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!

Dungeons and Dragons, Part 8

Ok.  So, a week ago last Saturday we played DnD, but I didn’t write it up because I was feeling lazy and stuff.  This account might be shortish, on account of me not remembering stuff.

When we left off, Ulfgar, The Bard, and Dragon Man got teleported by Makana into random parts of the city.  Realizing that their companions were likely inside of Makana’s tower, Ulfgar and Dragon Man quickly figured out their locations and made their way to the tower, arriving at the same time.  There was no sign of The Bard though, on account of Eric deciding not to show up.

Ulfgar and Dragon Man made it to the tower, and found Makana outside it.  Makana quickly teleported them into the tower, and then four of the members of the Golden Party were inside. 

Each of the party members found themselves in a black empty space, devoid of form.  For each of them, a pattern of gears formed of differing hues of light appeared, as well as a rod, which was also made of light.  Each of the party members had to examine the gears and determine which direction to use the rod to turn the last gear that so it would move a bar towards a smiley face instead of an exxed-out dead face.  Each of the members, after careful consideration (or taking a fifty-fifty chance) managed to turn the gear in the correct direction.

Each of the members then appeared in an empty stone room together, and they were happy so find that, minus the Useless Bard, they had all been reunited. 

A portal of magenta colored light opened below them.  After trying to scout it out by lowering Ulfgar into it, it turned out that you really just had to allow yourself to be teleported to another place once within, and the rest of the party just jumped in. 

They found themselves along the bank of a boiling, greasy river, with a ship nearby, surrounded by grey, gloomy hills.  The party got in the boat, and started heading down it, getting more despondent as they went.  An air of subtle unreality hung over the whole place as they went, but that feeling did little to lessen their gloom.  Eventually, they came to an amethyst portal on the river, and passed through it.

They then passed through several portals on the river, taking them through various levels of what felt like hell.  There was a gloomy hell full of giant worms, and Hannah and Dragon Man turned into worms!  But when Nory and Ulfgar killed them, they turned into shades that were returned to their proper forms in the next realm.  There was a realm full of cages packed with damned souls, and gates across the river.  One gate had a lock made of Adamantium, and Hannah shattered her great axe trying to break it open.  Another level was a river of fire, and the party was attacked by a suspiciously ineffectual Pit Fiend (Well, in comparison to normal Pit Fiends, that is). 

Eventually, the party arrived out of the interminable stream of hells along the river (which someone pointed out was likely the River Styx) after passing though an indigo portal.  The river ended here, and the party got out and began traveling over land.  They eventually came to a sleeping giant, and Dragon Man, being Dragon Man, walked up and attacked it.  This initial sneak attack allowed the party to defeat the giant, and after he surrendered he moved aside a boulder revealing another portal, an emerald one.

This portal took the party to some kind of Beast Plane, where they rested for the night after having been pretty beaten up by the previous realms, and ignored any plot hooks that may have been dangled in front of them while they were trying to sleep, such as Polar Bears dying in the night.  Remember, Dungeons Masters, never bother dangling plot hooks when the party has decided to long rest.  Parties who are trying to not die are not going anywhere. 

Next was a gold portal that took them to the Mountainous Plane of Celestia, where, to get out, the party had to praise the god Tyr to an Angel.  Ulfgar came up with a chorus that went something like this:

O Tyr, Tyr, Tyr!

Thinking of you removes my tears!

In light of your justice, I lose all fear!

My heart does warm when you are near!

O Try, Tyr, Tyyyyyyyyyyr!

An orange level here took them to a land of contentment, and the party rested among trees bearing fruits and nuts of plenty and slept.  Hannah didn’t want to travel through the Saffire Portal they found, and planned to stay there forever, even though the rest of the party knew that kind of thing never worked out in places like this, so Nory agreed with her and tricked her into walking through the Portal, telling her it was actually a green curtain.  Because Hannah is very stupid. 

The Saffire Portal took them to a realm where they saw two fighting elves, and they convinced them to fight each other instead of them and then placed bets on who would win.  The one Ulfgar bet on won. 

Next was a Saffron Portal that took them to a land of straight trees, which was so orderly that chaotic little Nory went stir crazy and ran off the path and got in fights with animatronic guards that looked like they’d been assembled out of bits of Humpty Dumpty.  But he got better.

After that was an Amber Portal taking them to a land that was wilderness on one side and civilization on the other side.  They passed by a pair of birds digging in the middle of the trail and spent a day messing about in the city, then went back and found a Silver Portal in the hole the birds were digging. 

The silver portal took them to a stone room that seemed to lack the vague unreality of the various lands they had just spent several days passing through.  It housed an enormous telescope-like device filled with lenses that matched the colors of the various portals.  The room was also filled with many bookshelves. There were no doors or windows.

One book sitting out had a passage that allowed the party to deduce that there was a way out by placing the lenses in a specific order in the telescope thing.  The party then rummaged through the books and found scraps of paper that related a journey through  the  various Planes.  If the scraps were put together in the proper order, they figured, that order would tell you the order to place the lenses in order to get it to work. 

At this point we stopped playing because we had been playing for over four hours and everyone was tired. 

After putting us through that, though, one thing is for sure:  the party now really, really, really wants to kill Makana. 

Writer's Block?

Early last week I had made a resolution to myself to write a thousand words a day.  I had been getting pretty lax in terms of writing activity and I had wanted to make some kind of commitment to get myself going again.  And for about six days, I did it!  I got a lot of writing done, and finished off two chapters of the thing I am working on now. 

And then I started trying to write the next chapter, and I just had nothing.  It wasn't that I wasn't feeling like writing.  Far from it!  In fact, I was sitting down every night, but one, for hours, and trying to figure out what to write next.  But nothing was coming.  I ended up spending all that time doing research to what I wanted to eventually write.  I suppose I could have knocked out some words on the two or so short stories I have in the mix, but I just didn't feel like it.  I had felt all this momentum building up in the days before on the main thing, and working on something else would have felt like putting that on the back burner.  Besides, those things had stalled too; shifting focus to those would have meant still banging my head against a wall, it would just be a different wall. 

I wonder, then, if this is writer's block, or at least a version of it.  It's not that I don't want to write, or that I am being lazy.  It is just that the ideas are not yet there for what I want to do, what feels right when I put it on the page.  It's like I have to wait for my subconscious to catch up to what I want to work on.  Its annoying, because honestly I would rather be typing.  When I do enough typing, I find that I actually like it, the sensation of your self melting away and becoming merely the flow of words and sentence structures building themselves invisibly inside the cavern of the mind as your hands glide intuitively over the keyboard.  I want to get back to that.  Why can't I? 

Hurry up, brain!

Dungeons and Dragons! (Part 7)

Today we played DnD!

So, to start off with, the party members went their separate ways and took care of some personal business.

Hank-now-Hannah when to a swinging swingers party and hung out with Sir Elton and some dude thought he totally recognized her but she totally lied her way out of admitting she was some dude he once knew in the Lionheart Kingdom.  Also, while chatting with some people, they let slip to Hannah that Matthew Makana the Wizard was a bit of a loose cannon and any day now he would do something terrible while hopped up on Bahah Blast.  Foreshadowing!

Nory made some deals to try to get some adorable toys made of his Dread Lord Cthulu at a toy store, (called, I think, Alan and Annie’s?) but when the guy tried to get him to poach an apprentice from a rival toy store (definitely called Poppa’s Toys), Nory decided it was a much better toy store and he would just get his dolls made there instead. 

Ulfgar met up with the Sultan bearing gifts, and scored some sweet commissions in banking for the Orebreaker Clan, but had to sweeten the deal by getting his adventuring party by taking out the crime syndicate living in the sewers, who were not the Thieves’ Guild at all, because the Thieves’ Guild is very respectable.   

Dragon Man tried to kill some rich people who almost ran someone over, but then his nemesis, Superdragon, showed up, wearing a red cloak of flight and pledging to protect the wealthy from the ravages of the court system.  Dragon Man knew he was outmatched so he slinked off in shame, like he would. 

Battle Bard played music at a party but not that well, and thus failed to pick up any chicks. 

When everyone returned to the hotel room, Ulfgar laid out what happened in his meeting with the Sultan, and then the party spent an hour arguing over whether or not the crime syndicate living the sewers may in fact be evil, or whether or not they should just run off and try to kill the insanely powerful wizard they got hired for a measly thousand gold to take out.  Dragon Man, the Bard, and Hannah went out into town to ask around to determine if the crime syndicate that lived in the sewers was actually evil and worth taking out, or if they were a merry band who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor like Dragon Man seemed to think they were for some reason.  (Maybe being butthurt after his encounter with Superdragon and having to run away with his tail between his legs?)  On the way, Dragon Man and the Bard got threatened by some Bahah Goons, angry that Makana was still alive, but Dragon Man just insulted them and they continued on their way.

Well, what do you know?  It turned out the crime syndicate living in the sewers were a band of rapists and murderers!  The party members came back and maybe kinda accepted that they should just do like Ulfgar said already. 

The next morning they headed into the sewers.  And, as soon as they touched down, they were immediately attacked by vile mutants hiding in the shadows.  Dragon Man got overwhelmed and went down after one round.  Then, the rest of the party came down and made short work of the mutants, though Battle Bard had to grapple with some tentacle-thing living in the sewer waters. 

Continuing on, they came to an alcove, where a treasure chest was upon an island of stone, and a woman, who claimed her name was Amanda and who looked like an adventurer, urging them to go open the treasure chest, which she insisted she had just come down here to find and open, because people totally share loot with random other adventurers they meet in the sewers. 

Dragon Man jumped across to open it, but oh well, it turned out it wasn’t a treasure chest at all but was actually a mimic and it started trying to eat him.  Battle Bard jumped over and started trying to fight the mimic as well, while Ulfgar, who smelled a rat, sent a firebolt at Amanda and told her to back off.  Amanda replied with a spell that, thanks to Ulfgar failing the super-easy Wisdom Saving Throw, dropped him to zero hit points and he dropped, literally. 

Hannah gave Ulfgar a potion which got him back on his feet so he could hurl a Scorching Ray at the not very nice Amanda, who didn’t like that very much and ran off.  When the rest of the party finished off the mimic, they all made fun of Ulfgar for attacking the nice adventuring lady, which made Ulfgar feel like an idiot, even though out-of-game we learned that Amanda was actually a Swamp Hag or something which means he was actually right and the party was wrong and they should really stop questioning him all the time. 

They then continued on and after Hannah having a bit of an issue with a trap, they decided that maybe they had to go back because the party was pretty worn out at this point.  Ulfgar decided, perhaps out of annoyance with seeming to do everything wrong, to just go just a little bit up ahead before turning back to investigate a dead body lying in the water.

Well, that turned out not to be such a hot idea.  He immediately got attacked by some kind of water current creature and was knocked into the sewer water unconscious, lying beneath its bulk.

Fortunately, the party was able to rush in and attack the creature and, thanks to Dragon Man scoring a critical hit and deciding to unload all of his Smite Evils for the day, (who knew Dragon Man could Smite Evil?) was able to kill the creature in one round.  Then the party was able to drag Ulfgar out of the water, revive him, and get out of there.

They went to one of the public baths, got cleaned up, and took the rest of the day off to recuperate. 

The next day, they headed back down again, with Ulfgar in the lead to use his quarter staff to investigate stones for traps.  They immediately got beset by mutant creatures again, and had to fight them off, though this time no one went down for the count. 

Continuing on, they got past the trap that gave Hannah problems last time, and then crossed over to a side passage with a bridge, but everyone decided just to jump across rather than risk the bridge being trapped.  Then they went up a passage, which lead into a hallway where Hannah heard whispering coming from up ahead, around a corner. 

They had the Bard rush around the corner and set off a Thunderwave, but nobody was there.  Drat.  They continued on, until the passage opened up and into a room with a fountain pushing out green water, where they were set upon by more mutants, including one of enormous size.  The mutants seemed to have been drinking sewer water which had over time either killed them off, deformed them, or turned them into hulking monstrosities. 

Mutants!  Told you they were evil!

Eventually, the party was able to defeat the mutants, and recovered quite a bit of money from the fountain.  Then they headed back up, realizing from the details of the room that this was the main residence of the sewer people.  They returned to the baths, and then went back to their hotel rooms for some nice meals and some rest and relaxation.  Ulfgar sent a letter to the Sultan, giving him an update on their exploits. 

The next day, the Sultan called the party, which Ulfgar had taken to calling the Golden Party, to his residence.  On their way in, he party overhead some cryptic words between the Sultan and someone who seemed to be a dwarf, but no one in the party could give them any significance. 

The Sultan thanked them for dealing with the sewer people, and said that this would smooth things over for the Orebreakers to move their banking business into the city.  However, the Sultan’s secret backers had a request that he wished to pass on to the party, which was that the backers really wanted a tower.  A nice, white tower.  Makana had to go, basically, was the thing.  Didn’t have to die, just go.  The party understood.

Then, when the party went back to the Hotel, who was in the bar, but Makana!  Talking to girls!  Showing them tricks!  Like making one of them disappear!  He was on Bahah Blast though, so instead of making her turn invisible, he actually made her disintegrate.  Finally, he had done something terrible!  The party had an excuse to throw down!

The whole woman being disintegrated thing basically sent the bar into an uproar, so Makana tried to get out of there.  When he saw the Golden Party, he was super happy to see his buddies, and invited them to come back to his castle.  The party, having seen what just happened, acted like they were still his buddies, and agreed. 

And then Makana tried to teleport them all. 

Uh-oh.

Some of the party?  They arrived where Makana was.  Some of them didn’t.  They were in strange rooms they had never seen before. 

Cliffhanger!