Tuesday, March 15, 2011

From Their Eyes - Juliet (The Scorpion Queen Encounter)

In my effort to return to writing consistent articles for my blogspot I’m going to try out three new series. These series may or not be permanent fixtures because I’m honestly just testing the waters to see if people care about reading these posts or not. I know I ask a lot and you probably hear it from a million sources, but honestly leaving comments here or sending them to my twitter help me know if you like the article or I have no way to investigate the views for individual articles on my blogspot. I’m going to post up these articles once a day, so first series today, second series tomorrow, and the third on Thursday. Let me know your thoughts, good or bad on each one, and I’ll decide which ones to continue on in the future. They could all be well liked and I’ll work on continuing all of them, or they could be reviled and I’ll go back to the drawing board. Constructive criticism appreciated.

Anyway the first article series is called From Their Eyes and is related to our D&D games. Basically I’m using these articles to help satisfy the roleplaying kick I’ve had for months now and cater to the D&D fans since people seem to dig it when I talk about the campaign. So these series of articles are being told from the first person perspective of one of my characters about a notable event in their career. It can be a heroic, dramatic, or humorous moment, but it needs to stand out. I’m starting this week with The Scorpion Queen Encounter and Juliet, so let me know your thoughts. If you’d prefer I only stuck to humorous or other sort of stuff, let me know. Again, all feedback is appreciated. Well, here we go:

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We stood at the entrance to that chamber for what seemed like an eternity. We had already encountered traps and ambushes in this pyramid, and it seemed obvious that something was waiting for us in that next room, but none of us dared to be the first one in to find out. We awkwardly stood there waiting for someone to bravely (and stupidly) offer to test the doorway, but any attempt at convincing someone to take the daring initial steps proved to be futile. I even offered the mercenary a sizable pocket full of the King’s gold to cross the threshold, but it appears sellswords aren’t as greedy as I first assumed. Our bickering had gone on too long, and whatever fiend was waiting for us had grown tired of lying in wait.

With an echoing thud the Scorpion Queen dropped from the ceiling in front of our hallway and sprung her surprise attack. With a single movement she kicked up a torrent of sand and sent it towards us with the force of a hurricane. Some of us in the party, including myself, shielded our eyes in preparation for the attack, but a few of our party members were unprepared and found themselves blinded by the sudden sandstorm. As the Scorpion Queen made her presence known, we took to the offensive. The Dragonborn swiftly snuck behind the resurrected goddess and began to use her underhanded tricks to sabotage our foe while the rest of us prepared our most powerful abilities. Unfortunately the Scorpion Queen was powerful even when shackled to this corporeal form, and most of our attacks missed… sans my Faerie Fire.

In retrospect, why did the spirits name that particular ability Faerie Fire. When you think of all of the intimidating forces of nature like howling gales, massive avalanches, and engulfing flames, why does Faerie have to be the first word to come to mind? Well, the spirits are far wiser than I, even if a tad unimaginative, so I won’t judge too harshly and instead be thankful for their power which struck the Scorpion Queen directly. Though initially the Queen would feel nothing, she would find her senses dulled which would slow her movements and allow my allies a better chance to hit until she managed to overcome it.

It came as a surprise to no one that the Scorpion Queen had many powers at her disposal, and she wasted no time unleashing her deadly arsenal. With one glance she looked upon the mercenary with a bewitching look in her eyes. I’m not well learned of the arcane, but I assumed she had some sort of power to dominate men and control their actions, and sure enough the mercenary began to wildly swing his weapon at us. As part of our party was distracted by this, she used one of her enormous claws to snap up the bard. While he struggled in her grasp, the Scorpion Queen reared back her massive stinger before plunging it into the chest of our bard ally, and in that moment I saw the life leave his eyes. Having finished off her pray she tossed the bard’s body carelessly to the side, and if there was any chance of saving him, it was obvious that it was quickly fading.

However the rest of the party wasn’t fairing much better. The mercenary was still trapped by the Scorpion Queen’s charms. The Dragonborn was valiantly fighting, but unable to shake the attention of the goddess. The archer was, once again, proving his ineptitude by firing arrows into the back of someone’s head, and I wonder if there will ever be a day when this raffish ranger will ever strike down an enemy with his arrows. Just as it seemed all hope was lost a brief glow overtook the Scorpion Queen. It seemed she had finally overcome my Faerie Fire, and with that the excess energy inside of her built up into an enormous explosion that tore the Queen into pieces. Carcass and viscera littered the battlefield, but myself and the Eladrin wasted no time with celebration as we rushed over to the dying bard.

With my knowledge of natural healing and the Eladrin’s superior healing magics we stabilized the bard in the nick of time. With the Queen’s death it appeared her palace was now crumbling to pieces. Unfortunately we were stuck near the top of the pyramid, and escaping the way we came in would likely not prove fast enough. Thankfully we managed to spot a lever that opened a secondary exit to outside, but to escape safely we would need to repel down the side of the structure. After the bard started to shimmy down the escape rope, I followed afterwards.

Except I lost my footing. And fell.

“FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFfffffffffffuuuuuuuuccckkkkk meeeee-----“

13 comments:

  1. I like it!

    I was expecting it to be a bit more descriptive of feelings, thought etc., but not a bad. But I did like the bit about Faerie Fire. And this could actually be a better way of getting recaps for the reader who doesn't want ot read the real recaps.

    Not that this should replace the recaps or anything. They are teh bestest.

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  2. This is great. I'd like to see some more of these on some of the more epic and silly moments of the campaign( Veraketh, tossing that duche bag out the window to save the Princess, The Epic Session, the death of Lord Commander Vane the 1st.) Also, it would be interesting if you could come up with an elongated narrative of DarkVolt's Death of Pigeotto comic. This is a really neat idea though.

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  3. If this series continues I do plan to get more in-depth with feelings a motivations. This particular event was a rather generic battle, and at this point Juliet really was new to the party hence why she doesn't refer to anyone by name. If this article series continued I would start including the more epic battles like the two Throne Room fights or the return of Morgana. Thanks for the feedback Yawret.

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  4. I'm really contemplating how to do the Death of Pidgeotto, Hwaldar. I could do it like a the dream sequence DarkVolt illustrated, or I could do it more as an internal retrospective. It would be an interesting article if I decide to continue this. Thanks for the feedback Hwaldar!

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  5. Yes this has great potential, out of curiosity would you think of doing an entire session like this? just to get Julliet's perspective of the entire thing?

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  6. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to writing a whole session from Juliet's perspective but I doubt I would because it would be massive. I already feel that people get turned off by the massive walls of text I write so I don't want to alienate more people by writing articles that would probably be about four or five pages long in Word.

    If I continue this series (and I haven't heard any major negative feedback, so I think I may)I'll make sure to include a variety of scenes and try to go for all of the most memorable moments that included Juliet. Thanks for the feedback Tachi!

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  7. Honestly, Chris, I love your Walls of Text. Really, those walls can be annoying...if the person typing them doesn't really have anything interesting or intriguing or entertaining to read. And, in my opinion, you cover all three with your blog posts.

    If you feel it better to type more to properly convey the mindsets, feelings, etc., for Juliet, please do so, because it'll only paint that much more of a vivid picture. And as for the concept, I love it. It's a very, VERY intriguing concept and if this is just a minute taste of what you can dish out, I look forward to more, possibly even from the eyes of different characters (if you plan for that).

    Anyway, great job for the pilot of From Their Eyes, and I look forward to more. :)

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  8. Wow, that was nicely written man :) Fun to read. I hope there's many more of them.

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  9. Interesting. I liked the mention of whether the "ranger" would ever strike down a foe with his arrows, nice nod to the fighting like men incident.

    Again, interesting overall. The one issue is that you'll be basically retelling certain incidents that happen within the campaign which might not be the most interesting thing. Though of course there'll be more detail, specifically regarding your character's thoughts, with this. And if it helps satisfy some rp urge of yours, of which I know you've been left wanting in the past, then all the better I say.

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  10. i like it, though i do wish to hear about the time grae kissed garret

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  11. This was really fun to read. I love the idea of getting to see events from the D&D sessions from the characters POV. I would love to see some of the last Wyrmwick session from Eli's POV. The whole 'waking up to find an arrow in your shoulder' part makes me laugh every time I think about it.

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  12. This was great especially since I never saw the start of the D&D campaign. All I know is info from your Logs and a quick glance at the wiki.
    I wish you would include more details about the locations and the characters involved like the scorpion queen. Then again, it’s hard to detail events from a characters perspective which is why it’s generally not encouraged when writing. Other than that, it has already been said to write more about what the character is thinking.
    But these are just suggestions and if it were up to me it would probably be one huge post detailing ever single detail about the encounter. I really hope you continue because it was a fun read.

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  13. Wow this was awesome, your more talented than you let on, looking forward to more :).

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