We began the session by clearing the final room of last week’s dungeon, which almost turned tragic when a crystal minotaur statue came to life and bludgeoned me to unconsciousness. Twice. Luckily, my allies kept me alive, and we finally cleared the dungeon.
With the island now safe, we returned to Saltmarsh, our priest friend bidding us farewell along the way. Upon getting back, we found the town abuzz with activity. As we sought out the reason why, we were reunited with our sea elf friend from way back. He explained that the plans to assault the sahuagin were moving forward, and that there was a meeting that very night regarding the initial scouting mission.
The scouting mission that I had already sorta volunteered us for. So we went to the meeting and found out that it was time for us to go to the sahuagin lair and learn about their forces and so on and so forth. The next morning, we set off, accompanied by the sea elf.
We reached the sahuagin castle, which consists of three levels, the bottom two of which are submerged underwater. Heading for the top entrance, we found a heavy door that would absolutely alert anyone just within and decided to hit it hard and wipe out anyone we found inside before an alarm could be raised. Preparing ourselves, we burst through.
I was quickest to react to the room full of sahuagin just within the entrance, and the room with a pair of sahuagin on the far side, cut off by a gate of narrow bars. I decided to make sure the sahuagin in the latter room didn’t try to escape and reveal our presence, so I went straight for them – luckily, I was small enough to slip through the bars. The others stayed in the main room.
Thanks to Cassius casting Hypnotic Pattern, I was able to finish off the two sahuagin in my room with minimum effort, while also picking off a couple in the first with my bow. Meanwhile, Leo and the sea elf got stuck in in a big dog pile in the middle of the room, and came out the only survivors. Once the fight was over, I opened the gate from my side.
What followed was similar to last week, with me scouting out the various tunnels leading around the place – albeit without the multitude of traps this time. We found a couple of useful items from a fellow adventuring party – and the bodies of that adventuring party – as well as two rooms full of more sahuagin, one of which also included a group of slaves hammering away at the walls and the stairs leading down to the next floor.
The other room I managed to scout without issue, but when we happened to come upon it again from the other side, we were on different, slightly worse stealth rolls. The sahuagin picked up on some sounds from the others, and not wanting to lose the element of surprise, I struck.
This fight also went surprisingly well, in thanks largely to another choice spell use from Cassius. We were fighting the sahuagin in a corridor and he dropped an Entangle right over their area, pinning most of them down. It swung things our way enough to wipe them out without too much effort.
After this fight, I returned to the room with the other sahuagin, since I was worried our fight may have attracted their attention. It had alerted them to a degree, at least, but that wasn’t our biggest problem. Thanks to a natural 1 on my stealth roll, I reached the doorway to find them all staring at me.
Still being at full health while my two tanky friends were well whittled by this point, and figuring the others were pretty close behind me, and knowing Jack is a bit of a cocky, reckless sumbitch, I charged towards my enemies rather than away from them. This was a poor decision on my part. I miscalculated how long it would take the others to reach the room, or how long I could survive, or maybe both, but I ended up unconscious the round before the others arrived. In my defence, though, I also expected the slaves to do something, anything, other than just stand there and watch for the whole fight.
As the others began their attack while getting trapped in the doorway by a wall of sahuagin, Cassius dropped a Hypnotic Pattern on the area, getting most of the bad guys. Meanwhile, the dice gods smiled on me for once by letting me a roll a critical success rather than a critical failure on my first death saving throw, and I was back on my feet. I managed to stay on them for a bit, too, thanks to a combination of temporary hit points from Cassius (Glamour Bards are basically temp hp batteries) and Uncanny Dodge, but eventually I was laid low again.
By the time I was healed back up by Cassius, Leo and the sea elf had killed all but the last two stunned sahuagin. They mulched the first while I skewered the second, and the fight was over. We freed the slaves, scouted out the very last part of this floor, and then hunkered down for a short rest and ended the session.
So, more dungeons and more near-deaths this week. We still have two levels to go in this castle, and there’s no chance we’ll be able to take a long rest, so I think we’re going to try an even more stealthy approach next week. It’ll be risky, as it’ll involve me, invisibility, and scouting ahead on my own, a combination that historically has not gone well. But tune in next week to see whether or not that risk pays off.