SKT Episode 10: FUCKOFFWINDOWS!

Starring:

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Author’s Note: Er.. I got nothing. It speaks for itself. It speaks volumes!

That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

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Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have save the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They helped defend the town of Triboar from a fire giant attack and ransacked a dead wizard’s house for loot with style darlings!

– They set off on a quest to deliver some saddles but got waylaid by another quest to find out what was going on with the trolls in the Evermoors. Turns out fire giants are enslaving them. The trolls, not the players (but give it time).

Pre-session Guff

Mike had said he would be late and turned up early. Jake on the other hand decided picking up medication was more important than turning up for D&D on time. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

Matt has a new headset and Mike blatantly assumed the gender of his armour.

Don’t ask.

The DM discovered that the monster manual has a picture showing the different types of boulder that each giant throws. This was really cool but it is missing the one with a druid stuck under it.

The DM mentioned he would really like to get finished by 9.30 tonight.

Big bag of pants loot

Looting needed to be done as the DM forgot last week and the fire giant they the dice killed had a loot pouch on it!

We had a roll to decide who got to roll for the loot! Jake finally decided he could actually be bothered to turn up and had a proper rant about people queuing at the chemist. No one cared.

Regulus rolls highest and then rolls high for the cash, scoring 1,200gp. Nice.

Elvira rolls a d100 on a table of miscellaneous items and won an uprooted berry bush. Which was nice.

Well, ok, it was a bit pants but trust me, there’s a lot worse in there.

Joffrey rolls a d100 and found a 50ft coil of hempen rope.

The DM scans the giant’s loot table and finds it mostly devoid of anything fun, interesting or useful, except for a bronze gong which raises the possibility of some future gong bonging. If I get time, I’ll do a better version but no promises.

They return to the inn at Calling Horns and receive their letter of recommendation which may either be given to a half-orc at a house in Everlund to earn a friend (they are going there anyway on the Harper quest so probably won’t need it unless Joffrey stuffs the conversation) or it can be given to the Yartar thieves guild, the Hand of Yartar, in exchange for a favour.

Matt> I see a future rant from Gary when we forget to ask for help and it’s obviously there.

Indeed.

They group travel onwards and a day later are approaching Noanar’s Hold

Noanar’s Hold

This village on the edge of the High Forest grew up around a famous hunting lodge built over two hundred years ago. In its heyday, Noanar’s Hold hosted wild hunts that attracted the wealthiest nobles and merchants of the North. Some who ventured to Noanar’s Hold never returned, spurring dark rumours that the five Hunt Lords who ruled Noanar’s Hold were arranging wanton slaughters to amuse their guests and even allowing their guests to hunt one another. The place was shunned, and the village fell on hard times.

‘Hunt’… Lords.. right

Those proficient with History recall that the Hunt Lords were human and that these events occurred over 200 years ago.

They left the Evermoor Way and turned onto the trail leading up into the hills where they spotted a bird pinned to a tree by an arrow. Further investigation revealed it had a message attached to one leg. It reads “The Hunt Lords live! Help us!”

See, this is called a plot hook. It lets the players know that something is amiss in the village ahead. I really shouldn’t have bothered <sigh>.

They discussed where the bird was going, where it came from, what shot it, where the thing that shot it was, if they should take it into town, if they did take it into town would they find the person that sent it, if they took it into town would the person that shot it know they read it, that at least two people in the town must have know the message was sent and so on, and so on.

Now a lot of DMs complain about their players being murder-hobos but murder-hobos are easy to deal with, you just keep putting neutral characters in the game that are tougher than they are and they’ll learn to stop being dicks after they’ve been wtfbuttfucked a few times.

I have an entirely different problem <sigh>

So they have a chat on what to do with the deceased pigeon:

Having investigated and surmised the bird was shot from the trail, Joffrey examines further:

Well its just bad manners isn’t it?

They approach the White Hart Inn and despite the fact that it is coming on dark decided to travel up to the hold anyway to deliver the saddles <sigh>

Well this is going to utterly bork the DM’s plans for the session but he did not have to intervene as his hardened adventurers, all by themselves, decided not to travel in the dark to a castle possibly inhabited by the risen-dead Hunt Masters, not because it would be dangerous (and stupid) mind you, but because it would be impolite to arrive at a haunted castle after dark.

I’ll let that sink in for a bit, it’ll be important again in a short while.

The inn is run by Avgar Filroy who uses unseen servants to run the place. He welcomes them warmly, warns them not to go out at night and, when they eventually tell him why they are in town, tells then to go up to the hold in the morning.

The group settle down for a surprisingly good meal and find themselves sharing the inn with three human males who have the look of brothers. Clay goes and has a chat and they say they only arrived today and they are there to hunt a hill giant. Their reasons for doing so are a private family matter.

The following morning the party rise and run into the brothers at the stables, they are strapping on rapiers and preparing to ride out. The group offer to accompany them but they refuse and restate that this is a family hunt.

The players head up to the hold.

Noanar’s Actual Hold

The keep is nestled among old pine trees on a hilltop overlooking the sleepy village. The building has three stories, corner turrets, and rooftop battlements. One of the turret rooftops has collapsed, leaving a gaping hole through which birds and other creatures can enter. All the windows are bricked up, and the heavy oaken doors on the ground floor are barred from within.

They forgot. I don’t know why I bother but I do so I posted the damn thing in the chat:

“Look, it’s either a statue of a Gargoyle or it’s an actual Gargoyle. Just shoot the fucker with an arrow and find out. Find out from a long way off.”

Simple, right? Easy, right? Apparently not. They still didn’t fucking do it. The DM had to seriously fight the inclination to make the bloody things actual gargoyles.

Eh, I can always do it when they are on the way out next week.

And this is not even remotely the silliest conversation we’ve had in this game.

Nice.

Clay knocks, 30 seconds pass, nothing happens (except the DM berating them for not shooting arrows at the ‘gargoyles’). Clay knocks again, louder, about 30 seconds pass, nothing happens. The players start to discuss looking around the outside and splitting up. The DM saves about 20 minutes of over analysis on who should go where by asking a question:

The DM feels a momentary, fleeting twang in what once passed for his conscience before D&D DMing turned it into a dark, cold pit of irritableness and retribution. Is this online bullying? Is this unfair to Adam?

“Oh and by the way, your husband is dead”

“Oh! Can I eat the boar?!”

Nah, it’s fine.

Amrath turns out to be a very old shield dwarf and the book description of him is as follows:

Characters who seek an audience with the Hunt Lords must first speak to Amrath Mulnobar (NE male shield dwarf veteran), the castellan of the Hunt Lords’ keep. Amrath has served the Hunt Lords for more than two centuries, dating back to when they were still alive. Now he’s a gray-bearded curmudgeon who hangs about the dark halls of the keep like a bad smell. The keep had a small garrison once, but only Amrath remains.

There’s never a paladin about when you really need one

I’m just going to summarise what the players know about the situation before we go forwards:

Short of a gigantic neon sign saying “EVIL UNDEAD FUCKERS LIVE IN THE FUCKING CASTLE AND YOU SHOULD GO AND FUCK THEM THE FUCK UP!” the DM is unsure what else he can do.

So what fundamental force do you think stops our adventurers from storming the place and killing these twats for xp, loot and adulation? Fear? Laziness? Tempus fugit and they are in a hurry to do something more important? No, dear reader, the quest to rid the village of the evil undead fuckers that have been tormenting the residents for over two hundred years came to a grinding halt because of… politeness.

Amrath invites them in to drop the crate on the floor, which they do.

This was delivered casually and it is, of course, total bullshit. That map took fucking ages to make! There were however vociferous objections to the idea of leaving.

You want a pretext? Ok, I actually did it, I made this for you, it’s subtle though:

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Law vs Order vs Morality

Oh dear. Right, you are in a vast wilderness with a few city states and a lot of small towns and outposts. It is essentially a feudal system but for ease of explanation, I’m going to equate it to the wild west. There is no law here worth a damn. The laws are set by each individual town and backed up by whatever law enforcement they have, be it volunteers or the equivalent of a sheriff. These people are appointed by whoever is in charge and whoever is in charge could be a total evil arsehole.

Say you go to clear out a bandit base from which the bandit arseholes are riding out to rape and pillage, but when you get there you are met with a guy wearing a sheriff’s star saying it’s illegal for you to enter. Are you going to just bugger off and let the bandits carry on raiding because stopping them would involve breaking some rules?

No, of course not. Hey Drikk! What are they going to do?

Drikk Fra-Kar> Pay attention Florence! You’re going to shoot that corrupt mother-fucking sheriff right in his sodding unmentionables, you’re going to take his mother-fucking badge, and you are then going to declare “LISTEN UP FUCKERS! There’s a NEW law in town now!” and then you’re going fuck every single last one of those raping and pillaging mother-fuckers the fuck up and then you’re going to loot all of their shit, return what you can, keep what you can’t and spend what’s left on ale and whores! HOOO-YAH BUTTERCUP!

Indeed, thanks Drikk. That’s one way of doing it, you have other options, obviously (that one sounds fun though, right?)

It’s the frontier; might makes right. Morality counts, at least for alignment and reputation but morality is largely set by the gods in this realm as they are real and they are watching and there may well be consequences to your actions both good and bad but if you are doing bad(ish) things for good reasons, you should be ok. However, there are a lot of gods and they aren’t all good.

If you feel you are the good guys and you are so motivated, you need to storm in there, demand to see the Hunt Lords and, if they are indeed undead, fuck them the fuck up (Buttercup) without letting being impolite to the fucking butler get in the way <sigh>.

Or, you can just decide it isn’t your problem and ride on. That’s actually a perfectly good response. It’s just not very adventurous, adventurers, and the rewards are pants too.

So Florence ask yourselves if it is worth a bit of breaking-and-entering and some trespassing to save a whole town from some evil twats while also getting some phat lootz?

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Cleaners… really?

The DM is picturing this heavily armed group pretending to be cleaners. You could pull that off but it would need to be a different type of ‘cleaner’.

I don’t know why that last bit is funny, it just is and we all cracked up. It was the visualisation of this lanky druid making air quotes at the dwarf castellan. I can’t do it justice in text form but the tone of Adam’s voice and the timing just worked for some reason.

Then there was a glimmer of a breakthrough!

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And then it all goes off the rails again <sigh>

Will nobody think of the pigeons?!

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There was further discussion <sigh> I’ll just cover some high points:

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You just scared an old man so much he passed out and you thought that was awesome?! What kind of burglarising, trespassing bandits are you people?!

Joffrey checks to see if he is faking it. There were a variety of suggestions from the DM’s standby of stab-him-in-the-leg to the old faithful of kick-him-in-the-nuts, but they went with a somewhat less fun but also less damaging choice of a medicine check. He wasn’t faking it.

Right, so you wouldn’t shoot the fucking gargoyle statues to see if they were actually gargoyles but you will shoot a bit of furniture? <sigh>

29 to hit. Arcane fucking Archers eh?

Ooh, nice stove!

Joffrey wanted to go right so everyone else went left. The druid then tried to play the double bluff “This looks like a really interesting stove!” but no one was buying it and so they searched the kitchen.

Indeed.

In an alternative dimension a holy paladin of Tyr confronts the castellan:

Two minutes tops and you’re in. But no, we have to have naked dwarves being shackled to gargoyles, adventurers pretending to be cleaners and begging to use the loo!

The only things of note in the kitchen were a pair of what were once probably cheap bottles of wine but are now a distinguished vintage.

They then proceed to the barracks where the shortsword named ‘Bait’ lies on a table. We had a bit of a disaster around the whole ‘You can cast Detect Magic as a ritual’ thing until it was discovered that Abelas did not know the spell at all.

We than had another bit of a disaster when Clay said he picked up the sword but Abelas talked at the same time so the DM missed it and we carried on doing arcana shit and non-Detect Magic shit for another five minutes without Matt once questioning out how we were doing that shit as he had picked it up <sigh>

Only after they spent some minutes searching the room, finding a dairy of the guard captain in which he mentions the Hunt Lords dabbling with something named ‘Orcus’, did the issue get revealed and we had a roll back and when Clay picked up the sword and a horde of skeletons manifested from all the bones in the room. Which was nice.

There is 1 Skeleton Captain and twelve other assorted Skeletons. We used the minion rules for this fight; the skeletons only have 1 HP each but if they make a save from an attack or spell that usually is half damage, they take no damage at all.

Isaac rolls high and goes first. He runs into the middle of the room and shouts “FUCK MY DICK!”.. oh wait, that was last week. This week he shouted “See the light of Lathander!” and casts Radiance of Dawn which deals 2d10+6 radiance damage to anything not in full cover within 30ft, half on save. This hits every skeleton in the room bar one.

The DM outsourced the twelve saving rolls to the players, which was a remarkable success and the DM made a note to slope his job onto the players much more often in the future.

Five of the skeletons perished and the captain took 9 damage after the DM rolled a less than impressive 1 and 2 on the two d10s <sigh>.

Abelas remembered to Bladesong (for a change) and missed the captain with a Chromatic Orb. Shame really.

Clay pummels the captain with Legana and throws in a trip attack for good measure for 36 damage in one turn.

Fucking fighters.

Fuckingwotnow?

Regulus double-blasts the captain and blows a few bones off him.

It was established that the homunculus servant was in fact, really quite cool, physical, attackable and perched on Regulus’ shoulder.

One shot, one kill. Nice work modron with no name!

The DM finds a cube object in TTS, shrinks it down and sticks it on the Artificer’s base.

The DM names the cube ‘Nottyett’

Elvira saunters into the room, rolls a miserable 9 to hit, adds her attack bonus and smashes past the captains armour anyway. 19 damage was done and he failed the save and is blind beyond 5ft.

The skeleton missed and Nottyett survived!

Clay gets twatted three times by the skeletons and the captain and he ripostes, rolls a twenty and wtfbuttfucks the skeleton leader into pieces scattered all over the room.

Isaac’s turn and he Scorching Rays three skeletons, killing two.

Abelas Magic Missiles and kills three of the rapidly dwindling number of skeletons. Two are left and Clay and Regulus dispose of them handily.

Ouch.

Disposition of the magic shortsword was discussed (before they knew what it did). Abelas and Elvira are the obvious candidates and it was given to Elvira.

Elvira> I don’t know how much I’ll use it though!

Hah! I do!

Adam and Mike got into a spectacularly pedantic argument discussion about a shortsword of dual-wielding vs being able to dual-wield it anyway. The DM found it highly entertaining because if you are going to be properly pedantic about it, it would have been a shortsword of two-weapon fighting like the proper D&D description of bashing shit with two things at once in an uncoordinated mess.

That won’t fit through there guv’nor!

Good times.

Regulus> Right that’s Anonymoose I’ve pulled out of the bag.

It slowly dawns on everyone that the huge 15ft wide moose will not fit through the 5ft wide door of the barracks.:

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Such a simple question. Three hours later and following a vote they all decided to go the way Joffrey didn’t and approached the main door. This led to the ridiculousness that was the ‘plaintive moose’ incident which is best explained by watching this (you’ll need the volume up, the DM is quiet):

Once composure had finally been regained, horse tracks were noticed in the dust leading to the doors. The door is investigated and does not appear to be locked or trapped.

This obviously led to the obviously lengthy discussion of exactly how to open the doors:

Joffrey> Guys! I could turn into a cave bear and run in there screaming!

There was some hilarity over this but it wasn’t even the silliest suggestion. The final decision was that, because they’d made so much noise laughing, they might as well just burst in, which they duly did.

Wight about now (the fucked soul brothers)

They encounter a large dining hall with a large table around which sit five hooded figures, next to which is a large pile of bones. Roll initiative!

Now the DM was a little wary about this fight as Kobold Fight Club (Yip yip!) makes it a ‘Deadly’ encounter. The DM’s fears were not allayed when the five Hunt Lords (Wights) rolled the highest initiative.

Abelas> I don’t suppose we surprised them did we?

They took twenty minutes arguing with the doorman, they had an argument ‘spirited discussion’ in the kitchen, they killed the Hunt Lord’s undead minions, there’s a plaintive moose bellowing in the barracks and they had a hysterical fit right outside the door. No. Surprisingly, they were not surprised at all.

After discussion on whether robots have detachable balls or not, the two boars were indeed moved next to the Artificer.

Abelas> If we’re going to meet Gary’s request at the beginning, we’ll have to finish this fight in.. seven minutes, yeah?

Hmm.

Well, shit.

CHEEEEESE!

There was a further discussion while the DM set up the fight which I’m not going to cover, but one of the comments was “Did you give Gary Gygax a blowie?” <sigh>.

The bone piles next to the Hunt Lords transformed into skeletal warhorses which the DM couldn’t find the stats for because they were listed under Warhorse, Skeletal <sigh>.

Four of the mounted wights charge and surround the players while the fifth jumps his bony mount up onto the table and shoots arrows at them.

Joffrey is hit by a longsword attack for 7 damage but the follow-up life drain missed. The second wight hits with his Life Drain

Indeed.

Two attacks on Clay miss and Abelas Shields against a life drain. Elvira is longbowed by the one on the table for 6 damage. Elvira retaliates by laying into the closest Hunt Lord with a pair of shortswords and lands both attacks.

It is Abelas’ turn and because he lacks adventure he decided not to follow the DM’s suggestion and “Thunderstep the fuck out of there!” Pussy. Instead he nuked three Hunt Lords with a Lightning Bolt for 25 damage.

DM> I didn’t buff anything for this fight because Kobold Fight Club said it was ‘Deadly’ but that killed Hunt Lord two and now I’m considering giving each of them an extra 40 hit points but that feels slightly cheesy doing it in the middle of a fight.

I’m only joking of course, there’s no way I’d tell you I buffed shit in the middle of a fight.

Then it’s Adam’s turn:

Squeezin’s

I’ve checked the rules as far as they go on this one and you can squeeze into a space one size smaller than you are. We aren’t doing pushing stuff out of the way because that could get ridiculous and, in the right circumstances, spectacularly cheesy.

Adam was a bit grumpy that the DM wouldn’t let Joffrey pass between two of the Hunt Lords but once he realised how big the bases were (large, 10ft) he understood. It did look wonky to be fair.

So instead of panic-snaking it, he threw out a level 3 Flaming Sphere behind the wights but didn’t ram it into anything because he needs the bonus action. He moves away, takes the attack of opportunity, which hits for another Life Drain and that’s another failed Con save and another 5 off the druid’s max hit points but he did, finally, get to turn into Panic Snake which is a Huge beast and has 60hp.

The DM realised he stuffed up the initiative and forgot Isaac again <sigh>. He cast Spirit Guardians, which we will inevitably forget are active next week. Isaac then randomly shouts “FUCK MY DICK” and ends his turn.

Regulus is stuck in melee range and attacks at disadvantage but hits anyway with one of his two attacks. Nottyett has a pop but also misses.

It’s now 9:30 and Clay’s turn <sigh>

Clay twats a Hunt Lord and the DM reads out what happens with a trip attack; if the rider fails the save he has to make another save to see if he falls off the horse. He did fail the save but he did not fall off the horse.

Clay’s second attack, at advantage on the prone wight, also hits for another 15 damage.

Good times.

End of Session

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Matt, remember you are action surging next week.

Joffrey, remember you have the flamey orb thing out.

Isaac, remember… er you can’t remember because you didn’t do it but you have Spirit Guardians out!