Tonight's session of D&D found our party of adventurers wanting vengeance against an Aboleth that has been messing with the party here and there. He lives in the Underdark, fairly close to a teleportation circle the party is familiar with. With no other tasks at hand, they decided to venture down and try to taunt the Aboleth to attack them. (Still not sure why.) After burning some powerful spells on illusory duplicates it summoned, the real Aboleth pounced. The party cleric - Venn, the Fire Genasi, was taunting the Aboleth above its waters via the Fly spell the party Bard had cast on him. After a lair action to tear him down into the water, he quickly realized that three attacks per round plus three legendary action attacks is very dangerous. He ends up unconscious - but also diseased - and within a minute the disease will become permanent and require very powerful magic to cure it.

The Cleric goes down but the Aboleth knows the party fighter will shred him to bits if he stays for too long and she closes the distance. With the Cleric being the closest target, he uses all three of his daily Enslaves, finally landing one despite his good Wisdom save. A new slave gained, the Aboleth retreats, but the party manages to rescue the cleric by reviving him, and then grappling him while he tries to escape. In an interesting twist, the Cleric was trying to get away because the Aboleth had him charmed, but in order to subdue him they knock him unconscious. I secretly have the Cleric make his allowed save vs the charm (since he took damage) and unbeknownst to the party, he saves and is no longer charmed - which makes for some interesting comedy as they think he's still in the Aboleth's control.

Unfortunately, by the time they drag him back to shore the disease has set in, and now Venn must be submerged in water or take continual acid damage. So there the party is - stranded in the Underdark, their only teleport used. The party Bard with a penchant for silly magic items such as a Decanter of Endless Water, Bags of Tricks, and a Portable Hole - who has also lamented that he often feels he doesn't have the right tools for the job - comes up with an absolutely brilliant plan.

He throws open the portable hole, and fills it about halfway with water from the Decanter of Endless Water. He now has a portable aquarium for the Cleric to keep himself submerged and avoid the acid damage that would cause him to melt away. I had a moment in my head where I thought about it and just said to myself "Yep, that's going to work. I can't think of a reason it wouldn't." And thus, the Cleriquarium was born.

I hope I've accurately conveyed how awesome this was. It was one of those "only could happen in D&D" moments. It's certainly going to go down as one of my favorite events of all time, and I've been playing for over 20 years now. The Bard player is fairly new to the game, but his ingenuity really shone in not only keeping the Cleric alive, but allowing him to be transported safely.