Wyrmwick Log: Session 9 Part 1

Holy crap, I still don’t know how this group finds ways to play over seven hours of D&D in a weekend. This time it was all on one day, but in one long session that started at five and ended a little bit past midnight rather than broken up over two days. However I should note that we wouldn’t have bothered playing that long if we weren’t having fun, so obviously there was a lot to enjoy this session. If you decide to read through this whole thing I commend you because this is going to be a long one. You should probably get some snacks.

So our campaign continued about where it left off with the party at Vern’s cavern, and the White Dragon agreeing to fly us to Owayne’s. However we decided not to assault Owayne’s directly at the moment as we could use more information, and thus we convinced Vern to take us first to Vante’s Tower, a tower of mages far to the north where we could perhaps learn more about how to defeat a Deathknight and more about Caitlin’s condition. The dragon could only carry three of us though, so Dhother, Denora, and Caitlin readied themselves for the journey while Greig and Jonn headed towards Colingrove where we would meet up with them once we completed our journey. Oh, but before we left Vern smelled Caitlin and said, and I quote, “This is gonna be a good journey”. Ew. A thousand times ew. Vern is one creepy dude, though shockingly not the creepiest guy hitting on Caitlin this session, but I’ll get to that in time.

So during the long travel to Vante’s Tower Caitlin began to grow a tail, horns, and a new sense of smell meaning that as the days continue to pass by Caitlin becomes even more of a dragon. With renewed urgency we entered the tower and spoke with Ghadi, a mage in the tower. He said he could help us out with both of our problems by providing us with a device that would prevent Owayne from teleporting, and by putting a ward on Caitlin to slow her metamorphosis. Figuring we just walked into a good deal, we headed up to the room where the ward would be performed only to find a room littered with corpses. To our bewilderment though Ghadi wasn’t actually trying to trap us or trick us—he and the other wizards of Vante’s Tower are just completely batshit insane. Obviously when we saw the floating corpses we decided Caitlin wouldn’t take part in his ward, but he refused to give us a decent deal on the orb that would prevent Owayne’s teleportation. He did tell us that this orb could be trusted as a more permanent version of this orb, along with a device to prevent changes similar to what Caitlin is experiencing are currently being used by the Goblin King who’s prison rests just beyond the Mountains of Madness and the Boreal Maze.

We contemplated briefly about just heading to the Goblin King’s prison and taking the stuff he had there, but without the luxury of time, Caitlin made a deal with Ghadi. If he gave us the orb, then after the battle with Owayne she would return and allow Ghadi to run his tests on her on the condition her companions could supervise it. Ghadi anxiously agreed, and we had the orb, so we quickly headed off to Colingrove where we reunited with Jonn and Grieg.

At this point we had to make our final preparations to go up against Owayne, and we started by speaking to the city’s clerics to have them bless our weapons and provide us with support against Owayne’s undead legions. After that we visited the mages only to find Arwyn, who was quite eager to see Caitlin. He explained there her blood had turned silver and that currently they aren’t aware what it meant, which is rather annoying when all you want are answers and instead the mages just say “hey look this happened! I don’t know why, but it did!” After that he provided Caitlin with an amulet that he said would allow us to see Owayne should he turn invisible. Caitlin asked if Death Knights could do that, and Arwyn responded that he didn’t know. Then we found out the amulet wasn’t magic, indicating that Arywn is also batshit insane. Apparently studying the arcane arts in this world leads you to be a complete freak. Note to self: kill all mages.

That night Caitlin was disturbed in her sleep by a dream where she found herself alone in this strange field with the crystal we found back in Zelalah’s Crypt. She wandered up the crystal only to see a strange shadowy figure within the crystal who would stare at her while banging on the crystal. After that Caitlin woke up and immediately headed into Dhother's room to find the crystal. To her shock the same figure she saw in her dream was staring at her in real life, but she couldn't tell who it was. As she tried to speak with the shadow, Dhother woke up leading to an interesting exchange. After sharing some words, Caitlin punched Dhother in the balls and took the crystal for herself. I can't remember why I had Caitlin punch Dhother in the balls, but he probably deserved it.

So with preparations made it was time for the big moment when we would attack Owayne. Our plan was in place: let the clerics handle the undead, and then have Vern attack the tower and bring it down on top of Owayne. The plan started off almost flawlessly as Vern brought the keep down and Owayne was crushed underneath his own palace. Then the clerics handled the undead and left us to deal with one pissed off Death Knight. Around here though is where the plan fell apart—and we all sorta knew it would. The problem is that Owayne had gone too far (attacking Alpert and Timmy) to really justify ignoring him any longer especially if he was going to remain a constant threat while we tried to combat the Demon Baron.

But the downside is fact is that Owayne is a level 19 motherfucking beast so he jacked our monkey asses up. No lie, he seriously fucked us up, and we just about party wiped. To be completely fair we fought far better against Owayne than any level 4 party should have. We took him down to bloodied and I think everyone got at least one good hit in on him. The problem is that his health easily outclassed our damage output, and every time he attacked it was pretty much a guaranteed hit. With a few of our party members already down for the count, Caitlin handed off the crystal to Jonn for him to smash into the ground. Once it shattered, everything went white...

And like the Season 5 finale of LOST, that's where I'm going to leave you right now. To be frank this session was long and full of stuff to talk about, so I really can't sum it up in one long post without basically writing the Time Cube (sans the racism). Expect the rest of the recap to come up in the next few days, but until then reminisce about how fucking stupid it was for us to attack a Death Knight at level 4.

Credits go to Sighter and DarkVolt for the images.

Until next time, Namaste!