SKT Bitesize Recap 6-10 – Ten-foot Squares

Episode 6: Standing on the Boulders of Giants

Vaguely Important Stuff-

Orc raiders attacked Triboar and the party went to a nearby field to help with the defence.

Having killed the orcs they were summoned back to the centre of town where more orcs and a pair of Fire Giants had appeared.

Really Important Stuff –

Adam broke one of his monitors. This is where months of abuse started.

Joffrey (as a shape-shifted dire wolf) managed to talk Abelas into mounting him with the intention that Joffrey would carry Abelas magnificently into battle where he could Fireball the approaching orcs.

Halfway there Abelas’ brain suddenly realised what he was doing and he jumped off. This left the druid extremely unhappy and with one wild-shape wasted.

A very pissed-off Joffrey dropped a Moonbeam but it doesn’t do damage until the end of the affected creatures turns. It now became a challenge to the other players to kill off all the stuff in the circle before the Moonbeam could get to work. They largely failed but had a lot of fun trying.

Joffrey runs off alone into a field full of orcs and gets into a bit of bother. He suggests that Regulus and Abelas cast Shatter on both him and the orcs. He fails the saves on the first spell with style and on the second one with aplomb. This loss of hit points, along with a wasted Wild Shape, would have consequences.

Joffrey launched a Tidal Wave at the pair of giants, one of whom was holding both a very large boulder and her action. It did not end well.

Important Verbalisations –

Joffrey> Look, you can’t do badly with a Fireball…
Regulus> You can’t, no.
Joffrey> You can do better with a Fireball…
<general agreement>

Adam> Jake.. operation gimp-elf dire-wolf?
Jake> Oh, you know what? Why the fuck not?
DM> “I somehow feel we should be better than this”… Jake last session.

Jake – Wait, wait… WHAT?! Fuck this shit I’m going back!

Jake – I didn’t come into this session meaning to piss off Adam, it’s just… progressed.

Joffrey> I can call a Tidal Wave on these two and then run.
Regulus> <dubiously> I feel like you are inviting a rock being thrown.
Joffrey> It’s fine, I’ve survived worse.
DM> Yeah, I mean, what are the odds that she’ll hit you at that range, right?

DRUID DOWN!

Episode 7: My Empire of Dirt

Vaguely Important Stuff –

The adventurers (and Jake) finish off the orc raiders and watch as the two fire giants finish digging up a hefty chunk of adamantite that looks like it is a part of a very large construct. They toddle off the battlefield unmolested.

The Lord Protector asks them to go look for the wizard with the gargoyles as his house got trampled and no one has seen him since. They found the wizard’s corpse and looted it and then found his vault and tried to loot that. A genie appeared.

Really Important Stuff –

Apparently a DFU civil war was happening between Team Slash and Team Dash but the DM was on leave and gave not one single toss.

Joffrey got healed and got back up. The orc next to him twatted him back down again.

DRUID DOWN!

Clay got surrounded and twatted down as well.

FIGHTER DOWN!

Adam spent an hour doing nothing as Joffrey remained on the floor for most of the fight. He did, eventually, get to his feet and got enthusiastic support and encouragement from his teammates;

“Why don’t you wild shape?”
“Cast Tidal Wave again!”
“Wear another rock as a hat!”

Regulus wants to rebuild the giant construct and become ‘brobots’ with it <sigh>

The Bag of Tricks was used in the last round of combat and a giant moose was summoned. Anonymoose became a thing for the first time. Level 6 became a thing too.

Important Verbalisations –

Chris – You spent an hour dead and that’s what you came up with?

Regulus – He’s not barbequed yet because the cunt druid is dead!

Abelas> Though also… shut up, you’re dead!
Joffrey> Unconscious!
DM> “You’re not here little druid-bitch!”

Drikk Fra-Kar points out that nobody likes fire giants because they are gingers.

DM> “Here lies Elvira, she was the one who could hit shit”

Episode 8: Duel of the Snakes

Vaguely Important Stuff –

The genie, named Benjamin, explains that if they are willing to face the guardians of the lamp they can free him and then he will reward them with gifts of power, majesty, intrigue and most importantly style!

The challenge was duly accepted and they ended up facing off against a team of doppelgangers.

The players beat themselves up and won the fight. Benjamin asked if they would free him and they did. Each player gains a ‘dormant’ version of a powerful item that will level with them as we progress through the campaign.

Really Important Stuff –

Notable highlights of the fight were when doppelganger-Elvira action-surged all over Abelas and took him out first turn and when Joffrey turned into Panic Snake and the DM used doppelganger Joffrey to not-really-ironically Tidal Wave him.

D-Joffrey then also turned into Panic Snake and we had a giant snake-off while the medieval version of Duel of the Fates played in the background.

Important Verbalisations –

Regulus> We could try to talk to them…
Abelas> Nah, I know me, I’d Fireball us in a heartbeat!
Joffrey> Go on! Shoot yourself!
Elvira> I will!

Adam – I didn’t realise Karl Urban was in Lord of the Rings!

DM – “Reward time darlings!”

DM – dit-dit-diddle-oo, dit-dit-diddle-oo… DIDDLE OOOO! DIDDLE OOOO!

Episode 9: The Evermoor the Merrier!

Vaguely Important Stuff –

Magic bracers from the dead wizard were sold in town for 5,000g and, along with two sets of plate mail, the players bought horses and named them as follows:

Abelas – Binky
Elvira – Artax
Joffrey – Shelby (a black mustang <sigh>)
Regulus – Nofoo (not food)
Clay – Schlots
Isaac – Firefly

They travelled to Yartar where they overheard a rumour about a trade delegation going missing near Womford and listened to a bard sing about Force Grey, a retired adventuring band out of Waterdeep that included a frost giant called Harshnag.

They stop at the town of Calling Horns along the Evermoor Way, a road running along the edge of the Evermoors. The woman who runs the town gives them free room and board as having adventurers around adds to the security of the place.

That night a disturbance outside leads to the adventurers (and Jake) confronting a pair of trolls that were trying to break into the stable and eat the horses. The trolls were summarily dispatched and the horses saved… mainly because Abelas was threatened with violence if he Fireballed the rather flammable looking stable.

Tamalin, the innkeeper, persuades the party to go spend a couple of nights in the Evermoors and see if they can figure out what has the local trolls so riled up so off they go on a happy camping trip.

On their second day in the Evermoors they hear a commotion and Joffrey polymorphs into a Giant Owl to investigate. He failed to persuade anyone to go with him and thus Operation Flying Wizerd was killed at birth, which was a shame.

The commotion was caused by a fire giant giving a troll a bollocking for not bringing it enough to eat. Mission accomplished; the trolls are roaming out of the Evermoors because the fire giants are enslaving them. Quest complete, they can go back to the inn and get their reward right? No, no they fight the fire giant.

Sadly the DM was unable to punish the wizard for not stepping back into cover with a boulder to the face because the fire giant failed every single save in the fight and got blinded and knocked down.

Really Important Stuff –

Two of them chose bright white horses to take adventuring in a land full of stuff that likes to eat horses <sigh>.

They want horse armour because Bethesda trained them to want it and the DM calculates that it will cost 36,000 gold to outfit all of the horses with plate so they didn’t do that after all.

It turns out that the horses are more charismatic than the wizard. Not joking.

During travel planning, Jake dismissed Lurkwood as a ‘discount Murkwood’ and the DM accepted the challenge and renamed it on the quest map to “Binky’s Doom”

The DM persuades Adam that a Spike Growth is a better tactical option than a Call Lightning and it end up doing more damage than the wizard’s Fireball, which was nice.

Important Verbalisations –

Jake – I’d tell you I feel your pain but I just rolled a 19 so…

Isaac – FUCK MY DICK!

Elvira – Er… 26 to hit?

Joffrey> Is there any chance I can buy a white cowboy hat?
DM> No

Adam> I blame Jake!
Jake> Go fuck yourself!
<fapping noises come through discord>

Episode 10: FUCKOFFWINDOWS

Vaguely Important Stuff –

They return to the innkeeper and are rewarded with a letter that can earn them a favour from the Yartar Thieves Guild should they find themselves in need of one.

The next day they arrived at Noanar’s Hold where they were to deliver some high-end saddles. On the trail up to the town they spot a pigeon pinned to a tree by an arrow. Investigations showed it had a message on its leg which reads “The Hunt Lords live! Save us!”

The stayed at the inn and were warned not to go out after dark. Three brothers were also staying at the inn; they were there to hunt a hill giant for private reasons.

The next morning they head up to the hold to deliver the saddles, gained access to the fort and found some undead within. The session ends in the middle of a huge fight with the Hunt Lords and their undead skeleton minions. The DM asks everyone to remember that both Spirit Guardians and Flaming Orb are in play.

Really Important Stuff –

The discussion about what to do about the pigeon is one of the most painful, and yet entertaining, experiences the DM has ever had to sit through. Suffice it to say they massively overcomplicated things <sigh>.

They decided not to travel from the town to the castle in the dark not because it was potentially dangerous, possibly haunted and unquestionably stupid to go there at night but because it would have been impolite to rock up there after dark.

There were statues of gargoyles outside of the hold and they refused to check if they were statues or actual gargoyles. I still don’t know why. At the door they were met by a short irritable dwarf castellan called Amrath who grumpily invited them in to put the crate of saddles on the floor.

At this point the session ground to a halt because what they should have done was demand to see the Hunt Lords and if they turned out to be evil undead arseholes they should have fucked them the fuck up. However, they were simply too polite to upset the castellan and investigate the castle despite all the clues. There’s never a paladin about when you need one <sigh>. For the write-up the DM actually made graphic to summarise all the clues they had been given about what was going on. It was characteristically subtle.

The heavily armed team of adventurers (and Jake) first pretended to be cleaners to blag their way into the castle and when that failed begging to use the loo didn’t work either.

Eventually, after an extraordinarily long session of pontification with zero actual action, the DM had the castellan faint so we could get this shit show back on the road. They checked Amrath and found he was not faking it. They then discussed tying him up and Joffrey wanted to shackle him to a gargoyle naked <sigh>. They chose not to tie him up. Remember this bit.

Joffrey wanted to go left so everyone else went right, obviously.

Regulus summoned a modron cube as a pet. The DM asked him if he had a name for it and then labelled it Nottyett.

They get in a fight with a bunch of skeletons in the barracks and only after the fight does Mike use the Bag of Tricks and produces Anonymoose. It then dawns on everyone how big the moose is compared to the door. Anonymoose was abandoned which led to this: