He doesn't sell whatevers, but always does have what the party "needs", but at a cost. In this case Sybil took advantage of Anton's spiel and the group got a chance to get a leg up in a direction that would get them through the Bugbear Warren.
Write up follows:
Icemonth the 1st, roughly noon. The group talked about heading west into the next area but there was a body just inside the passageway. Humanoid, tall (maybe 7’), goblin like in his bones, and his skull and collar bones smashed. Been dead at least 9 months, mostly just bones with some thin skin. No clothes, no belongings. With torch light we could see the room was perhaps 20 x 30, at least a 15’ tall ceiling, and numerous stalactites and stalagmites again, like the hall and the prior room we came from. Some broken stone on the floor and little else. There was another passage on the opposite side of the chamber along the north wall.
Sybil went back and forth and the thought was to sneak slightly into the room so she could look down the passage. So she crept forward slowly…slowly…making it to the nearest stalagmite…
When some dropped from the ceiling, smashed into the back of the halfling’s head, and smashed her to the ground. It was a damned stalactite! And as we watched, it slowly turned itself around like a mollusk or some sort. Looking up, we could see LOTS of other stones hanging above shuffle about. Thalin charged in, grabbed her ankle and one tried to fall on him, but he reared back and gave it a punch – and it was like hitting a damned rock!
But he did run out of the room with her and we spent 10 minutes waking her up, patching up her head, and coming up with another plan. We wanted past here – but do we go back to the straw room? Discussed the matter for a bit and eventually decided that if we hugged the wall in here, we might avoid any more of the piercers.
That’s when we thought about dousing the torches and once dark – we could easily see 20 of the piercers on the ceiling and 5 on the floor radiated heat and visible to infravision. But not everyone had it so we had to link hands and pick our way through the room without delay, watching above and dodging the slow moving piercers. Once through though Sybil grew alarmed that we had NO light’s lit and that meant we were ripe for a Gru attack so we lit torches quickly and regrouped.
The passage here went north to what seemed to be a former camp of some sort. Torn bedrolls, smashed brazier, bloody (very dried) blanket. Door to the left and passage leading to the gloom to the right. We looked around and discussed options for a while until the vote was to go check out the door. It was here that we heard a voice coming from the side passage say, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. But I’m willing to watch and see how this plays out.”
Human (?) male about late 20’s/early 30’s, handsome, oiled hair slicked back into a pony tail, wearing a bulging backpack, short sword at his side. Had a giant slug toting a cart laden with covered bundles. Identified himself as Anton, he’s a trader down here, always looking around for a good deal. The group spoke to him and he had an acerbic wit and a biting retorts but wasn’t fazed by the group and was willing to trade. Like for magic items? No, you don’t NEED magic items, do you? I’ll trade what you need. And I’ll always be fair.
What did he want for the trade of information? Simple Sybil, just a little bit of that baby fat you were carrying. And Sybil took the deal – shaking his hand that was a HOT flash and Sybil was sweating madly as 10 lbs boiled away – she looked flush and tired and wild all at once as 1/6th of her body weight slid away.
Anton honored the deal, gave her the information that the wizard was not at home but did have disguises to get the group through. He then thanks the party and let them know he might see them again at some point in the future, or he might not. But wished them good luck!
We went down the hall to the door, it was locked and Sybil worked the lock until it snapped open – and we all entered. It was a fairly large chamber – 30 x 30, that had been retrofitted as living and working quarters for a single someone. Bed, armoires, table, pantry, chairs, library, some robes. Robes were wizard looking , black and chased in silver and gold. There was a feeling that the person here was elvish, but the furnishing were “whatever” – touched up and bedecked after the fact.
There was a door on the other side of the room, also locked (twist lock from this side). We locked the door and looked around a bit. At some point we had cast for magic and found a few places that had some glowing – but no one wanted to risk touching anything just in case. During all this Shim had parked himself at the wizard’s writing desk and once we came to the conclusion we were going to take nothing and just go out the other door, Shim figured he’d leave the wizard a note detailing that they had come to do some trading but he wasn’t here. And they’d like to try again to get some disguises.
And then as he put the pen down, right below where he had written, SOMEONE else was writing a reply! No pen, just the letters appearing. It was the wizard and he was Busy right now, but wanted to know what they wanted so he can help. Identified himself as “V”.
Shim said this was so damned cool.
What followed was a slow conversation back and forth with some wizard somewhere else and Shim where he did identify he did have some bugbear disguise potions. Would last 3 hours – and should be long enough to get them through the warren. Thought the group was pretty ballsy for doing it. Would also give them the ability to understand and speak Bugbear if need be. We dickered a bit but the wizard was Busy and the more we asked him things, the more curt his replies got.
Shim didn’t want to piss him off and the party elected to buy the potions over Darius’ serious concerns – the bugbear warren was massive and we were sitting ducks there. But being outvoted we all took out coins, paid the wizard (just laid it on the table and the coins disappeared!). He thanked Shim, gave him some Falser rootbeer candy as a thanks once he learned Shim was a gnome, and a hidden compartment under the table opened and we saw about 60 small vials – 3 groups of 20, each marked with a B, a D, or an L. V had told us to take the “B” potions so we did.
From there we drank them down and one by one, we all changed outwardly to bugbears. Our heights remained the same, appearances changed. So the Halfling and gnome appeared as if children. But when you looked at yourself, you saw yourself!
We went to the north door, left, was in a small 10x10 room that had been used as a portal, and then beyond that was a larger room with a DIRT floor – not stone, various bones sticking out. On the walls were some commendation to Hel. We went beyond it to the far door and opened it – to see 9 bugbears here.
And this led to our 3rd wacky conversation of the night. The bugbears were under the impression we were a group that had gotten lost and at some point we turned to Asher and acted as if he knew what this happened. Which then had the bugbears remember that we were Asher and the Runts. Yeah..we know you. What did you do Asher? Why were you gone so long?
And then it got weird. There was a brothel beyond here that we were taken to after some good natured dueling in the hall where first blow landed wins the fight. Asher had to have sex with three of the Bugbears as demanded by the silent gods and he gamely did what we could. But Darius was trying to fill in the “fake” missing gaps and couldn’t come up with a reason for some of the questions – saying that his memory was foggy.
And he was asked How do the silent gods get rid of fog? They blow it away. So he needs to get blown to remember. And one of the women came forward and there was some back and forth and Darius really got into the bugbear mindset, punched the girl in the face for too much talking and demanded a different priestess to the silent gods blow him. And she did.
Sybil and Shim were looked at as the kids of the group, Sybil being the chatty of the two and Shim making growling noises. They were given some candied rat to nibble on and the legend of Asher’s Troupe continued to grow as we fielded other odd and leading questions.
Eventually guards from King Zandark came in and waited from Asher to finish. From here they took us further into the Warrens past some store areas and a smithy until we arrived at a throne room. King Zandark was a giant of a bugbear, bare chested, dressed in pinks and yellow puffy pantaloons, and sporting a 5’ tall black sword against his throne.
He welcomed Asher back, asked how his parents were doing, and then wanted to know about the barrels. Where were they? Asher was very ready and we quickly put together a plan where we would follow a war party out against the Ogres who took the barrels and then bring it back to the King. There were some threads lost in the conversation and King Zandark had to be reset a few times, but we took the mission to…return with the ogre stolen barrels with the mystery stuff inside. Yeah, we’re on it.
The King then beat Asher for a bit until the half-elf admitted he didn’t want to be hit anymore and was not ok, and then he did the same to Darius who also eventually relented. The king was satisfied and we made our way out of here following some guards who lead us through a number of large corridors, a massive chamber well over a hundred feet long with a 30’ tall arched ceiling, with bugbear homes mounted against the ceiling in places. We saw other passages and even a room with some ogres, liazrdmen, and a human..a fucking GHOUL in a cage. Why a ghoul?? According to the bugbear’s there, if someone is badly hurt and needs to have their skin sewed or a spear dug out of them, the cage is lowered and the ghoul scratches that person, paralyzing them so the bugbear Chirurgeon’s can operate.
How…dreadful.
We did get out of the warren and found ourselves in a passage beyond that we then followed to a room with a door on the north wall and a passage that led to a sloping corridor to the left. Rotten bunks, old straw, rancid smell. According to our guess we had under an hour on the potions until it ended . Which way to go?
Sybil seemed hungry and was nibbling a lot. We looked up slope, it was a good 30 degree angle and there was grit, rocks, and … teeth at the base of the slope! Like over a dozen of them – and all canines and molars. … Ok.? Top of the slope was lost in the gloom. Door on the north led to a passage and wound a bit, some light down the hall, and then eventually a long hall going north.
We then decided to summon a monster to check out both halls as we didn’t like either one. So Shim called out and got…a lizard man! But unlike any lizard man we had seen before. Almost 7 1/2’ tall, 400 lbs, plates running down its back, strong and terrible looking. It looked at the group and Shim had it go down the long hall. Before it went, Darius pulled out the lizardman disk we’ve had forever and it was a holy symbol to some lizard god – and the sign was two fingers on one hand and pinky thumb on the other!
The lizardman called Shim “Little food” and did trundle down the hall, calling out what it saw. Long hall, some 80 plus feet, ended at a door, opened to a room with some torch light and a set of stairs going up next to a large number “1”. Hot damned – another way out!!
We then had it come back and then go up the sloped passage (which it did with its clawed feet). 4 way intersection, door on the north. Went through door, small room, Glyph gate here. Um,..Touch glyph – light shot out, but nothing happened.
And then spell ended.
Ok, we decided we were going to work our way up the slope and see what the Glyph gate had for us, knowing that our illusion was only going to last another half hour tops.
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