Talk about teetering on the brink of death. No one died this session, but for reference, I started with 15 hit points, and up until the long rest we ended on I never had more than that. In fact, mostly I was sitting on less. The others, too, were somewhat hit point light for the session. But let’s get on to why.
We picked up where we left off last week, with Gib opening a door in the tunnel system. There was a horrifying, terrible, monstrous… nothing behind it, so we continued on in our search.
First, we found a sarcophagus that was rigged with a spectral axe, but before it could hurt us we ran away. Then, we found a room full of ‘bodies’ that turned out to be humans lying in wait, but before they could hurt us we killed/unconscioused them all. Then, our luck ran out.
Searching several rooms along a corridor, Gib checked the first couple and found nothing, but upon opening the last he was confronted by no less than six zombies. I used Turn Undead to make half of them flee to the back of the room and remain there while we dealt with the first three, but they took ages to die. Zombies are really resilient. Eventually we cut through them all, but not before Gib took a couple of hits, bringing him down to 2 hit points, and I took a single critical hit, bringing me down to 5. So, basically, our front line was now incredibly low on health, we were basically out of healing options (since we were saving what little we had left for in-combat emergencies – which turned out to be a good idea) and we still had a decent chunk of the dungeon left to explore.
Luckily, we found some healing potions before we had to fight anyone else, so Gib and I were able to regain a little health. Unluckily, that next fight was against a dude with a skull for a face… that he did himself. Yep.
We found him fighting a big dude with a club, but upon spotting us, he ran into another room. We met the club dude and he asked for our help in dealing with skullface, since he was already pretty wounded. We agreed and entered the next room.
Inside, we found three statues – one to each of the Dead Three deities these cultists worshipped. After looking around and not finding skullface, I approached one of the statues only to be enthralled by it and forced to kneel. As soon as that happened, skullface leapt out and attacked me, knocking me unconscious.
It looked hairy for a minute, because I was too far from the others to be healed quickly, and I failed a death saving throw. In this situation, I have far too much experience rolling natural 1’s, but luckily I didn’t. I managed to not roll enough fails to the point that the others killed skullface and Gib used his Healing Hands to get me back on my feet.
After the fight, the club dude explained a bit about what was going on before taking his leave and making his way to the exit. We acquired a couple of treasure chests before heading out ourselves. On the way, we decided to check the last couple of areas that we had skipped upon hearing club dude and skullface’s fight and rushing to help.
The first was a door, which I stepped through only to be immediately beset by a group of skeletons. They knocked me unconscious, only for Sarek to heal me back up with a healing potion that we had just acquired from the treasure, only for them to knock me unconscious again with a single strike that did exactly enough damage to bring me to 0. Then, while Gib and Sarek killed the skeletons, I managed to stabilise – but again, death saving throws, I was impossible to get to in time to heal, and all it would have taken was a 1 and I’d have been out.
After that fight, Sarek decided his yuan-ti patience would only stretch so far and made his way to the exit. Gib used the last healing potion from the treasure to get me awake and we investigated the remaining areas, discovering that some people had left not too long before we arrived there. Fearing that Sarek might run into them on his way out, we hurried after him.
Meanwhile, Sarek reached the bath house only to run into club dude, who was taking his time on account of being badly wounded. The two of them stepped out of the main building only to be confronted by a new group of bad guys, Tiamat cultists this time. They claimed to be there to get their treasure back (the chests had clearly had some draconic-themed items in them) but before Sarek could talk his way out of it Gib and I showed up and… a cleric of Bahamut and a group of Tiamat cultists are never going to get along.
After the first three cultists died, the last two ran, but the red mist descended and Gib and I gave chase. They managed to knock Gib out, but I killed the first and used Healing Word to get Gib back on his feet. He gave up the chase, as he was too far behind, but I continued and caught the remaining cultist in an alley, where I proceeded to turn his head into paste.
And then, all alone in the alley, Orgonbrand cried over having just killed two people. Cultists of Tiamat, so it was justifiable, but even still…
At this point, Gib and Sarek recovered the chests of treasure, fenced the loot, and we all eventually reconvened at the tavern where we planned our next move and took a long rest to finish the session.
So that was that. Combined, we had less than thirty hit points between us going into that final fight, and since it might have been circumvented entirely had I not shown up, I felt a little guilty at the time because I honestly thought that might be it for us. But it was also an important moment for Orgonbrand, and we survived it anyway, so in hindsight, I’m glad it turned out the way it did. And the rest of the session as well, for that matter. A couple of rolls going slightly differently could have made a big impact overall, and not for the better.
We won’t be playing this campaign next week, on account of a player being unavailable. Instead we’re going to do a one shot. That’s going to be an interesting one, I think, so tune in next week to see how it goes. The following week, we should be back to our regularly scheduled programming, following the continuing adventures of Orgonbrand, Sarek and Gib as they probably fail to not teeter on the edge of oblivion a whole bunch more.