Apples and a scaly dustup

Jones & Aurora, Robrick & Lancewick Willikers, Hadji & Foxy, Shamash & Valda, Jorel were searching the area following the encounter (see previous entry)

Hadji followed the wide tunnel left by the purple worm earlier, being careful not to step beyond the 200'deep level. He knew as well as the rest of the Uprisers, that violating that treaty with Asmodeus would be a bad idea. As an underdark ranger who spent most of his life below the surface, dungeoneering came naturally. He read the geological striations along the walls of the new cave like the back of his hand. at 175' below, light shone from an area further back. The purple worm had pierced the edge of a spherical area with no other entrances. In the center stood a perfectly symmetrical tree with visible, symmetrical roots. It had gold and silver leaves.

Lancewick ran into the room and picked three apples, ready to eat them all. In his usual contrary fashion, Robrick dashed in and threw an apple at his face. "Don't eat that, wait for Hadji first!" Lancewick only got a few bites of one of the apples.

Jorel knew some of its history, but although his ritual allowed him to look back in time the 14378 years to when the tree was magically buried here, he didn't know what to make of the situation. Needing neither food nor drink he had no interest in the apples.

Hadji cut a quarter of an apple, ate it, and fed the rest to Foxy.

Aurora prayed to Pelor and ate an apple.

Jones borrowed a dagger from Willikers, cut an apple up (it was more like a pomegranate on the inside) pocketed the seeds and ate the rest.

Nex picked an apple and put it in his bag.

Shamash and Valda each ate an apple, and picked several of the leaves.

The apples, if eaten in the chamber, bestow immortality (well, un-aging at least). If taken out of the chamber without eating, they create pustules (-10 charisma per apple for 1 year per apple).

Since Jones took a bite, he gained the benefit but the seeds and the tree spoke to him, requesting that when the opportunity presents itself, Jones is to plant one seed on each different world he visits. There is a limit of one such tree per world. The leaves, with a limit of one occurrence per individual became "anything" items, 21st level magic items. Also, being a master diplomat he negotiated a reduction of Nex's charisma penalty to a period of 1 week.

Once everyone left the chamber, new apples and leaves appeared and the entire chamber popped away, as though nothing had happened.

And so ends that little detour.

---

Phil continued our battle with Bane's mace thief, Bledgore or his general or his general's delivery boys or whatever. Turns out the leaders of this group were in the underdark. We fought koa-toa, drakkor or drakoliths or something, some flying CR 25 things. The larger encounter/rest of it was saved for later; some bad guys retreated behind a magical wall that closed after them. Something we fought must have had about 500 hp or something, it just took forever to get it bloodied. If I have more details later I will update this paragraph.

Aurora had hoped for more of the enemy to have the dragon subtype rather than a bunch of scaly reptiles and fish. If the bad guys had been draconic she could have "gone nuke," with her abilities.

Our group of strikers and leaders mowed through the enemy like a hot knife through butter.

XP was 3 or 4k and we got a 19th level magic item and about 3000 gp.

The Other Two Encounters

So picking up from where the party killed the Nagas, when the Primordial Naga was dying, he let his friends know somehow. As a result, a couple of big encounters followed. Robrick & Lancewick Willikers, Jorel, Aurora, Jones, Shamash, Nex, Valda, Hadji & Foxy were more than a match for them however. Three leaders and six strikers make quite a combination.

First, an Elder Purple Worm arrived, preceded by an earthquake that sent boulders from the ceiling of the cavern crashing all around the Uprisers. The gargantuan monster was hard to hurt, and managed to swallow the party's cleric (Aurora) before being defeated. Luckily, she survived the acid and constriction since she was swallowed late in the encounter. A deep screech, like that of a bat only muffled and much lower in pitch filled the cavern, and then the remains of the Worm exploded gooey guts everywhere, coating the cavern and the party. Found within the remains were bits of some strange giant batlike creature from the underdark, possibly even a demon or devil of some type -- probably something the Worm ate earlier. The trail left behind by the Worm was impressive too, and lead to an alternate, unintended entrance to a hidden cavern, where the party fought...

An ancient green dragon and six banshrae warriors. This was a bit tougher, but for most of the encounter the dragon was affected by so many conditions it didn't get that many actions really. In the end there were 3 of the banshrae warriors left, and Jones told them they work for Hadji now. After all they are somewhat like-minded: unaligned but brutal. They probably picked the wings off of bugs as kids.

Treasure will follow next time. Obviously this number of powerful guardian monsters must be guarding something. Spoiler alert: The party spotted a magical tree in the deep cavern. But this time treasure will need to be handled in a roleplaying situation, please don't give yourself any magic items yet for this.

Our current xp total should be 135,000 each I believe, we're about 2 sessions away from leveling to 20th.