Author: Dunorlan

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

• Jake as Abelas the Gimpy Wizard – We do make things interesting!
• Adam as Joffrey the Druid – Er… wait, that came out wrong!
• Matt as Clay the Battlemaster – What was Elvira drinking? I want some!
• Christina as Elvira the Arcane Archer – Too right, I want that in real life!

With:

Gary as the DM – It’s Karl, “no, fuck him” is a perfectly good answer!

Author’s Note: This session actually took place on 17^th December but it has taken the DM over two months to get around to writing it up. This was primarily due to the DM spending a fortnight in hospital nearly expiring from the Covid-Jake-Aids (DM DOWN!) and then taking a really long time to recover.

This review should be a fairly short one as this session had the introduction to the stronghold of Goldenfields and that meant a lot of DM exposition on various descriptions of the buildings and people therein. I’ve attempted to streamline the main fight to keep the length down.

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 saved 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.

– They were on the way to Goldenfields when they were side tracked by an ‘Adventurers Wanted’ poster from Beliard and located the Hill Giant stronghold of Grudd Haug. Then they went to catch a bat.

Pre-session Guff

Jake turned up late claiming that he ‘forgot’ it was D&D day. The only reason he made it at all was because he saw everyone else loading up TTS <sigh>

Adam has a mini-rant over Windows automatically installing Skype and the ‘Meet Now’ icon that Microsoft has decided we all need on our desktops all the time.

Mike decided he couldn’t make D&D because he had the Covid. I don’t think I need to say any more about that. Karma, however, would have quite a lot to say about it a few days later.

A member of staff (not Mike) where most of us work tested positive for Covid that week but Adam was on maternity leave. This lead to the following:

• Adam> Jake, I hear you have been spreading Jake-Aids!
• Jake> You fucking wot?! No, I have done nothing of the sort it’s just that a lot of the people in my office are now coming down with Covid!
• DM> Well one… possibly two.
• Jake> Well one official but <redacted> was apparently feeling shit this morning.
• Adam> Ah, that’s fucking great…
• Jake> And stayed for the entire fucking day, next to me, the cunt!
• DM> That Bradford score is a thing!
• Jake> I’d like it noted everyone gave me shit for staying in when I wasn’t well.
• DM> Not me, I don’t give a fuck.

Ah, recordings; little windows back in time to our slightly younger, more stupider selves who don’t have the foggiest clue about the steaming pile of poo that is about to land on their life.

After the last two months, the DM now very much does give a fuck <sigh>.

Going full Twilight

We rejoin the end of the vampire fight from last week. This was more of this encounter but the DM decided to chop it because were were about to take a two week break for Christmas. This actually turned out to be a seven week break because Covid really sucks.

Joffrey had just ‘killed’ Morticus the vampire who, instead of having the good manners to just die, turned into mist form and vanished into the surrounding fog.

• Joffrey> Everyone breathe in deeply and we’ll try and destroy him that way!
• Abelas> Because you just want a vampire inside you… er… wait, that came out wrong!

Cru wants to to heal Abelas who is currently face-planted on the ground from saving Binky last session. Cru opts to take an attack of opportunity to reach the ailing wizard’s side:

• DM> So… attack of opportunity, gimmeacrit, gimmeacrit, gimmeacrit!
• <The DM rolls a natural 20>
• DM> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry… no, not sorry!

Cru takes a hefty hit but he’s level 8 and can take it. The cleric runs over to Abelas, bleeds all over him and drops a Cure Wounds that gets him back on his feet.

The fight continues with Elvira rolling ridiculous to-hits, Clay Legana-ing (and missing), Cru Guiding Bolting (and hitting!), Abelas magic missiling, and Joffrey Snake-Jazzing (jazzing Adam, jazzing). Clarice, the female vampire spawn, runs into the fog, takes the hide action and rolls high and also disappears. Ormintroyd, the male spawn, stands his ground and gets wtfbuttfucked and killed. End of combat.

• DM> You have driven off the Womford Bat but he has escaped you in mist form. One of his undead servants has run off leaving clear tracks in the soft ground.
• Adam> Oh good, we almost ‘mist’ those!
• <tumbleweed>

The somewhat banged up party decide not to immediately pursue the evil vampire spawn but instead opt to find a way out of the mist and rest for 8 hours. The fully refreshed group of adventurers then head back to the tracks.

They find the mist has dissipated while they rested and Clarice’s track are easy to follow in the light of day. They follow the tracks a few hundred yards to a large rock behind which they discover wagon tracks and a note:

Well done adventurers, it was time to move on anyway.

See you around.

M.

The DM explains that the vampire’s coffin was on the wagon. His misty escape allowed him to retreat to the coffin and then after 1 hour he regained 1 hit point and was able to revert to his humanoid form and escape. Downside; no loot. Upside; they succeed in the quest to rid the region of the Womford Bat. Yay.

Cru bids them farewell and heads off to be the mayor of Red Larch and the group heads back to Womford whee they are profusely thanked by the Mayor and given river passage to Goldenfields.

Goldenfields

Exposition time!

The DM calls for investigation checks and Clay’s experienced eye note the following:

The outer wall is in need of repair in many places. Time and weather have eroded some of the mortar, creating ruts between the stones that can serve as handholds and footholds. The fortifications were clearly constructed to defend against large scale threats; armies and dragons.

The Abbey

Both Clay and Abelas are members of the Emerald Enclave and are warmly welcomed at the gate. The party is allowed inside and are directed towards the centre of the stronghold to Harvesthome Abbey.

The abbey is a large fortified building with an open central area with pews and an altar. The group are directed to smaller rooms at the rear of the building. As they approach the main office they see a young acolyte having a heated discussion with the Abbot. She is critical of the sate of the stronghold’s defences and the competency of the guard captain but breaks off her diatribe once they spot the party approaching.

The Abbot introduces himself as Ellardin Darovik (male human). He is an elderly, dignified priest and he gives the party a warm welcome. He leads prayers to Chauntea three times a day if any of them are worshippers of the goddess.

The Abbot introduced them to the acolyte next to him as Zi Liang. He also explains that about two months ago a pair of hill giants, accompanied by a band of goblins, waded across the river and started throwing rocks at the outer wall. They were driven off by a hail of arrows from the defenders. While the giants have not been seen since, there have been sightings of goblins and bugbears around the perimeter.

Zi Lang explains that the current guard captain has singularly failed to inform his guards of the potential threat nor prepare them for a possible assault and refuses to do so, not believing the threat is real. The guards and the captain are funded by the major cities in the region and the captain is a political appointee, not under the authority of the Abbot, hence the appeal to Emerald Enclave members for additional help defending Goldenfields.

Zi Lang takes the party on a tour of the stronghold. The DM will go through the highlights of this next session as it wont make sense without the map.

Northfurrow’s End (the inn)

Zi Lang finishes the tour at Goldenfield’s inn; Northfurrow’s End. This is a grand three-story establishment run by a human, Miros Xelbrin, a retired carnival attraction, dubbed “the Yeti” because of his barrel-shaped body and the thick, white hair covering his arms, chest, back, and head.

This is a pretty impressive inn, not too busy at the moment, but there is a drunken halfling bard, Oren Yogilvy, performing to a couple of dozen workers. Miros greets the party warmly and, once he finds out some of them are Emerald Enclave, offers room and board for free. The rooms are spacious and comfortable, the food is plentiful and delicious because it is made with the freshest and finest ingredients in the land.

• DM> The ale, or the drinks that you order… <big sigh> We’re going to do this again… what would you like to drink?
• Joffrey> Milk!
• <groans>
• DM> You actually get it. It’s fresh and it’s lovely.
• Joffrey> Wow, this tastes different to the last one. Excuse me innkeep! There’s no lumps in this one!
• Miros> I can put some in there if you want <makes hacking-up-phlegm type noises>
• <groans and repulsed noises from the gallery>

Abelas and Elvira opt for wine, Clay opts for cider (apple, mulled). These drinks are served in large varnished mugs. Joffrey was disappointed that Abelas didn’t go for a flaming sambuca.

Abelas is directed to have a chat with a scholarly looking middle-aged human lady sitting off to one side of the common room, who turns out to be Naxene Drathkala, a representative of Waterdeep’s Watchful order of Magists and Protectors. The guild has an arrangement with the Abbot to send a member for diplomacy, advice and protection and Abelas spends a nice evening talking magic with her. Naxene also lets Elvira know that she too is a member of the Lord’s Alliance.

Oren turns out to be a rather good bard despite being obviously worse for wear and performs a new tune doing the rounds called “Darin is a Cunt”.

Joffrey orders a chocolate milkshake <sigh>. He gets a lime milkshake topped up with a nice lime schnapps. Joffrey then attempted to buy one of the mugs but was informed they are not for sale. The DM was somewhat surprised when no one tried to steal one.

Oren, having finished his set, wanders out, bumping into Abelas on the way out, apologising profusely and saying that he likes to wander around the compound at night looking for inspiration. He seems quite proud of the fact that he often wakes up in a cornfield.

Zi Liang joins them for a few drinks explaining that she comes from a well-off family until she found her faith and became a monk of Chantea. Joffrey decides to spend the evening getting drunk on free lime-schnapps milkshakes. Abelas is rather scathing of this but then Clay, after a comms failure (MATT! ARE. YOU. GETTING. DRUNK.?! Can anyone hear me?!) decides he is also getting shit-faced and then Elvira jumps in too.

This may hurt

Jake is having a meltdown over what he sees as an impending disaster and everyone, including the DM, has the giggles, which made reading the following interesting:

A mighty yell shatters the night’s silence. “We’re under attack!” the voice calls out. “To arms! To arms!” Gathering your wits and weapons, you stumble outside the inn. A low mist blankets the quiet gardens to the north and slinks between the rows of darkened longhouses to the south. A small figure stumbles around the corner of the nearest longhouse, loses his balance, and falls. You have never seen such a clumsy, dishevelled halfling.

• DM> <still laughing> Oren is drunkenly shouting and screaming about attackers being inside the walls. As you three are drunk you count as poisoned…
• Clay> Yes… we do
• Abelas> OH MY FUCKING <invokes the name of a heathen deity>!
• DM> Aaaand, please roll initiative.

Abelas, not disadvantaged, rolls a two. Elvira, with disadvantage, rolls two twenties.

Fucking Arcane Archers <sigh>

• Abelas> OH MY WHAT?!
• Elvira> TWO TWENTIES!
• Joffrey> This is definitely cheating now!
• Clay> What was Elvira drinking? I want some!
• Elvira> Too right, I want that in real life!

Abelas was a tad upset that the drunk people all got to go before he did. Lolz.

Putting the boot in..

During the setup the discussion involved the DM introducing his friend Karl to the game and then Abelas’s low Dex and then rolling stats generally.

• DM> Right, are we going to make Karl roll his stats on his first ever character?
• Jake> Ooh.. that’s a bit cruel…
• Adam> Standard array would probably be better for a first character… but…
• DM> <laughing> But it’s Karl, so “no, fuck him” is a perfectly good answer!
• <general evil laughter>
• Jake> If I have to suffer…
• Adam> I was just thinking, it is your friend..
• Jake> I feel bad…
• DM> But not that bad…

Sorry Karl…

But not really.

Night Fight

DM>There is an entire story about how the things that are attacking Goldenfields came to be attacking Goldenfields but I can’t explain it to you until the end so it might be some weeks, or even a month away.

Closer to three months at this rate <sigh>

The four adventurers (mostly drunk) are joined by five NPCs in the fight; Oren the Bard (drunk), Zi Liang the Monk (angry), Miros the innkeeper (hairy), Naxene the Wizard (not drunk) and Lifferlas the Treant (woody).

Lifferlas started in a grove of trees on the other side of the map to the attackers and doesn’t move very fast. Everyone else starts outside the inn.

Coming down the road towards the group is a raiding party of two ogres, four bugbears and 10 goblins.

The players were offered a choice of which NPC to control in initiative order.

• – Sophie chose Lifferlas and rolled a 2 for initiative.
• – Matt chose Oren the drunken bard and rolled 1 for initiative.
• – <The DM has a fit of the giggles at this point>
• – Adam chose Miros the innkeeper and also rolled a 1.
• – <Everyone had a fit of the giggles now>
• – Jake chose Zi Liang the Monk and rolled a 4.
• – It took a while for everyone to get their shit back together after that fiasco.

Clay> There are nine people in this fight and the other eight don’t add up to Elvira.

Just for a few further added giggles, Joffrey had to roll off against the ogres. The ogres got 20, Joffrey got a 1. It was just that kind of a night.

Drunken Elvira squints at the oncoming horde, gives disadvantage the finger and one-shot kills one goblin and then rubs it in further by hitting with her second attack and killing a second goblin for good measure. This was just showing off.

Fucking Arcane Archers <sigh>

The enemy are a ways off so the bugbears advance forward seeking cover after having just seen two goblins casually massacred. The goblins, being rather stupid, just charge down the middle.

At this point Adam offered to post a video of his child straining to have a poo. Apparently this is hilarious <sigh>.

The ogres, who were at the back of the oncoming pack, advance up behind a house.

Drunken Joffrey drops a Call Lightning which encompasses pretty much the entire battlefield, or at least the bit that matters. He drops the lightning bolt on a pair of bugbears and then takes cover behind the inn. His mini lands askew on the well.

Clay runs halfway to the goblins and shouts drunken abuse at them.

Abelas drops a Shatter on the eight goblins for nine damage, the all failed the save and they all have seven hit points and they all died. It seems showing off is all the rage.

• DM> Well… that just made the fight a lot quicker.
• Abelas danced a jig.
• DM> Joffrey looks like he’s hanging over the well deciding whether to barf or not.
• Joffrey> I’m swaying between the two.
• DM> The whole world is doing that ‘wobble’ thing right now.
• Joffrey> The milkyness I can taste at the back of my throat isn’t helping.
• <groans, laughter and an ‘eeew!’ noise>

Second round notable events:

– Drunk Elvira missed!

– She made up for it on the second attack by rolling 23 to hit with disadvantage <sigh>

– The bugbears and Ogres advance.

– The DM points out that with an Int of 8, the bugbears are smarter than half the party.

– Drunken Clay somehow manages a disadvantaged 24 to hit and does some serious damage to a bugbear, followed by a ‘tactical puke’ all over it <sigh>

– The DM had everyone in sight of Clay make a DC 8 Con save to see if they puked too. No player failed it but two bugbears did and joined in the barf party. Goonies ftw.

– It turns out Adam has never seen the Goonies <sigh>

– Joffrey calls lightning on an Ogre, it needs a 15 to make the save. The DM rolls a 16, Joffrey groans. The DM points out that Ogres have a -1 to Dex so it actually got 15. Joffrey groans more.

– Abelas inappropriately touches an ogre with Vampiric Touch for 14 damage.

– The DM gives Oren (Matt) the ability to cast Vicious Mockery as a cantrip because all bards should have it.

– Miros (Adam) attempts to grapple the female ogre and rolls a 1.

– Liffrelas (Christina) continues to charge 40ft towards the fight and continues not to get anywhere near it.

– Naxene throws out a 27 point Lightning Bolt that severely damages both ogres.

Third round notable events:

– Drunk Elvira saves Abelas from being squished by killing the ogre next to him.

– A non-drunk bugbear throws a javelin at Abelas and crits!

– Jake was unimpressed.

– Drunk Clay attacks an ogre with the giant slayer axe but rolls a 1. Told you it was one of those nights. Dice are chaotic evil.

– Drunk Clay attacks an ogre with the giant slayer axe again and doesn’t roll a one. He hits it for 23 damage and cuts it in half.

Fucking Fighters <sighs>

– Drunk Joffrey snake-jazzes around the corner, despite not being a snake, leans drunkenly against the handy tree (Lifferlas) that has suddenly appeared nearby for support and drops some lighting on a bugbear.

– Abelas inappropriately touches the bugbear that critted him but misses by rather a lot and bonus action Mist Steps back to where Elvira is and then looks sheepishly at her.

– The DM mocks the wizard for wasting a level 2 spell slot when a level 2 Magic Missile would have killed it.

– Miros (Adam) bear-hugs a bugbear, apparently mainly for the irony factor, and actually kills it!

There’s only one bugbear left, Lifferlas still can’t reach it and Elvira is going next so he just stays where he is providing a means of support for Joffrey who has the cold sweats and is rather unsteady.

Miraculously, drunken Elvira misses twice (shocker!) and the bugbear runs away. Zi Liang gets an attack of opportunity on it and attempts to knock it out but Jake rolls a 5 and lets everyone down.

Clay however, did not miss, knocked out the last bugbear and put manacles on it.

The DM decided to see if Christina was paying attention:

• DM> Elvira, would you like to shoot the prisoner?
• <slight pause>
• Elvira> Er… yes?
• Abelas> NO.. no..
• Clay> I don’t like drunk Elvira!

Sadly, sober Abelas managed to convince drunken Elvira not to shoot the unconscious prisoner <sigh>

End of Session

Matt had to go:

• Matt> I’ll see you at work tomorrow.
• DM> Nope, I’m working the weekend, I’ll see you Tuesday.

Yeah, Tuesday twelve weeks later later <sigh>.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

• – Will Abelas make another melee attack?
• – Will Joffrey actually barf?
• – Will Lifferlas ever make it into a fight?
• – What will the captured bugbear have to say for himself?

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

The DM notices a stray goblin in a bush that everyone missed. Well.. shit. Oh well, we’ll figure that out next session.

Everyone was highly amused that Adam thought he would be able to afford a decent graphics card in the next 20 years.

Adam also praised Stadia which goes to show just how deluded he was that night.

(Jazz Adam, JAZZ!)

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

With:

Author’s Note: This is one of those encounters where the DM has tweaked a creature a little so if something starts doing something the Monster Manual says it shouldn’t do, it’s probably by design. Although never discount the possibility that the DM just fucked it up.

There is some guest narrator commentary from the vampire Morticus Von Strimple. His two Spawn are called Clarice and Ormintroyd but the players don’t know any of the names. It’s written from his memoirs from the future. It’s narrative bollocks so just roll with it.

Morticus was supposed to a bit camp and funny but he turned out to be a bit more.. er… hardcore, I guess. Probably because the player banter was funny enough, it didn’t need more.

I ran out of time to do it properly towards the end of the session so enjoy what is there. I might go back and finish it off over Christmas if I get time.

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 saved 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.

– They were on the way to Goldenfields when they were side tracked by an Adventurers Wanted poster from Beliard and located the Hill Giant stronghold of Grudd Haug. Then they went to catch a bat.

Pre-session Guff

The DM announced he nearly threw up in a Tie Fighter earlier and was now very tired and still slightly nauseous. This is due to recent purchase of a VR headset.

The DM, Jake and Mike embark on a lengthy discussion of VR games.

Adam joined. We had a map issue:

The DM, Jake and Mike embark on another lengthy discussion of VR games.

Twenty five minutes into the session:

He has a point.

Batten Down The Hatches

The fight takes place on a misty map at a roadside camp fire. The present characters are at the fire the absent characters are by the horses off to the side to the south-west of the fire.

Jake> Right… my mind’s already blanked out. What the fuck are we doing and why the fuck are we here?

<sigh>

It was explained, again, to the players that were here to try and find out what was making villagers from Fucking Womford disappear along this stretch of road. The ‘bat’ was reported to be humanoid and unusually fast.

“You’ve always been an idiot, boy!” was father’s favourite expression. Well he was the one that looked stupid as I eviscerated him on the drawing room floor after I finally came into my full powers. Sadly I was enjoying the moment too much to spot the serving girl who witnessed the incident run from the house and thus outraged peasants with pitchforks and torches caused me to flee the family estate with but a handful of valuables.

I next made a home in Neverwinter for many years, charming the rich dowagers of that fine city. Alas, it seems that while the rich elderly do not keep too close an eye on their finances, those that stand to inherit it more than make up for that lack of diligence.

Having exited the city with some haste, this time being better prepared and taking my fortune with me, a purchase of an out of the way villa near Loudwater gave me a wonderful home for many years until the locals hired a party of ‘adventurers’ to intervene with my nocturnal activities.

Whilst no mere group of vagabonds would be likely to unseat me from my chosen lair, they brought a bloody frost giant with them! I ask you, who goes adventuring with a frost giant?!

I really detest ‘adventurers’.

Having escaped before they found the crypt, I was once again near penniless in a savage world. I travelled west and set up base near an establishment called the Bargewright Inn. This festering hole is populated predominantly by the Zhentarim and they are easy pickings; when one goes missing they are quick to blame each other, allowing me to prey on them with ease, even planting the odd bit of false evidence to stir things up inside when I got bored.

I was well on my way to rebuilding my finances when I happened upon Clarice travelling the dark road one evening. Ah, such a beauty; wide eyes, trembling lips and large heaving… yes, well, it was love at first sight! In her case it was love at first bite!

Sadly, the lovely Clarice refused to be parted from her brother, the witless Ormintroyd. Now that we had three to feed our activities were not nearly as covert as I would have liked but I simply could not part with Clarice and she could not part with the bufoon.

Soon though, we would have collected enough to settle down once again, although I was contemplating making arrangements for Ormintroyd to have a little ‘accident’.

Bat’s The Way It Is

As the party scouted along the road towards evening a strange mist started to rise. Soon after they came across a small campfire tended by a human male in plate armour and a magnificent cloak. His teeth gleamed and his hair… was perfect.

The man, Cruril, welcomed them to the fire and explained he was currently out canvassing votes for the upcoming mayoral election at Red Larch.

DM Note: Cru is level 8 for this one so that’s two levels higher than the party. When I plugged this fight into Kobold Fight Club (yip, yip!) it came out deadly with six level 6 characters so Cru was added for both nostalgia, comedy and mainly insurance purposes.

There was a lot of laughter at this because during the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, Cru embezzled a bunch of the party funds to pay for this election campaign.

Some pleasantries are exchanged and all are a bit worried about the mist. Cru asks to make an Arcana check on the mist and recognises that it is unnatural.

Regulus> It could just be… hundreds of vampires in mist-form!

DM> Ooh! I didn’t think of that, shit!

A lone human was camped along the road one night, easy prey I thought until a number of others showed up as well. This would be a risky enterprise but they looked stupid and reasonably wealthy. Also, several of them were not mentally well-grounded to this plane and should be easy to incapacitate. If all went really well, Ormitroyd would not survive this encounter.

The first human worries me, he looks vaguely priestly but too martial, but he is also lacking the smugness of your typical paladin. He is, frankly, entirely too shiny for comfort. He does have nice hair though.

Of the others we are likely to have to contend with, one looks quite rustic and is wearing what looks like some sort of animal hide. He looks a little sad and tired and seems to shudder every time he glances at the nearby rocks and boulders. We will try and deal with that one first, pick off the weak and thus undermine the strong when they see their beloved companions fall.

They seem to have some sort of a shield golem with them. That will be easily neutralised once we find out who it serves and end their command over the mechanical creature; it’s difficult to issue orders when you can’t breathe.

There’s a bulky looking fellow with an enormous sword, but it’s made of stone. Probably some kind of peasant or barbarian, I mean really, a stone sword?! He does not look appetising at all… I shall feed him to Ormintroyd, if he survives.

Then there’s the Elf. Clarice is partial to elf but I find them way too sweet for my palette. No, give me a nice mature gnome any day. This elf moves in a strange disjointed manner though, perhaps some birth defect. We will quickly end his miserable existence. I expect we will be doing the poor chap a favour.

Bats What I Want

The players now have to decide on sleep arrangements. Will they wear armour? Will they sleep or just pretend to sleep?

Joffrey decided not to sleep in armour and seemed quite offended by the very idea. Cru and Clay both slept in armour because they aint stupid. They do forego the benefits of sleep but that won’t matter if they get attacked at night.

The DM called for a watch order and apologised in advance if he accidentally killed someone this week. The DM feels no guilt at all if someone dies to a book-standard encounter but there might be a slight twinge if he personally designed the thing that killed them.

Initiative was rolled and, carrying straight on from last week, Abelas rolled a 2. Lastbelas makes a re-appearance at his rightful place at the foot of the initiative board.

The DM rolls for when the attack will occur:

Only four swarms answered my mental summons, I should have used the wolves but the last time I commanded them to aid us, Ormintroyd ate three of them. I sent the swarms straight into the camp to get things started.

All Bats Are Off!

The standard ‘Adam didn’t read it properly’ applies to this as well but in a detrimental form for the druid:

You can make the wall up to 50 feet long, 15 feet high, and 1 foot thick. You can shape the wall in any way you choose so long as it makes one continuous path along the ground.

So he could have wended it around the bats hitting all of them instead of the straight line the DM assumed it was.

Hmm, that may be the first time I have ever typed the word ‘wended’:

Wend

Verb

Wend your way

To move slowly and not directly:

The thieves then wended their way through the dark back streets to the docks.

The wall stops ordinary projectiles and deals 3d8 blunt damage to anything in the wall when it appears. Small or smaller creatures cannot pass through the wall.

They actually get -3 to Str but Adam rolled 6 damage from 3d8’s (13.5 average) and he then retreated to the other side of the fire.

The DM really did feel sympathy for his player at that point. He promptly stomped that shit out and got a grip though.

Everyone had a good laugh at the level 3 spell doing 3 damage but again, most were sympathetic as it mostly sucked due to unforeseen crap dice and resistances.

Cluster Suck

Indeed. It was bloody funny though. Adam took it well for someone that can’t bring a gun to work and make us all pay.

Regulus, having used half his speed to stand up, attacks the closest bat swarm:

The swarm got thunder-fisted for 10 and then 14 damage despite Regulus only rolling a 5 and a 6.

The four swarms surrounded Regulus and Abelas, all four attacked the warforged and all four missed. Great start DM!

Getting To the Heart of the Batter

The shiny one offered some prayer to a heathen deity beyond my ken and a strange holy artefact manifested near the fire! It was a ludicrously bright red, oval ‘thing’ wrapped in cord. It surged forth and struck some of the bats, killing several.

Matt was struggling to remember how the Sun Blade worked; it required a bonus action to activate so he threw the +2 throwing hammer Knight’s Innately Throwing Tenderiser (KITT) at the swarm instead.

Clay moves forwards and unlimbers the giantslayer battleaxe and knocks a few more chunks out of the swarm.

Clay did successfully scatter one of the swarms though.

Abelas throws out a Lightning Bolt which was ever so slightly overkill on a bunch of CR1/4 enemies but eh, they are not my spell schlots. With some DM assistance this was angled to hit all three remaining swarms, killing two of them and leaving the last properly buggered.

Well this is a bit of problem because he is right but the vampires are not on the board yet. The DM does a quick division of the angle they might appear in, calls that 200 degrees, guesses roughly what angle of that 200 the lightning shot off in and asks Abelas to roll a d100. If he get around the 60-70 mark, he might hit something out in the fog.

Sadly he rolled 50, which was actually pretty bloody close. Shame really.

He hit a tree on the other side of the map and the DM felled it for him.

As A Batter Of Fact

At this point Abelas discovers he has one more Bladesong than he thought he should have. We added Tasha’s Hideous Cauldron recently so the Bladesinger and the Artificer have been updated. They’re kind of respectable now. Obviously that was before WotC realised the likes of Mike and Jake would play these classes.

The druid flame-attacks the last swarm but misses by quite a lot.

Three of them succumbed to the unwaking magic, less than I had hoped, and the elf seems to be a spell caster. He moves slowly though and will be easy prey. Time to get this soiree started!

The DM rolls a magnificent 7. Well, shit. The follow up unarmed attack is a natural 20!

The elf was slipperier than he looked and my bite narrowly missed but I managed to grab hold of him, now he was mine!

Morticus does 8 damage with the attack but the DM forgoes the crit to grapple the wizard instead because the vampire doesn’t know the gimpy wizard can teleport.

Regulus gives the last bat swarm a damned good double-fisting (right in the wind hole!) but then we start some light cheese with Abelas miraculously being able to tell Regulus what he was going to do (Thunderstep). This was a tad too meta-gamey for the DM. I usually let this crap slide but I just forewent some crit damage to not metagame it so fuck em!

They took it in good spirit and Regulus did not run away from the threat.

Fuck me D&D is complicated: Combat Communications

Just to clarify here, the rules say that during combat the players can make ‘brief utterances’ during their turn. Well I say rules are there to be cheesed. As a party that has by now travelled and fought extensively together you will have ways of communicating what you are going to do and so I’m not that fussed about more lengthy strategy, especially at the start of combat, or those wonderful moments when something has just gone very, very wrong.

Mostly though, it’s an issue of timing. If the wizard on their turn shouts to the fighter “I’m going to Fireball the doorway next!” and then the fighter, on their turn, grapples a nearby goblin and throws it into the doorway where the rest of goblins are bottlenecked and then runs the fuck out of range, that’s fine.

If, however, the wizard says nothing on his turn but then when the fighter starts running towards the doorway, on the fighter’s turn, decides to shout “Oh noes, I was going to Fireball there!” thus causing the fighter to change what he was doing, that’s a subtle but important difference.

Eh, most of the time I don’t care. Consistency? Eat more bran or something, I don’t give a shit about it.

Bat Seriously

Abelas lamented that the one time something was in melee range of him <he’s a fucking Bladesinger ffs> that his Vampiric Touch probably wouldn’t work on it.

Legendary actions are used by boss monsters and they occur at the end of another creature’s turn. They renew at the start of each round. So basically, the vampire gets his normal go and then another three actions on top of that.

DM> In this case he is going to use two of his legendary actions to make a bite attack, and it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that he has advantage on a grappled target.

The DM rolled a 6 and a 7 <sigh> there was a little bit of swearing at that point.

Twice! Twice that little <expletive deleted> avoided my attacks, how is this possible? Which of the dark gods must I appease to end this run of accursed luck?!

It was a good idea but sadly for Matt ‘daylight’ is merely bright light and the vampire is specifically weak to ‘sunlight’ which, because fuck me D&D is complicated, is not the same thing.

Nice try though dude.

The Driftglobe description does not mention taking an action so it is still Cru’s turn:

The shiny one presented some kind of holy symbol at me, I felt a force attempting to rip me from this world but whatever god was behind it had not the heart or the simple bad manners to banish one as obviously well bred and meticulously groomed as myself!

The vampire gets +9 to Charisma saves, the DM rolls a 9 and the Banish takes no effect.

Clay lands one of his two attacks for an unimpressive 8 but then Action Surges and lands both the follow up hits, plus a Trip Attack, for a much heftier total of 30 damage and knocks the vampire prone.

The cad knocked me to the ground! Much as I desired to teach the impudent peasant some much needed lessons in respect, the sad one was my target!

At the end of that barrage, the vampire uses a legendary action to move his speed, without provoking an attack, over to the lone druid and away from the pack by the fire.

The DM did feel that would be somewhat cheesy and so left the wizard behind as he ran over next to Joffrey.

Batter Late Than Never

Time for Clarice to join the fray! She emerged from the undergrowth and my heart melted once again at the sight of my feral beloved. She moved to flank the druid, now we pin him and feed!

A female vampire spawn, who had hitherto been unseen in the foliage and the mist, ran up to flank the druid! Oh noes!

The DM leads off with a bite attack and rolls a 19!

In terms of basic attacks, yes, the spawn have a lower CR and thus a lower to-hit and lower damage but otherwise they are pretty much the same with an unarmed and a bite attack. However, a full vampire has a host of cool extra abilities like Charm or Call of the Night which summoned the bat swarms. Then of course, the vampire also gets legendary actions and legendary resistances.

DM> Now the bite hits, that is 6 piercing damage and 7 necrotic damage. Your hit point maximum is reduced by the amount of necrotic damage taken until you long rest.

Clarice bit deep, the blood streaming from her lips, oh how I wanted to taste them at that moment but no, the sad one was our feast now.

<sigh> It took a while for the DM to look up this particular bit of cheese. The issue was not the grapple but the description about teleporting items of your carrying capacity. The spell makes it clear that the weight of an object matters for the teleport so how is a person different from an object?

‘Coz fucking magic’ was the DM’s eventual decision on that particular written spell description, as was ‘let the cheese happen and then make him pay for it’. And so, the squishy wizard runs right up to two vampires, teleports their lunch away and drops a thunderbolt on them for good measure.

Nooo! That… ‘elf’ just ran in there, grabbed our meal and a booming wave of thunder momentarily staggered my beloved and I and when we recovered our meal was gone! The sad one and the wizard were standing several yards away, the wizard looking smugly back at me! Impudent wretch! I would make him pay!

Guess who just hit the top of the vampire’s shit list?

Joffrey drops the amazingly productive Wind Wall and casts Call Lightning instead.

Joffrey> <pointing to another hitherto unseen spawn lurking in a nearby bush> I’ve er… just spotted this boy in here.. is he meant to be there?

DM> <casually> Er… don’t know what you’re talking about.

The DM had in fact sneaked Ormintroyd onto the table some time earlier.

Morticus and Clarice got walloped by the druid’s lightning.

The sad one appears to be some tree worshipping nature lover who manifested lightning from the heavens. I cared not, I had my target!

Clearly I had to resort to somewhat more devious measures to deal with this wretch, perhaps a charm to turn him against his companions!

He appeared to have the mental fortitude of a gherkin and yet he rebuffed my clearly superior psychic abilities! Is he somehow protected? Do the gods somehow favour this barely-perambulatory varlet?!

Matt attempts to warn Jake about repeatedly foiling the DM’s plans but Jake recognises he’s probably fucked anyway and gives not one toss. Well, we can make him care, oh yes, oh yes we can!

The DM informs the party that the vampire regenerated a bunch of hit points at the start of the turn and Regulus sets about removing those again by giving him a damned good fisting.

At the end of the Artificer’s turn the vampire makes another unarmed attack against Abelas at +9 for a total of 21. Abelas, cheese wizard extraordinaire, has an AC of 23. However, he has very few hit points and sooner or later one of these will land.

Cru activates his Sun Blade:

Cru lands two swipes with the Sun Blade, dealing radiant damage. The DM missed the knock on effect of this at the time (it stops the regeneration) but it got caught later.

Oh how it burned! There was little strength in the blows but that blade was anathema to my kind! Luckily the wielder did not seem to truly be the master of his weapon!

Cru had forgotten that the Sun Blade does extra damage to the undead and the DM had trusted matt to know wtf he was doing and so hadn’t looked it up either. Great work from both!

The vampire missed yet another unarmed attack on Abelas. That’s ok though, every miss makes an upcoming crit that tiny bit more inevitable.

And still this whoreson managed to evade my every attack! Very well, I would approach this from a different angle. He must have a weakness! I would find out what he cared about most and I would take it from him!

Clay wades in, bemoaning the crowded nature of the fight that stops him getting a flanking bonus. He still manages a Legana double-tap for 27 damage though.

This peasant hit remarkably hard, I would take care of him once the gangly cretin had fallen before me! Or.. maybe this would be Ormintroyd’s doom? Or his next meal?

It’s time to play dirty:

I caught his gaze and penetrated his mental defences with ease, I ransacked his recent memories for a thing I could twist from him, to make him suffer as we ripped it to pieces before him. I saw… a four-legged shape… the colour white.. and… A NAME!

The DM starts counting squares:

Yes! BINKY!

Detect Thoughts

For the duration, you can read the thoughts of certain creatures.

You initially learn the surface thoughts of the creature – what is most on its mind in that moment. As an action, you can either shift your attention to another creature’s thoughts or attempt to probe deeper into the same creature’s mind. If you probe deeper, the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. If it fails, you gain insight into its reasoning (if any), its emotional state, and something that looms large in its mind (such as something it worries over, loves, or hates).

Absolutely Fangtastic

Ormintroyd attacks with his claws… and rolls a 1. “Every miss is a step closer to a crit” the DM kept telling himself, wistfully.

It makes another claw attack… and crits!

Indeed, now they do know.

Now however, it is Abelas’ turn and he dithers mightily but the DM Morticus knew exactly which button to press and the outcome was inevitable! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ouch!

True though!

Abelas Misty Steps out of the melee party and runs up to the vampire spawn. He multi-attacks for the first time ever and misses with both.

Now for this bit, please bear in mind that both the DM and Adam are very, very tired. It explains a lot going fowards.

Joffrey> I’m going to become Panic Snake, I meant to do it last turn but that’s my fault. So that’s my bonus action, or action? Let’s use an action, why not?

The DM wasn’t paying attention and missed that last bit about actions. I’d like to apologise to Adam for that because if I’d caught it, I would have saved him some pain later and some cheese in the short and mid-terms. Yes, Adam fucked up (as we all do) but the DM knows the rule and just missed it so it was my fault.

Adam thought that 5ft radius meant one 5ft square. The DM starts laughing, mainly at the fact that no one else said anything, they just let him nuke them.

There was much laughter and swearing as everyone rolled and then Joffrey rolled a fairly high 21 damage. That was one of his highest damaging attacks of the entire campaign too!

At the end of that fairly epic turn, Morticus uses a legendary action to move towards Abelas without provoking any attacks.

The fool cared more for his horse than he did for himself or his companions… although having met them, that was understandable. Now he was isolated and vulnerable. Ormintroyd could hold the group by the fire whilst Clarice and I had fun with this slippery rodent!

The first attack makes the wizard use another Shield but the second is a 17 roll plus 9. Ouch.

Another One Bites the Dust

With his last remaining 8 hit points depleted, Abelas hits the floor.

WIZARD DOWN!

You steal my food and run away! Now YOU are my food! Then I’ll eat your horse too!

The DM then got very confused about what stops the vampire regenerating, goes full-Adam and is adamant it is not radiant but then bothers to read ALL of the description and finds out that it is, in fact, also radiant damage <sigh>

Back at the melee huddle near the fire, the appearance of a very large Panic Snake has not made manoeuvring any easier:

Er.. ok.

Poor Ormintroyd was Thunder-Fisted, taunted, Legana’d, bitten, constricted and dragged off.

My vitality was running low due to that accursed cleric with his blade of fire stopping my regeneration. I could feel the tide of battle turning against us. I needed sustenance to heal my wounds and thankfully a handy repository of blood lay at my feet!

In the midst of all that, Morticus uses two of his legendary actions to make a bite attack on the incapacitated Abelas and regains 7 hit points. This does make Abelas fail a death save, so that’s one down.

Morticus is on the receiving end of a level 4 Guiding Bolt (twenty-fucking-three to hit!) from Cru, which is also fucking radiant because fucking cleric cheese <sigh>.

MY EYES!

This led to an extended discussion on BLM, the fight for gay rights, Norman Tebbit being a god amongst mere mortals, benefits scroungers vs benefits for the needy, having kids but never having worked, the life expectancy of a senior NCO in the forces in 1985 (55), and 20mph speed limits in towns.

That was about a 15 minute mass-rant by everyone present all thanks to Adam going for a piss <sigh>

Clay wants to longbow the enemies near Abelas’ impending exsanguinated corpse unconscious partly-exsanguinated body, but there’s a spawn adjacent to the fighter causing him disadvantage on ranged attacks.

The first arrow attack was a rather disappointing 2 but the follow-up was a 20!

That’ll teach the DM to be generous.

Ormintroyd bites Clay with advantage from the grapple and heals himself a bit.

Clarice attacks and grapples Cru and then with his last legendary action for the round Morticus moves to a flanking position on the cleric with the nice hair.

Lastbelas fails a second death save with a miserable 3. One die from death!

Adam assured everyone that accidentally nuking most of the party was not the reason he sounded so depressed but was actually the highlight of his day and he was just tired.

Joffrey’s turn and here the DM compounds his error not paying attention earlier and again misses Joffrey casting Call Lightning as a bonus action when it is, in fact, an action <sigh>.

Regulus asks if anyone has done radiant damage this turn. The DM points out that A) it’s actually the start of the turn and B) if not for the radiant damage my vampire lord would have 40 more hit points right now!

Fucking clerics.

Always Look On The Bite Side Of Life!

Much like the squopping octopus from a previous campaign, the DM cannot possibly do justice to the noises Adam made in text, but I’ll try.

Joffrey wants to drag the spawn down towards the other two enemies south of the fire. This is hideously complicated because the spawn is grappling Clay. The DM rules that Joffrey/Panic Snake, enjoying a considerable size advantage over the spawn, and having assistance from Clay, can drag the undead half the snake’s movement speed uncontested if Clay is willing.

Turns out Clay was willing and we got that conga line a-movin’!

Some time later.

The DM explains why the vampire is attacking Cru; the radiant damage is fucking him up whereas the wizard is down and out and not a threat.

A grapple and a bite both land and Cru loses another 7 points off his maximum. Jake has linked a snake jazz video in Discord but it bugged on him and he’s now permanently stuck with it on loop. The DM lets him suffer for a few minutes but then takes pity and deleted it from the channel.

Down, Bat Not Out

Regulus is worried about how the fight is going but the DM points out that Morticus is a bit buggered. Being a bit buggered he burns two of his legendary actions on another bite attack against Cru and recovers another 7 points..

DM> Cru is the only thing keeping him in the fight right now!

Cru has a conundrum however, he can Healing Word the wizard but he’s likely to take 4 attacks from the two vampires flanking him next turn. He also needs to deal radiant damage to Morticus to stop him regenerating. This causes a bit of a discussion on tactics.

Wizard back up!

DM> The vampire sighs heavily.

<sigh>

Cru attempts to Sun Blade Morticus. Abelas is worried about Cru’s health but the DM points out (to some amusement), that Cru does in fact have plot armour for fairly obvious reasons, so he might get a bit battered but he won’t die-die.

Probably.

The War Cleric lands a hit with the radiant blade (cheese!) and Morticus retaliates with a legendary action attack but misses.

Abelas is getting really excited about killing the vampire but Clarice runs over next to him on her turn and Lastbelas suddenly had something else to worry about. Cru lands the attack of opportunity and only just realises that the Sun Blade does an extra 1d8 to undead. Lolz.

Fangs, But No Fangs!

Clarice twats Lastbelas and KO’s him again.

WIZARD DOWN (AGAIN)

She then runs back and twats Cru.

Obviously we now had to look that up.

I’ll Have Mine… De-coffin-ated!

(not sorry!)

Morticus makes the save with plus 9 to Dex but it doesn’t matter, he had 10 hit points left and Joffrey rolled 21 damage.

VAMPIRE DOWN!

Well, sort of.

The DM explains Misty Escape:

Misty Escape.

When it drops to 0 hit points outside its resting place, the vampire transforms into a cloud of mist (as in the Shapechanger trait) instead of falling unconscious, provided that it isn’t in sunlight or running water. If it can’t transform, it is destroyed. While it has 0 hit points in mist form, it can’t revert to its vampire form.

The session ends because the mist-form is a nice break, the fight may end soon but there’s a bit more to the encounter.

End of session.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

– Will they mange to get Cru killed despite his plot armour?

– Will Binky survive?

– Will Abelas now become a vampire spawn-thrall of the DM? (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Morticus got a few upgrades some of which are a tad unbalanced but you guys managed well.

Fucking snake jazz though, really?!

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:

---

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.

---

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!

---

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

---

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:

---

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

---

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.

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

Also Starring:

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 side tracked by an ‘Adventurers Wanted’ poster from Beliard.

Pre-session Guff

The DM doubles and then triple checks he is actually recording what he thinks he is recording, which makes a change.

Matt couldn’t make it because he has a PTA meeting. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

Sophie will not be making her online debut as she has caught the COVID, apparently, and can’t make it. I don’t think I need to say any more about that either.

Christina has decided sleep is more important than D&D. I don’t think I need to say any more about that as well.

It seems Jake is unwilling to make it on time and Adam is due any day now and so might be making a rapid departure.

Matt did make it after all because “reading calendars is hard” and the PTA meeting was last night.

Adam played as Elvira and Regulus will be playing Isaac as the DM already has two friendly NPCs to control.

Jake finally joins.

As the DM reset the table to something more sensible it was confirmed that Clay had attuned the Giantslayer Battleaxe.

Jake was depressed because he only had one Coke left. The DM countered that with being depressed because he just found out Greggs now does deliveries (this is very, very bad). Jake countered this depression with the more depressing fact that the Nandos 10 minutes from his house does deliver… just not to his house.

Jake, the plant eating vegan, then dissed McDonalds and will now be shit on by the DM for the immediate future:

DM> I will be rolling on my desk tonight instead of out in the open like normal!

This, somehow, led to a discussion on how the player’s characters reflected their personalities:

Like I said before, think of it as a Haka; lots of posturing and silly faces. After that opening exchange of pleasantries, we started the session.

Tight Quarters

Most of tonight’s action will occur on this map of the Stone Bridge:

---

The DM points out that the bridge is 20ft wide. The lore may say it is 15ft but the DM can’t make a nice looking 15ft bridge on Tabletop Simulator so in our particular branch of the multiverse the dwarves did a better job of it and made it 20ft wide. It is also 1,200ft high as to be more like the artwork than the 400ft it says it is in the book.

There’s also a Fire Giant and a couple of Hell Hounds on it.

Last week the party had met a dwarf named Dulron and a human that asked to be called Ember as he was reluctant to give his full name as he has enemies in the area. The pair were waiting for others to cross as these are dangerous times to be caught alone atop a 20ft wide bridge with no hand rails that goes a really long way above a really big river. They agreed to all cross together for safety (mainly for the DM’s safety in case he got this one a bit wrong).

The DM mis-wrote ‘Giant’ on the initiative board and instead managed to write ‘Giants’. Despite there being a number of comments directed at the DM that distinctly sounded like “FOGOF”, sadly the ‘adventurers’ weren’t adventurous enough to accept the DM’s generous offer of ‘fight one, get one free!’.

The mighty fire giant rolled a truly impressive one for its initiative and as it has minus one to Dex that gave it a final score of zero. Great start to the night DM <sigh>. The upside of this is that a potential disaster has significantly reduced in likelihood. They should be able to take care of the giant before it gets to them but initiative and dice rolls can mess that up.

He has a point.

We then had a brief reminiscence of the time they seriously considered setting off an Orb of Devastation (1 mile earthquake range) inside an underground temple that they were standing in at the fucking time <sigh>. The DM really needs to get his arse in gear and post the rest of those PoA write-ups online. I’ll do it soon in all that spare time I don’t have.

Regulus> I really wish I was ranged-spec for this one

Indeed.

Measuring, Counting and Reading is Hard

While the following is probably about as interesting as watching paint dry, I’m going to include it to show some issues we had. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and the next time the DM makes this kind of map it’ll have different tile sets weaved into it.

Joffrey> I think there is 250ft between us…

He starts counting, loses count, starts again, the DM helpfully puts a counter down where he said the 100ft mark was, or though it was, Joffrey loses count and starts again

There were another couple of minutes of this while we sometimes helpfully and often unhelpfully tried to aid Adam in measuring distances on the bridge.

Try and remember everyone laughing at Joffrey for his inability to count squares. You aint seen nothing yet.

Regulus uses the Bag of Tricks to summon the mighty Anonymoose but stuffs up the roll and gets a weasel except the DM can’t find a weasel mini and so this particular Bag of Tricks summons a Racoon. The Racoon is named Mattroll because you have to roll a 1 to summon it.

This is clever, funny and abusive and therefore the DM heartily approves.

Abelas did nothing. Adam\Elvira takes a shot at the giant at disadvantage and misses. Regulus is amazed that Adam has managed to make Elvira shit. The second arrow is a 22 to-hit and that does indeed hit.

Ok, let’s examine the amazing plan these two geniuses are congratulating themselves over shall we? This also highlights Adam’s utter inability to read spell or ability descriptions properly, although, frankly, the DM expects better of Mike but he has spent a lot of time talking to Adam lately.

The giant would not be blind, he would be unable to see further than 5ft so, as he is 15ft wide, he could still see the bridge and the edge of it. He is 250ft away so he isn’t going to be throwing any rocks anyway (and he doesn’t have any) so all he is going to do is sprint forwards 60ft. Shadow Arrow in no way impedes his ability to do this and would be a complete waste of one of the Arcane Archer’s two magic arrow abilities.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “What’s that stupid game you have over there? Where they chase the little ball and all applaud politely but insincerely? Yeah, fucking golf, that’s it! Golf-clap fuckers, golf-fucking-clap!”

Adam however, having been given the choice of two things to use, obviously wants to use both of them, preferably all at once, but still hasn’t actually read the fucking ability description properly:

<sigh> We are such a bunch of <expletive deleteds> to each other.

It’s funny as hell though so I don’t think we’ll be stopping any time soon.

Now admittedly, the above sarcasm and snark by the DM is somewhat unwarranted because this is not Adam’s or Mike’s character and they have never played an Arcane Archer before, but fuck ‘em.

I love you guys really!

But seriously, fuck ‘em.

The DM’s quick and dirty guide to Magic Arrow choice:

Shadow Arrow will stop ranged attacks or a lot of spells that require you to see what you are casting at and thus it is nice to use against ranged attackers. It is really effective at what it does but the downside is that the blind component fails if the victim makes the save so using it is a gamble. To offset that, it does extra psychic damage and that is rarely resisted.

Grasping Arrow has no save. If you hit with the attack, you automatically get to apply the restriction. On a ranged attacker that won’t mean much unless it is forced to move but a melee attacker has to either continually suck up the -10ft movement and the recurring damage or waste an action tearing off the thorns. This is really effective but the downside is that it does poison damage and that is quite commonly resisted. Undead and Elementals for instance, generally give no tosses at all about being hit with poison.

Fuck Me, D&D is Complicated: Help!

Be sure to at least read the last section of this as it has a new house rule in it.

During the above section, Matt made a suggestion about the Help action and there was a bit of a discussion about its uses in combat and the DM said he thought it didn’t apply (it didn’t at the time; it’s a melee thing) but would look it up so here it is.

This is what the book says:

You can lend your aid to another creature in the completion of a task. When you take the Help action, the creature you aid gains advantage on the next ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, provided that it makes the check before the start of your next turn.

Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature in attacking a creature within 5 feet of you. You feint, distract the target, or in some other way team up to make your ally’s attack more effective. If your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first attack roll is made with advantage.

So the Combat use is pretty straight forward and pretty limited. It does apply to Wizard familiars so you can use one to distract an enemy, just expect it to get swatted next turn.

Out of combat is a bit tricky because as-written everyone will assist on everything and thus any non-combat roll could be made with advantage. To offset this, a lot of DMs (including me) generally run with a house rule that you must be proficient in the skill you are assisting with.

However, going forwards, if you are not proficient, but can convincingly describe to the DM exactly how you would assist, and that your character would be able to do such a thing, then that would be allowed. For example, the party face is ‘negotiating’ and you interrupt with a really awkward fact that diminishes the opponent’s argument, then the DM will allow that to count as a Help action.

Adam, just to manage your expectations, and because I know how your D&D brain works, pretty much anything you try will be regarded as ‘fucking cheese’ and be met with the response of ‘Fuck no, fuck off!’.

However, please do still try it as I can use a good laugh.

Particularly Athletical

Clay longbows it at disadvantage but misses with both shots. Genuine sympathy was expressed by the other players (for a change).

Ember moves forwards, muttering a variety of complaints about fire giants and fire resistances and preps an action.

The hell hounds have a speed of 50ft and they dash a further 50ft.

Joffrey drops a Spike Growth on the bridge such that the hell hounds will have to travel through the entire length of it. The DM is already planning to cheese it though.

Mike\Isaac moves forwards and casts Bless on Clay, Elvira and Regulus.

Regulus summons a second pet from the Bag of Tricks:

Regulus> Please don’t be Boarax! Please don’t be Boarax!

It was Boarax, obviously.

It is Abelas’ turn and despite the urging from the DM he did not Fireball the hell hounds.

For those of you think the DM shouldn’t be doing this, A) Fuck you and B) How else are they going to figure out they are immune to fire if they don’t try it right? Right.

I was helping my player, obviously.

And if you believe that I have this handy stone bridge I now need to sell…

They then discussed casting “Tiny Butt” on the bridge and cowering inside it. The giant would end up sitting on it for eight hours and then, when it expires, the thing they really, really, don’t want in melee range of them would be in melee range of them.

“Golf-clap fuckers, golf-fucking-clap!”

Adam\Elvira attacks again and misses again. Regulus reminds her she has Bless. This then hits! Bless is a very underestimated spell, especially when you are attacking a high AC enemy. Its main drawback is the concentration as the cleric usually has something better to spend it on but paladins or other hybrid casters should use this a lot.

Clay plinks at a hell hound and hits for 8 damage.

Ember, eyeing up the bridge, drops a sarcastic comment about how congested it is. This is because the DM has thought ahead and realised the two wizards are going to be throwing lightning bolts up the middle of the bridge. The players don’t seem to have thought of this though. Oh well, never mind, it’ll be fine I’m sure.

The barrage hits for 33 damage.

DM Cheese is the Best Cheese

It’s the hell hounds turn:

Several notable things happened here. Watching it back the DM realises he cheesed an extra 5 ft of the jump because measuring is hard. We had a mini discussion on jump rules in combat with Adam and Matt helping the DM immensely to sort this shit out (that is not sarcastic (I know, right?!)). The DM decides to restrict jumping in hazardous terrain to ‘in but not out’ because, as he put it at the time “You try jumping in knee-high mud”. Sure, you can jump into it, but try jumping out of it.

Everyone seemed reasonably happy at this interpretation which makes the DM think he fucked up somehow.

The hell hounds landing in the spike growth have to make a check or fall prone. One made it, one did not. In future episodes, landing in hazardous terrain will incur damage as if you moved 5ft through it.

Joffrey drops a Tidal Wave on the hell hounds. Isaac “Guided” Bolted hell hound 2 and kills it.

There. Are. FIVE. Squares!

(That’s a Star Trek reference for the true nerds)

So, remember earlier when we were all taking the piss out of Joffrey because he couldn’t count squares on the bridge? Yeah.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: “Karma has much in common with my first wife; she’s fucking psychic, she just knows when you fucked up and she will make you pay for it!”

So the DM is getting confused counting and attempts to place gradient marks on the bridge to make it all easier for everyone. How fucking hard can that be right? Right.

All I had to do was count 5 squares and make a mark. The first attempt ended up with two 5-square marks and three 4-square marks.

<sigh> It got worse from there. There were four more 4-square fuckups, an accidental deletion of the Spike Growth, a complete comedy mental breakdown when ‘helping’ hands were left on the bits that needed counting\marking and a random line that ended up going from the bridge to the river.

DM> Future Gary; record just how long that mess took you!

It was 4m42s to make 6 small marks on a bridge made of uniform squares <sigh>

Adam decided now was the time to mention a work-related anecdote about a Racoon that led to Mike un-summoning Mattroll. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

There was a discussion about spells that turned into speculation about Ember’s spell list:

Abelas suddenly realises he is standing right on the edge of the bridge. However, it was also his turn and the DM suggested a retaliatory Thunderwave. Sadly he did not have it prepped.

Adam> I’d like to point out Jake, that you are five feet away from a new character!

Indeed, thus highlighting the tricky nature of this fight.

Adam\Elvira misses and it becomes apparent that the fire giant is rocking an AC of 22. This is the highest the DM has ever stuck on anything in any fight before. Absolutely nothing can go wrong!

At this point in the fight various characters are advancing up the bridge to get within range of the giant. The DM is unsure of the wisdom of this. Distance is your friend in this fight and the giant will be in range sooner or later.

Clay’s response to the DM’s concern was fairly good though: “What’s the point of having a giantslayer battleaxe if you don’t get it up in the giant’s face?”

Ember is out of range and isn’t stupid enough to run at a fire giant so he holds his action.

The DM admits to a cheese-move of the highest order as he has the remaining Hound jump further towards the edge of the Spike Growth and then runs out the rest of the way taking some damage. It dashes and runs up next to Clay.

Joffrey cast Produce Flame and threw it at the hell hound. The fire damage did surprisingly little damage to the flaming hound from hell. Who’d a thought, eh?

Mike\Isaac casts Spiritual Weapon and Isaac’s holy symbol makes its first appearance. It’s a light bulb and it illuminates the hell hound nicely.

The fire giant long jumps a remarkable 25ft into the Spike Growth patch and pisses all over the Dex save!

By ‘pissing all over’ I mean he rolled an 11 and gets -1 to Dex but the save is 10. Never in doubt.

Regulus uses his last summons of the day, rolls a 7 and that means a Dire Wolf. It was named Insensitive Bastard in honour of Joffrey <sigh>. The DM then accidentally dropped Insensitive Bastard off the bridge.

Adam questions exactly what he did to deserve having the wolf named in such a manner and both Jake and Mike took great delight in reminding him.

Abelas now encounters the problem the DM saw coming two hours ago; he wants to cast Lightning Bolt up the bridge but the middle of the bridge is full of summoned pets, wayward archers and suicidal fighters. So the squishiest party member runs towards the oncoming fire giant. Well, that’s one way of doing it.

The DM realises that Ember missed his held action and the giant has indeed reached the trigger point:

Particularly Dextrous

Obviously, because Ember went out of turn, the DM manages, again, to totally fuck up the initiative. Interesting word ‘initiative’; I type it multiple times on a weekly basis but it just took me four attempts to get it right and I had to resort to a right-click spell-check because typing was suddenly inexplicably hrad.

Joffrey re-casts Spike Growth so the giant has to traverse most of its length. The giant, moving at half speed due to the difficult terrain, has to walk all the way through the spikes taking a fair chunk of damage, but now it is free! Free to cause havoc and punt players gleefully from the bridge!

It is 25ft from the closest player and not a lot of its hit points are missing. The DM is getting a tad concerned at this point but figures it is about to take a ton of damage over the next turn. Absolutely nothing can go wrong.

Regulus casts Web at it and then moves the two summons up towards the giant.

Abelas and maths then happened as the wizard moves forward a bit to get a clear shot:

This particular glimpse into the workings of the DM’s brain led to several seconds of silence followed by laughter and comments about the unnecessary complexity of the calculation, the remarkable fact that it resulted in the right answer and the use of the phrase “knock one off”

Adam\Elvira hit the giant with another Grasping Arrow and then Action Surged and rolled two ones on the next two attacks. Even Matt was impressed by that level of fail. This obviously led to a large amount of mockery and abuse with Mike wondering if he should message Christina and see if she could come on and sort this shit-show out.

Clay, having waited two hours to get a melee attack in with the Giantslayer Axe, is still denied because there’s a web in the way so he resorts to javelins.

Well, that at least puts the DM’s mind to rest that we aren’t about to have a spate of water-related ‘severe deceleration syndrome’ deaths (it aint the fall that kills you Buttercup!).

DM> You need to get Clay in there; action surge plus a Giantslayer with auto-crits… yeah.

Adam has been conspicuously quiet for a couple of minutes and now when Joffrey is called upon, Thunderstruck starts playing in Discord and Call Lightning is summoned to the bridge.

Jake calls for a moment to appreciate the music and the DM recommends Mike watches the best non AC/DC version by Steve ‘N’ Seagulls.

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Joffrey> <smugly> Can it make a Dex save? Oh wait! No, no it can’t.

A lightning bolt streaks out of the storm cloud and hits the giant for 26 damage.

The giants fails the Hold Creature save again and is now paralysed for another turn. That’s this fight over pretty much, it’s just a case of how they end it now, in style or by being dicks.

So we have been in this fight for nearly 2.5 hours and now Mike wants Boarax to attack the 22 AC giant <sigh>

Between Regulus, Boarax and Insensitive Bastard we rivalled a Jake turn in length and accomplished about as much.

Look, it isn’t harsh if it’s true AND funny, right?

The DM suddenly doesn’t care anymore. Major Butthurt is at the table! The DM isn’t on full angry rant mode but he is definitely irritated (more than usual!)

But don’t worry Clay, the DM can fix it for you!

Abelas casts some shit the DM was no longer paying attention to and hits for some damage the DM didn’t bother to subtract.

Clay hits the fire giant with a +1 Giantslayer axe (2d6), plus his damage (a lot) plus he uses a Superiority Die for a Push Attack AND all of that gets added again but maxed for the crit.

Clay> Fifty one damage!

FUCK YEAH! FIRE GIANT DOWN!

The fire giant had no rocks or valuables but he did have the large rod which Clay attuned at the next rest:

Rod of the Vonindod – Rod, rare (requires attunement)

The fire giant duke Zalto hired a wizard to craft several of these adamantine rods. Each measures 4 feet long, weighs 100 pounds, and is sized to fit comfortably in a fire giant’s hand. The rod has two prongs at one end and a moulded handle grip on the opposite end.

The rod has 10 charges and regains 1d6 + 4 of its expended charges daily at dawn. As an action, you can grasp it by the handle and expend 1 charge to cast the Locate Object spell from it. When the rod is used to detect objects made of adamantine, such as fragments of the Vonindod construct, its range increases to 10 miles.

Adam Ruins the Big Climax

Some laughter and some abuse and some deep breaths… woooooo-saahhhhh.

DM> Uhh… <momentarily lost for words> <starts laughing> He er.. he calls you off to one side and says:

“There is an enclave forming to try and deal with the strange weather events that have been plaguing this area recently. We are looking to recruit suitable candidates. If you wish to leave these adventurers and do something more worthwhile with your time, come alone to Scarlet Moon Hall. Ask for me by name; Thermander, Bastian Thermander”

And then he puts spurs to horse and gallops away to the south.

Beliard (unflooded)

Beliard is a market-moot for local cattle drovers. It surrounds the intersection of the dusty Dessarin Road and the Stone Trail.

Beliard is home to many cattle ranchers whose herds roam the hills around the village, particularly to the east. The community has a public well, as well as a pond where harnessed horses or oxen can be driven through the water to bathe them, drive off flies, and let them drink. It also boasts a tanner, a smith, some horse dealers and trainers who keep extensive stables, and an inn: the venerable, popular, and several-times-expanded Watchful Knight. The inn was named for an inoperative helmed horror that once stood in the common room. The creature mysteriously vanished years ago, and the innkeeper went missing shortly thereafter.

They have a chat with the mayor and find out that hill giants have attacked many of the cattle ranches around Beliard. Every attack is the same: the giants ignore the ranchers and instead raid the animal pens, making off with pigs, sheep, chicken coops, and cattle. The ranch owners have pooled their resources and posted “Adventurers Wanted!” signs that promise a payment of 500gp to anyone who finds out where the hill giants’ lair is located.

They only need to locate the lair and then the mayor can petition the Lord’s Alliance to clear it out. In the meantime, if they know where the giants are coming from, they can post scouts and minimise the losses by moving the cattle away from any incoming giants.

Quest accepted, rest was rested and they set out to explore the southern hills. Some distance from the town they heard an awful moaning dirge being sung. They traced it to a nearby tower.

End of session.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

“Charley Says” was mentioned by Mike. Mike and the DM then had to explain to the young’uns about really badly animated 1970’s public service announcements. Thankfully YouTube can remind everyone how much things were both better and worse in the old days.

Would you like to see a puppy?

Bastian Thermander – Bit part player to major villain. Who he is and why he matters.

In Princes of the Apocalypse this was Uffo Puddlefoot’s (AKA Chris\Uhffo) the Bard’s personal quest:

Uffo’s Personal Quest: You were performing in the Princely Innara tavern in Waterdeep, one of few places in your life you would have called home. A fight broke out, which wasn’t unusual, but a sorcerer started throwing around a lot of fire magic.

The place burned to the ground along with the innkeeper Robert Tollen and his daughter Yantha, whom you were very close to. You learned the sorcerers name was Bastian Thermander. Your investigations have turned up evidence he belongs to some cult forming in the Dessarin Valley and you have travelled here to make him pay for the deaths of your friends.

The Fire Temple: Uffo’s quest to locate Thermander led to many places, some torture and a few slit throats until they finally tracked him down to the Fire Temple. When they got to his quarters though, all they found was a note.

They found themselves in a hot but well-appointed room with slightly singed furnishings. A writing table held a scroll with a card on it saying ‘For the Bard’. The scroll reads as follows:

To My Dearest Admirer, Poohfo Piddlefeet,

From the first moment our representatives in Red Larch informed me that a common bard of middling talent, such as yourself, was anxious for an audience with me I was sure a great friendship lay ahead for us.

I hope this letter finds you in good health and I eagerly await each update from our agents, sincerely hoping you haven’t fallen prey to either the many dangerous creatures within the temple complex, or that unfortunate drinking habit you seem to have picked up somewhere.

You will have to forgive me; my own personal preference is for a delightful Waterdeep 1346 and I would have left you a bottle but I am informed you prefer a more.. er.. ‘rustic’ vintage and, alas, I have nothing of that quality in my cellar, though you might find something more to your taste in the maintenance closet.

As you are no doubt aware, large ‘morally-flexible’ organisations planning on world domination don’t just run themselves and unfortunately I am simply too busy to spare the time to meet with you at present. However, you are hereby cordially invited to the Grand Birthday Party of Imix the All Consuming Eternal Flame, Prince of Evil Fire.

The venue for this magnificent soiree will be The Weeping Colossus which can be found beneath the Fane of the Eye.

You now face a choice; you may elect to immediately charge down to the Colossus in your enthusiasm to meet me but you may fall short of the dress code for the party. Certain… protective items will be required for this event. However, should you dither overly long in the other nodes whilst putting together the perfect party outfit, you may find my mistress Vannifer, and Imix the All Consuming Eternal Flame to have departed and you may miss the party altogether.

I do hope we can meet soon and perhaps spend some time discussing past acquaintances we have in common, like the rather grumpy innkeeper Tollen and his delightful, if now slightly crispy, daughter Yantha.

Yours Very Sincerely,

Bastian

Uffo was particularly unhappy with the ‘Bard of middling talent’ bit and went looking for the maintenance closet, but only after pissing on Bastian’s pillow. Kroq was rather impressed with how triggered the DM had made Uffo.

Having got to the Weeping Colossus, shortly after Uffo accidentally murdered two innocent Temple of Tyr bods with a Fireball and was subsequently now Wanted (Alive, 3,000gp), there was an illusion of Bastian and another note:

My Dearest Uhffo Piddlefoot,

Once again I am astounded that a Bard of your talent managed to get this far. It pays to have powerful friends I suppose. I was so looking forward to making your acquaintance particularly so I could offer you some advice on dealing with the consequences of murdering innocent people with fire.

I never realised we were so alike given my obvious superiority in looks, intelligence, charisma, talent, education, fashion, sophistication and so on.

Alas, having successfully manipulated dear Vannifer into starting this cult, I never guessed she would be stupid enough to go through with actually summoning Imix. Thus, I have departed before the impending apocalypse.

Dear Albeari and I will be travelling to Neverwinter and you should look us up in the unlikely event you survive what is about to happen. I look forward to seeing you again and I may even attend your trial and subsequent execution. It should be quite a spectacle.

Best Wishes,

Your Eternal Friend,

Bastian Thermander

p.s. I left you a present. Just a little something I found in the maintenance closet.

The ‘present; was a bottle of degreaser.

So that’s Bastian. A low level boss who was supposed to just be an excuse to get into the larger plot but became something much more interesting along the way.

To play online you will need the following:

Download and install Steam and then open your friends window:

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In the newly opened Friends window click the little man (OMG did you just ASSUME THEIR GENDER?!) ‘person’-with-a-plus icon:

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On that page, paste the code 9378107 into the ‘Enter a Friend Code’ box.

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Congratulations, you have now added the DM as a friend on Steam. Now I own your soul! BWAHAHAHAHAHaha ha…

Ok, now you need to buy Tabletop Simulator on Steam. It’s £15 but you will get literally hundreds of hours of tears, frustration and rage amazing D&D experience from just this small outlay!

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Now you can play, you’ll need to be able to communicate so that you too can randomly shout “FUCK MY DICK!” at your party.

For that, you’ll need a microphone (gaming headset ideally, simple clip-on is ok) and Discord. Once you have found the Discord installer (Google is not your friend but they can find shit on the net) and installed it, you’ll need to add the DM as a friend on that as well: Tenz#1296

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Using Tabletop Simulator

The DM will invite you to a game the first time. You’ll probably be late getting in because you’ll have stuffed up Discord so if all you can hear is an irate Christopher shouting “FUCK MY DICK”, or Jake repeatedly dropping the C-Bomb, DO NOT PANIC! This is perfectly normal.

You use WASD to scroll the camera around and hold the right mouse button to pan up/down. It’ll probably feel weird at first but don’t worry, after 30-40 hours it’ll just feel a bit strange.

Left-click and hold to drag stuff around on the table.

The ‘p’ button swaps between 3rd person, 1st person and top-down cameras. Use 3rd person for D&D. Let me repeat that USE 3RD PERSON FOR D&D!

It will put message on screen when you swap between modes. 1st person sucks utter monkey balls so if it feels like you are moving slower than an Arizona vote counter, you probably have the wrong view selected.

When you do get into the table you must follow the commandments of TTS:

So there you have it. Good luck player!

You’re going to need it.

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

Author’s Note: The DM boomered the recording because (I think) OBS was started before I plugged my headphones in and thus we don’t have the player audio for this session, which really really sucks and means this write up will be somewhat drier than normal because most of my content comes from you twats.

Because of the loss of the player audio I will consequently have to write down more or less what I said and then completely make up what I think the players said.

This is not terribly different from normal.

We are going back in time to before about a quarter of the way through Princes of the Apocalypse when the DM finally started using a voice recorder. Before that it was all done from memory but I’m a few years older now and… er.. what was I saying?

The titles from tonight’s chapters are taken from The Sound of Silence which Mr Garfunkel once summed the meaning up as “The inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly intentionally but especially emotionally” which I think for you lot is accurate in the first part but the exact opposite of the last part; you communicate especially well emotionally; “You’re not here little wizard-bitch!”, “FUCK MY DICK!”, “Fuck you, you luminous prick!”, “You are the worst being ever!”, “Fuck this shit! Dash!”, “I JUST WANT TO SPUNK EVERYTHING!”, “And how is that working out for you while you are on your back?“, “I didn’t realise you were now dead to me!”, “I know you’re old enough to be my dad but…”, “Fucking selective cheese hearing!”, “You stupid vertical twat!” etc.

I could go on but I won’t… but I could…

This song does of course provide us with our now-traditional dead player chapter title of Hello Darkness My Old Friend.

The recent Disturbed version of this classic is so good I’ll probably want it played at Christopher’s imminent my funeral:

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

– They set out to rob the Margaster family in Silverymoon, set off an Alarm spell and got trapped in a carriage house with a couple of Cambions and some potential Demon Horses.

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Pre-session Guff

The DM discovered that actually plugging your headset into your computer made it work much better. The DM found out later of course, that it made the OBS recording much, much worse <sigh>.

Matt said that he can’t make next week because he has to attend a PTA meeting. Yes, that is not made up and is definitely now the definitive worst excuse for missing D&D ever. Worse than the football and worse than the shit dinosaur movie that they could have seen on any night over the following 6 weeks.

Sophie may be joining us to replace Matt and everyone agreed that while it was a terrible, terrible shame that Matt couldn’t make it, he shouldn’t hurry back any time soon if that were the case.

Ram-raiding and water fairies were discussed. Not the likeliest of duos you would have thought but trust me, it turns out there’s a lot more synergy there than you would think.

“Fools” said I, “You do not know”

We begin our eerily silent session inside the carriage house of the Margaster estate.

Having deftly set off the Alarm spell and nabbed the stolen items, the players had gotten into a fight with two human guards who turned out not to be human after all and were, in fact, Cambion devil guards.

Cambion 1 is prone on the floor having been flattened by a Joffrey Tidal Wave, he is also somewhat damaged. Cambion 2 is barely touched at the back of the room.

The DM explained that he forgot to photo the combat board he uses last week and has smudged the dry-wipe a little and can’t see if Cambion 1 had lost 38, 58 or 78 hit points.

Joffrey, obviously, immediately suggested 78 and so the DM made it 38 just to spite the cheesy twat.

Clay steps up and twats the prone Cambion with Legana. He rolled two 19s on the first attack and crit on the second attack. Well that’s all his good rolls used up for the next year.

Just to prove that particular point he rolled two 1s for the damage and then stuffed up a Wisdom save and got charmed by Cambion 2 who instructed him to attack Joffrey.

Joffrey then immediately tried to cheese a second Tidal Wave at a right-angle to him when it clearly says ‘away from you’ in the casting description. Or it did right up until the DM checked it and found it didn’t say that at all.

Hmm, spell must have been updated recently or something.

Cambion 1 fails the save and gets flattened and killed by the rush of cheese-scented water.

It is now Elvira’s turn and there is a huge discussion about what she should attack and what she should use. She stepped away from Clay and shot him with her longbow, rolled a 7 and even with her to-hit did not damage the fighter. Her second arrow did though!

Clay had to roll to see if he made the save:

DM> Please roll low! Please roll low! Please roll low!

Matt rolls a natural 20 and the DM expresses some mild disappointment.

DM> Goddamfuckingshitfuck!

Clay was, sadly, no longer charmed and Joffrey was, even more sadly, safe.

Regulus runs up and attacks the remaining Cambion with his lightning fists to the refrain of the DM chanting “Fist him good! Fist him harrrrd!”

Having then been further molested by Clay, the Cambion grins and calls out “Well played!” and casts Plane Shift and buggers off home for a holiday.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

They now start faffing about searching the place and the DM has to subtly point out that the alarm is still ringing.

After Matt posted the dictionary definitions of ‘Detect’ and ‘Dispel’ into Discord, Abelas went from pissed off and confused to just pissed off, although he did, eventually, cast Dispel Magic upon the alarmed box and it shut the fuck up.

Regulus tries to open the door but cannot. He examines it but finds it is not physically locked. Joffrey turns into a Rhino and charges the door, because why wouldn’t you? He takes half the damage that he inflicted and the door remains unimpressed by the efforts made so far.

Abelas casts Dispel Magic on the door and lo and behold it opened.

A female Tiefling is stood on the nearby tower, she chuckles and calls out “Ahhh! THIEVES” and casts a Fireball right at Abelas. Sadly, Regulus was the only other player in range.

Initiative was rolled and Clay, after last week’s inaugural award of the Cheese of the Week trophy, won the inaugural award of the DM’s digital thumb.

Er, that did not come out the way I meant it to… and neither did the thumb! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Hah! Hah… hah…

Not sorry.

The average for a Fireball is 28. The DM rolled 37! GET IN! THE GIMPY WIZARD GOES DOW… what? He made the save?!

Well, shit.

Regulus did not make the save but he is not nearly as flimsy as Abelas and stayed upright.

Joffrey throws a heal at Regulus and gets on the carriage and grabs the reins. Thankfully this happened after he dropped rhino form or it would have been really messy.

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Joffrey had to resist engaging full gallop and running down Abelas who was blocking the door.

Regulus stated that the gods are false and the DM makes a note of this in case they ever need to resurrect the Warforged in a temple to a god he doesn’t think is real. That’ll put the cost up a bit!

In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone.

Abelas hitches up his robes and goes full Rincewind, legging it out of the compound and down the street.

The Tiefling shouts out “Yes! Run! But I will find youuuu!” and then she preps an action. This causes some consternation for those that have yet to leave the carriage house.

Clay decides to leg it from the top floor to jump into the carriage and insists on grabbing a random book from the Devil’s Lair on the way out. That will work out well I’m sure.

And so, with Clay and Regulus in the back and Elvira and Joffrey up front (temporarily renamed to Bonnie & Clyde) the carriage is driven at pace out of the carriage house and towards the waiting gates and freedom!

Only the evil(?) Tiefling stands in the way… er. metaphorically speaking because she is actually standing quite a long way away from the actual.. er.. way.

As the carriage emerges from the doors she starts to cast Cone of Cold but then does not release it, laughing and shouting down to them “It’s a good job I love my horses!”

Bonnie and Clyde steer the carriage through the gates and down the street to safety.

Joffrey now wants to keep both the carriage and the horses. The DM has to point out that the carriage is made for well-maintained roads and they will not always be travelling on those. Joffrey, because it’s Adam, doesn’t give a shit and wants to keep it anyway <sigh>

People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening.

They currently have to decide the following:

We now see a minor advantage of not having player audio. This conversation took twelve minutes before the DM intervened and directly asked them each of the above questions.

They did leave town straight away, they did not take the carriage, they did take the horses. Well Joffrey did, the rest just left him behind as he couldn’t keep up trying to wrangle a cart, Boris, Shelby and two draft horses.

They have another discussion about how far to camp off road:

As there wasn’t room in the tiny hut for the horses, they were left outside. A passing comment about them being crushed against the see-through side of the hut led to the DM making the comment “You attempt to sleep that night but you are somewhat disturbed by the sight of your horses Garfielded up against the outside of the window”

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This broke Jake.

JAKE DOWN!

It literally broke Jake. He couldn’t speak for a couple of minutes and then when he could speak he insisted he was ok but sounded definitely not ok.

After a couple more minutes passed and we were all reasonably sure that Jake had regained the ability to breathe we got on with it.

It finally occurred to them that they hadn’t yet examined the magical loot which was kind of the whole point of this escapade anyway <sigh>.

They found they had Eyes of Minute Seeing, Goggles of Night, a Greater Healing Potion, a scroll of Vampiric Touch and, because the DM is a dick, another of Detect Magic. There was also a hitherto unnoticed magic ring:

Ring of Detect Demonic Horses: When worn, this ring will gently pulse whenever a Demon Horse is within 300ft of the wearer.

That will be spectacularly useful, I’m sure.

The time between escaping the compound and finally travelling on to Zymorven hall was just over half an hour. Obviously the reasons for this are lost due to the lack of player audio but I think it was primarily down to deciding who got what loot, Clay being possessed by a devil when he read the book, Regulus attempting to start planning the next travel phase even though they have no fucking clue where they will be heading and the DM, for reasons he forgets, having had Isaac cast Thaumaturgy and shout out, three times louder than normal ”YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF SALTY DICKWEASELS!”

Truly, this is the epitome of D&Ding.

Zymorven Hall

Perched atop a crag overlooking the Rauvin Road, with a clear view of the Evermoors to the south and the Moonwood to the north, is a keep of mortared stone with a high-pitched roof that has wooden statues of baying wolves rising from its peaks. A branch in the road winds up to the keep’s gatehouse and bailey. From the keep, the Zymorven family of Silverymoon has watched over the surrounding lands for four generations.

The DM gives a complete recap of the quest, the reason for doing the quest, the person they need to talk to and what, exactly, they need to say to get to see that person.

Trust me, it’s just better for everyone this way.

However, they then start questioning if they even need the Giantslayer weapon before they even know what the fuck it does or how powerful it is or how valuable it is <sigh>

It’s a magic fucking axe! Who gives a fuck if you need it or not, it’s a magic fucking axe!

<sigh> ‘Adventurers’ my arse.

There is a patrol from Silverymoon just leaving and, as per usual, they become completely obsessed with the utterly unimportant detail the DM threw in for flavour instead of whatever the fuck it was that they were supposed to be doing. This has been happening for so long now that the DM isn’t even phased by it anymore and is occasionally disappointed when it doesn’t happen.

The players are asked to eat with Lord Zymorven that night and a thoroughly enjoyable meal was had during which Lord Zymorven refused to discuss business and instead they swapped adventuring tales.

After the meal he had the following to say when they broached the subject of the Giantslayer weapon:

“Ah the giant slayer, yes I did have such a weapon but alas it was stolen from me by my youngest boy Harthal. He’s an idiot. I tried to help; good education, martial training and I even got him a job on the board of a gnomish mining company despite the fact that he doesn’t speak gnomish nor knows anything about mining but he still managed to bugger that up as well. Alas, the fool fell in love with a tavern wench from Yartar and married her against my express wishes so I disowned him. The cad then robbed me and ran off with the girl and my axe. If you can find him, the axe is yours with my blessing. My scribe will provide you with a document of ownership.”

After the Lord and the rest of his staff had left, they were approached by the resident musician Rimbredol Rainer who tells them that Harthal, the son, is indeed an idiot but the girl is not. He suggests they start looking for them in Yartar and mentions asking politely at the Wink & Kiss tavern for help from the Hand of Yartar thieves’ guild.

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, that split the night

The following morning they set out, deciding (eventually) to go back to Everlund and use the teleporter there rather than go the off-road unexplored route via Rivermoot, Nesme and Mornbryn’s Shield. There was no right or wrong choice here.

A few hours out, Joffrey with his high passive perception becomes aware of a really high pitched whine coming from the road to the right, barely audible but rising in tone.

The Ring of Detect Demonic Horses starts pulsing on Clay’s hand.

The DM describes the following:

A booming crack like a thunderbolt shatters the quiet and the air over to the right of the road rips apart as a thin portal forms in the air, a few feet wide and about 20ft tall, through it you can see a sky where the clouds appear to be on fire.

A gleaming jet-black horse streaks through the portal which slams shut behind it. The horse has a dark orange mane with a matching tail and flaming hooves.

As the horse came through the portal, just for a split second the figure mounted on it seemed to shift. You think you got the momentary hint of large horns and a tail but you must have been mistaken as instead you can now clearly see a familiar, portly figure dressed in silks and a turban, flapping somewhat as the horse strides through the sky towards you, its hooves leaving small smoke clouds with each stride.

“WOOO-HOOOO! DARLINGS!”

Benjamin brings the magnificent horse to halt about 20ft above you, he fetches out a large pouch and tosses it down to Clay, it clinks as you catch it.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you darlings! As further thanks for my freedom, please accept..” and then another massive boom sounds out, far louder than the first as a much bigger portal rips open where the first one was. The ring is now pulsing so fast it is almost vibrating.

Benjamin continues “Oh, er, must dash darlings! Enjoy those! COME FANDANGO! WE MUST FLY! FLY LIKE THE WIND!”

The horse rears and its mane and tail catch fire as it leaps away, climbing and heading off towards and area left of the road.

Through the right side portal eight large flame-wreathed figures emerge mounted on similar horses to Benjamin but not quite as large or magnificent. One shouts out in Primordial “There! The princess’s defiler escapes us!” And they gallop across the sky in pursuit of Benjamin.

You eyeball it and it seems to you that Fandango is clearly faster than the chasing pack, although you also notice that Benjamin’s silks seem to be trying to catch fire from Fandango’s fiery mane and Benjamin is slapping himself silly trying to keep it from happening. Another portal booms open in front of Benjamin and just as he disappears he waves back at you and calls out “I’ll be watching you darlings!”

Regulus> That man is… magnificent.

The pursuing pack streaks across the sky leaving a trail of smoke drifting behind them until they also vanish through yet another portal with yet another thunderous crash.

Silence suddenly descends upon the road and it seems as if the entire areas is quietly contemplating what the hell just happened here.

The bag contains 20 lacquered metal badges, seemingly scratch-proof:

And in the naked light I saw

They arrive in Yartar and Regulus immediately starts trying to plan whether or not to use the Letter of Recommendation before they even know if they have to <sigh>.

There was an interlude where we reminisced about the last time the players were in the Wink & Kiss and Henry got the blame for the entire session going wrong because he was stuck in Red Larch in jail having had sex with a chicken and thus no one spoke, and I quote, “Thieves cunt” <sigh>

They were shown to a corner table. The DM asked for perception checks to be made, Joffrey rolled high:

DM> It’s subtle and it’s clever; some of the ‘patrons’ are pretending to drink heavily but they drink from different jugs to those you think are actual customers. Fully half the people in the tavern are nowhere near as drunk as they appear.

A serving girl wanders over and asks what they want. A bribe of 5 gold is required but they don’t know that and Clay offers two gold, and then another two gold because why fuck it up once when you can fuck it up twice?

Someone paid her ten gold, I can’t remember who, and she says someone will be in touch soon. Then however, we turn back to the subject of the drinks. Joffrey asks for milk. The serving girl shouts over to the bar “Hey Wescott! Do we have any milk?”

The entire tavern turns and stares at Joffrey with various expressions of amazement and disgust. Wescott shouts back that the mare is in foal and he will see what he can do.

They are soon joined by a middle-aged human woman calling herself Nareen. She points out that they are a very eclectic group; The metal man, the wizard in white, the limping wizard, two Genasi and a very shiny cleric. They are making a reputation and she has heard of their exploits in Triboar.

Matt had to leave early and so Clay was immediately offered to Nareen for use in the local brothel.

The party present her the scroll and explain that they need to locate Harthal and the weapon. She takes the letter and leaves then for several hours, When she returns she explains that Harthal killed someone and is currently incarcerated. A corrupt watch captain named Tholzar Brenner currently has the axe.

Take my arms that I might reach you

Nareen suggests several methods of obtaining the axe:

– The ‘legitimate’ method; approach the Waterbaron and explain the situation. This has more chance of success if a party member is in the Lord’s Alliance (Elvira) but the Waterbaron is not well regarded and if the party is not persuasive enough, she may just keep it for herself.

– Take it from Brenner themselves; he isn’t well thought of so the investigation would not be too vigorously pursued but there will be an investigation.

– The Hand will obtain it for them; this will be expensive though as there will be bribes to pay.

– They could approach either the Zhentarim or the Harpers for aid.

They choose the latter approach and Regulus and Joffrey manage to locate a harper safe house by passing the investigation checks required and the agents inside set some wheels in motion for 200g in expenses. The next day the Giantslayer Battleaxe +1 is delivered to them.

Giantslayer Battleaxe (Rare)

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.

When you hit a giant with it, the giant takes an extra 2d6 damage of the weapon’s type and must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or fall prone. For the purpose of this weapon, “giant” refers to any creature with the giant type, including ettins and trolls.

Abelas is approached by a rangery looking person who tells him there have been giant sightings around the Emerald Enclave outpost of Goldenfields and they are asking any faction members who are available to travel there just in case.

This is a faction quest and they decide to follow up on it straight away. They collected Clay from the brothel, and set off travelling first to Yartar and then south down the Long Road without any meaningful incidents until they get to Westbridge.

Westbridge

A village strung out along the Long Road between Red Larch and Triboar, Westbridge (so named because it lies to the west of the Stone Bridge) is home to the Harvest Inn, on the west side of the Long Road facing the Stone Trail. The inn’s proprietor is the affable Herivin Dardragon (male strongheart halfling), a curly-haired collector and reseller of paintings and statuettes of questionable taste.

The innkeeper’s particular interest seems to be cults and cultists and he goes at length about a variety of rumoured cults organisations in The North:

– A red dragon worshipping cult up in the Spine of the World

– Rumours of elementalists in the Dessarin Valley

– Some particularly idiotic people are thought to be worshipping a Kraken in Yartar and Waterdeep

Er.. the cultists are in Yartar and Watedeep, not the Kraken, because that would create something of a stir.

On the town noticeboard they find a flyer for ‘Adventurer’s Wanted’ in the nearby town of Beliard where there would appear to be… trouble.

---

This led to change of plan and instead of heading south to Red Larch, they went east towards Beliard. However, between Westbridge and Beliard lies the Dessarin River, over a mile and a half wide it is deep and it is bitterly cold. The main crossing is The Stone Bridge.

The Stone Bridge

---

A gigantic stone archway, two miles from end to end and four hundred feet tall at its apex, comfortably spans the Dessarin River and the plain around it, remaining high and dry during even the worst springtime floods. The Stone Bridge is a sacred site of pilgrimage for many dwarves. Long ago, the dwarf god Moradin appeared atop the bridge to rally dwarves of the Ironstar clan against a horde of orcs, and the founder of the ancient dwarven kingdom of Besilmer, Torhild Flametongue, died fighting a hill giant in the same location.

The Stone Bridge is made of smooth, fused granite. It is only 20 feet wide and lacks railings or barriers, so anyone traversing it is at the mercy of the wind.

There’s a much-used camp ground near the base of the bridge where caravans and travellers rest before or after making the crossing. As the group nears the bridge they see an armoured dwarf and a human in dark red robes having an animated discussion.

The dwarf’s name is Dulron and he is rather put out that the human will not give his name. The man explains, somewhat wearily, that he has enemies in the region and would prefer them not to know he is around. He asks them to call him Ember.

The dwarf says there has been some rumours of trouble on the bridge recently and asks if they wish to cross together for safety. They camp overnight without incident and all set out across the bridge the following morning.

End of Session.

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Yeah, I couldn’t hear that shit either but Adam seemed to be trying to pre-emptively use the birth of his firstborn as an excuse not to attend D&D <sigh>.

Priorities Adam, priorities.

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

*Jubilee was not an Avenger, sadly, but I’ll always think of Joffrey this way:

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Author’s Note: Bit of an unusual session, a lot of talking, a lot of exposition by the DM and very little combat. This always worries the DM as I don’t know what the quieter members of the group think about all this.Are they sitting quietly and enjoying the banter or are they bored shitless and just want to hurt something?

Some of this week’s titles are brought to you by some classically naff but somehow still cool 80’s pap which features the other least-scary highwayman ever (and possibly the worst lip-sync ever):

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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 delivered some saddles to the Hunt Lords in Noanar’s Hold. They killed the Hunt Lords and kept the saddles, obviously.

Pre-session Guff

Work stuff including having to work Christmas weekends was discussed. That went down well.

Mike lets everyone know that Regulus is now melee oriented.

The DM points out he spent a lot of time doing trivial stuff like flags and Cheese of the Week trophies instead of important stuff like making the minis for tonight’s session because he managed to forget about the important stuff for tonight’s session <sigh>

The name of the group was discussed:

So now we have an extended conversation in which the following points were made:

At this point Adam’s keyboard stopped working so he couldn’t alt-tab to his character sheet. He was roundly mocked for his inability to afford a new monitor but helpful suggestions were made about how a monitor is actually a benefit to someone with a new baby. He had to reboot and so disappeared for a few minutes.

The DM told them they had some time to decide on the group name and should think about it.

And even though you fool your soul your conscience will be mine

---

We start the session at Noanar’s Hold as they prepare to travel to Everlund with a stop at Olostin’s Hold. The DM asks Matt (picked at random) to roll a d100. They don’t know this but this is for a random encounter. The DM has one planned and will just wing-it for two others as it is a 100mile trip through a dodgy area.

Matt rolls two ones, the DM checks the encounter table… bandits. That could be problematical.

Adam returns:

Ooh! Challenge accepted: time, efficiency, predictability, my wits, sound tactical planning, politeness, respect, boars (barbequed), pigeon funeral rites, geometry, maths, physics, the rules, Thursdays, co-operation, commiseration, the Baconne Beutay supply (Matt), common sense, enemy armour class (Elvira), negotiation, navigation, orientation, the entire Bladesinger sub-class (Jake), consistency, competency, empathy, the concept of taking cover, the laws of probability (Matt), the concept of it being hard to actually die in 5^th edition (Adam), listening, learning, reading comprehension, decorum, both sense and sensibility, the institution of marriage (Drikk), the will to live, critical thinking, remembering even basic shit, the KKK’s dress code, attention to detail, attention to the blindingly fucking obvious, the word ‘malnourished’ (The DM), Christopher’s health, Matt’s parenting responsibilities, the wizard’s house, Gary’s free time, compassion, logic, animal welfare, plot hooks, the DM’s faith in the education system and the English language.

“I could go on but I won’t… but I could….

Ah! DIGNITY! Almost forgot to mention dignity.” – Handsome Jack

The final decision was for Avengers Anonymoose.

Jake was asked to roll a d100 and he actually managed to roll lower than Matt with a 7. Well… shit. That’s even more bandits then <sigh>.

I’m the dandy highwayman that you’re too scared to mention

So here’s my problem; in just the first round of combat the party can throw out a couple of Fireballs, a Shatter and a Call Lightning\Spike Growth and that’s not even counting the two fighters in the party just waiting to Action Surge and drop 8 attacks on anything unfortunate enough to have survived the AoE barrage. Bandits just aint going to cut it so we’ll have to play that out a slightly different way without doing a pointless combat… I hope.

The Evermoor Way now takes them along between the Evermoors and the High Forest.

High Forest

Although much less expansive than in ancient times, the High Forest is still vast and mysterious. Larger than most kingdoms, it encompasses mountains. The High Forest is home to treants of enormous size, stags with antlers as wide across as a wagon, brown bears bigger than large sheds, owlbears, wolves, unicorns, and many other creatures, including fiercely territorial wood elves and Uthgardt barbarians of the Tree Ghost tribe. The forest holds many hidden settlements, haunted ruins, fey crossings, and ancient magical wards.

In the outermost fringes of the forest, woodcutters ply their trade, and outlaws on the run might find refuge. But as everyone knows, those who venture too deep into the High Forest are often not seen again.

The Travel Chat; Part 1

The players immediately start eyeing up Shadowtop Cathedral and a couple of them ask questions about it so the DM gives the players some options regarding travel in general. This is a tricky subject in D&D because it covers the issue of player free will vs DM railroading which some people take entirely too seriously.

This chapter of the campaign involves a lot of travel, often without a very clear goal. As the campaign moves forward into later chapters, the options available to the players will become more focused and specific. For now though, they currently have several quests and assorted other things to do that mostly originated from Triboar. At some point that quest ‘chain’ will end and then they have three options:

1. Wing it – No DM input, total free will, go where you want.

2. Railroad – The DM will tell you where to go to most efficiently complete all the interesting things on the map. This does have some big advantages but it also sucks some of the fun out of it.

3. Some Guidance – When you complete a quest chain the DM will guide you on where the next main faction quest is or where the next chain starts. This will be done by hearing ‘There are rumours of trouble in…’ or by being approached by a faction agent. When they follow up on it and the route they take is entirely up to them.

Don’t worry, the DM has recently mastered a formidable tool for conveying subtle messages!

---

The DM told them not to worry too much about going out of the way to visit places as the various tasks they undertake will get them most locations. However, if they have a choice between two routes, choosing the one they haven’t been down before is never a bad idea.

Other methods of travel will open up as the campaign progresses but that will form part 2 of the ‘Travel talk’ at a later date.

Joffrey was happy with all this as long as he gets to ‘Maelstrom’ in the future. Maelstrom is way out in the sea to the south-west and the DM quickly looked it up.

It’s kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he’s making

A restful night’s sleep is taken without incident and they set out again the following morning:

What do your Druid eyes see?!

The following day Joffrey spots something

Isaac is left with the cart and, after they argued discussed taking the horses or not they headed over to investigate.

They came across a battlefield, about a week old, with the corpses of seventeen Uthgardt Barbarians and four Frost Giants. The giant’s pouches were empty.

The Gnomish Pontification System contains a certain amount of information about the main populations of The North:

Uthgardt Barbarians:

The Uthgardt barbarians are a black-haired and blue-eyed people — large, hale, bloodthirsty folk with inhuman dispositions. Few Uthgardt are willing to trade with civilized folk. Most are vicious raiders who pillage and destroy any caravan or homestead they come across.

Uthgardt barbarians take their name from Uthgar Gardolfsson, a great hero-chief who battled giants and conquered much of the North before ascending to godhood. In addition to revering Uthgar, each tribe venerates a totem animal spirit after which the tribe is named.

Numerous Uthgardt tribes have been vanquished over the years, and at least one tribe previously thought to be extinct has returned in force. There are currently eleven known Uthgardt tribes scattered throughout the North. Each tribe claims a vast tract of wilderness as its hunting grounds — territory that often overlaps with the hunting grounds of other Uthgardt tribes as well as land claimed by civilized races, orcs, dragons, goblinoids, and other monsters. Encounters with Uthgardt barbarians can occur almost anywhere in the Savage Frontier.

Uthgardt barbarians fear magic so much that they will attempt to kill and dismember spellcasters they meet.

Of all their enemies, Uthgardt barbarians hate orcs most of all. Even rival tribes will unite against a rampaging orc horde. The Uthgardt treat giants with similar contempt — the legends of the barbarians are replete with tales of how evil giants slew their ancestors and threatened Uthgar’s rise to godhood.

It must be DIGNITY DESTINY!

Joffrey’s religion check reveals he knows stuff about Uthgardt funeral rites:

Uthgardt barbarians bury their dead under cairns and earthen mounds. These burial sites are scattered throughout the North in out-of-the-way places.

Regulus asks if they can tell which tribe the barbarians are from and the DM engages waffle mode whilst he scans the source book and then sighs heavily when he sees which tribe occupies the Evermoors:

There was a discussion about disposal of the bodies:

Regulus> I’m not sure there’s anything else we can do here, they sound like a bunch of knobbers anyway, so should we go?

*Much as the DM hates pretty much everything about 2020 culture, Urban Dictionary does not include the 80’s definition of ‘Knobber’ and that is probably a good thing. The best modern definition is as follows: Knobber – A more polite way of calling someone a cock.

During the extended discussion that followed the DM left several verbal notes for himself on the recording. He then realised how that might sound and mentioned to the players that if they hear him say something a bit out of context, abusive and derogatory, then he probably triggered his push to talk by reflex when he didn’t mean to.

So, in a rather more polite way than was entered on the recording, the DM would like to take this opportunity to wonder why none of the players checked the area for tracks to see if there were any survivors who left the area to, you know, get the tribe together and come bury the dead, as a purely hypothetical example that totally probably wouldn’t have happened in order to time it so they get back at about the time these guys were burying the corpses.

They eventually decided to leave them all alone when it dawned on them that taking them to their burial ground had the minor drawback of them not knowing where the burial ground actually was.

Onwards we travelled to Olostin’s Hold.

Olostin’s Hold

A fortified keep that stands on the northern side of the Evermoor Way between Yartar and Everlund. Enclosed within the high walls of Olostin’s Hold is a small village with a market, a smithy, a caravan supplier, an inn called the Headless Troll, and a tavern known as the Flaming Flagon.

The inn gets its name from an incident involving a beheaded troll that wandered into village, caught fire, and nearly burned down the establishment.

The tavern is the namesake of an ordinary flagon that was ensorcelled during a wizards’ duel long ago and now floats and sheds light in the middle of the taproom.

Qua qua da diddley qua qua da diddley

The group decide this place is so cool they immediately start planning to see if they can just retire here <sigh>

Indeed.

*Babycham is the trade name of a light (6%), sparkling perry** invented by Francis Showering, a brewer in Shepton Mallet in Somerset, England. The brand was particularly popular during the 1960s and 1970s

**Perry is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented pears, similar to the way cider is made from apples.

Ok, the point of that little trip down the wikipedia wormhole was to see if Babycham (or the equivalent) could actually exist in The North and yes, yes it can!

There was now an aside where they asked about any rumours and heard about a pair of blue dragons causing trouble in the northern desert region. The DM invited them to travel over to Ascore and have a go if they felt they were hard enough. The felt they weren’t.

Hmm, it would seem they aren’t that stupid after all.

Abelas spends gold scribing spells from scrolls (50gp per level). This is one of the downsides of having a DM who thinks wizards should know a fuck-ton of spells (otherwise sorcerers are just better); it’s going to get expensive.

And so we moved on.

GPS> Everlund is forty miles away! To the north!

Camp that evening is made adjacent to The Silverwood.

Silverwood

Growing atop the rugged, hilly terrain between the Evermoors and the Nether Mountains, the Silverwood was once part of the High Forest, but over centuries, loggers working the woodlands on either side of the Evermoor Way have carved a great wound through the terrain. Bare hillsides littered with stumps line this gap.

Everlund

The following day the party arrive in the city of Everlund.

DM> We are about to change table so if anyone is using VR* and hasn’t told me, hang on to your lunch.

*Table Top Simulator does a full rotate and perspective change when you change tables. It’s a bit disorienting on a monitor. The DM can’t wait to repeatedly try it out on Jake when he has his VR set on.

Situated on the banks of the Rauvin River, Everlund is one of the North’s most active mercantile communities. A thick stone wall encloses the city, pierced in five places by gates. Like the spokes of a wheel, broad, straight avenues lead from each gate to the Bell Market at the city’s centre. The streets are clean and wide enough to accommodate large caravan vehicles. Soldiers of the city’s army make a show of patrolling the walls, to reassure citizens and visitors as well as to discourage attackers. The buildings of Everlund are stately and well maintained, with steeply pitched rooftops and tall spires that sport colourful banners. Two bridges span the river, which has parks and trees along its shores.

Until recently, Everlund was a member of the Lords’ Alliance. The five leaders who currently comprise the city’s Council of Elders voted three to two in favour of separation and, in a symbolic show of support for Sundabar, condemned the alliance for its failure to come to Sundabar’s aid during the War of the Silver Marches.

The most prominent edifice in Everlund is Moongleam Tower, a keep of black stone that serves as a Harper stronghold in the North. It rises from one of the higher knolls in the city and consists of four narrow, cylindrical towers joined together, surrounded by a dry moat that can be quickly flooded through a system of cisterns and pumps. Crowning the roof is an open turret, where a signalling mirror shaped like a crescent moon stands.

The city boasts many temples, the most prominent of which are dedicated to Helm, Mellikikkiki, and Corellon Larethian. Everlund also has many fine places to eat and rest, the oldest and largest being Danivarr’s House. Once a noble’s mansion, this rambling inn is a favorite haunt for adventurers. The Zoar family bought the establishment a few years ago, but leaves the running of Danivarr’s House to a one-eyed half-orc named Dral Thelev. Both the Harpers and the Zhentarim keep a close eye on this place.

So what’s the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?

We had the ‘splitting the party’ discussion but despite the DM’s urging they decided not to. The DM did point out that this place looked as if legal advocates would be expensive.

They head to Danivarr’s House, a nice establishment, and the one-eyed half-orc behind the bar greets them warmly:

Regulus flashes his Harper badge at him and Dral responds with a slow wink. Regulus hands over the ‘coin’ <sigh>

It’s a fucking badge.

The group find themselves in a well furnished parlour in Moongleam tower populated by 6 or 7 flying cats called Tressym. Shortly after an elderly human appears and introduces himself as Krowen Valharrow, the resident Archmage of the tower.

Regulus relates the party story so far and Krowen is very interested in what Zephyros had to say about them being destined to stop the giants and where that information came from.

Joffrey shows interest in the Tressym:

DM> Seeing your interest, Krowen offers to bequeath you one Tressym, but no more that one. He glances around everybody and says “It will bond with the first one to earn its trust”.

Joffrey them promptly cheats and turns into a Tressym, has a quick chat with it, passes the Animal Handling check and succeeds in bonding with the winged feline, which he calls Solo.

DM> I give that things life expectancy as even less than Binky’s but you never know.

The DM posts the Tressym stat block in Discord.

Three minutes and forty four seconds ladies and gentlemen. That’s how long it took from DM clearly stating “but only one”. <sigh> Attention span of a fucking goldfish; Ooh a bridge! Nice castle! Ooh, a bridge!

Krowen leads them to a room at the top of the tower in which there is a teleport circle. He shows them the address for both Moongleam Tower and Yartar and they can now freely use those two circles. Other circles exist in Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Mirabar (up in the snowy north) and Loudwater (south of the High Forest) but to use those the characters will have to travel to the circles first.

Krowen hands Abelas a scroll case, a present from the Lord Protector, that he doesn’t need. The spells are: Dispel Magic, Fly, Magic Weapon, Sending, Tongues and Water Breathing.

They sell the saddles for 800g, give a chunk of it to Abelas for scroll scribing and buy some healing potions. This one sentence encompasses about forty minutes of bickering ‘spirited’ discussion.

Joffrey then attempts to get barding made for his cat, spectacularly fails on the persuasion check for the armourer and gets charged the equivalent cost of horse barding and it will take a week or two. Joffrey is warned to watch how much he feeds the cat as the armour is tailored to it. The armourer takes no liability for a fat cat not fitting into it.

At about this time the DM dearly wished he had left them to wander off into the Great Forest in search of Shadowtop Cathedral <sigh>

And so we depart the civilisation of Everlund for the er.. also civilisation of Silverymoon.

Silverymoon

Silverymoon is two days travel from Everlund but these are two of the major cities in the North and the road is pretty safe.

The Gem of the North is a fitting epithet for Silverymoon: a beautiful, tranquil city where trees and gardens live in harmony with buildings, bridges, and sculptures. Silverymoon is an enlightened place, with a great library, breathtaking temples and shrines, and respected schools of magic, art, and music. Its beauty awes visitors and is the subject of many bardic songs and tales.

High Marshal Methrammar Aerasumé, the city’s lord, resides in a tall, slender palace on the east side of the city and commands Silverymoon’s knight-defenders. The city’s magical defenses are even more formidable than the knights and have served the city well for years. Silverymoon is also a haven for Harpers — not surprising, given that many Harpers are wizards and bards.

Grand and enlightened though the city may be, Silverymoon’s reputation was tarnished by its halfhearted efforts in aid of Sundabar during the War of the Silver Marches. The city remains a powerful and influential member of the Lords’ Alliance, however.

We’re the dandy highwaymen and here’s our invitation

The DM manages to make a Silverymoon map on the fly because that’s one of the things he forgot when he was doing important shit like trophies and flags.

<sigh>

The DM delivers the Silverymoon monologue above but then suffers a mishap:

Indeed.

DM> Harpers, when you are in a major city, you can make an investigation check to locate a Harper safe house. If you succeed, you will find out information about the city and its inhabitants and gain a safe refuge. If you fail, you must wait a day before trying again.

Both Joffrey and Regulus manage to score exactly the 15 Investigation check needed. They learn that there are rumours the Margaster family are dabbling in demon worship. People have gone missing in the area of their estate and some enterprising ‘property relocation specialists’ that have broken into the estate have never been seen again. The Harpers have not investigated further as the Margasters are not deemed a sufficient threat to warrant intervention but they are on the watch-list.

It didn’t take much to convince Regulus to rob the fuck out of the place (that is technical criminal terminology). The others were already convinced.

They rock up at the estate after dark and find that it consists of a walled compound containing a large fortified stone tower and a carriage house. The gates of the compound are open, the doors to the tower and the carriage house are closed.

The carriage house is a two story structure, 30ft square and the carriage has been backed in through the double doors for a quick getaway. Two horses are hitched to the carriage. There is a set of stairs in the back-left corner that lead upstairs to guard’s quarters.

Joffrey immediately announces that he has an amazing plan for infiltrating the tower in spider form. If it wasn’t getting late the DM might have been tempted to let him try it but then we’d have to have Adam roll new stats and then that would be a really late finish.

Instead, the DM reminds them that the stash of items is under the driver’s seat.

We’re the dandy highwaymen so tired of excuses

Then we had the Detect Magic discussion. Again. <sigh>

How quickly they forget:

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So the party are now at the gate. Somewhat disturbingly, there is still an hour of the recording left and the DM was sure this was a pretty short encounter before we ended it, so what the fuck took an hour? Let’s find out shall we?

The devil take your stereo and your record collection

Planning took place and involved the following:

The owl plan was put in motion and Joffrey spotted two human guardsmen seated at a table on the first floor. The DM did briefly go all American and called it the second floor <sigh>

The DM calls for a 5 minute break because, even though he made the damn minis for the fight, he can’t find them <sigh>

It took six minutes to find the art work, resize it in gimp, cut and paste it into the standee template, import the artwork into TTS and then make the ‘shonkiest mini ever’. Not bad, but it would have been quicker if I’d remembered where the fuck the originals went.

They re-iterated the plan; sneak up, pick lock, steal stuff, get out.

Ok, the DM silently in the background is now rapidly scanning the book and realising that the Alarm spell is set off by opening the box. There is nothing about just stealing the carriage.

Well… shit.

This could bypass the entire combat encounter. Fuck.

Never fear though, gentle reader, despite having an amazing solution to the task, they didn’t do it.

A group stealth check was made and they barely made it across the gravel path to the doors of the carriage house undetected.

The doors were investigated and appeared to not be trapped.

The doors were perceptionated and they appeared not to be locked.

However, the DM noted the doors, and particularly the hinges, were not in the best condition.

The DM apologises because he is currently stuffing his face with a mini-roll which prompted a short discussion on whether the emergency mini-roll is still in the trophy on the cabinet in the old D&D venue.

It was ok, it was about doors dragging on the ground but these don’t.

However, the inaugural award of the new digital Cheese of the Week trophy was not postponed for long:

Now the DM might have sounded a bit grumpy (I usually do!) but being a fairly good practitioner of the art, he does appreciate a good sophistry attempt. Notwithstanding that however, congratulations Clay:

---

Bombshell confession time!

The DM, whilst writing this and having just checked something, feels he should point out at this time, because he feels he should be fair, that not only can Isaac learn Detect Magic, but that he actually already has it memorised and thus can cast it as a ritual.

Oops.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Look Buttercup, I think we need to have a discussion about your propensity for blabbing unnecessary bollocks to people who really don’t need to know that shit. Take it from someone who has been married to a bloodsucking she-demon, what they don’t know won’t hurt them… but it might just end up fucking you the fuck up!

And moving swiftly onwards…

They open the doors, apparently unnoticed.

All kinds of checks were successfully made and the party are fairly sure the horses are not some kind of evil shape-shifting demon-horses that are about to try and kill them.

Everyone except Isaac went into the carriage house and after thoroughly inspecting the box under the driver’s seat for traps, they opened it.

And then it all went to shit, obviously.

DM> An audible alarm at about the level of a hand bell starts ringing out to 60ft and the doors of the stable slam shut. You have just triggered an Alarm spell <if only they had Detect Magic!>. Can you all please roll initiative.

As part of his opening of the box action pre-combat, Regulus snagged the several items in the compartment; a pair of goggles, a pair of spectacles, two* spell scrolls and a red potion.

*This is a retcon from one scroll for reasons that will become apparent next week.

Clay takes up position opposite the stairs and preps an attack with a javelin. He did prep it for the ‘first guard that came down the stairs’. This could have been an issue but that would have required the DM to be a much bigger dick than usual, and that’s going some.

The two guards transformed into Cambions; evil shape-shifting devil-guards that are about to try and kill them.

Clay throws and hits with his spear, it doesn’t do the full amount of damage though.

The Cambions have a flight speed of 60ft which gets the first one into melee range of both Clay and Joffrey. It makes an attack against each, hitting both for 8 piercing and 3 fire damage.

This fight is rather congested as it’s a small building with a big carriage in it. The second devil makes it to the ground floor but can only see Joffrey and Clay and it makes a ranged fire attack but misses.

Joffrey casts Tidal Wave in the confined area and flattens the first Cambion, the second makes the save and does not get knocked prone.

Joffrey then runs around to the other side of the carriage. The prone Cambion attacks at disadvantage but misses. Isaac, out by the gate is not going into the compound and so he casts Scorching Ray at the doors and damages them a bit. Elvira does some double short-sword slice and dice on the prone devil and hits twice.

Abelas uses some poison ray bollocks and hits the standing Cambion for 12 but that gets reduced to 6 because he made the save. They have +6 to Con or as Joffrey put it “Particularly Constrous”.

Regulus rumbles over to the downed devil spawn and punches the crap out of him with his ‘fisting radiance’ attack. That’s not what he calls it but it makes me laugh and I’m doing the write up.

End of round.

End of Session

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Adam suggested not only stealing the carriage but painting it black with a red stripe for the A-Team <sigh>

The DM is marginally surprised that half the table actually know who the A-Team are.

The DM hopes this write up will be significantly shorter than the last one.

Fuck me d&d is complicated – Dual wielding\Two-weapon fighting

I am going to try and make this as simple as I can because frankly it can be a mess of a subject.

You typically get one Action, one Bonus Action and one Reaction per turn unless you do something cheesy like Action Surge.

If you use your Action to attack with a light melee weapon (Dagger, Scimtar, Shortsword etc) you may then spend your one Bonus Action to make an attack with the weapon in your off hand. You do not add your Str or Dex bonus damage to that attack.

If you have multiple attacks, you may them make another main hand attack but you do not get another Bonus Action if you have already used it. You do not get another Bonus Action if you Action Surge!

You cannot roll and then decide what kind of action you are using, you have to say what you are using and then roll it. Unless you specify otherwise, the DM will assume you are making a main hand attack then a bonus attack and then another main hand attack.

This is because anyone who has actually tried fighting with two weapons (stick fighting in the DM’s distant past) will tell you that hitting twice with the dominant hand and then hitting with the off hand is fucked up and wrong. You hit with the main hand, then hit with the off hand while the main hand resets.

Also, two-weapon fighting is really hard and makes you look like a complete twat when you fuck it up and hit yourself in the face.

The Fighter and Ranger classes have fighting styles that let you add your bonus damage.

The feat Dual Wielder adds +1 to AC and lets you dual-wield non-light weapons.

Main Quests –

Sort out the giant problem – You have no idea how to do this or where to start. You should probably level up a bit and get some decent gear.

Faction Quests –

Emerald Enclave – There’s been a spot of giant trouble at Goldenfields. All faction members that can be spared have been asked to travel to the site.

General Quests –

WANTED: The Weevil – Darz Helgar in Yartar told you that a travelling merchant friend of his spotted someone who looks just like The Weevil working in a stable in Xantharl’s Keep. There is a reward posted in Mirabar for his capture.

Miscellaneous Stuff –

Letter of Recommendation – Citadel Felbarr – Ghelryn Foehammer, the smith from Yartar, gave you a letter of recommendation that you can present to King Morrin or Queen Tithmel in Citadel Felbarr should you find yourselves visiting there.

The Inheritance – Lezryk Daerivoss became the sole beneficiary or a very large inheritance under unusual circumstances after his two brothers (Rantharl and Marthun) died on a hill giant hunt (allegedly). He has promised the party 10,000gp if they keep quiet about the circumstances and visit him in Neverwinter in a couple of months. The party have some suspicions over Lezryk’s version of events but most of what he said was true and they have hidden his brother’s body just in case. In a world where the dead can be made to speak, this might come in handy later.

Completed Quests –

Saddles to Noanar’s Hold – Narth Tezrin at the Lionshield Coster paid you 100gp and threw in a horse (Boris) and a cart to deliver 5 expensive saddles to Amrath the Castellan at the castle in Noanar’s Hold.

Alert the Harpers in Everlund – Darathra Shendrel, the Lord Protector of Yartar, has asked you to travel to Everlund and bring word of the recent giant activities, including the attack on the town, to the Harpers in Moongleam Tower. She entrusted you with a platinum badge bearing the Triboar insignia and asked you to give it to Dral Thelev, the proprietor of Danivarr’s House in Everlund.

The Giant Slayer Weapon – Urgala Meltimer, the retired adventurer who now runs an inn in Yartar, mentioned that one of her former adventuring companions, a wealthy knight named Harthos Zymorven had a giant slayer weapon. Harthos lives in Zymorven Keep and Urgala thinks he would be willing to part with it if you mention her name and why you need it.

Margaster Family Theft – Othovir, the saddlemaker in Yartar, confided in you the whereabouts of a small stash of magic items belonging to the Margaster family, his kin, in Silverymoon. The items are stored in a carriage house separate from the main residence. Othovir intimated that the Margaster family have a dark secret and are not good people.

Letter of recommendation – Yartar Thieves Guild or Dral Thelev (Everlund) – As a reward for finding out why the trolls were getting uppity in the Evermoors, Tamalin Zoar from Calling Horns gave the party a letter of recommendation that can earn them a favour from either the Hand of Yartar or Dral Thelev, the proprietor of Danivarr’s House in Everlund.

Starring:

Author’s Note: The chapter headings are taken from Billy Joel’s You’re Only Human (Second Wind) because it got stuck in the DM’s head.

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 ransacked a dead wizard’s house for loot with style darlings!

– They set off on a quest to deliver some saddles but got waylaid finding out why the Evermoor trolls were acting up (they were being enslaved by fire giants) but eventually they arrived in Noanar’s Hold.

Pre-session Guff

Michael couldn’t find the table. Nice work, detective.

Adam wanted the players to go full murder-hobo after last session <sigh>

Jake had a pizza! But it was probably a pants vegetarian one instead of a proper one covered with dead animal parts so it’s basically just cheese on toast.

Adam shamefully admitted to having overwritten about an hour of his and Jake’s Divinity 2 game by accident. Jake was unimpressed.

Matt couldn’t make it because his wife’s job was more important than D&D. I don’t think I need to say any more about that.

Christina couldn’t make it because she is on holiday. In Hastings. The DM was going to be rather scathing about the choice of destination until he remembered he took his wife on a holiday to Hastings (the rural bit) two years ago and very nice it was too.

The DM asked Adam to play Elvira as that way Adam might actually get something useful done for a change.

Look, it aint bitchy if it’s true, right? Right.

You’re having a hard time and lately you don’t feel so good

Clay doesn’t get to action surge because Matt couldn’t be bothered to turn up. This would have significant ramifications later.

That meant it was the end of the combat round and the other doors burst open and another 8 skeletons arrived at the back of the room and a further 8 from the side door. They were some distance from the players and used all of their movement to get into the room.

And so it begins.

I have been through that conversation twice now and I still have no clue what it was about.

Joffrey enquired why Elvira was positioned where she was and no one could remember exactly and so it was presumed to be group incompetence at room entering. The DM did point out that an Arcane Archer was still a fighter and could still absolutely shred stuff up close.

Of the original 5 Hunt Lords, two are dead, two are wounded and one is untouched.

You’re getting a bad reputation in your neighbourhood

Isaac gets missed with a longsword but is inappropriately touched with a Life Drain attack.

Eh, Adam does it all the time… except the ‘cool’ bit obviously.

We then had the whole “can you blind a zombie” discussion but as it isn’t on the stat block, the DM isn’t about to add it.

Another hunt Lord attacks Isaac and hits. Since he has just used his reaction his cheese-flares won’t save him from this one and his max hit points are reduced by 5. The follow-up longsword attack hits as well.

Clay gets hit as well but the players were having issues accessing the character sheets of the other characters they were controlling:

Then, entirely as predicted, we all realise that we all forgot both the Spirit Guardians and the Flaming Sphere damage at the end of the Hunt Lords turn so those activate and deal a fairly hefty amount of damage.

You’re only human, you’re allowed to make your share of mistakes

Elvira/Adam backs up to get some distance so she can use her bow without being at disadvantage. However, this means the skeletal warhorse… sorry, ‘warhorse, skeletal’ gets an attack on her:

The damage roll is unimpressive and only does 7 damage but the wight only had 6 hit points left and another Hunt Lord bites the dust… err… re-bites the dust..?

Interestingly, last year the National Field Archery Association banned arrow twirling in all its forms because apparently most real archers think arrow twirlers are ‘dangerous selfish obnoxious poncey cunts’. True story, look it up.

Adam wanted the stray shot to hit Isaac, Isaac invited Adam to “suck a dick!” the DM randomly rolled to what did get hit and it was, in fact, Isaac which set everyone off laughing again.

Elvira\Adam’s second attack (fourth of this never-ending turn) did hit however:

You better believe there will be times in your life when you’ll be feeling like a stumbling fool

Sadly, Abelas decided to Fireball a skeleton pack which was a lot less interesting but probably a lot more effective. Having said that, he only killed three of the eight.

Christopher, Michael and the DM then gave Jake shit for not using his Wand of the War Mage to buff his Spell Save:

Good times.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Unless you are one of those types that has to beg a deity every single god-damned day to lend them some power to be nearly as good as the rest of us, pick a god you like and, from time to time, drop a few coins in the collection box for when you really need the local priest to cure a bad case of the cl.. er.. ‘a disease’. What you absolutely do not ever do, Florence, is get between two complete fucking idiots engaged in a religious spat. Their gods just don’t care and you better really fucking pray it stays that way.

At this point Regulus suggests he cast Spiritual Weapon but then Isaac realises he got hit three times and we forgot the concentration rolls <sigh>, he failed a roll and Spirit Guardians dropped, but that meant he could cast Spiritual Weapon after all. Which was nice.

It’s a technical horsey-person term I believe.

Regulus Shatters the clump of five skeletons and despite Isaac’s urging to “Be better than me and Abacus” still only kills three but with a lower level spell.

So much wrongness and cheeseness all in one turn

(that isn’t Billy Joel, that’s pure Adam)

I’ll cover everything wrong with this below it. See if you can spot just how much bollocks can take place in one attack in D&D:

The conversation kind of degenerated for a little bit, I’ll cover some highlights without including the entire sordid mess:

Ok, so let’s start with the Adam cheese: “Ten-foot reach bitch!”

---

Giant Constrictor Snake –

Actions

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one creature. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) piercing damage.

Constrict. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16). Until this grapple ends, the creature is restrained, and the snake can’t constrict another target.

---

Those of you paying attention, unlike Adam, will notice the distinct lack of a 10ft reach notation on the constrict attack.

You may also note, again unlike Adam, that a roll is required for the escape, which takes an action, and not to see if it gets grappled in the first place as it is automatically grappled if the attack hits.

If you read it really carefully, you’ll see that at no point does it mention the snake occupying the square of the thing that is grappled. Call it artistic licence, suspension of disbelief for necessary game mechanics or just plain old ‘coz magic, bitch!’, but it stays in its own square and the target stays where it was.

It’s not always easy to be living in this world of pain

Seven minutes after he started, it was, remarkably, still Joffrey’s turn and he was, remarkably, still getting shit for it:

As one IT professional to another, I’ll keep this at high level and with absolutely no sarcasm at all: open your character sheet and then open a second, blank tab. Right-click the URL in your character sheet tab, copy it, and then paste it into the URL bar of the second tab.

Quite remarkably this will now give you two open tabs with your character sheet on it and you can put the second one on your Wild Shape form whilst keeping the first one on your spells. If you are feeling really adventurous, you could open a third tab and have one for the front page, one for spells and one for Wild Shapes.

This is a fairly recent technological advancement that has only been around since 2008, apparently. Before that you had to use different browser Windows entirely to accomplish the same thing. How did we all manage back in the dark ages eh?

WOKE ALARM!

Generally, when it comes to offending people who live to be offended (usually on behalf of someone else who isn’t actually offended), the DM’s response is FUCK MY DICK!

However, it is now 2020 and freedom of speech has been severely curtailed by a bunch of fascist cunts who have learned absolutely fuck all from the last century of human history and think they are actually the good guys <sigh>

Consequently the conversation that followed, and was rather entertaining and very funny, mainly due to the DM mishearing the original abusive comment, will not be included. Truly, the world is a better place now though right? Right.

I’ll leave you with one comment so those that were there can remember and chuckle:

DM> It’ll certainly be ‘tart’ in the write-up!

You’re gonna be crashing into stone walls again and again

Joffrey’s turn lasted 13 minutes in total, which is nowhere near the record (Jake) but was still impressive for an online game where the play is usually a bit faster. 12 minutes of that were abuse though. Good times.

I’m just fucking with you Jake, Rincewind Abelas may not have stats but he does have character!

This was quite an important moment in the session, although none of us realised it at the time of course. The fight is well under control, most of the Hunt Lords are dead and the skeletons are a nuisance rather than a threat. There’s no need to blow resources when you don’t know what is around the corner (Adam).

The fight continues:

And then it is Elvira’s turn again (brace yourselves):

I’m really sorry Christina, I knew it would be bad but I didn’t expect this.

Joffrey foolishly announced his intention to attack the two skeleton spearmen spearmen, skeletal that were attacking him but it was, as Isaac put it, Regulator’s turn next. He promptly took out both skeleton spearmen spearmen, skeletal with double lightning blasts from his totally-not-a-crotch-cannon and then remembered his balls boars and had them kill the last enemy combatant.

Joffrey was unimpressed.

End of combat.

‘Cause all I needed was a little faith

The room was searched and a chest found at the back. Unbeknownst (great word!) to the players, the lock is a mother to pick, the chest is pretty near indestructible and the key is on Amrath. The DM has plans for Amrath so they’ll have to go and get it off of him.

Well that was the plan, it didn’t quite work out like that.

Yup, that buggered things a bit, never mind, we can adapt!

The chest contains 600 gp in a grey sack made of stitched orc skin, a leather pouch that holds six 50gp gems, and 1d3 magic items, determined by rolling on Magic Item Table B in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. These were pre-rolled and Abelas got scrolls of Melf’s Acid Arrow and Leomund’s Tiny Hut and Clay was given a small flask containing Oil of Slipperiness.

The chest also contained a ledger written in Dwarvish.

At this point, Abelas mentions that he had Comprehend Languages memorised…

Abelas starts casting the spell by means of interpretive dance, this will take 10 minutes.

We actually had a performance check to see if Regulus’ boars would look judgementally at Abelas’ self-confessed shit dancing.

You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes

When finally read the ledger turned out to be written by Amrath in which he confesses to having lured the Hunt Lords into a deal with Orcus for immortality.

They return to the entryway:

Yes. They are. The DM removed them before the start of the session. The six plinths that previously held gargoyle statues have been empty since the beginning of the session and it’s taken these trained investigators nearly two hours to notice.

Indeed.

Just like a boxer in a title fight, you got to walk in that ring all alone

Regulus was suddenly convinced that the Shield dwarf they met was actually a Duergar and had turned invisible. In actuality, was a CR6 Mage NPC from the Monster Manual and has Greater Invisibility. He is also outside with the gargoyles and not in the kitchen.

This is rated as a deadly encounter but the gargoyles are half dead and Amrath is insane so that all evens out right? Right.

Absolutely nothing can go wrong.

---

It immediately went horribly wrong, obviously.

And so, with hit points missing, spell slots expended and faced with a missing evil mastermind, last seen in the immediate vicinity, they did the obvious thing; they split the party.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Seriously? AGAIN?! Look Princess, in combat teamwork is essential! For starters, it gives the enemy other people to shoot at!

Abelas, Regulus and the two boars headed for the kitchen to search. Roll initiative!

Christopher mentioned he had a bad migraine (he sounded like shit too) and the DM sympathised as something very similar tends to happen to him every Thursday evening.

Regulus was unimpressed.

Everyone made the save except Clay and the DM rolled “the shittest Fireball in the world ever” with 19 damage from 8d6 (average 28, maximum 48).

Amrath is a standard mage from the Monster Manual but with Invisibility instead of Counterspell. As such he has some firepower but only an AC of 15 and 40 hit points. If they can get to him, they can fuck him the fuck up but they have to get to him.

Having nuked the lobby, Amrath runs sideways out of sight of those inside. The DM then realises that Amrath actually has Greater Invisibility but decided not to use it because retroactively doing that would have been cheese. Plus Amrath is insane and not particularly in the mood for hiding once he has successfully ambushed the twats that just ruined 200 years of scheming.

You probably don’t want to hear advice from someone else

I feel that if Christopher had not been a bit fucked he would have had a few choice words to say to Adam over this one.

Abelas spent two minutes describing all the things he wasn’t going to do and then stayed in the kitchen and Blade-Warded himself even though the bad guy was miles away outside the castle. Well, that’s one way of doing it.

Don’t forget your second wind

Clay’s turn:

Safety Snake slithers out of the door and spots Amrath crouched down behind a former-gargoyle pedestal. He also spots the six gargoyles lurking behind each side of the door.

You’re only human, you’re allowed to make your share of mistakes

Joffrey drops form and becomes a puny human druid again and casts Call Lighting so it covers most of the combat area outside of the castle, and then hits Amrath with it. The dwarf, who is suddenly remarkably spry, manages to make the Dex save.

The DM counts out 30ft of movement for the gargoyles and comes up just short of the squishy druid:

Joffrey cries a little as he is surrounded and beaten unconscious by six gargoyles.

DRUID DOWN!

Isaac moves out of the doorway and uses Radiance of Dawn on the gargoyles and then cast Healing Word getting Joffrey back on his feet. Unfortunately he could then not withdraw because he would have taken four attacks of opportunity so he stayed put.

Christopher then had to sadly leave and was rather ill later on. He should be fine but if he isn’t we will soon have the tourettes table to draw from so we can always remember him.

CHRISTOPHER DOWN!

The DM would like to take this opportunity to remind his players that, whilst being dead is an acceptable excuse for missing D&D (barely), dying is not. Hospitals have Internet connections these days and it’s not like you have anything better to do!

Also Chris, if you do get a CAT scan Adam asked to be informed if they find any cats in there.

‘Cause you’re thinking everything’s gone wrong, sometimes you just want to lay down and die

He only gets one of those, but they don’t know that.

Joffrey rolls a natural 20, Elvira makes it as well, Isaac fails it.

Minimum 8, maximum 64, average 36… the DM rolls 40.

Joffrey breathes again.

DRUID DOWN!

CLERIC DOWN!

RANGER DOWN!

All but two of the gargoyles got wiped out and the two that made it were not very well off.

Abelas is 50ft from the door and a further 40ft from Amrath. Even if he hitches his robes up, he isn’t getting within range to make a shot.

As Abelas is pondering his options (maybe he should have moved last turn?) Adam informs everyone about a cat excrement issue he was having to deal with <sigh>.

Jake made the mistake of enquiring about some specifics and were treated to an exposition on the type, the smell, which cat it was, what that cat usually does, how the items in question were the largest ever seen from a cat (turds of unusual size?!), how the other cat’s offering were smaller and how and how long each cat takes to cover aforesaid offerings.

We can all look forward to similar discussion about child excretions when Adam becomes daddy-Adam soon. Joy.

So to recap the current situation; three members of the party are down, the wizard has done nothing and is in no position to do anything, Regulus and Clay are just inside the doorway 60-65ft from Amrath who is stood in the middle of the courtyard frothing slightly. Oh and the DM is having a mild panic attack because he thinks he might have overdone this one and gotten everyone killed. Oh and Adam’s place stinks of cat shit.

It’ll be fine though!

Regulus takes charge of Clay and ponders moving him to the doorway, shooting Amrath with a longbow and then Action Surging. The DM points out that if he is going to action surge, Clay has just enough movement to dash to Amrath on the first turn and would get two melee attacks on the second turn.

The DM wouldn’t typically intervene to this extent but Michael isn’t used to playing a fighter and the DM doesn’t want an undeserved total party wipe on his hands.

Clay crits with his first melee attack and took all but one hit point from the unfortunate dwarf, and them finishes him off with the second blow. Chop! Chop! Amrath down!

Regulus double blasts the last two gargoyles into oblivion. Fight over and everyone didn’t die. Phew.

We then had to explain, again, Ritual spellcasting for wizards to Jake, which explains the whole memorising Comprehend Languages thing. Some of you may recall the DM wrote out an entire ‘Fuck me, D&D is complicated’ section explaining it in a write-up <sigh> Why do I bother?

Sooner or later you’ll feel that momentum kick in

Abelas reluctantly agreed to sell the saddles. Joffrey was strangely silent on the issue. It’ll be interesting to see what the others think of that decision.

As they arrive back in town they see two of the three brothers. The elder one Rantharl, is not present and Lezryk, has a wound to the shoulder.

Joffrey enquires what happened and is informed that Rantharl was killed by a hill giant. Regulus offers some healing, which is gratefully accepted, but succeeds in a medicine check and notices the wound is clearly caused by a rapier. The brothers insist it was a spike from a hill giant’s club.

Further questions resulted in pissed off brothers and no further information.

They had actually short rested but they weren’t in the best of shape for a confrontation so they all head inside.

Avgar greets the party and states that they look like they have been through the wringer:

The party are offered free board at the White Hart Inn any time they pass through.

I really didn’t want to record any of the following bollocks but I feel compelled to make it public <sigh>:

It took some time to regain composure. Just as we were all getting it under control, Jake blurted out ‘Moon doves of the day!’ and set us all off again.

Good times.

There was a lot of support for that one but only because they thought it was funny about how angry Christopher would be about it.

So I could catch my breath and face the world again

A well-deserved long rest was taken.

The following morning they see the two remaining brothers riding out again. There’s 20 minutes of content here that I’m just going to summarise because this is already 19 pages and that’s far too long.

They let Lazryk go with a promise to see him later:

So very true.

The DM said he would explain what they should have done but they pretty much nailed it and this may develop when they get to Neverwinter and there may be some ramifications of this whole thing going forwards. Or not.

They move Marthun’s body and bury it in an unmarked location, noting landmarks so they can find it again.

End of Session

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Nothing this week.

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!

---

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:

---

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?

---

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!

---

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

Will nobody think of the pigeons?!

---

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

---

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.:

---

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!