I became interested in Dungeons and Dragons a couple of years ago, but only managed to start playing when I went back to Australia for a visit earlier this year and found out that a friend from high school was running a game. I joined in, and, well, basically, it’s awesome. I’ve been meaning to post some stuff about D&D in general, and will do so soon, but for today, and for most Saturdays from now on, I’m going to be bringing you tales of my group’s adventures. We typically play every Saturday, although sometimes life gets in the way so we play on Sunday, if at all, so this post may be moved to Sundays to account for that. We’ll see.
A little backstory first. I’ve been playing with this group now since February, and we’re on our third campaign since I joined (and the first that’s homebrew). The first two ended with TPK’s (Total Party Kills – ie. we all died), the last one happening four weeks ago. Maybe I’ll tell those stories one day, but for now, let’s focus on the current campaign, which we started two weeks ago.
Our group consists of four players plus our DM, my friend Sam. For the players, we currently have a Half-Elf Warlock called Leo (a former ‘merchant’), a Human Barbarian called Aelin (a total bitch), a Goliath Barbarian called Hector the Well Endowed (seriously), and myself, a Sea Elf Bard/Monk. My character is called Spoon, an ex-pirate who walks around shirtless, covered in scars and tattoos, with bells on his clothes to let his enemies know he’s coming (for those who are Dynasty Warriors fans, yes, I’m basically playing an amphibious, immortal Gan Ning).
To bring things up to speed, in our first two sessions we met (in a tavern, of course) in the town of Crowhaven and somehow found ourselves investigating a slew of people randomly and mysteriously going brain-dead. Our investigation led us to the underground drug trade, where we learned that a new group, The Cutters, had recently moved in on the town and were supplying spiked drugs to the townsfolk. After tracking down a Cutter, we found out that they were interested in a nice lady in town called Estelle.
While investigating Estelle’s house, we found that her basement was infested with fleshy, demonic creatures. I almost died in the act of clearing them out, but once they were gone, we found a crack in the basement, which was leaking mysterious, black water. Leo rather ingeniously decided to touch it, and taught us that it was the source of the spiked drugs as he was rendered brain-dead as a result. We managed to get him fixed at the local church and decided that we would raid the Cutters’ headquarters, which we learned was underneath the town hall, the following dawn.
As we rested for the night in Estelle’s house, I heard a noise from her bedroom. I investigated and found Estelle dead, and a mysterious blonde woman (presumably Vixen, the leader of the Cutters) leaving by jumping through a mirror. We immediately went to attack the headquarters, but they were waiting for us outside the door and, though we won the ensuing fight, I almost died again, and we were arrested before we could enter. In jail, we learned that pretty much anyone of importance in town had been killed or cajoled by the Cutters, and eventually Vixen came and offered to buy us off so long as we promised to leave and never come back. Being a group of morally grey characters (a decision we all independently made, I might add) with no real stake in the town, we agreed, and left.
After leaving Crownhaven, we travelled south to find some ruins that we’d heard about because there was supposed to be treasure there. We fought a bunch of frogmen and a giant mud frog thing that almost killed both our barbarians, snagged a couple of gems, and started heading north again to the capital to sell the gems. On the way, we skirted through the swamps around Crowhaven and came upon a small village of Tortles. There, we befriended Gad, a cleric, who told us the black water was probably interplanar leakage from the River Styx. Gad was nursing a female Lizardfolk back to health, and when some more Lizardfolk attacked in an attempt to finish her off, we defeated them in our first fight of the campaign where none of us got taken down. And that was where today’s session began.
We started off with interrogating the Lizardfolk woman, Korth, and in doing so discovered that she had challenged the new Lizardfolk queen for rule, but after losing she fled and these others had come to finish her off. Korth told us that the queen was evil, and communing with some malignant force through a totem. She also told us about a secret entrance to the ruins that they had claimed as their home, and that she was done with the tribe, so we could deal with them however we chose.
Accompanied by Gad, we found the secret entrance and entered the ruins. Inside, we followed a dark tunnel that eventually split, one side being half-filled with water. I, being amphibious, began swimming down the tunnel, only to bump right into a giant snapping turtle that immediately turned around and almost killed me (seriously, in one bite it brought me down to 1 hp). We began the combat with it narrowly missing out on finishing me off, before I used magic to make it flee. After it turned around and came back, we put everything into it and quickly turned it into turtle soup.
Before we could even take a breath, we were beset by a handful a quasits, poisonous little demonic creatures. We dealt with them and discovered a cavern down the dry side of the tunnel that had streams of a certain black water leaking down from above. We also found a vine wall blocking off another part of the tunnel.
As I set down to tend to my wounds, Hector decided to try burning the vines away. When they proved too damp, he set to them with his axe. By the time he had revealed an extra room with a giant corpse in a sarcophagus, I had resumed scouting down the wet tunnel and spotted a Lizardfolk, apparently attracted by the smell of smoke. It hadn’t spotted me yet, so I waited in ambush, carefully preparing my attack as it eked closer and closer…
And then Hector called out for me down the tunnel, alerting the Lizardfolk, so I struck. I shot it with an arrow, but as it still didn’t spot me, I also fired an arrow at, I mean past, Hector’s ear. Alerted to something going on, he and the others began to make their way through the water towards me as I moved to the far edge, totally submerged and waiting for the Lizardfolk to approach.
The Lizardfolk obliged me by coming right up to the edge, so I grabbed it and dragged it into the water. In the ensuing wrestling match, we smacked each other around a bit before the others caught up and Aelin finished it off. Regrouping in the cavern beyond the tunnel, we found an exit and made our way back into daylight.
Once outside, our entire party decided to stealthily head down the ensuing path… except Hector, in the lead, who trudged along like he was out for a stroll in the park. We quickly found the path running down a ravine with twenty-foot cliffs on either side, a rickety wooden bridge spanning over the top, and a whole bunch of Lizardfolk, including a shaman, overlooking Hector, at this point the only one they could see.
In the ensuing fight, we wiped out all of the Lizardfolk, but it took its toll. Our barbarians tanked a heap of damage, but they and Gad almost ended up dropping. Some other highlights include yours truly dropkicking a Lizardfolk into the ravine, Leo snap freezing a dude, Hector doing an impression of a hedgehog with all the javelins sticking out of him, the shaman polymorphing into a giant crocodile and snatching up Aelin only for me to punch the bridge out from under him, dropping them both into the ravine, and several Assassin’s Creed-style drops onto bad guys.
Once the fight was done, as roughened up as we were, we decided there was no time to waste, and immediately hunted down the queen. We found her praying to a statue of a giant that was leaking more of the black water, evidently her totem. She was tough, and nearly killed us, but with a bit of luck we took out her and the quasits that were with her, and Gad managed to use his magic to seal the crack in the statue.
Finally done with the Lizardfolk, we found a relatively safe place in the swamp to tend to our wounds (we really were bad by this point), and then made our way back to the Tortle village. With Gad still keen to accompany us further, we spent the night to recover fully before setting out, resuming our trek towards the capital.
And that was our game today. A solid bit of work, if I do say so myself. Tune in next week for the next step in the journey of Spoon and his companions.