I wrote last week’s episode from the point of view of Spoon, and I think I preferred it over just telling the story of the game. Tragically, that won’t be possible this week. You’ll understand why before the end.
Our game started simply enough. We journeyed to the Grand Cathedral of the Trinity, the main place of worship in Ravenwhick. The Trinity is the primary religion of Barrenfall, the worship of the trio of gods Bahamut, Erathis, and the Raven Queen. It also is primarily a human religion, and indeed, when we got to the Cathedral and had to wait through a sermon, there were no non-humans there but us.
Eventually we managed to speak to Grand Herald Beltran Patrell, leader of the church. We traded information about the dark water that we had encountered, but we didn’t really learn much, other than to confirm things that we had only strongly suspected (like that the water was coming from the River Styx). After dealing with the Herald, we went and, accompanied by Rain, made our way into the sewers.
Sneaking through the sewers, we reached the area that the monsters we were down there to hunt had been sighted, and found a crack leading into what looked like an old ruin. Waiting around in the ruin were a couple of acolytes of the Trinity. While I, invisible, slipped past them to discover what was going on, the rest of my party came bursting in with the subtlety of a marching band. Aelin made the ingenious decision of knocking one of the acolytes out, and suddenly they were in a fight with a priest and a paladin, as well as the other acolyte.
I ignored their fight, and while still invisible, explored the ruins. There was a trace of the black water down one corridor, and a gap through to a hidden area in another. By the time I was heading into that area, the others had slaughtered the paladin and acolyte, and the priest was running for his life, into that same hidden area. I investigated further while the others were chasing the priest, and found a lake of black water, with a bunch of weird, fiendish creatures in it, and a large, empty room. Rolling really high on a perception check and not seeing anything, and trusting in the fact that I was still invisible anyway, I entered the room. My companions, at this point, were still blundering around in the dark, except Leo, who had stayed in the first area with the bodies, to loot them.
I go to one of the coffins in the room, and as I shift it to see what’s inside, I hear a noise. Suddenly, there’s a giant, orange, demonic gorilla thing attacking me from behind. Luckily, it misses with all its attacks, and before it can do anything else, I do the only thing I can think of that will save me and drop invisibility, falling to my knees. I do my best to pledge allegiance to the beast, and it seems to accept, and tells me it wants flesh and souls to eat.
Now, before I go any further, I want to point out one thing. I respect any player (or DM) who makes decisions based solely on what their characters would do, since I feel that is the best way to play D&D in terms of the role playing side of things. It’s how I play, and so it should hopefully explain some of the decisions I made that might otherwise seem questionable.
So, I tell the giant orange monkey to go back to its hiding place and I’ll bring it food, and it turns invisible again and jumps back to the roof, but then says, “I’ll follow you”. My plan was to GTFO and leave it behind, so that’s plan one dead. So I lead it to my group, which is everyone but Leo at this point, all standing around in the dark. They’re with the priest as well, but miraculously, they’ve decided not to kill him. I tell Gad to run, since, from a character perspective, I don’t know that the Paladin beat Aelin and Hector the hell up before he died, nor that Gad is totally out of spells, since I wasn’t in the fight.
Gad goes, and then I tell the monkey to make its choice. I was hoping it would go for Rain or the priest first, but of course it goes for Hector. Rolling a critical hit, it knocks him out, so with its other attacks, knocks out Aelin too. Plan two, dead.
I cast Dissonant Whispers on Rain, because if she fails the save she’ll run away from me, and hopefully draw away the gorilla so I can help my two unconscious barbarians. Of course, she succeeds. The priest does run, but the gorilla ends up ignoring him anyway. Plan three, dead.
I decided to heal Aelin anyway, but because the gorilla has its turn straight after mine, it knocks her straight back out before she can even get up. At this point, the lake-creatures have come over as well, and are starting to release clouds of poison at us.
I use my last spell to try to Dissonant Whispers the gorilla, but it saves too, then comes over and bludgeons me. With a critical hit. Leaving me broken, on the ground, one 55:45 roll away from death.
By now, Rain is running, Gad is running, the priest is running, and Leo, having been attracted by the noise, took one look at the extremely one-sided fight and bolted. They eventually regroup, and with some very lucky dice rolls, take out the gorilla and the other monsters, the priest being the only one of them to die.
As for those of us who were unconscious, Hector and Aelin both stabilise fairly easily. Me, I fail my one roll that I get. Death 1, Spoon 0. The group investigated the water, searched the rest of the ruins, and eventually left the city to bury me and the bones of the holy men they just murdered.
So yeah, Spoon is now dead. To be honest, it really looked like it would be a TPK there for a minute, but somehow the others managed to pull through.
Anyway, that’s why I didn’t use the same format for writing this week. I suppose I could have, but I felt this way would help things make more sense. So, there is no Spoon, which means there is no more Spoon and the Pretenders, just the Pretenders. My new character will be joining the campaign next week, so now all I have to do is come up with one. Maybe I’ll create a good character to become the moral compass of the group, since that seems to be something we sorely need. But we’ll see.