So it begins!
Aug. 6th, 2004 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothThere comes a time in every Dungeons and Dragons party's lifespan when you know you've finally made it -- when enemies you never met before start sending random demons to teleport in and attack you in the middle of town. That point has now been reached in Jeff's Dragonlance game.
And it's all thanks to the stupid deck of many things. Did I remember to mention the deck of many things last time? Stacy remembered that Sawyer, Sonnet's cohort and mount, was his own creature, and had him draw a bunch of cards from it, screwing more things up horribly. It's annoying to see them NOT die to it because of all the rerolls and wishes they have to spend avoiding badness... but still screw up the rest of the party.
[last time,] Among the treasure found in Frost's lair was a 'scroll box of many things'. Its nonstandard design tricked Murphy into drawing from it, but he got a good card -- defeat the next enemy you meet alone to gain a level. It was easy enough for him to find a goblin to stab -- he incinerated a whole camp of them for good measure.
This set off a flurry of drawing from everyone but Kijj -- which resulted in a lot of good things (mostly magic items and wishes, which were used to avoid the bad things that did show up) and a few bad things (mostly 'lose all your nonmagical wealth' and 'lose 10000 xp'). The worst bad thing was one of Sonnet's scrolls, which research indicated had earned her the enmity of a powerful demon lord. She used a wish (she spends wishes like water, funneling them through her luck blade and then paying mages to recharge it) to find out who this demon was -- it was a devil, actually, a sadomasochistic gnomelike creature that liked to kidnap female gnomes and rape and torture them to death. Which didn't end the suffering, because hey, he was the lord of hell.
Then the party spent six months or so improving items, or having them improved. Kijj switched to a spear instead of an axe, ending up with a +5 shocking burst spell-storing defending keen longspear, and bought a +5 book of CON improvement. Sonnet bought a bunch of things for Sawyer, of course, and a few for herself. Morgan bought a cloak of Starmantle, which basically reduced the damage he'd take in melee by half. Mike bought a swarm of ioun stones and some wishes to give himself more feats.
All that time was spent safely in the Tower of Wayreth, warded by the gods themselves and thus out of reach of Frost and insane devil-gnomes alike.
But eventually, they had to go out into the world -- they had to return the dragonlances to Alhana and her Solamnic allies, find more work, research Sonnet's life quest (one of her draws from the scroll box had given her the recipe for nonmagical permanent ink, but the recipe was 'the heart of an ancient amethyst dragon', 'an emerald of X size taken from the plane of elemental earth within ten miles of the castle of the lord of the realm', and 'the blood of a tree-ent whose domain includes at least 10,000 trees, given willingly', simmered for 28 days in elemental water in a diamond pressure cooker on the plane of fire, then cooled for 28 days in total darkness), find out who the guy who'd hired Melkor to kill them was (they had his name, but that was it), and so on.
At some point in there, Sonnet decided to have Sawyer draw five scrolls from the box. The notable results of this were that he turned evil, and earned the permanent enmity of one of the other members of the party, namely Lini, Kijj's cohort.
So that night, Lini snuck into his room as he slept, and encased him in a wall of stone, then told Kijj that she'd 'found an evil creature lurking in Sonnet's room' and had encased it in stone to trap it, and now needed him to carry it to the temple of Mishakal for 'healing' (aka 'brainwashing'). She used a silence to avoid waking Sonnet, but only got about halfway to the temple before Sawyer (who'd been woken up by the jostling) broke through the wall of stone and tried to run.
Kijj didn't see who it was before he ran off [Kijj's spot is horrible, he made a -3], and tried to help Lini catch Sawyer -- but Sawyer was a powerful enough druid to wild-shape, now, and managed to change into a bat and fly back towards the inn for reinforcements. Kijj and Lini dimension-doored back towards the inn, and got there first, rousing the rest of the party lest they be killed in their sleep by the 'evil thing'.
The fight was ended before anyone was hurt by Mike's Mass Suggestion (that they not fight and explain themselves). Lini explained that her god had shown her in a vision that Sawyer was evil, and that she was trying to take him to the temple to be imprisoned for his own good until he could be cured, or exorcised, or whatever was necessary to reverse whatever it was that had happened. Sonnet scoffed at the notion, and pulled out her rod of alertness to prove that Sawyer was still good -- but no, he was evil.
So Sonnet wished that he wasn't. Since Sawyer wasn't a willing subject, that wasn't a safe use of a wish, but it worked out mostly okay -- he ended up Chaotic Neutral. Which pissed Lini off just as much, but wasn't as actionable -- she couldn't just go kidnapping or killing NON-evil party members, and her oath as a priestess of Mishakal forbid her from even withholding healing services!
So, things went more or less back to normal, although Lini started keeping around a symbol of sleep keyed to exclude everyone in the party except Sawyer, just in case.
They talked with Maldred, who'd led them to the Solamnic camp way back when, about the person who was trying to kill them, and it turned out he was the king of the ogre nation, the originator and original benefactor of the Ogre Titan transformation. The party wasn't sure whether they could actually take him on, what with the army he'd have backing him up. The army of ogre titans.
They asked the priests of Bahamut about amethyst dragons, and found out that (a) they lived on the elemental plane of earth, (b) they were powreful psionicists, and (c) they weren't evil, and thus not fitting subjects for a random search and destroy mission. Especially not to make ink. But (d) their hearts remained behind after they died, of natural or any other causes, and were usually prospected by denizens of the plane of earth -- they might be available for sale.
But the mission they decided to take on was to help Alhana Starbreeze take back Silvanesti, by escorting the three princesses to the location where they'd sing the magic song and do... something... good. Or so the legends went, with about that much detail.
But before they could actually do that, a demon randomly teleported in and ate Sonnet. In the surprise round.
So Sonnet pulled out her Rod of Rulership, inside its stomach, and ordered it to spit her up, which was good because if she hadn't she'd have been digested pretty quickly. She also ordered it to stop fighting (not realizing that this order, given outside the stomach, ACTUALLY applied to the nearest 600 HD of creatures, including the entire party and many nearby elves), so it summoned a nastier friend, who whipped out a spiked chain and stunned Mike.
Sonnet suddenly realized that these were devils, and could only be killed by blessed silver weapons, so she ran off on Sawyer's back to get some.
That left Kijj and Morgan to take down the pair of devils, which they did, although the original one (who'd walked through an invisible portal Mike had seen and blocked off with a wall of force early on) was still regenerating.
That was when the BOSS devil decided to get involved, opening another portal and walking through to retrieve his buddy. He had a powerful Sanctuary effect, but Kijj broke through it to strike him with his spear -- and suddenly lost all his strength. ALL of it. Down to 1. Lini fixed it with a Resurgence, but Kijj was really leery about hitting the guy again.
So they traded spells back and forth a bit -- Kijj and Morgan with elemental darts for 20 or 30 (after his save), the devil-lord-thing with a 128 point flamestrike, yada yada, until the little gnomish evil thing managed to drag his slowly regenerating servant back through the portal, and close both of them -- after cackling about how much he'd enjoy Sonnet once he got his hands on her.
A minute or so later, Sonnet got back with the blessed silver arrows -- too late to do anything with them. About the same time the city guard, several powerful NPC wizards, and a silver dragon showed up to investigate the disturbance.
last week | next week
Morgan's player was really annoyed by the Lini vs Sawyer subplot. Especially the part at the end where Lini still hated Sawyer. He went so far as to say that if Lini wouldn't help Sawyer to the best of her ability, they should dump her. I'm not in favor of ditching our only cleric over something like that, especially when it's Stacy's fault for using the stupid deck of many stupid things. Let her lose HER cohort over it.
And it's all thanks to the stupid deck of many things. Did I remember to mention the deck of many things last time? Stacy remembered that Sawyer, Sonnet's cohort and mount, was his own creature, and had him draw a bunch of cards from it, screwing more things up horribly. It's annoying to see them NOT die to it because of all the rerolls and wishes they have to spend avoiding badness... but still screw up the rest of the party.
[last time,] Among the treasure found in Frost's lair was a 'scroll box of many things'. Its nonstandard design tricked Murphy into drawing from it, but he got a good card -- defeat the next enemy you meet alone to gain a level. It was easy enough for him to find a goblin to stab -- he incinerated a whole camp of them for good measure.
This set off a flurry of drawing from everyone but Kijj -- which resulted in a lot of good things (mostly magic items and wishes, which were used to avoid the bad things that did show up) and a few bad things (mostly 'lose all your nonmagical wealth' and 'lose 10000 xp'). The worst bad thing was one of Sonnet's scrolls, which research indicated had earned her the enmity of a powerful demon lord. She used a wish (she spends wishes like water, funneling them through her luck blade and then paying mages to recharge it) to find out who this demon was -- it was a devil, actually, a sadomasochistic gnomelike creature that liked to kidnap female gnomes and rape and torture them to death. Which didn't end the suffering, because hey, he was the lord of hell.
Then the party spent six months or so improving items, or having them improved. Kijj switched to a spear instead of an axe, ending up with a +5 shocking burst spell-storing defending keen longspear, and bought a +5 book of CON improvement. Sonnet bought a bunch of things for Sawyer, of course, and a few for herself. Morgan bought a cloak of Starmantle, which basically reduced the damage he'd take in melee by half. Mike bought a swarm of ioun stones and some wishes to give himself more feats.
All that time was spent safely in the Tower of Wayreth, warded by the gods themselves and thus out of reach of Frost and insane devil-gnomes alike.
But eventually, they had to go out into the world -- they had to return the dragonlances to Alhana and her Solamnic allies, find more work, research Sonnet's life quest (one of her draws from the scroll box had given her the recipe for nonmagical permanent ink, but the recipe was 'the heart of an ancient amethyst dragon', 'an emerald of X size taken from the plane of elemental earth within ten miles of the castle of the lord of the realm', and 'the blood of a tree-ent whose domain includes at least 10,000 trees, given willingly', simmered for 28 days in elemental water in a diamond pressure cooker on the plane of fire, then cooled for 28 days in total darkness), find out who the guy who'd hired Melkor to kill them was (they had his name, but that was it), and so on.
At some point in there, Sonnet decided to have Sawyer draw five scrolls from the box. The notable results of this were that he turned evil, and earned the permanent enmity of one of the other members of the party, namely Lini, Kijj's cohort.
So that night, Lini snuck into his room as he slept, and encased him in a wall of stone, then told Kijj that she'd 'found an evil creature lurking in Sonnet's room' and had encased it in stone to trap it, and now needed him to carry it to the temple of Mishakal for 'healing' (aka 'brainwashing'). She used a silence to avoid waking Sonnet, but only got about halfway to the temple before Sawyer (who'd been woken up by the jostling) broke through the wall of stone and tried to run.
Kijj didn't see who it was before he ran off [Kijj's spot is horrible, he made a -3], and tried to help Lini catch Sawyer -- but Sawyer was a powerful enough druid to wild-shape, now, and managed to change into a bat and fly back towards the inn for reinforcements. Kijj and Lini dimension-doored back towards the inn, and got there first, rousing the rest of the party lest they be killed in their sleep by the 'evil thing'.
The fight was ended before anyone was hurt by Mike's Mass Suggestion (that they not fight and explain themselves). Lini explained that her god had shown her in a vision that Sawyer was evil, and that she was trying to take him to the temple to be imprisoned for his own good until he could be cured, or exorcised, or whatever was necessary to reverse whatever it was that had happened. Sonnet scoffed at the notion, and pulled out her rod of alertness to prove that Sawyer was still good -- but no, he was evil.
So Sonnet wished that he wasn't. Since Sawyer wasn't a willing subject, that wasn't a safe use of a wish, but it worked out mostly okay -- he ended up Chaotic Neutral. Which pissed Lini off just as much, but wasn't as actionable -- she couldn't just go kidnapping or killing NON-evil party members, and her oath as a priestess of Mishakal forbid her from even withholding healing services!
So, things went more or less back to normal, although Lini started keeping around a symbol of sleep keyed to exclude everyone in the party except Sawyer, just in case.
They talked with Maldred, who'd led them to the Solamnic camp way back when, about the person who was trying to kill them, and it turned out he was the king of the ogre nation, the originator and original benefactor of the Ogre Titan transformation. The party wasn't sure whether they could actually take him on, what with the army he'd have backing him up. The army of ogre titans.
They asked the priests of Bahamut about amethyst dragons, and found out that (a) they lived on the elemental plane of earth, (b) they were powreful psionicists, and (c) they weren't evil, and thus not fitting subjects for a random search and destroy mission. Especially not to make ink. But (d) their hearts remained behind after they died, of natural or any other causes, and were usually prospected by denizens of the plane of earth -- they might be available for sale.
But the mission they decided to take on was to help Alhana Starbreeze take back Silvanesti, by escorting the three princesses to the location where they'd sing the magic song and do... something... good. Or so the legends went, with about that much detail.
But before they could actually do that, a demon randomly teleported in and ate Sonnet. In the surprise round.
So Sonnet pulled out her Rod of Rulership, inside its stomach, and ordered it to spit her up, which was good because if she hadn't she'd have been digested pretty quickly. She also ordered it to stop fighting (not realizing that this order, given outside the stomach, ACTUALLY applied to the nearest 600 HD of creatures, including the entire party and many nearby elves), so it summoned a nastier friend, who whipped out a spiked chain and stunned Mike.
Sonnet suddenly realized that these were devils, and could only be killed by blessed silver weapons, so she ran off on Sawyer's back to get some.
That left Kijj and Morgan to take down the pair of devils, which they did, although the original one (who'd walked through an invisible portal Mike had seen and blocked off with a wall of force early on) was still regenerating.
That was when the BOSS devil decided to get involved, opening another portal and walking through to retrieve his buddy. He had a powerful Sanctuary effect, but Kijj broke through it to strike him with his spear -- and suddenly lost all his strength. ALL of it. Down to 1. Lini fixed it with a Resurgence, but Kijj was really leery about hitting the guy again.
So they traded spells back and forth a bit -- Kijj and Morgan with elemental darts for 20 or 30 (after his save), the devil-lord-thing with a 128 point flamestrike, yada yada, until the little gnomish evil thing managed to drag his slowly regenerating servant back through the portal, and close both of them -- after cackling about how much he'd enjoy Sonnet once he got his hands on her.
A minute or so later, Sonnet got back with the blessed silver arrows -- too late to do anything with them. About the same time the city guard, several powerful NPC wizards, and a silver dragon showed up to investigate the disturbance.
last week | next week
Morgan's player was really annoyed by the Lini vs Sawyer subplot. Especially the part at the end where Lini still hated Sawyer. He went so far as to say that if Lini wouldn't help Sawyer to the best of her ability, they should dump her. I'm not in favor of ditching our only cleric over something like that, especially when it's Stacy's fault for using the stupid deck of many stupid things. Let her lose HER cohort over it.
