The morning starts off with a river of mud, flowing through the town. Everyone begins to blame the beavers and wants to fight or destroy the beavers. A few of the towns adventures and founding members step up to investigate the problem.

The party decides what to bring with them and eventually gets the gear together and we canoe up the river in three canoes.

We arrive to the dam and everything looks wrong. There are no beavers on our side of the dam.

Ken Leaves finds a beaver and begins a dialogue with them. The beaver asks if we want our friend back, while Ken investigates their health. Ken gives the beavers some kombucha, to help with the digestion issues and notices that they have quite a few patches in their fur. Ken also gives them the gifts of sticks and the beavers thank him and say they will go see the Lodge Leader.

Meanwhile, Geoff notices their guards getting slowly more disheveled over the days. Geoff had been planning on teaching their “cat” to play cards, but decides to misty step out of the way.

A crow lands on Flint’s shoulder. After waiting for a few minutes, the Lodge Leader arrives with the original beaver and some chult beavers. We discuss the issue with the Lodge Leader and he tells us that the scouts haven’t found what the issue was and they have gone up the river two days travel. We agree to help the beaver’s with their problem and the Lodge Leader asks if we want to bring our friend with us. The crow on Flint’s shoulder looks away.

Geoff takes this opportunity to teleport out of their prison and surprises everyone. The Lodge Leader tries to handwave this off, but as their health derails, they are escorted back into their dam by their fellow beaver. A few moments later a scout arrives to discuss with us about their scouting.

We speak with the scout about what they have seen and they describe an awful feeling, as they are very sensitive to psychic energies.

Proceeding up the river, with the first night being uneventful, the water gets even thicker and more acrid, clearly getting closer to the fouling’s source. Geoff, while attempting to degunk his paddle, spots a wide pair of eyes following in the water, alerting the troupe before a giant Chultian Crocodile leaps towards the lead canoe. In a panic, Flint polymorphs the beast into a tiny robin, who can then only ineffectively peck at him.

The following day around noon, we come across a large structure in the river. We are being eaten alive due to the gnats and insects biting at us, as we are wilting under the hot sun.

Flint fills us in on the history of this place, as it reminds him of ancient lizardfolk. We notice a tree with one completely clean branch and one that is in rough shape. Before this structure, the river is clean, but whatever is happening inside, it is turning the river into the murk.

We discuss what we want to do. The thought of blocking the river intake, is an ideal plan, but we don’t have the tools to cut it off.

We enter the temple and a troll, with a small group of lizardfolk, guarding the place demands us to leave. We try to reason with him, but he just repeats his demand. Ken Leaves even attempts speaking in troll, but to no avail. Misora, getting tired of this, decides to attack the troll.

Geoff, thinking the plan was to leave and regroup, grabs Misora to leave. Drake blasts his poison breath at the troll. The troll, being struck, attacks Drake, while the rest of the party tries to retreat, but in the end we decide to stay and fight. Taking down the troll, the lizardfolk move in to fight off the intruders. After dealing with the lizardfolk, we continue to investigate the temple.

The walls are lined with unlit torches, which surprises us as lizardfolk typically do see by light. We come across a cave tunnel entrance and decide to follow it, hoping to find the source of the river’s issues. We do find a set of hanging cages, containing dead lizardfolk, who appear to have been stabbed by daggers. While most wore awful clothes, one had a shiny blue cloak, which again seemed odd for the captors to have missed. Flint puts it on, noting its magical tingle, and finds a note written in lizardfolk. Misora reads it, which illustrates that the caged lizards were likely acolytes of the temple who wanted to stop whatever ‘the new boss’ was doing, as it had already killed too many. We guess that might’ve been the Troll and the tainted water?

The party discusses what we want to do next and decide to take the exit that will take us to the water. The corridor eventually leads us to the water. Ken Leaves wildshapes into an otter and hops into the water, followed by Drake, after doffing most of his gear. Ken swims through the corridor and almost gets distracted, but finds that the corridor eventually goes up, meanwhile Drake gets attacked by two lizardfolk. One threw a trident at him, but misses, while the other tries to grapple with Drake, but he breaks free and then disengages swimming up the corridor, breaking the surface.

Ken decides to try and dart pass the lizardfolk to alert the rest of the group. He easily swims pass, as they ignore him in his otter form and makes it near to the end of the passage.

The lizardfolk swim after Drake, attempting to attack him. The first one strikes at Drake and he ripostes them, following up with another strike. His follow up strike, takes out the lizardfolk.

Ken pops out of the water, letting us know of the attack of the lizardfolk on Drake.

Drake has taken out the lizardfolks by the time we have arrived. He looks mighty pleased with himself and Ken congratulates him.

The party continues our hike and after 5 mins we come across a huge underground lake taking up most of the cavern. There are four lizardfolk standing at the edge of lake. Despite their weapons, they don’t seem interested in attacking us. After a few moments, a creature pops out of the lake and demands of us why we are in its lair. It is communicating thoughts in our heads. It suggests that we leave one person behind, while the rest of us may leave, when we tell it that we want to clean the river.

The creature is an Aboleth. It is a very intelligent, but very evil creature, that likes to corrupt the water around it. Even the young are born intelligent, being able to access the millenia of information from all other Aboleths.

The creature grows impatient with us and prepares to attack us. Three of us fall for the stone tentacle trap. Geoff attempts to use their class hex feature, but realizes there is something not right with this Aboleth, so they try to wake Flint, but it doesn’t work. Drake then gives Misora a slap, but she doesn’t snap out of it, and then he moves to attack the lizardfolk with his breath weapon and follows up with his rapier.

Misora manages to overcome the vision and the stone tentacles fade and then hexes a lizardfolk. Flint breaks free of his vision and moves away.

The lizardfolk then begin to make their moves, moving into to attack the party. Ken takes some damage from the illusion, causing it to fade. He comes out of the reverie with a bad headache, focusing on a lizardfolk to sacred flame, but it dodges the attack.

We fight off the lizardfolk and move onto the Aboleth. Flint attempts to Slow it, but the Aboleth shakes it off. It attempts to use a mind attack on Misora, but she shakes it off, which causes the Aboleth to get angry. Ken then announces he is going to help and blesses Geoff, Drake, and Flint.

The Aboleth is raging, causing the water to bubble and foam and rushes forward, attempting to grab everyone on the shore, pulling Drake, Misora, and Flint into the water.

Geoff rushes forward and pulls Flint out of the water. The Aboleth lashes out at Drake, dealing him a mighty blow. Drake then swims to shore and whips out his blow, blasting it with arrows. Misora swims to shore and holding onto her concentration of hex, she was able to move it onto the Aboleth, and then blasts it with Eldritch Blast. The Aboleth glances at Drake and makes him feel friendly towards it. It then races forward, to attack Geoff, managing to hit him with one of three blows.

Ken puts up a healing totem for folk to use. Geoff takes advantage of the totem and heals up, following up with a Witches Bolt, dealing lightning damage to it. Drake then bullrushes into Geoff, taking them into the water. Drake doesn’t shake off the charming until he takes some mental damage from the Aboleth. Misora blasts another Eldritch Blast at the aboleth. The aboleth then pummels Geoff. Geoff manages to keep their concentration on their spell, but ends up dropping it, when being attacked by another tentacle. Geoff attacks the aboleth. Drake then grabs onto Geoff and swims themselves to shore, but takes a strike from the Aboleth. Once on shore, Drake launches some arrows, but they go wide.

Misora launches two Eldritch Blasts at the Aboleth, that both land their strikes, dealing some damage. Flint throws a catapult at the Aboleth, which then sinks into the water.

Ken runs to the shore and launches a guiding bolt at the fleeing form of the Aboleth, we hear its screams in our minds, as the spell was enough to kill it. Its body surfaces on the surface of the lake water, with its mass of tentacles glowing briefly from the final spell against it.

A cursory search through the remaining tunnel and see a large metal door. Going through, we see a medical room, with instruments of torture, rather than healing. There is a painted mural on the wall, depicting a grusome scene, of warriors fighting, dead bodies, and clutching their chests and wounds.

Geoff identifies all the items we find, a lighting trident, a set of black bracers, a dagger that can take any items, and a Warriors heart. Geoff quickly smites the heart, which disintegrates upon casting of the spell.

• Lightning Trident - extra damage per hit
• Black Bracers: increases max hp by 2 per level. User can’t wear pain and doesn’t know how hurt they are.
• Dagger - Versatile Magic Weapon: +1 and can be bonus action shifted to any type of weapon
• Warrior Heart - noooope, lets just destroy that demon

Previous Chapter: Puzzles

Next Chapter: Vialchasing

Dramatis Personae

• B - Flint Stone, amnesiac wizard, Wizard/Monk School Headmaster and Head Mayor of Greenstone
• R - Drake the bounty hunter
• M - Ken Leaves, the down-to-earth Furbolg Cleric Druid
• M - Misora, the Aasimar Archfey Warlock
• G - Geoffery Armstrong, Human Fighter with a heart of gold? definitely has a heart there, yep.