SKT Episode 15: Charisma is NOT a Dump Stat!

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

Author’s Note: Writing this note before I listen back to the session I feel I might be going to be a tad harsh on the players. However, unlike normally, most of this session does not have the answers in the book. It merely gives the initial setting and then lists the possible outcomes. How we get to those outcomes is not described and so the DM is going to have to figure out how to approach these situations in just the way the players do.

My recent annual psychological evaluation (it’s a job requirement) highlighted ‘empathy fatigue’ which is wrong; you can’t fatigue something you don’t have. Having the empathy of a rock means A) I will probably will be too harsh on the players but B) I won’t give a toss. So that makes it all ok.

As long as it’s funny, it’s fine though right?

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!

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 travelled to Everlund to bring word of the attack to the Harpers there. They were given access to the Harper’s teleportation network.

– Having robbed a poor devil-worshipping family in Silverymoon and then robbed a watch captain in Yartar for a magic axe, they were on the way to Goldenfields when they were sidetracked by and Adventurers Wanted poster from Beliard and got into a fight with a fire giant on a bridge.

Pre-session Guff

Matt couldn’t make it because he has the COVID again. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

Adam was congratulated by the players on the birth of his first born. The DM offered commiserations.

Extensive pre-session guff conversations took place on the following:

– The wisdom of work considering potentially moving everyone to a new site if Brexit stuffs the roads up, while apparently not having thought of the fact that the route to the new site goes past the current site.

– Mike’s impressive ability to test for cocaine.

– Selective schools; a tool of the fascist overlords, a leg up for underprivileged kids or snobbery pool for middle class twats with superiority complexes (or probably all three).

– How the picture that Sophie supplied for her mini was about 14 times too large so that when the DM opened it on the template it displayed a remarkably clear picture of a tabaxi monk’s left knee cap.

– Sophie’s Monk’s stat scores and how much better they are than Jake’s and how completely non-salty he is about it.

– The massive nerd-fail from most of the player’s for not recognising the M’Aik part of Sophie’s monk name <sigh> You all suck.

Jake> Well I remember it now I’ve googled it!

Indeed.

Half an hour of this later and we had a Tabaxi Monk mini, Sophie was on both Discord and Steam, the map was set up and we got started!

The Old Tower

At the end of last session the party has headed into the Sumber Hills in search of where the hill giants were coming from that had been raiding Beliard’s livestock.

The found an old ruined tower in the middle of nowhere and coming from that tower was the most godawful sound; “a deep, guttural, dirge pouring from the lips of something big and awful”

The DM likened the standard of awfulness to Chris trying to play the mini-xylophone… just a lot louder and slightly more in tune.

Near the tower was a Tabaxi monk.

Sadly, that did not happen as Joffrey thought better of it, especially as everyone else wanted to jump in on the side of the monk just so they could punch the druid.

It transpires that Felix is a travelling monk, visiting far flung places to try and gain knowledge and experience of the wider world. That was about as far as an explanation for joining the party went and the DM recalled Regulus’ answer to the previous time the DM tried to get them to share background stories; “I feel I know everything about these people I want to know to be honest”.

And that may have to go on a T-shirt at some point.

Good times.

The DM roundly mocked Adam for his inability to count squares last week. The DM then roundly mocked himself as his inability to count squares last week made Adam’s attempt look vaguely competent.

The DM is an equal opportunities mockerist and is happy to divert an equal share of mockery in his own direction; it’s just that there are a lot more of them than there are of me so they get the brunt of it, which is only fair right? Right.

Counting is still hard

This is the tower and the layout:

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The DM put the 6 blood hawks above it and the giant inside it.

Ok, there we are, that’s the set up. Spoilers, there are two outcomes; they kill the singer, Moog or they talk to her. If they successfully talk to her they can get her to show them where the giant stronghold is. If they kill her, they will be able to follow her tracks that go back and forth between the tower and the stronghold. They don’t know this, obviously.

DM Planning

This is the DM’s thinking on the matter;

To talk to Moog they have to get into the tower or get Moog out of the tower. To get in they have the following options:

If they wait, Moog will leave the tower after 26 minutes (pre-rolled by the DM) but they don’t now this and they won’t wait.

Trust me on this; I know my players, they won’t ever wait.

They don’t have a small-sized player so the windows and the gap are out and the blood hawks are a problem going in from the top.

DM Plan 1: Make a really loud sound outside and see if the giant comes out to investigate and then negotiate from there. That way you aren’t stuck in a small space with a big enemy. A Shatter would do it as it has to be louder than a bellowing giant.

DM Plan 2: Roll the rock out of the way have someone run in, have the giant see them and have them run out. Mostly for the same reasons as above but riskier for the person assigned with grabbing attention of a mournful hill giant.

Let’s see what the players came up with shall we?

And so it begins

The DM points out that due to the volume of the singing they don’t really need to be all that stealthy and calls for tracking checks. Sophie’s first dice roll in virtual D&D was a 1 prompting a lot of amusement and showing she really is Matt’s replacement. Despite Sophie’s best efforts, the check was passed and tracks are found leading to and from the tower which appear to be made by the same giant. This was a clue for later if they killed Moog.

Regulus and Abelas approach the tower while the others bravely stay a long way off. Nature checks are called for:

They spot the small gap between the boulder and the doorframe and note that it will take a fairly hefty strength check to move the boulder.

Abelas suggests they send the shape shifter druid in. Regulus makes that excited schoolgirl noise again and suggests sending in a weasel but then remembers he has to roll for it and reckons, probably rightly, that as they need something small, they will probably get three Anonymooses.

Then Regulus suggests throwing a tribble into the room through the gap which makes the DM giggle like the aforementioned schoolgirl at the thought of the inevitable Anonymoose being stuck in the doorway and eaten by the giant.

Abelas is allowed to assist Regulus in the deception roll because the DM figures if two of your ‘allies’ are agreeing on what they are telling you, they are more likely to be deemed to be telling the truth.

Regulus needed the advantage too, having rolled a 1 but despite then passing the check he confessed all to Joffrey anyway.

Regulus then heads off on a rambling journey through several reasons that Joffrey should be the one to scout the inside of the tower ending with the following:

So far the utterly unproductive suite of totally rock solid ideas has taken ten minutes to come up with. It’s going to get worse, dear reader. It’s going to get a lot worse.

The DM once did some management training where they attempted an experiment that was supposed to show that a large group will take longer than a small group to come up with a decision about a complex task but would get more of it correct. That experiment failed at the time and nothing the DM has seen since has persuaded him that it ever will work. Moving onwards no.. the planning progressed… no, the planning continued!

To be fair, we got more sense in the next 30 seconds than we had in that entire previous 10 minutes:

While this is going on the DM is drawing on the map in bright pink, circling the bit that says “1 square = 10 feet”, drawing several arrows pointing to it and then drawing a box around the boulder. Geometry is hard.

Sophie\Felix was then awarded an inspiration for ‘not being a cheese monkey’ when it was revealed she did not, in fact, speak giant.

Pissing Into the Wind

At this point everyone was desperately searching their character sheets for things that made noise. Isaac has Thaumaturgy, one effect of which is ‘Your voice booms up to three times as loud as normal for 1 minute’ but sadly, Isaac is with Clay guarding the horses.

Abelas suggests Toll the Dead <sigh> Joffrey asks if anyone has a visual spell like dancing lights and Regulus lists the stuff he can tinker which includes ye-olde-world-magic equivalent of a text message; “So I could tinker one and throw it up there!”

The DM then interjected with an aside about the current ‘wisdom’ of capitalising the word black. He also mentioned that there was a slight flaw in the current plan.

Progress (?)

The DM goes on an ever-so slightly sarcastic mini-rant:

“Mister DM, how many of us do you think it would take to shift this boulder? Who could fit through the window? Or, how difficult would it be to climb up the wall?”

It turns out that the reason they were not asking any of these questions was because none of them wanted to be the one to do it.

ALERT: The Bad Dad Joke of the Week Award goes to….. Miiiiiike!

During the above fiasco discussion the DM has used the advanced graphical toolset of Tabletop Simulator to draw an incredibly lifelike Regulus next to the boulder and has used the integrated vector analysis suite to draw a simulated ballistic arc of a thrown object through the upper window showing a 97.8% probability that it would land where the giant could see it.

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Now Sophie wants to add a pan flute fanfare to the message <sigh>.

There was further discussion involving erotic giant porn (don’t ask) how best to search for it online (really, don’t ask) and whether or not to attach said erotic giant material to the message box with a pan flute fanfare.

Ok, I think I can add that last paragraph to the list of shit I never, ever thought I’d be typing before we started playing this game.

The planning has been going on for nearly an hour. We have gone through all of the following bright ideas:

Only after all of that shite does Mike ask “What are we trying to achieve here?”

And that was why the DM was having a breakdown.

Having explained all of this and everyone had a good laugh at the state of affairs they got back to it:

It was pointed out by several players that getting up there wasn’t the problem; Abelas can just cast Fly on something if needed, Regulus has a grappling hook, Felix is a cat, Elvira has Levitate.

Adam hasn’t had a lot of sleep recently.

But that was still stupid.

So now we address the boulder issue:

DM> Who is the strongest of you?

Joffrey> As a polar bear I have a 21 Strength. As Joffrey I have 10.

There was some consternation as they realised Felix was the strongest of them.. with 13 Str. That is not great.

The giant was then blatantly mis-gendered again and the DM had to threaten retaliatory SJW lightning bolts if that alt-right fascism continued.

The DM looked up the spell and declared it completely acceptable <look, at that point I just wanted it over with, ok?> :

Mold Earth

You choose a portion of dirt or stone that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:

If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have no more than two of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action.

Joffrey spend about 30 seconds repeatedly casting the cantrip and excavated a nice trench while Regulus quietly cried and dismantled his tinkered text-box cabaret show.

Intelligence of 5, and an alignment of chaotic stupid (and evil). Interestingly, they have a Charisma of 6 so that makes them as cute as the gimpy wizard. I’ll put more details in about hill giants later but written communication is not a thing for them. Beating something repeatedly over the head with a large tree is more their style.

Regulus stands in the doorway and asks if he can see anything. The DM once again uses the inbuilt advanced graphical tool set of Tabletop Simulator and its integrated vector analysis suite to determine with incredible accuracy exactly what a 6ft tall robot could see from the doorway:

A pair of feet!

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Regulus walks out and tells the others he thinks the giant is deaf. The DM was wondering why he didn’t just let it see him, it would have exactly the same effect as letting it hear him.

Felix suggests a group shout <sigh>

Look.. one of you just stick your fucking head around the corner, wave at the fucking giant and go something like ‘Cooo-eee!’. It’s not that fucking difficult!

But no, they did a group shout. I’m surprised there was no dancing frankly.

The five of them stacked up in the doorway and then spent 2 minutes trying to think of what to say. I’m not kidding either.

Abelas> We can’t even think of a good thing to say, that’s how shit we are.

After all that they finally settled on “Greetings”. Fuck me.

Group performance check time!

The giant is singing her mournful heart out and the DM sets a Performance DC of 8 average for the group. A DC 10 might sound like a good target but you have to bear in mind that Abelas sucks at nearly everything and would drag everyone down a bit. Offsetting that, there’s a couple of them that have pluses to Charisma and the average roll of a D20 is 10.5 so 8 is pretty attainable right?. They can’t possibly fuck that up, right? Right.

They fucked that up, obviously.

Adam rolled a 3 then used Guidance and got an extra 1 (net 5), Sophie rolled 16 (net 18, cats are cute), Jake rolled a 2 (net 1), Mike rolled a 10 and Christina rolled a 6. Truly the spirit of Matt was with them at that moment. They needed 40, they got 39.

The DM sighed heavily off-mike and invoked a silent prayer to a heathen deity asking just what the offence he has committed to deserve this.

Interestingly, this is exactly what would have happened if they had passed the group shouting check. This is pretty much what would have happened if they’d thrown something into the tower two hours before. This write up would have been a lot shorter and a lot less funny though.

Regulus calmly attempts to negotiate with the giant

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Regulus, with guidance, rolls a 9 <sigh>.

The DM sighs heavily, invokes the name of a heathen deity once more and calls for initiative rolls.

That is the negotiation attempt for that round, combat is about to start but if the players can roll higher initiative than Moog, they might get another go at negotiation. Giants have notoriously low dex and the players are generally pretty high dex so they can’t fuck that up as well right? Right.

They fucked that up as well, obviously.

Adam rolled a 2, Mike rolled a 3, Jake rolled a 6 and Christina rolled a 5. Sophie, the only one who’s character does not speak giant, rolls a 19. The DM lets out a resigned chuckle as Moog inevitably rolls high with an 18.

So Felix is up first and Moog is up second. Once she starts swinging that tree trunk around, negotiation is going to be a lot harder so it’s all on Felix.

Just to throw a further spanner in the works, the DM tells Regulus that as Moog landed she dislodged some rubble and he can see what looks to be the corner of a wooden chest.

There’s a bit of a discussion on what to do. The DM points out that the rock only does 21 damage compared to a fire giant’s 29 damage. The DM felt this bit of good news was severely underappreciated by the ungrateful players.

Well, you’d have had to roll a reasonable performance check but yeah, totally possible:

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Regulus suggests Felix just repeats the sounds he made. The DM agrees this is possible but it would require a performance check to mimic the sounds accurately. As she literally just heard those sounds, the check wouldn’t be too high.

If it’s any consolation Mike, if this were a fire giant or a storm giant that would be lower for you because for them robots are a lot cooler than cats. Hill giants are basically big, technically illiterate, idiots though so the kitty wins this one.

Felix rolls a natural 20 on the persuasion check!

Combat has been avoided and the DM tells the players about how Storm King’s Thunder adds a variant to each giant type over the standard Monster Manual version. The hill giant gains a special attack:

“Some adult hill giants like to hurl themselves bodily at smaller foes and crush them beneath their bulk. This ability is represented by the following action option”:

Squash. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one Medium or smaller creature. Hit: 26 (6d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage, the giant lands prone in the target’s space, and the target is Grappled (escape DC 15). Until this grapple ends, the target is Prone. The grapple ends early if the giant stands up.

The DM is disappointed. Maybe we’ll get a chance to try this later.

What a Bitch!

The players have a chat with Moog and come to an arrangement; they will rescue Gruk if Moog shows them where Grudd Haug is. The offer to get rid of Guh but Moog tells them “You too puny!”. That’s what we DMs call ‘a big fucking clue!’.

So, finally, having taken an hour and half to move a boulder and say “Hello!” to a giant, they depart the tower for Grudd Haug.

Unfortunately, Jake then remembered the chest in the tower. There are two items in the chest that the DM pre-rolled on the treasure tables. One is a Potion of Animal Friendship and the Other is a Goggles of Night. The players have no need of that second one so the DM offers a re-roll on the table live and in colour!

What magnificent magical items will they win with a simple D100 roll?!

There are some supremely powerful items seeded on that simple tabulated list of goodies, surely all the gimpy wizard has to do is roll slightly better than average to score some sweet, sweet loot. He can’t fuck that up, right?

He fucked that up, obviously.

Jake managed to roll a 2 for the tens and a 1 for the units. That resulted in a Potion of Fire Breath, possibly the most singularly useless item on the entire table. Even if he had rolled less than that he would have gotten a Greater Healing Potion.

The ghost of Matt was having a good chuckle somewhere as they departed the tower and set out for the stronghold of the hill giants.

Amnesia

So the ‘fluffy cat’ was nominated to calm the giant with both Guidance and assistance. An initial roll of 19 did the trick. However, as they continue to travel, Moog continues to throw tantrums and seeks reassurance that the party will rescue Gruk. They also needed to feed her to keep her calm.

Having spent some time in the company of a hill giant now, the DM gives the players the following information:

Hill giants are selfish, dimwitted brutes that hunt, forage, and raid in constant search of food. They blunder through hills and forests devouring what they can, bullying smaller creatures into feeding them. Their laziness and dullness would long ago have spelled their end if not for their formidable size and strength.

With nothing else to occupy them, hill giants eat as often as possible. The giant eats anything that isn’t obviously deadly, such as creatures known to be poisonous. Rotten meat is fair game, though, as are decaying plants and even mud.

After a couple of days of bumbling around, Moog eventually manages to guide them to Grudd Haug but she refuses to approach closer than half a mile.

As to be expected there is a significant discussion on how to proceed. They briefly ponder just leaving but are worried about how far Moog can throw a rock. Since none of them thought to ask <sigh> Moog tells them that Gruk wears a necklace of beer barrels so that’s how they can identify him.

Grudd Haug

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The hill giants’ den is called Grudd Haug, which means “river mound” in Giant. Resembling a beaver dam, it straddles a river. The lower level of the den is lodged between two rocky outcroppings and made of piled timber packed with clay and mud, with hollow cavities that resemble caves. Above this piled timber foundation is a mud steading (a house made to giant scale) with a log roof. The structure is an impressive feat of engineering, well beyond the ability of hill giants to fabricate on their own.

East of the steading is a yard enclosed by a 20-foot-high palisade wall made of logs lashed together with thick twine.

There is a watchtower staffed with hobgoblins that means they would need stealth to approach the stronghold. Instead they opted for Joffrey. A giant owl flying quite high was not spotted and the shape-shifted druid successfully scouted the camp.

Joffrey decides to go back and consult with Moog and gets told “You get Gruk to chase you to Moog!”

DM Meltdown Time!

Ok, we’re going to take a break here and take stock of the situation and what the DM’s view of this is. There is no book solution to this there’s just what we know and what we have and then trying it make it vaguely realistically work.

This is what they know:

They need to lure the giants away from the gate without alerting the watchtower. They have a druid that can shape-shift into a wide variety of large succulent looking beasties. They have a Bag of Tricks that should, on average, produce at least two boar sized or bigger animals that would be under the control of the owner.

Since there are two giants, and they have access to multiple things that are likely to get the giants to chase them, you would have thought that it was BLINDINGLY FUCKING OBVIOUS what to do.

Let me explain what I think the blindingly fucking obvious thing to do is:

<WARNING EXTREME SARCASM DETECTED AHEAD!>

Genius Fucking Level Plan Alpha:

The absolute real fucking genius bit about this plan is that as there is more than one giant, you send in more than one distraction! I know right! This is fucking quantum level thinking, right?! You’d probably need to be a fucking chess grandmaster to think of sending more than one distraction for more than one target, right?

Now, if you decide to only send in one fucking lunch, both fucking giants will chase it! Then it’s a fucking competition so they’ll both keep fucking chasing it! Then you’ll have two fucking giants to deal with instead of one!

Let’s see what happened instead shall we? A slight warning, the DM is going to lose his shit even more. It’s all meant in jest (well, mostly 🙂 ).

And so it begins again!

Joffrey wants to ask Moog if there’s anything they can say to Gruk to convince him to go with them. How they will deliver this message was not specified.

Regulus and Abelas want giant-owl-Joffrey to flap around Gruk and get him to chase the bird. Joffrey is somewhat reluctant to do this due to the rather high chance of getting a boulder to the face. Abelas reassures Joffrey that he could almost certainly survive one rock whilst clearly forgetting that there are two giants <sigh>

Regulus wants Elvira to shoot him with an arrow. Whilst this would certainly get Gruk’s attention it would also get the attention of the entire fucking fortress <sigh>

Regulus now wants Joffrey to do a ‘swoop’ attack and then ‘swoop’ off again.

<<The DM makes an off-mike verbal note to himself; “Why don’t you just shape-shift into a fucking cow and get him to chase you?!!”>

The DM reminded the players about what motivates hill giants. Joffrey thinks its time Regulus got Boarax out. Wow, there’s an idea.

Regulus now wants Joffrey to carry a creature to the giants to get them to chase him. I’m… I have no words.

Abelas, Joffrey and Regulus continue to discuss the plan to carry lunch to the giant by something that is already lunch.

<<The DM self note: “OH JUST SHAPE-CHANGE INTO A FUCKING BOAR AND RUN OUT THERE!”>

Regulus> I mean, could we just hunt for an animal?

<<DM self note: Oh jesus fucking christ!>

You have fucking animals! You have a fucking druid that can change into a fucking animal! You can summon fucking animals! WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO PISS ABOUT HUNTING A FUCKING ANIMAL THAT YOU THEN CAN’T FUCKING CONTROL WHEN YOU HAVE ACCESS TO ONES YOU CAN FUCKING CONTROL? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Joffrey now wants to fly over and drop a trail of rations away from the gate <sigh> DO YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING THINK… er… hang on… that might actually work. Well, shit.

Who are you and what have you done with the real Adam?!

Regulus now wants to leave a trail of mayonnaise.

Regulus> What are we missing? What have we got that we are missing? I’m not going to sacrifice a horse…

<DM self note: YOU HAVE A CHARACTER THAT CAN CHANGE FUCKING SHAPE!>

Abelas> I could go full Bladesong and just Rincewind my way past him..

AND ALERT THE ENTIRE FUCKING FORT! AAAAAAARGH!

<DM self note: HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!>

We were there! We had it in the bag!

Felix> Or you could become your fire-breathing rhino and run right through them!

AAAARGH! WHAT KIND OF A FUCKING PLAN IS THA… hmmm… hang on… would they raise an alarm over a rampaging rhino? Would they even know what a rhino is? Dunno… let’s chalk that one up to ‘low success chance, high entertainment value, probably worth a go’.

Regulus now wants to use charm. This may or not work.

Much like Adam, outside of D&D Mike is remarkably smart. He used to be smart inside of it but now he’s been with us too long and the faculties slow down every Thursday night.

We got a dire wolf and two giant elks, Anonymoose and Anonymoosier. This is perfect, thought the DM, just send them all in and see what chases them, thought the DM, ‘FUCK YOU DM’ thought the players <sigh>.

So we finally had a workable fucking plan. For all of about 10 fucking seconds.

AAAAAAAARGH!!! YOU WANT THE FUCKING GIANTS TO CHASE THE FUCKING MOOSE! GIANTS ARE FUCKING LAZY! THEY WON’T CHASE THE FUCKING MOOSE IF YOU JUST FUCKING DROPPED FUCKING LUNCH IN THEIR FUCKING LAPS!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!1

Operation ‘druid-drops-dire-wolf’ was discussed at some length but thankfully disregarded and they reverted back to the original plan of sending in Anonymoose alone.

Mooses have a movement speed of 50ft. Hill giants have a movement speed of 40ft. Regulus attempts to now have the second moose distract the unwanted giant but this fails. These fuckers are in a race to get the first moose er.. first, as it were and the DM, who never saw this coming, has to do a battle map on the fly and everyone (players, mooses, dire wolf, giants and a giant fucking owl) all arrive at Moog at once. Roll initiative!

Sophie asked what the ‘Flip’ button does in TTS so the DM had to load up the Stone Bridge map for a demo. Totally worth it.

The DM bodges up a dirt background and drops a couple of hill giant minis on it.

You will aid true love Mike, you unromantic grinch!

The Matt-cursed dice rolling continued with Jake getting 8, Sophie 13, Mike a 1 (lol), Christina 7 and Adam 5. Well done everyone!

DM> The giants chase you back to the clearing and Gruk looks genuinely terrified as he lays eyes on Moog. This is man who is suddenly having a very bad day.

Felix goes first and, having no idea what’s going to go down, just readies an action.

Moog runs up to Gruk, grabs him by the hair and start s to drag him away. The other giant is very confused and attacks Anonymoosier with a boulder. The adventurers all fuck off while he is busy with the giant elk.

Well that was anticlimactic.

Mission accomplished. The lair of the giants has been located and Moog has been reunited with her one true love Gruk.

The DM informed the players that they had missed out on the reward from Moog but that was a total troll, there was no reward.

The Womford Bat!

They return to Beliard without incident and collect the 500gp reward and the mayor introduces them to his wife who has a request: her sister lives in Womford and something is preying on the population there, the locals call it The Womford Bat. A number of people have gone missing recently and she asks if they will go and investigate, they agree.

Rest is taken and travel is undertaken and they soon arrive in the village of Womford:

A tiny village along the Iron Road was known as Ironford until shortly after a dragon was slain nearby. Passersby began to call the settlement Wyrm Ford — a name subsequently corrupted, thanks to the thick local accent, into Womford. The village has a dock (somewhat damaged after a recent incident) on the Dessarin River for shipping grain from its gristmill. It’s also the market and the source of supplies for the surrounding farms from which the grain comes. Aside from the mill, the village has a handful of granaries and a larger handful of cottages, several of which house tiny shops. West of the village is the Ironford Bridge, a long, narrow, ramshackle wooden bridge that spans the Dessarin River and leads to Bargewright Inn, which looms atop a hill.

Womforders lock and bar their doors and shutter their windows at night, for fear of the so-called Womford Bat, a nocturnal predator that snatches folk it can catch outside after dark

Most of the snatched townsfolk have gone missing along the Cairn Road which leads to Red Larch. The ‘Bat’ is humanoid and unnaturally fast.

Concerned about a potential vampire Regulus asks about magic weapons and in particular if ‘Monkey McMonkface’ has magical attacks on her punches, recorded by the DM as “Regulus asks Felix for a ‘magical’ fisting”

The group set out along the Cairn Road and as the sun is setting, despite it being summer, a fog rises where there should be no fog. They come across a small campfire and are welcomed by human male in plate armour with a magnificent cloak of brightest red. His teeth are unusually white and his hair… his hair is perfect.

End of session.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

The gang brought Mike up to speed on Cruril and the DM reminded everyone that he had run for mayor of Red Larch using embezzled party funds to finance it.

It was at this point that they realised Matt was party treasurer for this campaign as well. Lolz.