A Typical Day

So far the day has been eventful. I couldn't say what a typical day is like for adventurers, but most don't involve fighting zombie pirates as well as mimics and gargoyles. A whole range one might say, and one that I'm not particularly fond of, especially mimics, who's adhesive is simply impossible to get off. I'll start from where I left off last time. We were setting off for parts unknown, and I enchanted my armor and the warrior's weapon. I am now wearing a mithral twilight chain shirt, of admirable quality. Before the end of this it shall be fearsome too, but for now it is merely protection.

Coming to an island we know little about and we find a few seemingly wrecked ships. Naturally our small fleet goes to investigate but are attacked by cannons from those ships. An unexpected predicament, but given what we've been through we are prepared. We set the flagship for ramming speed, and crashed into the first ship while our other two, more heavily armed vessels proceeded to take apart the other two ships. Upon closer inspection there were some strange undead folk aboard the opposing ships, not unlike me though far less intelligent.

The party still does not know of my condition, though I believe the Inquisitor suspects. As of yet it has not been a problem, but sometimes they arise with something like this. I will have to be careful of who reads this diary. Nevertheless my master of necromancy allows me some degree of control over the non-living, forcing them to cower in fear before me. The rest of the crew, including the new shipwright who doesn't seem to know the first thing about building ships, but is a veritable minotaur in a fight, clean up the rest with little difficulty, though the ship slowly sinks from both our cannons and the defeat of her crew members.

Luckily our druid friend has the ability to transform into animals, and once the battle is done he descends to the bottom of the sea and returns with a chest of treasure. This however turned out to be false, and I was glad we had the warrior try to open it, because it sprung up and attacked him. I quickly cowed it into submission, and as it was cowering the shipwright smashed it across the deck, breaking it apart. This done we set up for the island and came upon a wondrous sight.

In the center of an enormous waterfall stood a castle, enormous in size and equally mysterious, it floated over a graveyard of ships, so many drowned at the bottom of the waterfall. Had we not some experienced crew members it may have been us as well, but we landed safely at a small docking platform, though the tower was not unattended. We unfortunately had to leave two of our ships behind, but they will be safe with a good number of crew and cannons.

Just outside of this building was two gargoyles, imposing but not particularly deadly, until they rose up and attacked. Using one of my newly acquired spells I summoned an enormous skeleton to saw through one of their bones, and it did so magnificently, quickly silencing it. The other was quickly dispatched by the party and we quickly moved on. After breaking through several doors we were faced with an obstacle, a bridge filled with holes.

Luckily several of our party were trained enough to leap the gap, and pull the rest of us along. With that done we blew through the wall to the next room and faced a Bulette. A fearsome beast, with four legs and enormous plating, luckily it was not so study on its feet when a patch of grease appeared beneath it, and was quickly felled while it lay on the ground. Unfortunately it had company, and several orcs, and another Bulette arrived in the room.

By this point I was running low on energy, only able to cast the most basic of spells, though my aura of intimidation still scared some of the foes. The orcs quickly retreated, and we stood victorious. Now there were multiple paths, so we split up to cover more ground quickly. The warrior, mercenary captain, and warlock came with me to pursue the fleeing orcs, and arrive in a large ballroom lavishly decorated. The orcs refused to listen to diplomacy, and fled again.

We followed and found an aberrant being, part man and part far realms creature, who we were able to defeat with relative ease, though he was a spellcaster who summoned an ape to defend himself, I must investigate that further. Unfortunately I must leave off now, I will write more when I have time.

Jail Break

Have you ever woken up and seen the world in an entirely new light? Now I have, as I opened my eyes and saw everything as it truly was. The world is made of fools,  fools who live until they die, and that is that. I have defeated this, and though it was a painful experience, and difficult, now I defy all those who believe in a life span. My life is endless, and I will never let anyone attempt to do otherwise. They will all fear me, especially if they find out what I truly am. But they always fear what they don't understand, so some day when they all realize the superiority of the undead they will submit.

We recently acquired a few new members to our small party, as well as a new ship. But as I left off in the last entry we were fleeing from a large number of guards who refused to retreat even when shown true fear. The warlock, the warrior and I ran from the mob, while the druid flew overhead providing aerial information. Unfortunately when we reached the gate to enter the dock our boat was in we met with the apparent ruler of this island, a vice admiral. He stood towering above all of us, and demanded we hand over our prisoner, this was not in the plan, and I had run low on spells, with only weak magics left.

What I did have however was a scroll of mists. As we ran up to the gate I unleashed the power within and we were able to escape, though unfortunately the druid's pet was grappled by the man so we had to abandon it. We ran again from the mob but before we got to the ship the druid arrived and reformed into his human shape. He informed us that our crew had been incapacitated and that the Vice Admiral had already arrived on our ship, a most unfortunate situation. We then slept in one of the nearby buildings, and undignified condition but unfortunately unavoidable.

Upon waking we decided the best course of action was to go to the boat where we met up with the inquisitor who had been searching for heretics throughout the night. I don't trust that one, he seems to be adventuring with us only in the belief that we will eventually be adversaries, a precarious situation. As it stood though most of the crew had been taken to prison, with only our mercenary companion still with us. For the next few days we began preparing for the assault on the prison. Prior to actually assaulting the prison we had the inquisitor gain the bounties for both Travis and the warlock.

During that time was when my eyes were opened, as I discovered the city had a substantial underground population, who with the right motivation were able to grant we what I had been searching for. I have not surpassed my master in knowledge, and will not have until I can raise him, but I will outlive him, one way or another. For now however it has granted me unholy resilience, much greater than before, as well as access to a new line of spells, which will allow me to keep an eye on both the party and the crew.

The assault on the jail went much better than expected. We picked the lock on the back door and quickly shut down all resistance through intimidation, leaving not a trail of corpses but merely unconscious guards who would then fear us, and also remember that we spared them. Mercy is not the domain of the weak, but of the intelligent. Upon arriving at the actual cells I created an enormous web disabling almost all of the guards who had bunkered in the room, and intimidating the rest into giving up their weapons.

After stripping the armor and weapons off all these foes we released our crew as well as the motley band of what are in all likelihood rapists and murderers who are now members of our crew. I'll be watching them very closely. But we parted ways with these criminals allowing our pirate captain to guide them safely back to the ship. From here we went to the docks seeking our other prisoner, Travis. Unfortunately once we arrived at the dock we found Reaver, the man from the first island who's boats we destroyed.

Luckily we have grown since then, and were able to utterly demolish his guards and himself. First the druid did a bombing run dropping alchemist's fire and acid destroying the boat they were on nearly completely. Then we created a windstorm forcing the guards to stay on the boat, which was now filled with fire and an inescapable web. They effectively had no chance to escape, and fear tactics destroyed the rest of them.

In the end the Admiral managed to stumble his way out of the burning web, right into the warrior and mercenary, and he was brought to unconsciousness swiftly afterwards. With that we took the fully functional boat that was in this dock and sailed out with everyone, subsequently meeting up with our other two vessels, and setting out for parts unknown.

Instant Class Change

Today I had the second group again, though the classes are a little bit different this time. There is the original warblade, then a warlock replacing the duskblade, a cleric replacing the samurai, and a ninja replacing the rogue. Thus the title.

So we begin on the steps of the keep, just where we left off, with most of the party unconscious, and a few guard corpses around. After some small looting of guards, and a few convenient healing potions everyone was up, and ready to go. So the next course of action is of course to find the cheapest tavern in town, and spend a night there. After a relatively safe night, it was time to go out and get a job, so where would one acquire a job? Of course, at the tavern. Here they learn about someone who has been destroying buildings, and decide to murder him/it, as is the natural response.

So they arrive at the house where he was staying, though at this point they have a sort of a disagreement, as they can't decide whether they want to kill him, or see what his deal is. After knocking on the door, with the warlock spider-climbing his way up to a window. Now they meet the man, though all they can see is an enormous suit of armor, towering above them all by at least a head. This is actually an engineer using mountain plate as his mecharmor, but they don't know that. After the man questions why they're here they realize they don't actually know. So, surprise shurikens. Tink, Tink, no effect. Everyone rolls for initiative, ninja wins, slash slash, again no effect. Everyone in the party actually beat the guys initiative, so they all had their turns, ineffectively stabbing and shooting their way to no gain. The man then rips a huge chunk out of the wall, and smashes the warblade all the way down to 5 health.

This is when the warlock actually got a chance to attack the guy, and since he had 10 touch AC, he hit pretty much every time. This d6 damage didn't seem like a lot, but it did add up, and he began to get annoyed, running up and with one hit knocking the warlock down to -3, and bleeding. This is where the cleric really came in handy, healing the warlock and giving him another attack. Meanwhile the ninja has made many attacks, dealing a grand total of no damage, truly inspiring. The warlock however spider climbs his way up the building, not the best idea considering this guy's reputation, and looses another blast. As a natural response the guy, we'll call him Bill, decides to destroy a large part of the building, causing what I thought would be a fairly easy balance check, which was failed by the warlock. Now was the running time.

Running far, but not quite far enough, then charged down to -8, where he stayed. During this time the warblade was firing arrows at Bill, to little effect, but a lucky crit did enable a good amount of damage, so at this point the guy is almost dead, and is kind of flailing around, still doing damage, but not a great amount. Here comes the ninja again, nobody expecting much, but surprise, sudden strike shuriken and he actually takes Bill down. Now the warblade decides to drag Bill back to the keep, and claim the bounty. So he goes off alone, being the only one who is not a wanted criminal, but is unfortunately assaulted by 3 brigands, who I wasn't really expecting much of, but then I wasn't expecting a 1, and for him to toss his greatsword 50 feet away. So he goes down and unconscious, and loses just about everything but his life. This changes fairly soon.

So, he's pissed, and finds his party and they go on a crusade, busting down doors and such to find these guys. This has no real result, as they were already arrested, and gone. So their quest rendered moot, they go looking for others. They find one, in the case of a shop owner blackmailing another, a simple intimidate and beat up mission. This however goes horribly wrong, when they arrive at the door to find the man's wife, and before anyone can do anything intelligent the chaotic stupid ninja decides to spam shurikens, missing with both, how sad. The warblade then fails to keep the door open, as the woman screams and shoves the door shut. A careful application of force gets them through, and they charge into the basement, the only place she could really have gone. Here they find an ogre, what I though would be a fair challenge.

Well his first move is to just about knock out the warlock, bringing him down to 0 health. Both parties slogged it out, the ogre further knocking out the ninja with some fairly powerful swings. Then the warblade got what was his fifth one for this session, managing to critical hit himself, damaging his strength and con, and bringing him close to death. So the ogre, using his massive strength smashes the warblade right into the ground and down to -18. Death. Oops. They do manage to kill the ogre, and the man's wife, and knock out the shop owner, and this is about where we ended it. Next time they plan to go on a quest for a resurrection spell for their fallen comrade.