DnD Log: Session 6

What a session last night. In total we played the campaign over seven hours, and at peak I believe we had over 700 viewers. Pretty good for a bunch of nerds sitting around rolling dice. Anyway, this long session featured quite a few golden moments along with a heavy dose of story elements. Let’s start off from the beginning.

Just to note, Paw was not able to make the campaign.

We started off where we left off. Having fought like men and killed Verreketh we found a trap door leading into the tower. Cautious (and with several members of our group weakened) we spent the night in the fortified chamber of the alchemy lab, but in the middle of the night we heard loud banging on the drums from beneath the tower. We placed a heavy bookcase on top of the trap door, and then finished our night. The next morning we prepared to enter the depths…

Opening the trap door we found a staircase leading into a darkened basement. Andraste has night vision, so I instructed him to go in first and I would follow afterwards in a beast form. People were angry I had Andraste take point considering Paw wasn’t here, but in my opinion he was the most apt for the job. My darkvision is the byproduct of crossing with an owl. His is natural. All I wanted to do was check the room out to make sure zombies weren’t hanging from the wall because I’ve kinda been down that road before. Unfortunately, me and dark places (along with heights) don’t mess well. Andraste and Juliet were jumped by two swarms of Needle Drakes which resemble those nasty little spitting dinos from Jurassic Park. Juliet was torn apart by them, and considering the chatroom declared she was raped by wolves the first time was knocked prone, I can only imagine what they thought as she was knocked prone by these guys. I fully expect to see a picture of Juliet gang banged by miniature raptors in the near future. Truth be told I was slaughtered in that fight. I was down to 9 or so HP, but luckily as quasi-Defender this wasn’t too bad. I was saved, and our group went on the offensive. The problem we faced however was that the room was extremely small (4x4 with a ten foot long hallway off the northern side). This meant that positioning was extremely difficult, and burst spells were highly ineffective. Since melee and martial ranged attacks were not very effective on these creatures this meant magic was our best bet, but area spells were dangerous to use with so many allies around. You’d think this would Lord Vane’s time to shine, right? Afterall the guy does big magic damage against single targets, so perfect fight for him right? Yeah, well Joe’s contribution to the fight was flying around in a room no larger than 9 feet tall. Oh, and then he cornered himself off. It was actually Garrett and Andraste who saved the fight with repositioning, and the few burst effects we could use being SUPER EFFECTIVE! We won, but little did we know we had a much greater foe waiting for us afterwards: the standard wooden door.

Again, reaffirming our stance as the Dethklok of D&D groups, our party of seven adventurers, fresh off killing the corporal form of a goddess, were completely halted by a wooden door. After our Rogue broke the lock, we tried to smash it open, three times to no effect. In fact our big strong fighter failed three times in a row, and only ended up hurting his foot. After that Lord Vane zapped the door with electricity, I suggested we set it on fire, and Joe even contemplated using Shocking Magnetism on it. I repeat, Joe contemplated using his Daily… on a door. Oh, and our end decision? We spent twenty minutes hacking down the door with a pair of axes. Yeah we were stopped by the door completely, for likely almost an hour in game. Unbelievable. I honestly believe we are the Dethklok of D&D groups. I’m Nathan Explosion though, cause I want to talk in his voice.

Anyway, having vanquished our greatest foe, and leaving him in splinters at our feet, we entered a hallway full of several paintings and a few statues. When Garrett attempted to investigate the statute, he triggered a trap and was smashed in the face with a sludgehammer, and then deafened by the horrid scream of a statue. After that we sent our Rouge in. Yes, we sent Darstine in to check for traps AFTER Garrett was nearly killed. He found a trap, and I, in all of my genius, disarmed it harmlessly. Cause I’m awesome. We were now faced with five doors. One at each of the hall (with the Southern door barricaded), and three doors along the eastern wall with one door surrounded by statues of a goddess (always a good sign). We started from the top and worked our way down, and to our surprise the northern door was very safe. Inside we found books, and a wand. Yay! No danger at all! We’re awesome!

Opening the next door however, things were not as awesome. Viktor and Juliet make up the parties front lines, so we’re the first things enemies see at each door, and when we entered this door we were not expecting a room filled with vile steam. Luckily we’re the two characters with a good Constitution, so he could survive not vomiting at the smell, but we couldn’t tell what was inside. As a test I had Juliet attack the room with a Grasping Tide, and we could hear water sloshing inside. However with no idea what was in the room, and the smell starting to wear on us, we slammed the door shut. We never found out what was inside that room…

Next up was the middle door surrounded by the statues. Obviously this was the main room, and after opening the door we entered a small hallway leading to another door, but Andraste noted that whatever evil he was feeling was coming from that room. So instead of trouncing into the room of unadulterated pure evil, we decided to explore. The next room was a pantry with two corpses sitting at a table, but Juliet’s high Perception allowed her to notice creatures scurrying along cobwebs in the ceiling. Both Vane and Juliet tried to use lightning to set the webs on fire, but we botches, and instead we ran like cowards! However this wasn’t a bad plan because we got the jump on the creatures. As Vane, Andraste, Garrett, and Juliet sat in the back of the hall, Grae, Darstine, and Viktor laid in wait for the spiders to go after our casters so that they could get the jump on them. Our plan actually worked rather well, and I feel we should all be proud of for once in the campaign coming up with a potent strategy. Good job you sexy bastards (especially me). The spiders were actually rather weak once we focused on them, but the spiders also rolled very poorly. Spoony warned us that had the spiders managed to hit with their bite attack on a restrained target then nasty shit would have happened. Either way, we investigated the pantry and found the corpses were wearing peculiar cloaks (I curse myself for not remembering what they looked like because this came up later). We took a ring and a golden necklace off these corpses, and then faced the final door: the barricaded one.

Now because getting through the first door was such a massive process, we figured this barricade was self made and that they were hiding in that room and fortifying a defense. We cleared out the debris, steeled ourselves, and opened the door to find… and empty room. Just a few cots and one bed that was covered in some blood. We wanted to investigate some wardrobes against the far wall, but Darstine too initiative to investigate the bloody cot. Bad idea. The moment he did some foul, fiendish creature with sharp talons rose from the bed and told us that he was going to devour us. This fight was a lot tougher than any of us expected. You’d think “Phf, who cares if he’s got good attack or defenses? It’s 7 on 1 for Pete’s sake!” Well screw Pete because this nasty bastard was built tough. Over 20 AC and Reflex with over 17 Will and Fortitude. Hitting this guy was near impossible, and several Dailies were spent on him. Furthermore he had a +13 to attack with his claws meaning he could critically fail and still hit Lord Vane. To put this in perspective, our character with the highest AC is Viktor with 18. All the demon had to do on a claw attack was roll a 5 or higher meaning he had over a 75% chance to hit our most well armored character. Yep.

Plus the nasty son of a bitch hit us with a daily power that caused Viktor, Darstine, and Juliet to all take massive damage with an ongoing 5 fire damage effect thrown on for “fuck you” measure. Viktor was the hero of this fight as not only was he playing the Defender role to the tee, he was also the one dealing the big damage. He nearly single handedly took the demon out, and deserved the killing blow, but Andaste’s Lance of Faith did MASSIVE DAMAGE to its weak point for the kill. Still, big kudos to Nik for playing that battle extremely well. Defenders are quite skilled at one on one combat. After searching the room we didn’t find much initially but again Juliet’s high perception led us to find a loose plank filled with 50 gold and two health potions. With that, we had only one room left to explore in our mission to find the two Anders boys: the room of unholy pure evil!!!

There was a debate on whether or not we should take an extended rest to recover our Dailies and Surges, but we decided against it. Instead we prepared to charge into battle against the evil! We opened the room to find a demonic Dretch toiling over a portal with two crocodiles hanging off to his sides. Our epic battle began with: SLEEP! The Dretch casted SLEEP on us, but our Will was too strong… except Andraste who fell victim to the SLEEP! I was ready to have Juliet perform a combo of Faerie Fire and Call Forth the Spirit Pack, but the turn before I could go Juliet along with I believe Viktor and Darstine was hit with an effect for Weakened and – 2 to hit. This meant that when I finally tired to perform my combo, I of course missed… with everything. Actually no, I hit the Crocodile’s shitty Reflex with CFtSP and knocked him prone, but I was annoyed. A controller is next to useless if her spells miss, and this fight emphasized that. As Viktor, Garrett, and Vance tore crocodiles apart with swords and lighting, I sat in the back casting my reliable miss each turn. Eventually I threw my headset in anger over not saving, but twas a joke for those unaware. I’m not the type to get that upset over a D&D game. Still, I was ticked that I was made useless in that fight. Alas, the rolls were not with me last night. Well, Lord Vane managed to kill a crocodile, and demanded that he be given a cool death description.

Apparently the crocodile’s bones exploded from the lightning attack. Joe is a simple man to please.

The Dretch was formidable, but with this group once it becomes 7 on 1 it’s an easy fight to win. The Dretch was killed, but we now had a decision to make regarding the swirling portal to the Abyss, and once again returned Team Dethklok. I can’t believe how many people wanted to explore the portal. Inside was the Abyss, basically all fire and brimstone and demons. Even if the Anders boys were still in there, they were dead. No one could live through it. My plan was to cover the portal and then exit, but Grae wanted to dive in (with the old rope trick), and Vane wanted to send his pet familiar Trogdor. A reminder, Grae is played by Jason who played Jonn from our early campaign where he and Sayid died from leaping through portals. Jason needs to be died down when there is dangerous shit to jump through.

We had to make a decision because Garrett fell into a trance and started to move towards the portal, and we eventually covered the portal… only to have the heavy bookcase age and turn to ash almost instantly. Again, this group is beyond stupid. “We’ve got a swirling portal of evil here.” “Throw my badger into it!” Tell me right now you couldn’t see Dethklok doing the exact same thing. Anyway we had to forcibly drag Garrett from the power, and tie him to a tree outside. We managed to wake him up, and he started screaming, and people seem to disagree with my action: turning into a bear and punching him out. Look, I know it sounds silly, but the dude was obviously in a trance. We all know he was tainted from the scorpion queen, so clearly he wasn’t in his right mind. When he finally came to he starts fucking howling and screaming. He wasn’t having a seizure or something, he was having a freakout. It would be best to just knock him out and let him wake up without remembering. Apparently it was a stupid idea (whatever), but I did punch Garrett. Anyway, Garrett got better, and after this point we did some story telling. Now I’m not abridging this because I don’t like role playing, but rather because… this is a long damn recap. Anyway, the group told Mr. Anders that his boys were still missing, but likely dead (still think it would have better to give him closure and tell him the bodies we found inside were his sons).

I sent message to the clerics in Sarmanath to come to Ahestas to help us deal with this portal. I then spoke with a follower or Melora (nature goddess), and received some insight regarding the wizard who once owned that tower (I found a page of his journal in the tower). I also got a nifty +1 magic totem, and now the group is waiting for the Clerics to arrive to deal with the portal.

A long, but fulfilling section. We’ve conquered another quest and made another good amount of cash. Plenty of new plot details have emerged, and now Garrett seems to be even more cursed that we originally believed. He’s quite susceptible to the dangers of the abyss, and his visions seemed to indicate the world would be plunged into anarchy in death in a millennia. Scary stuff, but exciting. Might we be the brave adventurers chosen to stop the apocalypse? Curious… In all we had a lot of fun moments last night, but the door was by far the memory I am forever cherishing from this session. Seven people, and we couldn’t figure out how to pass a door… “It’s so brutal~!”