What do I keep saying? I’m cursed, and my characters will never survive their fifth session. Well, guess what. King did not survive his fifth session. Yep, King is dead. I legitimately am cursed, I’m not even joking.
Before we get to that, let’s cover what happened in the lead up. Taking care of the three missions that we were provided toward the end of the last session, we worked through looking into rumours about the Black Viper, a notorious thief, climbing a mountain to speak to a monk, and killing a man who was recruiting kenku for the Xanathar’s Guild. That last one involved combat, but it was fairly brief, as we hammered the guy with everything we had and Parvus ended up decapitating him. In all, we completed every outstanding task that we had.
In the aftermath of our three brief missions, we got a day of downtime. For the day, Parvus, Mercenary and Airina went out, to report on their missions to their handlers, while I stayed at the Goblin’s Mug to do some crafting. This is where we get to the drugs.
First of all, I should say, hard drugs (the bad ones, obviously) are bad. They are dangerous and you shouldn’t do them. However, role-playing games, like movies or books, are an artistic medium that affords the ability to explore interesting stories, with consequences only for your imaginary proxy. It was in this mindset that, last session, I asked my DM if I could make some hard drugs.
I had this crazy idea that began to take root over the course of the last week: what if King became a drug kingpin? It made sense as a goal, for character reasons, and as a player, I thought it would be interesting to see how far I could get, and how my fellow players would respond, both in and out of character. And, as an artificer, I figured that, at the very least, I might be able to weaponize whatever drugs I made, and how freaking cool would that have been?
Unfortunately, things didn’t get that far. I made my roll, rolled high, and ended up with a drug in the form of a powder (the properties of which I had no way of knowing). As an alchemist, I figured King was more than used to experimenting on himself with his creations – it was how he cast all his spells, after all, and I had already established with my DM that he was basically addicted to the chemical that Hummingbird used to give him temporary hit points (as per the alchemical homunculus rules). So, I had King try the drug. After the (admittedly potent) effects wore off, I rolled to see if he had become addicted, and, of course, I rolled a natural 1. There was still powder left, so King took another dose.
And overdosed. I had to start making saving throws to see what happened, failed one, then the next, and then, when I failed the third (with the same roll each time, because of course it was) King outright died. He just expired.
The rest of the party discovered his body a couple of hours later, determined how he had died, and after we had an out of game chat where, basically, I made the call (mostly determined by his backstory, and partly because what a fitting death), they decided not to try to revive him. They buried him and continued with the session.
To summarise the rest, they completed a couple more missions each, earning renown with their various organisations. The highlights came from Parvus getting his ass handed to him in a friendly fight by a certain human called Wulfgar, the party discovering that Droop was now a sorcerer on account of his resurrection, and the session ending with a massive explosion right outside the tavern.
This was the first fifth session that I’ve played where, had I not accidentally overdosed, I definitely would have survived. If that isn’t a sign that I truly am cursed, I don’t know what is. One decision followed by four consecutive dice rolls that didn’t go my way, and that was it, no more King. It’s a great example of why you shouldn’t do drugs, actually.
I was enjoying the alchemist, for the little I got to spend playing it, but now, once again, it is back to the drawing board, for a new character. You would think I’d be used to it by now, but the problem is, D&D has so many options, I have difficulty narrowing the possibilities down to just one. That’s why I’ve had a couple of characters who’ve had class changes after a couple of sessions.
Anyway, King is dead, long live… the next guy? Gal? Who knows? We’ll see who shows up to help the party with their explosion problem next week.