Day #230

Hi all.

So today we had another absence sadly, it was the Deva Shaman. She got called back to her post in deva-world. Either way the adventurers were set to enter the mountain. However! They had no clue what was going on. So they were unsure what to expect in the mountain as a seemingly evil king sent them to kill 'cultists.'

Anyway they arrive to the mountain and see a crazy gnome. He has a really dirty black beard full of bugs and beetles and dirt! He's like "Hey what you want?" The players inform them of their quest. He responds with "Oh, well I know of some humans/elves and the such that live in the mountains. I'll tell you where they are for like 20 GP OR if you go kill some hyenas for me and bring me their corpses. I want to eat them."

They do the latter and the gnome says go to a camel-shaped rock, it's only about 5 minutes up. They do, they enter the room and this is where I get to show off my new map made on maptool (online mapping program). It should make us able to play online if we ever plan to. The players are confronted immediately with shouts such as "The king has sent another group to kill us! Defend the position, etc. Get reinforcements!"

Now, what happens now is A LOT of back and forth from everyone. First off, the guard captain was accusing them of being proponents of the tyrannical rule of a evil king, etc. Then Mini laid down her ARMS (get it). And Sel refuses to do the same, as does Dwinn-Rae. Turok shifts to mouse form and flees the scene. The guards attempt to kill the warlock first, for they hate him the most. However, they are unable to. Dwinn-Rae kills one of the guards and nearly kills another before they halt the fight as reinforcements kick down the door.

They are reluctant to give up the fight, but they must as Sel and Mini would have been captured even if Dwinn-Rae can escape. So they continue (1 hour later) to meet the leader of these people. Turok meanwhile scouts out the whole dungeon and finds two rooms: the first being a sleep quarters of some sort; the second being a room full of statues and possibly the figurine they sought. He falls into one of the soldiers chests as the fight continues in the other room and discovers 100 GP.

Dwinn-Rae is accused to be the warlock of King Hyrien's high court by the leader of the 'enemy'. He claims to be the rightful king to the throne of the kingdom. The players are like okay and Sel "tells the story." Assuming, the king would believe the entire story because he is very charismatic. While, the king believes most of the story he is still suspicious of the warlock, for they are known to be quite evil on this continent. However, Dwinn-Rae explains away these suspicions as Turok comes into the room to raise questions.

The king explains the figurine that Hyrien seeks is one of great power that his own great-great-grandfather had once wielded to take his power. His great-grandfather had to defeat his own father to take the power away. He further explains the figurine's power can only be harnessed by a cleric of the god Asmodeus. Yeah, but the adventurers are like this whole thing is getting very very complicated. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What should we do?

The king suggested that they go on to the other half of the continent to gather support from the other kingdom against the king Hyrien. He explains that the resistance is weak because Hyrien had came to power with the support of the nobles and that most people have no issue with him.

May update this to clarify/spice it up as I left out details.

Double Post

So long updates require double posts. I'm just going to outline the current position of the party to supplement the future up-to-date posts. I may even get one of the players to update this for me, lol. Anyways, the most recent developments are:

• Dwinn-Rae has persuaded the guard captain that he is indeed an evil-warlock. The guard captain informs him that his services would be of use to the king.
• The party unites within the castle town, the heart of the kingdom. They meet the king and he seems childish. He talks only to Dwinn-Rae, and he says listen to me: Go to this mountain get me this artifact. Because I need it to weild the power of the immortal God Asmodeus in the body of a mortal. It is guarded by some crazy cultists.

The party has decided? Possibly I'm not sure to go through with the quest. I believe we ended with them right at the mountain. I mean: Finally reunited, they proceed to the mountain. Everyone thinks that Dwinn-Rae is turning Evil because he extorted an expensive armor from a shopkeep by Eldritch Blasting his store front with a natural 20. The guards were like, "Give him the armor, so he can get the hell out this town." They seemed bitter because in Dwinn-Rae's escape he killed one of their own.

But everything else was peaceful OR WAS IT.

Day 3039

So, some of my most loyal of followers have complained that I haven't been updating this blog often enough. Okay, so I do have a few things to mention before we get on to the exciting conclusion of the first arc. Let me mention that a lot has happened to our Yet-to-be-named group of adventurers. Consider yourselves warned as you will experience the ups and downs as the party experienced them.

Okay after being able to get past the tricky mysterious ghosts the adventurers moved on to the next room almost prematurely. I believe they decided to engage in battle, while half the team was trapped in a long hallway. They were forced to attack these mumbling hovering creatures that look like THIS:

Pretty sweet, there were like six? of these. However, the party fought them valiantly and I believe only the Dragonborn fell unconscious. Let me describe for you what I envisioned for this room. I made it into a REALLY big triangle, like SUPER big. Within the room was a platform of natural stone also shaped as a triangle that three bridges connected to. The players entered at one base of the triangle, etc. The monsters were kind of just hanging around and then they got killed by the good old ask questions later team of good-doers (I've hit a a Lawful Good phase in my DnD career).

The idea behind the room is that it was an ANCIENT stage for performances, which one of the players did a successful history check to discern. I love how these guys want to KNOW everything, they did like 15 religion, history, arcana checks, you name it they did it. Anyways, the room had three means of moving on. One was a trap door, which the players had to have like looked for to find, or roll an incredibly high history check to discern that wooden stages such as though typically had trick doors, etc. Well, they decided to take a natural path that would lead them straight to the big bad boss.

The boss was of course a Psion! You know that race that can control people's thoughts and stuff. So he was influencing the ghosts and even the fell taints (above) by excising full mind control. For the sake of fun I also made him part necromancer. Or somewhat necromancer. He was pretty cool, I forgot to give him a name, I think I settled on Josh. But, the coolness factor got tossed out the window with that blunder (the issue of names may become a theme).

But yeah, he was all like "I knew you guys were here" (gasp!). In my world, a villain will never reveal his plans, although I think this one may have. I don't remember. I try to keep the story spicy you know? Anyways, I was afraid that he was going to totally wipe the floor with these guys. So I may have done some last minute adjustments, which may have made him reasonably weaker. Not to mention the first two attacks on him were critical hits by Dwinn-Rae (Mike Lefors) and Dazzler formerly known as the Deva Shaman. They like basically made me realize exactly how much stronger PCs are then any NPCs. But, the rest of the battle proceeded quite interestingly. I had to make a lot of on-the-fly calls.

For example, Dwinn-Rae used an infernal grasp (or whatever) to push Josh into his open bone chest. The bone chest was full of gold to the brim and dead baby corpse. So then Balfogore (his time was so short) jumped on top of the chest and screamed, and then so did Turok (Ryan). I gave them some damage modifiers, etc. Then Josh was like oh hell no and he used a force push to knock off both Turok and Rogue. (Of course reigned in the 'I told you so's' from Sel, who was like let's kill the 15 skeletons.) Oh did I forget to mention there were 15 minions hacking at the cleric in the back of the room. Well guess what there were. Anyways, Josh and his little mind controlled corpses were all made easy work of and he like died. His last words were, "You are making a mistake..." (I think these are good default last words, please let me know as this is like my favorite part of DMing so far. The newest adventure is going to have so many more humanoids ^_^.) Yeah ANYWAYS.

I believe what happened next was a lot of exposition about the changelings history. She was all like, wait that's my daughter give her to me. I'll take her to her father, etc. They were like NO LIAR. But, then she was like Azbere (the old dwarf from the beginning) is my husband. I have been in the form of a dwarf for at least 10 years. This was our daughter. Etc. She explained that Josh had been sent by an evil king from the land of Astoria? (I know, I know, I'm gonna run out of places in Queens.) Oh em gee, the players got hung up on the changelings personal life, as she had wished to be left alone to sort it all out. But, she was rejected by Azbere. She never told him she was a changeling, but she never would in fear of his hatred even more. His rejection was because she left him to mourn over his daughter alone. :'(.

Eventually the players resolved that they should go see what the deal was in the other country. So they tried to go, fought some random encounter I made up and then had to get on a ship. They negotiated a deal with a crooked sailor, who turned out to be REALLY nice. So they were taken to the other land despite crazy storms in those parts. They got there, and all hell broke loose.

Yup, you guessed Dwinn-Rae stood up at a tavern and screamed "FUCK THE KING!" In this new kingdom where the Evil King reigns. Well, 15 guards pour in instantly and accuse Dwinn-Rae of treason and that he would be taken to the prison nearby. He of course is WASTED, so he can't resist. Sel surprisingly comes to his defense and is also taken away. The other players sulked in the corner. (Oh around now is when Balfogore is sold into slavery.)

Dwinn-Rae used his level 2 utility power to teleport out of the prison cell. Upon which, the guards pour into the prison cell to only find Sel (Mike Lipkin) cowering in the corner. They look at him and demand to know where Dwinn-Rae went. He cries "I don't know." They respond with "We'll know how much you know by tomorrow. MUHAHAHAHA."

Okay so over the next few weeks the players would have to decide how to proceed. They spent I believe two weeks doing the following. Wandering around the little harbor town they were in attempting to glean any information they could. There was a small resistance, but nothing organized in the town. They found that the king had recently lost a princess? Or something like that. But all in all, eventually Dazzler and Minerva (Savi) are arrested for being associated to Dwinn-Rae. Eventually, everyone makes it to the next town.

Lol, I'll update this post when I get a chance to fill in more details.

Day 2

So I'm going to do this all as one post, since the last two meetings can easily be summed up in one adventure. So our first adventure is complete and all the players are level 2 now, I figured 3 encounters to one level is better for more fun. I also don't feel like dividing up properly the monsters experience values, lol.

Anyways, the 2nd adventure was kicked off in the library pictured to right below. Now this was pretty simple to get describe, there were indeed books everywhere and there were shelves knocked over, and some extra details that I drew out for fun, but for the most part the room reeked of death. There was a pile of dead goblins and a pool of blood around the knocked over bookshelves. Basically, the goblins got their shit owned and were throw in a giant pile roughly five to six feet high. (Meanwhile, the rogue was still sleeping, and the party continued onward).

(The bulk of this room was a beautiful creature I designed myself called Maggot. Well, this Maggot is simply a maggot, but somehow empowered to be roughly five feet long, and smell wonderful. They were FULL of little actual maggots and these were their primary weapon.)

The players approached the pile of dead bodies cautiously (who wouldn't). They did notice that the bodies were vibrating and it was clear that they were animated by something. However, everyone was baffled as to what exactly was going on. I believe the Dragonborn Sel had decided to touch the bodies before anyone could get a closer look, some of the group was in the back of the room. As soon as Sel touched the bodies, he was surprised by a tremendous five foot Maggot that went out to clench its round mouth around his exposed flesh. I believe he failed, and three of its brothers (I guess) popped out and made a little roar.

The party soon discovered that these bugs were not alone and not here to fool around. Once the maggots successfully grabbed hold of their enemies with their teeth, they injected a swarm of maggots into their bloodstream. These smaller maggots infected the brain, and I believe Dwinn, the warlock, took most of the damage from nearly every monster that he encountered.

From the shadows of the bookshelves emerged two fully grown maggots with wings, that apparently were full of acid. As they flew by they would spit acid. Now, I think nearly everyone came close to dying and a few people were knocked unconscious including Mini the cleric. As the monsters came close to death, they began to show that they had a bit of a self-destruct action. When reduced to 0 HP, the maggots projectile-vomited their 'babies' straight up, which latched on to any creature they hit. The flyers shed their exoskeletons and spun extremely fast, spraying acid in a huge radius from their position, after being bloodied. Both these attacks proved to be quite the task to handle for the group. However, the rogue arrived to save the day and spread some bolts into the flying insects and helped eliminate the insects.

The room was scoured and there was a ritual book and some Dwarven armor found. The players decided that they would approach a room that was filled with some wailing, which was not clear to them until they approached. They made out some sentences like...'We didn't mean to!' and 'Please don't make us do this anymore!'

They let the rogue stealth into the room and gather what was going on. He saw two ghastly figures floating over a bundle of rags. The ghosts were wailing in grief, 'We didn't mean to!' etc.

The players eventually tried to talk to the ghosts, and they did so for a bit and gathered the situation slightly. The ghosts explained that they believed themselves to have killed the dwarf girl. They blacked out and came to over the body. They explained that they did not know where the body was and that the bundle was not actually the body. The ghosts then had their expression changed, and began to attack the players!

The players began to attack, but when they took damage, the spell was lifted for a split second and the ghosts pleaded with the players screaming, 'I'm so sorry!' Some of the players kept damaging the ghosts, others tried to figure out what was going on. Dwinn-Rae figured out that there was some kind of magic that was controlling the thoughts of the ghosts. He figured that if he worked on it hard enough he could break the spell. However, Dazzler, the Deva Shaman, actually knew the spell from her past 1000 years of living...So she broke the spell with ease, and the ghosts came to. The players used some clever diplomacy to get the ghosts to help them continue on through the dungeon.

That was the end of the day! Ya, I changed my mind, I'll post the most recent adventure when I do, I guess, lol. Sorry for the cartoony images, they were the only ones that didn't completely make me want to puke, and that matched the tone I was going for :D.

So today was our first adventure and I was admittedly nervous that I would kill my party, or they would figure something out about my adventure that would bring the whole structure down. But, thanks to some crafty improvisation and clever npcs the adventure carried on.

So basically, the players start in the tavern, and to my surprise they were not interested in booze, but REWARDS. So they were very on point to talk to the NPCs that seemed to be in the know. The first guy was a crying delusional dwarf that had clearly been through something traumatic, and he wailed about the mines! He says that the ghosts come from the mines and there are ghosts everywhere. He just rambles on about the ghosts and he's crying. There were local dwarfs that were not as important and they drew attention to themselves as they snickered at the adventures talking to the NPC. Of course, the Dragonborn threatens them with an intimidating roar and asks what their deal was. They respond in kind with fearful faces and say that they just think that he's crazy. But, when asked about the ghosts the dwarves direct the players to the tavern keeper Torias (a name that made Sydney laugh out loud?). She is actually asking me right now to do a side track adventure right now...favorite first year for sure.

Sel (Lipkin) wants to intimidate the barkeep, but Minerva (Savi) restrains him and says that we shouldn't go around baring our teeth at everyone. (A good thing as the barkeep would not respond well to this). So they basically discern there is something that is keeping all the sane people from talking due to an unexplained fear. Some type of unknown force has instilled fear in all the dwarves, driving some insane.

Anyway, the adventures do a perception check to 'Notice anything that they hadn't already,' now for these types of checks I try not to be generous I mean. I didn't tell the players you notice on the third shelf there is an insect that seems to be sentient, although they do roll admittedly high (a theme of the day apparently). Basically, the players notice the third NPC is an extremely powerful well-trained warrior. They, of course, approach him and ask him some questions. He kind of grunts at them, which nobody likes and they ask him about the ghosts, etc. He says that 'if I can't do anything about it you guys can't.'

Anyway, the players go to the mines and see a little girl dwarf! She immediately says "Hi, follow me!" and walks into the outside structure of the mines. They all freak out (like crazy) and then I'm like the dwarf girl is moving are you following? And they follow her into a pitch black shed, and upon lighting a torch they notice dwarf corpses against the walls and that they have been dead for weeks, etc. The girl actually turns out to be a changeling! Who Minerva (Savi) is very cautious of. The changeling tells the players that the dwarf town does not actually concern her, she just wants something that she believes the 'evil forces' want. She wants a ring that a powerful dwarf fighter Azbere has. She says the ring holds a mysterious power and she will give the players a large sack of gold (I'm thinking big enough sack for the players to need a wagon).

So I mention the wagon because Sydney and Ryan purchased a wagon that she really really really wants, even though they have no reason to use it. I feel this wagon may be the end of the party, lol.

Anyway the players figure they should try to talk to Azbere. He doesn't give them the ring, he is wearing a total of four rings, three of which Dwinn-Rae (Mike Lefours) detects magic properties about (along with all the equipment the dwarf is wearing). The dwarf tells them that he has many people who want this ring for some reward that they try to use to bargain with him. He does not know who really wants the ring, but he knows someone does. He does not know why, to him it is only an personal attachment. He does not think the ring is the cause of the chaos, and that the players were misled. But, he does kind of play into the players' motives, if you do something for me you can have this ring.

Then the players hear his story: Azbere had a daughter around the age of 8 years old (the same age as the dwarf girl the changeling was posing as, same hair color too). So everyone gasps, as they believe the changeling is acting as his daughter or is. Azbere explains that his daughter was kidnapped and killed by a brigade of goblins, all of which he defeated. However, he was distraught and ran from the scene leaving behind his daughter's body. He cannot bring himself to face her as he failed to protect her. It's a simple task, he wants them to retrieve the body. Then they can have the ring. So the players are pissed, particularly the cleric at the changeling.

So the players confront the changeling, who plays 'What you talking about?' card. She just says she has been here for 10 years, and they are all like hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The cleric still doesn't trust her, but the players decide they'll enter the mines, and are faced with three choices (as they have not asked anyone where to go woops?). So they eventually find the entrance after long debate, and they are into the first encounter room. Which I have a picture of...here!

So basically this room is a long hall, with a raised platform that I envisioned for dancing, but everyone thought it was an altar. So they notice a green glint from an object in the dirt pile, and they are very cautious and Sel (Lipkin) drops his hammer into the pile of dirt, and smashes into a zombie!!!!! First encounter begins, he missed! Lol, so the zombies are triggered and pop in through windows all around the room and close on the adventurers. It takes the paladin and cleric an eternity to land a hit and realize they could be mowing these guys down with radiant damage, but the players handle the zombies briskly. The deva shaman decides that she'll just wing her spear around and crits one of the zombies in the face at point blank range and kills him instantly. Very cool! So they discover they found their first magic item! A Rod of Corruption that is used primarily by warlocks.

However, Sel popped the zombie and caught the rod, and was very hesitant to give it up. (His love interest?) Minerva was very adamant that he share with the party! But, he kind of carries it around until they decide to leave the room. Then he says something along the lines if you guys do this I'll do this, and they find some gold pieces in some dirt and move on. Now the players have a choice between two doors, one is giving a sound of soft wailing and the other is giving a sound of dripping water. They do some checks and decide that they'll go towards the dripping water. The water is the result of a heavy condensation in the room that they enter. Once they enter the room the wall shuts behind them! They are seemingly trapped in a room with a giant turning lever that is surrounded by a pit, looks like this...

Basically the players quickly figure a way to turn the lever! They do so, and as they turn it more and more door start appearing in each crevice. The druid (Ryan) detects creatures behind each door, and they decide to turn the lever back and hide the other doors. But, then Sel convinces the party that they should turn it all the way and the players hear a loud cracking noise from the way they came! They ignore it and the druid approaches a door and kicks it open revealing a giant rat! Another five doors open and reveal rats as well. The rats are very fast and attack first, but the party does well to fend off these giant rats. Particularly the warlock, Dwinn-Rae (Mike Lefours) makes easy work of the rats. They don't find anything and realize the room was simply a trap. They also realize that the door opened once they completed the full turn. The rats were kind of not aware of the situation, so they were not going to attack unless instigated.

Actually at this point we had played for three hours. We all learned a lot and I think everyone had an awesome time, which was great. I really had fun, and we look forward to next week. The only thing I found to be troubling is keeping track of initiative as I was like mentally ill at this. I was pretty good at masking my mistakes (as usual). Anyways, I think the first adventure went REALLY well.

Well, as a little preview for next week, look for more ROLE PLAYING (and less META GAMING). Lol, like I care as long as everyone is enjoying themselves. But, do look for more storyline events to happen. And more DM commentary. This week was just a transcript as I have midterms and other stuff that occupies my time. I will upload the maps all at once at the end of next week. :)

Suggested names for our group include: Mutually Assured Destruction, Mike Lefour's Adventuring Troope...

So today we finally made characters. All though it took about 3 hours to finally get everyone settled and satisfied with their personal creations I'd say it went over pretty well. Our party ended up with six adventurers that all have unique backgrounds that are slowly developing. I did not catch everyone's name. But our party ended up being composed of the following:

Kunal (Tiefling Rogue), pictured on the right. Kunal has played the game before and it was easy for him to get the hang of the character creation. He actually helped a lot with the other players. His character's back story is a time line of scribbles that goes something like this:

1. His father dies when he was really young and that was sad.

2. His mother became a whore that slept around and ended up remarrying with a human (all of which he now hates).

3. Um, he sailed around for a bit and now he is a mercenary.

I enjoyed the part about him hating humans as our next character is Sydney! She made an awesome Human Shaman (human is the best race obviously). So her character does not have as much of a back story as Kunal's as she did not plan it, but she is and I quote the "Mama Bear." Basically, shamans can have spirit companions that they call upon to help our everyone in the party, they are very useful and they can also provide support for the party. She looks a bit like the picture to the left. She is going to be pretty awesome by throwing totems around and casting spirits and talking with them.

Related to Sydney's shaman is Ryan's shifter druid, who can basically be anything he wants. In terms of animal, so he will be pretty useful. Also, he apparently was raised by wolves. Seems strange because shifters like live in the wild, but that's fine by me. Him and Sydney are going to be very close? Eh, eh. Maybe, not. But, then there was my other roommate King Mike. Who is a half-Elf Warlock. He really didn't have much of a back story as he joined right at the last second. But I think he will be changing the game play and make it enjoyable for at least me. I envision a lot of funny scenarios with him in the party. And I look forward to DMing this group because of just the general atmosphere of the character creation process.

Savi and Mike (Lipkin) also showed up to create characters. Savi whose wide-eyed enthusiasm also makes me excited to DM. Her character is 6'0'' tall (the limit of the elf race) and she choose to be a Cleric! She is wayyyyy excited to be playing this game, and that's awesome. Also equally if not more (or less) excited is her boyfriend Mike, a Dragonborn Paladin! He is going to be smiting enemies with his gianormous battle maul and rolling like 15 damage dice (apparently, we'll see). I guess the question is: Are we going to see any real life romances turn into roleplaying romances? I mean a Dragonborn + Elf is kinda a brutal combination. Maybe Kunal and Mike can pair off (they do have the same deity).

Okay so basically, that is the first troope of adventurers that we set out to create. I may have to form another group as multiple people still want to play, and 6 people is quite a bit. But, now I'm excited as I get to make my own adventure! It will be loads of fun, I hope it goes well. But I do know everyone is going to love the magic items. Plus the group is pretty awesome, so I have no fear that anyone would find it hard to be having fun.