First thing first, we did not have any extra party members this week. We are actually due to be gaining two players – the new person from last week’s one-shot and an old member of the group who had to leave before I started writing about D&D on this blog – but due to scheduling conflicts and technical issues, neither were able to join for this session. But, with luck, both should be in next week, and based on where we’re heading, I think we’re going to need them.
We began the session by heading to our captain of the guard friend to appraise him of the situation, before making our way to a ship chained to the docks which is used as a tavern. Within the tavern, we were expecting to find the son of one of the four dukes of the city, who just so happened to be the person that had hired the cults we had recently eradicated and whose duke mother just so happened to be the person responsible for the city’s sister/rival city being sucked to hell. Basically, we needed to grab this nobleman – who worked out of the tavern as a money lender – in order to gain access to his mother.
Our plan, because we had no idea what this nobleman looked like, was to go in with the deception that Gib had severe gambling debts and needed a loan. We would thusly determine which individual our target was, and use that information to inform our future plan of when, where and how to grab him.
That was our plan.
It failed immediately.
As soon as Gib told the nobleman that he was 2500 gold pieces in debt, the jig was up. The nobleman had us given drinks that were poisoned, but luckily I passed my Constitution save and Sarek is immune to poison and drank both his and Gib’s. A little dancing on the edge and flailing because we had no backup plan for this eventuality later, and we were rolling initiative.
We were fighting three bad guys – the nobleman, his bodyguard, and a spined devil. So it was very convenient when my attempt at casting Calm Emotions to end the fight immediately was failed by everyone but those three. Meanwhile, Gib attacked them and Sarek threw up some defensive spells before trying an Earthen Grasp that mostly grabbed the bodyguard and mostly didn’t grab the nobleman. But they were also hitting back, and they were doing it harder.
Eventually, largely thanks to being restrained by the Earthen Grasp and thus easier to hit, the bodyguard was taken down. As soon as that happened, the nobleman made a run for it, using the spined devil to halt our chase. Sarek managed to finish it off thanks to it having been weakened by a couple of my Guiding Bolts, and then we followed the nobleman onto the deck of the ship.
There, we found him confronted by a new person, whom we came to discover was a hellrider. She was telling him she wanted to ask him some questions, but he was also being pursued by us, so he attacked her. As they fought, Gib was attacked by a pair of ravens that turned out to be imps in disguise.
Sarek killed one of the imps before I attempted to hit the nobleman with a Guiding Bolt, but I missed on my attack, and on his next turn, caught between a rock and a hard place, he attacked me and knocked me unconscious. Then the surviving imp knocked Gib unconscious, so Sarek healed me up with a healing potion and I healed Gib up with a Cure Wounds.
As the fight drew to a close, Sarek killed the last imp and I was brought back down to 1 hit point by the nobleman, but then he surrendered. Sarek bound his hands and frisked him, confiscating a bunch of daggers, and then we made our way to an alley where we properly met the hellrider and learned she was trying to find the leader of her disappeared city.
We also, thanks to Sarek’s clever use of the Suggestion spell, learned everything we needed to about the nobleman’s mother’s compound, which is where we needed to get into to find her. And, upon learning that the leader she was searching for was also to be found in the compound, the hellrider decided she would join us on our quest to infiltrate it.
But first, we needed somewhere to rest, because we were seriously roughed up. The only place we could think of to go was the newspaperman’s, and he graciously allowed us to spend the night. Sarek used Mold Earth to create some makeshift bonds for the nobleman in the cellar, and we began our rest.
Not all was well through the night, though. When it came to my watch, the last of the night, I heard noises from the cellar so went down to investigate. There, I found the nobleman, weeping and seemingly repentant. Now, this guy had been a real dick, but he managed to appeal to Orgonbrand’s strong belief in forgiveness and even my 19 insight check could not beat his natural 20 to deceive me. So when he asked me to check his back, because it was sore, I willingly did, and got a pair of scissors in the neck for it. Twice.
Luckily, that only brought me back down to 1 hit point, because my paranoia had had the forethought for me to take a short rest before we began our long rest, so I’d managed to get a bit of healing. Also luckily, as the nobleman ran I was able to successfully grapple him, pinning him to the ground.
The others were waking up at this point, but the nobleman had one trick left up his sleeve – literally. He brandished a small pellet and threatened that it was a last resort thing to use because it was so powerful, and his reference to all the paper in the place suggested it was some kind of firebomb. So I told him ‘go ahead’ and clamped my mouth over his hand.
Turned out, it was only a smokebomb. As my mouth filled with smoke, I decided this guy had pissed me off enough so I used my fire breath to partially melt his hand. Then the hellrider helped me bind him again.
From there, Gib and Sarek took the nobleman to our guard captain friend for safekeeping while the hellrider and I stayed where we were so I could finish my interrupted long rest. And we ended the session at that point, with a tentative plan to ‘stealthily’ infiltrate the compound and deal with everyone inside.
All in all, a great session, despite the disappointment of neither of our additional players being able to join. But, once again, we had more than a few close calls. And now, next week, just in time to assault a compound filled with guards and more, we’re facing session five. The big one. The question is, will a party of five plus an NPC make the difference and keep me from dying? The answer? Tune in next week.