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.)

Dungeons and Dragons Part 12

We played DnD last week and this is what happened, to the best of my memory.

So, when last we left off, the Party was sleeping outside of the inn Ulfgar burned down.  In the morning, they continued on down the road, heading towards Gnome village of Barrelhelm.  On the way, they encountered a marching band of Orcs, but made short work of them, especially since most of them were clustered closely enough together that Ulfgar was able to take most of them out with one Fireball.  For once, Ulfgar managed to use a fireball without causing property damage or the loss of innocent life!  Hurrah!

Eventually they came to an outpost alongside the road that was being attacked by orcs, though it seemed to be held off by a valiant warrior dude of some sort.  They gave aid to this lone guardian, and defeating this band of orcs, the guy there, who turned out to be a human, gave them directions for a fork coming up in the road.  To reach Barrelhelm, they needed to take the right.

They continued on, and took the right in the road when they came to it.  Traveling down the road they eventually came to a place where the road was blocked off by several tree trunks.  It not being possible to navigate their cart around it, the strong members of the party started working at hacking away at the trunks. 

But while they were doing this, the party was soon beset by a pack of sprites, firing poisoned arrows at them, and a tall faerie woman, who excoriated the party for hacking at the trees (which really doesn’t make any sense when you think about it, because the trees were already dead). Fortunately, none of the party fell victim to the effects of the sprites arrow poison, and the sorceress fey failed to take control of Nory’s mind.  Then Nory killed her, like, right away.  Like it wasn’t nothing.  No one puts voices in Nory’s head except Cthulu!

The party succeeded in hacking through the rest of the trees, and continued on their way.  They soon came to a village, but it was a mostly human village, with little sign of Gnomes.  The party soon learned that this village had set up the road blocks, and the party kind of let slip that they had maybe sort of destroyed them.  They also quickly learned that they had gone the wrong way at the fork, that the gnome village would be reached by going the other way, and that the fellow they met at the outpost fighting orcs fit the description of someone with family in the village who had actually been beheaded by Orcs.  Curious!

Trying to be helpful and feeling a little bad about destroying the village’s roadblock, the party met with the village elders, who appeared to be kind of druidy types.  The Elders let them know that, to defend themselves from the bands of orcs roving from Barrelhelm, they had entreated the local spirits of the forest, who seemed to be the same poison-arrow-firing jerks they met on the road, and who gave the Elders a spell to cast to gain protection.  The Elders cast the spell, and one of their lot, a man named Swiller, turned into a bear covered in runes, then slashed and killed one of the acolytes of the village religion, and ran off into the woods.  The council asked the party to go off and bring him back.  The Elders weren’t angry with him or nothing, they just wanted him back.  All was forgiven.  No one deals well with being turned into a bear.  

The party set off for the nearby woods, accompanied by the second and last remaining acolyte, who guided them through the woods.  Eventually they came to a cave, from which they heard moaning.  The party ventured into the cave, leaving the acolyte outside so he would be safe.  Certain members journeyed ahead of others, and the stragglers looked behind them just in time to see a bipedal bear carrying an axe cut the acolyte in two.  Because the party can never safely protect innocents anymore, can they?

Most of the party rushed forward to do battle with the bear, who was not covered in runes, while the Bard and Ulfgar continued through the cave, coming to a room where they saw a man turning into a bear covered in runes, who then attacked them. 

Ulfgar moved back to hurl minor spells at the bear, not wanting to kill him with his magic.  The bear then knocked out the Bard in short order.  Meanwhile, the rest of the party managed to kill the first bear.  Then, joining with Ulfgar, they managed to subdue the rune covered bear, who then turned back into Swiller.  The other bear, after some time, turned back into a man, and the party deduced that he must be the first slain acolyte. 

The  party tied the knocked-out Swiller up and returned to the village.  There, they informed them that the spell granted by the spirits of the forest had turned Swiller into a werebear, so, they were going to have to deal with that, and maybe not trust the spirits of the forest anymore, on account of them being two-faced dicks. 

Dungeons and Dragons Part 11

When we last left our heroes, they had bedded down for the night, planning to travel through the wilderness to a gnome village a week’s journey distant, to confront a band of orcs who had taken over the town, and had killed the copper dragon who had served as the town’s protector.  However, the next morning the party realized that they had no easy transport to the town, and would have to procure some.  Luckily there was a gnome who was fleeing the city who had a wagon filled with iron ore and uncut gems.  He sold these items to the party, and also made a deal with them to recover the treasure he had hidden within the city.  He told them where it was hidden, and the party promised to bring it to him when they returned, because the party is trust-worthy. 

So the party bought supplies, and Nory gave some Cthulu dolls to some refugee gnome children, and then the party set off.  They hid most of the party members inside the wagon, so that people wouldn’t know their true numbers.

The party came, eventually, upon a wagon, traveling from the gnome city.  They hailed them politely, but something seemed fishy, so Ulfgar used a message spell to communicate with the gnome driver to alert them of any danger.  The driver whispered back ‘help us.’

At this Ulfgar came up with a plan.  Hannah, having aided in the defeat of Superdragon, had a cape that allowed her to fly.  The bard would cast a spell of invisibility on her, and she would fly over to the other wagon, check out the situation, and then report back to the party.  Everyone agreed to the plan, except Nory, who shot off a spell at the other wagon’s horse, killing it. 

Then a sword emerged from the driver’s chest.

Deciding that any innocents must surely be dead now, Ulfgar cast fireball on the wagon, and three orcs jumped out of the ensuing fiery blaze.  The party rushed into battle and made short work of them, only to discover that the wagon had actually been full of gnome children.  Like over a dozen gnome children.  Over a dozen charred dead gnome children.

Ulfgar punched Nory and screamed at him for ruining the plan, and how he had assumed that there was no way for there to be people still alive in there, because of course there had to be, but pretty soon the enormity of what had just happened set in and then, Ulfgar just kind of shut down. 

The party continued on, and eventually camped down for the night off the road.  Maybe they got attacked, maybe they didn’t.  I don’t remember.  However, when they tried to get the cart back on the road the next morning, the axle broke under the weight of the iron ore in it, so they ditched all that stuff, Ulfgar used Mend to repair the cart, and they went on their way. 

Eventually, they came to an inn along the road, with was empty, but the party wanted someplace warm and dry to rest, so they went inside.  The inn was empty, and the innkeep was acting strangely, and then, the drinks that two of the party drank turned out to be poisoned!  The party overcame it, but when they questioned the innkeep they realized he was bewitched, and figured out a way to lift it.  The innkeep remembered nothing of what had happened to him, but when he came to he worried about his family, and ran into the back area to check for them.  The party followed after him, just in time to see him slaughtered by orcs standing over the bodies of his dead family. 

Well, the party killed the orcs, but, due to another fireball Ulfgar cast, and complications in dealing with the blaze, due in part to Ulfgar’s bewitchment by an orc sorceress, convincing him that he had to save the dead children, the fire got out of control and burned down the entire inn, and the party had to rush out, narrowly escaping being crushed in the collapsing inferno.

They ended up spending the night in the cart again. 

That happened two weeks ago.  Tomorrow, the adventure continues!  Maybe this time they won’t fail endangered innocents!

Dungeons and Dragons Part 10

So, we are playing DnD tomorrow but I never wrote up our last session!  This is because I am lazy.  However, I doubt I will remember what happened last time unless I start writing it up so I better try my best.

So, after the party killed Makana, they went their separate ways a bit.  Nory got some progress made on his evil toys of Madness and Darkness.  Hannah and Dragon Man were attacked by Superdragon, who was intent on kicking Dragon Man’s ass for still being in the city.  Hannah, after getting a few licks in, decided to desert Dragon Man to his fate at the hand of Superdragon.  But, just as she saw Dragon Man succumbing to defeat, she rushed back in to attack once more, and knocked Superdragon unconscious!  This allowed the freshly revived Dragon Man to cut off Superdragon’s head, so the pair could run away from the townsfolk recoiling in horror at the gruesome execution of one of their heroes. 

When the pair returned to the hotel, it turned out that one of the other adventurers had learned of a frontier city beset by evil forces to the North, and Dragon Man quickly recommended that the party travel to their aid. 

The party left the city, crossed the lake uneventfully, retrieved their animals, realized they needed to travel upriver, and thus would need to use a river transport, sold their animals, and then realized they really should tell the Sultan of Ispep they were leaving.  So some of the party returned to Ispep to talk to the Sultan, and some went about securing them passage north. 

The party in the city managed to gain a short order audience with the Sultan and his heretofore mysterious backers, who turned out to be evil Drow and evil dwarves who are willing to partner with evil Drow.  The party members hightailed it out of there as politely as they could, promising absolutely no commitments on the part if the Orebreaker Clan.  As soon as they were out of sight Ulfgar sent what amounted to an ABORT ABORT message to his fellow Orebreakers, which is to say that he explained the nature of the people wanting to draw them into business.

On the other shore of the lake, the party found passage on a strange ship run by merely a halfing and a wizened wizard who powered the craft through the steady application of wind spells.  Within a couple of days the party was attacked by huge muck creatures, one of whom almost carried a knocked out Ulfgar away in the current, but he was saved by the Useless Bard diving into the water after his swiftly passing corpse. 

Later, the party boat passed between a pack of fairies lights and a ship of pirates.  When the fairy lights attacked, the pirates stayed off to the side, planning to take the ship upon the deaths of the inhabitants at the hands of the fairy lights.  However, after Ulfgar set off a Fireball and the Useless Bard unleashed a Thunder Wave in the destruction of the sprites, the pirates decided that such magic users were too much trouble for them to deal with, and sped off. 

Eventually, the party made up to the village from which the trail led to the village they were searching for.  There they heard tales from the other people fleeing the city, saying it had been overrun by orcs or something.  There was no vacancy in the inn within the village, but the barkeep was very dumb, so Nory managed to trick him into giving him the room of someone else who had reserved one.  The party than prepped for the journey ahead! 

That’s all I remember!

Dungeons and Dragons Part 9

Last week we played DnD but I did not post about it because I have been lazy all week.  But honestly, not much happened, at least not much that can be written in a write-up.

Last week, the party was trying to figure out what to do with scraps of paper and figuring out the order the lenses needed to be put in to open the ‘demesne’ (a word I did not know the meaning of!) of Makana’s father.  As the session began, the Useless Bard showed up, whining about how he had lost his lute in the Fay Wild, and with Makana in tow.  Makana looked like shit and blamed it on saving Useless Bard but really it was from being all coked up on Bahah Blast, but Ulfgar wasn’t having it and hit Makana with a Scorching Ray. 

Makana seemed to shrug it off, and, when the rest of the party stood around shrugging and not attacking Makana like Ulfgar was pretty sure they had talked over that they would do, Ulfgar changed course by necessity and they went back to trying to figure out the order of the lenses.  Eventually the order was determined with some crucial insights from Makana, and the portal was opened to the demesne. 

It was a room, with a guard, who was an enchanted suit of armor, and who immediately announced its intention of killing the party.  So, the party and Makana began fighting it.  But!  It quickly became obvious that arcane spells had no effect upon it.   So, when Makana’s first attack turned out to be a massive fireball that hurt everybody except the guard, Ulfgar focused his scorching rays on Makana, not the guard, because he really didn’t like him anymore. 

Eventually, the guard crumbled.  And the Useless Bard found a bag inside him that everyone saw him try to hide!  But!  Ulfgar refused to stop attacking Makana with Scorching Rays!

So Makana laid Ulfgar out with a Magic Missile.

Magic Missile is a first level spell.  It consists of three points of energy, each dealing damage.  For every spell level slot you move up the casting, you gain an additional point of energy.  Makana’s Magic Missile consisted of 11 points of light.  Do the math. 

And the party didn’t want to fight Makana.  They had no idea what came out their crazy dwarf friend!  Ha Ha!  Let’s just stand around and not fight now!

Oh!  But then Makana asked for the bag Useless Bard found.  And Useless Bard threw it to the ground!  And Makana was going to grab it.  Hannah, not being a total asshole, ran over and fed Ulfgar a healing potion. 

By the way, somewhere in here, Makana took another hit of Bahah Blast.   He was going to go up and pick up the treasure and  (I later learned out of game) abscond with it, leaving the party behind, but Dragon Man finally decided to follow Ulfgar’s lead slash not lose the treasure and attacked Makana.

Well, Makana laid out Dragon Man.  Then Ulfgar attacked again and got laid out.  In fact, everyone kind of got their ass kicked that did anything useful until Hannah finally killed the guy.  Then Nory, not being helpful, tried to steal the treasure bag, but other Nory sucks at lying so he had to give it up.  It was in a bag of holding!  Nory kept the bag, and the party split the treasure. 

Then they cut off Makana’s head and threw it in the bag of holding.  That felt good.  He deserved it.

The party, pretty much all on death’s door at this point, decided to take a long rest. 

Now, Makana, being a real asshole, had, it turned out, cast a spell that blocked the portal the party had entered through.  So the party had to figure a new way out.  Luckily, they found three scrolls of teleport on his headless corpse! 

Ulfgar tried casting it, but, as I had been rolling terribly all session, the spell failed.  Then the Useless Bard, who had been rolling pretty well, and has a higher charisma bonus, tried, and got it on the second time, and teleported all of us into the room we had just left. 

Suddenly, we remembered that the room had no doors.  Perhaps we should have teleported to another place that wasn’t so precariously positioned! 

The party started working the stones in one of the walls.  Pulling it out, the party found themselves staring down the side of the tower, from high up in the sky.  So, Ulfgar cast Spider Climb on the party (I knew that would come in handy at some point!) and they all walked down to the street.

Then they went back to the hotel.  Their rooms were waiting for them.  Ulfgar sent a letter to the Sultan letting them know the task was done.  Then they took a load off. 

That was it!  No Cliffhanger!