dnd session summaries

you're all gonna die01/12/2019
The party begins as refugees, fleeing the country of Rol as the undead hordes ravage the land behind them. They make their way through a snowy mountain pass towards the free country of Lumina, leaving their old lives behind. As they make their slow way on, they notice storm clouds gathering. However, this is interrupted by a growling noise, which Ander determines to be 3 wolves coming at them from behind a snowbank. These wolves look starved, and are willing to take a chance on some fresh meat. The wolves take large chunks out of Edward and Ander, and the parties dice end up pretty low in their counterattack, a pattern that would continue for the night. However, Lo’koth has the idea to give one wolf some of his dried meat, and with a good animal handling check, he manages to keep it occupied. The party continues to roll badly, and the wolves are doing pretty well, until one of them drops to a sleep spell from Meraeador, and the other finally folds to the party actually hitting. After several other good animal handling checks, and some more meat, the last wolf follows Lo’koth. The ranger names his pet “Koth”. The clouds are still not looking very nice, and the party spot a rundown watchtower in the distance! They make haste for it. Smoke curls out of the chimney, but the door opens with only a knock from Ander. Sitting on the table of a cozy dining room is a large raven, who opens his beak and speaks to the party. He explains his name is Hagar, and he is the caretaker of the watchtower. A wizard named Tanith summoned him, but has moved on for now. The party can help themselves to the tasteless but sustaining rations the bird has, but he is running low. He puts on a pot of tea for the party; this involves the bird managing to fly with an entire kettle of water, a rather heavy load for a bird…
After supper, Hagar asks the party for a favor- he needs more provisions, but a giant spider moved into his basement, and he can’t get there anymore. He wants the party to kill the spider dead. The group agrees, but would like to rest first, as they are rather beat up from their fight with the wolves. Unluckily, the raven has another problem, as a pair of kobolds have moved into the barracks where watchmen used to sleep. The party decided to give them a talking to, and Lo’koth leads the way, and gets a shelf to the head for his troubles. After this, the party scouts much more carefully for traps, using mage hand to trigger them. This racket alerts the kobolds in the other room, one of which points his head out of a small hole in the wall, asking them what they’re doing. After some negotiation, the party gets safe passage through the hall and into the barracks if they treat the other kobold, who has been wounded. The party agrees and follows, finding the second kobold lying in bed, with a puncture wound that has black rot spreading around it. Meraeador flunks his medicine check to notice the poison in the wound, and only binds it. Strangely enough the healthy kobold mentions the wound is because the raven stung him. By morning, the kobold is dead, and the other escapes through a hidey hole. The party finds a map of the entire guardhouse, which includes a trapdoor under the rug in the commons room.
Heading back, the group decides to investigate the hidden room given they cannot find the raven, and drop down into a basement area. They hear strange muttering in draconic, and a defaced shrine to the Mother. Two gnawed on skeletons lay at the feet. Ander shouts towards a hunched over figure, the source of the muttering, and he charges at them with a guttural roar. The identity of the attacker is revealed as a ghoul as he crits Lo’koth, knocking him to zero immediately. The skeletons rise, but an eldritch blast and an arrow drops one immediately. Ander tears into the ghoul as Edward squares off with the last skeleton. Quarion beats a tactical retreat to an area where he can more safely rain spells as Meraeador drops to the ghoul as well. A healing word rouses Lo’koth again, and he rises with a war cry “Death cannot stop me!” and crits the ghoul, dropping it dangerously low. Edward finally cleans up the skeleton, and Ander stabs the ghoul until it stops moving. The party pauses to catch their breath and heal, before searching the room. They find an eerie spellbook belonging to Tanith containing a few necrotic spells. As well, they find a valuable looking ring which looks similar to a ring Quarion has as a noble. The party decides now is a good time to tackle the spider, and they are lucky enough to catch him sleeping. However, Lo’koth, who has a serious fear of spiders, freaks out and lightning breaths the thing. The rest of the party dogpiles on, hitting the thing before it even gets to fight back. They return to the common room, and find the raven there again.
The party is very suspicious of the raven at this point, and when he appears again the party talks catiously with him, until Quarion pulls out a sack, and stuffs the bird in! A barbed stinger rips out of the bag and strikes, hitting air but solidifying the parties desire to secure this creature, and they trap him under a barrel. Hagar screams and screeches and wails, but eventually the party gets the story out of him. He was the familer of the wizard Tanith, and they slew the guards at this tower and made it their base, but Tanith messed up and turned himself into a ghoul. Hearing enough, Meraeador puts the imp to sleep, and the group kills it. However, the imp does not return to hell, but rather stays dead on this plane. Lo’koth is much dismayed by this. After this, the party explores the rest of the tower. They free a fairy from the insect collection of Tanith, who blesses them with temporary hit points for their help, then dips right back into the feywild. On the top floor, they find the bodies of the other two guards of this tower, and with that they head off to bed. The storm abates the next day, and the party moves on.
________________________________________
January 30, 2019
you're all gonna die01/30/2019
The party has reached Lumina and joined the rangers, the interior defense force. This bumps them up to level 3, and they have also received special magical items, which will possibly be revealed at a later date. With that, their group assignment is the investigation of the small logging community of River’s Bend, reported to be taken over by a bandit group known as the smiling masks. In particular, the group is implored to investigate the mayor of the town, Lord Silas, to see if he is corrupt. The group arrives at the town, and finds some guards gambling outside the city walls. They end up paying the toll to go in, but application of Quarion’s magic music persuades the guards to give the money back- but only into the bard’s pockets. Edward ends up down some money due to gambling. Their next stop is the local tavern, where they find some lowlives and socialize with both them and the innkeeper. Quarion manages to score a gig at their hideout, much to the party’s amusement. He uses even more mind-fuck magic to suggestion the thugs into letting the rest of the group tag along. The rest of the party chats up the barkeep, and finds out the smiling masks moved in a few months ago, and they have been using the town to ship around goods. The barkeep isn’t sure quite what else they’re up to.
The party is lead into the smiling mask’s underground base, where Quarion sets up his instruments and the rest of the party either does special effects, or socializes. The bandits have on their titular masks, most of which are painted in pastel rainbow colors. However, the party notices a few special masks, a black mask with a red handprint, and a green mask with a black x. The black masked person leaves quickly, so Quarion tries his luck on enthralling performance on the green masked fellow, but he makes his save easily. A grunt is not quite as lucky, and Ander plies Quarion’s biggest fan for information. He learns they are trafficking, mostly weapons but also magical items. Also, if he wants to join, he should talk to the green masked fellow, which Ander. The green masked fellow tells Ander he will contact him by weasel in the next morning, and with that the party’s information gathering is over. Ander is contacted by weasel, given a map and instructions to help some other people move some goods. The party wakes up, and gains a new member, the rather stupid but well intentioned barbarian Uthal. They also find a wandering potion seller, Angelica, who sells Ander two healing potions and a potion of leaf form in exchange for 10 gold and knowledge of his deepest fear (heights). With that, they head off tailing Ander and a carriage. Ander is handed a mask, and immediately has to make a wis save Ander manages to get out knowledge from the grunts, learning that the green masked man’s name is Falgrin. Meanwhile, the rest of the group finds out they have a weasel tailing them, and Lo’koth and Meraeador team up to blast it into smithereens. It dies in a puff of toxic gas.
The party finally converges on the hideout in the barrows, where Ander helps people unload. Notably, one bandit has a blue mask. As they do this, the rest of the party helps themselves to loot from the wagon. Lo’koth snags a bag containing magical looking panflutes, and some coin. Uthal helps himself to some dried meat by punching his fist into it, and remains there when the bandits come back. They lead him into a room filled with painting, and attack him there, the blue masked figure attempting to paralyze him with poison. However, Uthal makes his save and returns fire by throwing his barrel of weapons at the blue masked man. The rest of the party, waiting in the back, engages as the paintings come to life, and the blue masked man swells up with purple muscles. The fighting begins in earnest, and it is looking bad for the party. Even with massive health and rage, Uthal starts fading fast due to basically being the only target for the bandits. The paint animates, and manages to entangle the entire party, even the raging barbarian. Ander, however, keeps on having to make wis saves. Nothing really happens, but the saves are noted. However, the tides manage to turn once the party clears out a few of the bandits. With Uthal looking dire, Ander slips him a healing potion. Then, Ander ingests his potion of leaf form, and becomes death. He slips out of his paint bonds as his body turns into a maelstrom of razer leaves. With this, he shreds the remaining grunts, as the force damage from Lo’koth and Meraeador manage to leave more of a mark onto the blue masked man than physical weapons. Finally, the party manages to bring down the blue masked bandit with their full force.
The blue mask falls off, and the party realizes he is a fiend, his body again not disappearing like it should. Uthal carves a mountain into his back as a victory gesture, then uses his magic item- a goblet that creates wine, which he pours onto the fiend and speaks with its spirit. The demon is confused why it is not in Hell again, but it is happy to say that it’s summoner is Falgrin. Anther also takes off his mask, with some prodding. He is forced to make a con save as his body shifts somewhat, but he makes it. After a short rest, the party decides to explore the rest of the barrows, Ander donning the mask again to trick anyone still around. They head into a much more filthy part, hearing garbled draconic. They find a nest of kobolds and some dragonborn, all pale and slimy. The party feeds them, but the nest takes objection to Lo’koth’s attempts to make them his minions. The party fights them, which looks sketchy at first due to the disease inflicting powers of the dragonborn, but a shatter from Meraeador makes quick work of the kobolds and chunks the dragonborn. However, Ander fails a wis save from the mask and forced to run in and mindlessly attack, and gets shattered as well. This unearths an egg, draconic looking and slimey, which Lo’koth claims. Mereaedor finds a stash of coins, but doesn’t tell anyone, although Ander notes he pocketed it. Ander is forced to make another con save to doff the mask, and makes it for now.
________________________________________
February 5, 2019
you're all gonna die02/05/2019
Rested and recovered, the party is relaxing in the forest and planning their next move when a few zombies straggle into camp- wearing smiling masks. The party wipes the floor with them pretty easily with the rogue squad pumping out great damage, and Quarion rolling surprisingly well with his rapier. The party is concerned at both the presence of zombies, and also the fact that they had smiling masks, so they decide to track them back to the source. They find a small hut along the way, whose dwarven inhabitants were murdered, presumably by the zombies. The party finds their journal, but sadly none of them can read the dwarven runes, so they take it and continue tracking onwards. They eventually come to a strange patch of forest where everything becomes red and more life-like. The ground is marshy, with fleshy cattails stretching up, and the trees almost look veined. They however fail the (rather difficult) nature check to identify what’s the deal with the area, mostly due to Lo’koth not actually having nature proficiency. The party is found by an incredibly large boar, but clever use of many cantrips, offerings of food, and some animal handling checks manage to convince it to eat something else instead.
The party ends up finding the presumable source of the zombies, and blackened and corrupted version of the forest, the marsh giving way to tar pits with bones sticking out. They find three depressed inlets into the ground, with passages spiraling away into them. In addition, to the side they see a rock slab with a small cave opening. They decide to investigate the cave first, sending Ander as the scout. He finds a colossal hermit crab using a 30 foot tall black metallic skull as it’s shell, and the creature beckons towards Ander to continue heading in (despite his very high stealth check.) The rest of the party joins him, and the crab telepathically asks the party a favor. He is Zeldinia, an ancient being with great power. However, he thinks the rock he lives in is too pretty to break down, so he wants the party to destroy the evil of this swamp for him. In exchange, he will answer one question of their choice about the world or anything. Lo’koth makes sure he takes care of his egg for him in the meantime. The party takes Zeldinia up on his offer, and heads down into the tunnels. On the way down, enemies rise from the silt! A group of oozes materialize, but the real threat is the skeleton that rises, a pillar of silt taking the place of its bottom half. It wields two larges bones as clubs, and it wastes no time taking big chunks out of both rogues. Edward surprises everyone by pulling out two of his ribs and slashing at the BONESTORM with them Lo’koth plugs it for decent damage as Ander weakens his rapier by attacking the oozes. However, concentrated fire takes down the BONESTORM before it manages to down anyone, but the party is looking shaky, and they decide to outpace the oozes as they run into the tunnel. The oozes return back into the silt…
Moving onwards, the party ends up in a room with a shrine made of roots carved into the form of a woman. The walls are covered in water, and they see a face in the water. They attempt to communicate with the face, which does respond but does have amnesia. Lo’koth manages to convince the face to inhabit the statue, which causes the mouth to gush water as a fountain. The spirit it is a nymph that protected the hot springs that were here, but she became incredibly weakened due to the curse on this area. However, she does cleanse the room, which gives the party a place to rest. In addition, by dipping their weapons in her fountain, they become magical for 24 hours. The party heads onwards, towards the center of the corruption. They find a root that looks oddly like a heart, with a dark looking dagger stabbed into it. Ander grabs the dagger out of the heart, and in turn has his hand grabbed by the wrist by a wight, which materializes into existence. From the tar pits, animal skeletons rise for battle. As it turns out, this ends in complete anticlimactic action as Edward and Ander both sneak attack for catastrophic damage, their magic weapons piercing through the wight’s resistance and obliterating it. With the combat done, Ander takes the dagger, who shouts “YOU WILL KNOW THE WRATH OF WYRMBLIGHT” before exploding. The party returns to Zeldinia, asking him each of their questions. Edward asks how Rol can be retaken. Lo’koth asks how to hatch and raise his egg. Ander asks why demons aren’t disappearing. Quarion asks how to find the greatest song in the world. Their answers are given privately…
________________________________________
March 18, 2019
you're all gonna dieToday at 8:23 PM
The party heads back to the town, now certain their cover has been blown. They notice the guards from the gate are missing, however. When the group walks inside, they decide to visit Lord Silas. However, he does not answer the door, so the party decides to use more subtle tactics- of picking his lock, and sneaking in. They find signs of a struggle, but no Lord Silas. Not getting the answers they want, the party heads out to the Smiling Mask’s hideout, only to fight naught but a dragonborn there. The dragonborn insists this is its lair, but that Falgrin gave the party a message in the form of a letter. The party takes the letter and leaves, and is barred from investigating any further. The letter says to head to the town of Alm’s Tragedy, and that Falgrin has taken Lord Silas.
The party heads out for Alm’s Tragedy, the entrance of the place called the Rot, the decaying carcass of a massive tree, essentially a mushroom forest. Since this is also a bustling trade route, the group is able to blend in among the carts and horses. The primary inhabitants of the city seem to be rangers and guides for merchants travelling along these roads. The party finds they are expected, and Falgrin has arranged a meeting point in a tavern. The meeting goes fairly well, with Falgrin revealing he is essentially an arms dealer for dwarves, and that he sells both chemical weapons, and the masks. The masks reveal a bestial nature of the wearer, and when the mask is removed, the wearer can assume a more powerful but berserker form. He has an offer for the party; he wants his old business partner, the dragon Wyrmblight, out of the picture, in exchange for Lord Silas back, and monetary reward. The party agrees, and receives a map toward Wyrmblight’s lair. Before leaving, however, they find the apothecary Angelica again, who sells them some potions and anti-mushroom pills, and gives them a list of some mushrooms to look out for, she’ll make them some potions at discount if they do. In addition, Meraeador gets an enchanted arrow of flaying, and a message from his patron: she wants the skin of a mushlion. The group then sets out.
They run into a pair of hill giants wandering through, eating the mushrooms as they go. One decides it wants some of that tasty meat the party has on their bones, but the party convinces it otherwise with n entree of pointy weapons and an extra sized serving of pain on the side. As they continue walking, they find a broken down carriage, and a merchant sitting inside. Her name is Maribelle, and she says she was attacked by zombie, and her guide was killed. She managed to get them off with a large barrel of salt, as mushroom zombies hate the stuff. The party agrees to help her out, and fixes the wheel well enough with some wood splinters from the rest of the wagon, using Uthal’s massive strength to pull it. As a reward, Maribelle gives the party a barrel of salt, some gold, and a letter of recommendation for the Royal Shipping Guild.
The town they have reached is called Coven, and the party notices this place is weird. For one, rules are written on the walls in sylvan, such as “Alligators are banned from the town” and “No red may be worn on Thursday”. The main population is Elvan, and the largest building is a bakery. The party decides to check it out, and walks in the front door, where they are served by a cheerful elven waitress. After some questioning, they learn the town is governed mostly by fey rules, and the mayor of the town is decided by who is the best baker every year. Uthal orders a special meat pie, and gets a bonus to his movespeed for a day. The party takes this time to rest up, then heads to Wyrmblight’s lair.
On the way there, they run into the reason why there are no alligators allowed in Coven. A titanic, almost 40 foot long alligator, practically fused with fungus, greets them as they pass by his lair in the soggy rotten wood. He offers them pies, baked especially for them. The pies are filled with mushrooms and look like painful death personified. He demands the party try them now, but Ander manages to convince the monstrosity that they will have them as a victory snack after defeating the dragon. In that case, the baker gator gives them a few more for the road, firing them in his belly. In total, the party ends up with about 20 pies. With this in hand, the party completes their journey towards the lair, and finds it in a circle of mushrooms where a pit leads downwards.
________________________________________
you're all gonna dieToday at 10:40 PM
The party heads into a pit, which has three passages branching outwards. From one, they hear squelching noises, and immediately decide to not go down that passage no matter what. Instead, they pick a different one at random, and head into a maze of fungal filament and silk. They run into plenty of elves, zombies, and dragonborn, and fight their way through. Quarion realizes quickly that the pies they received from the baker gator make quite effective weapons due to their caustic nature, and salt does in fact work on the zombies. The elves look rather fungal, and carry dried mushroom spears that cause paralysis, although their tips break off after one use. Uthal decides he wants one no matter what, but all of them break. As the party wanders through, they find large bumps on the wall. Cutting into one, they are attacked by puffs of spores, but find half formed elves made of mushrooms inside. Deeper still inside, they find a group of elves defending a shrine of a salamander-like dragon. Lo’koth immediately walks inside, demanding to pray to the shrine. Quarion however, is the only one who can speak any elvish, so negotiations are odd. Uthal is asking for one of their spears, but is unsuccessful. Lo’koth notices a gemstone in the base of the shrine, and pries it out, deciding it must be there for him. At this the elves attack, but roll horribly on initiative, and the rogue buddies lash out and cut down their numbers, making for an easy fight. Quarion melts an elf into a puddle with a well-placed pie. Uthal ends up with three of the spears, and Lo’koth ends up with the gem, which upon a command word, pulls towards its pair. Using this gem, they determine that lair of the dragon is below the initial room, but are unable to dig down, so they head down the second passage after a quick rest.
In here, they find multicolored shrooms which have a tendency to explode when the party comes near them. They encounter first ones that cause nothing but a shrieking noise, and next they find dragonborn meditating near ones that have a hallucinogenic effect. The next room they find has mushroom people tending these things on some sort of a farm, and they are attacked by these farmers as they throwing an explosive mushroom at the group. However, the group runs past before firing an arrow into the field, causing a chain reaction that destroys the room but leaves the retreat path cut off for a good amount of time. The end of this passageway comes with another dragonborn meditating on top of a house sized mushroom. The party starts to hack at the mushroom, only for it grow legs and attack. The dragonborn throws down a mushbomb that causes hallucinations, which Edward and Lo’koth fail against. Lo’koth sees lots of giant bees, and Edward thinks he’s swimming. Uthal and Ander proceed to take giant chunks out of the mushroom, and Quarion throws more pies. The fight ends up fairly easy, as uncanny dodge and rage take off most of the sting, and temp HP flies around freely. The PCs end up with a single use fireball gem for loot, and rest up to wait for the spores in their exit to disperse.
In the end, the PCs do have to head down the squelching passageway, and end up in a room full of dead bodies and oozes. They spy a gem deep inside the room, and the faster members of the party run towards it. Uthal, Ander, and Edward manage to reach it and make it back without much issue. They realize it is some sort of drill spell that digs into the ground. This is immediately used to tunnel down into the central area to reach the lair. They are immediately received by a well-dressed dragonborn, who says Wyrmblight would like to speak with them. When Lo’koth shows off the dragon egg he takes it. He then leads them into a lake of ooze, and Wyrmblight pokes his head out, and tells the group to come close. Only Lo’koth complies, and is bitten and dragged into the lake of acid for his troubles, where he starts to drown and burn to death. Meanwhile, the dragonborn tries to sneak around and gets a dagger for his troubles. Quarion takes the egg and leaves an illusion in its place, as Wyrmblight furiously looks around for it. He finds the dragonborn body and the egg, but this takes him out of the acid lake, and Quarion manages to land a hypnotic pattern on the dragon.
Uthal sighs, gives a short speech about how terrible Lo’koth is, and dives into the lake to save him. It’s pretty difficult, the barbarian just barely manages to reach him, Lo’koth only lives due to two successful saving throws vs death, and a timely healing word from Quarion that reaches him only on a coinflip, due to the blob of both Lo’koth and Uthal being indistinguishable. However, while this is happening, Quarion, Edward, and Ander put in place their master plan, which involves taking all their pies and salt, and placing it in the dragon’s gullet. When this is complete, Quarion casts suggestion for one word: “Swallow.” The dragon fails yet again, and consumes about fourteen caustic pies. He hacks up blood, and the party pounches. Uthal swings down with his glaive, the rogue buddies sneak attack, and even Lo’koth contributes with an arrow shot. However, the one who takes it ends up being Edward. With that the party licks their wounds, and sets out to explore their loot.