Twelve days earlier…
"Let's go find some frost giants..." 🌱 says from atop the corpse of a slain frost giant he found.
"Hey horsee, where's your owner," Dur-Dur-Dur says to Friendship, Valour’s warhorse, which then disappears as Valour casts find steed 50 miles south at Port Castigliar. "Why do my friends keep leaving me!?"
🌱 wants to write a message in the sky for Valour to see in case he’s nearby, but it's rainy tomorrow, so he doesn’t.
They debate ambushing more frost giants to eradicate them from the jungle completely, or going back to Port Nyanzaru to see a dragon turtle fight. Zanzibar feels like they've eliminated most of the frost giant threat since they torched their boat as well as killed the leader. Zanzibar is also fully dedicated to being an audience member to a WWE dragon turtle brawl.
Oh yeah, they then decide to make a decidion about the missing-Valour situation.
"He swung his sword and then he just poofed away!" Zanzibar says. "He didn't go invisible."
The party decides that if their undead-hating paladin were to go anywhere, it would be the super dangerous undead territory, so that’s where they go. Dur-Dur-Dur bangs his two bronze gongs together to get Valour’s attention.
Banging bronze gongs together in super undead territory is great for the DM. Now he can handwave every percentage chance of finding a random encounter and just consider them all successes!
A little ways into Dur-Dur-Dur playing the Gong Song, the party hears lots of loud dino noises ahead, so Zanzibar sends his owl to look at stuff. The noises come from herd of seven hadrosaurs is minding their business and chewing on undead territory plants.
Dur-Dur-Dur speaks to the hadrosaurs, "My name is Dur-Dur-Dur have you seen my daddy? He looks like me.”
"None like you,” a hadrosaur says.
"Have you seen this one?" Dur-Dur-Dur points at a drawing of Valour.
"No..." the hadrosaur says.
"Weeeeell he might have died." Dur-Dur-Dur says to the party.
"He could be an undead then,” 🌱 says, making everyone feel much better about their situation.
At that point, the party decides to eat good tonight, so Zanzibar lobs a fireball at the dinosaurs that are minding their own goddamned business and kills three of them. 🌱 drops one with chill touch and Dur-Dur-Dur murder-der-ders the babies with his axe.
"What the hell are you all doing!" Azaka shouts after seeing the massacre.
Nobody listens to Azaka.
"Hey hadrosaur! Go keep watch." 🌱 says, using fungal infestation to raise a hadrosaur fungus monster that then dies.
As the party gets ready to chow down, filling the undead wilderness with scents of cooked dinosaur meat, not too long after causing a giant explosion of fire, and not too-too long after smacking a bunch of gongs together, HEY WHADDYAKNOW some vampire-monkey-looking su-monsters show up from the trees and stare at the PC's. 🌱 puts on his monkey battiri mask, then uses druidcraft to mimic the sounds they were making.
The su-monsters have never seen something so racist!
Dur-Dur-Dur kind of knows who these creatures are, and he knows that they’re not the nicest of critters out here in the jungle, so he tosses some meat to them. He then tries to apply some poison from the jug of infinite mayonnaise to a piece of meat, but the su-monsters catch onto his nonsense and leave, even more offended.
Azaka recommends not pursuing the monsters.
At this point, Zanzibar thinks that casting Leomund’s tiny hut would be a great idea.
About five minutes into casting his condom tent, the su-monsters come back, this time leading a fuckton of ghouls and a ghast behind them on a collision course with the party’s camp.
Neat!
Azaka goes into kitty-form and intercepts the ghast. She pounces on it and knocks it to the ground, then tears it up with her pointy fingers. 🌱 casts shenandoah on his quarterstaff, then conjures giant eagles, Crime and Punishment, to hit the su-monsters out of the trees.
The eagles hit the su-monsters.
A su-monster uses psychic crush on one of the eagles and stuns it.
Dur-Dur-Dur gets angry and closes in on the ghast, activates Durminator, and annihilates it. He then annihilates another one. Then another one.
That boy just likes killin’!
A su-monster then hops up and uses its psychic voodoo powers on Dur-Dur-Dur, but he’s just so gosh-danged mad that he doesn’t feel it in his brain.
Zanzibar drops a fireball and murders a bunch of stuff including a bird.
Argus kills a ghoul, then Azaka kills a ghoul. Basically everyone is killing ghouls. Except for 🌱, he chill touches a su-monster and kills it.
They then just kill everything. Dead. Everything dies.
Then they sleep in Zanzibar’s tiny hut (which is actually Leomond's hit, but Zanzibar LIES!) Dur-Dur-Dur puts a dead su-monster out as a warning totem with some gongs because yep.
The next day they find no giants. They do however find a pteranodon skeleton with 25 boxed rations on it, like it was a courier, so they snatch the hell out of those then take a nap.
The next day is raining like hell, but they get closer to Port Nyanzaru. The next-next day is just regular rain, which they trudge through and sleep. The day after that is girallon zombie weather, which proceed to punch the hell out of Argus until 🌱 summons a fairy allosaurus that joins the fight and everyone kills the girallons for beating up their new old friend.
The next day they head to Port Nyanzaru and make it there right as the sun goes down.
SURPRISE! That dragon turtle they saw in the ocean a couple of episodes back with the town on its back is now nestled in the port, bridges and docks connecting its back-town to the regular-town. The party also sees that so many ships are crammed into the port now.
In addition to the turtley real estate attached to the port and the excess of boats, people from all over the world appear to be in the port—not just a majority of Chultans.
Dur-Dur-Dur remembers that he’s heard of this new dragon turtle before, but he’s damn near completely wrong about some specific details. "Hey Badu is in town! He was my bestest friend growing up! Let's go talk to him!" Dur-Dur-Dur lies, pointing at the dragon turtle.
Dur-Dur-Dur picks up Zanzibar and runs to his tavern instead.
While in the tavern, Dur-Dur-Dur looks around and sees his tavern has actual patrons now—foreign ones! About 40 in total all buying drinks and getting their hoopla on.
"Hey Shenice I'm here! I'm just going to drop some stuff off! I GOT SOME NEW DECORATIONS!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, running up to Shenice who is definitely not equipped to handle this bar on her own right now.
Dur-Dur-Dur uses his hand to brush several drinks off the bar so he can have some room to unload his two bronze gongs, gigantic rocking chair, white dragon wing, piles of frost giant body parts, and massive door.
“Hey, has Valour been here?” Zanzibar asks.
"I haven't seen the clanky man!" Shenice shouts at him above the uproar.
The party then decides to go check out the dragon turtle with the town on its back.
"Now you gotta make sure you address the dragon turtle properly or else he gets upset," Dur-Dur-Dur says. "You go up to him and rub his shell counter-clockwise and say 'Hello Badu I'm say your name' then give him a kiss. And he may let you on. Now you gotta do it by the eldest person so you go ahead." Dur-Dur-Dur says and pushes Zanzibar forward.
Zanzibar kind of doubts everything that Dur-Dur-Dur just said.
🌱 goes up to the dragon turtle. He sees a sign that says "Barnacle Removal Needed: See Valerya at the docks"
🌱 finds the woman whose name sounds like an STD and asks her, "Are you related to Valour?"
"Why do you ask?" she says, then realizing that 🌱 is a fellow druid, she puts on a hat, a trench coat, and sunglasses, "But you can call me 🕵️♀️"
🕵️♀️ hires 🌱 to get barnacles off of Badu’s rear end for 25 gp each.
"Can you talk to Badu?" 🌱 says.
"Yes." 🕵️♀️ says.
"What has he said?"
"He doesn't talk much he's resting."
"Do you know any secrets?" 🌱 says.
Off to the side, Dur-Dur-Dur is talking to the dragon turtle about his whole life.
🌱 casts water walk and start harvesting the barnacles off of Badu. The party takes their dinosaur knives and pries the barnacles off of the turtles butt and cashes them in like a World of Warcraft fetch quest… but with way more booty-barnacles.
While they return back to the Thundering Lizard Inn, Zanzibar notices that some of the tavern's patrons are wearing the colors of Kinchasa.
"Hello, a fellow Kinchasan here in Chult!" Zanzibar says to one of the patrons.
"I'm sorry have we met?" the Kinchasan says.
"I don't know. Have we? I am Zanzibar, son of the Manzibar of Kinchasa."
"Um... I have been out of the city for some time, but I was not born yesterday...” the man says. “And neither were you!”
Zanzibar fumes with age... I mean rage. "Yes, I was born twenty-four years ago, however due to a violent encounter with a ghost in the jungle, I have aged many ears."
"HI I'M DUR-DUR-DUR welcome to the Thundering Lizard Inn!” Dur-Dur-Dur shouts.
"This man is my adventuring partner and can vouch for my identity,” Zanzibar says, pointing at Dur-Dur-Dur.
"You want this guy to vouch for your identity?" the Kinchasan says, looking very nervous.
"Well my other options are this pirate over here or this mushroom," Zanzibar says, pointing to Argus and 🌱.
"Oh I remember him. He is the plant licker!" the Kinchasan says, looking at 🌱.
"What news do you have of home?" Zanzibar blurts out, changing the subject.
"The Manzibar is fine. One of your brothers is in town, doing a great job keeping the town in good spirits. The Temple of Guga has been raided and replaced, made into a home of misplaced youth,” the Kinchasan says.
"What of the kobold?" Zanzibar raises an eyebrow.
"The kobold has... he has been made into a second in command at the home for displaced youth. Doing a great job helping the city."
"Oh that is good, I was afraid he had gone into a murderous rampage and killed my whole family.” Zanzibar’s eyes glaze over as he remembers the terror in the temple beneath his hometown.
"No we keep an eye on him. But we in Kinchasa heard that the dragon turtle of Port Nyanzaru, Aremag, is out of the way recently with Badu's arrival, so there is no 'import tax, so more merchants are coming into Port Nyanzaru. News of this has been spreading all over the Shining Sea.”
The party parties into the night, then crashes as Dur-Dur-Dur counts the money he’s been making and Shenice counts the massive surge of tips and crawls into her bedroll under the bar.
The next day, Zanzibar wakes up and sees a courier in the bar downstairs. The courier has a letter from him which reads, "I KNOW HOW TO GET THROUGH THE BARRIER”—Grandfather Zitembe.
Everyone goes to see Grandfather Zitembe at the Temple of Savras. "I've been waiting for you!" the old man says.
Zitembe tells the party about how he has been using his scrying pool and consulting his books to find a way past the barrier of the ziggurat in Mauratal. He says the way through the shield lies in the temple of Orolunga, which is protected by an ancient guardian. He then shows them on their player handout map, indicating that it’s on the northwestern side of Chult. He says that he doesn’t know what the ancient guardian might be, but Qelong to the southeast is ruled by Dendar the Night Serpent, and its guardian is a dreadful naga snake monster thing.
The party asks if Grandfather Zitembe knows where Valour is since their players are pretending they don’t know what’s happened to him.
Zitembe says he can't see Valour anymore, but can tell that he is on the way to Port Nyanzaru due to a “blind spot” that encroaches closer each day.
Dur-Dur-Dur then demands Grandfather Zitembe see if he can look for Dur-Dur-Dur’s daddy. Zitembe examines a crudely drawn picture of the orc, then sees a terrifying vision; He sees an orc in a cage, locked in a wet, fleshy room, and a demon composed of grasping hands lurking nearby.
He dare not pry anymore—but it appears the orc has been in dire trouble for a long time.
Dur-Dur-Dur wants to go to Mauratal because he wants to MURDER!
The party hops into the circle of teleportation in Zitembe’s hidden closet. They warn Argus about how dangerous the place is, but XP is XP, and it’s time to grind! They emerge from the circle into the busted up library.
🌱 casts water walk on the party so that they can fight on the water’s surface.
An hour passes by and nothing happens. Water walk goes away. 🌱 reconsiders his choices for a brief moment—
OH NO two wights burst up from the floor of the library and start lashing out at folks!
They kill the wights without much of an issue, then wait for like three hours for something else to come along and get them. Argus begins to doubt just how dangerous this place really is when—
GIGANTIC CROCODILES OH NO!
No really, the party is about to get fucked up.
🌱 throws back a Soren juice as the giant crocodiles appear because SOMEONE didn’t learn anything from episode 25!
Dur-Dur-Dur throws some spears at a crocodile, then gets his axe out. The crocodile charges him back and tears him a new one, knocking him on the ground and then snatching him up in his jaws.
Zanzibar shakes his booty and casts hypnotic pattern, using his portent to cause the crocodile to let go of Dur-Dur-Dur.
A second crocodile charges at Dur-Dur-Dur, Argus and 🌱, then crits Argus with its tail attack. Argus uses uncanny dodges to take only 12 damage, but then gets bitten and takes damage and is grappled. Argus starts shanking it in the jaw with his dagger, unable to get loose from its jaws.
A third croc goes BOO and runs up from the water, swats at Zanzibar, but bites nothing as the wizard poops out a shield.
"Do something, 🌱!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, which triggers 🌱’s wild magic surge, which states “the next person to say 🌱’s name forgets his own name.” Dur-Dur-Dur forgets his real name. Even I have already forgotten his real name, so it's all convenient.
Oh, to imagine the potential elderly jokes if old-man-Zanzibar were the one to forget his name...
Everyone panics because the crocodiles have Argus grappled and they're REALLY hurting people—like, a lot. And they’ve got the PC’s cornered. And there’s four of them. It's like the end of Lake Placid but twice as dangerous and Betty White can't save them.
🌱 fights back by conjuring little weenie crocodiles to fight the big ones. They… do okay.
Dur-Dur-Dur activates the axe and wails on a crocodile like a beast of hell. He doesn’t kill it, which makes him panic since they still have four giant crocs to deal with.
Zanzibar drops a fireball and kills one of the weenie crocs as well as one of the big crocs that's holding Argus, who lunges with his rapier at a crocodile and pokes it a bit. A giant croc then bites 🌱, crits on the attack, and the baby crocs all disappear as 🌱 is reduced to 0 hit points.
Another crocodile comes in and chomps down on Dur-Dur-Dur, who tries hitting him back but can’t quite do it. The party is now beat to hell with one PC down, and Zanzibar has only one option…
HE DROPS THOSE PANTS.
AND HE SHAKES.
DAT.
BOOTY!
Zanzibar casts hypnotic pattern on every creature nearby, Dur-Dur-Dur included. Everyone fails the save. He then shoves a goodberry into 🌱’s mouth, and 🌱 slaps Dur-Dur-Dur awake. The PC’s then proceed to systematically annihilate every giant crocodile one-by-one, not waking them up, not letting them any time to take an action, and just scarfs down four CR 5 monsters like it’s nothing—
Bullshit! That’s what it is!
Fuck!
They kill the crocodiles and run back through the circle of teleportation into Grandfather Zitembe's place, looking like absolute shit. 🌱 hits level 7.