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!
