Things did not go as planned.
The fight began with Parvus charging into the midst of the fish people, only to learn that the sticky floor was difficult terrain for us, but not for them. He also managed to get grappled by sticking one of his horns to one of their shields. Mercenary moved partway to assist, and Airina shot an important-looking one with her wand of Magic Missiles, and then it was the fish men’s turn.
First, one of the fish people threw a net on Parvus, restraining him. Six of them surrounded and continued to attack him while the remaining ‘important’ one moved towards the rest of us. It tried to blast Mercenary, Parvus and Airina with a spell (Charisma save – probably Bane, which it used again later) but they all saved.
I moved forward as well, hitting Parvus and his six attackers with an Entangle in an attempt to restrain the fish men and put Parvus back on even footing with them. It worked, somewhat, as three of them failed their saves. For the rest of the fight in which he took part, Parvus was hitting these restrained fish men, killing two before… well, you’ll see.
Mercenary and Airina both went for the important, spellcasting fish man, but then more of them showed up and successfully Baned me. I didn’t have many options, so I hit one of them with my Shillelagh while Airina fought another newcomer and Mercenary continued with the original. The next round or two went on much like this, until circumstances changed.
Before we’d brought down more than one or two fish men, out walked the illithid, with another damn intellect devourer. He went and floated in the air, while that thing went for Parvus. It managed to zap him again, reducing his intelligence to zero and rendering him, once more, a Parvtato. This was only the start of his troubles, however.
Mercenary popped her aasimar death aura thing and tried to get close to the devourer and illithid, but was grappled by one of the fish men and his pincer weapon. I tried to get out of her aura’s range, successfully doing so, but not getting far enough for what came next. Airina continued to blast fish men and poke them with her Spiritual Weapon, gradually whittling them down over the course of the rest of the fight.
Then the illithid used his mind blast wave thingy on us again, and guess who was the only good guy to fail? Me. You know what else I failed, over and over again for three rounds until I was beaten unconscious and another three rounds unconscious while I saved my death saving throws and then finally saved after I had been brought back to consciousness by Mercenary’s Channel Divinity which she used later as a last resort from a possible TPK? My save against getting rid of the stun effect as a result. But it’s not like I’m bitter about that or anything.
While I was stunned, Mercenary and Airina’s combined efforts destroyed the intellect devourer (after Merc got a very lucky – and very rare – low roll from out DM which prevented it from dropping her intelligence to zero as well), and then the illithid went after Parvtato while Mercenary went after him. However, she did not succeed in stopping him, unfortunately, when his tentacles wrapped around Parv’s head and sucked out his brain. So that was Parvus dead.
The illithid almost tried the same trick on Mercenary as well, but opted for another mind blast instead. It stunned Merc and knocked her unconscious (join the club) but Airina used her Channel Divinity on her next turn to get Merc back on her feet. Then Merc used her Channel Divinity to bring me back up, I healed up the just-knocked-unconscious-at-this-point Airina and buffed myself with a buttload of temporary HP, and then we were hit with yet another illithid mind blast. We all failed, and were all damaged and stunned. Yes, I was stunned again.
Luckily, so were most of the fish men at this point – those still living. Even luckilyer, Mercenary and Airina both saved against the stun on their next turns. Less luckily, I didn’t.
However, the tides were turning. Mercenary and Airina managed to kill the illithid (and take his head for later use) and our final combined efforts killed all but one of the fish men, who managed to outrun Airina. Knowing we were now on a clock in anticipation of his returning with friends, and because the crazy gnome had gone and lit the bombs we had already placed, we hurriedly collected Parvus’ body, placed a couple more bombs where they needed to go, and fled. On the way out, I tried to rescue Xanathar’s goldfish from being killed in the impending explosion, but at Mercenary’s suggestion, ended up abandoning the poor creature – mostly because Xanathar himself was chasing us.
We just managed to escape with the engineer before big-bada-boom! and everything went up in smoke. We don’t yet know the end result of our efforts, but we did complete our primary objective of killing the illithid, so I’d call that a win. However, we were now faced with the question of what to do about literally brainless Parvus.
Understandably, Mercenary was particularly distraught, since she and Parvus have shared pregame backstory, the full extent of which the rest of us are not totally privy to yet. She and I took his body to the temple of Tempus, since Parvus is/was a paladin of his, while Airina escorted the engineer back to the Mug. Unfortunately, because of the whole lacking a brain thing, their only option would have taken something like three in-game months and cost 50000 gold, way more than we had access to.
Instead, we went to the Blackstaff, and Mercenary asked her for assistance. She came through, bringing us to a lush garden in the centre of the city a couple of days later. There, the mysterious, unseen druid owner conducted a ritual to bring Parvus back, in exchange for a to be determined favour.
The way we do resurrection-type rituals, there is a roll whose modifier can be altered by us contributing sacrifices, literally speaking. Each item we contributed, and they varied in type greatly, as you’ll see, was drawn into the earth and gone for good. Droop contributed the Spider Staff, one of the most powerful items we had (but, to be fair, totally useless to the rest of us). I contributed the bugbear ears Parvus gave me, which also happened to be the first thing anyone ever gave me, and the only thing I had. But Mercenary really took the cake by contributing her left arm. I mean that literally. She hacked off her left (shield) arm. It was really metal.
But it paid off. Parvus was successfully resurrected. Or, rather, reincarnated, since that was all that we could get. So, when Parvus came back, he wasn’t exactly the same. Let’s do a comparison.
Parvus, pre-reincarnation: 6′ tall, 300lbs, male, minotaur.
Parvus, post-reincarnation: 4’10” tall, 120lbs, female, human.
Yep. Parvus is now a little girl, basically. He rolled for all of those things, as well. The dice gods certainly have a sense of humour.
Anyway, at this point, Mercenary passed out from blood loss, and then we returned to the Mug and finished the session. We levelled up too, which is nice (level 4 spells, yay!).
The big questions we will be facing next session are what will the druid’s favour be, and how will Parvus handle adapting to life as a little girl (okay, so he’s 20 years old, but he’s still basically a little girl now)? I’m still giggling to think about it; it must be one of the most hilarious outcomes that can possibly come from such a horrific tragedy as someone’s brain being sucked out of their head. But that is just one of the great, crazy things that can happen in D&D.
Let’s see what craziness happens next.