Sunday, December 6, 2015

Dungeons and Dragons 15



So.  Two weeks ago we were in the empty gnome town after laying waste to the Orcs and snake people who had taken over.  Unfortunately, since we had killed them all, there wasn’t any leads on what to do next.  So we stuck around, and after some time, a Green Dragon showed up. 

As stupid headstrong adventurers itching for a TPK, the party followed Dragon Man’s lead and waltzed up to this Green Dragon, and started talking trash about the all his useless minions that they just killed and how they, the party, would obviously make better servants.  The Green Dragon, amazingly, agreed with this, and pressed the party into service for him, because, sure, why not.  Ulfgar views this as a chance to serve as double agents, which will give them a much better chance of stopping whatever this Green Dragon is up to (who is named Krollnish the Vile, by the way).  Nory is probably chafing at pretending to serve anyone other than Cthulu.  Who knows what Dragon Man is thinking (I’d rather serve a Black Dragon?).  Who cares what the Bard is thinking.  Hannah probably just thinks the dragon is cute. 

So, The Green Dragon told them to head to the city of (I think) Illmatter, which is 100 miles north along the main river.  There is a sacred temple there guarded by another good dragon, just like the copper one who guarded the gnome village (who had been named Reveran Rayanne, since I never mentioned that before).  Krollnish wanted us to travel there and work to undermine this good dragon, and set the grounds for his destruction.  Through the destruction of good dragons, Krollnish aims to lay the grounds for the return of his evil snake god.  That’s cool with us, we said, and the dragon flew off.

After dallying a lot more than necessary, we set off for the refugee city on the riverside.  On the way, we came back upon Randy’s hut, and discovered that Randy was, indeed, working the snakepeople and orcs, probably as a reanimated corpse or something.  They pretended (vainly) to fight each other, but we dismissed this by pointing out we worked for Krollnish too, now.  But they didn’t believe us.  We got indignant, naturally, and Ulfgar killed them all with a fireball. 

This is that last time Ulfgar is going to do anything useful for a while, so let me take a moment to savor it.  Oh yeah.  Ulfgar killed all the baddies with one spell.  Nobody else got to kill anybody.  Power gamer heaven.  Hmm-mmm. 

The party continued on to River City, not expecting trouble, and met up with the fussy gnome we had dealt with earlier and gave him his stuff and sold him some other stuff, and we were now properly loaded.  Huzzah!  Then we went to the inn and dealt with tricking the dim bartender to giving us other people’s rooms while using fake aliases.

For Ulfgar, this turned out to be a bad idea, as the bartender knew that someone was looking for him.

Heading into the room that had not actually been reserved for him, Ulfgar found a note on the table.  He went over and opened it, because who’s ever been afraid of a note? 

‘The Greenwoods send their regards,’ it read. 

And then, in true Red Wedding style, Ulfgar looked down at the two blades sticking through his chest. 

That was the last thing he remembered before awaking.  He was amazed to find that he was, indeed, still alive.  He was even more amazed to discover that he still had all his possessions.  Well, except one thing.  He was missing his tongue.  For Ulfgar, that was probably the most amazing thing of all. 

There was another noted left upon the table.  It pointed out, in so many words, that the whole tongue thing was to stop him from making any more deals. 

(This meant a couple of things, which Ulfgar didn’t exactly process at the time on account for being too upset about his tongue missing.  First, it meant that the deal with the Orebreakers and the Sultan of Ispep had gone through.  There was no way for the Greenwoods to learn about the deal unless it had been publicly announced and their own arrangements with Ispep terminated.  This of course, meant that the Orebreakers had gone through with a deal with unscrupulous dwarves and drow.  Drow.  Which implied, perhaps, either the Orebreaker clan was in even more dire straits than Ulfgar himself had known, and had gotten desperate, that they in fact lacked the scruples that they had professed to him in his youth, or both.  He hopes that there is some facts unknown to him that will absolve him of these worries—Maybe these Drow aren’t actually all that bad!—but he doubts it.  As the later weeks spent upon the ship pass, these worries shall grow ever more prominent in his mind.  Also, he is completely confused by why the Greenwoods deigned to leave him alive, when they could have simply had him killed.  No one knew who he was around there.  Were they afraid that the Orebreakers might learn of a murder, and respond more negatively?  Maybe they wanted to send a message to the Orebreakers?  Surely, the Orebreakers would not treat this defilement as acceptable, would they?  Perhaps, it was bartered for by the Orebreakers?  Did his people condone his defilement?  Could, perhaps, it not have been the Greenwoods themselves who sent the assassin?  After all, who signs off on their assassination attempt?  Could it have been his own people, trying to start a war with the Greenwoods by creating probable cause?  Who could Ulfgar trust, now?)

When Ulfgar was able to meet up with the party and explain what had happened to him (mostly through pointing, some grunting), the party asked around and learned that the quickest way to regenerate Ulfgar’s tongue was to travel to Illmatter and entreat the very metallic dragon that they had been tasked with to destroy!  Serendipity! 

The party made preparations and headed out, traveling upriver in a longship piloted by the usual pair of tricksy figures.  Along the way, they ran afoul of several glowing orbs of light.  Now, as Ulfgar was missing a tongue, the spells he could use consisted of: True Strike, Counterspell.  That’s it.  Therefore, Ulfgar was well on useless, but he did manage to stab of the glowy things and cast a counterspell to stop it from turning somewhat invisible.  But, The Bard had the Lantern of Revealing at this point, which made all of them easy to hit, and the party made short work of them. 

As the party was thus engaged in fighting river spirits, the boat got trapped upon a sandbank, and the boat was soon set upon by an ogre.  But, Dragon Man and Hannah rushed into melee against the thing, and Hannah preceded to unleash the full power and her fully armed and operational Level 6 abilities.  And soon, the Ogre was no more. 

The party kicked ass, without really even needing Ulfgar.  Ulfgar felt well on useless.  Aww.

The party got the boat off the Sandbar, and continued on their way. 

At that point, the session ended.  But, I want to take a moment to say that this may well have been the last session that we will get to play with John for some time, which likely means that Nory will soon be leaving us as well, as John is moving away, having landed his dream job.  These write-ups didn’t really manage to convey it, but John was easily the funniest  roleplayer in the sessions, really committing to playing Nory as a batshit insane little Cthulu acolyte that he was, and mining that concept for all the humor it was worth, power gaming needs be damned.  He will be missed.

Congratulations on your new job, John.  This summer and fall have been the most we’ve ever got to play Dungeons and Dragons together, and I have really enjoyed it, and will treasure the experience.  I hope this isn’t that last we see of Nory, and I hope we get to play DnD again together sometime.  May Fharlanghn smile upon your travels (I believe you are in transit as I write this!), and may you always have a friend in Cthulu. 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Dungeons and Dragons Number 14



We played DnD last week!  In advance of today’s game, here is a recap!

So, two weeks earlier we were preparing to enter a fortress entrance that was carved into the side of a hill on the outskirts of the Gnome village of Barrelhelm.  Rereading the letter written concerning dark magics about to go down in the fortress, we decided we better not waste any time farting around, so we needed to head into the fortress ASAP.  It seemed that the Orcs (and the snake people they were hanging out with) were planning to take the corpse of the copper dragon that had once guarded the village and use it to conjure some dark forces.  We were panicking about having to fight an evil lich copper dragon. 

Seeing as how the villains were all Lizard-like and Orcish, the party fake-tied up the Human Bard (who wasn’t here yet), Ulfgar the Dwarf, and Nory the Gnome, and Dragon Man the Dragonborn and Hannah the Half-Orc marched them towards the entrance, which was guarded by a pair of Orcs.  The Orcs demanded a password, so the party attacked, with Ulfgar starting things out with a magic missile, which killed one of the gaurds right off, but not before he managed to knock on the portcullis entrance. 

Finishing off the other Orc, Hannah and Dragon Man lifted up the Portcullis, and the rest of the party attacked the band of four Orcs and a magic using serpent person on the other side. 

Pretty soon, they were all dead, even though Hannah briefly got mind-controlled.  Inside they found a room with three doorways, one in each of the facing walls, and since the Bard wasn’t really in a position to tell the party to always turn left, Ulfgar suggested just taking the door straight ahead and charging deeper into the mountain. 

On the other side of the door was a track and a cart, just like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, (except the cart was on just one rail due to fancy gnome engineering).  The party really couldn’t get the cart back on, so they headed down the tunnel, until the track split in two.  This time, they took the left path, and soon came upon another band of four Orcs and a serpent-lady. 

The party kicked ass as Eric finally showed up to get his bard in on the action (having been briefly waylaid by a beer explosion).  The party continued on, and met and kicked ass on another band of Orcs and serpent people (which we didn’t bother roll playing because time).  By the end of this endeavor, the Dwarf was just standing on the sidelines, on account of wanting to save some spells for later.  Eventually, the tunnel looped back around to the right entrance, and the party came back out to the initial room they had entered the fortress from. 

This time, the party took the room on the left.  However, Dragon Man had decided the party needed to be careful to search for traps, and lo, it turned out that this doorknob was covered in poison!  But, Dragon Man solved the issue by tearing some cloth off of one of the dead Orcs lying around, and opened the door using that, and the party continued on. 

There was another cart and tunnel, and this one opened into a series of rooms.  The party walked down a hallway, past a room of mining supplies, and came to a door that had some kind of rune of transformation on it.  The Bard used Mage Hand to activate it, and the door started turning to stone!  But, the Bard thought fast, and cast Dispel Magic on the door, halting the progress of stonification, and the Party was able to open the door with ease.

Inside was a large room with two doors upon and far wall and one upon the right.  Ulfgar walked over to the one on the left of the far wall, but it was locked.  So, Dragon Man kicked the door in.

Inside, three of the scantily clad snake people were trying to open a stone chest. 

Ulfgar didn’t feel like wasting time on things like initiative or anything, or waiting for a bunch of magic users to cast mind-control spells on them, so he just cast fireball on the room. 

Well, that fireball not only hurt the serpent-people, but also caused the explosive booby trap in the stone chest to explode, and that just straight up killed them.  The party then found about 500 gold worth of gems in the remains of the chest. 

Dragon Man then tried opening the next door over, and found a kitchen covered in gunk.  When Dragon Man went into the kitchen to investigate, the gunk started attacking him, so he ran out, and the party closed the door and vowed to deal with that later. 

The next door, Ulfgar opened because why not, we all have to go some time. 

Through the sliver of the opening door, he saw a Beholder.

He quickly closed the door and passed this information on to everyone else.  Beholders were enormous floating eyes with tentacles.  They fire disintegration rays at you.  If the disintegration rays drop you to zero hit points, you automatically die.  They are scary evil bad things and you do not mess with them lightly, especially since Eric had just gotten his other character killed by one in a different campaign. 

The party debated turning around and fleeing, since they might not really be up for fighting a beholder just about now, (or ever) but then someone pointed out that Beholders usually guard things of importance, so whatever lied beyond this beholder must be critical to the quest. 

So they came up with a plan.  The Bard would throw open the door, then Ulfgar would cast Fireball on the Beholder, and then the Bard would jump in and cast Thundarwave on it, knocking it into a corner.  Then the party would run in and fight it as best they could. 

So the Bard threw open the door. 

And saw in the room not, one, but five Beholders. 

For a brief moment, the party all thought they were dead.   And then Ulfgar sent in the Fireball, and the three Beholders that were within its radius all exploded, causing a rain of shards that cut up the Bard as he stood in the doorway.

The party then deduced that these were not actually Beholders, but just some kind spore that only looked like Beholders, but weren’t actually that dangerous.  Dragon Man went into the room and guided the spores into a corner, then the party cast spells that blew them up outside of the range of the exploding damage. 

There were two doors on the far wall of this room.  The door on the left opened onto something that looked like a temple, but all the shrines were defaced with the gnome figures carved there being given mutilated snake heads.  The room on the right contained three tubs full of water and a brazier, and seemed to be some kind of bathing room.  There was a door on the wall to the right.  This door opened onto a cave filled with water that stretched out into darkness vast enough that the characters (all possessing darkvision) could not see the far end of, but could see an island on the edge of the gloom and in the middle of the lake.  A waterfall was falling to the left, and on the right side of the island, a mutated gnome dressed in rags was hovering near the edge of the water. 

Since Nory seems to hate all other gnomes he encounters or something, he hurled an Eldritch Blast at the gnome, and the gnome immediately jumped into the water and disappeared.  The party then sent Hannah to fly across to the Island and spot around.  She found some fish bones on the island, but little else.  Then Dragon Man swam over to the island, and just was he got over there, a whirlpool appeared in the water.  Dragon Man jumped out of the water and onto the island, just as a Water Elemental appeared. 

The Bard jumped into the water to swim across and do battle, but ended up almost drowning instead.  Dragon Man and Hannah attacked the Water Elemental as Nory and Ulfgar hurled spells at it, and by the time the Bard managed to stop drowning, it was defeated. 

The party then all traveled over to the island and began looking around, and one of the party (I think Dragon Man, but it might have been Hannah) found a hole underneath the island, into a cave.  The party swam in and found the weird Gollum-looking gnome underneath there, who was trying to hide a ring on his finger.  Dragon Man found this all suspicious or is chaotic evil or something, so he killed the Gollum gnome, and Ulfgar took the ring and put it on, because why not, and immediately started hearing the voice of the crazy hermit gnome in his head, which Ulfgar just went with because why not be crazy now?  Everyone else in his party was.   

After Ulfgar determined the waterfall didn’t lead further into the cave complex, the party left the underground lake and retraced their steps back to the entrance way, and finally took the door on the right. 

And the door on the right, after passing through a tunnel with a cart, took them into a wide opening, where a trio of serpent people were using giant braziers full of green fire to cast some long involved spell on the murdered corpse of the Patron Copper Dragon of Barrelhelm.  His gutted body was writhing as if filled with snakes.

The party rushed in and began attacking the serpent priests.  Ulfgar, Nory  and the Bard managed to kill the middle one pretty quickly with a Scorching Ray, an Eldirtch Blast  and a Thunderwave, which unfortunately failed to knock over a brazier, while Hannah and Dragon Man ran towards the far right one, while the Bard ran for the far left one. 

With a three pronged attack from The Bard, Nory, and Ulfgar’s last offensive spell (a first level Magic Missile), The one on the left fell first. Shortly thereafter the one on the right passed out after blows from Hannah and Dragon Man, but not before finishing off a truncated version of the spell they were casting.  At this a giant creature with a snake-like body, but with arms, emerged from the corpse. Hannah and Dragon Man were terrified, and dropped their weapons and ran for the exit.  The Bard tried to fight the Creature, but eventually just stood there taking damage and trying to heal himself to stay up, while Nory and Ulfgar, who had completely used up all his non-cantrips, ineffectually hurled spells at the creature that didn’t hit it. Eventually Ulfgar, realizing the Bard was in rough shape, starting walking towards it while casting and hurling insults at the creature, insulting his snake god and so on.  This only proved consequential after The Bard dropped, at which point that Snake Creature rushed onto Ulfgar and started wailing on him. 

It was at this point, after several rounds when the party had seemed completely undone, that things bounced back.  The Bard jumped right up from his dropping (for Eric rolled a 20 on his death save and returned to one hit point).  Meanwhile, as the three Magic users and spent time missing with spells and serving as meat shields, the two fighters managed to overcome the fear instilled in them and ran back into the cavern and unleashed attacks on the Snake Creature.  And after about two rounds, it died!  The Creature had only a third of its hit points, due to the spell having been interrupted!

The creatures in the Gnome Keep were now all defeated.  The party searched the room of the Copper Dragon.  Dragon Man tore out the copper dragons’s teeth because, hey, dragon teeth.  Ulfgar noticed that the last of the serpent priests was actually still alive, and cut off his head.  Meanwhile, Hannah flew up into the air and discovered a ledge filled with treasure!  Yay!

Nothing happened for the rest of the day!  The party healed and regained spells and got a lot of loot, plus some magical items that weren’t that great!

And the party Leveled!  Yay! 

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Dungeons and Dragons Part the 13th



Today we played DnD!  I decided I was tired of writing this a week later when I have forgotten half of what happened and what I remember may or may not be accurate, so I started writing it right away!  Boyle was tired and we didn’t get much done!  But that was more the undertaking of the campaign than anything else, as most of this session was spent in combat.  It’s still my longest entry in months.  Writing the day of helps you remember details and stuff.  

So, after the party finished up with the town of druids, the druids gave the party a guide who took them through the woods to Barrelhelm, and thus they reached the village of Barrelhelm without anything happening along the way.  The party said goodbye to their guide, who turned and hightailed it back to Druid Village, and the party began investigating the area. 

Between them and Barrelhelm was a large river flowing east out of the western mountains, at a span of about five hundred feet.  There was a pair of towers on either side of it, which rose to a height of 100 feet, with a bridge spanning the river at the top level.  The towers were each wide open at their base, with an entrance 40 feet high.  A turnstile upon the top level lowered through the empty tower a platform that carts could be raised up upon to the top level to then travel over the river.  There was also a ring of stairs along the interior of the tower that traveled up to a stone door that one could enter to reach the top level. 

The party spent two days on reconnaissance, and saw there were was a cluster of Orcs on the North Tower, as well as some kind of winged beast.  This spying was being done by Hannah flying about in Superdragon’s cloak with invisibility cast on her by the Bard, so she wasn’t entirely certain what the winged creature was.  On the Southern Tower (that would be the one on the opposite side of the river) there seemed to be a pair of giant creatures, possibly ogres.  In the village beyond, all the gnome huts appeared empty.  Beyond them, built into the western mountains, was a fortress.  And the second day, Hannah saw an Orc riding a giant wolf come up from the south and bring a message to the fortress. 

The party decided that attempting a frontal attack on the first tower might be dangerous, since it might call out reinforcements from the fortress, so the party opted to bypass it by having Hannah carry each member of the party over the river with her flying cape.  They waited until dark to begin the crossing, and Hannah began with Dragon Man.  But!  As they reached the halfway point of the river, they saw flying straight towards them, from the opposite shore, the winged creature that was nesting on the North Tower. 

It was a Manticore. 

Hannah and Dragon Man turned about to fly back to the other side, as carrying a Dragonborn is not that ideal way to fight a Manticore. But the Manticore was flying faster than them. 

The night was moonless and cloudy. The rest of the party had no idea what was happening.  (Also, we were all failing our spot-checks.  Hard.)

 The Manticore attacked Hannah and Dragon Man, and after a couple rounds Hannah was forced to drop Dragon Man into the river, where he was swiftly carried away by the current.  Flying on towards shore, under constant attack from the Manticore, she called out to the party members on the shore.  Eventually, the Bard saw what was following her, and pointed out the flying creature in the darkness to his companions.  Nory and Ulfgar unleashed spells at it, and after getting hit, the Manticore turned tail and ran. 

The Bard and Ulfgar ran off down the river to try to catch up to where Dragon Man was getting carried by the current.  Hannah followed them, but in the air.  Nory stayed behind to continue hurling spells at the Manticore until it was out of range, as Nory’s spells have an extra long range.  Also, Nory doesn’t really care about people, what with Cthulu ending the world soon and all.

Dragon Man in his armor had been struggling to stay above water this entire time, and was just about to go under when Hannah was able to throw a rope down to him.  With the rope as a guide slash Hannah pulling him, he was able to swim easily to shore. 

The party regrouped on the riverbank.  Ulfgar pointed out Manticore’s are capable of speech, so at this point any element of surprise was pretty much boned, so they just took off for the North tower to, as Dragon Man put it, go HAM.

When they came up to the tower, four Orcs stood on the parapet throwing javelins at the party.  They didn’t have much success against the Melee fighters, but neither could the melee fighters do any damage to them, so the Bard, Hannah, and Dragon Man ran into the entrance of the Tower, which led the Orcs hurling javelins at Ulfgar instead.  Meanwhile, Nory stayed well back and, with his super long-range Eldritch Blast, succeeded in killing one of the Orcs up above. 

The Manticore had by this time ridden back into view, this time with a blue-skinned Orc riding on his back.  The Manticore flew in low and hurled spines at the Melee fighters in the entrance of the North Tower.  So, Ulfgar encased the Manticore and his Orc-rider in a Fireball. 

Hannah and Dragon Man took this as a good sign to not be in the entranceway and started running up the stairs to the tower top, but the Bard stayed behind.  Meanwhile, Nory killed his second Orc javelin-thrower.

The remaining two Orc soldiers decided that maybe standing up high while a gnome warlock picks you off from out of javelin range wasn’t the best idea, so they backed away from the parapet. But, the Blue Orc hadn’t appreciated that Fireball none too much, so he dive-bombed the Manticore straight at Ulfgar, and hit the dwarf hard while rolling  past him. 

Ulfgar was stuck between a blue-skinned Orc badass and a giant Manticore.  So, he cast Fireball on the Manticore. 

And the Manticore died.  Ulfgar moved straight back from the Blorc (as John called him), and called out the the Blorc that he was surrounded by spellcasters now, so he should probably surrender. 

The Bard noticed that Ulfgar was pretty messed up at this point, so he ran out and cast healing on him while Nory hurled more spells at the Blorc.  The Blorc, noticing Nory the Gnome Warlock, exclaimed that he hated Gnomes, and ran off to mess Nory up.  And did, pretty much straight away.  Nory was able to get off another attack, as was Ulfgar, but on the next attack the Blorc took Nory down hard like it wasn’t no thing. 

Thankfully, Ulfgar was able to kill the Blorc right after that with a Scorching Ray, and then the Bard was able to run over to heal Nory and loot the Blorc’s corpse.  (He found a pair of waterskins not full of water.  One was all foul-smelling alcohol, the other seemed to contain about seven doses of healing potion.  That’s 350 gold worth of healing potions!  Sweet!)

The Bard, Nory, and Ulfgar than ran into the tower and up the stairs, to find Hannah and Dragon Man ineffectually trying to open the stone trap door, as the remaining Orc pair laughed at them through the stone.  Try as they might, the door wouldn’t budge. 

The party decided on a plan.  Hannah and Dragon Man would travel down to the base, and then Hannah would fly up the side of the tower while Dragon Man, with Spider Climb cast upon him by Ulfgar, would walk up the tower’s side.  They would jump over the side and kill the Orcs, then open the trap door and let the rest of the party in. 

But when they stormed the side, the Orcs were running down the bridge!  And far too far way to catch!

Thinking quickly, they opened up the trap door and ushered in the others, and pointed out the two fleeing orcs to Nory the Boss of Long-ranged Spells.  Nory strutted down the bridge while casting Eldritch Blast until the two Orcs were dead. 

The party took a short rest to recoup, then continued on across the bridge over the river.  As they got closer to the South Tower, they heard what they quickly determined was indeed a pair of Ogres, who were arguing over who had to cook the dead gnome they were waving around.  So, Nory cast thoughts into their heads suggesting they kill each other, and the Ogres, who are very dumb and can’t really distinguish between their own thoughts and ideas beings whispered in their heads, started fighting each other. 

The fight was pretty evenly matched, but finally one of the Ogres succeeded in killing the other.  He barely had time to enjoy his bloodied victory when Dragon Man walked into the tower and used his breath weapon on him.  And the Ogre was so worn out that (even though he made his saving throw) he died. 

So the party took out a pair of Ogres without taking any damage. 

As the Towers were ancient Dwarven constructions of the finest engineering, the party opted to spend the night there, closing up the turnstiles and weighting the trap doors with Ogres corpses, and took a long rest.

The next day, they ventured into the village, and found no signs of life.  They made their way to the place that the gnome back in the river village said his treasure was hidden, and it was there!  And they dumped it all into Nory’s bag of holding. 

While they were moving about the village, finding little sign of supplies, an Orc riding a giant wolf left the fortress, heading towards the village.  The party set an ambush, and killed him and his wolf.  They found he was carrying a letter, sent to some strange leader figure.  It stated that all the gnomes had finally been killed (so much for rescuing anybody), and that they would soon revive the corpse of the Copper Dragon who had guarded village.

Were the Orcs creating a Zombie Dragon?!

Dungeons and Dragons Cliffhanger!

(Really that’s as far as we got.  Boyle was really tired.  He had like three hours sleep total all weekend.)