Play Report: Rumbling Forest (Session 2)
This is a play report for the second session of my ongoing Mangayaw campaign and the second session playing The Rumbling Forest by Goobernuts, who is also the creator of Mangayaw; see previous posts for Sessions 1 and Session 2.
This time, the party picked up where they left off, venturing deeper into the jungle to try to figure out what was going on with the wild boar. The boar had previously attacked them and stampeded past them in the jungle, and they had been told the strange activity from the boar likely had something to do with all of the earthquakes. They'd also been told about a cave downriver where the boar usually congregated, so they headed there, with little happening along the way apart from monkeys throwing rotten fruit at them while crossing the rive.
At the cave, they found a single boar guarding the entrance, which was a crack in the face of a 10 ft. rock outcrop. The character with a background in jungle warfare first snuck around easily, and found the crack was open at the top, allowing view into the first chamber of the cave, where several more boar were resting. They made a plan to attack from above while bottlenecking them at the cave entrance. This, of course, quickly went awry when a player failed their DEX save sneaking up above the cave. Fortunately, the two creating the bottleneck at the front had great success, and quickly killed the boar at the entrance. Those above threw down oil and a torch to light one of the others on fire and the fight was soon over with several dead boar and one player with a scar, an infection that she quickly fought off with antiseptic leaves, ultimately resulting in no change when she rolled for a new possible HP.
But, a gunshot fired during the fight alerted a group of boar from deeper in the cave, including a massive one that was going to cause them a lot of trouble. This turned into a dangerous situation at the cave mouth as they rushed out, but the one character with a mind control spell used it again, now filling nearly half her slots with greed since she hadn't cleared those from the first session yet, but it turned the fight as the massive boar began attacking the others and they eventually either died or scattered when their morale failed.
Exploring the cave, they first found a large room of boar nests. The survivors of the fight were hiding in their nest, but didn't emerge so long as they were left alone, leaving the party to explore. They found a very large nest deeper inside in an underground pool. The otterfolk character then found iron boar tusks in the water and a secret underwater tunnel (the second of the campaign she's found) that lead to a creepy room with a boar skull full of holes and a strange black worm moving about in the holes.
After regrouping and discussing strategy about possibly burning the nests or taking the tusks and running, they investigated the skull further. One player attempted to stab it with a spear, but instead the worm jumped and burrowed into her skin, imparting a curse that allowed her to call on the strength of 10 people, but at a cost of WIL damage and eventual insanity if used too often. They used it to their advantage in the moment, however, digging a tunnel out through a cavein blocking the passage to the room and carrying out the massive skull to see if some actions with it (e.g., putting it in the big nest) would help stop the earthquakes. The eventually gave up, however, and determined they would have to continue their search of the forest for the solution after recovering from their fight in the village.
We are still thoroughly enjoying both Mangayaw and Rumbling Forest. I commented in my original review of this adventure how much I liked the dungeons as natural caves, and that still stands now that we've gotten into this in play. It feels perfect for this landscape, and I know we're going to continue having fun exploring the other two in future sessions.