Malice and Mystery Below

is the one hundred nineteenth episode of the second campaign of Critical Role.

Previously on Critical Role
[The Twitch stream glitched badly during the intro. This needs to be updated once a (hopefully) clean YouTube version is released.]

So, last we left off, the Mighty Nein, following and now slightly ahead of the tracks of Lucien and the Tombtakers, making their way from place to place across Foren in Eiselcross, seeking elements they are gathering before eventually heading towards the central Aeorian ruins on this portion of the region.

''You delve into your second Aeorian ruin, located as A2 on the map that you were given by the late Lady Vess DeRogna. You made a small friend, one outlier who had already gone into this ruin, but the rest of his group had [...] in days. Leaving him to fend for himself in the shadow, you began to explore aspects of this particular excavation. You found a terribly ruined street and what looked like an arcane dome [...]. You went and eventually discovered the entrance to some sort of Aeorian laboratory, which was covered in shattered glass and fallen implements and with some spell help through Caleb, able to ascertain some of these ancient language bits that were previously not understood by any of you.''

''You managed to fix one of the doors and hit one of the arcane-based button prompts on a nearby pedestal, causing the door behind you to slam shut and a door ahead, where you were planning to go, to open up, where a terrifying beast began to lumber in, its strange, somewhat muscular but sagging elephant-like body helming the front, a smooth, almost slick cherub-like bulbous human baby face on the front, clouded-over pupil-less eyes, a mouth that split open in the center filled with teeth, as numerous human arms, small, reached out for whatever was nearby the front of its toothy maw. At the front of its forehead, you saw dangling a tendril of some kind, at the end a bulb of glowing light that swung as it entered. And as it began to step into the chamber...''

Part I
The battle begins as Jester tries to crush the baby-like creature by dropping the door on it, but the door has jammed in its track. Yasha and Beau are immediately lured by its dangling light into moving towards it, stunned. Caleb uses the driftglobe to cast Daylight and Jester crits with Inflict Wounds for massive damage plus wild magic butterflies. The creature then vomits highly damaging acid spray hitting both Beau and Yasha and uses a legendary action to grasp the stunned Beau and pull her in close to its mouth.

Yasha is no longer stunned but in averting her gaze to avoid the lure, she is blinded and misses with her attacks. The baby swallows Beauregard into its acidic stomach where she is no longer stunned but dangerously close to unconsciousness, and she empties out her pouch of ten doses of suude, drugging and knocking the creature unconscious for three rounds. Keeping out of sight of the lure, Fjord attacks twice from behind using Divine Smites for massive damage, but jolting the creature back to consciousness. Veth runs up and into the baby's mouth, trying and failing to pull Beau out, but Yasha is able to pull them both out and Caduceus immediately hits the almost-unconscious Beau with Heal. Caleb then releases Disintegrate, but the baby uses a Legendary Resistance to succeed on its save. It grapples Veth. As the rest of the party attacks, the creature succeeds in grappling Beau again as well. Fjord manages to cut off its glowing lure, but the creature swallows Veth. From the creature's interior, Veth tries and fails to stab with the Corecut Dagger, and then takes a healing potion. The others continue to whack away until Caduceus decides to finish it off with a Blight, getting the How do you want to do this? Fjord pulls Veth out of the dead creature and Jester heals her.

Break

 * D&D Beyond. Play with advantage.
 * Narrative Telephone episode 3 coming up on Twitch Tuesday, December 15 at 4:00 pm Pacific. Storyteller will be Laura Bailey, with guest star Mica Burton.
 * Merch Alert! Vox Machina dice sets for Pike, Percy, Keyleth, Matt, Vax, Grog, and Vex, Vox Machina and Mighty Nein chibi pins, and Critical Role pewter logo ornaments available in all three Critical Role shops; Cobalt Soul varsity jacket and holiday wrapping paper with matching washi tape available in the U.S. and Australia only.
 * Taliesin channels the ghost of Rod Serling to ask us to enter the Twitch Subscription Zone.
 * Critters' art montage.

The Mighty Nein

 * Beauregard Lionett
 * Caduceus Clay
 * Caleb Widogast
 * Frumpkin
 * Fjord
 * Jester Lavorre
 * Veth Brenatto
 * Yasha Nydoorin

Quotations
Marisha: Babies have a low tolerance to drugs. Sam: I learned that the hard way. Matt: ♪ The more you know... ♪
 * Veth: (after Beau is swallowed) No Mo'-Regard.
 * Matt: (determining the effect of suude on the baby-faced abomination) It fails, with a natural one, hilariously.