In Rememberance

We last left off with two party members dead and no healing for any future encounters, meaning those who are damaged stay damaged. Unsurprisingly this was a problem. Even so the brave adventurers continue on valiantly on their quest for the bow.

The next real encounter is inside of a room containing an enormous device on the floor. Once the engineer steps out to investigate, the mechanism is reveled to be an enormous fan, and like any good dungeon this is not the only obstacle in this room, which includes two pissed off sphinx, who can actually maneuver inside the windy environment.

The three comrades then charge ahead, but with extremely limited success due to the strange environment. Luckily with the timely arrival of two strangers (New PC's) heralded by a quick incarnate zooming onto the scene accompanied by a cat on his back.

The battle is still difficult, though the party had closed in on to the sphinx, boxing them in and denying them their maneuverability.Once they can actually get a hit in it's a matter of a few blows to bring them down, and the factotum is given a chance to show off his new skills, grappling hooking to the ground and disabling the fan, with the engineer feather falling everyone safely to the ground.

With that done the party can move on. Next a small puzzle presented a problem, a button connected to a timer which dealt damage to whoever pushed it. There were of course barriers blocking the door backwards and forwards.

The solution is simply to let the time run out, but given the atmosphere and circumstances this was less than obvious. Eventually the solution was puzzled out, but not after they had already bashed through a wall to get to the other side of the door, thus passing the puzzle in a slightly different way.

Finally the party found the ranger they had been pursuing for some time, who then promptly shot many arrows at them. He also provided a unique challenge by being on a 50 ft. high platform, adding to the difficulty of getting to him.

Now the incarnate managed to actually jump up and get him while running his max speed, and the factotum's (cat's) grappling hook helped the totemist and engineer, while the shaper's eagle strike beat everyone to the punch, or claw as the case may be. The shaper then babooned the shit out of the archer, while the rest of the party preceded to make nice little meaty chunks of him, to everyone's great satisfaction.

The entire time however the party had been avoiding the elephant in the room, a genie. The genie had been standing, floating, in the middle of the room the entire time, and had challenged the party to a fair contest, which if they won they could get the acquire the bow.

The first of these fair contests was the genie fighting with the totemist, one on one, with a wall of fire preventing others from getting in, as well as damaging the totemist, and healing the djinn, who also happened to be an efreet. The continuous assault from the totemist proved to not be quite enough, with the genie driving him back to the point of unconsciousness, and past, though he still refused to yield because of his furious claws.

Luckily an adventorous incarnate managed to leap into the fray and to heal the totemist, as well as rescue him. The next fight was between the shaper and the genie, with the shaper changed into a polar bear. This was a much more even fight, with the shaper falling just as he delivered the final blow to the genie, who disintegrated into smoke.

No one had officially won a contest so far however, so the incarnate challenged him to a race, which surprisingly he accepted. Even with him transformed into a cheetah, and actively hurting the incarnate during the race it was not quite enough, and he conceded defeat, granting the party one wish and also delivering the legendary bow to them.

With much deliberation the wish was eventually decided upon to give them large quantities of gold, and they got as they wished, thought the gold was stolen, and the owner of this was in all likelihood watching and waiting to make his move.

Moving on to the finale they were granted the bow, and took their leave. They decided to head to the kobold, and see if he could discern anymore about the bow, given his immense knowledge. There is one more obstacle on the way though, a now gnoll who had been killed once before by them, and once before by an ogre. They would not have him come back this time though, once he was dead they would burn and crush and maim his bones to the point of no return.

I'd like to take this moment now to discuss a tragic loss. Someone who had been with the party for many months, who slept with the party, who was always trusted on to deliver that ever important finishing blow. He was truly, the greatest of them all, and without him it is doubtful whether the party can go on. His name was Thrusty, and he will always be remembered for his great contributions to the rape and pillage of so many people and places, before being tragically destroyed by a cruel and insensitive greatsword.

And so the party arrived at the kobold, though first completely and utterly destroying the bones of an old PC. While visiting however, they learned little information, and when asking him for a teleport were mistaken in a belief that it would always succeed. With a botched reading the party ended up in the town they started in, where one of them is wanted for murder.

Not much more was accomplished, though the incarnate was arrested for reckless destruction of property, and a breakout attempt was subsequently started, though not completed, as that will have to be left until next time.

The Final Countdown

We continue on the quest to evade the centipede tumbling blindly down some stairs in frantic panic. The next room however is completely and dark, and all the party can here is the continued rumblings of the centipede, when suddenly ... Pop! About a dozen glowing lights suddenly flash on.

These lights are more than they appear though, and all the balls fire energy rays at the party, missing dismally. Unfortunately for the party the cats are not so unlucky. Flying cats of doom spit acid at the party, doing moderate damage and adding a sense of urgency to the situation, though no more then the centipede was already providing.

So like any intelligent party the group sprints straight ahead, unaware of dangers lurking below, as the party healer who happened to be first falls down a pit. Luckily he has wings, sot he situation on a whole is nowhere near as bad as it could be. But with his handy wings the situation is soon rectified, and the peaceful march away can continue.

Of course, by peaceful march I mean full on sprint away from the flying cats. Who spit acid. And the centipede larger than most houses. Compared to some past excursions, it is peaceful, though on the whole, not as much as it could have been. But running jumping and tumbling the party arrives on the other side, and with only minor acid burns!

With that the done the party runs headlong into the next room, given relatively little choice with the beast behind them. In this room there are merely two towering behemoth abominations, nothing that hadn't been faced before, though the last time the party met them they were nearly TPK'd, they weren't that worried.

With much more experience on their shoulders and the firepower of a large tank they handle the creatures relatively easily, with the first beast driven down for the count with only a few jabs from a spear and some cuts from an axe, and the second knocked to the ground, though not dead, soon after. Then on to the next room the party rushes, keenly aware of their pursurer.

The next room contains their true object of desire, the goal of their current quest, and the mastermind behind the whole damn plot, Dr. Satan, real name Ptolemy. Accompanying him as always are his Marrasualt guards, deadly giants wielding enormous scimitars.

The guards put up quite a fight, first exhausting the party through howling screams, then tearing them apart with their enormous weapons. This was too much for the healer, who poisoned from previous encounters with the centipede collapses to the ground.

Thus begins the time of desperation for the party, reeling in the heat of the moment, with a centipede at their backs it seemed there was little chance to survive. Then a plucky young kobold sorcerer sneaked behind the guards in the form of a dragon, and did major damage to the good doctor, though eventually he was brought down himself.

This was enough of a morale boost for the party though, as a tired knight emerges victorious, rushing past the injured guards and delivering the final blow to the man who gave him life, in some small form of irony. This was not the end of Ptolemy though, as he sinks into a portal now opened, and leaves these parting words, "I'll be back".

And what kind of villain would he be had he not left a parting gift, that of explosives embedded in the ceiling, causing rocks to crash down and everyone to die.

Just kidding, the ceiling was not completely destroyed, just damage and with rocks falling and an approaching centipede the party prepared for a finalish battle. With resources almost exhausted this battle was close, with everyone within single digits of health if not less, but with the brave sacrifice of the dragon shaman, and the end of the original party the 'good guys' emerged victorious, and descended on the platform to unknown depths, unsure of what will now happen.

The Bell Tolls Twice

Last time the second party left off they had just encountered some druids just outside of the kobold's lair in the basement of a house. They were subsequently dealt with so there was only one more thing to do. Deal with the blacksmith, in the kindest way possible.

This is where the amazing assassin attempts again to show off his skills. After his failure to immediately kill a cleric he needed a confidence booster. So he strolls right up to the blacksmith, invisible courtesy of the wizard and performs a sneak attack instantly killing the dwarf. Oh, no, no he doesn't. He stabs him once, misses, and doesn't even kill him with that attack.

The blacksmith responds to this unkindly, and beats his initiative and smashes him with a hammer, rightly deserved. The party wizard then comes to sort this out, but the rogue will have none of this, and stabs the blacksmith again, this time actually bringing him down. The party totemist, the only original member of the party that hated the blacksmith so much then does some unmentionable things to him.

So the party sets off, having accomplished everything they needed to. On the way to the location of the bow, they encounter two strange gentleman mounted on bears, who attack them without provocation. Bear cavalry is proven to be quite a formidable force, doing good damage to the party, though a summoned ape combined with a transformed ranger swiftly deal with one, though the other does a few ride by attacks before finally being brought down by the totemist and his leaping.

Without too much more trouble they arrive at the place where the bow should be, and find two doors, and two large gentleman, one wielding a bow, the other a sword, who are apparently beginning a race to the bow. They run in, and the doors close. After a little bit of scouting the party decides the best option is to smash the door, and go after the sword wielding of the pair.

Smashing through the door takes some time, but with the rogue's handy dandy admantine dagger it is eventually destroyed. They then rush ahead, and see a pit. A very deep pit, with a door on the other side, and a corpse at the bottom. Everyone can easily jump across, except for the engineer, who has to take off his armor to have a hope, and then fails his jump check falling all the way to the bottom, though using his insight to slow his fall significantly.

After getting back up with some help from friends with ropes, everyone arrives into the next room, which has a steady drip of water, something the engineer is utterly terrified of. After the party is entirely in the room, the drip becomes more of a rush, and it appears that the ceiling is buckling. With this unfortunate predicament the ranger and wizard run to the door opposite the one they came in on, and the rest of the party tries to smash down the previous door.

Then an enormous abberation collapses downwards, but the party assassin actually kills something for once, planting an arrow directly through its brain. The water continues rushing, but luckily the party is strong, and smash their way through both doors, continuing on through the dungeon.

 They are subsequently attacked by the man from before, wielding the enormous bow. After shooting them a few times, he runs off through the next door. they decide to follow him, breaking their way through the small partition separating them from where he was, and go charging forward.

Here they encounter a minesweeper room, with the mines being traps. Through a very long and animal sacrificing process they eventually uncover where most of the traps are, and acquire some very nice loot. Then things go bad.

Every other chest in the room was fine, why wouldn't this one be, thought the party rogue. This one was a mimic, a very sticky mimic, who got stuck to the rogue. The party didn't help things either, getting stuck or actually attacking him, the finishing blow was dealt by the engineer who threw a javelin straight through the rogue into the mimic, pinning his corpse to it.

This was not the only life claimed however, as there were a few other monsters in this room, including one tricksy earth monster, a xorn. This thing can float through walls like their air, or water or something, and had attacked the wizard previously. This time the wizard was weakened, and decided to attack head on with a dagger, instead of using spells like he should have.

This resulted in his head being bit off, and spit out. Finally the party found the lever, pulled it, and disabled all the traps. They also destroyed all the few remaining creatures, and then got ready to enter the next room, next session.

Some Sort of Monstrous Menagerie

Back to the first party again, we combine two sessions into one for the ultimate fusion. In this first session the party once again adventurers out unwittingly into danger, demons are slain, and some devious deals are done.

Onto the session, the first thing that happens is an assassin of sorts. The party bard hears things inside his head, and unlike all those other times, he's not crazy. He is told to come outside or the store he loves so much will be destroyed. So he strolls out, with the now invisible dragon shaman stepping behind him.

Instantly he is shot by two large arrows, taking a large amount of damage and still not quite sure where the shots came from. Everyone then tumbles out, looking this way and that for the source of the arrows, but no one can find them. This time 4 arrows find their way towards the party, and finally the little kobold sorcerer spots some sort of monster wielding two bows just above them.

So the dragon shaman flys up, gets an attack, or a miss as the case was, and becomes a very disenchanted pincushion, no longer happy with the idea of being the meatshield. The real MVP of the fight was the sorcerer, who shot a couple of rays at the demon, knocking its dex down to next to nothing, resulting in many more misses.

The demon however then summons another of his kind, resulting in a very desperate party, with everyone low on health even with the healers healing. Luckily the knight finally finished his ascension to the platform where the demons stood, and did an enormous amount of damage to the weakened one, almost completely obliterating it. With this the other demon teleported away, never to be heard from again.

Then the bard goes with the healer to go and convince the church of Pelor to assist them with their assault on Dr. Satan's lair. This goes well with a little help from glibness, and a magnificent quantity of bullshit. So then everyone goes to rest, to let them think it over.

Next day, everyone wakes up, things seem to be a bit worse, with chaos in the streets and several buildings on fire in the distance. Being the heroic heroes they are the party rushes towards the disturbance, and finds a small group of outnumbered clerics trying to fight off a larger number of Dr. Satan's mutants. One breaks off from the group, and offers to help along with his companion, and they all set off for the probably final assault on the underground.

First they encounter a huge centipede zombie, who is easily dealt with, but his two friends offer more problems. Everyone saves their bigger bangs for later, using only the bare-most of resources, and they set off down a long winding staircase to Dr. Satan's lair. Eventually they arrive at a bend, hearing loud noises from the left the bard goes to investigate.

Here he finds an enormous ogre, but with his newly learned spell charm monster he manages to convince him to be friends, after only one smack of the ogre's club. Unfortunately they have bigger problems to worry about, literally, as an enormous centipede rushes down from the ceiling, crushing the ogre completely, it then takes a big old bite out of the bard, leaving him on the border between death and life.

The healer runs up, heals him, and they all begin running at top speed. The sorcerer drops a web, but it doesn't hold him for long, as the centipede smashes and crawls its way slowly towards them.

In the next room they find several orc guards, again dealt with quickly, especially with the added time pressure of the centipede pressing in. Running past the knight running ahead he falls into a pit trap with spikes. He is given a potion of fly, and helps to fly all of them out of there as quickly as possible. With that dealt with they sprint into the next room, hearing some loud thrashing from just behind them.

Alas, a wizard. The wizard creates a large noxious cloud which the party stumbles out of, unable to fight the guards who mercilessly attack them. At this point they are not that interested in fighting, and instead run off towards the next door they see, another trap door.

Instead of opening it the dragon shaman breathes fire, burning it to cinders, and they see the centipede burst through the little hallway, and devour two of the guards, with the wizard subsequently going invisible. Down the stairs they go, and we finish up the session there.

A Forestfull of Mantises

The second party now on an epic quest to do absolutely nothing. First things first, they meet up with a strangely charismatic warforged who offers to sell a thunderstone to the party totemist. This is then shat right back at him, and the totemist skips off merrily. Great first impression and all. Luckily the rogue is there to smooth things over, and with a little convincing he goes to meet the rest of the party, including the engineer who was forging his full plate very slowly.

Struck by lack of things to do, they retreat back to the tavern. Luckily they run into a holy man carrying an enormous sword who threatens them asking for the location of the dragon egg. He then takes the rouge hostage with permission from the the party, and they agree to meet tomorrow to figure out where they are going.

The trip down is fairly uneventful, running into no beasties, and in fact running into no kobolds. What they do find is a mass of gnomes who claim to have slaughtered the kobolds, the paladin then begins praying in front of the egg, and the party runs off while his back is turned. They run all the way back to town, but encounter a small cloaked figure flanked by two very much larger figures. They are asked by him to go and find the dragonslayer bow, and to kill the dragon egg below.

Conflicting opinions on exactly what to do next but in the end they decide they will definitely find the bow, though not necessarily kill the dragon with it. The engineer is still working on his full plate, so they have to wait a few more days before they can leave the city, and go ask a particularly knowledgeable kobold about the bow.

In the mean time the new warforged party member goes and sells his wares to passers by and tavern people netting a fairly decent amount of money, which he promptly goes off and spends on scrolls. By this time the session is coming to its conclusion, and so we pick up next week with the journey through the forest.

Everyone has bought all their equipment, and is prepared to set out for the dangerous journey to the town. Before they leave they bought maps of the area, as well as the town and the continent. And so they decide to take the quickest way off the city, and dive off with feather fall prepared for when they just about reach the ground.

This works perfectly fine, except for maybe indicating insanity to any watchers. So they set off towards the town, and have a fairly uneventful travel for the first maybe 4 hours. Then there is a dire bear. RAWR!. The enormous bear takes a swat at the party engineer, dealing enormous damage.

Luckily the party is fairly ready for this, and deal out an enormous amount of damage before the bear has a chance to respond, and then the mauling starts. The rogue had a brilliant plan, run up and stab the beast, but after his first attack was quickly knocked down for his insolence.

The summoned beasts from the warforged wizard are also subsequently dealt with, though not without significant damage done to the bear. Eventually the totemist brings it down with a great pounce tearing right through it's head. Its claws are subsequently made into gauntlets for him.

The travels conclude with a praying mantis encounter, in which the rogue is again lifted off and brought closer to death than he would ever like to be. Eventually however the party arrives a the town, and finds it nearly completely destroyed, plants having taken over much of the surroundings and few buildings left standing.

A short discussion with the only remaining guard reveals there are a few families left, him, and the blacksmith. The blacksmith especially peaks there interest because he was not the nicest of fellows and they had been planning his torture for many weeks now.

But the target of their search was to be found, and they discovered the approximate location of the bow, as well as a little bit more information about the dragon. They learned it was one of an ancient species of dragons long wiped out, Regulator dragons. They leveled up then, and the session ended.

Now all we need to do is stop the world from ending!

The day started off fine enough, but by the end of it the party had lost two comrades and were no closer to their goal. They had constructed a new objective however, and it was coming along swimmingly.

Last the session the party had lost their monk, and after recovering from their devastation (which lasted all of 5 seconds) they started the slow climb back to their home city. Along the way they met a friendly neighborhood ogre, who demanded a small pilgrimage for their travels.

They, being adventurers,  resorted to violence immediately, talking only to set up a better tactical position. The party landed the first, second, and third blows and it looked like victory would come quick and easy. Then the ogre got serious. He slammed the dwarf knight against the wall, knocking him unconscious.

His next action was to skillfully dodge the flying dragon shaman, who had set up an expertly crafted attack, ruined by the cursed fate of the natural one. All that was left of the party was the fragile skeleton, and the bard. The skeleton was not the heartiest of the party, and promptly exploded into so many little bits upon collision with the wall.

The damage the ogre had taken however finally caught up with him, and after a little bit of prodding from the bard and a spear through the back from the dragon shaman he collapsed. The rest of the ascension was fairly uneventful.

After retreating home and acquiring an enormous bag of holding the party made a decision. This was quite a surprise. They planned to start a business, with the bard as the face, the knight as the muscle, and the dragon shaman as the manager. Quite some discussion later and the party had hired an architect as well as a plan to make money, they would do what they were best at, killing monsters.

So they adventured out, charging ahead to take out a monster that had been terrorizing a small area just a bit away from their new base. This creature as it turns out has enormous claws, stretching the length of the room. Even with this it is fairly easily disposed of. Just as they were leaving however, they were assaulted by a monster of monstrous proportions.

It smacked the knight into unconsciousness, then the dragon shaman, then the knight again as the bard brought him up, then the dragon again, and so on until he missed a few times, and was subsequently pulverized. This is where this session ended, the party huddling in their home happy with a days work.

Next came the recruiting of some people to work in the shop. The bard was good at talking to people, and managed to convince a dwarf wizard and his 6 sons to help work with whatever they could catch and kill, as well as hiring a sorcerer and a healer, both new PCs.

The knight and dragon set up a routine of descending into the underbelly of the city and bringing back some centipedes for the workers to cut up for armor and weapons. With all the shop sorted out, all that was left to do was stop the world from ending.

Their first idea was to try and get recruits from the leader of the local city. After a failed try to get into the city gates the session ended, most of it was spent discussing various things, with nothing really getting done.

A Player's Perspective

So for the first time in about 5 years I got to view a game from the perspective of a player. My friend was DMing and I got to play my homebrew class and had a lot of fun. We started with a fairly standard premise, the town is in danger and heroes have gone off into the local dungeon, go investigate what has happened.

This temple or dungeon was made from dwarves, and was very impressively big. My character can not speak, but delights in drawing so I drew the map both in character and outside the game. The first few rooms we investigated had nothing but corpses, some older and some newer, and we experienced no traps or combat of any kind.

Things grew a bit more exciting as we traveled along and encountered a fork. Down one path of the fork, there was a pit trap which seemed to be disabled by the roguish cleric, but in actuality it was not, and the big dumb fighter fell down it. We decided to go down a different fork then, after rescuing the fighter, but again this was trapped.

This time we disabled the pit, but there were rocks behind the door, which again crushed the fighter. Finally we went down a non-trapped path, and discovered more corpses. All this time I was listening very well, because of my race's bonus to listen, I had +24, resulting in a vast quantity of listening to nothing.

The only path ahead was over the pit, so we all hopped onto a phantom steed, and leaped across the path. Up ahead was the first combat in the game, which my keen senses detected ahead of time, but were not enough to avoid the rolling log trap. We met a cowardly lion goliath who had apparently been left behind by his brothers.

As is standard for a party of adventurers, we did eventually kill this man, though it was really his fault. We threatened him a bit, but didn't intend to actually murder him, but he would not submit to us leading him around. So we had a fairly uneventful combat, but I was almost critted multiple times, and hit despite my enormous AC.

We then traveled down, and encountered a few goliath mercenaries hiding in holes. The fighter smacked one, and the other had a boulder put over his hole, and thus could not get out. Eventually we did let him out, only to immediately knock him out and to interrogate him. We found out where to go and who was here, and charged off ready for a fight. A few corridors later and we had a large boss battle on our hands.

First we had to fight two rogues who sneak attacked us, and avoided our blows fairly deftly. Then we were fighting a big bad who dropped from the ceiling, the leader of the group who could almost not be hit. Luckily the wizard had been saving his big guns for the fight, and we entangled and distracted him so we could buff and heal. We did not actually finish him off, as the true BIG bad smashed him across the room before we could.

This guy looked tough, but our party made quick work of his first form. Unfortunately, he was made of acid, and proceeded to rip apart the fighter, tearing him in twain. With very little health left on his part, I smashed him with a face full of force, and he fell into the enormous lake behind him.

This was followed by me throwing a gem we had gotten at the beginning of the game into the lake, opening a portal to hell. Emerging from the lake was an enormous black dragon, and it was the only real option. Then I had a brilliant plan. As the portal to hell slowly grew, I knew what I needed to do. I spoke to my apprentice, telling him that I had taught him all I could, then me and the healer ran towards the portal.

My final act was to grab the two half of our friend, deploy the swan boat token that I had bought just before the game started, and ride it all the way to hell. What happened next was a tale for the ages, but also for another day.

Kobolds, Kobolds, Everywhere, But Where is There to Sit and Drink?

We began this weeks adventure with the early stages of combat, as a large group of kobolds guards an even larger group from the interloping adventurers. Most of them go down with the ease that first level warriors should, one hit and they're down.

A few prove to be sticklers though, with one having blows just glance off of him, and another merely rolling with them. Luckily a kobold can not tank hits forever, and one goes down. Now the party had met a shapeshiter previously, who now had a perfect opportunity for an Eagle Strike! One roll and it's a twenty. Next roll also a twenty, excitement was building now. Then boom, only a 19, even still, quite a crit.

And what a crit it was, decapitating the opponent, as the eagle whisped by and whisked off his head. Now there were just a few kobolds with crossbows hiding in the corners, who were easily disposed of. Then came the Coup de Gracing, easy murdering of the sleeping kobolds. Now the party had a decision to do, once back at the fork, north, west, or south.

The west path lead to no good, though it was the first taken. The only result was a pit trap, followed by some enormous strength checks to pull up the dwarf enginner who had significant difficulty with his climb checks. Then the ceiling collapsed a little while later, due to a baboon triggering a trap, and they had to go back across the pit. Once again, the engineer fell in, as did the party rogue.

A little finangeling later and everyone was off down the south path, and after a short period they came upon the door. The rogue detected not one, not two, and not just quite three, but four separate traps. Some pokes here and prods there and there were no traps, or so the confidently striding rogue thought. CRUSH!

The rogue was crushed by an enormous spiked pillar, and slowly crawled his way as it crashed into the ground again. A resetting trap says the warlock, why I'll just stride right in to the door, what could really happen? One greataxe bisection later and his top half decided that it was not a good idea, and that was his last idea as he died.

The orc behind the greataxe satisfied with himself was subsequently destroyed by the remaining party members, with the totemist completely shredding him. The party rests here, and gets prepared for the final fork. No more traps but they discover an enormous egg being worshiped by a large group of kobolds. The party decides now is a good time to report back to the quest giver, and receive a bag of holding for a reward. How nice. There are some mutterings and we end the session with no clear idea what to do next.

One city down, one more to go

The first party begins in the end of a battle with their reserves fairly depleted but the tides of victory on the horizon. So the party manages to dispose of the big boss man and then has to decide what to do with the clerics. There are about twenty of them, and there are divided opinions on whether wanton murder or just an enormous amount of beatings is the appropriate course of action.

In the end though they talk to the clerics, insult their god, and attempt to use an illusion to convince the clerics to come with them. The illusion is of there god, walking around, and setting the roof on fire. It is not very convincing. So the party goes to plan A, and hightails it out of there.

Alas they run into some old friends, the guards from their previous town. These guards don't look too friendly either, carrying the corpse of their comrade, the rogue. The guards are finally getting their revenge for the slaughter of their friends by the party, way back at the keep.

A few sharp words are exchanged between the two parties, but in the end it always goes to combat; and quite a combat it was. The less experienced guards trade a few blows with the party, and the bard takes a potshot at the leader, and misses. That was when the real fun started.

The leader charges the minotaur knight, bringing him hugely into the negatives, but with regeneration he is only knocked unconscious. This leaves the bard alone with the leader, not a good situation to be in. Luckily the rest of the guards brigands are easily wiped up, with one taking a spear through the face and another being punched so hard he lost all his strength and constitution. Crit tables are fun.

The day could not all go good though, and as the party skeleton runs up to attack the boss he takes a huge amount of damage, and promptly runs straight back. The monk then goes in for a triumphant rescue of the bard, who is currently severely damaged. This does not end well. He is smashed by a great-axe for his troubles, then curb-stomped while on the ground, leaving quite a splattering on the ground.

The day is not quite lost though, and the bard and dragon shaman team up to murder the general, and in the end take him down, though not with great exuberance. The session ends there with a long debate about where to go from there.

A quick summary of the reaming party members:

lvl 6 Dragonborn Dragon Shaman (Original member)
lvl 5 Half  Minotaur Dwarf Knight
lvl 5 Tinker Gnome Bard (previously a druid)
lvl 5 Skeleton Melee guy (previously a bard)
lvl 5 Sorcerer, has not met the party (previously a monk)

Catching up

Too long. It has been far too long since I've wrote something, done something creative. So the galavanting heroes or at the very least protagonists continue on their perilous adventures. The first party now 6 strong decides to go and visit Dr. Satan, a nice friendly trip to the underground which was sure to result in victory.

One small problem is a couple of hundred rats swarming. These are no normal rats though, ghost rats from outer space they are, ready to gnaw and to gnash and to drain all the strength. A little help from some dead adventurers though provided the party with much needed ghost destroying weapons and a way to restore some of the strength that the nauseous rats gnawed down.

So a little worse for the wear but still on their feet they descend to the very welcoming arms of Dr. Satan, who's actual name is Ptolemy and henceforth I shall call him by that name. Ptolemy is flanked by two large armed guards bearing the likeness of guard dogs with enormous scimitars. They convinced by his facade decide to descend on an elevator, traveling past several enormous objects in an empty black room of cavernous proportions.

Only then does he reveal that he is not too happy with their activities, agreeing to work for the city and all that. But doublecrossers that they are they decide to doublecross the city, and agree to work for Ptolemy once he shows them his secret project. On an enormous platform revealed to be the still beating heart of the dog they find an ancient being sitting on a throne, threatening to wake and to bring the world to a new sort of order.

Ptolemy reveals his entire plan was to conduct a series of murders and catastrophes at the same time so all the blood can feed into his new god, and bring him back from the edge of extinction. He also reveals that every city is controlled by this one man, and that killing or destroying him may have dire consequences. Suddenly there is a huge quaking, as the city shakes from a collision with a nearby town, the one the party is planning to raid.

Now after a few hours spent with grafts the party is ready to face the clerics in the new environment, and gets prepared for a war. They ascend quickly to the surface, and digging, jumping, and flying there way down they meet the welcoming comity. Unfortunately the group's collective charisma is not of the diplomacy sort, so an armed conflict is inevitable.

Luckily they are better armed, equipped with their new arms and legs courtesy of Ptolemy. They easily dispatch the guards, and capture one who was presumed to lead them to the clerics. Again though, they are too trusting, and are led into an ambush, involving archers and a few footsoldiers. This combat lasts quite some time, great damage being done on both sides, with the dragon shamans healing just barely keeping the party up as the constant volleys seek to perpetually annoy them.

Again they seem close to their goal, and seek a warehouse containing a group of clerics. After some mighty deliberation and dispatching of more guards they come up with a cunning plan. They will forge a document to enter the warehouse, and then easily backstab the guards claiming their reward. This does not go well, as the party gnome is grappled as his paper thin disguise does little to help, and as the rest of the party busts in the session comes to an end, to resume next week.

As for the other party, they are doing fine with their resting and all that, and have a brilliant plan, find some quests, and go kill stuff, something which their record clearly shows they can do. Their immediate target is the mansion of Mathew, a dwarf crime boss who can not be eliminated legally, but since when have adventurers cared about legality?

Their attempts at reconnaissance and stealth do not go that well, so they buy some acid and begin melting the front gate. At this point the party warlock pops his head over, and promptly gets headshotted down to 0 health, and lies on the ground for the rest of the session. The rest of the party charges in and attempts to execute the gun wielding guards. A few misses later and the mission is not a success, but as always the party wins in the end, and they go streaming through the front door.

Here they find more guards, who are met with more difficulty due to the crime boss being armed with magical armerments, and peppering them with acid orbs and fireballs. The totemist gets all up in the face of the boss, and rips and tears his small guts into oblivion. The clean up is fairly routine after, with one of the rogues surrendering and joining up with the party. This is a new PC. The house is then set on fire by the totemist, and the rogue and engineer have to make a run for it with a heavy admantine safe while battling the remaining two guards, one of which gets a face full of safe, and the other manages to shoot himself.

One mansion burned to the ground and their job is complete, reward claimed, and ready for the next quest. This involves opening the safe. After many smashings, and a few more subtle attempts the rogue realizes he has several acid wands in his possession. Many failed UMD checks later and the safe is open, granting a large amount of money to the party, the first of this kind. The party dwarf now commits huri kuri, to be replaced by a shapeshipter a short while later.

Before this can happen they encounter a warblade that a few of them remember from before. He looks a little different, having been reincarnated as an orc, but is none the worse for wear, and puts up quite a fight as a druid casts entangle on the party, severely limiting their movement possibilities. The orc goes down, and up, and down, and up again, and finally the little rogue gets a few critical stabs in, and brings him down for good. That all wrapped up they can finally do what they had been meaning to and go investigate a disturbance in the sewers.

These sewers are different than the ones previously mentioned, and have some interesting new challenges awaiting them. They meet some kobolds on their way down, and that was where we left off, just a few kobolds hanging out with some trabs and some crossbows.

A Summary

It ha been too long since I've made a blog post, and a lot of stuff has happened. We have had a session for both groups, because real life so rarely allows for everything to go as planned.


The first group has now not only destroyed the keep, but have managed to get themselves arrested, and brought to the local ruler. This ruler will absolve them of all their sins as long as they do a task for him. This task is very simple, just go to another city, steal all their clerics, and come back. Do it within a limited time, or your heads go off.

Unfortunately when they were arrested they had several guard corpses in their guild, something the guards were not too happy about. This means that if they put one toe out of line they will promptly be arrested and sent to jail, or an early death. They decided to camp out at the lady they murdered before's house, because it was the most innocent place they could think of.

So this goes fine, they all have a nice rest, and then decide to see if the kobolds from before had anything of interest for them. And by thing of interest, I mean straight up murdering all of them, for the inevitable slight that results from a gnome diplomancing a kobold. So everyone attacks, the gnome, he's brought down, but the party come to the rescue. And with a new member now, as a prisoner of the kobolds breaks out and assists by punching his way through a large amount of kobolds.

The monk and the party combine to take down the group, though the knight is brought to unconsciousness and the bard is flung from his back, almost dying himself. Overall though, the fight is won, and they win a healthy reward from the looting of the kobolds. The session then ends and will continue next week.

The other party made some slow progress down the beach, as they defeated the crabs and ascended towards a new goal, one of prosperity. First however they had to defeat the crab in front of them, with aid from their theoretical opponent, the magistrate. His army of horse bombadeers assists quite a bit, and the crab is taken down, albeit with quite a bit of damage done to the party. The magistrate then rides off, but the party has a brilliant plan.

The druid summons a hippogriff, and sends it off to pick up the magistrate and drop him, hopefully for a KO. One failed grapple check later and the hippogriff is thrown off and slaughtered, and the magistrate comes back and delivers a talking to the party. They decide the obvious solution is to beat the druid to unconsciousness and to let the magistrate have his way. This doesn't quite work though, as the druid springs into the water on the edge of consciousness and lives to fight another day.

Both parties part then, with the slower PCs travelling along the shore on foot. This turns out to be a bad decision as they fight yet another crab after about a day, and narrowly defeating the baby crab they retreat to the forest to regroup. The druid has not returned, and will in all likelihood abandon them.

Continuing along the path because they have nothing better to do they run into some bandits, again narrowly winning the fight they slaughter the bandits, burn their tree hideout, and take all their loot. They then proceed to a city which they found after several days search. After climbing up the city they go for a night's rest and the session ends. Fin.

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

The tower is burning, burning down, collapsing, booming out over the city, letting the populace know just what has happened. That was how it all ended, but it began in quite a different way. As of last session the plot had become more involved, four factions not two now. There were the kobolds, the dwarves, the humans, and the goblins. In the end it would all come together in an explosive finale.

The original plan was such: the goblins would assault the keep from the front, distracting the guards, the dwarves would then go into the tunnel that the kobolds had built, and would be followed by the humans once all the guards were dead. The explosives would then be planted, and everything would go off without a hitch, with most of the factions dead resulting in less payment.

The initial planning and arming went fine, but the issue came when the actual plan was to be enacted. The dwarves went up, closely followed by the humans, but their was commotion just outside of the tunnel. The guard were more than expected, and better armed. This is further compounded when three guards descend the tunnel, and charge.

Luckily the party minotaur dwarf makes short work of these, with some additional courage from the bard. The magical energies granting the corrosive energy of acid, burning all in its path. But above was chaos, the garden stained with the blood of the not so innocents. The party bard plans to go and check the explosives but doesn't quite get that far.

A gunshot is heard, and he falls, not quite dead, but on the brink of unconsciousness. Luckily he gets off one more spell, and instantly he has 6 copies, adding confusion to the already chaotic battle. The rest of the group goes to assist him, but are intercepted by an additional sniper. Luckily both of these are still in the courtyard, and so can still be reached.

With one sniper down the other fell quickly to the sword bigger than him, and now all that was left was the explosives. The leader of the human anarchists seemed to be the only one alive, and he was surrounded by guards. But one shout from the knight drew them away, enabling a back-stab and death. Corpses were gathered and everyone was just about done, when a group of seven guards burst through a door, and urgency was again added to the situation.

Luckily they were faster and set up all the explosives to be triggered at the same time, destroying the tower and everything in the surrounding area, hopefully disincluding them. Unfortunately the explosives timing was a bit off, and five of the seven made it into the tunnel for an extensive fight in close quarters. The fight was close in the end, with the party knight being knocked out, and the dragon's pet almost being destroyed. But in the end victory, for some at least. The tower is burning, burning down, collapsing, booming out over the city, letting the populace know just what has happened.

The Crabs, the Crabs!

The tomb continues to be frightening. But it is oh so enlightening. There are 3 skeletal champions still up, and the party is not in top shape. Luckily the totemist is a whirling frenzy of death, and pounces on a skeleton, missing all but one attack. Not the best start to a session. The rest of the party does alright though, the engineer and samurai doing decent damages against their respective skeletons. The fight is actually fairly easily won, and the loot that is had is good.

They gain one magical breastplate, and the warlock heavily considers a steel shield, though eventually decides against it. So they search around the room, and find a secret door, what a twist. The totemist manages a natural 20 to break it, and crumbles it into dust. The hallway they stumble upon is treated with immense distrust, and the warlock investigates the ceiling.

Unfortunately the trap contained the entire wall, up to and including the ceiling, and he is hit by several darts with dex poison. Even failing the two saves he still only loses two dex, so comes off fairly lucky. They now open the door at the end of the hallway, and find a priest of some kind praying at an alter to Nerull. They attempt some diplomacy, but it doesn't go too well. The warlock is hit by an inflict wounds spell, and falls from the ceiling at -8. The rest of the party rushes after him, and the totemist just about brings him down with a few attacks.

He then runs away,  but the party catches up and absolutely destroys him. The totemist smashes him into a wall several times, and the samurai cuts off his arm, leaving him far far from life. They then realize they are an enormous room with one to two hundred corpses, all filed away into coffins. The room is harrowing, and they all decide to not investigate, a move that was probably for their best.

They decide to camp out in the previous room with their bears guarding them from any nasties. Their sleep goes as well or better than expected, and they wake up fine. Then they leave and travel towards the beach. A few large eagles are waiting for them, and their flyby attacks prove to be quite troubling.

The eagles are dealt with through two occurrences, one the totemist with a worse grapple check successfully grappling and almost taking down one of them. And the other is a summoned wolf being tossed at the eagle by the engineer, dealing a large amount of damage. With those dealt with they yet again head to the beach. They arrive at it, and plan out their ambush of the magistrate.

The ambush is where the end of the session occurred, as just as it was being sprung, a giant crab scuttled its way out of the water.

And the City Shall Burn

The plan was a success. The retreat went exactly as well as expected, with the fog cloud providing the much needed escape. The next destination was obvious to the party, to go underground and meet "Dr. Satan". There was only one problem though, the woman whose house they normally went through had decided that enough was enough.

So the woman will not let them through. She claims that they have trounced through her house one too many times, and that they should probably leave. Of course, being the party that they are they decide to grapple her, and force their way through. This does not go as planned though, as they hear a rumbling sound coming from inside the house.

An ogre, a large, brutish infuriated ogre comes charging in from the house, and everyone prepares for the oncoming storm. The knight is busy wrestling with the woman, and rushes inside to allow his party members past. Unfortunately he had already blocked the skeleton and the dragon shaman from coming in, and now it was the ogre's turn.

He takes a mighty swing at the dragon, and misses. Truly exciting stuff. Now the druid has a brilliant plan, he will transform into an eagle. That is his plan. Then the rest of the party converges on the ogre, with the knight tossing the woman away, who then tries to escape. The druid then swoops in and takes a good swing at her.

This swing is extremely effective, quite literally cutting her head off with the critical hit table. Now the ogre wants revenge for this callous act, and proceeds to murder him. One hit and he is down, out, and splattered all over the wall. The rest of the party take down the ogre, but it was all for no avail, as their beloved comrade has dies. Oh wait, they don't care.

No they proceed to Dr. Satan's secret base, and deposit their corpses, proceeding back to the main city for more destruction. A brilliant plan is construed, to raise the cast offs of the cit into a frenzy, and to collapse the government to the best of their abilities. This goes swimmingly as their gather information checks lead them to the sewers, where they meet their guide to the underground, one bard named John. Q. Everyman. They returned to the surface to acquire weapons for their coup.

To Me My Bears!

The session had to be shortened for various reasons, so this may be brief. The party hexblade rolled up a new druid, as pertaining to his recent death. This took about way too long, so there's that.

But we begin in the druid camp, with everyone getting ready to leave, with their bears. After a few more hours spent training bears they are ready to depart, and decide to try to cut off the magistrate or king at the pass. They travel through the woods, with some difficulty, because of their bears. They now encounter some frogs, larger than expected.

These frogs are not too difficult, the big ones die in a couple hits, and the small ones die in one. The small ones are also poison, dealing a small amount of con damage to the totemist. The giant frogs though were able to eat both the dwarf samurai and the party warlock, dealing minimum damage excluding the psychological trauma.

The next encounter is with some skeletons in a tomb, just outside of a long forgotten town. This crypt houses 4 skeletal champions, who deal a good amount of damage to everyone in the party. The warlock is damaged by the engineer smacking him across the face with a slab of concrete due to a critical fail. The druids new lizard is also severely damaged, even brought to the brink of unconsciousness. This is where we had to end unfortunately, so this is where we end.

Murder, Arson, and Jaywalking

We wake up from last week's session to a rather fortunate situation. The two people recently dead, are no longer as much. This is due to a little help from a little friend. The party Tank now has regeneration, at the cost of having a little person living inside his chest, and the druid is made of dire badger parts, giving him more resilience. They are also now working under a new master besides chaos, giving a little bit of direction to a lot of unlawful deeds.

Their first task is simply to cause chaos, kill a few things, burn things, steal things. This is mostly business as usual, but now they have a reward for it. They first decide to find a tavern, and have a good old fashioned tavern brawl. So they arrive at the first inn they saw, called the Full Mug, and the party druid smacks the first person he can.

He misses, no one is surprised. However after the imitative rolls are over he gets a second attempt, and hits and brings down the barkeep's son, but that is all he does. Next the rest of the bar attacks the party, seeing as they violated the sacred pact between tavern owner and party. This doesn't end up too well for them, leaving three roasted, two sliced, and several more with bashed in heads.

The only one moderately successful in their venture is the bartender, who manages to punch and grapple the druid. The druid however has a brilliant plan, and moves his flaming sphere into his space, burning him and the keeper. This ends in what could be called a win, both unconscious at the same time, but the party to support him, with the bartender left on ice, or fire as the case may be.

There is quite a lot of fire too, given that the party knight decided to burn down the tavern, not their best plan as the guards have been brought in. These guards are summarily dealt with, by running away. Plan Alpha it was, use a fog cloud and then sprint away as fast as they could go. And so they did. I ruled that this did count as besting the encounter, and this was enough to push them over and level up. This ended the session, with everyone happy with their new levels, and prepared to fight for a new day.

Lizards and Swandives Part 1: The Pyramid of Zombies

Last year I ran a campaign which stretched roughly from the beginning of March to the middle of January. This was mostly a weekly game, with about 3 two week breaks. This campaign began with 5 players, one dropped out, and another joined. The players were one Paladin of Freedom, one Paladin of Tyranny, one Sorcerer, one Rogue, and one Dread Necromancer later changed to a Warmage. It was an interesting party to say the least. We started at level 2, because at level one a brisk breeze will kill you.

We begin the tale exiting a city, setting off through a tunnel a few miles out of town looking for some heroes. This was sort of a throwback to an older game, where the goal was to look for heroes, though this was quite a bit more exhaustive. This cave had two interesting occurrences; the party rogue was mauled, and almost killed by a dire rat, and the party necromancer managed to roll three 20s and send a different rat off the plane of existence. So there was that, in an encounter which should really have been just an attack here, an attack there, showing that this would be a bit more than a normal game.

The tunnel opened up to a beautiful jungle vista, hinting there may be something more to this world. The party descended down a small cliff face, and began a journey through the jungle, no immediate end goal in mind, just hoping to find something. The first thing they find on this expedition is a small tribe of lizard folk, less than 100. These lizard folk are all green, and are at war with another tribe of blue lizard folk.

They decide they need a decent army, and challenge the chief and his top advisers to a battle. He accepts, and we have an interesting arena fight between the paladins and the rogue, and the three leaders. So after winning this fight the only one who spoke lizard folk was in fact the rogue, but the paladin of freedom had the most leadership potential. Fights were had because of this.

By now they had made no progress unto the main goal, and decided to wander around trying to find the missing heroes. They stumble upon an enormous structure, essentially a Mayan pyramid, and decide to investigate inside. Their first encounter, aside from the traps which the rogue easily disarmed, was with members of the blue tribe. The party rogue had a plan though, and led one of them away, using a little bit of sweet talk.

Now murder was his next goal, and by slaughtering the lizard every so carefully, he managed to construct a full body mask out of his skin. This was quite a surprise to the other lizards, as well as the party, when at an opportune moment he erupted out of the skin, sneak attacking a few lizards on the way. I believe the term used was erupting out of his ass. So these scouts easily dispatched they decided to adventure downstairs, where they believed the treasure to be. This was a slight mistake though, as they got more than they bargained for from a Shelob impersonator.

This proved an interesting encounter, as opposed to the fairly standard ones which we had had so far. The fact that it was crawling on the ceiling meant they could just barely reach it, and had to adapt to new tactics. Once the ferocious beast was down, they now had to contend with a dinosaur downstairs. This being a Megaraptor, it jumped all over the place making for another different fight. It’s hopping around was entertaining, given that they had to run after it whenever it moved, but in the end victory was had.

Then came the looting. There was actually a treasure vault hiding behind the monster, and much cheering was had after this discovery. This made the trip already a fruitful venture, but there had to be more. There was too, as they traveled back to a staircase leading up that they had missed before. I should point out too at this point, that they had captured a member of the blue reptilian race, and had been leading him along for a fair while.

The next encounter was an enormous statue which they were forced to climb, made especially difficult with the full plate wearing paladins. This was also difficult because of the steadily rising water level. The reward was worth it though, as they emerged to the top of the pyramid, bearing a large gold idol, which they then rolled down the pyramid. Their tactic to get down themselves was to used summon zombie to create a cushy cushion to land on. This worked as well as expected, and everyone left alive.

 The only thing they forgot was the lizard.

Epitaph for the Fallen

The party began the day in a forest with 5 members, and ended with 4. The loss was not a major one emotionally, but physically the tole was felt. Even still it was not a bad day, even if no loot was to be had. It began with everyone strolling through the forest not a care in the world, who eventually ran into the scouts for a contingent of armed men. With these men, the king who they had been searching for. Excellent cried the party, this is wonderful.

It was not so wonderful though, as they realized when they had found him, in that there was no real reward to be had, and they had no real plan. What they did offer though, was to attack a town taken over by druids for him, as part of there ever lasting quest for rupees. They also managed to convince him to spare some of his men for their surprise attack. A cunning ploy really, unfortunately they forgot that druids were fairly well attuned with the trees.

So they managed to successfully get to the other side of the town, and sneak, sneak, sneak there way in. Only problem was, a large wood figure stood in the way. This wood figure would eventually lead to their downfall, him and his splinters. This wood figure was immune to the warlock's petty magics, and did not take kindly to being shot by one. He proceeded to charge in, smash some people, and explode with splinters, doing massive damage to everyone, and leaving him unharmed. This is when everyone got a little bit worried.

Still, they outnumbered him 15 to 1, they had a good chance so they said, we can beat him so they said, that won't kill me so they said. Everyone has their turns, volleyed are shot, and golems are thrusted at, but all in a vain attempt. The golem then smashes down the hexblade, leaving him on the wrong side of consciousness. He also dealt significant damage to the samurai, and prepared for an explosive finale the next turn. Now the attempts were even more desperate, with even the warlock resorting to his crossbow to damage it, and again, it all was for naught. One more explosion sent a good portion of the line sprawling, leaving few alive to tell the tale.

Those who were alive and conscious included the totemist and the samurai, as well as the warlock. Not alive including the PC, the hexblade. A rather unfortunate turn of events. This is when the golem decided this was a great time to smack them both, just putting them at -1 health. Now it was up to the final line of NPCs to deal with him, him having only one HP left. And that was the exact number of damage they dealt to him, one damage, just enough to bring him down.

Health potions shared all around, and everyone got up. They then planned a variety of shenanigans, ultimately resulting in them selling out the king to the druids. This worked wonderfully, resulting in only the king and a few personal guards alive, and a huge battlefield full of death. Hip, Hip, Horrah.

                                                   Like this, but times 100, and in a forest.

A Forest Full of Foul Fiends

Walking along paths is always fun, so we begin with that. The party marches on, and on and on, attempting to catch up with the "king" and his rupees. This plan goes alright, except for the little problems of the animals. As they continue going south they see more and more people traveling north, indicating perhaps that something is wrong. Turns out there are some crazy animals on the loose, and the destruction of everything they know has in fact driven them away.

The first  beast we encounter is an enormous boar, something like that there on the side. This thing attempts to impale one of them, but the zerg rush does enormous damage to him, and the pile is victorious. Unfortunately this is not very long lived, as four smaller boars slowly approach, not looking too happy This would actually not be too much of an issue if the party had any decent source of healing. So the boars all deal decent damage, about 30 or 40 to the party all round, but this is just a taster compared to what happens next. Soon they face what can only be described as the most fearsome creature in D&D.

But before we do that, we start with the carving of weapons, shoulder pads, and codpieces. A boar's tusk is nothing to be sneezed at, and  a weapon made out of that could be fairly deadly, so they begin with that. The warlock wants pauldrons made of the smaller boars skulls, unfortunately one botched craft check later and he has silly looking doodads sticking to his shoulders. The totemist then declares he needs a fierce codpiece made of one of the big boars tusk's, and one of the smaller's skulls. This is in fact a sucess, and it is given the affectionate name 'thrusty'. The other tusk is made into a decent sized club for the engineer.

The next fight was against the most terrifying beasts in all the land. Owlbears. Just two of them, but still a fairly difficult encounter with everyone already damaged. The fight didn't start off to well, with the totemist knocked out fairly early on, losing the primary source of damage. The warlock is again up a tree, firing eldritch blasts down, and missing a huge amount, a new feeling for him. Before any damage is dealt to the actual owlbears everyone but the engineer and the warlock are out, and the engineer is not doing too well. Surprisingly they do manage to win the battle, with only minimal assistance from a passing family. So with that encounter done everyone levels up and we end the session.

Machinations of the Mysterious Kind

After a long break we begin again with some troublesome combat. See the party, plus a rogue and a dwarf warrior begin by facing two huge monstrous centipedes, both dead. The dead can still fight on occasion, so we everyone rolls for initiative, and the game begins.

So the fight starts off with everyone charging, then realizing what a bad idea it is, given the relative strengths of these monsters. They do some minor damage, but take major hits as well, especially the party knight, who is knocked out twice and single hits manage to bring just about everyone below half health.

Luckily the tide turns for the better when they take down one, and zerg rush the other to a satisfactory conclusion, while healing everyone to full health before they journey on. Given the choice of two doors they choose the larger doors, which are locked, providing further evidence for their direction. Of course their handy rogue is able to pick the lock, and they can then charge in recklessly.

To the surprise of many they did not do just that, they actually planned a box formation, allowing only one in and the ability to gang up and destroy him. This would have went well if they had not underestimated the enemies they were facing. Upon opening the door the party druid, somehow taking the leader role, spots several caged mutants, a few just kind of standing around, and one mad scientist type dude.

So he quickly shuts the door, and sends an entangle that way too, because why not. Unfortunately the caged mutants had wings, and were released before he could really do anything. They begin flying, at quite a fast speed towards him, and unfortunately his hasty retreat does nothing to save him. The thing flying at him was essentially the thing at the side there, but with a grabbing tentacle and only 2 hands. This grabbing tentacle grasped him and tossed him over to the workbench by the scientist, at less than -10, but not yet dead. This will play a part later, in the machinations of the world. So they fight this thing, manage to actually kill it, only to be overwhelmed by a second one.

This was the final straw for the rogue who took his opportunity, and back stabbed the party ranger to an untimely unconsciousness. This was followed by the dwarf stabbing the dragon shaman draining his last bits of health, and the knight being smashed deep into the negatives. The party reaper was then grappled, and we ended it there, a fate uncertain.

The Unbelievably Late Tales of Some Rooms

Sorry for such a late post, I lost quite a lot of ambition as the year dragged to a halt, and the ability to perceive things just kind of faded. But, assuming my memory has not completely died, I will try to recount what happened in the final sessions of the term.

So we began the session as we last left off, with the first party having just met up with some dwarves, making a party of 8, and 2 animals. The next obvious option was to go into the next room, by way of ladder. In the previous room lay the corpses of the recently slain abominations. So the druid is decided upon to go and check for traps, a decision made by no one but himself. As expected it did not go well. He fell down a pit, as did his dire badger, Mr. Snuffles.

So now he is in a jail cell, similar to one from a few weeks ago, and needs to find a way to get up the 15 feet. The rest of the party formulates a fairly exhaustive and much discussed plan and how to get across this pit, and after much derision, but no name calling, they decide to have the dragon shaman just kind of jump and float his way over, which he does admirably. Now the process of building a rope bridge begins.

Unfortunately down in the pit someone/thing has taken notice of Mr. Snuffles, and sidles over to the cage to investigate, slowly opening the door. Druid's response is fog, lots of fog, everlasting, all-enveloping fog. This goes exactly as well as planned, mayhaps even better for the druid, since he finds the rope the dragon shaman, threw down, and manages to climb out of the pit. Hurrah. So we now have 2 party members on one side of the pit, 6 on the other, and neither has any idea as to what is happening.

Luckily the druid has gust of wind prepared, so swoosh and much of the fog is gone, the party can see! Unfortunately there is still a fairly substantial pit in the way, and a rope bridge may not cut it. So they attempt to cross, but some fall in, oh no. So eventually all the PCs excepting the druid and scythe wielder are in the pit, and the druid is chucking stones down.

I do believe I forgot to mention the scythe wielder in my last post, he is skeleton warrior type, who likes to be referred to as death, and the party believes is the dragon shaman's pet, so he is accepted. This is the bard player's new character. So back to the pit, the druids throwing stones, hitting his allies a good chunk of the time, and just about everyone is missing down there. Eventually the beast does fall, with only minor cuts and bruises, and everyone manages to climb the rope to get out of the pit. So they then proceed to march to the next door, ever so cautiously open it, and see two enormous centipedes in the next room. Fin. I really hope to finish this to some degree of completeness soon.


The second party's tale is not quite so exciting, mainly consisting of wandering around for a few in game days, and finding out bits and pieces. The most eventful confrontation consists of a combat with 2 praying mantis, similar to the one before. These use a more open approach though, and charge straight at them, followed by the party counter charging. The samurai does his awesome charge smite attack, and manages to smite himself with his one. Not to be overshadowed by some puny mortals, the praying mantis manages to crit himself, followed by a 100 on the 100 sided die. This results in decapitation, with little chance of a saving throw. So he killed himself, but he killed himself really damn well.

We also had some journeys down the road, as the party charges towards certain...something, they're not sure quite what, and neither am I, but it sure as hell will be exciting. They meet with a merchant on the road, mug him, and drive his mule off, much to the consternation of certain party members. Sorry this was kind of a brief description, the session was kind of phoning it in, and to be honest I'm not really sure what happened, that week is mostly a haze for me.

Next Come the Flies

So the second party is now celebrating their victory over the innumerable zombies, and decide they they need to take the initiative, and and after healing up they strut out to finish off the necromancer for ever. This goes exactly as well as they expect it to, surprising everyone.

So they don't meet any opposition on their way to the necromancer, and find him, or something that could be him, discussing some matters of utmost importance with his comrades, some wolves. Using their keen senses they discover he is lamenting the absence of someone, or some large group of somethings, and they manage to convince themselves that full out Leroy Jenkinsing is the answer.

The more sneaky members, the rogue and totemist, try to sneak up behind while the others, samurai, warlock, and engineer just stand there pelting ranged attacks. This works well, until the rogue is sneak attacked by a zombie, and has a fight almost to the death with it. This is a cause for alarm, as the rest of the group grapples, literally in the totemist's case, with the wolves. Now the necromancer at this point has hit the warlock with a negative level, a decently long lasting debuff.

The totemist then springs out, grappling the dwarf, who being a wizard is not too good at hand to hand, biting him repeatably until he eventually crits his face off. The wolves at this point are heavily damaged or dead, and so are easily dealt with. Next comes the wolves, and they go down fairly easily, though the lone zombie manages his escape, a fairly might task for a mindless undead. Then comes the loot gathering, gaining one enchanted chain shirt, and one pair of enchanted bracers.

Now they find some more tracks leading them to a small shrine to Nerull, the death god. They are not immediately aware of this, and are not too weary of the pool of dark, almost black, liquid nearby. The warlock's first response is actually to drink it, followed by a confirmation of this request. This actually works out alright, even though he permanently poisons himself with the taint of evil, but gains the ability to make all knowledge checks, and gains a bonus to initiative. So they decide to stopper up a bottle of this stuff, just in case.

They then go back to town asking everyone they see if they can tell them what it is, but most people don't know, this is when they discover a kobold hiding away, with knowledge of just about everything adding at least +20 to his d20 die roll. This results in quite a few answers, though quite a few questions too. Also I feel I should mention that the party totemist is cursed to not see humans, by the necromancer, and it may take a while for this to be cured.

So they do all this, rest up regaining their spells and such, though the party warlock has a slightly less restful night than normal. So then they decide to go back to the shrine, and see what they can do from here. Unfortunately on the way there they are surprised by an enormous praying mantis, approximately the size of a horse. This surprise enables it to grab the rogue, shake him a bit, then have the rogue get hit by a javelin from the party, disposing of the now -6 health rogue. This rogue was also fairly high up, and took 2d6 falling damage from this, giving him a 90% change of dying. I decided he could roll for this, given that it was a life and death situation.


He made it, he got snake eyes, something in all other situations would be bad, but here saved his life. So he lived, but so did the mantis, and it soon flew over to the party warlock, picked him up, and flew away, then proceeded to drop him, bringing him all the way down to -6. The party samurai then threw his short sword with all his might, actually hitting and killing the mantis, resulting in it almost falling on the warlock, doing 3 damage and just about killing him. So this CR3 threat fighting a level 4 party managed to down 2 of them. It was fairly impressive. And then it was over.

It'll be the end of the world as we know it (But I'm a fucking dragon)

So we began play with the party knight in a bit of a pickle, surrounded by kobolds and a dwarf with guns. This was resolved fairly speedily however, with a big stick and some assistance from officer Snuffles, of the dire badger division.

So the dwarf was mostly strewn across the back wall, one kobold missing an arm, one missing a head, and one beaten to the ground with a magic stick. So that was mission accomplished, even though there was supposed to be no murder involved, meerly taking them in. But whats done is done so it's time to get the reward. They search the dwarf and find several explosive packs and an ever-full mug, things which could be useful, but maybe not right now.

So they return to the chief of the town guard, get their payment, and return to the guild, content to sleep and restore their spells Here they discover the thief they helped to arrest earlier, and are on guard, given he probably wants revenge. They throw him up against a wall, but still hear what he has to say, given he broke out of prison to do it.

He warns them of a great evil brewing, something that would disrupt the power between good and evil, and throw the world into a new layer of hell. They decide to take his word on that and with his assistance, and some basic supplies, journey down into the under-city. They again go to the woman's house, knock on her door, and go through her basement despite the lamentations of the women.

So they continue down, and eventually find their way to the room they were in last, containing one enormous centipede corpse and one small alone kobold wizard. He casts his spell, makes some more centipedes, but they take him down with surprising ease, killing his centipedes with one blow, and the wizard himself only taking 2 hits. They then, after taking his stuff, proceeded down the stairs that alluded them before, and met with some kindly dwarves killing one of the monstrosities from before.

So they meet the dwarves, do a bit of talking, and then they all join up for a decent sized party of 8 people and 2 animals. They then move into the next room containing 1 large mutant and 1 small one, as well as two acid spitting cats. These are again quickly dealt with Coup de Grace dealing with the regeneration and one hit bringing down the cats. Then the end, we continue for the stunning conclusion next week.

Rat Queen

 I'm sure everyone who played with me last year remembers the giant rat spewing blob of flesh. Well here are its stats, as I don't think I will use it again, but was pretty happy with how it turned out. I also planned to make a rat behemoth, essentially a colossal version of this that spewed out rat queens, which then made more babies. But that was not really feasible, because by that point the individual rats would be destroyed by fireballs and the like, so I just stuck with this. So without further ado the rat queen.

Rat Queen
Large Animal
HD 10d8 + 63 (108)
Speed 5 ft. (1 squares)
Init -4
AC 15 (-1 size, -4 Dex, +10 natural); touch 5; flat-footed 15
BAB +7; Grp +11
Attack Bite +6 (1d8 plus disease)
Full-Attack Bite +6 (1d8 plus disease)
Space 10 ft.; [b]Reach[/b] 5 ft.
Special Attacks Belch, Death Throes
Special Qualities Damage Reduction 5/-, low-light vision, scent, resistance to acid, cold, electricity, and fire 5
Saves Fort +11 Ref +3 Will +11
Abilities Str 10, Dex 3, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 10, Cha 5
Skills Spot +13, Listen +13
Feats Toughness, Improved Toughness, Endurance, Steadfast Determination
Environment Underground
Organization Hive (1 Rat Queen + 5-100 Dire Rats)
Challenge Rating 5
Treasure Standard
Alignment Neutral
Advancement 11-20 (large), 21-30 (huge)
Level Adjustment -

An abomination stands before you, a grotesque heap of flesh, with ratlike claws and feet, and a grotesque head almost dog like. Its belly is constantly wriggling, pregnant with some unknown horrors, and occasionally it seems to scream inaudibly.

Rat Queens are heavily mutated dire rats, from living beneath powerful magical locations, or just insane wizard experiments. Rat queens are rotund, with about a 5 foot radius, demented limbs sticking out from its spherical body.

Combat

A Rat Queen rarely if ever attacks with its bite attack using it as a last resort, and sometimes not even then. It can barely move, slowly rolling its way away from danger, while belching out followers to defend it.

Disease (Ex): Filth Fever-bite, Fortitude DC 15, incubation period 1d3 days, damage 1d3 Dex and 1d3 Con. The save DC is constitution based.

Belch (Ex): Every 1d4 rounds a Rat Queen can eject out 1d4+1 Dire Rats, in the squares adjacent if possible, and if not the nearest squares determined randomly. For every rat produced roll a d6, and on a 6 the creature has either the spellwarped or the horrid template, roll to determine which.

Death Throes (Ex): On death the Rat Queen releases 2d4+2 rats, each with a half chance of having a template.

Man, We Suck at Being Evil

So we begin the session in the midst of chaos, an enormous battle unfolding as the final fate of the town is decided. This did take a while to get off the ground, because painfully reassembling the exact locations from last week was not an easy task. But then it began the fight for guts and glory, and before the days end there were a lot of guts.

So the first focus of the action is on the ogre and the engineer dueling, one with a large stick, the other with an even bigger stick. There was an experienced fighter, but he lost a large quantity of his face to the first hit, so was quickly taken out of the fight. The engineer would have easily been brought down and killed, if not for the timely intervention of the High priestess, healing him for as much if not more than he was being damaged. This fight was joined by the totemist, three heads flailing, dealing a moderate amount of damage to the ogre. This fight lasted for a while, and a particularly strong hit from the ogre brought the engineer down to unconsciousness, though he was quickly revived by the priestess. The final blow was an enormously powerful hit from the engineer, severing the ogre in twain, giving the engineer a better, heavier, messier weapon.

On another side of the battlefield the party warlock ran into some trouble with a bear. This bear could climb, and climbed up to where he was, mauling him for significant damage. The warlock fled, as one does, and managed to evade the bear, leading to him landing right in the middle of the two other fronts, read to maul any who came near.

This leads us to the tale of these two fronts, one of wolves and one of humanoids. Be aware these are all zombies, and fast ones at that, think 28 days Later not Night of the Living Dead. So the samurai, with a cleric, fighter, and warrior try to hold off the five wolves, which is made difficult as their barricade is destroyed by fire. This was the result of an ineffective molotov cocktail, and led to just about everyone but the samurai being killed. The wolves smashed their way through the barricade, dealing fairly major damage to all present, excluding the cleric, and then proceed to systematically kill all but the samurai, who is a PC. One critical hits and eviscerates the warrior, another slowly rips apart the cleric, and the fighter is pursued by one as he attempts to flee. This is compounded by the bear.

The bear actually took its time getting down, enabling the other front to be defended for a small while. Six zombies versus a monk, hexblade (The PC), cleric, and warrior. The warrior is the first to go down, right at the same time the bear arrives, clambering over the barricade. He was ripped apart by one of the stronger zombies, after being healed by the cleric, just to hang on a little longer. The hexblade now maneuvers his way over to the bear, and attempts to damage it. These attempts are largely unsuccessful, missing at least twice as much as he hit. Once the monk went down over here it really started to collapse, as had the front line and main defence.

See the front line consisted of sword and shield guys at the front and longspeared commoners at the back, a decent plan, but their first action is to charge the zombies, two of them getting ones and falling or dropping their weapons, and the others missing completely. The zombies responded a bit better, doing significant damage and that was simply the warm up. When the peasants came in is when the real meat grinder started. With no PC backup they were fish food, even with the captain of the guard, he just didn't take up that much room. So the zombies managed to slip around and feast on these commoners, as well as batter down the front line, leaving little left alive. At long last the ogre was slain, and the totemist came to help, but it was pretty much over by that point, only the captain was left alive.

So this looks bad for the heroes, having defeated at most 1/4 of the zombies, and having lost most if not all their NPC help. But all is not lost, as the bear falls due to everyone concentrating on it, eventually simply swarming it, though the hexblade did lose consciousness, he was again brought back up, through all the healing concentrated on him. The zombies were also fairly easily defeated once the main threats had been dealt with, namely the ogre and the bear. So their was victory in the end, at the cost of 3 clerics, 5 commoners, 2 tavern owners, and 5 warriors.

The town leader, high priestess, one lower order cleric, and all the PCs manged to survive. And they leveled up, so all was happy in the end. Though there was still a little something to deal with... Oh right, the necromancer. But that will have to be left until next session, as the week comes to an end, as do the lives of many a brave man.

Snakes, Why did it have to be Snakes

We begin the session as we last left off, in the midst of an epic combat. Our intrepid heroes, (bard, dragon shaman, knight, druid and ranger) fighting an enormous zombified centipede. Also zombified is totally a word, no matter what the spell checker says.

So the fight progresses normally for a turn, hits being exchanged on both sides, nothing abnormal. Then the bard decides to charge in with his 5 health, yes he hit, and for some damage, but something bad was bound to happen. And it did. The bard was ripped in half by the centipede's (Which can have between 20 and 300 legs) mandibles. This was quite a surprise to everyone, especially to me given on average damage I wouldn't kill him, but I rolled max.

So now the dragon shaman stabs him one more time, and manages to take down his one hit point that he had left, and the battle is over. Everyone levels up, yay! Except for the unfortunate bard. So after that is done, and some significant time is spent on it, we proceed to the next great encounter, a wizard descending from the ceiling.

This wizard immediately begins summoning centipedes, smaller ones, but still man sized, and still fairly dangerous. The party decides a fighting retreat is the best way to get out of here, and it almost works, but the knight gets critted by one of the centipedes, and is stunned for 4 rounds, bringing him down and out for quite a while. Meanwhile the others are fighting to the best of their ability, but the wizard is summoning more centipedes, and can not be hurt by arrows or thrown stones.

So the druid runs in and begins dragging the knight, at a whole five feet per round. This does actually end up working alright, as everyone else escapes with their lives, though not much else. They return to there guild for much needed healing, and go looking for a quest, which they decide is better than wandering around aimlessly. But first the druid and the ranger need new animal companions, so they go to a pet store. The conditions at this place, more  of a livestock storage area than store are not good, so the druid burns it to the ground while saving the animals, except for a snake who he hates for some reason.


Anyway they find several jobs, but the one that strikes their interest is the rogue guard, not of the rogue class, who has holed himself up with some firearms. The find the place, and try talking to him. This doesn't go so well, as they lost their only member decent at diplomacy, so it is up to them to fight it out. So after attempting to leave the party knight gets shot, and pissed off, and charges the door while trying to smash it down. He gets shot a couple more times for his trouble, but breaks down the door successfully, and we then had to end the session, as real life got in the way.

Night of the Dead

So today's, (Well yesterday's) session went fairly well, with everything I was hoping for to be accomplished. We started out by finishing off the few zombies from last week, with the cleric character changing back to a samurai, and the ninja changing to a rogue/fighter.

So the zombies are dead, but everyone is on low health, with absolutely no means of healing. Later they discover they have 2 healing potions, but right now they have nothing, and multiple people in the single digits. They press on anyway determined to kill whoever is causing this. Now they come up to a small stone bridge, which they are immediately suspicious of, based on the fact that I actually showed them what was here. So the brilliant warlock thinks there might be something hiding under the bridge, and so climbs his way, under the bridge.

This surprisingly does not go well, as he is attacked by zombies and almost pulled into the water. Here there are 4 zombies, and later a dire rat zombie all intent on killing the party. So two of the water zombies manage to grab onto the warlock, but with a manly scream the others come to help, and manage to pull him out. This is when the real fight starts.

Of course the warlock's first action is to run up a tree and hide. Something which he does admirably. The rest of the party then gets their weapons out and fights for their life. The enemies immediately gang up on the recently changed ninja, bringing him down to fairly low health. This is when the rat comes from behind for a sneak attack, doing a little bit of damage to the engineer.

Now the zombies do actually manage to bring the rogue down, and damage a few of the others bringing some doubt to the plan of continuing on. This is further enforced by the warlock's scouting, seeing at least a dozen zombies, including a bear. So running away is the obvious course of action.

They get back to the town and get healed up by the clerics, essentially running them all out of spell slots for the day. Then they hole up in the inn and prepare for sleep. The next day is when things really get serious, the town defence is prepared and a small militia is created. This consists of about 11 weak guys, 3 clerics, 2 lieutenants, and one leader cleric and one leader fighter. So they have a fairly formidable force, and manage to set up barricades to funnel the enemy down a chokepoint.

Now I had them make spot checks, lots of spot checks to see if they saw anything. This was an attempt to create some tension, I'm not sure how well it worked. Then boom, a large amount of zombies swarm. These aren't ordinary zombies though, they are faster than a normal human, as well as stronger. More like 28 days later than Night of the Living Dead. So they smack into the rogue who was used as bait, and he runs away, leading them into the small line of militia. Wolves now arrive from the west, and an ogre smashes through their barricade to the east. This is unfortunately where it ended, though I hope to resume next session with the same positioning and stuff through use of pictures.

So the party now consists of an engineer 3, Samurai 3, Rogue 1/Fighter 2, Warlock 3, and Totemist 3.

Journey To the Center of the Dog

We begin today's session as everyone is rested up and healed, and now that we have health potions it is time to go back to where we were a few days ago. Again this is for no real reason, just a personal curiosity, some hope to discover something.

Before this however they met a little assassin, intent on taking the orc from a few quests back's life. This was accomplished with a magical arrow,  and a nice 20 on the to hit roll. So the assassination a success he tried to flee but was run down by the party knight, though the knight failed his bullrush miserably and was pushed back.
The party ranger then sinks a shot into both the knight and the assassin putting the murderer down, but the knight only down a few hit points. They then left the corpse of their ally and his killer on the street, since they couldn't decide what to do with them otherwise.

So after discovering that they have no idea how to go back to the barrel room they decide to go to the woman's house from before, with the centipedes. Of course they expect no centipedes for some reason, so go in and wander about for a little while. Of course what they do is they run into some centipedes. Specifically 2 large ones and about 6 smaller ones. These are dealt with with a fair amount of ease, but doubt sets in about future combats, especially if there are a large number of them.

Next they wander about for a bit and discover another huge room containing another huge centipede. This one is a little different from the last however, because this one is dead. Well really undead but the point is is that it is different. That, combined with a few other walking corpses make for a moderately difficult fight. This is compounded by the limited area and the party tank having relatively few hit points. The fight starts off with the knight and his KNIGHT'S CHALLENGE against the centipede, giving him a little bonus to attack and damage.

The druid proceeded to use a flaming sphere which just about everyone dodged, then switched to smacking people with his stick. These zombies were headless orc corpses, something which may be relevant in the future. So they managed to fight the centipede to a standstill, winning mainly because they had the action economy enabling them to get 5 hits in for its every one, even if its attacks really hurt. And that is where we ended, the centipede aliveish and kicking, and the party locked in desperate combat.