She was alright though. Physically. There might be some emotional damage.
Also, I should say this post is coming a few days late because I’ve been devoting practically all my time to working on Dernderns Ernd Dern-Derns. All my time.
The session began with the party plus Morty leaving Fallen Star and heading south to Silvermine. Along the way, Brakken managed to crash the car on the one big-enough rock in the entirety of the Wastes, but luckily, no one (including the car) suffered too extensive damage. The car’s axle was busted though.
When the party arrived, they found the village abandoned. Morty directed them to the farm where the monster’s attacks had been focused, and there they found a pen with a handful of straggly sheep. Poppy tried questioning the plants there, and found out the monster was big and black and flew in at night to steal sheep away. And then she questioned the sheep, which was when we discovered that she has a pathological hatred for them. Makes sense – she’s a plant creature, they’re plant-eating creatures. And it wasn’t helped when they gave her no more useful information, and instead kept saying they wanted to eat her and formed a pyramid in order to try to reach where she was taking refuge atop Brakken’s shoulders.
This sting was lessened somewhat when the party sent Monk down the well and he managed to find a satchel full of goodies (the first rule of RPG’s: always check in your wells and behind your waterfalls). After that, the party decided to wait the night out in a neighbouring pen to the sheep’s and keep an eye out for the monster’s next attack. Unfortunately, the monster was so stealthy that it managed to nab a sheep without any of the party noticing. They only discovered it the following morning, in the light.
Their first plan a bust, the party decided to form a second one. Which took absolutely ages for them to do, and was fantastic for every moment of it. Eventually they decided to hide the remaining sheep in the farm’s large barn and leave one of them just within the entrance, as bait tied to Brakken. Poppy covered it in spikes coated in a tranquilliser poison, and then she and Monk hid behind the doors in order to shut them to trap the monster in.
This plan actually worked. That night, the monster returned. It managed to grab the sheep without any of the party noticing (and, unfortunately for the plan, rolling a natural 20 on its save against Poppy’s poison), but Brakken won their strength contest and kept it from skedaddling straight away. That was when the party discovered they were hunting a Deep Crow, a large, crow-like beast with a bug-like face.
Monk and Poppy slammed the doors shut behind it, but it turned on them before Brakken came at it. Its first few attacks missed (thanks to my abysmal rolling) but as it got into it it managed to beat Poppy quite badly. Brakken and Monk hammered away at it, but it knocked Poppy unconscious and carried her up into the rafters. Monk climbed up to follow while Brakken waited on the ground, but the Deep Crow was quicker, dropping Poppy down onto the sheep (killing one) before attacking Brakken again and then flying back up into the darkness.
This was when I realised the one surviving sheep needed to roll initiative, and, because this is how things tend to happen in D&D, it landed bang on next, rolled a natural 20 to bite Poppy, and killed her. Don’t panic, she didn’t stay dead. But we’ll come to that.
Meanwhile, Monk attacked the Deep Crow up in the rafters, and it attacked him back and grabbed him, attempting to get to the exit. However, Brakken followed them, throwing a couple of axes up into it before Monk finished it off with a trio of jabs from his astral wings. It fell and landed on Brakken, dragging Monk down with it, and while the distance was theoretically enough to knock them both unconscious, my low damage rolls were not.
At the same time, Poppy entered the Dream. There, she was confronted by the Dusk Unicorn, which told her that ‘he wasn’t done with her yet’. And then she came back to life, having made the same roll Clourc had to make way back at the start of the campaign and rolling better than he did. She did noticed, in the moment of coming back, that her unicorn pin seemed to be rather warm, but rapidly cooling.
The fight done, the party took the Deep Crow’s head (and Morty collected the dead sheep) and they left. Their return journey to Fallen Star was uneventful, and upon arriving and bringing the Deep Crow’s head to Lord Bendrosian he revealed that the task he needed them for was a four day tournament that would begin the following week. The party accepted, Morty explained roughly what the tournament would entail, and then we ended the session there.
I really enjoyed this session. It was great fun giving the party a situation – the Deep Crow raiding the farm – and watching the players then decide how to deal with it. I’m also quite interested to see if, and how, they decide to cheat in the tournament, and how they do despite (or because) of that.
But we’ll get to that when we get to that. So tune in next week to see how it goes.