![[Publish/Assets/Session Headers/2026-08-19 — Bob's First Blood & the Demon Nest.png]] # 2026-08-19 — Bob's First Blood & the Demon Nest > [!quote] Session Hook > The mace finally tasted battle, the Slough finally collected its debt, and the party finally stood at the mouth of the Demon Nest — right before five things came up out of the ichor. --- ## Overview The shredwing died badly. Dragged out of the sky by a lightning lure, grappled from two sides and beaten flat, it took one last swing at [[The Party|Lilly Pallywally]], missed with everything, and was finished when [[The Party|Ara-Ara Avannatto]] raised the blood mace **Bob** over her head and brought it down like a piñata. The weapon answered in her mind for the first time — *"yes, yes"* — as the kill landed. Its banished twin never came back; [[The Party|Tahara Rahma]] lay flat in his hole under the shelf for the last forty-two seconds of Banishment rather than risk a stubbed toe, and the Abyss kept what it was given. Then the War-Slough presented its bill. Seven hours of travel — three already lost, four more to reach the nest — meant seven escalating Constitution saves, and the party bled exhaustion levels all the way to the door. [[The Party|Casanova Frankenstein]] arrived at four, with half his hit points and disadvantage on nearly everything. They found the Demon Nest anyway: a rift dropping a hundred feet into a seething ichor lake, an island at its center like a colossal ant's nest, demons half-grown into the walls and fed by pulsing tubes, and a rhythmic pounding somewhere deep that made the tunnels breathe. Rather than walk in like that, they backed off, warded a hidey-hole with an Alarm, burned two Greater Restorations, ate stew, and slept. The Alarm was what saved them — the rest ended with five hezrou erupting from the ichor, and the session cut out one turn into the fight. --- ## Key Events ### 1. Pulling the Sky Down The surviving shredwing opened by folding forty feet out of the air to hover just over Lilly, shrugging off an opportunity attack — *"He dodges you midair"* — and throwing three talons. All three glanced off a hurriedly cast Shield. Tahara, unable to reach anything from beneath the canyon shelf and unwilling to drop his Banishment, settled for an upcast Healing Word and a running commentary: *"Sending love from my dank dank hole. Sending good vibes, good thoughts."* [[The Party|Ara-Ara Avannatto]] ended the air war in one cantrip. **Lightning Lure** caught the fiend on a failed Strength save and yanked it to the ground for 24 damage, split lightning and radiant. From there it never got up. [[The Party|Celeste Valentin]] stepped in, punched, grappled it with Tavern Brawler and kicked it with her long warped leg for 26 — arguing successfully that the mismatched limb should give her *more* reach, not less. [[The Party|Unit-NULL]] dove in for a 21-damage hit that triggered her acid claws, then failed a second grapple to a natural 20. [[The Party|Dr. Herbert Who]] landed Frostbite for 7 cold and disadvantage. The fiend spent its final turn swinging at Lilly three times and missing with all three, pinned and unable to move. Along the way it acquired a name. The DM: *"That's what I call it. That's why I named it Shredwing."* Tahara: *"He's got all the holes in his face; he's the holy pecker."* Celeste, deciding the matter: **"I will just call him 'peephole.'"** ### 2. "Yes, Yes" [[The Party|Casanova Frankenstein]] softened it with Draconic Cry to hand the party advantage, and Ara-Ara took the kill with the weapon she had been carrying unswung since the boneyard. > [!important] Ara-Ara Avannatto > **"I am gonna take Bob out, swing him high in the sky, and pop him on the head like a piñata."** > [!important] The DM > **"You hear a 'yes, yes' in your mind when you make the kill."** > > **"The shredwing is no more."** Bob's mechanics were read out at the table for the first time: **+4 to damage on Strength-based melee attacks**, and a reaction to make one melee attack against a creature that damages you within reach. One attack, not two — the two-target reading Ara-Ara had in mind wasn't in the text. Notably, she had a *different* new weapon available and chose Bob anyway. ### 3. The Abyss Keeps Its Own Tahara had roughly forty-two seconds of Banishment left on the dolphin and asked whether preparing for the fiend's return was worth the effort. > [!important] The DM > **"I would say that he would stay in the Abyss if you hold out, because that's where he came from, and then came here; he is not a natural creature of the Nine Hells."** So he lay down and waited it out — *"Just to make sure I don't accidentally drop concentration. Yeah, don't want to stub my toe and fail a concentration check"* — while the DM cheerfully invited him to go for a walk instead. Forty-two seconds passed. **The shredwing did not reappear.** Tahara, surveying the fight he had spent lying prone in a hole: *"You are telling me I did half of all the lifting in that fight?"* Celeste asked for the corpse to be removed. *"Oh no, no, no, we don't need pee hole to come around the house with us."* ### 4. Seven Hours, Seven Saves The Slough charges by the hour. One **Constitution save per hour travelled**, DC climbing by one each time, one level of exhaustion per failure — and the party learned this session that the clock only runs while moving and fighting. **Resting stops it and resets the DC.** > [!important] The DM > **"That's what makes this so insidious in the War-Slough. They definitely punish you for being here."** … **"The War-Slough tries to force you to take rests."** Three hours already lost meant DC 13, 14, 15. Unit-NULL extended her aura over Tahara; Ara-Ara sat inside Lilly's. Five members still failed once each: Tahara, Lilly, Casanova, Ara-Ara, and Dr. Herbert Who. Celeste and Unit-NULL came through clean. Four more hours to reach the nest meant **DC 16, 17, 18, 19**. Tahara, doing the math out loud: **"Well, someone could die right here, really."** He wasn't wrong — exhaustion 6 is death. | Character | Failures | Running total | |---|---|---| | Casanova Frankenstein | +3 | **4** | | Dr. Herbert Who | +2 | **3** | | Tahara Rahma | +1 | **2** | | Ara-Ara Avannatto | +1 | **2** | | Lilly Pallywally | +1 | **2** | | Celeste Valentin | +1 | **1** | | Unit-NULL | +1 | **1** | Casanova at four had disadvantage on nearly everything, half speed, and his maximum hit points halved to 45. Between the batches, both clerics **ritual-cast Prayer of Healing** — twenty minutes and no spell slots, once Celeste pointed out that the ritual tag adds a flat ten minutes rather than ten per level. Unit-NULL handed Lilly 24 points of Lay on Hands from a pool of 55. Casanova tried to ritual-cast Identify and discovered he was out of pearls: *"Damn, forgot. I need one hundred gold."* ### 5. The Map Holds Navigation fell to the map-holder alone — Tahara — on a **DC 15 Wisdom** save, after he corrected the DM's initial call for Constitution: *"I felt like the map was a willpower save, like a wisdom."* The DM agreed: *"Yeah, you are right. It was a wisdom because that's the reason we gave it to you."* The dice handed him a pair of twos and he passed anyway. The DM was clear that the save and the getting-lost roll are separate mechanisms — *"It actually has all to do with the d8. The DC 15 Wisdom save is for something completely different"* — leaving what the map is actually testing for still unanswered. Result: **the map worked.** *"You can't use the infernal map to just make your way through easy peasy. You are going to have to traverse through the area, but it did get you to the proper location."* The cost was four hours. Lilly also established a rules point that will matter later: **Silvery Barbs works on your own allies**, because the trigger is any creature within sixty feet succeeding on an attack, check, or save. *"He's reading the map and he's like 'it's this way,' and I'm like, no, he's fucking wrong."* The DM allowed it. It went unused. ### 6. The Demon Nest > [!important] The DM > **"The demon nest is an area where the demons were so entrenched that it's just covered in ichor, and demons are constantly spawning out of it. They hoped that with time the area would cleanse itself, but it hasn't; it just keeps getting worse and worse."** Descending into the caverns, the party found **demons set into the walls, wrapped in purple and green vines and tubes that appeared to pump ichor into them.** They did not attack. They did not move. Further on, the rift: > [!quote] W3 — The Rift > **"A huge circular rift that drops a hundred feet into the depths of the Slough. Small streams of demonic ichor cascade over the edges. And at the bottom of this foul place, demonic ichor of the War-Slough has gathered into a huge ichor lake that seethes and bubbles with unconstrained malice and possibility. At its center is an island that resembles a massive ant's nest, with entrances to caves and perhaps burrows. The smoke, haze and muck make it nearly impossible to see, or to discern whether creatures occupy any of the areas."** And the entrance itself: > [!quote] W3-A > **"Moist ichor covers the floors and walls. There is a pounding noise in the distance, as if a large machine is rumbling away, performing some unfathomable work. The tunnels seem to undulate in rhythm with the noise, and in places you think you see terrible faces etched into the stone. Many tunnels appear to lead into caves where ichor has accumulated."** The lore came with it, by way of Rex. Zariel's underlings had hoped a finite number of demons remained in the Slough and would dwindle over eons until the land could heal. **The most recent infernal survey found nests spawning at random inside the tunnels and caves — demons replaced as fast as they are killed.** The Slough perpetuates itself. And Rex, it turns out, had failed to mention that reports of *increased* demonic activity in the area had already come in. *(Tahara, mishearing "infernal survey" as "infernal census," prompted the DM's ruling that devils absolutely do keep one: "They like to check their boxes.")* Celeste asked whether the tunnels were the way to the objective and got a flat correction: **the phylactery is at the bottom of the ichor lake.** A hundred feet down, past the rift, under the seething surface. Reactions were about what you'd expect. Tahara: *"There is a fucking demented E.T.-looking motherfucker right there."* Lilly, looking at the demons in the walls: **"Looks like this friend I used to have named Jeremy. I am going to call him Jeremy."** ### 7. The Hidey-Hole Nobody was walking into that at four levels of exhaustion. The party backed off from the nest, picked the least ichor-soaked ground available, and looked for a way to rest safely. Leomund's Tiny Hut was requested and did not exist on anybody's sheet. Celeste volunteered to stand watch and give up her own rest — until Lilly remembered something better. > [!important] Lilly Pallywally > **"Yeah, I do have Alarm. Oh! Oh shit! So I'll set that and we can all rest."** Celeste: *"That's perfect. Thank you."* Everyone slept. The clerics went to work. **Tahara cast Greater Restoration on Casanova and Dr. Herbert Who; Ara-Ara cast it on Lilly and Casanova.** With the long rest's own reduction on top, the party came out the other side at **zero or one level of exhaustion across the board** — Casanova down three from four. The DM's verdict: *"It's a good thing you have a bunch of clerics."* Tahara also laid **Death Ward** on Lilly and Unit-NULL, and Casanova re-applied his infusions. Casanova, meanwhile, remembered he is a chef. > [!important] Casanova Frankenstein > **"So I cook a number of treats equal to my proficiency bonus. So that's four treats."** Steak, potatoes and a spice wheel of carrots, broth drawn from his Ladle of Curing — *"kind of like steak stew or something, some type of stew in a bottle. Kind of like Zelda."* Four servings, good for eight hours, bonus action to eat, four temporary hit points each. Lilly declined a portion and gave it away, already buffed to the gills. He also brewed two Experimental Elixirs, one of them **Boldness**, and offered them to anyone who wanted them. And he finally studied one of his unidentified potions. A roll of 89 on the random potion table produced a **Potion of Vitriol**. His reaction was immediate: **"Ah, nice. I have an attack option."** ### 8. Jeremy, Times Five > [!important] The DM > **"…when all of a sudden your rest finishes and Lilly's Alarm goes off, so you're not surprised — but you wake up and get up and you see five hezrou pop up out of the ichor, ready to attack."** Lilly, instantly, to all five: *"Hi, my name's Jeremy. Hi, my name's Jeremy."* Celeste: **"E.T.-looking, Jeremy-ass motherfuckers."** The name stuck, and by the end of the night the shredwing corpse and the hezrou had been formally declared cousins — *"'pee hole' and 'doo doo butt.'"* **Casanova** went first and did not hesitate: the Potion of Vitriol, thrown as a ranged spell attack, **22 acid damage**, one hezrou's face burning down one side. Draconic Cry followed, but at a ten-foot radius it only caught that same target. **Tahara** shadow-stepped forty feet down the line, lined the measuring tool up through all five, and called on his god. > [!important] Tahara Rahma > **"I am going to invoke all of my fervor and faith in Osiris, and I am going to launch a Sunbeam."** Five DC 18 Constitution saves. **Two failed.** The front two took the full **33 radiant** and were **blinded**; the three behind took half. *"All of them now are going reeling, and the front two are covering their eyes and moving their heads around."* **Lilly** had to survive the stench first — two DC 14 Constitution saves at ten feet from two hezrou — and passed both, earning **24 hours of immunity to hezrou stench**. Then Longinus went to work on a blinded target: a bonus-action **Thunderous Smite** for 16, and a second hit for 14 with the Topple mastery applied. Both riders were shrugged off on **back-to-back natural 20s**. No push, no prone, nothing knocked down. > [!important] Lilly Pallywally > **"Mhm, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. That will be me."** Ten o'clock arrived with the round unfinished. Celeste asked whether to push through or let the monsters swing next week; several people said "wait"; the resulting confusion over what "wait" meant became its own bit, and the table called it there. --- ## Notable NPCs | NPC | Type | Notes | |-----|------|-------| | **The shredwing ("Pee Hole")** | Flying fiend | Dragged out of the air by Lightning Lure, grappled and beaten down, killed by Ara-Ara with Bob. Its banished twin never returned from the Abyss | | **Bob** | Sentient blood mace | Spoke for the first time — a *"yes, yes"* in Ara-Ara's mind at the moment of the kill. Grants +4 damage on Strength-based melee attacks and a retaliatory reaction attack. True name still unknown | | **Hezrou ×5 ("Jeremy")** | Toad demons | Erupted from the ichor the instant the long rest ended. Two are blinded. Their stench forces a DC 14 Constitution save within ten feet; passing it grants 24-hour immunity | | **Wall-demons of the nest** | Unknown | Half-grown into the living stone of W3-A, wrapped in pulsing purple and green tubes feeding them ichor. Quiescent — they did not react to the party at all | | **Rex** | Devil broker (referenced) | Source of the intelligence on the nest and the phylactery's location. Neglected to mention the reports of increased demon activity. Still owed the horn, still owes ten soul coins | --- ## Locations - **The canyon shelf** — where the shredwing fight finally ended; Tahara held his Banishment prone beneath it for the full duration. - **The War-Slough** — seven hours of it, at one escalating Constitution save per hour. - **The Demon Nest (W3-A)** — ichor-slick tunnels that undulate with a distant mechanical pounding, faces etched into the stone, demons embedded in the walls and fed by tubes. - **The Rift & the Ichor Lake (W3)** — a hundred-foot circular drop to a seething lake with an ant's-nest island at its centre. Oruo's phylactery lies at the bottom. - **The hidey-hole** — an unnamed patch of drier ground back from the nest mouth, warded by Lilly's Alarm. The party is fighting here now. --- ## Decisions & Consequences | Decision | Consequence | |----------|-------------| | Ara-Ara used Bob rather than her other new weapon | Bob got its first kill and spoke aloud in her mind for the first time | | The party let the Banishment expire without preparing for the shredwing's return | The gamble paid — it stayed in the Abyss, being a creature of the Abyss rather than of Hell | | Tahara stayed prone under the shelf for the full 42 seconds | Concentration held; the fiend never came back | | Pushed on to the Demon Nest rather than resting first | Seven hours of escalating Constitution saves; Casanova reached exhaustion 4 with half his hit points | | Backed off from the nest mouth instead of entering | Two Greater Restorations, a full long rest, and the whole party reset to 0–1 exhaustion. The DM: *"I don't know that going through the demon nest without taking the encounter and long resting would have been good for you"* | | Lilly cast Alarm on the campsite | The hezrou ambush did not catch anyone surprised — and Celeste got to sleep instead of standing watch | | Tahara aligned the Sunbeam through all five hezrou | Two blinded, all five damaged, on his first sixth-level cast in a long while | --- ## Open Threads > [!warning] Unresolved > - [ ] **Five hezrou, mid-round-one** — Casanova, Tahara and Lilly have acted; the rest of the party and all five demons have not > - [ ] **The bottom of the ichor lake** — a hundred feet down, under the surface, and nobody has said how the party gets there > - [ ] **The pounding** — something deep in the nest is running like a machine, and the tunnels move in time with it > - [ ] **The wall-demons** — dormant, fed by tubes, and completely unexplained > - [ ] **Tahara's cure** — the DM confirmed there is exactly *one* specific item or way to cure him, and offered him the chance to divine it during the rest. He never took it up > - [ ] **Dr. Herbert Who's book** — he asked to identify it; the DM took it as homework > - [ ] **What the map's Wisdom save actually tests** — explicitly not the getting-lost roll > - [ ] **Ara-Ara's other new weapon** — never named, never drawn > - [ ] **Bob's true name** — still unknown, though it is clearly awake now > - [ ] **The horn** — still undelivered; Rex still owes ten soul coins > - [ ] **The flesh warps** — duration and cure still unknown for all five affected > - [ ] **Silvery Barbs on a friendly success** — allowed in principle; the bonus-action-spell interaction was left for a Crawford ruling > - [ ] **Damon Charles** — still missing, and not mentioned once this session > - [ ] **Paladin of Bahamut's undisclosed news** — still never delivered --- ## Combat Summary ``` Encounter 1: The surviving shredwing — canyon shelf Status: RESOLVED — killed by Ara-Ara Avannatto with Bob Lilly 3x Eldritch Blast, all hit (27/25/28) Tahara Held Banishment; Healing Word (3rd) on Lilly for 13 SHREDWING Flew down to 10 ft over Lilly; dodged the OA; 3 talon attacks (16/14/22) — all blocked by Shield Casanova Firebolt; spent a bonus action to "regain control of the weave" (flesh-warp penalty) Ara-Ara LIGHTNING LURE — failed DC 15 Str save, dragged to the ground, 24 damage (13 lightning + 11 radiant) Celeste Punch + Tavern Brawler grapple (success) + kick with the long leg — 8 / 19 / 26 Unit-NULL Hit for 21, triggered acid claws; second grapple failed to a nat 20; extra attack for 15 Herbert Frostbite — failed DC 17 Con save, 7 cold + disadv. Lilly Miss, then hit at 27 Tahara Toll the Dead — saved on a 20 SHREDWING 3 attacks at Lilly with disadvantage (11/19/17) — all miss; cannot break the grapple Casanova Fireball (resisted); Draconic Cry — party advantage Ara-Ara BOB — "pop him on the head like a piñata." KILL. Banished shredwing: DM ruled it stays in the Abyss if concentration holds. Tahara held prone for 42 s. It did NOT return. War-Slough travel: 7 hrs = 7 Con saves, DC 13→19 Casanova +3 (total 4) Herbert +2 (total 3) Tahara +1 (2) Ara-Ara +1 (2) Lilly +1 (2) Celeste +1 (1) Unit-NULL +1 (1) Post-rest: 2x Greater Restoration (Tahara), 2x (Ara-Ara), + long rest → everyone at 0 or 1 exhaustion Encounter 2: Five hezrou — the campsite near W3-A Status: UNRESOLVED — one turn into round 1; no PC has taken damage Casanova Potion of Vitriol thrown as a ranged spell attack, HIT — 22 acid. Draconic Cry (10 ft, one target) Tahara Shadow step 40 ft; SUNBEAM through all five. DC 18 Con — saves of 9/17/21/21/25. Front two: 33 radiant + BLINDED. Rear three: half. Now concentrating on Sunbeam. Lilly 2x DC 14 stench saves — BOTH PASSED (24 hr immunity) Longinus + Thunderous Smite, hit at 24 — 16 total; DC 18 Str vs push/prone — saved on a NAT 20 Longinus again, hit at 19 — 14 piercing; Topple, DC 14 Con — saved on a NAT 20 Active at the cut: Death Ward on Lilly and Unit-NULL (8 hrs) Sunbeam — Tahara concentrating, 1 min Blinded: 2 hezrou (until end of Tahara's next turn) Draconic Cry advantage: 1 hezrou Lilly immune to hezrou stench, 24 hrs 4 Chef treats in circulation, 4 temp HP each, 8 hrs No Bless. No Spirit Guardians. No PC damage taken. ``` --- ## Loot & Acquisitions | Item | Who | Notes | |------|-----|-------| | **Potion of Vitriol** | [[The Party\|Casanova Frankenstein]] | Identified on a d100 roll of 89 — then thrown at a hezrou the same night for 22 acid. Acquired and expended in one session | | **Experimental Elixir — Boldness** | [[The Party\|Casanova Frankenstein]] | Brewed free on the long rest; offered to the whole party | | **Experimental Elixir — second flask** | [[The Party\|Casanova Frankenstein]] | Type not settled at the table | | **Chef's treats ×4** | Party | Steak stew from the Ladle of Curing. Bonus action to eat, 4 temporary HP, 8-hour shelf life | | **Bob's properties** | [[The Party\|Ara-Ara Avannatto]] | Not new loot, but read out for the first time: +4 damage on Strength-based melee attacks, plus a reaction attack against anything that damages you within reach | > For a full loot breakdown see [[Session Loot]]. --- ## Party This Session | Character | Highlights | |-----------|------------| | [[The Party\|Ara-Ara Avannatto]] | Owned the fight twice over — Lightning Lure ripped the shredwing out of the air on a failed Strength save for 24, and Bob finished it with a piñata swing that drew the mace's first words. Also spent a Greater Restoration each on Lilly and Casanova during the rest | | [[The Party\|Tahara Rahma]] | Held Banishment prone in a hole for forty-two seconds to keep a shredwing in the Abyss, corrected the DM on the map's save type and then passed it, cast two Greater Restorations and two Death Wards, and opened the hezrou fight by shadow-stepping into position and putting a Sunbeam through all five in the name of **Osiris** | | [[The Party\|Casanova Frankenstein]] | Hit exhaustion 4 with his maximum hit points halved and kept going. Cooked four stew treats, brewed two elixirs, identified a Potion of Vitriol on an 89 and immediately threw it at a hezrou for 22 acid. Draconic Cry twice bought the party advantage | | [[The Party\|Celeste Valentin]] | Grappled the shredwing out of the fight and beat it flat with a punch and a warped-leg kick for 26. Supplied the ritual-casting ruling that let both clerics heal for free, volunteered to give up her rest to stand watch, and got to sleep instead thanks to Lilly's Alarm | | [[The Party\|Lilly Pallywally]] | Opened with three connecting Eldritch Blasts, Shielded away an entire shredwing multiattack, and cast the **Alarm** that stopped the hezrou ambush from being a slaughter. Passed both stench saves for 24-hour immunity, then hit twice with Longinus and watched both riders die to consecutive natural 20s | | [[The Party\|Unit-NULL]] | Extended her aura over Tahara for the exhaustion saves, gave Lilly 24 points of Lay on Hands, and put 36 damage into the grounded shredwing across two attacks with acid claws | | [[The Party\|Dr. Herbert Who]] | Frostbite landed disadvantage on the shredwing's last gasp. Took two exhaustion levels in the second batch and needed a Greater Restoration to walk it back. Asked to identify a book; the DM took it away as homework | *[[The Party|Damon Charles]] did not appear this session — still missing since the Styx, and not mentioned once.* --- ## Table Notes - Hard stop at 10:00 PM with round one of the hezrou fight unfinished. The DM's plan: *"Next week we'll finish this little hezrou fight and get you guys down in there to get a phylactery… the long slog through the demon nest."* - No initiative list was read aloud. Confirmed order: **Casanova → Tahara → Lilly**. Celeste said at the end that she had "already gone," but no Celeste action appears in the recording — worth a glance at the Roll20 turn tracker before resuming. - Tahara described himself once as a *"death domain cleric"* rather than Grave Domain. Probably a slip, but flagged. - Tahara's invoked deity was said clearly and unambiguously: **Osiris**. - Recording runs ~2h 10m, with roughly the first seventeen minutes of pre-game conversation before play begins. --- *Session recorded on Plaud · File ID: `1ddb2bc13e3d53197fef29d9bc399a65` · Duration ~2h 10m*