#he teleported into all our ‘private’ DMs

[mymitochondriaforpresident]

Yessssssssssssssss 💜🌺

[stardustedknuckles]

I finally got the chance to really haunt someone as my bard boy and it was so fucking satisfying.

He was part of the revelry for 30 years cuz nobody really cared that he never aged. They just interpreted it as superstitious sailors will. Fenn left that life after a great loss and moved on from place to place but our group is in a town a few dozen miles from the coast. Someone's been sabotaging the two rival logging companies that make up most of the city's livelihood and while on the way to a bar with a revelry symbol scratched into it to look for answers (is it you guys? Do you know who it is?) we ran into the guy described as beating the shit out of a couple loggers.

Around the time he turned down my very persuasive offer to get a drink and talk about who hired him (if I'd really wanted to talk a 21 would've opened a door to try harder) I said okay well your loss and cast bane. Fight kicked off, the captain came at me and I used my college of spirits feature to teleport as a reaction out of his reach and out of sight, also giving my friends the option to teleport up onto the rooftops.

And then the mutterings among the flunkies backing up the captain. "Could it be him? The Child? They say he never ages. He can't die."

It should be noted that my DM and I sussed out privately like ten minutes prior that Fenn had a reputation at all. He's not bombastic, just ageless. So I ran with it and cast dissonant whispers from like 50 feet away behind a building. I frantically googled that creepy children's rhyme from doctor who about the whisper men and made it whisper man. The captain would have saved, except he got a minus 3 from bane and JUST failed.

Everyone scattered. It was glorious.

(And then our new friend the tabaxi murder bladesinger kitten slaughtered them all without most of our knowledge and our rogue tackled the captain to put a knife to his throat but accidentally killed him instead and oh yeah also the knife is super cursed because we got it off a dead moon cultist but we'll deal with that later.)

What a fantastic session.

I'm highly amused that Fenn only ever intended to haunt and it was the rogue who killed the captain by accident, and also people would think Fenn is cursed but he's really not. But the rogue is. Congrats on your first curse @khalliys!

[creacherkeeper]

How is the cowboi doing? :) I’d love to hear about some of their recent adventures.

OH WELL IT'S ME + ALSO MY DICE HATE(/love) ME SO YOU KNOW THEYRE GETTING WHUMPED CONSTANTLY LMAO

there have certainly been some Events Unfolding so those are under the cut, casey since youre in our campaign now NO PEEKING

fair warning this is .... long ..... you have asked me to talk about my dnd character and you simply CANNOT stop the floodwaters now. enter at your own risk

okay so basically the first arc of the campaign kind of kicked off with them getting a vision from their goddess (the grain goddess/goddess of agriculture) saying that she was trapped in a fey gate and that they needed to come rescue her

so erley immediately Rallied The Posse and set off to do that. they NUMEROUS times tried to pray to her, commune with her, basically just get ANY sort of communication or guidance from her, but the dice like to tell their story so i literally never got above an 11 (paladin with only +2 to religion my beloved) and they never heard from her, which was making them. pretty nervous. when it seemed like everyone else was able to talk to their gods just fine

well we eventually figured out that there was a huge gathering of fey in the woods (me: this might be too big for us to fight. what if its like 30 fey? / my dm, glancing at his notes where he has 2000 fey written down: (: ) and basically the fey like. had captured and were trying to kill what was left of the pantheon so they could bring back gaia as the One True God

we found all this out because it turned out several members of the party had been lying about how much they knew of the fey and had personal connections to the fey they'd kept hidden. and erley, who is ALSO HIDING A LOT from the party like. immediately went on the offense and was just generally very unhappy about this

there had been this fey merchant who kept popping up wherever we were trying to sell us magic weapons that seemed tied to us specifically. erley was always VERY suspicious of her and did everything in their power to stop the others from buying her weapons (which we literally had to buy with -5 to a skill point, not money, v sus) to mixed results. but basically when we got to the fey gathering (we called it gaiapalooza) erley rolled a 1 on their survival check to get through the magic field and like. got teleported to her. and they really wanted information from her so they basically were like LEORA I DONT KNOW WHO TO TRUST I THINK MY PARTY HAS BEEN LYING TO ME, CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THEM CAN YOU SEE US WHEN YOURE NOT THERE? and basically pretended to need a therapy session in order to milk her for information lmao. she also seemed like. REALLY interested in erley and i was also very nervous about that

and i was RIGHT to be suspicious of her because we found out she WAS ACTUALLY THE BIG BAD and we had to fight her in the arc finale. and several of our party members had rl stuff and were not there, and in game our druid was away casting an 8 hour long spell to try and stop the palooza ceremony, so our party was SUPER nerfed and also as soon as erley realized it WAS actually leora who was behind all of it and she WAS trying to hurt them with those weapons (the weapons were tethers to the gods to be able to kill them basically), they got .... a little angry

and my party found out after irl a year of playing these characters that erley's first level is barbarian :))

so erley raged and did frankly a staggering amount of damage in this fight, and also only stayed up because of rage because they took a LOT of hits. but also. they dont rage FOR A REASON so it sort of took them over and when leora dropped, one of the other pcs ran over to stabilize her as she was making death saves and erley :) maybe :) drove a spear through her heart and killed her :)

and her body immediately just like. overgrew with plants and vines and flowers and basically wrapped the spear in a bed of plants and it was very cinematic and cool

(we have since found out that leora was like. actually an aspect of gaia so. that is. interesting)

of course then erley popped out of rage and was like FUCK this is why i dont do this, i went too far, it always goes too far, THIS is why im ashamed of this, and just got very emo boi about it. so they used their last spell slot to cast restoration on the space they had fought in and reached out to their goddess, having just saved her and the rest of the pantheon like she had asked them to

and i rolled a nat 1!!!

(the dm was like "you have committed this violent act, you feel so low and so bad and in need of guidance, and reach out to your goddess. and the absolute lack of a response just makes you feel empty inside" and i was like :) oh :) okay cool :) you love to see that with your paladins huh)

at this point the druid came back in and, instead of erley like. examining any of their own shit immediately lashed out at her and was like "why did you lie to me about the fey, why did you lie about why you were here, why ARE you here because i realize now it wasnt to help me"

and at that point ONE OF THE FEY QUEENS WALKED IN and the druid was like "... mother ..." and we were all :O

so it turns out the fey queen is her birth mom but had like? kidnapped one of the children of her firbolg tribe and was holding her hostage and the druid was on a quest to find her and bring her back

so erley :) felt :) even more bad about that :) and very shamedly pledged their help to her, and basically was like "as long as youre on this noble quest i will follow you if you'll have me"

so we're on our second arc now, which is traveling across the country to go meet the fey queen and get this kid back. as we were traveling my dm had me roll religion and a luck check and i got a 21 ON RELIGION FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER and a 6 luck. and he was like "you dont usually dream, but you have a nightmare. you know this nightmare was given to you, it was divinely inspired, but you dont know who sent it" and it was just erley killing leora over and over and over again. so they were like. well fuck

(my dm also messaged me privately and we talked and he was like. yeah you can get rid of your oath of devotion and change it to oath of the ancients, i am not telling you or erley why the subclass has changed and you also might get nerfed later. also level up barbarian for the next fight)

so erley was. feeling PRETTY DANG BAD and very guilty and stressed and all that. they did also realize their barbarian side was getting stronger which, considering their backstory is all tragic barbarian shit they were NOT happy about. i was fully prepared to have them be more ostracized from the party and go into full angst mode, but then the druid actually like. pulled them aside and explained why she had hidden information from them, and had a very sweet conversation with them and held their hand and it was VERY touching (she also had the baller line "you think your goddess can hear you and she's not answering. but maybe you're talking in a whisper and she needs to hear you scream")

we had another fight (we're level 7 and my dm told us after it was a cr 32 fight like. dude??? what the fuck?????) and once again erley didnt go down only because of rage

THEY ALSO UNINTENTIONALLY CAST MISTY STEP (which is an ancients spell they didnt have before) and were like WELL NO TIME TO UNPACK WHAT THAT WAS RIGHT NOW, HAVE TO NOT DIE

after the battle was over i asked to roll a check to figure out why i had access to that spell and got :) yeah you guessed it :) another nat 1 :) so erley has literally no idea how they cast that or what it could mean. we just had a new pc introduced who is a sorcerer so erley is definitely going to talk to her and see if she knows anything. because they are FULLY IN THE DARK about their subclass change or what that means in game

we're also (because of the fucking cr 32 fight) going to be leveling up again soon, and babey you KNOW im leveling barbarian. after rage kept me up and then rolling another nat 1 religion check, and also me the player not knowing whats up with their goddess/magic, i simply cant level paladin rn. so im BETWEEN A FEW SUBCLASS OPTIONS and ive been thinking them over but i think it really depends how the next few games go

my FULL ANGST option was to make them level into zealot barbarian like their awful dad, but i thought that made the least sense in universe rn

secondary angst option is to level into berserker, which i think fits pretty closely with how i've been roleplaying the rage so far. trading off an extra attack for a level of exhaustion fits pretty closely. also whump central

the NICE option is to have them be a totem warrior barbarian, and have both their paladin steed and their totem be a bull :) (they are a cowboi after all) i think thats the closest i can marry their two classes and potentially have some healthy growth for them, let them see that the rage doesnt HAVE to be a bad thing, that being a barbarian isnt something they HAVE to be ashamed of. reskinning the bear totem would give them resistance to all damage but psychic while raging, and im planning on taking the tough feat, so theyd pretty much be ... an unstoppable tank. plus i can still divine smite while in rage so theyd be VERY powerful

and now youre all caught up on my very special boi :))))) bet you didnt expect quite that much of an infodump but. listen. listen im simply obsessed with dnd i cannot help it. any chance to talk about my characters i WILL TAKE IN A HEARTBEAT (thank u for prompting my ramble lmao)

[lighdramons]

Hi I'm back. I promised awhile ago I’d tell the story of the fucked up digi.mon cult, so I figured that’s a great start for getting back onto this hellsite.

If the read more works, everything will be below the cut and it is a mess. Just a few things before the cut though:

General TW as I will be bringing up some of the bad experiences I had as well as talking about mental illness.

I will not be using names of sites, usernames, etc. I will not answer on specific users either. I’m sure these sites are still operating somewhere privately and back in the day, some of these people were big in the Digi.mon community outside of the sites as well.

If any of the people involved see this, no ill wishes towards you guys, just my take on things.

I quit these sites back in early 2015. I do not know what happened after I quit. I am only still in contact with a few individuals who either quit around the same time as me or long before.

As a general courtesy, some of these sites still exist. Please do not go harass them. A lot of the public sites are just teens trying to figure out themselves.

If you have questions or comments after reading this whole thing, I’m happy to answer any either publicly or privately. And yes, you can reblog this post.

We need to jump back to 2007 to begin with. I was a middle schooler getting back into Digi.mon because I walked into Gamestop and Digi.mon was sitting in the new releases. And I had access to the internet. I did binge S1-5 with subs and watching reruns of the dub on Toon Disney. I spent some time on the big fansite. Great site, just bad experience at the time because I was a teen and probably lied about my age. I didn’t feel like that was the community for me. I do check it every day now for news, just never made a new account cause I don’t even remember what I used back in the day.

By end of 2008/beginning of 2009 I began looking for other sites, stumbled across the digiclipse stuff on the bad encyclopedia site, looked into it, thought it was neat, moved on. Stuck with the big site for now because the only other sites I found were RP sites and not my thing at the time. Got hit hard with depression at the start of 10th grade (late 2010) and found my way back onto the digiclipse stuff. Didn’t really believe most of it, but thought the idea of creating AI Digi.mon was neat. Joined the smaller of the two sites because it felt friendlier and most users seemed my age.

For people who do not know, digiclipse is the act of going outside and holding the toys up hoping to get teleported. Most people by the time I joined thought the people who did this were crazy. Some people liked to do it for the lolz though.

Anyways, most of what happened on the sites was just talking and hanging out in chat rooms about life and other things. It was pretty chill. I can’t speak for everyone on the sites, but for me it was an escapism kind of thing. I was depressed and hated life so pretending that a magical adventure was a possibility gave me some hope. But honestly, got a group of people who were cool to talk with for the most part. There was one older female in her mid 20s that would come in the chat drunk and sexually harass the other female users and tell all the male they should die and are worthless. Nothing was ever done about her. And honestly it was weird having her there when most of the other people on the site were under 18. That was initially my only bad experience on the sites.

At some point during 2011, there were three individuals who claimed to see and speak with their digi.mon partners. And that they could read your aura and tell you exactly your digi.mon partner. And everyone believed this shit, mostly because two of them were prominent members and how could they lie. The process was simple, you would DM them either a creative piece you’ve done (art, writing, etc) or send a photo of yourself and they’d come back in a few days and tell you who your partner was. There was only ever one individual this method of tracking did not work on and that is yours truly. Oh and at the time it hit hard because I had started falling down the rabbit hole. This is the beginning of the cult-ish stuff.

Then the Ouija board happened. I have no issues with what happened during the fucking around with said Ouija board, I have issues with everything that spiraled out of control after. They fucked around with it confirming people’s partners that the others had “found”. And eventually they asked about mine. And then it was basically said, “oh we can’t tell you the results”. I was eventually added to this secret site of “The Chosen”. And basically told, “oh your partner is the offspring/creation of THE BIG BAD” and there were all sorts of debates on what to do about it. I literally thought I was getting punked at first and these people are clearly taking this whole thing too far. No, these people all believed this. Oh and the best part, most of the people involved in this “chosen” group were in their mid 20s. Me being a depressed as fuck 16yo that just wanted something exciting in life ended up eating all this up. I felt special and chosen. I look back on it now and I’m like what a fucking idiot.

We were all taught from the three who could do the stuff I explained earlier how we can also learn to bond and communicate and see our partner. I had absolutely no progress. Eventually this stuff led to everyone in this “chosen” group getting a “special guardian spirit”. Again, I made no progress on this. And to the point where they made me feel special again, I was the only person who had the wrong “guardian spirit” and they eventually found my “real one”, more on this later.

These discussions moved from a forum site to a private skype chat room, and then further smaller private chat rooms. The movement to skype is where I started having some bad experiences. I gave a few of my “close” friends on the site my phone number, soon everyone had my number. And this happened to multiple people over the years. My own stupidity at the time.

This stuff continued as I finished high school. At the time, I still managed to maintain my social life with school friends, keep up my grades, etc. Got into college with a good scholarship in my dream field. And then I started to go downhill once I got to school. The longer this stuff went on, the more you were expected to be involved. Including being on skype calls all night. It slowly began consuming my life. I ended up not only with depression, but ending up with an ED that was tied to anxiety so I’d go days without eating. I was seeing things and hearing voices, which was highly encouraged because it meant things were working. I literally could not tell the difference of when I was asleep or awake. I honestly do not remember the majority of my freshman year of college. I had no real friends and was just barely scraping by grade-wise. And well, the academic year almost ended with me hanging from a pipe in my dorm.

I ended up running the site I started on as an admin after the original admin team left. And it was expected you do not mention any of the “secret” stuff on the main site. Over the years I know it became clear to the users not included that there were secrets in the background. And those who knew stuff would actively fuck with these users. And if I haven’t made it clear yet, there was a hierarchy to this whole secret group. And it was the original three who were mentioned at the beginning that were on top. And what they said was gospel. Whatever they claimed is what happened and whatever rules they had were the rules. But of course certain people could break the rules and get away with it.

This next part happened at some point during my freshman year and will be relevant again later on. This is the biggest TW section so skip if you have to. I had a user dox me. He had my home address and threatened to post it. He had sent it privately to a few other users as well that alerted me of this. His reasoning? I would not date him or say I loved him. He told me that he would come to my house, murder me, r*pe my dead body, because he is the only one who gets to have me. Another user got involved and called the cops. I do not know if anything ever came of this because I never spoke to anyone about it. I at the time had admin privileges on one of the sites so I banned him and blocked his IP and I blocked him on anything I could. And I continued doing this over the years. I was told I was a bad person for doing this because I did not understand him. This lead to a lot of the things in the above paragraph getting worse.

As this all continued, there were battles and casualties and everyone ended up with like 20 partners. And if you haven’t noticed I’ve stopped using the term digi.mon entirely in the past few paragraphs. That’s because oh they weren’t digi.mon. They were spirits/dimensional beings that took on a form we were comfortable with and we formed a bond with. And I kept going along with all of this because I was in too deep at this point. And obviously yes, this all made sense. So at some point during this time, my “spirit” went to sleep and a new one “awakened”. And I of course still went along with all this. The BIG BAD kept mutating into stronger forms and blah blah blah.

During my fall semester sophomore year, I joined theatre at my college and did tech. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to begin breaking away from this. I started to get an actual friend group and have less time for these sites. But there was always a pull of “you have to be here”. You were expected to be on skype calls and/or active in chat.

Well, that all changed at the start of 2015. They wanted a deletion of all the other sites and they would have one site united under one belief system. I was not a huge fan of this and made this known, but also offered to help in the coding as that was a skill I had that no one else really had. It got out around that I was a cunt and a power hungry bitch and blah blah blah. If it was just that, I would probably not have left. No no no, I was accused of lying about the shit that that user said and did to me. Because he is such a nice guy that could never do that type of stuff. And unless I provided the receipts I was clearly an attention seeking liar that wanted to ruin his life. That was the straw. I fucking blacked out in a rage and attempted to delete some of the different websites, I blasted some of these people on their real facebooks, and then I deleted all of my accounts and blocked everyone and blocked their numbers.

After that, I started talking with other people that quit. I started enjoying my college life. And I tried to act like none of that stuff had happened. I distanced myself from those individuals that were active in the Digi.mon community. I stopped hearing the voices and seeing things. I started going to therapy. My road hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve come a long way since I got out of this stuff. Honestly going to meet up with one old member after covid is all clear cause we’ve known each other for over a decade now and its about time we finally meet in person.

So yeah, that’s my story. I know I jumped around a bit and thoughts might not be too clear, but I wanted to share the fucked up things that happen in the background of the digi.mon community. Did I have good times? Hell yeah. The Olive Garden incident still to this day is iconic. We played d&d oneshots sometimes. We had memes. We all watched xros and hunters together live. And I still have some good friends out of this. The most fascinating thing out of all of this is everyone from the community that I still am either in contact with or see them via social media had admitted over the years to suffer from some kind of mental illness and has come out as part of the LGBTQA+ community. My own conclusion is a lot of us got sucked in due to depression/escapism and just a feeling of not belonging. And being around people of similar age with similar interests just made things more bearable at times. It also made a lot of us very vulnerable to the manipulation that took place, whether it was intentional or just one big group delusion created by multiple mentally ill people. I call it a cult, but I'm sure people will disagree with me. Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't good for my mental health in the long run.

If this shit is still going on, I hope people aren’t letting it consume their lives. And I just wish the best for everyone even if some of the shit hurt me.

As I said up top, if you want me to elaborate on anything or have questions, I’m good with talking about stuff. If you know me IRL and are reading this and are like "RACHEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK" I owe you a drink and explanation. And of course it Is okay to reblog. This is one hell of a comeback post on this site, am I right?

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #99: Queen Medb

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the queen of Connacht and queen bitch of Chaldea, Queen Medb! (Pronounced Mae-ve) Medb is plenty charming in her own right, but unlike other charm-heavy servants like Stheno and Mata Hari you’re skilled with a riding crop and come packing some goodies from your various lovers as well.

Check out Medb’s build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Up next: The big 100!

Race and Background

Some people think you’re the incarnation of a god, but we’re going to keep things simple and canon compliant and make you a Human instead for +1 to all ability scores. Like many other servants, you’re also a Noble, gaining proficiency in History and Persuasion. This also makes it a lot easier for you to hobnob with other nobles at social gatherings. There is no party like a Medb party, because a party without you in it isn’t really a party at all.

Ability Scores

Make your Charisma as high as possible- it’s your spellcasting modifier and also you’re just good at it anyway. Second is Constitution to help you keep up with Fergus. Dexterity comes after that, the closest thing to a riding crop in D&D is a whip, and that’s a finesse weapon. You’re a clever girl, so keep that Intelligence on the positive side. Your Strength isn’t that high, but you have other people to do that for you. Finally, dump Wisdom. You built your perfect husband, but forgot to include a sex drive. No, I will not let you live that down.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: Don’t worry, the obvious class is coming. This just gives you more health, and the starting proficiencies work for you anyway. Speaking of, starting as a fighter gives you proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as two fighter skills, like Acrobatics and Insight. You’re very flexible, and you can read the room. You don’t care about the room, but you can still read it. You also get the Dueling fighting style to make your whip a slightly less bad idea, and you can use your Second Wind as a bonus action to heal yourself once per short rest. You’ve got to be able to get your beauty sleep in, no matter what you’re doing at the time.

2. Bard 1: Despite the lack of a musical instrument, I don’t think this is coming too far out of left field. Multiclassing gives you and additional skill proficiency; grab Performance for roughly the same reasons as Fergus. You can also give Bardic Inspiration to your adoring braves as a bonus action, adding 1d6 to an attack roll, check, or save of their choice within the next 10 minutes. You’re a giver, what can we say? You have a number of them per long rest equal to your charisma modifier.

You can also cast Spells, using Charisma as your casting ability. Grab Friends and Vicious Mockery to have the full range of social encounters available as cantrips. You also get leveled spells though, we’ll have to go over those as well. Grab Heroism and Charm Person to empower your braves and add new ones to the fold. You also get Earth Tremor thanks to Fergus letting you borrow his sword for a bit and Cure Wounds to protect your Golden Rule.

3. Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge, letting you add an extra action to your turn once per short rest. Your time is valuable, so treat it like it is.

4. Fighter 3: Third level fighters get a martial specialty, like the Echo Knight. This lets you Manifest Echo as a bonus action to create an Echo near you that you can switch places with as a bonus action, attack from their position whenever you would attack, or make attacks of opportunity from their position by spending your reaction as usual. The echos only have one HP, but you always have reserves. Yes, technically they’re all copies of you, not your braves, but I’m sure a bit of reflavoring is fine.

While your echo is out, you can also Unleash Incarnation when you make an attack action to make an additional attack from your echo. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your constitution modifier.

5. Fighter 4: For your first Ability Score Improvement, pick up the Defensive Duelist feat to add your proficiency bonus to your AC as a reaction when attacked. Your armor may be light, but you’re really good with that riding crop.

6. Fighter 5: As a reward to making it to fighter level five, you can now make an Extra Attack each time you attack as an action. You can still only Unleash Incarnation once per action, but that still means you’re up to three attacks per turn until they run out.

7. Bard 2: Popping back over to bard for a bit makes you a Jack of All Trades, adding half your proficiency bonus to checks you aren’t proficient in. Rocking people aren’t bad at stuff, and you definitely rock, Queen Medb. You can also perform a Song of Rest over short rests, adding 1d6 to healing done during them. Your inspiration also becomes Magical Inspiration. Inspired creatures can now add their inspiration die to magical damage and healing, boosting a spell’s effect on a single creature.

Speaking of spells, you also pick up Identify as a gift from King Conchobar. I’m not entirely sure how one gives people their clairvoyance, but I guess he’s figured that out well enough.

8. Bard 3: Third level bards graduate from college, and like the charmers before you you’ll also graduate from the College of Glamour. This gives you a Mantle of Inspiration that you can make as a bonus action by spending a use of Bardic Inspiration. When you do so, a number of creatures up to your charisma modifier gain temporary HP and can react to move without causing attacks of opportunity. Some people are so pretty it hurts, but you’re so pretty it prevents damage. 

Your Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus for Performance and Persuasion checks, making you very persuasive, as well as very “persuasive”.

You can also make an Enthralling Performance, charming a number of creatures that fail a wisdom save after making a performance of at least 1 minute. This charms lasts up to an hour, and creatures that succeed on their saving throw can’t tell you tried to charm them. You can use this once per short rest.

Speaking of Enthralling, did you know Enthrall was a spell? It is! Any charmable creatures within hearing distance that you choose must make a wisdom save, and on a failure, they have disadvantage on perception checks to notice any creature other than you. The spell lasts up to a minute if you can keep talking for that long. You always thought you were the center of the universe, but now a lot of people will agree with you.

9. Bard 4: Use this ASI for the Slasher feat! Dealing slashing damage causes a target creature to lose 10′ of speed on their next turn, and critical slashes force the target to make their next turn’s attacks at a disadvantage. Like I said, you’re really good with that riding crop.

You also get the Dancing Lights cantrip for a bit of a lightshow, and the Shatter spell as another gift from Fergus.

10. Bard 5: Fifth level bards see their Bardic Inspiration increase to d8s, and they become a Font of Inspiration, meaning your inspiration replenishes on short rests rather than long ones. The amount of temporary HP given by your Mantle increases at this level too.

One last gift from King Conchobar nets you the Clairvoyance spell, letting you see or hear a location of your choosing that is either familiar to you or obvious (such as behind a door you can see). 

11. Fighter 6: I think you should be charming enough for a while. Back in fighter, you get another ASI, and it’s one we’ll finally use to improve the score of an ability. Bump up your Charisma for better spells, tougher saves, and more Inspiration.

12. Fighter 7: Seventh level Echo Knights can make an Echo Avatar, using your action to see and hear through your echo. You can do this for 10 minutes at a time, and while this is happening they can move up to 1,000 feet away from you. You’re typically a bit too in the limelight for spy shenanigans, but it never hurts to have some flexibility.

13. Fighter 8: Use this ASI to round up your Dexterity and Constitution for more health, more incarnation unleashing, a higher AC, and a stronger whip. A good level all around for you!

14. Fighter 9: You’re now Indomitable, meaning you can re-roll a failed saving throw once per long rest. Now your wisdom score is slightly less of an issue! ...Congrats?

15. Fighter 10: Thanks to Shadow Martyr your braves are now as expendable as they should be. When a creature you can see would be attacked, you can use your reaction to teleport your echo within 5′ of them and have them take the attack instead. You can use this feature once per short rest. Darn unions.

16. Bard 6: Our braves are nice, but I think we should take a couple “me” levels. Sixth level bards get Countercharm, eating your action to give nearby creatures advantage against being charmed or frightened. You also get a new mantle, the Mantle of Majesty. When activated and each turn afterwards as a bonus action you can cast Command without spending a spell slot. Creatures charmed by you automatically fail the save to be commanded. You can use this once per long rest, and you have to use your concentration to keep it up, but you can literally turn a gaggle of men into your slaves while this is active. Or women, we won’t judge here.

You also learn how to cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut for some “private time” with up to nine other medium or smaller creatures. It’s not quite your chariot, but it’ll do in a pinch.

17. Bard 7: At seventh level of bard you get fourth level spells, like Compulsion, which can force creatures you see in range of the spell to move to your tune if they fail a wisdom save. I’m pretty sure “towards me” can technically count as a direction for this spell. Check with your DM about that.

18. Bard 8: Use your last ASI to maximize your Charisma for the most inspiration and strongest charms. Speaking of, you also get Charm Monster this level. I know we just made a humanoid build for Cu Alter, but there’s a pretty good chance he’d be a monstrosity if he showed up as an NPC, so we should take that into account.

19. Bard 9: Ninth level bards have a stronger song of rest, as well as fifth level spells. Your Geas forces a creature to make a wisdom save, and on a fail they’re forced to obey a command for 30 days. Once per day, disobeying your geas deals 5d10 psychic damage for a bit of encouragement. Remember when I said you were so pretty you prevented damage? I lied. You’re definitely so pretty it hurts.

20. Bard 10: Your capstone level gives you an even stronger Inspiration, a round of Magical Secrets, and another round of Expertise. Double up on Insight and Acrobatics for a little more flexibility, both socially and physically.

You get two spells this level, from any spell list you want. (You also get another cantrip, grab Prestidigitation for the hell of it.) Dominate Person gives you a much more fine-tuned control over your braves than your other spells, and Conjure Woodland Beings grants you a way to summon even more braves to the battlefield, as long as you’re okay with your braves being fey creatures. 

Pros:

You’re very charming, and I mean that in every sense of the word. A maxed out charisma stat, expertise in persuasion, and plenty of charming spells means that you stand a pretty good chance of defeating a lot of your problems without ever throwing a punch.

Unlike other charm-heavy builds, you’re also pretty good when the punches start flying! Echos are great at covering the battlefield, and when you add your whip’s range to that, plus your conjured braves, and it’s going to be really hard to avoid your influence in a fight. You can also affect the flow of battle, slowing down creatures with your whip and keeping them at arm’s length the entire fight.

Not only are you good at charming, but your spells specialize in affecting large groups. Enthrall and Compulsion don’t have an upper limit of creatures you can target, so you’ll be even stronger against larger armies. Just as long as a lone, dashing spearman doesn’t show up, your victory is assured.

Cons:

Whips are good for covering ground, but not so much for dealing damage. Sorry, 1d4 just isn’t very powerful.

You have one use of Indomitable later into the build, but your low Wisdom means you’ll probably be using it to avoid someone else’s charms. Building your own army is fun, but turning it on the rest of the party after one bad roll is probably going to cause some problems.

Most of these builds end up with too much to do in their bonus action, but you have to deal with crowded reactions instead. You can make attacks of opportunity, defend yourself with your whip, or defend your allies with your braves. You’ll also always have to weigh the current situation to every later turn between now and your next turn. Nobody ever said it was easy being queen.

[solitaria-fantasma]

((Session #5 highlights, GO!))

Our DM admitted to me the night before that this session was going to be “plot and  C H A O S” and honestly I am sO excited.

We start off with Matthias telling the party that he’d gone back to the bazaar and stolen a forged ledger. We’re uncovering organized crime today.

Recap: We still need to return Von Trikona’s books, as well as investigate/avenge the death of Clarissa Rose.

There are two new country names on the map - Croyden and Iandow!

New non-country locations listed include: Red Hawk, Caister, Alenwik, Aynor, Leeside, Dewsbary, Peinrith, Farenfros, Veritas, and Westwend.

Also ‘Fwee’ is actually spelled ‘Phwie’ and I need to adjust my notes.

We stumbled across a hungover wizard being harassed by a goblin. I immediately tried to scare it away, and rolled REALLY high intimidation.

“The goblin is intimidated af, and fucks off into the wilds.”

The wizard - Renaldo Ladboy - admitted that he’d ‘partied too hard’ the night before, and didn’t remember WHY he’d pitched his camp out in the woods.

Renaldo perks up when he hears that we are travelers, and heading in the same direction he is. He offers to take us there, but since a teleport spell has a limit on how many it can carry, and we are five people + five horses, he basically wants to put us in a Bag of Holding.

I imagined Renaldo pulling Udaji out by her horns and burst out laughing bc she’s sEVEN FEET TALL IT’D BE LIKE THE ENDLESS HANDKERCHIEF TRICK BUT WITH A BARD-

“Get in the fucking bag, Mountain!”

“What was the price of your freedom?”/”A Pringle.”

The interior of a Bag of Holding is - in the DM’s words - ‘a dumpster fire’. There’s everything from random treasure to books to laundry just thrown about in piles....and also there’s another person.

This is Helena (played by the DM’s mom), and she has been in here for a long time, apparently.

There is also Theo, a mysterious voice hidden in the laundry. They warn us to be wary of ‘skittering sounds’, and to hide when we hear them.

I think we were tricked.

Matthias knelt down specifically to slap Claus, who had rolled the highest on the insight check and found nothing suspicious.

Theo came out of hiding to once more warn us to be careful what we touched, and be wary of ‘the Guardians’.

Theo has been in here too long, though, and has a very small reservoir of spoons, so after this final warning, he disappeared back into hiding.

It is DEAFENINGLY quiet inside the Bag of Holding.

Udaji nervously strummed her lute, and the echo took a long time to come back…..and then we heard a flutter.

While Matthias tried to loot some potions and Mountain tried to take a nap, I strummed again to try and recreate the flutter….and I heard more fluttering. It was loud enough to actually wake up Mountain.

Udaji immediately ran off to investigate one of the sources of the fluttering, and then the fluttering turned into skittering. Oh no.

“Udaji, roll for initiative.”

I roared into the darkness and managed to intimidate away one of the gargoyles that were stalking me.

I also apparently terrified Theo with my ‘I Am A Mighty Dragon’ roar. Whoops.

I shouted back to the party “I FOUND THE SKITTERING THINGS!” and retreated one square, but Udaji is simultaneously too stubborn to completely run away and too afraid to run off into the darkness (again).

I TOOK “ZONE OF TRUTH” AS A SPELL LAST LEVEL UP I COULD HAVE CAST IT ON RENALDO-

Helena temporarily lit up our little corner of Hell, and I cast Heroism on Mountain because I have no ranged weaponry/spells.

Mountain could gain a max of 40 temporary hp from this spell if A) he doesn’t get hit and B) I don’t get hit and lose concentration.

Aaaaand one gargoyle promptly flew 60 feet and bit me, shattering my concentration. Heck.

Mountain tried to do a trick shot with his bow and accidentally shot Matthias.

Gargoyle #1 tried to bite Claus, but missed because Claus was too short for it to hit.

I desperately want to test out my Earth Tremor spell but my teammates are tOO CLOSE-

Honestly sessions with the DM’s mom are always a little bit awkward bc it sometimes becomes the mom and three sisters arguing and me just sitting there in awkward silence but I know she means well.

Theo ran up and hit behind the Dragonborn for safety when a THIRD gargoyle came out of hiding. This may prove to be a mistake

Gargoyle #1 hit Claus and I’m starting to wish I’d made Udaji a barbarian bECAUSE I’M READY TO RAGE-

All anger aside I’m actually having a very hard time not envisioning these gargoyles as THE Gargoyles from the Disney show, and I feel bad every time I stab them.

THEO KNOWS DIVINE SMITE?!

“It’s a very, very high pile of laundry, so we’re going to classify it as difficult terrain.”

I lost almost half my hit points in one turn and then got healed half of THAT back in the next what a roller coaster.

I FINALLY GOT TO USE EARTH  TREMOR AND KNOCKED GARGOYLE #1 PRONE!

Two gargoyles down, one to go!

Helena coming in with the killing blow on gargoyle #1!

With the battle over, Helena picked up some of the gold off the ground.

Poor Theo was being harassed by those three gargoyles for at least a month, maybe more (it’s hard to keep track of time in a dark, sunless void).

Theo admits that he got tricked into entering the bag after getting injured fighting ghouls, and the wizard came along and offered to carry him to safety.

Renaldo has now kidnapped seven people with his Bag of Holding, and has four people lined up to punch him (the other three advocate for murder).

Theo gives us a much clearer warning now about ‘the Guardians’ - two suits of armor that guard Renaldo’s stuff, and attack people who try to steal it.

Matthias immediately disappears to try and steal things.

Udaji sat down and started filling the silence with lute music because she is realizing that she does NOT like this kind of heavy silence.

Astrid stole a few potions, and Mountain realized we could switch out our suspicious, fake gold for real gold.

Theo watched us in visible confusion as we poured gold out onto the ground, only to then pick up equal amounts of seemingly identical gold.

“This man has kidnapped seven people! Seven people and presumably five horses!”

Astrid has a crush on Mountain, and tries to snuggle up to him, but Matthias literally flung himself between them in protest, so Astrid snuggled up with Udaji instead.

We took a long rest, and at the end of it, Renaldo actually remembered to pull us all out.

The only reason he remembered was because he’d teleported with our party’s horses, and landed surrounded by equines.

Theo punched him square in the nose.

“Claus is old enough to drink, but Udaji is not. Do not let the Dragonborn order beer.”

We hadn’t eaten in two and a half days, so we all ordered double meals and chowed down.

While eating on the mostly empty inn floor, we overhear two women whispering across the floor.

Eventually, one of the women raises her voice and says “We are not having this discussion! You are marrying Hassan, and that’s final!”

Marrying the Lord who was supposedly betrothed to the young Lady Rose? So soon? How scandalous…

Matthias sidled up to try and talk to them, and finds out that they are, in fact, talking about the same Lord Hassan who was betrothed to Clarissa Rose.

The older woman demanded to know how we knew of this supposed ‘other prospect’, and Matthias lied - saying that we had been hired by Clarissa’s mother to retrieve her daughter’s body.

This, predictably, did not endear him to the two women, so Astrid had to saunter over and try to assist.

The women are Amelia (younger) and Charlotte (older) Ulsten.

They asked when this previous engagement had been made, and we said that it had been a month. Charlotte got very pale and very still, and Amelia immediately told her “I told you something was wrong!”

Charlotte tells us that they had received the marriage proposal around the same time.

Matthias asked if they had heard the rumors of ‘accidents’ and stolen dowries. They said no.

The two women were traveling from Westwend, in Croyden.

“Charlotte sort of blubbers, like a Karen who’s been confronted by a manager and isn’t getting her free Frostie from Wendy’s.”

I traded places with Matthias to try and smooth things over, and Amelia - who has never seen a Dragonborn before - can’t stop staring.

Charlotte unbristled, and explained that they hadn’t heard of Lord Hassan before the proposal, so they’d hired a private investigator to look into him.

Their PI found that Lord Hassan WAS a legitimate bachelor and Lord in Kenkilly, but they hadn’t heard of this potential scam.

“But we DO have guards!”/”So did Miss Rose…”

Amelia begs her mother not to make her see this through, and Charlotte agrees that this scenario is too weird for her, and that they will seek a marriage prospect elsewhere.

Matthias speed-ate all his cake purely to avoid sharing with anyone.

Astrid gave her father puppy eyes, and he eventually caved, and bought her a slice of cake.

Amelia was still staring at Udaji as everyone settled back down to finish eating.

Claus and Astrid may or may not be leaving the party for a time bc the DM doesn’t want to end up playing too many NPCs, and while I understand that, I am going to dearly miss my best halfling friend and only female companion.

[xhorass]

Things that happened in today’s d&d game:

The bard was left chained to his bed by his succubus wife. I overheard his cries for help and promptly went to sketch him in his moment of crisis. trickster clerics are fun :)

Attempted to prank the rogue’s gf, who’s the mother of the bard’s succubus wife. (I missed two sessions and that happened somehow, though it is literally the least insane thing that happened while I was gone) poured vinegar into her wine, and then promptly turned that into a new drink for our tavern, which is called the Buttery Biscuit Empirium and has a drug operation running out of its basement that employs an army of drug addicted rats who worship the Dragonborn druid (all of this, btw, happened while I was gone lmao)

Spent five weeks writing The Rat Bible for our drug addicted rats in order to improve my wisdom score. the bard suggested we call it the Torat (name still in debate for being slightly sacrilegious)

Converted the leader of the rats, who’s bipedal and named Bigsby, to the Traveller. Jester would be proud

Attended an opera that was meant to be a cover for the bard to receive a message from a guild, but quickly turned into a stealth/deception mission because the nobles who took the rogue’s daughter were also attending

Side note: we realized when the curtains rose that the opera singer was the bard’s succubus wife

In order to get past the guards for the nobles’ private viewing box, the bard charmed an old female drink server into switching clothes with him, and then he pushed her drink cart with the rogue hidden underneath into the box and left both the cart and the rogue there

Which was a fantastic plan right up until the guild delivered their message and promptly kicked us out of the opera

With some clever usage of invoke duplicity and my changeling abilities, I managed to sneak back, pretend to be the drink server, and tried to get the cart back, but ultimately failed because the nobles wanted to keep it

Got 50 gold out of it though, cause they paid me to keep it lol

The bard then decided the next logical plan would be to use a spell to make it sound like there was a bomb in the middle of the theater, which I decided to assist with by using thaumaturgy to yell “there’s a bomb”

Unfortunately as the chaos began the nobles revealed that they knew the rogue was there and kidnapped him, already gone by the time I managed to get back and look for the cart

Luckily I remembered that I had locate object prepared and used it to track him, managed to get past the guards by pretending to be one of them and followed the nobles to the roof

Back to unfortunately—the bard and wizard did not have those abilities and had to fight the guards. The wizard decided that using a fire spell in the middle of an entirely wooden opera theater was a good idea

Almost got shot by the nobles TWICE, but I held person on one of them, the rogue got free, and then they attempted to teleport but I tackled the paralyzed one so now we’ve got a hostage :)

Got teleported home by the bard’s succubus wife, who was very very upset that her husband royally fucked up her performance. Also discovered that while we were gone, Bigsby and the bard’s ghost servant, who we left in charge of the tavern, started a fighting ring in the tavern and attracted the city guard, who arrested most of our customers rip

Overall: I think we’ve gone far, far off track from the Waterdeep module. Also, our DM looked like he wanted to TPK us multiple times. Pretty sure this is the normal D&D experience though

[arcanacouncilrp]

      event three     -      may 29 - june 19

                     first.

      28 October 1382 —  We’ve spent the last few days with The Ancients.  They’re teaching us lots of things, things I couldn’t even have possibly imagined. Explaining things to us that should have seemed so obvious, but are still new and surprising. Most importantly: how Earth’s veins run rich with magic. They span the entire planet, providing the world with all the magic it needs to flourish. They’re called ley lines by some, these veins, and before we were chosen anyone could tap into their power, if only they knew how. Now that knowledge is our responsibility to guard.

      It is our duty to be the gatekeepers of this gift, or so The Ancients tell us. It’s why we were chosen; in the wrong hands, this level of magic could be catastrophic. The ley lines need care, too, though. If they are ignored, or abused, or even damaged, things could truly turn disastrous. This seems to be our most solemn assignment: to protect the source of our powers.

      It even seems like these magical veins may be more important to The Ancients than they are to humanity. I need to remember to ask them more later. Perhaps in private...

                    before.

      Magic and all its mayhem is an expected occurrence around The Lair. Talking cats, teleporting kids, floating objects, an ever-growing room full of puppies—nothing out of the ordinary there. Even shoes could rain down from the heavens and simply be taken in stride.

      When this happens in Hong Kong, though, it’s a problem.

      The freak weather incident baffled the world. Footage of city streets filled with shoes of all kinds, car windshields shattered by stilettos, and crowds running to find shelter from the fallout dominated the international media cycle. Quick on its heels, no pun intended, were investigations. What caused the shoe storm? Could a shipping plane overhead have lost its cargo?

       Disrupted shipping could have been a perfectly plausible explanation had Temperance not monitored for more unusual happenings. Other instances of strange behavior popped up one after the other. Sleepy Scottish coastal town of St. Andrews saw a sudden spread of dancing fever; residents have danced the tarantella nonstop for three days with no reason or end in sight. Trees all over Toronto appeared to be yanking up their roots and moving when no one is watching, resettling in other parts of the city like they’d always been there. A small church community in Ecuador started losing every photograph in their homes, only for them to show up scattered under churchyard trees, their frames broken or missing.

      Balfour convened the Council only long enough for everyone to agree on one thing: it was their duty to figure out what was happening and how to fix the problem before the public ran out of natural explanations. The Fool and The Hanged Man took off for each destination to gather on-site information. Justice and Temperance pooled their powers to determine the cause of this series of malfunctions, and perhaps even discover if it was connected to the magical failings the Council has already experienced.

      Judgement went a different route, taking to the astral plane to look for clues, and what he found astonished him. Several of the Earth’s ley lines pulsed with light, crying out for help. They had been disrupted by something, causing their magic to leak into the world untamed and wreak havoc on surrounding areas.

      Judgement searched for the who and why of the problems to no avail. Questions still abound—was this a natural accident, or did someone purposefully tamper with magic? Could this have anything to do with the elusive figures watching over the Councilors? If nothing else, this new information gives the Council a direction to move in: fixing the disruptions should stop the leaks.

                   now.

      With some discussion and a few useful, albeit abrasive, tips from Balfour, the Council splits off into groups to handle this problem—the first they’ve ever tried to solve without Feiyan, and one of the more complex problems they’ve ever seen, too.

      The shoe-fall is an immediate issue, and who better than the Council’s own damage control expert to handle it? The Tower goes to Hong Kong to sort the issue out, though he can’t dissuade The Magician from going with him. Disposing of the evidence may just go better with someone to weave illusions over it all anyway. Maybe while they’re there, they can find a clue about what exactly caused the incident, too.

      Fixing Toronto’s forestry won’t be easy, but if anyone is well-equipped to try, and perhaps find out what caused the problem in the first place, it is The Empress. She and The Chariot go together on June 2nd to see if they can set the city and its greenery right without any of the locals catching on.

      Dancing fever needs to be treated as soon as possible, so The Emperor and The Hierophant are sent to Scotland as a pair on June 4th. Three days of dancing have already gone by and plenty of residents need medical attention, but with any luck the Councilors can also determine how exactly the phenomenon started and spread - or, at the very least, they can simply do their best to help.

      On June 5th The Devil and The Hermit take to Ecuador to discover what they can about the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Manglaralto’s missing photos. At the very least, they can do their best to find any that are still missing and return them to where they belong. Disappearing photos seems tame for a magical mishap - unless there’s something else going on?

      Judgement stays behind at The Lair, hoping to learn more about what caused the magical leakages. He finds a few scraps of Feiyan’s old notes and makes some small progress getting Balfour to open up, but upon heading to the library to take up his favorite desk,                                                            he is greeted by a stranger…

      In the meantime, several teams are dispatched to key locations on the ley lines to try their hands at restoring them to their modus operandi. Temperance stays behind to work with Judgement on coordinating everyone’s efforts, and The Sun lingers with them, prepared to jump to anyone’s aid if something goes terribly wrong. Justice visits each location as needed to extend their abilities to help. 

      One blockage appears to be right in the center of Hong Kong, so Death and The Hanged Man go to investigate. Blending in and working quickly are the key elements to their operation. At Judgement’s direction, they find a dilapidated warehouse with a pit drilled into its foundation and then plugged with what must be several hundred pounds of salt. If they can undo the mess, will the leak be fixed? If they need assistance, The Tower and The Magician are just around the corner.

      Strength and The Lovers are tasked with a broken pipeline of magic just beyond the beaches of Montañita, Ecuador. At first glance it appears a rock slide is the cause of the line’s interruption, but a closer inspection reveals shards of glass and iron piercing into the sea floor. Perhaps they can find an explanation for the strange debris, if they don’t get distracted by picturesque beaches instead.

      The Scottish ley line break has been pinpointed to the land outside Boarhills, and it appears many of the locals are experiencing the same kind of dream: spindly Fey figures roaming the countryside, digging into the land itself. In search of what? Is this a clue to what caused the leak? It’s up to The Moon and The High Priestess to find out. If there is one thing they do know, it’s that the atmosphere in town is tense, and even the forest doesn’t seem to want them poking around.

      A thunderstorm over Strange, Ontario has made it difficult to figure out precisely where the leakage there is, but with a little luck and some well-placed talent, perhaps this is just the right job for The Wheel of Fortune and The Star. It turns out the real problem isn’t cloud cover - it’s the twenty-five iron spikes thrust into the ground, drawing lightning from overhead. Removing them seems easy enough, but where did they come from, and what does it mean?

      Popping in and out as needed, The Fool doesn’t linger in any one place for long. He’s most useful for transport, and he doesn’t believe much in the hysteria caused by all this anyway. Does it matter when reality hardly exists? This is what is on his mind when, stopped off at a halfway point for a break and a drink,                                       he is approached by an eerily familiar figure...

Happy plot day, councilors, surprise! Its our first venture out of The Lair and onto our magically assigned duties! Ley lines are broken, wrecking havoc across the world. You have your teams, get to work! As with our first two very fun events, feel free to continue on with those threads if you have some to wrap up. Reactionary threads are also, again, encouraged. If your assigned task does not have a date listed above, assume it occurs anytime between June 6 and June 19. This event will last three weeks instead of the normal two as there’s a lot of ground to cover. 

We are very excited about this plot, as it is going to work a little differently from those of the past few weeks. Our two solitary characters here will be given their scenarios in a private setting, and the details of those will hit the dash a little later. The rest of you may also find us sliding into your DMs in the next couple of weeks, so be on the lookout! You’ll get more information about how this works when your number is up (or when your fellow players clue you in on their experiences) and we hope to explore a little angsty self-reflection that will very heavily tie into future plots down the road. Each of your reactions to this plot will drive the story forward, so we can't wait to see what you have to write!

[darkelfshadow]

Session Summary - 60

AKA “Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place”

Adventures in Taggeriell

Session 60  (Date: 9th March 2019)

Players Present:

- Rob (Known as “Oloma”) Human Female.

- Bob (Known as “Sir Krondor) Dwarf Male.

- Travis (Known as “Sir Lee”) Human Male.

- Paul (Known as “Labarett”) Elf Male.

- Arthur (Known as “Gim”) Dwarf Male.

Absent Players

NIL

NPC

- (Known as “Naillae”) Elf Female. <Controlled by DM>

- (Known as “Nac”) Half-elf Male. <Controlled by DM>

Summary

- Sunday, 7th Calistril in the year 815 (Second Era). Spring.

- The party begin this session, in the early morning, still within the corridors of the Dark Pyramid Of Sorcerer’s Isle. Having just defeated a group of Cultists, Red Wizards and Thay warriors last session, the party begin resting in the torture room.

- Labarett begins the Ritual of Detect Magic, Nac begins the long Prayer Of Healing, Sir Krondor begins searching the torture cages (and finds a large red gem), Sir Lee stands solemnly by the frozen body of their lost comrade Shaemus, killed last session, Naillae is guarding one dark corridor, Gim and Sir Sir Lee are resting, whilst Oloma moves towards a door at the end of short corridor.

- Sir Krondor places the red gem into his pocket, and seeing Oloma heading towards the door says, “Don’t go poking around, we need to rest before exploring further.”

- Oloma does not slow down and as she reaches the door replies back, “Stop worrying Dwarf, I am only going to listen.”

- The arcane ward that had been placed just outside the door, by the paranoid Red Wizard Rorreth, alerts him. He stops his searching of the room and turns to one of his personal body guards, “See what they want. If the rabble out there are still complaining of lack of food, tell them to choose one to kill and eat. That should shut them up for a while.”

- The Thay Warrior nods, “My lord” and moves to the door.

- Just as Oloma nears the door and begins to listen, it swings open and the tall solid looking Thay Warrior, dressed in black armour and with the sigil of Thay sees Oloma. The Thay Warrior shouts, “Intruders!”

- Two Thay Warriors run out the open door and rush Oloma, each holding a long sword and short sword. Before the rest of the party can respond more enemies rush out of the open door, another warrior and a Red Wizard of Thay. The newly arrived warrior is holding a large gold horn and holds it up to blow towards the party. A mighty sound bellows out, making the very walls shake, the sound hits the party like a wave of force making the party fall back in pain and Oloma loses her hearing (Unsuccessful Save). Whilst the party is still reeling from the blast of sound, the Red Wizard of Thay casts a spell that summons a raging Wall Of Fire separating the party from each other. Sir Lee and Naillae are now cut off from the party, a tall wall of fire blocking them. Nac, Gim and Sir Krondor are surrounded by a wall of fire, the heat forces them back as they suffer serious burns, and Labarett and Oloma are now the only ones able to effectively attack the enemies being by themselves on the same side as the enemy.

- The battle rages on. Sir Lee and Naillae are effectively out of the combat. Sir Krondor, Nac and Gim are forced to fire arrows, bolts or magic through the blazing fire but are finding it hard to aim through the blaze. Oloma is now forced to use her psionics without restraint, expending vast amounts of her mental reserves in this dire situation, as Labarett in a wild rage starts to hack into the enemies one by one. The Veteran Warriors of Thay are proving deadly but thanks to Oloma’s Cloak of Displacement and Labarett’s rage, most of the blows are either avoided or resisted though they still take damage. The Red Wizard of Thay is casts several Magic Missile bolts into Oloma, her cloak providing no defence.

- When Labarett leaps past two of the Warriors to thrust his sword into the Red Wizard, killing the mage, the Wall Of Fire abruptly disappears. This frees up the rest of the party to now join the battle proper and turn the tide. With the combined force of the party, and without the powers of the Red Wizard to aid them, the Veteran Warriors of Thay are eventually killed.

- The party are now very badly wounded and burnt, Sir Krondor has suffered a serious burn and Oloma is only just standing. Nac again begins the Prayer Of Healing. Naillae returns from the dark corridor to inform the party that she heard sounds coming the corridor, she says, “What ever is down there heard our fight and will be ready.”

- Oloma and Sir Lee enter the small room revealed by the open door and find a study room that appears to have been ransacked and searched. It looks like the Cult were searching the room. A naked male Half-Elf, badly wounded, is tied up and seated in one corner. Sir Lee tries to convince the prisoner that they are here to help but the prisoner keeps insisting that they are simply another illusion of the Red Wizard, Rorreth, who has been torturing and questioning him for days.

- The prisoner bellows, “Kill me and be done with it Rorreth! I will not tell you anything to aid you or the dam Cult. You may kill me but the Cult will not succeed. Others like me will raise to defeat you.”

- When Sir Lee unties the prisoner and Nac heals the wounds of everyone, including the stunned and confused prisoner, finally he believes the party and reveals his name to be Thilren Sohj.

- When Nac hears the name he instantly moves towards the prisoner and pulls him to the side to speak privately. After a moment the pair move back to the party and Nac speaks, “I vouch for this man. He is the informant that Whelsea told us about.”

- Thilren moves back into the study and shows the party a hidden floor compartment that was holding a quantity of potions that Rorreth had secreted and also all of Thilren’s gear, which he begins to put back on. The party learn from Thilren that he has been posing as a member of the Cult Of The Dragon Queen, sending information back about their operations. He came to the Pyramid a week ago with a large group of Cultists, meeting another group of Cultists that had already been working on and restarting the mechanism of the Pyramid for a month. The Cultists initially befriended a tribe of Lizardfolk that lived within and around the pyramid but then betrayed them and killed half the Lizardfolk tribe when the tribe would not let them go up to the highest level of the pyramid, as the tribe believed the level cursed with evil spirits and only the Shaman of the tribe are allowed up there. Whilst the Cultists moved upwards, forcing their way through the Lizardfolk, upon arriving at the top level two of the Cultists who had been sick, suddenly had creatures burst through their chest and start attacking the Cultists. Thilren is not sure what the creatures are, as he never went to the upper level, but knows that the Red Wizards were very fearful of the creatures and were very hesitant to try to engage them. The Warriors of Thay launched an attack on the upper level but were forced back, losing half the numbers.

- Thilren searches the body of Rorreth and locates a hidden small stone triangle which he informs the party is the only way to exit the pyramid. They stole the triangle from one of the Lizardfolk Shaman and he knows that it has to used with some magical portal stone to activate the only way to exit the Pyramid. The Shamans could use the stone triangle from the level above to somehow open the Pyramid entrance and summon a magic portal that allowed travel in and out of the Pyramid.

- The rest of the bodies are searched and the valuables taken. Labarett takes possession of the golden horn.

- The party try to take the well made and expensive full plate armours of the Thay Warriors, by trying to place them piece by piece into the Bag Of Sharing but soon learn that won’t work, as the Bag does not seem to be working.

- Nac sighs rubbing his head, “Of course the bag doesn’t work! This pyramid has a strong arcane field around it, nothing can pass it. That’s why Thilren was not able to send a message out via arcane means. Teleporting, communication, planar portals, scrying, nothing will pass it. We’re stuck in here unless we can get to the portal stone Thilren described in the upper level. It must be keyed into the barrier around the Pyramid.”

- Once the party is ready, with Thilren now wearing his armour and somewhat healed, they leave the torture room and proceed down a dark corridor where two doors await. The party enter and search the small rooms beyond both the doors to locate two ancient storage rooms whose contents are ransacked. Only a small acid vial is located by Oloma.

- Pressing onwards, the party follow the corridor towards where Naillae heard the sounds earlier. The party arrive at a set of large double doors, just beyond a series of pillars. There is visible light coming from the edge of the double doors.

- Thilren tells the party that the Lizardfolk control the area on the other side of that door and that they are very hostile. The party move slowly towards the door, Naillae examines it and sees that there is a solid metal bar on the other side, and she suspects there has been placed objects on the other side to reinforce it.

- Sir Krondor whispers, “We should barge the door and rush in!”

- Naillae shakes her head, “Not with a metal bar on the other side. The door won’t move. I could remove the bar but it would make a loud noise, there’s no way to do quietly.”

- Oloma says in a low voice, “If I gave you an acid flask Naillae could you use that on the metal bar?”

- Naillae nods, “Yes. I could weaken the bar at the mid point and then we could barge through the door. We would surprise anyone on the other side.”

- Sir Lee, looking impatiently shouts out in a loud voice, “Hear me! I am Sir Lee. We are not your enemy. We have dealt with the Cult. Open the door!”

- Sir Krondor bows his head down, “There goes our surprise!”

- Oloma, trying to make the best of a bad situation, also shouts out, in Draconic, “Open the door. We are not the Cult. I am a follower of Pelor and here to help you.”

- Thilren starts to move towards one of the pillars, “The Lizardfolk know nothing about our politics, the Cult, or our gods, and we all look the same to them. You’re wasting your time, Rerroth said the same words of friendship, in Draconic, before he betrayed them and killed half their tribe.”

- The light flickers at the top of the door edge, as if one or more persons had moved to the upper part of the door to look out the small gap, and then suddenly a crocodile and swarm of poisonous snakes appear near the party. The snakes appear in the air above Gim and fall down upon him. The party begin a confusing and unfocused battle. They soon find themselves in a predicament in which they can not see their attackers, a pair of Lizardfolk Shaman, but the Shaman can see the party through a small gap at the door. Spell after spell is cast at the party, a Spiritual Weapon appears in the air and begins to attack Sir Krondor, multiple swarms of poisonous snakes and crocodiles are summoned into the small area, and worse still the ground erupts with vines and roots that grab onto the party making it almost impossible to try to move to breach the door. And soon the vines erupt into arcane flames that deal severe damage to those trapped within.

- Sir Krondor can see the panic in the party. Some of the party have managed to move back, having broken free of the flaming vines, and have taken up positions behind the pillars but are unable to counter attack. Some of the party can not free themselves from the vines and face the grim prospect of being burnt alive. Oloma, standing behind a pillar, keeps shouting out in Draconic to the door, telling the Lizardfolk that they are friendly.

- Sir Lee snaps at Oloma, “By the gods Oloma, leave it be! We aren’t going to convince them we’re friendly when we’re trying to bash down their door with weapons!”

- Sir Krondor bellows to Naillae, “Jimmy that metal bar off now! Gim to me! We breach the door once the bar is off!”

- Gim hears the sound of the Shaman running away on the other side of the door.

- Naillae and Gim, the flames dancing around them, move to follow the Knight’s commands. Soon the metal bar is off but the wooden door is proving hard to push, as the Lizardfolk have placed a large quantity of heavy barrels and boxes on the other side. Labarett runs into the flames and helps the two Dwarves to push at the door. With one final push, one side of the large double doors opens enough to allow entry as the boxes and barrels are pushed aside.

- Sir Krondor can see beyond the open door into a long, odd shaped room that is filled with ready and waiting Lizardfolk. As he leans out to get a better look, ten javelins are thrown at him, most hitting the side of the door.

- Without any fear, the Dwarf Knight races in, screaming a Dwarf battle cry. He leaps towards the two closest Lizardfolk and kills one instantly.

- Standing at the back of the chamber, a large muscular Lizardfolk warrior shouts in Draconic, “Kill them all!”

- Next to him, is one Lizardfolk Shaman, who looks at one of two side curtains. The curtain is flapping back into place, as if someone had just run through it. The Shaman calls out in Draconic at whom ever is running away, “Warn the others! The deceivers are back!”

- Oloma can see that one of the doors is now open and has watched Sir Krondor run inside. She sighs, “This had better work, this will use the last of my psionic reverses.” She concentrates her mind and focuses on a spot on the far side of the flaming vines and just past the open door. With a rush of air she teleports herself inside to be standing facing the large group of Lizardfolk. Using the last reserves of her psionics she unleashes everything she has left into a forward blast of energy, just missing Sir Krondor and one of the Lizardfolk. The energy wave strikes all the other foes, killing all the Lizardfolk except for their leader and their Shaman, both of which kneel down in pain from the attack.

- With the powerful psionic blast that hit the Shaman he loses concentration on his spell and the flaming vines disappear, allowing the rest of the party to move forward and through the door, except for Naillae who sits down onto the ground, badly burnt and injured, and urgently takes out a magical Healing potion.

- The injured Shaman and patrol Leader do not survive long under the combined onslaught of the party. When the last foe is killed the party are look around at each other. They are barely alive, badly wounded and burnt.

- Nac is sweating and panting, “I am almost out of all my divine spells. Don’t expect much healing from me.”

- Sir Lee says, “Well, with Oloma popping about and unleashing devastation like that we should be fine.”

- Oloma leans on a wall, catching her breath, “Unfortunately, that was the last of my reserves of power. I have almost nothing left, and would not be able to do anything of note like that again until we sleep.”

- Nac answers, “Sleeping in this pyramid is not an option. We need to press on and get out before we get corrupted like them.” As he says this he points to the Lizardfolk and the party now see that they are all showing the first signs of suffering from the magical mutation. Some of them have small extra fingers growing out at off angles and places, some have secondary or even tertiary mouths growing over the bodies, some have extra eyes beginning to form, and most of them have boils and lesions with oozing liquid all over their bodies.

- The party look at the dead Lizardfolk in revulsion.  

- The bodies are quickly searched and a pouch of uncut, different coloured gems are located on the large patrol Leader. There are two curtained exits to this chamber. One leads to a small area that appears to be used as a latrine, which the party refuse to enter, and the other curtain leads to a wide long corridor. After Thilren scouts ahead, the party move forward and have the choice of either following the long bending corridor or entering a wooden side door.

- The party decide to go via the door, and after it is checked for traps by Naillae, Sir Lee uses a lit torch around the door, to check for danger and any combustable gases, when some of the party see small amounts of mist coming from the door edges.

- The door is opened and beyond is a swirling fog, so thick that only a very short distance can be seen into it.

- Labarett speaks, “That is no ordinary fog, see how it stays put and does flow out past the open door way. It must be of magic origin.”

- The party decide to slowly move into the fog, only able to see a few feet in front of them. They find another door, close to the entry door, and Labarett opens it to see a small room, with no fog. He enters it to find open boxes filled with an assortment of crudely made, natural looking implements, that he recognises as being typical of items used in tribal and ritual life. This must be a storage room for the Shamans.

- Moving onward, using the walls to guide them, they eventually make their way to another door. This time when the party step in front of it, the air begins to change colour and thicken, causing the people within it to cough and choke as poisonous fumes begin to fill their lungs.

- Sir Krondor decides to open the door and finding a small chamber with no fog he leaps in and then calls out for everyone to follow him. The party do so and once they catch their breath see a set of stairs leading up that are covered in thick webs. When the party begin to cut and burn the webs away, they see that the webs are slowly growing back.

- Nac says, “More dam magic! At that speed the webs will grow back to cover these stairs again in about five minutes.”

- Thilren looks up nervously and says, “What ever is up there, terrified the Red Wizards. I heard the fear in their voices when they spoke about this level. Twenty elite warriors of Thay were killed up there trying to deal with the threat.”

- Naillae looks around the tired and wounded party, “Is there any other way out of this pyramid?”

- Thilren holds up the stone triangle that he took from Rorreth, “No. We have to use this key in the portal stone above. Is that or we wait here to starve or be turned into mutants.”

- Naillae sighs, “So we’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”

- Sir Lee speaks, “Comrades, now is time for heroes to attack. We do not live simple lives. We are not simple men and women. If we are to die here today then let our deaths be glorious, and be sung by the Bards for ages to come.”

- Nac moves past Sir Lee and begins to cut away at the regrowing webs, “I would rather my life’s deeds be sung by paid whores, as I drink myself to a stupor in a comfortable brothel. I don’t intend to die today.”

- Sir Krondor moves to the front of the group and addresses them, “I also would like to avoid dying today. We are in this position because we have not been smart. We have been reckless, we need to approach the above position carefully and as a combined strength of arms. We can’t go up there half cocked!” Sir Krondor moves his eyes about the group, catching each of their gaze.

- The Knight Of The Anvil continues, “We need to work as a group! We are tired, injured, and low on the powers of Nac and Oloma which we have depended on greatly in the past. Some of us may not survive the threat we are about to face and if I die today, then I shall do so, knowing that I died for the lives of my friends and family. What more can I Dwarf ask for.”

- Gim smiles and puts a hand on Sir Krondor’s shoulder, “Aye cousin, if we die, we die together.” The two clink their weapons together and smile.

- The party all nod their heads, determination upon their faces, and slowly make their way up to the final level.

<And as the party ascend into the final confrontation within the Dark Pyramid of Sorcerer’s Isle, unsure of who will survive, that is the end of the session.>

XP Allocation

Group - Combined (This is equally divided by the number of players who were involved)

Quests (Only quests that are completed or rendered undoable, during this session, are shown here)

- Rescue Thilren Alive = 1000 XP

- Exit 2nd Level of Pyramid = 800 XP

Creatures Overcome

- Veteran Warriors of Thay = 2800 XP

- Rorreth - Red Wizard of Thay = 2300 XP

- Lizardfolk = 900 XP

- Lizardfolk Leader = 1100 XP

- Lizardfolk Shaman = 450 XP

Individual (This is only given to that person and is not divided amongst all players)

Special Bonus (Outstanding Role Playing)

Nil

XP Levels and Player Allocations

Player : Start +  Received = Total  (Notes)

Rob : 63317 + 1392 = 64709 (Level up to Level 10)

Arthur : 47776 + 1392 = 49168 (Level up to Level 9)

Travis : 54133 + 1392 = 55525

Paul : 45661 + 1392 = 47053

Bob : 50546  + 1392 = 51938

NPC (Naillae) : + (696)

NPC (Nac): + (696)

[koboldburrow]

Aurix update

There won’t be one of these for a while, since our schedules ain’t workin’ out until next month, buuuut:

Last time: Ronin wanted to get some Thieves’ Tools, and Aurix brought him to some shady-ass Drow gang to hook him up. He didn’t really wanna pay 50g for a set of tools, so instead offered to do A Favour. They asked him to get rid of an elf who was a High Priest of Savras; he agreed. Aurix asked him if 50g was a price he was okay with paying for blood on his hands, and promised to back him up in however he approached this job.

THIS TIME: Aurix made some very excellent use of her new spell, Flock of Familiars, in scouting out the Temple of Savras. We not only found out the high priests would be meeting tonight (one of which was our assassination target) so everyone could see them vote on a change in tenets, but we spotted a young girl that may be the child who was taken away by the temple. (I’m a little fuzzy on what THAT’S about, since it’s a plotline that was going on before I joined the campaign.) 

Von (the bard) polymorphed Ronin (the samurai) into a spider, Aurix tucked him into her hood, and one Mask of Many Faces disguise later, we sneak into the temple for that big meeting. We see the girl is being kept behind a High Priest by the name of Shadowstone, who’s got a fancy tattoo on his arm marking him as a member of the dwarven shady-ass mafia. Ronin also picks up that our assassination target glances at Shadowstone with utter fear before voting the same way that he does. It’s pretty clear that Shadowstone is the dude behind the sketchy business, and it’s equally clear that the drow gang who Ronin promised to Do An Assassinate for probably picked this dude because he’s obviously in Shadowstone’s pocket. 

The Polymorph is getting close to running out, so disguised-as-a-random-Savras-cleric Aurix tries to scootch out of the meeting all “bathroom break s’cuse me.” She manages to deceive all the high priests except one, ducks out, and hides away in an empty room so Ronin can be a half-orc again and not a spider. Knowing their cover may be blown, Ronin tries to suggest pulling out and coming back with the rest of the party. Aurix is wary, knowing that much of the party won’t be super on board with “murder a church guy” or really cut out for Stealth, and fearing that the suspicions they raised may lead to tighter security. She suggests instead that they do a “to hide a tree, use a forest” approach and try to slip in with all the leaving clerics when the meeting ends, and maybe try to follow their mark that way. 

No luck seeing him among the people who go by, though, so Ronin figures that we should just cut our losses and leave. He gets caught on the way out, though, and we get taken to talk to the High Priestess who wasn’t fooled by Aurix’s “lol brb bathroom” bit. She talks about Shadowstone’s shadiness, a bit about our mark’s past, and how he’s one of Shadowstone’s many puppets. Aurix suggests that they, as ardent adherents to the tenets of Savras and not this skewed version Shadowstone is trying to push, try talking to the mark in private. Somehow, this works, and the priestess arranges for them to talk. 

At this point, Aurix is READY THE FUCK TO HIT. Hexblade’s Curse, poised to strike, waiting for Ronin to give the signal. He talks to this drow High Priest a bit. The guy doesn’t really know anything useful at all about Shadowstone, but he quickly realizes that we were sent by the drow gang to kill him, and starts sobbing and weeping. At this point, Ronin does a 180, and completely changes his mind about killing the dude. He kinda does a “well now you know that this gang wants to kill you, so we’ll just see what fate decides” kind of thing and asks how he can help and stuff. Aurix is like shooting him Looks and trying to mouth stuff like “DUDE WE NEED TO GET INTO THE UNDERDARK ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DOUBLE CROSS THE DROW MAFIA,” but she takes her oaths pretty seriously, so she doesn’t really want to run this clown through in front of Ronin after she promised “I’ll have your back, however you wanna get the job done.” 

She knows that the High Priestess of Savras has seen his face and heard his voice, and she also knows that he openly admitted where he’s from, so she’s just thinking, like, “well shit, I gotta protect this poor naive idiot or he’ll absolutely get arrested and/or silenced.” She tells him “okay, go leave back to the inn, don’t hide it, just let people witness you exiting the temple.” Once Ronin clears off, she talks with the mark, convinces him “look, these people will just send someone who’s actually willing to assassinate you once they realize this failed, you have to flee, I can help you disappear so well neither Shadowstone nor drow can find you.” With some very lucky smooth-talking, she convinces him to tell some of the Savras clerics he’s heading out for a walk to clear his head (thereby proving he was still alive after Ronin left), and she takes him out to one of the city gates. 

Now, at this point, her full intention was “get somewhere with no witnesses, run him through, dump him in a ditch.” She did NOT want to backstab the drow criminal syndicate for a lot of reasons. 

They also knew Ronin’s face and voice, meaning they could easily come for him and/or the party he was with.

Aurix had been prepared all along for “I can do an assassination for you” to result in actually doing the assassination, so she was pretty braced for “this is a priest, he probably won’t go HELL YEAH KILL ME I’M EVIL AS SHIT,” so she wasn’t all that moved by tears at all

also Aurix is a True Neutral lizardfolk only really concerned with keeping her oaths and surviving, so risking the necks of herself and her friends for no better reason than “this total stranger did a real sad cry” is just not really something she’s wired to understand 

Aurix is a fuckign criminal with an evil sword that thirsts for blood. She’s been in shadyville so long that she’s probably pretty numb to shedding the blood of sapient beings, especially ones that are cronies in some Real Fucky Business

they definitely did still need to get to the Underdark, and the only really accessible entrance is in this exact city, so thumbing your nose at the drow seems REALLY unwise

It didn’t actually work out that way though. The mark passed out a little outside the gates, an elf standing guard there was all “HEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING.” Aurix tries the “hhha ha ha he’s just drunk I’m taking him home,” but the dude just automatically knows that’s horseshit. I’m thinking “jesus christ this unexpected morality moment is going to get my character arrested and/or killed,” so I try to cast Hold Person. Automatic fail (I guess elves resist paralysis or WIS saving throws?). I’m like. [SCREAMS INTERNALLY] and just..... try to bribe the guy to forget he saw anything 

I think the DM feels sorry for me and my utterly screwed character lmao, because the elf kinda just goes “actually for this much gold I’ll just handle making sure this guy gets to the next town over lol” at which point I go “COOL THANKS IF ANYONE ASKS YOU SAW NOTHING” and just fuckign. peace out. So I ended up losing a chunk of change on this, but like.... at least Aurix didn’t Perish

So the whole party reconvenes at the inn, and Ronin has already spilled most of what they were up to. The group moves up to one of their rooms for Privacy and Aurix is... not entirely happy.... about the way things went. She’s pissed that he sprung a last-second backdown on her with no warning and put her into a situation where she had to break an oath to these dudes, that they’ve made enemies of both sides of a gang war, that she had to go through a bunch of money and trouble to clean this up, and that there’s now a loose end running wild on his way to the next town over. The vanishing of a high priest is very quickly noticed, despite the “just going for a walk” thing, and the alarm is raised across the city. We decide “hey this would be a REALLY GOOD TIME to skip town.” We wait until the next day, when Corrin (half-dragon ranger/sorc) can pick up her new +2 spell focus, Aurix picks up the Entire Live Cow she ordered, and we skip town to go back to the ancient dragon’s lair and see how much of the hoard the kobolds have dug up. 

Aurix comes barreling in all “MY SWEET LITTLE LIZARDY BABIES I BROUGHT YOU A BEEF.” Kobolds are very pleased to get an entire delicious cow, and present us with A SHITLOAD OF STUFF. 11K gold tossed into our portable hole, along with 36 more magic items (most of them are scrolls). We explain that we’re gonna be away for a while and that the kobolds really should stay away from hassling the nearby city because AURIX NEEDS HER BABIES TO BE OKAY LMAO. 

With our ducks all in a row, Von (bardy boi) does a Teleportation Circle, and we all blip back to Breedonne to hand in our dragonscales to (and get our magic items Identified by) the wizardy dude who we’re doing this Main Quest stuff for. We retire to an inn to discuss our next move. We’ll still need more dragonscales probably, but it took us a lot to find this white dragon, so we’re not all that sure how easily we’ll even be able to locate another dragon to hunt. Sticking to getting mindflayer helmets from the Underdark seems like the better move, but considering the only really accessible entrance is the one in the city we just messed with the drow in, we’re kinda unsure how well that will go. We figure that we’ll maybe just, like... spend a bit here in Breedonne preparing and researching and getting materials for our Underdark adventure, and hopefully by the time we’re ready to come back, the heat will have died down a little bit. On that decision, we end for the night, and we’ll pick back up sometime in March!

[the-antiproduct-blog]

Gather 'round y'all. I've quite a tale to tell.

It all started when our DM introduced a group of Card-Master type NPCs. They would throw cards at us which would have random magical effects. He decided beforehand that the leader had 2% chance of dropping a Deck of Many Things. Guess what? He rolled it. At the time, I was playing a Halfling Master Thrower by the name of Katarin, a character who will always have a special place in my heart. Katarin was a no-nonsense Lawful Neutral military officer from Yllarum, a desert city with a booming economy (this was a homebrew setting, by the way). Also in the party was Gully Teach, a vagabond deadpan snarking Human Swashbuckler/Dread Pirate whose biggest goal in life (as far as I could tell) was to finally obtain his own ship and crew and be a famous scourge of the seas. Gully and Katarin are the two most important characters in this story, and in general they were the two highest respected in the group. There was also Throng, The Half-Orc Barbarian, Lloyd, The Human Duskblade, and Marris, The Human Ranger. There was an Assassin too, but I don't remember his name and he didn't have too much of an influence on the story. My tale begins when party was roughly level 6 or 7. We had just successfully managed to stop a war from starting between humans and dwarves, and we were on our way to explain the situation to the Dwarven king in the city of Gundermount. Gully had attempted to buy a ship at a human port town along the way, but he got himself gypped out of his money buy a couple of less-than-savory types. In our effort to recover the stolen gold, we ran into the aforementioned card-throwing gnomes with Brooklyn accents. It ended up being an easy fight. After mopping them up, I looted one of the bodies and found a deck of cards in a box, upon which was written something to the effect of "The Fate of Us All" in Gnomish. I didn't think that much of it because I had never encountered or read about a Deck of Many Things, neither in nor out of character, so I simply put it in my bag to inspect later. Once we'd all settled down for the night however, Gully Teach saw Katarin handling the deck and flips his stack. Apparently he knows what it is. After choking out a quick explanation of how major the find was, he begs to be the first one to draw from it. We concede. Gully draws three cards. I don't recall what the later two were (they were something minor like getting a few thousand gp in gems), but the first card Gully drew was the Moon. He got four wishes. He wished for one million gold, to be famous, to be more dextrous, and for "a ship that cannot be pierced by any means". He ended rolling a reflex save to avoid getting crushed by the gold, but he got it. He got a +4 racial bonus to dex, but he also grew a monkey tail. He also got an adamantine Ironclad ship, and everyone knew his name. Then Katarin (me) draws. Not really liking to take chances, he goes for only one card. He draws the Star, and gets himself a +2 to dex. Throng and Lloyd weren't there at that point and time (their players were gone and their characters were doing something else), leaving only Marris. She drew the card that summoned a CR 17-something dread wraith. It looked as though our luck had run out at this point, but Marris had been holding on to a modified version of an Arrow of Slaying for the past three levels. It just so happened that Marris had a deep running hatred for the undead, so naturally her arrow was attuned to destroy them. It also just so happened that the wraith had an abysmal fort save, so she killed it in one shot. The DM rewarded her with enough experience to boost her (and even Gully and I for some reason) up a level. So far everything about this situation had been one-in-a-million, but it gets even worse. The DM had ruled that instead of only being allowed to draw once from the Deck, he would allow us to draw once per week. This eventually proved to be more of a curse than a boon. Our DM's policy when it comes to wishes was that he'll let you get away with a lot, but he'll also screw with the wish if you ask for too much. It was dangerous business. But Gully hadn't had enough. We ended up having to find someone to teleport us the rest of the way to Gundermount, because we didn't have the crew or knowledge to actually pilot the ironclad. Upon reaching the Dwarven city, our party went on a MASSIVE shopping spree. The power-scale of the game had skyrocketed ridiculously. Throng rejoined us and drew from the Deck. I had been joking for the past week that when Throng drew, he would die, due to the fact that he was at times ridiculously unlucky and it often put him in ridiculous situations (in and out of character). Sure enough, he drew the Void. Throng was gone, just like that. A week went by as we took a rest, and as the dwarves celebrated the news that there would be no war. Gully eagerly drew from the deck again as soon as possible. The rest of the party abstained for the time being. I had all but made up my mind to never draw again after what happened to Throng. Luck smiled on Gully Teach, however, because right then and there he drew another Moon, this time with two wishes. Gully wishes for his ship to be capable of flight and underwater submersion (a suggestion I had made earlier in the week), and also wishes for "the ability to regenerate from any wound" (by which he meant Fast Healing). This is when the DM struck first. Gully was transformed into some sort of small-sized sea nymph in a glass bowl, who had Fast Healing 40, but he also couldn't survive outside of the water in the bowl. Gully was nonplussed. So it got even messier. Gully sought out the most powerful wizard in the Dwarven city, and paid a ridiculous sum of gold for a casting of Wish. He wished to go back in time to the point right before he'd made the wish that had turned him into what was effectively a goldfish. He then changed his previous wish to a wish for a powerful and loyal crew that was capable of expertly piloting his ship. Thus, he was no longer a sea creature, and he now had a crew. We hadn't actually gone back to the ship since Gully had made those wishes, but when we did, we found a group of 20 blue large size lizard-like creatures bustling about the ship, performing maintenance and other such tasks. Upon seeing our swashbuckling party member, they all abruptly came to attention. They all shouted simultaneously, "HAIL GULLY TEACH! THE BATTLE-TITAN BRIGADE IS AT YOUR SERVICE." It was at about this time that the game could truly be said to have become ridiculous. It was also about the time where Katarin lost his place as highest authority in the party and the campaign became more about pursuing the wild whims of Gully Teach, the eccentric millionaire pirate in his flying submarine of a ship. I don't know why or how they called themselves the Battle-Titan Brigade, why they were lizards, or why they could speak. I figured it was a reference that I still have yet to discover the source of. But nevertheless, these lizards were impeccably loyal to Gully, and the manned the ship expertly, not to mention they were handy in a fight. They also appeared to share some sort of hivemind. Suffice to say, they were odd. Upon starting up the engines, we found that the ship had a pathetic speed of 20 ft. Irritated, Gully went back into town, purchased another wish, went back in time again, and modified his wish such that it would allow for his ship to be faster. When Gully returned to his ship this time, the Battle-Titan Brigade was still there, but the ironclad had become an animatronic Gargantuan Blue Wyrm, another one of the DM's twists, perhaps based off something in the way he had worded the wish. It could fly and swim at 120 ft. speed however, so Gully didn't seem to mind. Also at about this time, Lloyd the Duskblade rejoined us and we offered him a shot at the Deck. He cautiously accepted, and recieved a Sunblade and his own private castle appeared on a deserted island (which he inherently knew the location of). The party decided to check it out. So finally, with at least half of the million gold spent, we set a course for that island. That's when are troubles began in earnest. We were flying over the ocean, when an Old (28 HD) Red Dragon came soaring in from out of nowhere, roaring with rage. Keep in mind, we were level 7. We pretty much panicked as Gully ordered to submerge the ship, and we dove a hundred or so feet underwater (it's maximum depth wasn't very impressive). This waylaid the red dragon for a moment, though it was obviously after the ship for some reason. "GULLY TEACH!" The dragon roared loud enough to make us roll fort saves vs deafness. "YOU STEAL FROM MY HOARD AND NOW YOU'VE USED MY GOLD TO CONSTRUCT THAT?" He was referring to the Blue Wyrm Ship. Red dragons don't like blue dragons. Unforunately it didn't have the stats of an actual Blue Wyrm, and it indignantly told us so when we asked if it could fight the dragon. The realization hit us like a ton of bricks. That million gold had come from this dragon's hoard. Gully's famousness wish had made it so that everyone knew his name and what he was doing. Putting 2 and 2 together, it meant that we were completely trapped. To make matters even worse, the fact that the ship was now a construct that looked like a blue dragon made it look as though Gully was mocking the red dragon. It followed us from above the surface of the water wherever we went, demanding that we resurface and face its wrath. Desperately, we all looked to the Deck. Gully had already drawn this week, but three of the party members had not. Maybe, just maybe one of us could draw the Moon or some other card that would help us escape this situation. This was when the deck really started to screw with us. Marris drew and had her alignment changed to Lawful Neutral. The assassin (whose name I don't recall) drew and received a level 4 fighter cohort, who he then instructed to keep drawing from the deck until he got the moon. He only got three cards in before drawing the Void and dying. He did, however, get a Luckblade, which just so happened to have zero wishes still in it. Lloyd drew and also got a cohort, to which he gave the same command. He drew some sort of magical item, followed by the Queen of Pentacles (destroy all magic items), followed then by yet another Void. Katarin had to make a choice at this point. He felt no real responsibility for this situation, despite the fact that he had used some of Gully's gold. Katarin had barely agreed to draw one card at the beginning, and after seeing Throng die, he had all but sworn off it. He knew that repeated drawing could bring great benefit, but he also saw that the law of averages said that one day it would kill him. Katarin also had a Cloak of the Manta Ray on hand, so while none of the other characters could escape underwater, he could easily just step outside, become a manta ray, and get away from whole situation, and he was dangerously close to doing so. But here was the whole party begging him to draw at least one more card. The dragon above had started to bombard the ship with spells. Cursing his luck, he drew a card. Queen of Pentacles. Lose all magical items. I was so mad I got up out of my seat and start yelling at this point. This was the one other card besides the Void that I knew of that could completely screw me over. Katarin had lost his escape route, and since a Master Thrower is somewhat dependent on returning daggers, he had lost a lot of his combat effectiveness too. While this had been going on, we'd been continuing our flight to the island stronghold that Lloyd had received from the deck. We had arrived near the shore, but we were unable to surface because it would mean exposing ourselves to the dragon. There was only one thing to do: Offer the Deck of the Many things to the dragon in return for a truce. The dragon hastily accepted. He probably could have simply taken the deck and then killed us, but he must have been too enthralled by the deck or too prideful to go back on his word. When we emerged onto the shore and got out to give him the deck, he simply took it and drew 5 cards immediately. He drew a joker and some other cards, but only two were important: The Moon and the Queen of Pentacles. The dragon made three wishes on the Moon, but we didn't know what they were. We were hastily trying to leave at this point. An affect of one of the wishes he made, however, was to turn the blue wyrm ship back into it's adamantine ironclad form. It could reach 85 ft. speed, however it took 4 or 5 rounds to get there from 20. As we had all retreated back onto the ship and begun to sail away, we heard a roar of complete and utter outrage, bemoaning the loss of his hoard. He must of been disoriented by his despair, because he didn't think to chase after us once we were out of sight. We made our way to Yllarum, Katarin's home city. After that the campaign seemed to regain a smidgen of normalcy. Gully bought one more wish in order to reverse the effect the Queen of Pentacles had had on me. Gully christens his ship "The Monkey's Paw", now that it was a proper ship again. We felt pretty good. We'd managed to escape the dragon, keep the gold, and live to campaign another day. Some time later, after taking care of our business in Yllarum, we decide to make for the southern continent. Lloyd, the owner of the castle on the island, asks if we can make a slight detour to fully inspect it, seeing as how we never got the chance during the dragon mess. It was only a little out of the way, so we agree. Flying overhead upon our arrival however, we see that same bloody red dragon resting in the courtyard of the castle. He had chosen quite the vengeful spot on which to start building his new horde. Now this is where it becomes crucially important that the ship had been changed back to its old ironclad form by one of the dragon's wishes. Upon seeing our ship, the dragon roars angrily and gets up to attack. Seeing as how the ship didn't have the speed to outrun a dragon, the only option was to stand and fight. Gully's player had been looking into Stomwrack's sections on naval combat, and therefore knew that the ship could ram for 11d6 damage. So, without any ado, that's exactly what Gully begins to do. Whilst commanding the Battle-Titan Brigade to man and fire-at-will with what ballistae the ship had (two), he repeatedly attempts to ram the dragon. Sometimes, he lacked the maneuverability to do so, and the ship needed to build full speed to do it's full damage (which would be X8 at max speed). Building up speed required he only turn by one diagonal square per round, and this fight just wouldn't allow him to do that as he had to keep swerving in order to hit the dragon. While it seemed to be working fairly well, the dragon was also dealing major damage to the ship, and even if we did gain the advantage, he could always retreat and be back to harry us again some day (probably soon). Thankfully, the ship's adamantine composition prevented us from going down like yesterday's leftover barbecue. It could even bypass the dragon's DR, seeing as how the ship was considered magical, but it still wasn't an easy fight. Gully, Katarin, and Lloyd happened to be the only ones in the ship at this point in time. This errand in the southern continent wasn't supposed to take long. So there we were, 3 level 8 characters and a bunch of cohorts taking on a CR 20 encounter. Our most potent spellcaster had three levels in Duskblade, so you can be damn sure we didn't have access to Shivering Touch. Lloyd is struggling to find a way to be useful. He manages to nick the dragon with a Shocking Grasp through one of the portholes once, but he promptly got caught in the dragon's breath attack (which the DM ruled only would hit each 5-foot square adjacent to the portholes if the breath attack came parallel to them), taking 128 and dying instantly. Katarin happened to have a Revivify scroll on him and a handy high roll on his UMD check, which brought him back, but he was out for the fight for sure. Meanwhile, Katarin was built to excel at ranged combat. The dragon's AC was too high for me to hit on anything but a very favorable roll, but my DM said he would allow me to shoot for his eyes, which had a much lower AC despite being smaller. At first, he attempted to time his attacks with the cooldown of the breath weapon, having to dodge in and out and waste several turns making sure not to get hit (and also to save Lloyd), but then he had the idea to mount one of the Battle-Titan Brigade members, with Gully's permission, and instructed it to take cover from the window if he should see an incoming breath attack. The dragon then feels the sting of Katarin's full attack: Six thrown daggers per round, each dealing 14-16 damage for about 90 damage if all of them hit their mark (which, with the range increment penalties, didn't always happen). Over the course of several rounds, I manage to fully blind one of his eyes, and deal significant damage to the other. The dragon doesn't like this at all, so he changes his tactics, attempted to kite us with spells and breath weapons. Unfortunately for him, this gave Gully the opportunity to do just what he had wanted with his ram attacks. Shuddering with anticipation, he calls for a full steam ahead. The range increments were getting even tougher, but Katarin finally managed to blind the other eye just before Gully hit maximum speed. The dragon, who had managed to get about 1-2 hundred feet away from us, conjures up a Wall of Fire, and begins channeling a Pyro Burst (the DM has a soft-spot for that spell), which I only know because I took a cross-class rank in Spellcraft, had a high int, and rolled high enough. Gully commands for the ship to dive as quickly as possible while still remaining full speed. We managed to get underwater just before the dragon laughs and says "You fell into my trap!" and releases the Channeled Pyroburst, which completely misses, seeing as how he is now blind and we are also beyond the range of his blindsense. The round after, we came careening back out of the water at full speed, flying directly at him. I start playing "Libera Me from Hell" from my laptop because it seemed appropriate. The ram connects, dealing a full its 88d6 damage. The DM informs us that we ram into the dragon, spinning like a drill, we pierce it's chest and come out the other side, having impaled its heart, taking it to -200 hp. "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE?" In the aftermath, we dragged the dragon's lifeless body back to the beach, where we later sold it's body to a specialist who worked with dragon parts. The ship had taken 85,000 gold worth of damages, which Gully paid in full to repair. I'm fairly certain we also leveled up again. Lloyd and I later encountered the Deck of Many Things sitting innocently on the sandy beach, presumably where the dragon had dropped it in his delirious rage. We simply passed by it without saying anything. We'd been damn lucky. It'd happened before in this campaign, and it would happen again, but the important thing was to acknowledge the fact that it was, in fact, luck. I don't believe Gully Teach saw the Deck lying there, because if he had, he might very well have kept drawing until the Deck really did manage to kill him. I might have buried it, though I honestly don't remember. What I do know is that after all we'd been through, Lloyd and I had decided the Deck was certainly not worth the risk. The real kicker is that some months later, we begin adventure to stop a bunch of time-traveling black dragons from destroying the earth. They claimed that an ancestor of Gully Teach would eventually unravel time, and that the only way to stop it was to tear out our world's magical lay-lines (thus destroying it). Of course, Gully Teach had since died in a particularly nasty encounter with Rakshasa and denied resurrection, leaving poor ol' Katarin and Co. to deal with it. Apparently something about Gully wishing to go back in time over and over again had sparked the DM's imagination in a pretty horrible way. So that's what happened. Because of a Deck of Many Things, we broke the power-scaling of our game, accidentally pissed off a dragon, fought and killed said dragon in a flying adamantine submarine, and then created a tear in the space-time continuum, all without meaning to and at level 6-8.

Not written by myself. In this story I was playing Gully Teach. My buddy Paul wrote this who was playing Katarin. I love sharing this because the way he wrote this captures the game perfectly.

[listener-blue]

Got any crazy ass DnD/tabletop stories?

Hm, it depends how you define ‘crazy ass’ :P

There was the time our party Sorcerer was stuck down a pit with a fierce looking foe. The rest of us had managed to get ourselves out one way or another. We offered to throw down a rope, but NO! our hero had a better idea... he would cast ‘teleport bash’ on himself - on a hit he could teleport out of the pit to safety. But of course he missed himself and much laughter ensued. While this may not be crazy as such we have quite simply never let him live it down. And never will.

Then there was the TPK incident. I wasn’t actually there that night as I couldn’t get the night off work. However I had asked @concentrated-sunshine to run my character for me. One particular player was only there once in a while as he worked away, but he happened to be there that night. So the party arrived at a town and at the entrance to the town there was a sign that basically said that the townsfolk allowed the ghosts of their ancestors to live among them, that those entering the town should not be alarmed by the presence of these ghosts as they lived among the people in peace and asked that this be respected. Except Diarmaid had no respect for the townsfolk, or indeed the other players, and proceeded to cast ‘turn undead’.... lets just say the townsfolk were not impressed. They slaughtered us. After this session the DM for decided he didn’t want to DM for a while, he was so pissed of that Diarmaid had walked in and destroyed his campaign. Shortly after this @concentrated-sunshine decided to DM his own campaign in order to keep the group functioning. Diarmaid was not invited.

The first campaign @concentrated-sunshine ran had lots of fun moments ranging from one of the characters trying to chat up a Death Knight in the local bar, me trying to gouge someone’s eyes out during a bar brawl (incident unrelated) which genuinely seemed to freak the other players out, us deciding to buy some squid from the fishmongers and pretend they were baby Illithid for... reasons.... and once when trying to distract some troll guards we decided the best way forward was to build some bridges - this would distract the trolls as we all know they like to dwell under bridges, thus allowing us to get by unscathed. Thankfully on further discussion we decided that idea was too stupid even for our group.

More recently our party Warden had to go to a private meeting with someone who she decided looked just like Jason Momoa. Now give @concentrated-sunshine an inkling of an idea and he will run with it as DM - henceforth this NPC became known as Jason Momoa... and Jess (playing the warden) went into a bit of a meltdown at this thought (it is a fact universally acknowledged that Jason Momoa is the hottest guy alive) and decided the best course of action was to flirt with the NPC. Unfortunately every time she rolled insight she rolled looooow and so while as far as she was concerned Momoa was well into her, in reality he probably just thought she was a bit of a nutter. The meeting ended with Jess basically on heat (along with Gizelda, her character) and she managed to garner exactly zero of the information she went to get as that plot went completely out the window at the mere thought of having carnal knowledge of Jason Momoa. Several weeks later and I still don’t think she’s sussed how badly she fucked that up. Still... it was funny watching her giggling like a schoolgirl, particularly with her boyfriend (another one of our players of ‘failed teleport bash’ fame) sat next to her :D

I dunno, those are the things that spring to mind immediately. We have a lot of fun and I probably don’t do the stories justice :)

[sea-salt-bastion-blog]

Shotgun #1: I'd like to Apologize for what the Alchemist did.

Shotgun DM #1 happened on Saturday night. We all rolled 12th level Characters for 5e. I played a Half-Elf Songsword Bard who successfully relies on a great personality. The others: A Human Cursed One (he refused to pick a subclass because he loves to make useless characters and get into hijinx), A Human Controller of Chaos Hexblade (Who loves Elementals. Loves. Loves... *Hand motions*), a Halfling Pathfinder Ranger who for whatever reason was Guy Fieri and a Dwarven Boneshaper Alchemist who made this whole shitshow go from a 9 to a 10.

So we start with the first DM. We start with the tavern troupe, it's tried and true. I'm performing. The Ranger is reviewing a Steak. The Cursed One is doing his best. Hexblade was chatting up the bartender with the Alchemist. We are picked out for our obvious look of experience by the bartender and he tells us we should seek work at the Castle. The Alchemist's owner sets this up with a King who needs to overthrow a whole city because of corruption and then kidnap the prince. We are promised half his salary. We promised a shiny new city. The first DM did a good job of providing us with direction and where to go in the end with whenever each of us took over. The timer goes off for the first time with us still talking to the King who is finishing up the exposition as the Hexblade is sensually caressed by an Ice Elemental who pops out of portal to come and get herself some Hexblade and disappear. It's the Hexblade's turn to DM. My Bard just finishes creating and memorizing a symbol for her spell of Teleportation Circle.

We travel there and find folks in front of an overturned cart. Because of mine and the Cursed One's Perception, we see that one of them has a knife at the ready. I fire off lightning bolt and blow people away and light the cart on fire as well as Mom the other two and have them come back and face me so they can explain what they did. This successfully gets the attention of more bandits who fall to the might of the spellcasters. We finally get there aaaaand the Bard acts like a Rogue and starts us off by gambling with some locals at the tavern while the Ranger is yanking food off people's plates and "reviewing them" and claiming they are "money". The Dwarf becomes the Bard and plays us some Dropkick Murphy's ala Dwarven Can-Can line. The Cursed One was hellbent on keeping my honor intact. The Hex Blade was drinking. I manage to cheat my way into a private conversation with a Half-Orc I beat at cards. He tells me the movers and the shakers and I charm my way to somewhere to lay low because the rest of party was blowing our cover fast. We get to a safehouse and the Hex Blade comes back as my Bard leaves so I may take over the reigns.

The Bard leaves with the Half-Orc to go find out more about this prominent guard. They are at the local thieves guild safehouse. The Guild Master Qana comes to greet them. They get acquainted and they devise a plan to raid this storehouse for weapons in case we decide to confront the King of this city the old fashioned way. Ranger has a brilliant idea. He and the Hexblade go and scout out the location. Ranger pretends he knows how to converse like a regular person to regular people. Oh, look, low rolls. The guards tell him to piss up a road. Ranger finally gets a good enough roll in to convince the guard at the entrance to accept some cooking made by the Ranger, little do the guards know they will shit their pants eating this dish. He prays for guidance from the flavor god. He receives a recipe for Glorious Beef Stew. The ranger and hexblade go shopping for poison and ingredients. They get on back and start cooking. Everyone who cares makes peace with the culinary sin being committed. My only regret is someone not saying "I command this particular drop of laxative by the powers of naughtiness to be really, really shitty!". The party spends the night fucking off by getting plastered at a Thieves Guild rager sponsored by Mead and Prostitution. There was fine entertainment at this party, the main event was a big name performer from another land. Suddenly my Bard appears to perform and Qana shits a brick because his ex-wife just stepped on-stage. At that point I had to give the reigns to the Ranger's owner as he gets sucked into a portal full of bubbling cooking oil, we hear "this is gonna be money...."

My Bard is back, I inform the party that Farenn (Big Guard Guy) invited me to a date that night and I would be attempting to seek an audience with the King so I could commit regicide. They tell me, they have poison stew ready for this warehouse they plan to raid. I'm game. Dwarf is ready to blow shit up. We arrive and the stew is carted to the entrance. People are served and then they have to consider new pants and organs. My Bard waits for the right moment for when in the panic, these guards are running around shitting. They finally get in a good line and I fire off lightning bolt and set the armory on fire. We panic and load up the cart as best possible, war horns sound in the distance, we move fast and the guards arrive. Alchemist tosses one of his magical bombs at the mob of them who happen to be near the armory... there's a massive explosion and the whole mob is just gone. Gone. Boom. Gone. I'm howling at this. The rest of this kind of gets out of hand as the DM just kind of lets the Hexblade run around murdering random people. The Alchemist has gotten livid and decides to go for a walk while drunk Qana sulks over my Bard. He gets stopped by three guards who give him shit. He kills them and blows up a crowd with another Arcane Bomb. *sighs*. This is now the start of the fun quote: "Hey, I think I saw a body in the woods". He goes around telling guards this to lead them away, murdering them and then lightning them ablaze. The timer goes off and the Cursed One spaces out.

My bard goes on her date and gets an audience with the guard with a good persuasion roll, trying to avoid having to sleep with anyone. We go to our audience. The Alchemist uh "finds (and makes)" two bodies in the woods for the lols. We get in, I perform for the King... a giant chicken on top of a golden egg (the prince)... I now want liquor, out of game and also in game. I succeed and beseech his royal highness so I may kiss his royal wing. The King agrees and extends his wing. I grab it sweetly and cast lightning bolt, obliterating the chicken and country frying it as the Ranger put it. I frantically begin drawing a Teleportation Circle to get back to the other King while the others fend off the royal guards. We push the egg onto the circle and everyone but the Cursed One is on the circle and we teleport out. The Alchemist for good measure sends a quick magical message to his dad saying "now". The DM has a massive arcane bomb drop on the city and annihilate the whole city. We see the mushroom cloud in the distance (war, war never changes)...

To wrap this up, long story short this could have gone horrible but in the end was incredibly fun and actually coherent. We found that it ended up being a good way for inexperienced DMs or folks who need work on coming up with stuff on the fly to get better. This surprised us and it actually ended up happening one more time. This has become a new tradition.

[solitaria-fantasma]

((Highlights from session #2.))

Humphry got charged with “Reckless Necromancy”, which is the equivalent of a misdemeanor. 

Mountain is the oldest in the party and therefore his ideas are the best.

“Don’t say ‘murder’ in front of the guards!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t mention that we’re the ones who stabbed him [the necromancer] to near-death…”

“Near death experiences are healthy. That’s how you become a Super Saiyan.”

Maxine Von Tikona is an elven wizard, and the mentor of Humphry.

Von Tikona paid her student’s bail before we could, so we had to tell her about the murdered nobles to have any hope of still getting Humphry to help us.

She was...not impressed...with our plan to use her student just to talk to corpses.

Our Lawful Good Cleric, Claus (played by our DM’s mom tonight) convinced Von Tikona that we were private investigators hired by the mother of the dead noble girl to investigate the disappearance and death of her husband, Donald Rose, and her daughter, Clarissa Rose.

Humphry is still hella intimidated by Mountain and did not call us out on the lie.

“Please don’t make me carry dead bodies!”

“That’s...that’s not how you preserve the dead-”

We asked for help speaking with one of the previous bandit corpses, and also preserving the bodies so that we could try and escort Clarissa, Donald, and the two guards’ bodies back to the Rose home.

Von Tikona absolutely despises Matthias the Rogue because he kept rolling abysmally while trying to persuade her to leave in the morning rather than immediately (he failed, but Claus didn’t).

Maxine Von Tikona is a Lvl. 13 wizard with maaaaad Maleficent vibes.

We went back to the tavern and asked around about the Rose family and Lord Bryant Hassan .

The tavern lady had heard his name, but only knew that he lived in the next kingdom over (Everton), on the eastern coast.

She also knew that the Roses were a trading family from Fwee, two weeks west on the border of the elven territory - it exports a lot of elven goods, and is a good place to find specialty or magic items.

“It could be genius, or it could be a cup full of regret.” [discussing the mixing of grape juice and wine]

*sounds of the DM’s cat Gabrielle demanding attention in the background of the audio call*

The tavern lady also told us that there had been a higher number of bandit incidents in the area than usual, and there were a lot of bounties available to collect, if we were interested.

“I don’t know your life but damn, I didn’t know you were a bandit!”

Bounties of Note:

Helmen La’Pierre - Blackmail & kidnapping - 6gp

Thames Allan - Leader of a bandit clan known for highway robbery - 14gp

“The Shadow” - Wanted in connection to several counts of conspiracy, muder, arson, and area organized crime - 80gp

“Alter” - ?? - 7gp

We took the bounties for Thames Allan and  “The Shadow”, and noticed that the sketch of an “Alter” on the bounty board matched one of the bandit corpses we’d found in the chest in the ruin.

The next morning, I tipped the tavern lady one gold piece as we ran out the door to meet up with Maxine Von Tikona and Humphry at the ruin.

We found Von Tikona lecturing Humphry for sloppy handwriting and spellwork when we got there.

Von Tikona cast ‘speak with the dead’ on the bandit corpse, who freaked OUT when he saw Humphry, so he [Humphry] hid behind Udaji and Mountain.

The bandit was not very inclined to answer our questions, until I managed to roll a 20 on persuasion and convince him that he’d already taken his secrets to his grave, so he might as well tell us now.

The bandit corpse admitted that his boss (Billson “The Boss”) led the Crescent gang, and was ‘hard to find’, if we knew what he meant.

Most of us didn’t, but Mountain remembered that there were three pieces to the map leading to the bandits’ main hideout, and asked if the bandit corpse knew where the remaining map pieces were (he did (sort of) and said they were probably held by other gang leaders/’minibosses’).

The bandit corpse said “The Boss” had a lot of connections to many types of crime…maybe “The Boss” is also “The Shadow”???

The guard’s corpse confirmed that the Rose family is a powerful merchant family from Fwee, and was made up by the father, Donald, the mother (no definitive name yet), and the daughter, Clarissa.

Lord Bryant Hassan apparently proposed to marry Clarissa quite out of the blue.

They were well known and respected in the town, and were relatively affluent, and had been traveling with an expensive dowry when they were attacked.

The guard’s corpse didn’t know much about Lord Bryant Hassan, just that he was a Lord from another kingdom.

He was supposedly respectable, with a fair amount of land in a decent kingdom, and the Rose parents thought this would be a wonderful match to get their daughter a title.

The marriage would have opened up trade between Fwee and Kenkilly, where Lord Hassan ruled.

“I seem to no longer be in possession of my possessions.”

We asked Maxine Von Trikona to help us better preserve the bodies of Donald, Clarissa, and the guards, so they could be returned to Fwee to be buried.

We have one month to get the bodies of Donald and Clarissa back to Fwee before they continue to decompose.

Mountain and Matthias noticed a small crescent tattoo on one of the bandits, and that it matched carvings within the ruin. The rest of us did not notice this, and must now pretend we have no idea.

Von Trikona teaches in a tower three days to the south of our starting town, and tells us that we should come to her tower once our business was done, and she would teleport us and the bodies to Fwee for us.

...in exchange for running some errands for her, of course (while she holds onto the bodies).

We dragged the two bandit and two guard corpses back to town to let the authorities deal with them.

The party all wanted to buy horses for the journey, but all the horses took one look at my 300+lbs Dragonborn self and ran away.

Suggested mounts for Dragonborn: Moose, Dinosaur, Celestial in the shape of an animal, etc.

I’m walking.

Thankfully, Maxine Von Trikona still teleported the party to Fwee with the Rose family corpses.