Kill All the Trees, No-Tongued Bastards.

Again, shit is happening. Always be aware of what's going on. Shit will affect you sooner or later.

So after resting in the fire snake den, we returned to where we fought the goblins and moved on. We continued to find infestations of bio-luminescent fungus in the corridors. We did find an intact wall mural depicting a dragon doing dragon stuff: burning down stuff and pillaging. We ran into another bugbear, this one apparently a fungus gardener. I got to viciously mock it out of my new Warlock Book of Shadows. Shannon suggested a Shakespeare insult generator to accompany this spell. Sounds legit. Phox took it out with a crit. Hopefully this breaks Kyla's bugbear curse?

During this scene we learned that Bruennor is meta-aware that Calvin re-statted him from a Knowledge Cleric to a Life Cleric, and has taken up a new hobby in response: drinking. We found ourselves in an area of plant-filled rooms. After opening some more doors we came to a different room.

It held a dragon statue with the eyes glowing blue and a circle of runes in the in front of it. As we moved to attack it, a shadow ambushed us. As you may recall, these incorporeal undead are weak to radiant damage. Auryx used moonbeam. I also used another new one out of my Book of Shadows: sacred flame. Bruennor also used that spell. But Calvin decided that being drunk reduces Wisdom (as well as Intelligence, Charisma, Dexterity, Strength...), so Bruennor kinda sucks at it, now. Once she had her moonbeam, Auryx became a giant honey badger. The thing had a bad habit of hiding behind that statue, so I broke out the drow racial ability to cast faerie fire, and it failed. Fortunately, Vrinn was finally able to sneak in and get a sneak attack off. Once we had beaten the shadow, we read the runes in the circle. It said in Draconic, "Sorcererous power illuminate my spirit." We tried putting some sapphires in dragon eyes again to no avail. Then Bruennor just said it out loud and got advantage on Charisma checks for a while.

Moving on we found a modest library. We took a short rest there. Vrinn poked around, finding a spell scroll of Melf's acid arrow. Phox tried to read by holding a book upside down. I helpfully flipped it right side up. Bruennor, in addition to his drinking problem, has also decided to take up the hobby of destroying and belittling knowledge. So he tried to vandalize books before the rest of us subdued him.

Beyond that we found some descending stairs! But dang it if we aren't players and we don't want that 100% map completion achievement (it unlocks a new skin for characters!), so we back-tracked to open more doors in the plant-filled area. We found a room of skeletons clearing scorched plant matter. As we engaged them, some twig blights appeared. We did have short discussion about Harryhausen, then moved on.

We found an octagonal room with more scorched plant matter and several holes in the walls. Squiz decided to stick his arm in one of the holes. He got attacked by another fire snake. Hiro used a new trick: charging his bow with psychic energy before attacking it. Needless to say, we won. Sqiz was rewarded for searching its lair, though, finding some sapphires.

Last, we found some goblins collecting edible lichen. We totally face murdered them, then moved back to library for another short rest. One of the fun features of the warlock: a short rest tops off their tank of spell slots.

The stairs led down, under a room we had explored, and then back up. It led down another corridor. We opened some stone doors, finding big old room full of goblins and twig blights. Another opened into another rift. Vrinn tried to pick a locked door, but failed. We fought the goblins, and they called for the Protector of the Twilight Grove, which summoned more twig blights! Hiro covered the area of that swarm of twig blights in darkness. Surprisingly they started moving away from us. Auryx dropped a flaming sphere to burn out the twig blights. Hiro also summoned up a pair of shadow beasts to block their retreat.

Squiz, once again proving he just exists to try different things, started throwing tridents. As Hiro's shadow beasts started killing blights, we had to check some rules. Apparently, if they kill a non-evil humanoid, it will raise a shadow in 4 hours. So we need to be careful with those. Once we had cleared the mob, we got to explore.

There was a back door to the locked room Vrinn failed to pick. It lead to a study with a soil floor. I found an interesting book written in draconic: Treasures of the Firelord. I opened it. It was trapped with a cold damage glyph of warding. Haha. Looking around we found some more spell scrolls: entangle and protection from poison.

We took a short rest back at the stairs. We decided, even though it would end with us running late, to go on to the final battle.

We came to a walled clearing: the site of the Gulthias Tree. We found Belak, and some humans: Sir Braford and Sharwyn Hucrele. The last two weren't looking good: a little bit like Zerg-infested Terrans but with wood. We got Belak monologuing about the tree: it grew from a stake used to kill a vampire. He using the fruit to "spread it's seed" as it were. Plus, he had turned Sharwyn and Sir Braford into "supplicants" of the Tree.

We concocted our plan: grab a red apple off the tree and use it to, hopefully, cure the transformed humans. Vrinn snuck around to the flank. Or tried to. This was the last straw, and Belak started fighting. Auryx finally got to use her entangle to tie down some of the enemies. Vrinn did manage to sprint up the tree and grab that apple as we were fighting twig blights, Belak, and the "supplicants." We managed to knock them out. I did helpfully remind newer players that you can decide to knock out a foe when you drop them to 0 hp in this edition. Yay more cinematic play style! Hiro got to score the killing blow on Belak.

While everyone else was trying to secure the humans for restoration, I listened to the strange voices in my head and poured lantern oil onto the Gulthias Tree and set it ablaze. Fortunately, the apple did cure the humans of their tree-infestation, and we were justly rewarded.

Next week, we move on to the Forge of Fury.