The Second D&D Tarak Campaign - The Bugbear Gardener

Welcome to the ongoing saga of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while back, using The Sunken Citadel module from the Tales From The Yawning Portal source book.

In the last post, the party fought their way through a fugus garden and then slaughtered the unarmed defenceless goblins staffing a laboratory.

I hope you enjoy my D&D campaign write-ups, and the commentary I add to them. Questions, comments and feedback are welcome !

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

After murdering the goblin laboratory assistants, our heroes were virtually unscathed and decided to investigate the entrance the goblins had been trying to flee through.

It took them out into a pair of long underground halls that had been transformed into a garden. It was lit by nodules of fungus that gave out enough light to simulate daylight, and enabled Belak the mad druid to grow over-ground plants in this place so deep underground.

There were several doorways leading of from the gardens, mostly into arboretums. That's what the book says. I'm sure the plural of an arboretum should be arboretae, or more correctly arboreta if I remember my Latin correctly (it's a very long time indeed since I had to sit at school learning the second declension !)

Anyway, whatever the word is, these subsidiary chambers were small microcosms of Underdark ecosystems, and Belak had left an interesting variety of critters to tend them. The brief in the book was that they might come out and join a fight if they hear one, at DM's discretion.

As for the source of the fight, well that would be the bugbear gardener in the main gallery.

She was pretty tough as bugbears go, and armed with a wicked scythe that not only did a phenomenal amount of damage (2D10+2) but also had 10-foot reach.

Interestingly, at this point one of the players (I forget who) said that she must be the partner of Balsag the Great Hunter, the bugbear they'd killed in the fungus garden. The book said nothing about this, but it struck me as an awesome idea so from then on it was canon 😁

Of course, the party couldn't help taunting the gardener about the fact they'd already killed one bugbear that day. That got about the kind of reception you'd expect.

The battle against the berserk raging bugbear was very brief, and incredibly violent. She gave as good as she got before she was put down, and the characters never knew how lucky it was that the fight was fast enough that none of the other monsters around had a chance to join in.

As they sat down afterwards, a lot of binding of wounds and healing magic had to be done. In three or four rounds they'd gone from having two fully-fit front line combatants to both of them being on low single-digit hit points. Ouch !

After taking another short rest to recover hit points, the party had to pick a door to go through. There were four in total, each leading to a different arboretum. As luck would have it they chose the northern door, which led to the only arboretum that had no monsters, just plants.

Passing through through the 40-foot square arboretum, the party easily found a door partly obscured by fungus and went through it. The passageway they stepped into led to what was clearly a chapel, and very much a dragon-themed one. The walls were covered with draconic carvings, and a huge statue of a rearing dragon filled one end of the chapel, the red glow from it's eyes illuminating the chamber.

With a surprising outbreak of common sense, they decided this all looked a bit dangerous and left the place as quickly as they could through the only other available door. They didn't know it, but they'd just avoided the Shadow hiding behind the dragon statue.

As only second level characters, they would have found the Shadow an incredibly dangerous opponent. They are stealthy, take half damage from non-magical weapons, and immune to most other types of magical or physical damage. Worst of all if they hit, they drain strength. If a character is reduced to zero strength by a shadow, they too become a shadow.

But the characters avoided that fate, and instead found themselves in a ruined library. Searching there, they found a couple of useful magical scrolls as well as a very valuable book of dragon lore bound in dragon scale.

Moving swiftly on, they found themselves in a passageway with a strange arrangement of descending stairs and then almost immediately afterwards a set of stairs back up again. This was actually an underpass beneath the arboretum they had passed through. It took them into a long corridor, and towards the end they had a choice of two doors. It all looked very safe.....

Next time.... into the grove

Previous posts in this series;
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-introduction
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-lets-meet-our-characters-
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-arrival-at-oakhurst
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-to-the-sunless-citadel
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-into-the-citadel
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-kobolds-are-people-too-
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-a-deal-with-kobolds
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-no-creatures-land
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-a-beast-a-fountain-and-more-rats
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-first-encounter-with-the-cunning-goblins
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-pits-and-dragons
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-the-goblin-chiefs-potted-plant
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-down-the-hole
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-the-fungus-garden-and-a-laboratory