Ooh, boy. First session of the new campaign, and it’s already a doozy. For real, this session was full of ups and downs. Well, it was more like, up, up, slightly up, down, down, down, down, crash and burn, oh god, the humanity, why me, please stop, et cetera.
We began in a tavern, as these things often do. I, Hamiota, Half-Orc Blood Hunter and all-around adventurer and fisherman, was drinking and telling stories with Cassius Algernon Tarquin, the nobleman Half-Elf Bard with an Intelligence of 6, when we were joined by Ghoti (pronounced ‘fish’ – seriously, it you don’t get it, just google it) the female Half-Elf Warlock who began hitting on Cass hard. Like, real hard. Like, if I was beating him with a hammer with my 19 Strength, I wouldn’t be hitting him as hard.
Anyways, the two half-elves expressed their desires to become adventurers, and I, being an experienced adventurer myself, told them of a job I knew about in town (a supposedly haunted house) and invited them along. They agreed to come, so we all got drunk. Once we were well and truly plastered, we left the tavern.
Because of Cass mentioning that we were heading to the haunted house, a bunch of the other drunks in the tavern followed us out to watch. As more joined from elsewhere, we became something of a parade, with me leading our followers in a bawdy fisherman’s tune while Cass played his bagpipes and Ghoti danced along. Bear in mind, this was in the middle of the night. We got more than a few angry shouts and dirty looks.
When we reached the haunted house, our followers left us and we went in alone. I led the way as we searched room after room. Being drunk did not help us in this regard, as I accidentally smashed a healing potion by curb-stomping a desk drawer and we failed more checks than we passed. Nor did it help when we got into combat.
We had our first taste when a swarm of spiders came pouring out of a fireplace to cover Cassius, but things only got serious when we were ambushed by a quartet of giant centipedes. Two hit me, forcing me to use my Relentless Endurance to keep from falling unconscious straight away, while the other two hit each of the others. Cassius was knocked unconscious, but Ghoti and I were able to kill the four giant bugs and stabilise him before he bled out. Deciding that we probably needed to be sober for the rest, we left the house and went to the inn for a long rest, returning in the morning.
When we picked up our investigation, we searched the rest of the house, discovering more spiders, flying mosquito-bat things, and a merchant who was tied up. He tagged along with us as we continued to search. At one point, I fell through the upstairs floor, prompting my Relentless Endurance again to keep me from falling unconscious from the impact. Also, between the other combats and a short rest (which was totally useless for me, thanks to my rolling a 1 on my d10 hit die) we were entering the basement with Cass without any spell slots left and me on 2 hit points.
In the first room of the basement, I found a secret door, and as I opened it we were set upon by a trio of smugglers, who had been expecting us due to all the noise we were making. The merchant with us also turned on us, hitting Cass once, but things otherwise didn’t work out for him. Unfortunately, they didn’t work out for me either.
I was stuck in the doorway, and because I rolled a natural 1 for initiative, I did not get to go first. The bad guys whiffed their first round of attacks against me, but so did I, and then I was felled by an arrow in their second. While Cass and Ghoti slowly wiped out the bad guys, I lay on the floor, bleeding out. My first death save was a success, then my second was a failure. As my third came up, I told my fellow players to get ready for the natural 1, and then what did I roll? A natural 1.
RIP Ham.
Cass and Ghoti finished the fight, searched the place without proceeding further, and then returned my body to the town proper, and that’s where we finished.
So that was Ham’s brief foray into the world, officially becoming my shortest lived D&D character, beating even Ognard. I can’t say I’m really surprised; nothing surprises me at this point. I am cursed. That is the simple truth.
Now, I have a week to come up with a new character. I thought I had created a pretty tough one – admittedly Blood Hunter is a high risk, high reward class – and I don’t think I made any bad decisions during the game. It was only level 1, after all. The dice just went against me. Perhaps I need to be a Halfling Divination wizard with the Lucky feat, or something.
(As a side note: we roll for stats, and I rolled up some very interesting ones for my next character. 16, 15, 15, 15, 7, and 5, to be precise. An intriguing array, to say the least.)
Either way, stay tuned for my new new character next week. Who will they be? How will they join the fledgling party? Will they outlive Ham? Only time will tell…