibar declares.
"What's happening?" Xandala says.
"I'm still naked." Dur-Dur-Dur informs.
"It'S NOT EVEN RAINING!" 🌱shouts and then does drugs.
🌱 rubs his hands across the scroll, and a halo of spores pops out and fuses the spyglass together. Tirykitail mushrooms grow out of the spyglass due to the nature of 🌱’s magic. The Soren potion imbibes 🌱 with the ability to double the range of his next spell.
🌱 uses the spyglass to confirm the location of the frost giant’s boat on the coast, and then he looks at the two new things on the map. The tree is massive—hundreds of feet wide and just hella girthy. The strange structure to the south is in the shape of a giant frog. So now 🌱 wants to go see this tree, and Dur-Dur-Dur wants to go check out this big stone Nangnang looking thing.
Zanzibar makes a proposal regarding the lingering frost giant situation and the Ring of Winter, “We should pool our money together to sail out of the Bay of Chult and encounter the giants that way.”
Valour counters, “They’ll definitely see us if we approach by boat. Also, I just don’t want to deal with a dragon turtle right now.”
The party debates taking a canoe across the jungle and paddling upriver towards the frost giant boat.
Like parents on a family vacation, Valour and Zanzibar decide the following events, “Okay, since we got to go have Azaka’s fun yesterday, that means that Dur-Dur-Dur and 🌱 get to have their fun also. We’re going to the stone frog for Dur-Dur-Dur, then we’re going to the giant tree for 🌱. No arguing. Xandala, if we find your dad along the way… well, then we’ll find him. No nonsense whatsoever. Stick to the plan!”
The party descends Firefinger and trapes through the woods to their boats but AH SHIT it’s another one of those damned zombie tyrannosaurus rexes and the party ain’t got no brontosaurus to kick it in the face this time!
So the zombie charges Minion II and just beats the shit out of it with its tail, then pukes up a zombie. After puking up the zombie, the tyrannosaurus snatches up Azaka in its jaws and just starts gnawing on her like crazy.
Buuut for some reason, Azaka looks like she isn’t taking any damage while in the tyrannosaurus zombie mouth.
Fancy that!
🌱 conjures animals and BRINGS ON THE GIANT BEES!
Valour charges the zombie t-rex and swings with Shatterspike, spending a divine smite to beat the shit out of it. Then he casts shield of faith on himself.
Minion II swats the regular human zombie, then the zombie swats back and annihilates it.
"Minion III will honour you!" Valour says, but he doesn’t cry. He’s done crying.
Zanzibar gets his owl out and casts dragon's breath on it. The owl flies around and uses dragon's breath to burn the regular human zombie.
Dur-Dur-Dur swats at regular human zombie with his greataxe, turning it to complete dust. He then steps up behind the t-rex and wails on it like crazy with the axe. After the dinosaur races, he knows what it's like to slap a t-rex around a bit.
The giant bees fly in and start stinging the t-rex like hell!
The zombie t-rex snatches back, eating one bee and crushing another with its tail.
Valour brings Shatterspike around for a final swing and drops the zombie tyrannosaurus, a little surprised that it dropped as easily as it did.
The PC’s sure do get humble at level 5, right?
Dur-Dur-Dur wants to talk about why Azaka wasn't hurt while being chewed up by the tyrannosaurus, but he also wants her to help him gather tyrannosaurus bones for his upcoming bone couch that he’s been planning inside his brain.
"I have many ways to survive the cursed creatures of Chult,” Azaka says.
🌱 asks how he can learn these ways.
“I am cursed already,” Azaka says, then shapeshifts into a humanoid tiger—a weretiger! It looks pretty damn cool to be honest. "Regular attacks don't hurt me. I can still take damage from falling through. Once a month I turn into a monster. I have to leave and enter the jungles when I do."
"Eh, I don't need it,” 🌱 comments on the lycanthropy. “But maaaybe this little girl over here would like an adventure!" He approaches Xandala.
She doesn’t.
Azaka warns that being a lycanthrope is a life of loneliness and fear.
Dur-Dur-Dur considers that maybe he's already a lycanthrope.
Zanzibar approaches Xandala and gets really honest really quickly. "Every single person we meet has some kind of deep, dark secret and not telling us who they really are. Our last friend was some kind of celestial being who turned into a dinosaur. Our next guide was a weretiger. What is your secret? I saw you cast firebolt with an extra d10 which is only accessible at level 5!"
"I just want to find my dad!” Xandala shouts back. “I just don't do things the way you do them. I don't study these. They just happen! I don't know. I don't know why I am what I am."
"I don't either," Dur-Dur-Dur says. "I just woke up as an orc, and I started screaming.”
"I don't hold this against you, wizard. You chose this power. I didn't,” Xandala says.
Dur-Dur-Dur pulls Zanzibar and Xandala in for a massive group hug. "Let's all be friends again. I hate it when we fight!"
Nothing much happens over the next couple of days down the River Tiryki. Tensions may be high, what with the sudden weretiger revelations and raging tension between the two arcane casters.
🌱 does find a grub though. So that’s nice.
The party approaches the giant frog statue thing, but there’s a bit of an issue in that it’s surrounded by a maze of briar thorns with several zombies impaled on the thorny roots.
Fortunately, 🌱 is well versed in hardcore thornography.
Plant talks to the thorns, asking them what the deal is and if they can tell the party the best way to navigate this thorny maze without getting all that hurt. The thorns tell 🌱 that the grung of Dungrunglung live here.
So yeah that’s a thing.
The party realizes that even with the maze itself telling them how to navigate through it, they still don’t quite know how to get through. If David Bowie snatched any of their little siblings up, that sibling would be a goblin in straight-up no time. So after tripping around looking through the maze, the party finally finds the exit.
At the center of the maze is a massive pond with a giant stone frog in the center of it. Stairs lead up to a little stone opening inside the frog, and around the edge of the pond is a series of grass huts and boggy swampy froggy nonsense.
And the party is sick and tired of nonsense as of now!
A bunch of grung approach the party members and croak at them, which eventually devolves into lots of speaking back and forth in incomprehensible languages. Nobody learns anything about each other, and nobody knows how to proceed with these potentially dangerous frog folk.
Zanzibar uses his scroll of comprehend languages to obtain some kind of edge over these frog people. He overhears them speaking of the PC's as an "omen," and that the PC’s they need to see the King Groak, the grung king.
“On this day of all days!” a grung adds to the discussion.
Xandala, Valour, and Azaka stay behind as Dur-Dur-Dur, Zanzibar, and 🌱 enter the frog edifice where the king resides.
They go inside and see a lavish courtroom with a pond and a private hot tub. The grung king is bright gold in color and rests in the little hot tub, and his attendees sprinkle flower petals and tend to mushrooms in the pond.
🌱 druidcrafts the mushrooms and makes them look nice, which impresses the king.
Zanzibar hears the king monologue about how there will be a wedding tonight in the city state of Dungrunglung. The goddess Nangnang will appear, and she will bless the king with a marriage.
Well shit, one of the nine trickster gods that Pretzelcoatl asked them to kill might be the bride tonight?
The party decides to party!
To help join the festivities and maybe-or-maybe-not murder the everloving shit out of Nangnang once she appears and gets her froggy freak on, the PC’s use the alchemy jug to make beer for the grungs, which are definitely enjoying the inebriated mass!
Grungs start throwing beer into their faces to absorb it the alcohol through their amphibious skin.
🌱 follows the tradition and tosses his glass of beer into his face as well, as does Dur-Dur-Dur.
Zanzibar offers a toast to Nagnang, and Dur-Dur-Dur throws a beer into Zanzibar’s face. "No like this!" Dur-Dur-Dur clarifies, then runs over to Valour, who is sitting broodingly near the edge of the maze. "There's going to be a party tonight, and we get to drink!" Durdurdur tells Valour, and then throws a drink in Valour’s face.
"What's the cause for celebration?" Valour says.
"They're having a wedding!"
"Oh... okay! I'll throw a drink in my face!" Valour does.
Durdurdur snatches up a catfish from the pond and says "Look Azaka, cat person, cat fish!" Then throws it at her. "They just love Nangnang here!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"Wait, is she going to be here?" Valour damn near shouts.
"Nangnang is always here." Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"... I should like to meet Nangnang. I have a message for her from our friend Eku," Valour says, then disappears to get his shady plan together to start stacking bodies of deities that he doesn’t worship.
Typical paladin!
🌱 uses druidcraft to make things grow and look bright green so that the wedding will keep a verdant flair of joy. As he’s doing so, a red grung approaches him and starts babbling in grung-tongue to him in a very urgent manner. The grung shoves some paint into 🌱’s hand, then leaves and gives 🌱 a weird hand gesture. 🌱 repeats the gesture back to the grung. 🌱 rolls insight to see what he said with his gesture, and turns out he said "understood."
🌱 panics because he doesn’t understand what he just understood.
🌱 runs to Zanzibar and shouts, "The red grung lady told us that she wants us paint the shrine with this weird paint, but I don't know if that's what she said because I don't speak it."
🌱 and Zanzibar go back over to the bush and motion for the red grung to come back over to them.
The grung runs over and repeats, this time with Zanzibar able to translate. "You create Nangnang, and the king doesn't kill us anymore!"
Zanzibar explains, "The king is going to marry Nangnang. I don't think Nangnang is coming. I think we have to make our own Nangnang."
"If Nangnang says she is coming! She's coming!" Dur-Dur-Dur says even though he is on the other side of the lake.
"I don't think that's what's happening." Zanzibar says.
"I think we should tell the king what's happening." Valour says, also somehow able to hear this conversation.
Zanzibar shakes his head at this plan, "All we can tell the king is 'Nangnang no!' The king is killing grung, so that's what we need to stop. You know how we said no nonsense on this adventure? Well time for maximum nonsense. You know how Dur-Dur-Dur is already green? We just gotta get Dur-Dur-Dur close enough to the king to kill him!"
"Right, so all Dur-Dur-Dur needs to do is dress up like Nangnang, like Nangnang would have wanted!" 🌱 says.
"We'll use druidcraft, the magic paint, some minor illusions... I think we can do this well enough to get Dur-Dur-Dur close enough to murder the evil king,” Zanzibar says.
"I'm not participating." Valour says.
"Why? He's evil," 🌱 says.
"Well if he seems like a bad guy, I'll kill him." Valour says. "I'm not gaslighting. I'll kill him if he's bad."
Plant starts to paint Dur-Dur-Dur to look like Nangnang.
"Don't forget the undercarriage," Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"The king called this deity a goddess so I think we should tastefully arrange the undercarriage. I think you're going to have to tuck it up,” Zanzibar says.
🌱 starts painting Dur-Dur-Dur with frog legs, which seem incredibly lifelike with these strange paints.
🌱 then realizes he can meditate for four hours and reprepare water walk to cast on Dur-Dur-Dur so he can walk on water and help sell the illusion.
Dur-Dur-Dur starts freaking out because he starts to look like a really weird orc/frog hybrid.
The party then asks Xandala if she can contribute anything. She says she has a trick, but she’s done it only once before. She places a hand on Dur-Dur-Dur’s head and casts polymorph, which turns Dur-Dur-Dur into a giant frog.
Zanzibar starts freaking out, insisting that Xandala is much more powerful of a spellcaster than she’s been letting off. The party reprimands him severely about his privilege.
So the party agrees that the plan to Nangnang-ify Dur-Dur-Dur will include the following:
Polymorph Dur-Dur-Dur into a giant frog
Paint him up all purdy
Create some mist with minor illusion.
Turn him invisible.
Water walk him out to the middle of the pond.
Drop the invisibility when Dur-Dur-Dur is in position for maximum scene setting.
Cast light on a coin and mage hand it behind Dur-Dur-Dur to look like a backlight.
Night approaches, and the grung light fires around the camp, then sprinkle petals into the lake.
🌱 casts waterwalk on everyone.
Xandala casts polymorph on Dur-Dur-Dur.
Zanzibar casts invisibility on Dur-Dur-Dur.
Zanzibar casts light on a coin.
Xandala mage hands the coin so the light hovers over Dur-Dur-Dur and backlights him.
The ceremony begins. Grungs start croaking in a deep chorus, and the king stands atop his stone frog fortress in an array of regal attire and a circlet crown.
Xandala brings the lit coin onto the water, which alerts the grung to the presence of a deity. Dur-Dur-Dur tiptoes invisibly underneath it. Zanzibar summons mist with minor illusion, and 🌱 druidcrafts the lily pad flowers so they get super eloquent-lookin’.
Zanzibar drops invisibility!
Nangnang appears!
Dur-Dur-Dur lets out a loud croak into the night, which the grung all interpret as a mating croak establishing the frog king as a fine suitor for the goddess, Nangnang.
Dur-Dur-Dur hops up the stairs and joins the king at the top. They go inside the shrine. They enter the hot tub.
They lean in to kiss....
Dur-Dur-Dur tries to EAT THE FROG KING. HE CRITS HIS BITE ATTACK!
Valour apparently objects to this wedding, which he announces by charging across the water on Minion III and barging into the love shack. He is highly freaked out to see the frog king neck deep inside Dur-Dur-Dur’s face, and can barely bring himself to swing his sword well enough, inflicting only minor damage on the king.
The grungs go absolutely crazy!
A mass of grungs gang in on Azaka and start stabbing her, their daggers doing little damage, but the poison leeching her life away
Another team of grungs jump on Zanzibar and start tearing away his hit points with dagger swipes.
Zanzibar panics and casts invisibility, fleeing out as fast as possible.
Azaka shapeshifts into a weretiger and gets ready to carve up some frog boys.
The king tries croaking loudly to stun Valour, but Valour makes the save. This isn’t his first encounter with frog nobility that likes to scream.
As the grung peasants start hacking away the PC’s in a frenzy, the red grung runs onto the terrace and shouts at them, which causes the peasants to hold off on their attacks, but a contingency of grung warriors can’t be swayed against the king. Seeing that there are still dangerous grung, the red grung leaps behind Valour and heals him with a cure wounds spell.
🌱 turns into a nightmare fungus monster and charges across the water, ready to engage the warrior grungs.
Xandala drops her polymorph concentration and fireballs a pile of warrior grungs, pissing off Zanzibar as she drops 29 fire damage onto the edge of the frog structure.
Minion III charges the king and kicks him onto the ground, then keeps kicking him like the terrible frog he is.
Valour steps up and swings Shatterspike twice, invoking a divine smite on the final swing which smashes the king’s face in, reddining the water.
The green grungs all back away at the sight of such a massacre, leaving only the orange warrior frogs in the fray.
The warriors lay arrows into Valour but can't hit him, so they shoot the red traitor grung and Xandala instead.
Zanzibar isn’t about to be outdone by some sorceress, so he downs some soren juice, gets rightfully pissed, drops his invisibility, and says "LOOK, THIS IS HOW YOU FIREBALL!"
He blasts a pile of grung warriors for 30 damage total, beating Xandala by one point. The Soren juice flows through him, but he doesn’t see it activate… something is amiss!
Dur-Dur-Dur rages since his wedding night is ruined and he’s a bachelor again, so he just swats the grung frogs with his massive greataxe, dropping several in his anger.
The red grung keeps Valour topped off with cure wounds, and 🌱 engages the warrior grungs on the outer terrace of the frog structure to keep them from getting inside.
Xandala drops another fireball and roasts two grungs, beating Zanzibar’s damage with a 31 in total. Her fireball attack was quickened, so she uses firebolt to stack some burn on another grung.
Valour drops another warrior, and the grungs feather up Xandala with more arrows as the green peasant grungs flee. She’s taking more damage, but the adventuring battle life is too ingrained in her now, so she refuses to back down.
Zanzibar magic missiles the closest grung to Xandala to pull some aggro.
Azaka joins the scrum with 🌱 and claws some grung away.
Dur-Dur-Dur murders the rest of the grung inside, steps outside, ensures all of his friends that "Nothing happened!" and approaches the nearest grung to end its life as well.
Xandala hits a frog with a quickened firebolt, misty steps, then hits it again. Dur-Dur-Dur claps for her, giving the little mage a good jolt of encouragement. Zanzibar gets mad. "SHE'S LIKE LEVEL 7 SHE DOESN'T NEED YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT!"
"It's not about her, it's about you." 🌱 says.
Valour and Azaka close in on the final grung warrior and tear it to shreds.
The fight is over, and the whole shrine is covered in blood, gore, dead bodies, ash, ripped apart grungs... you know, a normal occurrence for a race of creatures devoted to Nangnang, a goddess defined as “selfish and cruel.”
The red grung goes back into the king’s shrine, takes the circlet of blasting crown off of the dead king, places it on her own head, then steps out and presents herself to the grung. The party continues, the peasant grung no longer afraid and now fully embracing the carnal celebration.
The PC’s approach the red grung and ask it various questions, such as who Nangnang is, where they can find her, where Omu is, and a general sense of what-the-fuck-ism’s. The grung can’t understand them, but she tries her best to explain what she thinks they’re saying.
The grung dips her hand into the pool of blood and gristle and draws the nine trickster gods on the wall, then smears them away.
She walks to the opposite wall and draws a skull with a crown, then draws a circle around the skull with arrows pointing to the gods.
The party interprets many things from this display. Valour thinks that something is preventing the gods from dying. Dur-Dur-Dur thinks the skull is taking away their powers. 🌱 thinks the image means they need to kill the gods. Zanzibar thinks that death has already come to the gods and they aren't in Omu anymore since the skull came for them.
Zanzibar then tries buying the circlet of blasting crown from the red grung for 100 gp. Dur-Dur-Dur instead just asks the grung for it. Since the PC’s helped depose a murderous king and put the red grung in power, the red grung just gives the crown to Dur-Dur-Dur, which makes Zanzibar mad.
Dur-Dur-Dur then gives the crown to Xandala and says it's a gift from Zanzibar. He then snatches the 100 gp out of Zanzibar’s hand and throws it to the red grung.
Xandala says she loves it!
Zanzibar is furious.
"Wow Zanzibar, you're really coming around," Valour says. “Here, I’ll go half on it with you,” he says, paying Zanibar 50 gp.
At this point, Zanzibar’s wild magic triggers. His wild magic roll state that he “attacks the nearest person once money is spent,” and Valour technically spent money. Zanzibar punches Valour in the face for one point of damage.
"I don't know what came over me, I'm very sorry,” Zanzibar says, looking at his hands.
Valour slaps Zanibar with the butt end of Shatterspike for 9 nonlethal damage.
Dur-Dur-Dur picks them both up and tells them they need to be friends again.
"What did you hit me for?" Valour complains.
"I don't know!" Zanzibar says.
The red grung finds the party’s demeanor a bit odd, then offers Dur-Dur-Dur a ring of jumping as an extra bonus for helping to kill the king and the king’s warrior class.