Starring:
Adam as Ari/Beaver the Wizard – Zombie-herder.
Jake as Kroq the Fighter – Smugly informing everyone of how many hit points he had left.
Chris H. as Uffo the Bard – The Bard wanted it and the Bard got it.
Matthew as Cru the Cleric – Feels they have cleared this floor.
Henry as Darin the Rogue – Dealing fuck-tons (imperial, not metric) of damage.
Sophie as Torren the Cleric – Wotsing?
Chapter 1 – Secret of the Sumber Hills continued.
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.
– A trade delegation from Mirabar went missing in the area recently. Powerful organisations want them found.
– Whilst travelling with the delegate prisoners, the Black Earth cult got into a fight with the Air Cult. It isn’t known what the outcome of that was or where the delegates are now.
– The party investigated the Air Cult base at Feathergale Spire
– The boss was beaten, the spire looted, a letter from the head of the Howling Hatred air cult ‘Aerisi’ was found and also directions to Riverguard Keep.
– There was also a mention of ‘Sacred Stone Monastery’ being associated with the Black Earth cult.
– The temple entrance in the valley is protected by a barrier they party cannot get through yet.
– Rivergard Keep was found, entered and the boss, Grimjaw (a were-crocodile), was killed. A second amulet was recovered from Grimjaw’s corpse.
– The party travelled to Scarlet Stone monastery and attempted to gain entry. When they were told to get lost, they waited until night, stealthily entered the rear gardens and started a loud fight right outside the bedroom of the main boss.
Pre-session guff
There was some pre-session banter and, as predicted, the Battle Royale won’t be forgotten any time soon. Someone politely enquired if Ari was actually going to do any damage today. Uffo suggested the players not be salty about the Battle Royale. Darin pointed out that, as the winner, Uffo would say that and politely intimated that he could go fuck himself.
Adam stated that Firefly was shit and the DM rescinded all inspiration awards from Ari for the remainder of the campaign and asked all other players to remind the DM of this fact should he forget and attempt to reward Ari with an inspiration at any point going forward.
Adam can remove this penalty by watching the entire Firefly series and the Serenity movie and then explaining to the group, in detail, why he still thinks it is shit.
The DM told the players not to chase their personal quests; they will find them in the normal course of their travels or the DM will ensure they know where to go.
The DM also stated that both Ari and Cru were still experiencing the nightmares about the flaming skull and it had been about 7 days since those started.
Monastery Exploration
Our band of intrepid adventurers have just finished a monster of a fight with the bulk of the monastery monks where Uffo got a bit buttfucked due to an epic fail of an attempted con-job.
It wasn’t really his fault.
It was really funny.
Uffo wanted to heal himself but couldn’t find his spellcasting modifier. You know, that thing he uses pretty much every fight. The DM pondered why nobody thought to add important information like that to the character sheets so it could easily be found when they needed it.
Uffo also started the session in style with a Maths is Hard moment.
President Henry resigned from his position of authority within the group and jokingly nominated Jake to take over. Jake accepted enthusiastically and before you know it, a joke nomination ended up in charge. There’s a lot of that going around.
The newly christened President Corbyn-Trump promised to charge recklessly into every fight without stopping to think about the consequences. No change there then.
The monastery guest quarters were located and a locked chest found beneath one of the beds. The lock was picked and several scrolls were found. Ari got really excited over one of the level 5 ‘schpells’ (that shit is catching) and explained to the group what it did.
It makes mud, apparently
Uffo was super unimpressed.
Several gargoyle statues were spotted in the main entry hall and the group decided not to risk a confrontation should they not be the statues they appeared to be and avoided the room.
A scriptorium was found where the monks had been busy copying the Testament of Unrayle which contains the following information:
– Marlos Unrayle is the ‘prophet’ of elemental earth.
– He had visions that led him to a place called The Fane of the Eye where he found a magical weapon called Ironfang and took it for his own.
– Unrayle established the Temple of the Black Earth Cult in a long-abandoned dwarven stronghold that exists below Sacred Stone Monastery.
– He is in possession of something called the Black Earth Geode and when all is ready “the Evergrowing Mountain shall come and remake these lands in his own image”.
Monkey Magic
Exploring further, they arrived at the… DOJO OF DOOOOOM!
In the centre of the dojo is Hellenrae, the monastery boss. She is wearing one of the golden masks but this one has no eye-holes. Hellenrae is blind. She is also a pretty decent monk.
Low level monks are cool but squishy. High level monks are slippery and dangerous. There are five normal monks in the dojo as well.
Hellenrae ran up to Kroq, threw three attacks at him and landed a couple, and then she ran back into the centre of the dojo (without suffering attacks of retaliation due to cheaty monkey mobility stuff) and pulled the cheesy Morpheus ‘bring it’ hand gesture.
The doorway got a bit congested with Kroq, Torren and four of the monks piled into a very small area. Uffo managed to run into the room, launched a Magic Missile attack at Hellenrae for about 3% of her hit points, then ran back behind Kroq and taunted the Boss with the same hand gesture from between his legs. Er… between Kroq’s legs… because if it were between Uffo’s legs there’s some serious contortion happening.
Just for the record guys; squishies taunting bosses is generally a bad idea. Squishies taunting bosses that specialise in taking down squishies…. Oh my.
The DM had originally intended to focus Hellenrae’s attacks on Kroq or Torren as she was the first thing the party has run into that can reliably hit the high AC characters (+7 to hit) and Jake was smugly informing everyone of how many hit points he had left.
However, the bard wanted it and so the bard got it.
Hellenrae ran up to Uffo and hit him three times (+7 to hit for each attack) for 9 damage each. Ouch!
BARD DOWN!
Tripitaka was a bitch too
Cru got Uffo back off the floor and Ari pulled a risky (but ballsy) move to Shocking Grasp Hellenrae, which landed and prevented her from making reaction attacks until her next turn. This allowed Uffo to get the fuck out of dodge.
The phrase “nine plus four is fifteen” was clearly heard by several people but afterwards no one would admit to it. Uffo compounded the Maths is Hard moment by responding “No it’s 14”
Cru used this opportunity to pop a level 3 Inflict Wounds at Hellenrae but she is a difficult target to hit and the attack missed costing the cleric a level 3 ‘schplot’. If it had landed there would have been a lot less pain going forward. Shame.
Kroq started his turn at the same time as Chris pulled out a packet of crisps. The DM made a mental bet that the crisps would be finished before Kroq’s inevitable eleventy billion attacks. It didn’t quite happen but apparently the packet was nearly empty by the time Kroq was finished and Hellenrae had taken a substantial amount of damage.
Kroq however, did not quite seem to realise the danger he was in; at +7 to-hit she will land 1-2 attacks on average per round. She only needs to get slightly lucky to land all 3. If she gets 4 turns during the course of the fight, that’s 12 attacks total, plus she gets reaction attacks if people miss her, and that is a significantly better-than-even chance of getting a crit at some point in the fight.
Hellenrae got that crit at the start of her next turn.
Maths is Awesome!
Kroq took 18 damage and, more crucially, failed the Con save and was stunned. This gave Hellenrae advantage on her next two attacks against him, she only needed one.
FIGHTER DOWN!
Then, just to be a dick, the DM ran Hellenrae over to the bard and twatted him again for good measure.
Torren seemed to be having a wonderful time Wrath of the Storming (Wotsing?) monks who made the mistake of hitting her and Darin was doing what Darin does; hiding and dealing fuck-tons (imperial, not metric) of damage. The monks were slowly whittled down and died defending the honour of their dojo.
RIP Monkey, you were amazeballs
Sadly, the brave and noble Hellenrae was eventually brutally murdered by the band of rampaging, cheaty, clearly overpowered, homicidal and dysfunctional ruffians when all she wanted was to defend her home, do Kung Fu, punch people repeatedly and help bring about the end of the world
Let us take a moment to reflect on her outstanding contributions to this campaign; punching the bard repeatedly in the face until he was unconscious and proving to Kroq that he is not actually invincible.
Farewell Hellenrae you magnificent blind bitch, you will be missed.
Ok, moment over.
President Corbyn-Trump Takes Command
Hellenrae had a key and another of the cultist-symbol amulets on her which were duly looted.
The DM forgot to mention the amulet (again) so retcon that fucker in there.
The group were pretty messed up after this fight and a pretty lengthy discussion on resting took place. Cru was heard to say “I feel we have cleared this floor”.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Aren’t assumptions wonderful?
Uffo had a naturally occurring Scpell Schlot incident. Told you, that shit is catching!
They decided to check the last few nearby rooms; one was locked, one was a distillery with a lot of cheap brandy in it (Ari and Uffo helped themselves to a few bottles) and the other proved to be Hellenrae’s chambers where Torren found a rather tasty Hammer of Thunderbolts hanging on the wall.
President Corbyn-Trump decided that a short rest in the well-protected room was in order. Ari dragged the body of Hellenrae into the room and cast Animate Dead on it, accompanied by a chorus of groans from the other players.
The Zombie-monk immediately shuffled as far from Ari as it could get and made an attempt to walk through the wall and would not obey Ari’s commands.
In the ensuing torrent of abuse, Ari was called something very nasty indeed, which was a bit harsh, but funny as it wasn’t her fault. The nightmares Ari and Cru had been experiencing since pretty much the first session were symptoms of a curse they picked up when the touched something they shouldn’t have. One effect of the curse is that undead avoid you. Ari doesn’t know this.
Kroq stated “I don’t want to rest with a zombie in the room!” which was bizarre but accurate and tickled the DM. No one else seemed to find it funny, but fuck those losers.
Ari then attempted to do some entertaining but hopeless zombie-herding with little success and Cru eventually put the zombie-monk down with a few Sacred Flame cantrips.
Ari was unimpressed.
The Shrine of Black Earth
Other than the locked area that they can’t figure out how to get into yet, there is only one room left unexplored and it is the large central chamber of the monastery with the gargoyle statues by the front door.
They wisely decided to once again avoid any potential “AAAAARGH IT’S NOT REALLY A STATUE!” moments and avoided the front entrance. They stacked up on a side door and Uffo attempted to steal Ari’s brandy bottle. He failed hard and Ari caught him and poured the brandy over his head.
Uffo was now vulnerable to fire but sadly the DM never got the chance to put that to use
Inside the shrine is a Black Earth Priest (a.k.a Beppé), and two Black Earth Guards. The party discussed the last time they fought a BEP and couldn’t quite remember what he did other than it was an AoE. They agreed it was a fantastic idea not to clump together.
The fight started and the party clumped together.
Nice.
Beppé felt duty bound to lob a level 3 Shatter in to the midst of the group. Uffo responded by casting his Faery-Fire stuff on all three cultists.
Ari> Longbow attack on Beppé!
*Ari rolls a 3*
*Ari is unimpressed*
Ari> Oh wait, didn’t we get advantage on that?
DM> Yes
Ari> Cool!
*Ari rolls a 4*
*Much laughter*
Ari> Well… fuck.
Kroq burned fifteen resources to land one hit on the priest. The DM lol’d.
The priest lasted somewhat longer than his predecessor in the Tomb of Moving Stones but not by much. The last guard did a runner towards a lever in the corner. Or was it towards the door that was next to the lever? What does the lever do? They may never know as they cut him down before he could get to wherever it was he was going.
Victorious once more, the party engaged in a lengthy discussion about whether to short rest, long rest or push on. Henry went for a piss.
Henry returned from his piss and complained bitterly that they were still arguing the same points they were on when he left.
There are several sets of stairs leading down below the monastery and Uffo felt that, while there were almost certainly bad guys down there, “I’m guessing they don’t come upstairs for the most part”.
Aren’t assumptions wonderful?
This discussion continued for a lot longer until it was finally put to a vote.
If only you have some ability that would let you know if a proposed course of action were a good idea or not. Like… I dunno… may the Augury spell? That would be really useful and totally amazing.
As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena, once said “Use fucking Augury you twats!”
Consequences
The party left the monastery, headed into the woods and long rested in a tiny hut Uffo pulled out of his arse. Or something.
On returning to the monastery, the party found that the denizens below did, in fact, come upstairs for the most part and they faced Beppétoo, three BEGs and six Duergar (grey dwarfs.. dwarves?).
There was a brief Beaver appearance when it was suggested that in the middle of a fight, where they hadn’t actually seen all of their opponents, they cast Dispel Magic on the door in the garden.
The DM likened this to Dubya’s decision to start not one, but two land wars in Asia at the same time.
The Black Earth cultists were eventually defeated.
End of session.
Next time on Ten-foot Squares:
– Will the Battle Royale result continue spill into the main campaign?
– What were the consequences of those were-croc bite constitution checks (still x2)?
– How long will it take for whatever is fucking up Ari’s undead summon bollocks to wear off?
– What is behind the magically locked door?
– What does the brass lever do in the main hall?
– How fucked would they be if they had gone down the stairs without resting?
Tune in next week to find out!