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terryclothToday was the last session of Tom's adventure in the character-switching campaign, in which we rescued the fair princess from the bonds of holy matrimony, and killed all her friends, then broke the deal with the only fairies we'd managed to talk to, and threatened to kill our hosts.
This is why adventurers aren't usually invited to weddings, except in Living City.
So, as per the deal with the evil necromancer fairy lady, Linn stayed behind to guard the prisoners while the others continued on to 'rescue' Rosemary -- the plan being to fight our way back through the ants to rescue Linn et al after making good our escape by some other path.
The path led up through a wine cellar, and then to one of two locations -- the chapel, or the kitchens. Burnak and Alaric were adamant that the kitchen was the safer of the two choices, since the chapel might have actual priests in it who could cast spells and such, while the kitchen would only have cooks. Reluctantly, the party acquiesced in what would turn out to be a truly monumental error.
The stairs from the wine cellar led up to a small storage room, with two doors. One led to silence, the other to a noisy, busy kitched area. Tachi, scouting in the semblance of an evil fairy now (thanks to his hat), opened the silent door, and discovered beyond it the garden and tower they'd been told to seek, complete with a balcony on the third floor -- a princess's chamber if they'd ever seen one.
There was only a single guard at the door to the tower, but others were wandering around the courtyard, so the plan was to use an obscuring mist to obscure their assault -- and if any guards came to investigate the mist, they could be dealt with quietly as well. The party swiftly ninjad through the storage room into the garden...
...and the chef opened the door to the kitchen, and loudly exclaimed, "Who are you?" Seeing several other cooks and an entire WEDDING PARTY full of other evil fairies, Albinus and Felinne (who were at the rear) shut the door, grappled the chef, and dragged him out into the garden, as Tachi cast his obscuring mist. Burnak swiftly downed the tower guard, Albinus knocked the barred door, and the entire party was inside (fighting the tower's guard contingent) with the door re-barred before the fairies figured out what was happening.
The fairy guards were easily dispatched, but on the second floor, where the last of them fled to, a pair of redcaps and a scary ghost proved more of a nuisance, as they were all blinking and/or incorporeal.
One of the redcaps made himself look like Diego, and started swapping places with him by teleporting to confuse the matter, but the party followed Tachi's nose and the tactic availed him not.
The other turned invisible and hid in a library, so after a minute or so of fruitless chase (the redcap could bounce about the room faster than Tachi could track by scent) the party spiked both doors shut and let him stew.
On the third floor, they located what were presumably Rosemary's chambers, but Rosemary was not inside them. There was an armory, and a bat, but other than that the rest of the tower was empty... so they interrogated the chef they'd tied up on the bottom floor (interrupting his attempts to remove the bar on the door with his bound legs) and discovered that Rosemary was, in fact, in the chapel, preparing for her wedding.
The chef was offered his life if he'd help the party trick the guards who even then were pounding at the door, and kept his word -- lying to the guards as they came in that the party was upstairs when they were, in fact, hiding in the side rooms on the first floor, ready to run out and secure the exit so as to prevent anyone from escaping. Because of this, in part, the plan was successful, and for his services he was dumped in a small kitchen in the tower and forgotten.
The mist was long gone, but the party managed to sneak back into the wine cellar to plan the assualt. Albinus, who was still invisible from his part as secret door opener during the tower plan, took up the mantle of secret door closer to make sure the priests in the chapel -- four of them, glowing blue -- could be slaughtered without attracting the attention of the guards swarming the rest of the compound.
Of course, the original plan was to grab Rosemary and run, but the priests proved painfully protective of her, three of them casting sanctuary and surrounding her safely in a corner while the fourth starting casting offensive spells to try to fight off the party. To make a long story short, they were eventually all killed -- to make it slightly less short, Alaric spent most of the combat paralyzed, Burnak guarded the door until he became frustrated with how long things were taking and flew into a rage, and Tachi summoned a wolverine, which was the ONLY CREATURE in the entire battle able to resist the Sanctuary spells... and which managed to chew its target to death slowly over the course of thirty seconds, while the priest neglected to fight back for fear of allowing the others to attack him.
Oh, and the boss priest -- the one throwing around hold person spells like water off a druid's back -- was taken out by Tachi's weasel, which attached to him and sucked out all his blood. Chalk another one up for the dire weasel! That's... every non-undead boss monster so far.
Since they had a staircase right there in the chapel, the party decided it would be too much trouble to fight their way out through the front gate, or try to figure out a way to fly up until gravity reversed, or anything. So instead they marched back down through the evil necromancer priestess' chambers. She was very angry with them, and threatened all sorts of dire punishments for their arrogance... and gave them ONE MINUTE to get the hell out of her chambers. So the party continued on unopposed.
With the entire party present, the ants were no threat, and soon they'd rejoined the good fairy's who'd been camping out waiting for them. The healing fairy was conscious again, and cured the stat drain from the annoying ghost, and then, since the fairies could fly, they carried the party back down to the actual floor of the cave, two by two.
"Right! We can have them ferry us down."
"How nefarious."
At this point, Diego decided to see if the potion he'd been given would actually make him big again. It was a potion of Enlarge, and made him 8 inches high instead of 6. He was extremely unpleased. As a result, back at the 'good' fairy kingdom, he held a knife to Rosemary's throat and threatened to kill her if the fairy king didn't change them all back to normal size immediately, a standoff which was resolved when Burnak tapped him lightly upside the back of the head with his axe.
So they left the fairy kingdom, and found themselves still small. Before they could vow brutal, eternal revenge, a fairy who'd come out with them informed them that they'd regain their normal size in two more days, which was why the king had wanted them to stay for a few more nights of partying (an offer which Diego had vetoed and none of the rest of the party had found terribly appealing at any rate).
Eventually, they got back to Waterdeep, to discover that two months had passed in the week or so they'd been in the fairy world. Their superior was somewhat surprised to see them, as Sierra had given up waiting for them after five weeks and gone home to report them lost. They managed to sell the now-tiny magical weapons and armor they'd looted off the evil fairies and/or had been given by the good fairies for a fair amount, considering, and decided to rest and relax until their next assignment.
last session next session (different game)
Next session, Ed's going to run a game with the high-level party (starting level 12). He promised to send us all to hell. Or possibly the abyss. Or something unpleasant like that.
Michelle complained that she still didn't have her 12th level character ready.
Me: "Well, you've got 2 weeks."
M: "I don't have the rules or anything, though..."
Me: "We sent around the SRD. That should have all the --"
M: "The what? See, there you go getting all technical and stuff."
Me: "The System Reference Document. We mailed around three versions of it a month or two ago. It has the rules."
M: "Oh, everything you guys say in those mails is just totally over my head. I just 'delete delete delete' when it comes in my inbox."
Dave: "I'll help you with your character..."
Dave is Michelle's boyfriend/lover/forallIknowthey'remarriedbynow, and always helps her with everything. As a result, there's no *need* for her to know the rules, but I find it mind-boggling how someone could play Dungeons and Dragons for more than two years and still not understand basic things like how to calculate attack and damage.
She *is* a gamer, but I suppose she's a *computer* gamer, and expects to have all the rules and such interpreted for her automatically. And I suppose with the seven of us there that generally happens. But it's still just... huh.
This is why adventurers aren't usually invited to weddings, except in Living City.
So, as per the deal with the evil necromancer fairy lady, Linn stayed behind to guard the prisoners while the others continued on to 'rescue' Rosemary -- the plan being to fight our way back through the ants to rescue Linn et al after making good our escape by some other path.
The path led up through a wine cellar, and then to one of two locations -- the chapel, or the kitchens. Burnak and Alaric were adamant that the kitchen was the safer of the two choices, since the chapel might have actual priests in it who could cast spells and such, while the kitchen would only have cooks. Reluctantly, the party acquiesced in what would turn out to be a truly monumental error.
The stairs from the wine cellar led up to a small storage room, with two doors. One led to silence, the other to a noisy, busy kitched area. Tachi, scouting in the semblance of an evil fairy now (thanks to his hat), opened the silent door, and discovered beyond it the garden and tower they'd been told to seek, complete with a balcony on the third floor -- a princess's chamber if they'd ever seen one.
There was only a single guard at the door to the tower, but others were wandering around the courtyard, so the plan was to use an obscuring mist to obscure their assault -- and if any guards came to investigate the mist, they could be dealt with quietly as well. The party swiftly ninjad through the storage room into the garden...
...and the chef opened the door to the kitchen, and loudly exclaimed, "Who are you?" Seeing several other cooks and an entire WEDDING PARTY full of other evil fairies, Albinus and Felinne (who were at the rear) shut the door, grappled the chef, and dragged him out into the garden, as Tachi cast his obscuring mist. Burnak swiftly downed the tower guard, Albinus knocked the barred door, and the entire party was inside (fighting the tower's guard contingent) with the door re-barred before the fairies figured out what was happening.
The fairy guards were easily dispatched, but on the second floor, where the last of them fled to, a pair of redcaps and a scary ghost proved more of a nuisance, as they were all blinking and/or incorporeal.
One of the redcaps made himself look like Diego, and started swapping places with him by teleporting to confuse the matter, but the party followed Tachi's nose and the tactic availed him not.
The other turned invisible and hid in a library, so after a minute or so of fruitless chase (the redcap could bounce about the room faster than Tachi could track by scent) the party spiked both doors shut and let him stew.
On the third floor, they located what were presumably Rosemary's chambers, but Rosemary was not inside them. There was an armory, and a bat, but other than that the rest of the tower was empty... so they interrogated the chef they'd tied up on the bottom floor (interrupting his attempts to remove the bar on the door with his bound legs) and discovered that Rosemary was, in fact, in the chapel, preparing for her wedding.
The chef was offered his life if he'd help the party trick the guards who even then were pounding at the door, and kept his word -- lying to the guards as they came in that the party was upstairs when they were, in fact, hiding in the side rooms on the first floor, ready to run out and secure the exit so as to prevent anyone from escaping. Because of this, in part, the plan was successful, and for his services he was dumped in a small kitchen in the tower and forgotten.
The mist was long gone, but the party managed to sneak back into the wine cellar to plan the assualt. Albinus, who was still invisible from his part as secret door opener during the tower plan, took up the mantle of secret door closer to make sure the priests in the chapel -- four of them, glowing blue -- could be slaughtered without attracting the attention of the guards swarming the rest of the compound.
Of course, the original plan was to grab Rosemary and run, but the priests proved painfully protective of her, three of them casting sanctuary and surrounding her safely in a corner while the fourth starting casting offensive spells to try to fight off the party. To make a long story short, they were eventually all killed -- to make it slightly less short, Alaric spent most of the combat paralyzed, Burnak guarded the door until he became frustrated with how long things were taking and flew into a rage, and Tachi summoned a wolverine, which was the ONLY CREATURE in the entire battle able to resist the Sanctuary spells... and which managed to chew its target to death slowly over the course of thirty seconds, while the priest neglected to fight back for fear of allowing the others to attack him.
Oh, and the boss priest -- the one throwing around hold person spells like water off a druid's back -- was taken out by Tachi's weasel, which attached to him and sucked out all his blood. Chalk another one up for the dire weasel! That's... every non-undead boss monster so far.
Since they had a staircase right there in the chapel, the party decided it would be too much trouble to fight their way out through the front gate, or try to figure out a way to fly up until gravity reversed, or anything. So instead they marched back down through the evil necromancer priestess' chambers. She was very angry with them, and threatened all sorts of dire punishments for their arrogance... and gave them ONE MINUTE to get the hell out of her chambers. So the party continued on unopposed.
With the entire party present, the ants were no threat, and soon they'd rejoined the good fairy's who'd been camping out waiting for them. The healing fairy was conscious again, and cured the stat drain from the annoying ghost, and then, since the fairies could fly, they carried the party back down to the actual floor of the cave, two by two.
"Right! We can have them ferry us down."
"How nefarious."
At this point, Diego decided to see if the potion he'd been given would actually make him big again. It was a potion of Enlarge, and made him 8 inches high instead of 6. He was extremely unpleased. As a result, back at the 'good' fairy kingdom, he held a knife to Rosemary's throat and threatened to kill her if the fairy king didn't change them all back to normal size immediately, a standoff which was resolved when Burnak tapped him lightly upside the back of the head with his axe.
So they left the fairy kingdom, and found themselves still small. Before they could vow brutal, eternal revenge, a fairy who'd come out with them informed them that they'd regain their normal size in two more days, which was why the king had wanted them to stay for a few more nights of partying (an offer which Diego had vetoed and none of the rest of the party had found terribly appealing at any rate).
Eventually, they got back to Waterdeep, to discover that two months had passed in the week or so they'd been in the fairy world. Their superior was somewhat surprised to see them, as Sierra had given up waiting for them after five weeks and gone home to report them lost. They managed to sell the now-tiny magical weapons and armor they'd looted off the evil fairies and/or had been given by the good fairies for a fair amount, considering, and decided to rest and relax until their next assignment.
last session next session (different game)
Next session, Ed's going to run a game with the high-level party (starting level 12). He promised to send us all to hell. Or possibly the abyss. Or something unpleasant like that.
Michelle complained that she still didn't have her 12th level character ready.
Me: "Well, you've got 2 weeks."
M: "I don't have the rules or anything, though..."
Me: "We sent around the SRD. That should have all the --"
M: "The what? See, there you go getting all technical and stuff."
Me: "The System Reference Document. We mailed around three versions of it a month or two ago. It has the rules."
M: "Oh, everything you guys say in those mails is just totally over my head. I just 'delete delete delete' when it comes in my inbox."
Dave: "I'll help you with your character..."
Dave is Michelle's boyfriend/lover/forallIknowthey'remarriedbynow, and always helps her with everything. As a result, there's no *need* for her to know the rules, but I find it mind-boggling how someone could play Dungeons and Dragons for more than two years and still not understand basic things like how to calculate attack and damage.
She *is* a gamer, but I suppose she's a *computer* gamer, and expects to have all the rules and such interpreted for her automatically. And I suppose with the seven of us there that generally happens. But it's still just... huh.
