Starring:
Henry as Darin the Rogue – That’s what it says on this table.
Adam as Ari/Beaver the Wizard – I cast mage armour!
Jake as Kroq the Fighter – Is there anything else I can attack?
Chris H. as Uhffo –> “Uuffo!” the Bard – You are safe, everything is fine!
Matthew as Cru the Cleric – It just writes itself!
Sophie as Torren the Cleric – Um.. I have this ‘thunderous rebuke’…
Special Guest Stars:
Simon as Helmuth the Sorcerer – Magic missile!
The DM – What fucking sneak attack table? Where?! Well… shit
Chapter 1 – Secret of the Sumber Hills
The main story so far:
– A rogue member of a cult dedicated to the worship of ‘elemental earth’ tried to gain control of the town of Red Larch. He was found to be in possession of some rare trade bars from the city of Mirabar.
– A trade delegation from Mirabar went missing in the area recently. Powerful organisations want them found.
– The delegation was heading to the abbey at Summit Hall and was last seen in the town of Beliard.
– There are reports of the use of large amounts of magic along the Dessarin road between Beliard and Summit Hall.
– Fresh graves have been spotted in the hills to the SW of the area where magic was used.
– Some books which might, or might not, have belonged to the delegation turned up fucking miles away in the town of Womford which lies on the banks of the Dessarin river.
– The party went to Womford and picked a fight with a pirate captain.
Remind me again, why are we in Romford?
The DM interrupted a discussion about giant purple dildos and reminded the party of the happenings of the previous week. Ari attempted to initially blame Uffo entirely for their current predicament. When Uffo strenuously objected to this, Ari generously conceded that maybe he was only 50% to blame. The DM pointed out that if it wasn’t for Beaver turning up, the party wouldn’t be in Womford in the first place and that the whole situation was entirely 100% Beaver’s fault.
The party faced off against a Water-Genasi spellcaster called Shoalar Quanderill, his sidekick halfling thug called Pike, four bandit henchmen and a couple of mercenaries lurking at the back further down the dock.
Ari used her cheaty divination dice to stuff Shoalar on the initiative roll and the fight started.
Ari lobbed in a Shatter for a moderate amount of damage then ran off to hide behind a large chest and dropped prone.
Darin ran and hid in a boat and sensibly stayed there for the rest of the fight sniping at whatever seemed appropriate.
Uffo attempted a Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on Shoalar but he made the save so Uffo ran behind Kroq to hide. This bit of improvised cover didn’t last long as Kroq promptly ran off to hit Shoalar with an axe and Cru joined in.
Tsunami!
Shoalar teleported to where he could nail four of the party with a Tidal Wave spell. Big AoE, 10ft high, 10ft wide, 30ft long, lots of damage. It messed up a few of the group and Ari only survived by 1 hit point but got washed off the dock into the water.
At the end of the first round the two mercenaries legged it away from the party and towards Shoalar’s keelboat. Torren and Helmuth showed up and joined the fight.
Shoalar got another Tidal Wave off in the second round that dropped Helmuth and Uhffo.
BARD DOWN!
SORCERER DOWN!
Uffo wanted Kroq to heal him when there were two clerics in the party <sigh>
I think that was Shoalar’s last action, two rounds of combat and down he went. Pike didn’t last long either and the remaining bandits were mopped up. The group planned to capture the last bandit.
Ari> “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!”
On Ari’s turn she killed him.
Aftermath
The two mercenaries had used the distraction of the fight to steal Shoalar’s keelboat and were miles off down the river with whatever it contained.
The DM dropped Uffo right in the shit by mentioning the unused Wand of Magic Missiles (Womm).
The party were unimpressed and wanted the wand redistributed to someone who would use it.
Uffo launched into a lengthy and technically accurate defence of why he should get to keep the wand. This involved his innate ability to re-roll a 1 if the last charge was used and a roll made to see if the wand was destroyed.
Everyone seemed convinced and let him keep it. The DM, who knew it was total bollocks, awarded him a ‘successfully deceiving your group in real life’ inspiration.
Look, it doesn’t matter if he gets to use the last charge and re-roll on a 1 if he never uses the bloody wand. A 6-charge wand that gets used is quite considerably better than a 7-charge wand that doesn’t. Because then it’s basically just a stick.
Kroq looted what turned out to be a Bag of Holding; bigger on the inside than the outside. It contained an Enduring Spellbook for Ari (fireproof & waterproof) because the DM feels she’ll need it later in the campaign…
There was also a ‘Folding Boat’ which is a small wooden box that transforms into a 4-person boat or a 15-person ship and is just awesome.
Incoming!
Having been to the last place they should have visited first, they went to the second to last place they should have visited second.
That sentence made perfect sense in my head when I wrote it but not so much when I read it back…
However, on the way to visit the shallow graves the party were accosted by three attackers riding giant vultures. One rider was an armoured knight and the other two were robed initiates. The knight was throwing javelins and the initiates were throwing daggers.
Darin made a comment about not being unduly worried and was right to do so. This was a minor skirmish and yet the party blew a number of precious spell slots taking out what was a relatively minor threat.
They killed the vulture that was being ridden by the knight and he cast a Featherfall spell as he fell and started to serenely float towards the ground. Well, he was serene until everyone started shooting arrows and spells at him and, just for good measure, he was assaulted by a magical flying red plastic torpedo; Cru’s spiritual weapon, the symbol of The Hoff.
On landing the knight held his turn and then an initiate swooped down, jumped off his vulture, the knight got on it and buggered off. The initiate seemed quite willing to sacrifice himself for the cause, and the party duly obliged and sacrificed him quite messily. The other one was killed and his vulture flew off on its own.
The squished initiate had two bits of information on him; a map to ‘The Spire’ and a letter indicating he had been recruited to work for a bunch of arsehole nobles from Waterdeep who were a bit heavy on the religion (Air cultists) but were teaching him to fly. The initiates also had emblems on their robes that were similar to those of the Black Earth Cultists.
Paranoia
There were four shallow graves in the hills near the river roughly halfway between Red Larch and Summit Hall. Cru didn’t want to disturb the graves so took a walk to look around and noticed a tall, white spire some miles away off in the direction of Red Larch.
Darin wanted someone to cast my favourite new spell; Detect Undeaddy Crap.
“I can sense some zombie poo! It is 15ft in that direction! It’s runny!”
Ari, the poncy high-elf, suggested ‘we’ open the graves, meaning ‘not me’. Darin stepped up and agreed to do the dirty deed.
Ari finally remembered to cast Mage Armour before they opened the graves, clearly ready for imminent zombie attacks. Just in case, Cru pre-cast Guidance on himself. Darin asked if he could get guidance for a check; nope, it’s already been cast on Cru… oh dear, they forgot about Torren who can cast it too.
The graves were opened.
A MADDENED ZOMBIE ROSE FROM…. no, nothing happened.
The graves contained a guard from Mirabar, a tradesman or blacksmith, also from Mirabar, an Earth cultist in black robes with a golden mask and an Air cultist in robes.
Ambush time…. Or not.
As the party moved on towards the site of magical activity on the Dessarin Road, Uffo detected some voices and the smell of smoke and the party got the drop on a large group of bandits. The bandits appeared to be attending a sermon by a priest in dark blue robes and flanked by two warriors with shark-toothed longswords wearing the same dark blue livery. There was also a mercenary present, unarmed, who looked like he was getting a bollocking in front of everyone.
During the setup of this particular battle a certain amount of puerile banter was taking place around the table. The DM was not happy about this. Mainly because he was busy setting up the fight and couldn’t join in, and so he wasn’t actually paying attention but clearly Uffo was very unimpressed with Ari and did a Cutting Words on the wizard.
The bandits heard, surprise was lost, everyone blamed Uffo, everyone should have blamed the DM. The loss of surprise wasn’t necessary but the DM found it funny. No one else found it funny but that’s not my fault is it? Er.. is it? Oh well, shit happens.
Major Butthurt paid a visit to the game, hung around for a while, and then buggered off again. See you next week Major!
The DM pointed out that the mercenary was not hostile and not on the initiative list.
Ari threw a Shatter spell into the middle of the bandits and was super impressed with how much damage she did to everyone. Unfortunately, ‘everyone’ also included the non-hostile mercenary that was not on the initiative list.
The non-hostile mercenary turned hostile and was put on the initiative list.
The party were unimpressed.
The mercenary ran off on his turn taking an absolute fuck-ton (imperial, not metric) of useful information with him. On the plus side this means the party absolutely cannot go to the ‘wrong’ main dungeon now as they have no idea where it is.
On the downside the DM now has to figure out how to get this information to the party later on <sigh>.
Roll low, sweet chariot
Ten bandits attacked 7 players and hit one of them once. Twats.
Kroq ran up and flame-breathed three bandits and rolled a really piss-poor three fire damage. There was much mockery right up until the DM removed all three from the table. 8 points of shatter + 3 points of flame breath = 11 points of dead bandit. AoE tag team for the win!
Ari did some totally cheaty divination shit, subbed in a 20 and ranged spell-crit the Priest. The DM had to tack on another 30 HP to make up for it.
I’M JOKING! I only do that shit at the start of the fight. Mostly.
Darin then did a totally cheaty 2d6 sneak attack that the eagle eyed DM totally spotted and questioned immediately only to be pointed at the table in the book that he had never seen before.
Fucking Rogues.
The DMs main aim here was to get the two Reavers next to the two squishies, Ari & Helmuth, as they do extra damage to unarmoured creatures. Two bandits did manage to run the gauntlet and get to Ari.
The dice got a bit funky with the DM rolling 5’s (or less) on everyone but Ari who he seemed to roll nothing but 19’s on. Cru, not to be outdone, decided rolling 7’s was the stylish thing to do and proceed to roll them often.
Reaving
The two bandits got Ari worried and she asked for assistance. Not one toss was given.
Seriously, not one single one.
Uffo even threw in a “You are safe, everything is fine!”
That is so going on a T-shirt.
Lot of people did lots of things that didn’t involve squashing the things threatening the squishie. Ari and the DM shared a look. It said a lot.
The two bandits got flattened but Ari had to flatten one by herself, with a quarterstaff no less. She was so elated she made a fatal mistake… she was 25ft from a Reaver and forgot to move after the attack on the bandit.
CHARGE!
Ari got flattened. It was a nasty sword too. It had shark teeth in it! It looked like it hurt a lot! Ari and the DM shared another look. It also said a lot. The DM particularly admired Ari’s self-control.
But still…
WIZARD DOWN!
As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said “Look meatheads, it aint difficult; look after the squishies and the squishies will look after you”
On Helmuth’s turn Ari was insistent that he Ray-of-Frost the big bad guy at the back until she realised the big bad guy she was pointing at was actually Kroq.
A bandit found out why you don’t ever hit a Tempest Cleric when Torren used Wrath of the Storm, aka ‘thunderously smite thingy’ and obliterated the poor sap.
Stuff got mopped up, fight ended, no loot found, the guy with the information was miles off in the woods somewhere cleaning out his trousers.
Attack Site
Having been to the last place they should have visited first, the second to last place they should have visited second, they now went to the second place they should have visited third.
That sentence does actually make perfect sense. It helps if you have been drinking I think.
The book description of this site assumes the party are coming from Beliard and not Womford. Just sayin’ Beaver!
They arrived at a point about a mile off the Dessarin road to find a dozen dead Mirabar guards and two cairns. The bigger cairn held 5 bugbears, the smaller held a female human in dark robes with a golden snarling gargoyle face. The mask was gilded tin and not worth anything. Ari took it anyway. It was rancid.
Tracks led from the attack site to the river where there were marks from a keelboat.
Ari attempted to wash off the mask, the DM, just for shits and giggles, made her roll a Dex check. It’s easy, so an easy check is a 5. She rolled a five. So close!
Beliard. Finally!
In Beliard they learned a few things;
– The delegation left heading south to the abbey
– They were watched by a man in robes with a gargoyle mask
– Riders on giant vultures were seen flying above the road shortly after the delegation left
OMG WTF is actually going on then?
So, putting it all together in the right order (for a change);
– The Delegation left Beliard and headed south
– They were ambushed by Earth cultists who used bugbears as troops
– Those troops came and went from the river on keelboats
– Another fight took place further downriver between the Earth cultists and some Air cultists
– No bodies of actual delegates have been found, only their guards
– Some stuff, which may or may not have belonged to the delegation, showed up in Womford… sorry, that town is now renamed Fucking Womford.
The party know the whereabouts of some of the Air cult at Feathergale Spire. The party do not know the whereabouts of anywhere else at this time. Coz they stuffed it up.
End of session.
Next time on Ten-foot Squares:
– What will they choose next, the Valley of Death or The Spire of Doom?
– Will Uhffo remember the WoMM without being reminded?
– How many things will Kroq manage to fit into a single turn?
– What harmless bystander will the party twat next?
Tune in next week to find out!