Wyrmwick Log: Session 6

Alright, so before I get into this week’s D&D recap I want to address something—mainly the same thing I imagine a few of you are also wondering. “Didn’t you just make a blog like two weeks ago saying you were done with D&D?” Yeah, I did, and now I’m back and I feel I should explain why before I start to come off like a YouTube personality who says “I’m quitting YouTube” just to come back a week later and act like it never happened *coughPhillyDcough*. The reason I left D&D was to hopefully alleviate some tensions between the players. I had hoped that my lack of presence would allow some personalities to calm down and get back to playing a game we’d enjoy, but sadly that didn’t happen. Within the week things fell through and more people left the group. Considering the people who left were the ones I had a problem with, there was really nothing keeping me from playing, and honestly a lot of people wanted me back. I didn’t go emo or make the blog post to get traffic—I was honestly dead set on not coming back, but things changed. They just weren’t in the way I had planned.

I still have no plans to return to the Dethklok campaign, though from what I’m hearing it sounds like that won’t be returning either—at least not in any recognizable form. But that’s coming from someone not playing in the group, so I don’t know. What I do know is that this past week we had an amazing session in the Wyrmwick campaign, and I’m going to recap it right now.

So this session was my return to the game, and since ArcLight rolled up Denora, a Half-Elf Suncleric to replace Eli last week, I rolled up a new character so as not to overlap two characters essentially doing the same thing. My new character is Caitlin Cormac, an Elf Scout from Wyrmwick who I honestly had a lot of fun playing. She’s a bit more to the point than my past characters, and in general I just really enjoyed the change of pace. The chat really seemed to dig her as well which was a pleasant surprise. Plus this was the first time since Sayid that I got to play a Striker character! We’ll see if I can beat Sayid’s session count of “two” next week.

The session began with Caitlin arriving to meet the rest of the party after their escape/investigation of the south tower. She was to the point. After meeting with the rest of the group and learning that Khan Muzarog had returned to Wyrmwick, the party was told to head north to Collinsgrove to speak with Duke Ned about the fate of the resistance army and to request aid. The party headed north, and on one night they came upon an abandoned camp ground. After investigating, the party found it completely abandoned. It seemed like a good place to sleep, but the party felt it was too convenient to risk it, and there was nothing wrong with the way they were sleeping. That night Caitlin spotted a group of thieves approaching the camp asking why we didn’t take the bait. Yeah, we sorta avoided being ambushed and attacked in our sleep, and the chat was quick to praise our “underp” moment to me rejoining the group. I don’t think the group would have slept there regardless, but I did find it funny we just left after that. I hesitate to think LordKaT set up an entire encounter for us, and we just decided to walk right passed it.

So on our way to Collinsgrove we spotted what looked like refugees on the side of the road. Most of them were battered and mangled, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. We were allowed entrance to Collinsgrove and we spoke with Duke Ned, the dwarf. He asked for our report and then told us to stay around and speak to him again the next morning. After that we did some shopping leading to two infamous moments: Jonn asking for “defensive” armor, and Bomar the baker who was too stupid to be bluffed. Both segments were hilarious, but this recap is already going to be long, so we’ll skip over them for now.

The next morning we returned to Duke Ned to find out what was going on with the resistance army only to be told that Wyrmwick was attacked and the refugees outside were actually from Wyrmwick. This was sort of a big deal to Caitlin as someone very important to her named Alpert lived in Wyrmwick. In fact the entire party seemed devastated by this news, but there was very little they could do about it as it seemed we’d be screwed if we attempted to invade Wyrmwick directly to find out what happened. Duke Ned wanted us to stay to bolster the defenses of Collinsgrove, but again, telling us Wyrmwick was destroyed meant a few of us were in a rush to get back and see what befell of the city. Before we could leave though we were interrupted by the Duke’s son, Timmy who told us about a staff of power held in the crypt of some mage. After more questioning we learned that crypt was now in Owayn’s Hold, and we made Owayn’s Hold our next destination. Caitlin at first suggested stealing a ship to get there, but the rest of the party remembered how well that went over the first time. Instead we asked Duke Ned for a ship, but he only allowed the party a trip to an area about a day’s away from Owayn’s Hold which we were forced to accept. Before leaving I muttered “eat shit and die” under my breath, which apparently set off Duke Ned’s very fragile relationship with his son which before we left deteriorated to Duke Ned threatening to beat his son with his dick. I love this campaign.

We were let off a mile away from Owayn’s Hold and were forced to walk through the swampy marshlands to get there. We rested for an evening in the swamplands only to be attacked by a vicious spider during the evening. This bastard spider was actually a tough one to take down mostly because it had a high attack and whenever it hit it would knock you unconscious. It happened quite a few times to Caitlin, but thankfully Dhother and Drew managed to avoid being hit (for the most part) and collectively took it down while Denora spent time bringing Caitlin and Jonn back up whenever they got knocked out. It was good team work, and we found a bag full of money in the spider’s belly that totaled to 130 GP which we desperately needed.

After that we finally reached Owayn’s Hold, but to our shock it was completely barren. No one in sight, and even Owayn himself seemed to be resting peacefully. We ignored him and used the elevator to head into the basement where we found the crypt that contained the artifact of power we were looking for—presumably. We couldn’t open it, and the only way to open it seemed to involve a key held by a “Wesley” and yes, that meant we had to return to Wyrmwick to find good old Wez the Mad. Luckily we managed to find a portal in one of the other chambers in the hold that took us back to Wyrmwick, and from there we quickly discovered that only the poorer districts were destroyed by the Chain Devils, and the rest of the city was fine. We reported back to Khan Muzarog (after speaking briefly to Santa Claus—er… Alpert), who basically told us that they fended off the first attack, but surely more would be coming. Until then however, we were free to pursue whatever mad fables we wanted, and so we took Wez with us to visit the tomb back in Owayn’s Hold. After Wez turned Caitlin’s weapon pink of course. Fucking Wez.

So we took Wez to the crypt, and to our surprise he seemed to react with the statue in the room and before long found himself surrounded by a strange energy. The statue lifted into the air revealing a staircase that descended into the lower crypts. Unfortuantely we couldn’t figure out a way to bring Wez with us, and when we descended the stairs Wez ended the spell and the statue fell, sealing us in the crypt. Kinda messed up on that one, but we had no choice if we wanted to move forward. Don’t in the crypts we found a collection of wraiths and skeletons that we did battle with, and it was quite the epic encounter—except for poor Dhother who failed almost constantly to make an attack that would hit. His effects were still appreciated, but he had bursts that would attack several enemies at once, and he’d still miss. Also the same bad rolls spread to Denora, but thankfully she was amazing at support. She even handed Caitlin a +4 bonus to her attack rolls for a turn which for a Scout translated to +8 damage. Yep. Pretty fucking sexy. Not as sexy as this though. Sorry, just had to reference that picture in here somewhere. And then this follow up picture. Okay, I'm good.

In general everyone filled their roles excellently. Caitlin and Drew laid some big damage down, Jonn took a beating and kept the agro on him, Denora kept everyone in the party from going down, and Dhother, despite missing, still did an excellent job controlling the battlefield. I actually thought we had great tactics, and our team was very anti-derp for the first time in a while. We ended the game shortly after that, but this game ran about five or six hours. Thankfully even combat seemed to flow a lot faster I think due to partially to the fact that three of our characters are Essential classes so they’re rather straightforward and the fact this party isn't nearly as large as Dethklok's. I had an absolute blast playing this session and it felt very reminiscent of the early sessions of the Spoony campaign where everything just felt a lot more enjoyable. Great atmosphere, great friends, and a great game. I’m very eager for next week.

Now before I sign off, I want to give a bit of heads up on what’s coming up for me. I have plans to reveal Caitlin’s backstory either today or tomorrow so that you all can see what’s the deal with her and Alpert. I also plan to do an article detailing how I came up with Caitlin as a character from a mechanics and storytelling perspective to give people some insight into the way I make characters. I also plan to do an article regarding my thoughts on WrestleMania 27 tomorrow. Busy week, but I should also have a new episode of Weekly Manga Recap this Sunday. Fingers crossed.

Credits for the images above go to DarkVolt and CallingCthulhu.

Until next time, Namaste!