Our heroes hurried back to the forest where they had last seen Queen Toadstool and began searching for clues. They found some strange tracks but they didn’t come together into a trail and just appeared randomly. Fortunately Leena was able to pick up the Queen‘s musty scent and follows it deep into forest.
The trees here are large and strong…but some of their leaves are browning. The group is astounded to discover Queen Toadstool in a deep puddle of toxic sludge. The majestic mushroom looks ill.
Caqui didn’t waste any time in moving forward to aid the Queen but her action was greeted by irate shrieking from the nearby treetops. The Queen sickly gasped to Caqui that there was too much poison for her to absorb on her own. Then a swarm of simians coming in all sizes and forms descended around them.
The party was pelted with monkey poop as they attempted to rescue the Queen. Tiger Lily was able to discern that the apes knew that Queen Toadstool could clean up the toxic sludge harming their forest but she wasn’t able to communicate with the jarring howlers.
Soon it came to blows with one particularly aggressive ape assaulting Caqui. As the situation devolved into simian chaos the boss ape then leapt over and snatched Queen Toadstool; carrying her off to the largest tree in the area which seemed to be the monkey’s headquarters.
The situation was looking dire when the Game Master rolled a natural 1 and Caqui was spared a hammering from the large aggressive ape.
Tiger Lily followed up on this by rolling a Natural 20 and poking the aggressive ape in the posterior. The young players erupted in laughter at this reliving of their glory days from the Beginner’s Box. This had the undesirable effect of redirecting the ape’s aggression towards her.
In the midst of this, Lamima remembered that she was the ‘party face’ or rather the group’s diplomat. So she made use of her magic and diplomatic skills to bring an end to the fighting. 6 Year Old acted out the monkey sounds and gestures as she brought tensions down. Slowly the apes understood that Queen Toadstool was willing to help clean up the forest but that she couldn’t do it alone. They also shared that something upstream was polluting the waters and had caused the initial problem. Cries of Koopa Kompany sounded across the table as our heroes started upstream to see what dastardly deeds were being done there.