encounter · 2 min read
The Source Below
The grove keeps coming back crawling. A CR 5 lord that buds. Extra Attack on the door, Spirit Guardians in the air, and a wizard still on second-level weather.
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Guest fight. The full campaign is in development.
The grove keeps coming back after every clearing, as if something below sends more of itself to the surface. The trail leads into the forgotten deep — go under, and break whatever sits at the root.
The Source Below is the hardest fight on this site: a CR 5 boss, and the end of a loop the Guild is tired of resetting.
The company
The party is at the top of this site’s range: the fighter has Extra Attack, Action Surge, a stronger arm, and Second Wind. The cleric has Channel Divinity, third-level spells, and Spirit Guardians — a standing aura the party carries into melee. The wizard is still working with second-level spells; there’s no fireball waiting in this book. The player controls the fighter; the cleric and wizard act on their own.
The approach is still a forest node — trunks and old camp kit occupy hexes even this deep. Gathering before the stair beats letting the mass pick the party off one at a time.
What’s at the root
An ancient slime lord: a huge, Challenge 5 mass that splits a piece of itself into an open adjacent hex every turn, sometimes budding the same corrupted sickness found in the hollow. Left alone, it fills the board. The fighter holds a line even when it feels too small to matter. The cleric treats every failed save as the emergency it is. The wizard spends each slot on a target it can actually see, never on a hex it’s guessing about.
After
The grove resets for the next company that swears this time it’ll stay clear. This is the last of the four contracts on this site — the full campaign picks up from here.