D&D Log: Session 15

Holy crap, a D&D recap?! Yep, after a month of no gaming, the Dethklok D&D group got back together to derp up another session with new player, Linkara! As a note, Angry Joe wasn’t able to make it this week as he’s hard at work on the recently launched BlisteredThumbs.net, which, if you haven’t heard, I’m going to be working on as Lead DS Editor. Now that’s awesome. Okay, with obligatory plugs out of the way (http://neuroticfanboy.deviantart.com/ is taking commissions!) and now shameless plugs out of the way, it’s time to get to the recap.

Starting from where we left off, we had just finished killing the dimensional spiders and were ready to further investigate this tower when a Paladin approached us from behind offering assistance. This new character is Bayben, a Human Paladin of Bahamut sent from the church in Sarmanath to assist us as they feel well… we suck too much. Actually I’m a little offended by that. Fuck you Sarmanath. We saved you from the corporal form of a goddess, rescued a magical cursed tome from a demi-goddess, and managed to infiltrate a kingdom that saw us as kingslayers, defeat the elite guards within said kingdom, and saved the king. I think at this point we’ve proven we’re capable of doing the impossible. But sure, send us help because you think we suck. Fuck Sarmanath.

Okay, sort of went on a tangent there, but it did ruffle my feathers so to speak. Getting back to the point, with Bayben joining our party we decided to investigate further in the cavern until we came upon a room full of strange statues and a single coffin. For a reason I’m having trouble remembering, we sent the big heavily armored loud Paladin to investigate the room to find that the statues didn’t immediately spring to life and try to kill us. No, that happened later. It’s come to a point where I seriously want to destroy every statue I come across. I mean really, I couldn’t give two shits about culture if there’s about a 90% chance that any statue we find is going to suddenly become animate and try to skewer us. Seriously, I might purchase a sledgehammer just so I can take it to every statue I find and batter it into pieces. I don’t care whose fucking throne room we’re in.

It should go without saying that we had to investigate the coffin, and the moment we did the lid flew off and a vile demon popped out and attacked Bayben. Now was Bayben’s time to impress. He introduced himself as an enigma; a man whose legends cast fear into the hearts who know of his deeds. Was he a hero? Was he a villain? All we knew was that wherever he went death seemed to follow. What would happen when Bayben the Butcher swung his bloodstained axe?! He botched and split his pants. No, seriously. He botched, and the botched roll said that he damages a piece of clothing. What an awkward roll. I think we said he tore his cloak, but it’s so much funnier to imagine this big armored hulk of a Paladin trying to swing his weapon and instead ripping his pants. Sorry Linkara, but that will forever be Bayben’s legacy to me. Welcome to D&D.

If it weren’t obvious, the statues in the room began coming to life and attacking us, and truth be told we started getting absolutely hammered by these monsters. Well, I say we but I mean them. I sat back safely in the hallway tossing thunder bolts and stuff. We figured out the trick to the statues was that until a spirit possessed them they were harmless and easily destroyed, so we had to destroy the empty statues before the evil spirits could possess them, and once that was done we could take out the head demon. He went down, put a curse on both our houses, blah blah blah. Actually I think he was glad we killed him. Probably some adventurer who wondered down here and found himself driven mad. Sounds reasonable considering what we face later on, but I’ll get to that.

With the battle over it was time to collect “teh lootz”, and inside the coffin was some money and trinkets. Most curious of the trinkets was a small silver object that looked like a crescent moon sitting on a stick, or as all of us anime nerds immediately identified it: “that moon wand from Sailor Moon”. It did bear an eerie resemblance to it, and because of it I immediately demand fan art of our characters as Sailor Scouts. Make it happen internet. Make it happen. Oh right, the point! I was getting to that. So the trinket appeared to be part of a puzzle concerning the next door where we ran into a stone door with a small recess in it. It appeared the piece could fit inside of it but only in one of the four corners. We choose top right and the door opened for us, though I wonder what would have happened had we picked another corner. A trap? A different room? It’s that lingering question that keeps me up at night. That and the BBQ chicken bacon pizza I ate last night. It gives me gas.

The next room had five cubicles in it with human shaped imprints on the wall. I immediately feared our next adventure would be removing staples out of things that were originally stapled for 7.5 hours, but instead five of us pressed against the imprints and were transported to a chessboard without the pieces. The only other thing on the board beyond us was a king that stood directly across from us with his hand outstretched blocking the entrance. With a few trial and error tests we figured out that we were pieces on a chess board and we had to remove like our respective pieces. We traveled the board and then came face to face with the statue of the king. The king was decorated with a crown and a magnificent sword, and we kind of figured taking the crown or sword would be a bad move. At first I thought his outstretched hand was asking for something, like a toll, but it wasn’t. Instead I offered my hand, he shook it, and our party was allowed to pass. Wow, that one statue may have put my statue prejudice into question. I only realize now what a statue-ist I’ve been. Not all statues are evil assholes that come to life and kill you. I think I may need some time to dwell on my inner hatred of statues and learn to accept them in our world.

So we moved along after Darstine decided to be a dick to the one statue in this world who doesn’t try to kill us by stealing the dude’s crown. What a bitch. The next room was a featureless room with blank walls and floors that had eight chairs lining the floor. We sat down in the chairs and suddenly the room starting spinning and we could all feel ourselves undergoing strange pressure. When it ended we found ourselves back in the room, but a large hole had appeared in the ceiling. We exited the hole only to find ourselves in the same ruined castle we were investigating, only it wasn’t so ruined. It appeared we had gone back in time to before the climactic battle between the Tieflings and demons destroyed this area of the world. Or worse, we went back in time to when that happened. That’d be sucky.

Still we did run into a series of monsters that were quite strange. They were fiendish monsters, abhorrent I believe, that fed off of the madness of humans. Plus they had rape tentacles, yet Juliet actually managed to avoid being Rule 34’d in combat. Barely too actually. It would have hit my garbage Reflex if it weren’t for Pidgeotto’s Super Awesome Amazing Encounter Buff. I love that bird. We killed the creatures, collected our XP, and the game ended there to hopefully continue next week. As far as things happening, there wasn’t a lot. This is essentially a dungeon crawl, but I’ve yet to ever do a real dungeon crawl, so I’m excited. I like the puzzles and thrilling battles. Also, the traps confuse Jason. After a wall closed behind him he tried to walk through the wall, then later tried to walk up the walls. It didn’t work. Combat is still a killer. I actually found time to play two or three songs in Rock Band 3 while I waited for my turn to come up. It helps me get more game time in for my reviews on Blistered Thumbs, but still I’m not thrilled with how long combat will take. I’m actually a bit concerned that when Joe returns to the game we’ll have three defenders running around marking and that combat will become needlessly tedious, but all we can really do now is sit back and wait for it to happen.

So that was our adventure for the week. Sorry it’s been a while, but with Spoony’s recent health problems he hasn’t been able to play, and we have to understand that. I’m hesitant on saying we’ll play next week. We should, but it’s always possible something could come up. Regardless I am glad that people really enjoy our sessions. Of course all of really come to see our ass backwards attempts to save the world and to laugh at our misfortune, but I like to pretend that you enjoy our rich characterization and interesting dynamics. HA! As if we have those…

Until next time, Namaste!