The conclusion to one party's partial story

Finally the platform arrives on the heart as before, and they see the god struggling, as if he is waking up, and if he does, it means the end of everything they hold dear, mostly their shop. Unfortunately in the way is something that appears to be an apparition of death, at least he sports the appearance, with a black cloak, scythe, and skeletal claw.

The party has to convince him that the world is worth saving, and that the world ending is not actually for the best. He argues that once the god wakes, everyone will be dead, so he won’t have to claim anymore after. Though this is true, the party still seeks to live, and argues ferociously with the thing that they are best at, words.

To the surprise of everyone this works, they convince this mysterious skeleton that the world is worth saving, that the god needs to be destroyed, and that they should be the ones to do it. So he disappears, and they are left alone with the god. The bard decides he should be the one to do it, and with a mighty stab he pierces the god’s heart, resulting in an enormous explosion of blue light, then nothing.

Then there is a huge crashing, and tumbling. Everyone falls down, and the entire dog appears to shake, and move. What has happened is that the controller of all of these animals has been killed. The cities that everyone had lived on are now collapsing, and everything will change.

So that is the story of a party of adventurers, doing the things they do best, looting, killing and stealing, and in the end doing the right thing, if for the wrong reasons. As for what happens afterwards, well, they make it out of the cave alive, and set out for a new world of discovery and demons, of delirium and desire, of Dungeons and Dragons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Journey From the Center of the Dog.

Today we had what turned out to be a fairly strenuous session, especially for those accustomed to the 15 minute work day.

We started off where we last left off, with the party standing almost fine amongst 4 huge unconscious dwarves. Unfortunately these unconscious guys began getting up almost immediately after the party started celebrating. They had very little health, so were brought down again quickly, but this did not bode well, as they had no real permanent way to bring theses guys down.

Soon after the big bad came clomping his way up, really all he was was a higher level version of what they were fighting, but that didn't stop them from freaking out. So he comes calumphing, which I declare to now be a word, down the hallway, and they all begin worrying. Things are especially bad because the party dragon shaman rolled a 1, which in my group means we reach for the 100 sided die.

See I have a table from one of the dragon magazines giving very interesting results in the case of a critical fail, this being one of them. Unfortunately for the party he rolled high, and managed to critical hit himself, bringing him from a little under half to -6 and dying. Now at this point the boss guy is still down the hallway, so they have a chance to heal the shaman and get out of there.

At this point the bard has only one level one spell left, and the druid only has his magic stones. This is bad, but what is worse is the bard's healing brings the shaman up to -1, 1 less than what he needed to get his healing aura up, healing the entirety of the party. Then things got worse, as the boss charged and brought the party knight down to -1, leaving all the parties meat shields disabled, and a bard, druid, and ranged ranger to fend for themselves.

So the bard challenges the big dwarf to melee, and with a snowflake wardance he manages to charismatically do some damage, especially combined with inspiring courage and some rapid shots from the ranger. And the druid threw his stones. They actually do manage to bring him down, though he brings the party bard to 1 health. Lucky him.

So now they have a very limited amount of time to bring their two heaviest party members away from this place, and up the newly discovered staircase. They manage it with some pulling and pushing, but the party ranger gets brought down to 1, leaving the party's health at -1, -1, 1, 2, and 3, the druid having the most health.

They drag everyone up the stairs, and meet a large centipede, who they manage to defeat without taking a hit, again lucky them. They then go exploring, find some dwarves who give them one healing spell, bringing the dragon shaman up and allowing him to heal them all. So everyone manages to get to half health, and they find the exit emerging into the city proper. They retreat back to the guild and call it a day, though the knight gets fed up and goes to buy 5 healing potions, just in case.

Down the Rabbit Hole

We begin the session back at the guild as always, now with a new member of the group, but not party, not yet anyway. So the party realizes they are missing some equipment and head over to their dear friend mister shopkeeper who they don't know the name of. They see him arguing with a large customer, somewhat similar to a dwarf. This is our new party member.

You see he is a half-minotaur dwarf knight. After defusing the situation and giving a discount to this stranger they coerce him into joining them. Happy as a clam to have an actual bruiser in the party they set up to destroy the door that ever thwarted them before. The one they sat around waiting for a day just for something to happen. This time they do manage to break it, only to be surprised by what is inside.

They find two apparent stoners sitting in chairs around a table, as well as 2 doors. In a typically militaristic fashion they proceed to guard the doors to prevent them from escaping, then talk to them. After finding out that they know nothing, they go through the other doors very little. They find a room full of bunk beds as well as one sleeping occupant, after just about everyone leaves the ranger is left alone with the two original guys, who reveal they are a bit more aggressive than expected and attack with daggers. Incidentally the ranger player was not here and was played by the warlock player from the other party.

These sneak attacks manage to deal about half of her health, resulting in some worried players and some screams from the character. This causes everyone to run towards them, and combat begins. The druid runs in and uses flaming sphere to deal a moderate amount of damage to one, and the ranger sprints away as fast as she can. The little rogues now run over and try to stab the druid, resulting in a couple of bad rolls and misses. After some more fire, and the timely arrival of the knight and the battle was over.

Next came some "interrogation" work on the sleeping dude, as he was knocked into unconsciousness and revived multiple times due to the dragon shaman's healing aura. Eventually he revealed that he knew nothing, but the house was a hotspot for people coming and going, so after some investigation work they find a trap door, which the party druid ever reckless immediately opens. A successful reflex save later and he takes no damage, and soon descends into the depths.

After all the party reaches the bottom, with no one falling luckily, they proceed forward into a  hallway. Oh look, a pit trap, some one should really think about these things. So everyone falls down, some taking less damage than others, and are in a cage. Of course no cage can hold a man with 20 strength, so a few smacks later and they are out to fight the wardens.

These wardens are giant dwarves similar to the knight, with mutated lumps of flesh for hands, which they use as clubs. Druid uses an entangle hitting two of them, and the bard greases another. Unfortunately, for the party at least, two of them made their saves and come lumbering towards the party. The knight gets knocked down quite a bit of health, brought all the way down to 2, then promptly healed again, and manages to tank it out bringing all of the enemies to unconsciousness and bringing the session to an end.

This was unfortunately a short session, as making the character took quite a bit of time, and we started a  bit late anyways. We'll resume it next time as they attempt to escape from their underground prison.

A Burning Desire (For Loot)

Today's session was the first party again, and this time someone besides the druid got knocked out, it was very exciting.

We started the session off as we normally do, everybody fully rested inside of their ramshackle shack called a guild. Being the bounty hunters they are they went to the bounty board, an incredibly useful plot device. Advertised was a man driven out of house and home by a glowing, floating ball of light, which the party druid identified as a will o' wisp, not entirely accurate but a good guess.

After confronting the owner of the house and strong arming him for a better reward they departed to his house in the upper class part of town. After arguing about the best way to go inside, and the party druid going all the way back to the tavern, only to find out that the door was in fact, unlocked, they finally get in. Here they see a fairly nice house, and journey into the kitchen to find a glowing purple orb who with the surprise round shoots a ray of energy at the resident tank, the dragon shaman.

What follows is a fairly low key battle, between the CR 1 spark, a cat, and the party. They managed to take down the spark with only two hits, and minimal loss of HP, though the cat proved a bit more trouble. See this was a special cat, one that can fly and spit acid, it is a very special cat. The spark was his too, and this acid takes a minor toll on the party ranger. After dispatching the cat with its huge 2 hit points they proceeded upstairs, only to be greeted by an ambush.

Death cats, a party's worst enemy. These guys are actually CR 1/4, just optimized with some soulmelds. So up the stairs there are 2 cats, one to the front, and one to the back, which resulted in a fairly fun battle, being attacked from both directions. With some above average rolls from the dragon shaman, and some courage from the bard the fight ended well, and then the druid decided that he didn't want to waste his fire from the battle, so the obvious solution was to toss it at the first thing he saw, in this case a large wooden bookcase in the large wooden house. I suppose fire is always fun.

As a further proof the next encounter after claiming their reward is a burning house, not caused by the druid, but by some rats. They actually acted fairly heroic here, going up and even saving an orc from the building, though the party bard was assuming lotr orcs and was fairly surprised they didn't kill it immediately. I suppose I should mention here that the druid was knocked unconscious, yet again. This person may prove to be of some importance later, or not, either way. The key is choice, and their choices will definitely affect what happens next.

Next they retreated back to their "guild" and had a little rest, recovering spells and such. Here they fought an interesting creature called a Necrophidus, a skeletal snake with a human skull. This guy managed  to down both the oblivious ranger who managed to roll a 1 on both spot and listen, and bring the bard down to 0 HP, tough he subsequently healed himself, so in the end a good fight was had, bringing everyone up to the next level, after about 13 1/2 encounters.

And here is where we ended it, with everyone leveling up. It seems like it was the party ranger who got the short straw this time, having at least four ones in this session, though I suppose it all balances out given her 4 20s in the other.

Centipedes Down Under

This is the second session of our first group, so it is the continuing adventures of the human druid, dragonborn dragon shaman, elf ranger, and aasimar bard.

We started the group off as we ended last session, one tied up thief and a few bodies in an alley. The party retreated back to the shack they call a guild, and after some healing from the dragon shaman did a little interrogation work. This took a little while to begin, as the "good cops" decided to try interrogation and the bad ones just kind of sat there. Eventually it got sorted out though, and they found out that under torture anyone will admit to anything, so they found out some information, and carted him over to the shopkeeper, to get a reward. They did, getting the benefit of reduced prices at the shop, and a small 50 gold bounty. Then they decided to go to the location the thief claimed to have sold his good at.

Here they spent a lot of time, trying to burn, smash, and politely ask to get through, all to no avail, as the metal simply wouldn't budge. Then the waiting came. Waiting for an entire day as the bard busked outside, hoping that some mysterious person might go in, but no one did. Finally they tried to go up to the roof, and pry their way in, again resulting in no obvious effect. This is when they took the clue that maybe they should try doing something different. They retreated back to the guild, and had a nice little rest, to regain the few spells lost.

Now I had a standard situation, the frantic woman comes and begs for help, because of the monsters in the basement. Now I have used this before, and still feel it is a little cliche, but sometimes the job just needs to get done. In the basement there was an extremely large centipede, though given its low health and AC, it went down fairly quickly. This is not the end of the story however, and in this basement there was the hole that the centipede came from leading to a location that I think I will have some fun with, called the undercity. See this current city is build on the remains of buildings past, as instead of destroying the old they simply built on top, gradually creating a maze of crumbling masonry, forgotten memories, and deadly monsters.

That last part is the important bit, and will almost certainly play into the story later, but in this small area all they found were centipedes, a nest of sorts. I had small, medium, large, and even one huge one to fight, and they were fairly easy overall, as I overestimated the difficulty of hitting them, in that most of the players average rolls were about 15, as opposed to the 10 I was expecting. But I digress, what they really found was the remnants of ages past, a city devoid of people. So after fighting through a whole lot of centipedes, they decide it's time to head back, and with the kind lady's permission rest in her house. For killing the monster plaguing her basement they also get a fine lute that has been passed down for generations, giving +1 to inspire courage.

What followed was some information gathering about undercity, various trinkets they found, and the lute, as well of the fixing of the ranger's bow, which was natural 1'd to an early death. So the ranger now has a masterwork bow, they are all a bit closer to leveling up, and courage shall be inspired to all, for an even bigger boost. Still a lot of 1s rolled though.

First Party, First Session

Well, today was the first session, and it went moderately well. It was a little slow starting up, but once everyone not playing had gone we got some decent work done. We started off with brainstorming how the group would come together, and we decided on an old classic, they're in a guild together. Though the guild they have is pretty crappy, with their party being the only members. After that they decided to go looking for quests, and I told them about the bounties that I had created.

The party consists of:

Laxus Dreyar, Human Druid 2 with his trusty horse companion Buttercup
Fyiad, Half-Orc Dragonborn Red Dragon Shaman 2 with 6 intelligence
Lia Galanodel, Elf Ranger 2 with archery style
Bistechrn, Lesser Aasimar Bard 2 with 20 charisma

They started off by splitting up, always a bad idea, one half of the party going to find a thug hanging around in an alley, and the other half to go investigate some thievery. I had a little difficulty here as I tried to switch between the parties, allowing both to be doing stuff at the same time, which never really seems to work. So here we had the first real combat of the game, the dragon shaman and druid with heavy horse companion fighting a group of 4 orcs.

The battle was littered with misses and a spectacular critical fail on the part of the orc leader, which resulted in him knocking himself out and all the way down to -9, then failing his stabilization and bleeding out. The three basic orcs proved to be about the threat I thought they would, though an early lucky crit brought the druid down to -8, where the dragon shaman's aura kept him from dying. After dispatching the orcs, and a little bit of looting the rest of the party arrived from their investigations, they had decided to go to a upper class elf party in the hopes of catching the thief.

I'm not sure quite where this idea came from, but I let it slide, because I didn't really want them to waste their time. So I had the thief arrive at the party, acting shifty and the like, but a few failed sense motive checks later and I really had to tell them nothing was amiss. After the ranger decided to go and get the less stealthy of the party, the dragon shaman and druid, the party had come to a close, I had the thief try to run, and they of course decided to run after him, resulting in a chase scene which really could have been better. It ended with the druid, who got there first and alone, being stabbed to unconsciousness, again, and the dragon shaman coming to the rescue. After a lucky hit from the thief the dragon shaman was down to 0 health, though his aura granting fast healing 1 he was not doing too bad, especially after a series of 5s and 6s from me, and finally the ranger comes in, and finishes him with a couple of well aimed shots, with a little courage from the bard, and he was captured for next session.

And that was where we left off, the thief in chains and interrogation and presumably torture and murder soon to follow. Tomorrows group may take a completely different turn.