AKA the shortest session of D&D we’ve ever had. AKA I was right.
So the session began exactly where we left off last time, with me standing in the room with the hench lady and the others outside, ready to rush in and help. Which is exactly what Korfel, with the highest initiative, did. Unfortunately, when he attacked hench lady, she used a Hellish Rebuke to wipe out most of his hit points.
More unfortunately, an imp, up until that point invisible, then appeared beside him and struck him with a critical hit. Which Korfel failed his Constitution save against the poison of. So was instantly killed by
Great start.
Then another imp appeared beside me and knocked me unconscious with another critical hit. Then a bearded devil appeared beside our friendly NPC lady, and hit her twice… one of which was a critical hit. So she was almost brought down by that, and she was poisoned, meaning she would be taking damage at the start of each of her turns.
Seeing how things were going, Sarek came over to me and used my last healing potion to heal me to consciousness. Clourc threw a javelin at the devil and missed, our NPC hit the devil for about 3 points of damage, and Gib Eldritch Blasted one of the imps into oblivion and began heading for the exit back into the sewers.
In the next round, the surviving imp flew over and hit our NPC lady… with a critical hit. So now she was unconscious, and still taking damage at the start of her turns. I told Sarek to run while I ‘held them off’, went over to the hench lady, and she immediately Hellish Rebuked upon me hitting her with my warhammer and knocked me unconscious again.
Taking this as his cue, Sarek fled up the secret exit we had uncovered in the last session. Clourc, seeing the way things were going, followed him, while Gib continued his fighting retreat in the opposite direction, Eldritch Blasting the other imp as he went.
In the third round, Sarek and Clourc successfully made their escape, NPC lady died, and Gib continued to fall back, while the bearded devil followed with hench lady in close pursuit. Meanwhile, I failed my first two death saves by rolling a natural 1.
On his next turn, Gib surrendered, as it was clear he wasn’t getting out of there alive otherwise. Hench lady had the devil manacle him, and then there was only one thing left to do.
I rolled my next death saving throw, and rolled a 10, so, one success. However, since there was no one around left to stabilise me, I had to roll my next save as well. Which I failed… with another natural 1.
RIP Orgonbrand.
It was at this point we called it. After a lengthy discussion, we came to the conclusion that Sarek and Clourc wouldn’t make any attempt to rescue Gib, and since that was most of the party gone, we had to decide whether we would continue the campaign or start a new one. The decision ended up being made by our DM, since no one else felt particularly strongly either way and we had been discussing for a while that someone else would DM the next campaign. He basically said he needed a break from killing all our characters, so we ended the campaign there.
And all of that happened in about an hour.
So, a bit of a disappointing end to the campaign about going into hell… where we never even made it to hell. Reminds me of the time we played Tomb of Annihilation and never even made it to the tomb. But, honestly, it was crit after crit coming from our DM, and… it was brutal. And I was right in my last write-up, Orgonbrand died in his very next session after breaking a survival record. Thus, the curse continues.
However, not for much longer. Things are about to change, because we are about to embark on a brand new campaign… with yours truly at the helm. That’s right, beginning next week, we start our new campaign and I will be the DM. Go ahead and kill me now, death curse.
The world we’ll be playing in is a little different than your standard D&D fantasy realms, but I’ll explain all that and more in my write-up of the first session. So do be sure to tune in next week, when you’ll get a sense of the new world, the new party, and all of the trials and tribulations you had better believe I’ll be putting them through. And, in the meantime, I hope you have a very merry Christmas.