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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain aka Cookie (07/05/2021)

The session picks up from where we left off last week; while trying to find the drow that is suspected to be hiding out underground in some kind of stronghold, we found some diamonds above a lava pool. Quint made a bridge to try and get to the diamonds to mine them but came under attack. After a fight between us and the attackers, who were some magma maphits and some bronze sables, the maphits blew up the diamonds we'd been trying to get.

After a few moments we look around at the rest of the damage caused and notice something; one of the explosions has broken through a wall, exposing a tunnel of some kind. Quint goes over to investigate and notices some kind of room at the end made with stone bricks. Some of them are cracked, and a few of them are mossy.

Quint starts making his way along the tunnel, gesturing for the others to follow him. He takes his time along the hallway, being careful where he steps in case he sets off a trap. He reaches the room without incident and steps inside, with the others also catching up to him without setting off any traps.

We all look around this first room and notice that stuff that was in here has been moved; while we don't know what exactly would have been in here, we can see places in the room where the dust patterns suggest that things had been here, but have been taken away. There are still some decorations in this room though; various dragon pictures are carved into the walls, and judging by the sizes and shapes of the dragons they're all Black dragons.

Quint walks along a hallway to the left, passing a small junction along the way. He takes his time in case he activates any traps and looks around, noticing some dragon statues with mouths pointing in the general direction of the ground. He steps on what initially looks like a normal piece of floor only to realise too late that it's a pressure plate, and the two statue heads next to him shoot purple flames at him.

Quint stumbles backwards off of the pressure plate, calling out to the others that he got hurt. Harmony calls over that we saw the purple flames, and as Quint turns around to look he spots a lot more traps along this corridor; several pressure plates lined up with the statues, tripwires criss-crossing the space above the tripwires to stop people jumping over the pressure plates, and a huge dragon head that appears to be rigged to swing down and hit whoever triggers the tripwires.

He quickly comes back over to us and tells us about the rest of the traps he saw, then decides to head along another hallway opposite where we walked in from. He comes to another junction and looks to the left, and sees some kind of statue in the middle of a room at the end of the hall, standing in a big fountain-like bowl. He slowly walks over to the room, and without walking into the room fully he can see some sort of red liquid in the bowl. There's also a distinctly coppery, metallic smell in this room, which is also concerning.

He turns and comes back to the rest of the group and tells us what he saw. Javier sighs and mutters about how he could have just stayed at the town with the other elves, and Rosania and Harmony both try to comfort him. Quint approaches Rosania and asks her to come with him to investigate, and because Harmony is more familiar with Javier and can comfort him better than she could, Rosania agrees.

Quint leads Rosania to the statue room, walking right up to the statue's bowl and peering inside. Now that he's closer he realises that it's not liquid at all -- it's some kind of paste, though exactly what it is is unclear. Curiosity gets the better of him and he reaches out to touch it, and the texture of it is really weird. Quint's eyes widen in horror as he realises that this is some kind of meat paste.

Rosania notices that there are words written on the floor in Draconic around the base of the statue. She knows some Draconic, and so she walks around it until she finds what seems to be the start of the text and translates it out loud while walking around;

"Raise high the hero that brought down the dragon Raise high the hero who made the great fall When he returns we will all raise our flaggons For the hero of legend will answer our call"

As she finishes reading Ned wanders into the room and looks at the writing himself. He can also read Draconic, and because he's the Eyeless One's paladin he has a more in-depth knowledge of Draconic. As such, he's aware that the words Rosania is reading as "Raise high" more accurately translate to "Damn", which he tells her about. Quint voices some confusion since "Raise high" would surely make more sense given the rest of the words, but agrees that that is a translation for the words. Rosania walks round again, reading out the words again using Ned's translation;

"Damn the hero that brought down the dragon Damn the hero who made the great fall When he returns we will all raise our flaggons For the hero of legend will answer our call"

She finishes reading and glances at Ned who nods, silently agreeing with the translation. Quint, meanwhile, turns his attention to the statue. He hadn't really looked at it before, but now he notices that the person depicted by the statue gives off this almost "holy" feeling. They seem to be some sort of paladin, and something about them seems familiar although he can't quite place it.

The words on the floor though, that talk about the hero who took down the dragon, remind Quint of some of the stories he's heard around these parts. The most common version of the tale is that after the dragon was killed, the cultists were angry and killed the hero. He's also heard that the hero had two companions who helped in the fight; a bard known as the Merchant and a rogue known as the Thief.

He looks back at the meat in the bowl again and pauses, realising something. The way the meat paste is layered up is weirdly inconsistent, with portions of it looking like they've been taken away only to have fresh piled on afterwards. It makes it hard to date exactly how old any of it is, but the freshest looks to have been here for about a week. There also doesn't appear to be a meat grinder in this room, so how the meat even got here isn't clear either.

Quint turns and walks back along the corridor we came in through, and Rosania turns her attention to a corridor to the right of the one Quint walked through. She walks along it and reaches another junction; the way straight ahead is blocked by rubble, but there's a door to the right and what looks like some kind of storage room to the left. She walks over to the storage room to look around, hoping to find some sort of clue.

Just as she steps into the storage room however, she gets attacked; two slimes attack her, and their combined hits are enough to send her tumbling to the floor unconscious. The sound of her hitting the ground echoes through the halls, and everyone starts running to try and get to her.

The slimes hear everyone running to help Rosania and start moving towards them. Ned, who's the closest to the slimes, hears them coming and casts Moonbeam, blocking the hallway so that if they want to get to him they'll have to pass through it and take damage.

Quint is next to arrive on scene, grabbing his crossbow and shooting at the closest slime as it tries to make its way through the Moonbeam. Small balls of slime get stuck to the bolt as it shoots through the big slime, and the slime seems to recoil somewhat from the blow.

Javier arrives and fires a Scorching Ray at the closest slime, hurting it even more. He decides to do a controlled surge and ends up getting the ability to fly, and he zooms up into the air above the fight. Ned focuses on maintaining his Moonbeam, but also grabs one of his handaxes and throws it at one of the slimes. It cuts straight through the slime, but instead of taking damage like Ned expected, the slime splits into two.

Harmony catches up with the rest of the group and casts Hunger of Hadar. The tentacle void opens up in the middle of the hallway, engulfing the group of slimes huddled around the corner. Several of the slimes are killed, and although one of them attempts to charge through the Moonbeam and tentacle void, it dies before it can get out.

Quint is worried about Rosania, so he decided to take a chance. He runs into the tentacle void to get close enough to her and casts Healing Word to get her back on her feet, then darts back out before the tentacles can hurt him. Ned shifts the moonbeam closer to the other slimes, catching them all and finishing off one.

As Rosania wakes up and looks around, the two slimes that are left notice that she's awake and start moving back towards her. Still a little disoriented from being unconscious and unsure of where everyone is, she starts panicking when the slimes start approaching and turns into an Allosaurus. As an Allosaurus she moves towards one of the slimes and slashes at it with her claws, only to get the same reaction that Ned did; the slime splits into two and doesn't seem to take any damage at all.

Before any of the slimes can react however, Harmony hits the pair that just split with an Eldritch Blast. The other one seems unsure of what to do, and ends up succumbing to the pain of the tentacle void. With the fight over, Harmony and Ned both dismiss their spells while Javier slowly drops back to the ground.

Quint speaks up, asking if anyone needs healing after that fight. Rosania shifts back into her elven form and raises her hand, deciding that if Quint is offering then she'll save her own spell slots. However, it seems that Quint was only offering to heal anyone who urgently needs it, because despite looking directly at Rosania and noting her raised hand, he turns and walks away. She stares after him in mild disbelief, then heals herself.

Quint heads back to the hallway he'd been walking along when Rosania was attacked and starts walking along it again, with the rest of the group following close behind. He doesn't get very far though; we find the way blocked with a pile of rubble. Unsure of what to do about it, Quint decided to leave it for now and go back to look in the storage room that Rosania had been looking at.

As we head back to the storage room, the door catches Quint's eye. He walks over to it and tries the handle, but it's locked. He notices some Draconic written on the archway above the door though, and since he also understands some Draconic he translates it for the others;

"The dragons blood ran thick Through each dent and crack And from that blood was born A new terror of Arrak While in its first form weakened It could not attack And so we, the cult of Red’ne Swore to bring its power back"

We all stand there for a moment, processing the words and trying to work out what they could mean. Then Quint turns and walks towards the storage room, being careful in case any more slimes are lurking around. He enters the storage room and looks around, and one thing that stands out to him is that certain things aren't here.

There are empty spots on the shelves that have been marked for various pieces of equipment, like rope or pickaxes or arrows, as well as other generic survival gear and food supplies. In one corner of the room he finds a stack of wooden planks, although the way the dust has settled around them suggests there were more planks here at one point.

One other thing he can't see in this room is a meat grinder, although after seeing the slimes he's fairly sure that they were the meat grinder themselves -- capturing and digesting any source of meat that wandered down here before regurging it and depositing it in the bowl to consume later.

He heads back to the group and Rosania takes charge again, leading them back to the trapped corridor. She's pretty sure that something important is at the end of it, but in order to confirm her suspicions someone needs to get over there to have a look around. She walks over to the tripwires and takes out her sickle, then swings it at the tripwire with the intention of cutting through it. Unfortunately she doesn't quite manage to cut the wire, and the huge dragon head swings down and sends her flying backwards.

It takes her a moment to recover enough from the shock to sit up, and she grimaces and clutches her chest as she does so. She glances at Quint out of the corner of her eye and is once again surprised by his reaction; although he looks a little concerned, he immediately turns his attention to the trap.

After a moment of consideration he ducks down and starts walking along the hallway, balancing his weight on the edges of the pressure plates and being careful not to fully step on them. He makes it past the traps without incident and walks along the corridor, coming to a stop outside of two doors.

The way the doors are built remind him of cell block doors, but something strange about them is that there doesn't seem to be any way to open them from this side. He reaches through the bars in the door and feels around for some kind of mechanism that could open the door, but can't find one.

Quint walks back towards the tripwires and warns us to stay back, then cuts the wires. Since he's on the other side of the traps he doesn't have to worry about the swinging dragon head, which allows him to cut the wires for us.

With that trap disabled he starts trying to work out how to disable the pressure plates, but Harmony proposes her own solution. She fireballs the pressure plates, breaking them and ruining the mechanisms within. This sets off the fire-breathing statues of course, and judging from the intensity of the flames they'll be running for quite a while.

It takes about an hour for the flames to finally stop, and during that time Rosania recovers a bit from the injuries she sustained from being sent flying by the dragon head. She gets up from where she was resting against the wall and the group all head over to the doors.

Quint is busy casting a spell on himself when we get there, and when he finishes he takes his mouse Dave out of his pocket and places him on the other side of the door. Dave runs over to the other side of the room, where there's a heavy set of wooden doors. Quint casts Thaumaturgy on the doors and they swing open, and Dave scampers into the room on the other side. Quint turns to us and explains; he cast Speak with Animals on himself and sent Dave to go explore the room on the other side of the doors.

After a couple of minutes Dave rushes back and describes the room he went to explore, and it seems to be a nicely decorated bedroom. The draconic decoration theme is present throughout, and one other point of interest that Dave tells Quint about is something he'd seen on the way back to him; a lever of some sort, set pretty high above the cell-block style door.

Quint relays this information to us, and Rosania decides to take matters into her own hands. Her plan is pretty simple; turn into a mouse, hop through the iron bars, turn back into herself and pull the lever to open the door and let the others through. Sure, she's still not the best at this whole wildshaping thing, what with only having been a druid for less than a month, but how hard can it be?

As she starts the spell she starts thinking about mice. If she focuses on what she wants to turn into, she can turn into it. So she starts thinking about mice and rats in her head. Mice and rats and mice and rats. Both are pretty cool rodents. Sure, all rodents are cool, but mice and rats are probably the coolest. Well, to be perfectly honest, racoons are pretty top tier rodents as well. They're pretty cute, with their stripy tails and tiny little paws. You know what other rodents are cute? Capybaras.

Just as the mental image of a capybara appears in her head she feels the transformation happen. She realises what happened but it's too late to stop it, and the rest of the group watch as Rosania turns into a capybara in front of them. As soon as the transformation is complete Rosania immediately reverts it, swiftly becoming herself again and ignoring the embarrassment at having failed that starts to creep in.

Determined to prove that she can do it, she starts the spell again. And this time she's not going to turn into a capybara. Not a capybara. Not a capybara. Yes they're cute, yes they're a rodent, but that's not what she needs to be right now. She needs to be able to fit through these iron bars, and a capybara is too big to do that. Pretty big aren't they really, capybaras...

Once again the transformation happens, and Rosania's eyes widen as she realises the mistake she made. Not only did she spend the entirety of casting the spell focusing on capybaras, she was also thinking about how big they are...as the transformation finishes Rosania stares at the ground in embarrassment. She's a capybara again, and a bigger capybara than before.

Mortified at having failed again, she swiftly turns back into herself and hurries away, noticing as she goes that Javier seems to have a small smile on his face. Her face starts burning up and she quickens her pace, mentally bracing herself to hear laughter behind her as she flees to the first room they'd walked into.

That's where we left off for the night. Will the party ever be able to open the doors? Will we find the diamonds that we came here for? Is the drow still alive here or did the slimes get to him first? And what could all the draconic imagery and poetry be about? Guess we'll have to wait until next session to find out...

#recap #Cookie's recap #cookie #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain aka Cookie (30/04/2021)

The session picks up from where we left off last week; the group have just fought some raiding drow soldiers, and Quint picked up a book that the lead drow dropped, opening it on a random page and finding a poem titled "Wings of Black". While Quint was looking at that, Rosania was checking over the lead drow and determined that she was merely unconscious rather than actually dead. With that determined we all head back to the temple with Rosania carrying the Drow.

Back at the temple the elves thank us for our help and restrain the drow using a sheet of metal twisted into rudimentary shackles. Once that was sorted everyone went back to sleep. There were no further interruptions that night, and everyone was able to rest.

Once everyone started waking up the next day Rosania went to go check up on Javier and Harmony. When she got over to the pair she was surprised to see that Javier was still trancing, however Harmony was awake and was gently stroking his hair. Not wanting to disturb Javier, Rosania waited until Harmony was looking her way then gestured to her and tilted her head to the side, trying to ask without speaking if she was ok. Harmony paused for a moment then nodded slowly, and satisfied for now Rosania left them be.

Quint is sitting on one of the benches with the book. He opens it up from the beginning this time and starts reading through it. Rosania comes over to him and starts reading the book over his shoulder, and Quint moves the book so that it's easier for Rosania to read. Most of the book is written in Elvish and what looks to be Undercommon, and they all seem to be prayer rituals of some sort.

However, there seems to be some prayer rituals that are written out in Draconic. From what Rosania can tell, the ones in Draconic seem to be the ones that are actually being used, and the others all seem to be in this book as some sort of way to divert attention. What's more, everything in this book is hand-written, and was probably copied out of at least one other book. Looking through the book fully, the pair find that the only thing written in Common in the whole book was the Wings of Black poem.

The drow has woken up by now, and she's looking round the room scowling at everyone. Quint goes over to her and asks why she attacked the village, only to be asked why he wants to know. As he tries to explain, she spots the book and tells him that he shouldn't have looked at that since for all he knows it could have been a diary, and people tend to write very personal things in their diaries.

Quint asks her what she came to the village for in the first place, and the drow explains that she's looking for her fallen order; he's done something to wrong her and the society they both live in, and she was sent by her Matron Mother to come and get him so that he could be punished, and since it seemed that the village was harbouring him it had been decided that it wasn't all that bad if it ended up as collateral damage.

She explains that around the time this person disappeared three other powerful figures in the community went missing, and their homes had been burnt down. What's more, judging by the book (which had belonged to him) he was worshipping another deity aside from the Matron Mother, which is considered to be a horrible crime in her society. As such, his punishment would likely be death, either at her hands or at the Matron Mother’s hands.

Quint explains that there aren't any drow in town and asks what makes her so sure that the person she's looking for is here, and she remarks that if he truly isn't in the village, there is rumored to be some kind of structure under the village that he might be in instead. She asks us if we could go fetch the dude since she's no longer in a position to do so, but Quint turns her down since we're here on business ourselves and don't have time.

The drow asks what we're here for, and Quint turns to Rosania to have her explain instead. Rosania doesn't want to tell the drow, instead simply remarking that it's "confidential business". The drow remarks that it could surely wait, and offers to pay us if we help her locate and capture the fallen order. Rosania comments that she wouldn't want to be paid for something like this, but before she can explain what she means by that Quint says that he doesn't want to be involved with someone's death.

The drow explains that if she doesn't return to her Matron Mother with the fallen order then the village would likely be attacked again, with even stronger forces this time, and tells us that if we didn't want the people who lived here to die then we really ought to help her. Quint turns to Rosania since she's somehow ended up leading the group throughout all of this, and not wanting anyone else to get hurt she begrudgingly agrees to help the drow.

With that settled, everyone in the party starts getting ready to go, including Javier who's finished his trance. Quint asks about getting some extra food for everyone and the elves give it to him for free since we helped fight off the attackers. Once everyone's ready to go we all set off towards the mountains to find a cave we could navigate through to get underground. With Quint leading the way as he's used to mountainous terrain, we find a cave pretty quickly and head inside.

As we walk through the cave a strange, salty smell hits our nostrils. It smells like seawater, but it can't be. This cave and the mountains we're in are pretty far inland, so it doesn't make sense. Something else that doesn't make sense is the moss and algae and seaweed growing around the cave, and the overall very damp feeling of the whole place.

The deeper into the cave we go, the more we start to see signs of life. There are barrels of various shapes and sizes around alongside some strange lanterns that glow blue. And then we come upon what seems to be a shipwreck blocking the way. There's a nice dark purple curtain in front of us like a curtain, which seems to be made from a sail of some sort, and there's lights inside the ship as well as talking, which suggests somebody's there. The only way we'd be able to get past is by going through the boat itself.

Quint moves over to the curtain and tries to peer round it, holding onto the rail as he does so. Suddenly the rail breaks and he falls down, pulling down the curtain as he does so. The room inside is exposed, and we see three elderly women gathered around looking towards Quint. They seem surprised at what's going on, and they look round at the rest of us as well.

Quint apologises for breaking the curtain and one of the woman tells him it's ok, and that everybody makes mistakes sometimes. The ladies invite us all in to have a rest and eat some food, and when Quint tells them his name they introduce themselves as Anastasia, Cortana and Agatha.

We all relax and have some fish stew that the women give us to eat. It's alright, far from the best but hardly the worst. Once we're all finished the women show us to the back door so that we can leave, and we see this lake with zohorgans in. Some of them are just chilling out on the sides, but most of them are swimming around in the lake, forming tornado-like formations. The water is so thick with blood and bits of flesh that it looks almost black, especially in this low lighting, and something about the way it looks and smells makes Rosania wonder...was it really fish stew that we ate?

There's a small bridge that extends across the water, and Quint steps out onto it first, taking his time so that if he triggers any traps he'll hopefully have time to react. Nothing seems to happen, so he edges along the bridge while being wary in case the zohorgans try to attack. About halfway across the bridge, he happens to glance up and sees what looks like his family, coming round the corner and waving to him. As he watches, some zohorgans sneak up on them and pounce, dragging them to the ground and mauling them.

Quint screams in horror as this plays out in front of him, and spins round to start running back across the bridge much to the confusion of everyone else, who don't see anything. Anastasia tells Quint not to be afraid as the zohorgans won't hurt us, they're only pets. A couple of us turn to look at her when she says this, and all of a sudden the three women change forms.

Where the women were standing there are now three sea hags, and they cast some kind of spell. Quint, who is still out on the bridge, feels more fear wash over him and freezes. He can't get any closer to us, but he definitely doesn't want to go towards the vision of his family being killed. Glancing around, he decides to do something incredibly stupid and jumps into the water. He lands in the middle of one of the zohorgan tornados and they start attacking him, but he manages to get out of their clutches. As he does so he happens to glance towards the end of the bridge where the illusion of his family being mauled is, and he realises it's an illusion so it doesn't scare him any more.

Cortanya tries to cast some sort of effect on Quint, but he shrugs it off. Anastasia and Agatha shoot lightning at the rest of us, and we all get knocked out. All of us, that is, except Javier. As he starts to fall, his hair starts glowing and he stumbles, staying on his feet. His magic aura spreads across to the rest of us, and we get stabilized.

Javier glances round at the rest of us and sees that we're all unconscious on the ground. His magic surges within him, and his hair starts glowing so brightly that the entire cave is bathed in golden light. The three hags realise they fucked up and start scrambling backwards away from Javier, but he conjures two fireballs in his hands and hits them with them full force. They get burnt up and fall into the water, and the zohorgans all swim over to eat them, leaving Quint to get out of the water without harassment.

As Quint makes his way back along the bridge back towards the rest of the group, some flumphs appear floating in the air courtesy of Javier's magic surging. They take in the scene and immediately panic, flumphing around trying to get away. Quint calls out to them that we mean no harm, and one of them calms down enough to come and float around near him.

Just as Quint gets over to the group a modron appears near Javier, once again courtesy of fluctuating magic. It turns to him and tells him that his current emotional state is not very productive, and to please calm down. Quint tells it that maybe it'd be best to leave Javier alone for now and let him calm down on his own. The modron decides to ignore that advice and tries to grab Javier for some reason, only to get blasted full-force by some magic missiles, which yet again are caused by Javier's fluctuating magic.

Quint is shocked as he sees the modron get completely destroyed right in front of him, but Javier's magic is still going haywire. As he watches, Javier's magic heals him, casts some sort of confusion effect on him then turns him into a sheep. And he's still glowing as well. Worried about the dazed elf-sheep hurting himself, Quint walks over and grabs him then sits down near the others, gently stroking Javier to keep him calm. A few seconds later the flumphs vanish, and while Quint is a little disappointed he figured they wouldn't stick around very long.

About an hour later, as everyone else starts waking up Javier turns back into himself. The confusion wore off long ago but he couldn't exactly do much as a sheep, although now that he's back to himself he's pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. He shoots Quint a look that says "Please never mention this ever" and hurries over to Harmony to check if she's ok.

Once everyone is ready we all head deeper into the caves, slowly leaving the salty smell behind as we travel downwards under the ground. Eventually we reach another open cave, with grass growing along the floor and a tree growing in the middle. There's a nice lake in the room as well, as well as some familiar jelly-fish looking creatures flumphing around.

These aren't the same flumphs that Javier had summoned, but Quint is still excited to see them. He walks over to them and strikes up a conversation with one of them, learning that they'd been feeding on the emotions from the hags and zohorgans. He offers to take them all to the surface once we find the drow and the diamonds, and after explaining to the flumphs what the surface is like they all agree.

The flumphs tell us about the drow passing through this cave, and how he'd offered to take them to his "house" deeper in the cave. Rosania asks if they could take us there since it sounds like somewhere we need to go, and though confused about why we'd want to go there the flumphs agree.

We all head deeper into the cave, with the flumphs forming a circle around us. Quint and the flumph he's been talking to are near the front, and whenever Quint moves near the flumph it starts floating upwards. Quint gets caught up with making the flumph float up and down, and Rosania grins to herself as she watches this happening.

As we get near to where this "house" is, Ned happens to glance in the direction of a lava pool and stops, having spotted what looks like diamonds embedded in the rock above it. He calls out to the others and we all stop and look, and while it's exciting to see the diamonds there isn't any way to get over to them or mine them out, at least not at the moment.

The group all debate between each other on the best way to try and get the diamonds. There is a mineshaft just opposite the lava pool that the diamonds are above, and there might be a pickaxe or two in there, but we'd still need to get across to the diamonds in the first place. After some back and forth eventually the group agrees that the best course of action is to cut down some stalactites and stalagmites to make some form of bridge over to the diamonds.

Quint gets a pickaxe from the mineshaft and starts cutting down the nearby stalactites and stalagmites. They break into small pieces, but they're big enough to make a somewhat stable bridge if he's careful about how he layers them. It won't stay up for very long though, so he'll have to be quick otherwise he'll fall into the lava below.

As he sets off across the lava building his bridge, Rosania decides to try and help out in whatever way she can. She turns into a pelican and follows Quint, preparing to catch the diamonds in her beak if they fall into the lava. Before we can even get as far as that though, some bronze sables come crawling out of the lava. They scramble onto the bridge and attack Quint, rendering him unconscious due to their scorching metal. As Quint falls, Rosania manages to catch him in her beak.

Javier is the first out of the other three to react to this situation, attacking the bronze sables with some kind of thunder magic. Harmony is next to react, and seeing that Rosania seems to be about to swoop over to the others she decides to cast Hunger of Hadar. A large black void of tentacles opens, engulfing Rosania and the sables. It extends down towards the lava, and the lava seems to be thrashing around. Something's alive in the lava, and it hates the cold emitted from the tentacle void.

Ned sprints out onto the bridge to attack the sables, but because of the tentacle void he can't see anything. He lashes out anyway and lands a hit on something, dealing a fair amount of damage to it. As he does this he feels the bridge wobble ever so slightly under his feet, and knows that it won't stay in one piece much longer.

The creatures that are alive in the lava reveal themselves, and it turns out that they're magma maphits. They breathe fire at Javier and Harmony, but don't manage to hit them.

Out in the tentacle void pelican-Rosania becomes overcome with how painfully cold it is. She feels herself turning back into her regular form and manages to land on the bridge, still carrying Quint. Once she lands she starts racing across the bridge, making it out of the tentacle void. As she runs she glances back towards the void, feeling a little annoyed with Ned. It had been her that he'd hit, and while she understood that he likely couldn't see anything she didn't understand why he ran out onto the bridge in the first place with the void opening. She turns her attention back to Quint and casts Healing Word, bringing him back to consciousness.

The bronze sables crawl on top of Ned and try to bite him. They don't succeed, but their metal is still hot enough that they hurt him anyway.

Seeing how things are playing out so far, Javier casts Beacon of Hope. Harmony concentrates on maintaining her tentacle void, but fires off an ice spell at the magma maphits and misses.

Ned manages to escape the sables' grasp, and feeling that the bridge is on the verge of giving way he sprints to get back to solid ground, passing Rosania on the way.

Before Rosania and Quint can make it off of the bridge it collapses under them, and they both fall into the lava. Quint immediately falls unconscioius again, and Rosania is barely conscious herself. The magma maphits swim over and grab Quint, but the flumphs (who up until now had been too scared to do anything) fly over to Quint and spray him with their stink spray in an attempt to get the maphits to leave him alone. It works, and the maphits even take Quint to land themselves and throw him up onto it.

Rosania hauls herself out of the lava, barely managing to keep her grip due to the amount of pain she's in. She spots Quint lying unconscious and panics, worried about what Javier's reaction might be. Adrenaline kicks in and she propells herself onto land, doing a little sommersault and landing gracefully next to Quint.

The bronze sables lash out at the flumphs, but the flumphs backflip through the air away from them. Javier witch-bolts the maphits in the lava, and Harmony casts Distant Whisper on them. Ned decides to attack the sables, and casts Moonbeam against them.

Some of the maphits scramble out of the lava and slash at Harmony, not dealing very much damage at all. Rosania heals Quint a little again then turns to the maphits, grabbing her wand out and forming the thorny whip again. She swings it towards one of the maphits and hits it, but it's barely phased by the attack.

Javier swings his rapier at one of the maphits and casts Booming Blade, dealing a bit of damage but not a lot. Harmony uses Distant Whisper on the sables as well as the maphits, and takes them all out. As they die the maphits all explode, and the group turn in time to see one of the maphits exploding right next to the diamonds. The diamonds that weren't destroyed in the explosion fell into the lava below, and everyone stared at where they had been in disbelief.

(Cue dramatic end credits ig)

#recap #cookie's recap #cookie #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/highlight reel of Friday's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain aka Cookie (23/04/2021)

Last session, Rosania lead the group to a mining village to go through the mines and try to recover diamonds needed to revive Jayfice. On the way they were attacked by some skeletons and spiders, who were swiftly defeated by the group. They rescue a young wood elf called Avadele and return them to the village where they live, and while the group are resting in the temple overnight Rosania is jolted from her thoughts as a signal horn echoes through the night.

This is where we pick up from, and Rosania is not the only one to have noticed the horn; the rest of the party all stop what they're doing and look at each other in confusion. Quint gets up and walks over to the window, but it's completely dark outside; the elves who live here all have darkvision, so there are no lights of any sort outside.

Some of the elves from earlier all hurry into the room led by the healer, who gestures for everyone to stay quiet and put out the small lanterns they'd brought out for Quint. He turns to our group and quietly explains that the horn we heard is a war horn; the village is likely going to be attacked, and if the attackers are using a warhorn then they're likely a sizable force.

Quint pulls a torch out of his pack and starts lighting it, while Rosania steps outside to see if she can see the would-be attackers, determined not to let them cause any damage. She can't see anything unusual even with her darkvision, so she turns in the direction the horn seemed to come from and starts walking in that direction. She's wary of coming under attack, otherwise she'd be running.

As Rosania walks a voice calls out from somewhere south of the workhouse. "I have come to retrieve an asset. If you do not return it to me, we will burn down your little town." She hesitates, and Quint catches up and asks what we should do. Ned is hurrying after the pair, however it seems that Javier and Harmony are staying behind for now.

Knowing that it won't do any good to wait around for something to happen, Rosania glances at Quint and mutters "Well that's rather harsh" to him before turning and continuing in the direction of the speaker. Though she doesn't show any signs of it, she's feeling a lot more nervous about the attackers with this threat being made. As she walks, the voice calls out again. "I'll give you 5 seconds. If you don't give me what I want, I'll start burning your buildings down." Sure enough, the trio hear fire cracking somewhere where the voices seem to be coming from, and some arcane muttering.

Rosania panics. She thought she'd have more time to get to the attackers, that there'd be enough time to talk to them and stop them from attacking, she doesn't even know what they could want. All of that, plus the stress of having such a short time limit in the first place, hits her all at once and she feels the scales rippling across her skin as the world starts shrinking around her.

As she turns into the Allosaurus she starts running in the direction of the voice, and hears the others hurrying after her. Her darkvision fades away as her body shifts into the huge scaled form, but she's able to make it past the workhouse. As she rounds the corner, she sees a drow woman on the back of a large cow, and she's summoning a fireball that's somewhat illuminating her and her steed. There do seem to be other figures here as some of them are blocking her line of sight, but they're not close enough to the drow and her fire to see properly.

The drow glances at Rosania and speaks again, adressing her directly. "I won't hurt you beast. I don't want to play games. Just give me what I want and I won't reduce this town to ash." Rosania blinks in surprise at being referred to as a beast, but before she can do anything the drow casts her spell. A line of roaring fire shoots from her hand and hits the wall of the workhouse, causing a large explosion. The smell of burning alcohol wafts through the air as the drow raises her voice. "Alright. Now that you see I'm not messing around, if you give me what I want maybe I'll douse the fire."

Quint runs up behind Rosania and calls over to the drow, explaining that we don't know what she wants. She looks over to him and tells him that the temple has been defiled. Confused, Quint explains that we only arrived a few hours ago and have no idea what's going on. She informs us that if that's the case, we'll die last. Quint says that surely we can come to some kind of arrangement, and after a moment of thinking the drow agrees. She explains that she's looking for one of her fallen Order, and tells Quint that he has exactly one minute to go and get them otherwise she'll continue her attack. Quint turns and sprints back to the temple, and unsure of what to do Rosania stands watching the drow and her forces.

Back at the temple, Quint runs over to the healer and tells him that the drow wants one of her fallen order. The healer is confused as there aren't any fighters who may be part of the order here, however he does have a plan that might at the very least buy us some time. Feeling guilty, he turns to one of the elves who needs healing after being caught in the explosion and tells them that he's going to heal them before making them fall asleep. Then he picks them up, hands them to Quint and tells him to take them to the drow.

Quint rushes back to the drow and carries the elf right over to her. She looks down at the elf, then slowly looks back up at Quint. "What mockery do you take me for? Do you think I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a high elf and a drow?" Quint tells her that he was told to bring this elf to her, and she remarks that perhaps the town ought to be "cleansed" after all.

Hearing this, Quint panics. He grabs hold of the drow and casts Inflict Wounds on her, severely injuring her. She glares at him, and orders all of her forces to attack Quint no matter what. All of the army turn to look at Quint, and he realises quite how screwed he currently is; there are five drows at the front armed with bows; two at the side he's standing on with swords, and two sprites that he can see. They all start attacking him, with two more drows with swords coming up behind him to attack, and while most of them miss the hits that are landed are very serious. Quint screams in agony, and the rest of our group hear the screams and start racing towards us.

Quint doesn't think he's going to make it out of this fight, at least not conscious. He decides to try and take down the drow at least and reaches to grab her again. She's prepared this time though, grabbing her shield to block him and creating magical armour around herself. He pulls away, casting a healing spell on himself to heal up a little bit.

Rosania charges at the fighters, swiping at the nearest melee fighter with her claws. She manages to knock them off their feet, and as they fall she leans forward and chomps them. They seem pretty injured, however they're not dead yet.

The drow casts a spell to manipulate the earth and trap Rosania in place, then orders her stronger soldiers to attack her. The cow disengages from the fight and walks away, carrying the drow to safety. Her forces meanwhile do as they're ordered; the shooters shoot at Quint, the melee fighters all run over to Rosania (turns out there were four of them) and attack her, and the sprites (turns out there were three) poison Rosania.

Harmony and Javier make it over to the group. Harmony conjures a tentacle void, which attacks the soldiers and kills some of them. Javier conjures a fireball, and it hits the group full force. Rosania and the stronger drow fighters survive, but Quint is knocked to the ground unconscious and the other attackers are killed.

As soon as Rosania sees Quint on the ground, a feeling of dread washes over her. Her mind goes back to the fight with Ivan in the temple, when Jayfice was killed and Javier, upon realising that, started stabbing himself to try and activate some kind of magic. Terrified at the thought of a repeat of that experience, she forces herself back into her elven form and casts Healing Word on Quint.

Seeing the fight turn so swiftly in our favour, the drow on the cow casts a spell to make the ground around us crumble and shift. Quint is shaken about so badly that he ends up almost being knocked out again, but it throws her troops off balance and they don't manage to hit Rosania again.

Harmony and Javier just want the fight to be over. They both cast fireball at the group, killing the remaining drow soldiers but knocking out Quint and Rosania in the process. Thankfully, Ned was out of fireball range, so he runs over to the pair and heals them up.

As soon as Quint comes round again he loads up his crossbow. He takes aim at the final drow and fires, shooting her and causing her to fall off of the cow. As she falls a book falls out of her grasp, and Quint scrambles to his feet and makes his way over to grab it, closely followed by Rosania.

The cow doesn't attack the pair when they reach it, and as Quint picks up the book it starts licking him. He starts to open the book on the first page when he pauses, instead opening at a random page nearer the middle of the book. The page it opens on has some text written out in Common, and a peculiar feeling washes over Quint as he reads it.

"The great wings of black

They fly through the night

The hero he sought her

To prove his great might

The cultists of Red’ne

Did not forgive his great slight

The hero, once righteous

Now lost his inner light"

(Recap ends dramatically.)

#recap #cookie #cookie's recap #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/highlight reel of Friday’s session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain aka Cookie (16/04/2021)

The session picks up from where we left off last week; Rosania making the decision to go check out the mines to try and get the diamonds there instead after finding the jeweler's business style to be rather unsavoury for her liking.

Most of the group stay behind at Hallow to look after Jayfice's body and get some rest, but Ned, Quint, Javier and Harmony all accompany Rosania to the nearest mountain to locate the mines.

As we approach a mining town near the mountain, Rosania pauses briefly to look at the sky. It's a calm day, weather wise. Blue sky, a few fluffy clouds, bright sun...so when lightning suddenly strikes about 200 feet ahead of them, creating a fairly large crater in the ground, naturally it catches everyone off-guard.

Quint lets out a scream but quickly collects himself, leading the way to go look at the crater. Rosania hurries after him while the others hang back a little, with Javier keeping just ahead of Harmony in case things get nasty.

As the group draw closer to the crater they spot a wood-elf approaching the crater from the direction of town. Quint calls out to them but they don't respond, and as Quint nervously scans the area he spots some giant spiders moving around. Rosania also looks around but doesn't register the spiders as her mind is on other things.

The elf walks right over to the crater and peers inside, only to suddenly get shot by a bunch of arrows. They fall over unconscious and the shooters are revealed to be two skeletons on the backs of skeleton horses. Two other skeleton riders accompanying the two who just shot the elf shoot at Quint and Ned, while the spiders come racing over with skeleton jockeys of their own who shoot at Javier and Harmony.

Quint is the first to react, shooting the closest skelehorse and rider with his crossbow. The spine of the skeleton snaps in half, but the ragged old t-shirt it's wearing prevents it from falling apart completely.

Rosania is next to take action, pulling out her wand and summoning the thorny whip which she swings at one of the spiders since it's closest to her. The spider dodges out of the way, however a quick glance at Quint is enough to determine that he's upset at her trying to attack it.

Rosania isn't the only one to notice how upset Quint is; Harmony, who seemed about to attack one of the spiders as well, catches sight of Quint's displeased expression and quickly changes target, instead shooting a beam at one of the skeleton horses and disintegrating it.

Javier stares dully at the monsters and casts Fireball at them, wiping out all of the skeletons and skeleton horses. The spiders survive but are half-dead, and Javier rolls his eyes and pulls out his fire rapier, activating it ready to fight.

Ned warily eyes up the situation and thinks for a moment, then casts Moonbeam. What looks like a giant eye opens in the sky above a couple of the spiders and shoots them with a huge beam that comes shooting out of the center.

The spiders panic and break formation, cartwheeling around everyone and stopping in front of each person.

Quint attempts to cast a spell to speak with the spiders, but they seem too panicked to listen to what he has to say. He notices the elf again and casts Spare the Dying, stabilizing them for now.

Rosania turns to the spider in front of her, gripping her wand tighter. She's not exactly a fan of spiders, so to have one this big standing this close to her was...unnerving to say the least. She manages to keep calm however, swinging her wand-whip again and this time landing a hit. The spider falls to the ground but isn't quite dead yet, and she reckons another blow would finish it off.

As much as she doesn't want to upset Quint, Harmony knows she doesn't really have a choice by now. She blasts the spider in front of her, killing it instantly.

Javier glances quickly between all of the spiders. Since Harmony's already killed her spider, Rosania seems to have things under control in regards to her spider and Ned can handle himself, he runs over to Quint and attacks the spider in front of him with his fire rapier, finishing it off.

Ned grabs one of his axes and swings at the spider in front of him, cutting its head in half. He spots the spider in front of Rosania and, realizing it's still alive, directs the moonbeam to target it instead. The beam delivers the final blow, and everyone relaxes a little.

Rosania stares down at the spider in front of her for a moment then silently puts away her wand, glancing over at Javier and Harmony as she does so. She's concerned about both of them, and despite having only been part of the group for a short time she can tell that something's not quite right with how either of them have been acting.

Quint, meanwhile, turns his attention to the unconscious elf. Sure, they’ve been stabilized, but they need healing. He scoops them up in his arms and starts hurrying in the direction of the town they came from, and one by one the others follow him.

We walk into the town and there's no-one around. All of the windows and doors are shut tight. Quint calls out to announce our presence and one of the temple windows opens slightly, and the person inside asks who we are.

Quint explains that we mean no harm to the people here, and that we rescued the elf in his arms and brought them to be healed. The person at the window moves away and opens the door, although there's rope tied to the door so that it can be quickly pulled shut if needed.

We all walk over to the temple and head inside. As we do we notice that everyone in here seems to be elves, and that the one who'd been talking to Quint looks pretty old. Since Quint is a human and Javier and Rosania are both elves the elves who were here don't pay much attention to them, but they all seem pretty surprised at the presence of Harmony and Ned, what with them being a tiefling and a dwarf respectively.

The doors close behind us, and the room is plunged into nearly complete darkness. The only light is from a small handle-hole in the window, which isn't enough to properly see by. This wouldn't be an issue were it not for the fact that Quint has no darkvision what with being a human. He awkwardly asks if someone can light things up, and about a quarter of the elves immediately conjure various light spells. The room gets so bright that some of the elves have to dismiss their light spells.

The elf who opened the door asks Quint what exactly happened, and he explains that the unconscious elf was walking towards where the lightning had struck, looked in the crater and got shot by skeletons on skeleton horses. The elf sighs and comments that Avadele (the unconscious elf) was probably trying to pet the skeleton horses, and asks someone to go fetch a Truth spell scroll so that they can ask Avadele when they wake up.

He leads Quint to the altar and has him place Avadele down on it. As one of the elves comes over with a Truth spell scroll, he heals Avadele and they wake up. As Avadele wakes up, the head elf casts the truth spell and asks them what happened. Avadele pauses for a moment, then responds by saying "There was a horsey and I went to go pet it, then lightning struck and big needles stuck into me. Then I was here." The other elves in the room exchange glances and roll their eyes, clearly expecting an answer like this.

Quint tells Avadele that they were shot, and they respond in confusion by saying they didn't see anyone with spell-shooters. Quint asks if they know what arrows are and Avadele nods, which is when they catch sight of the arrows which are still sticking into them. Before anyone can stop them they break off all of the arrow staffs, much to the horror of Quint and unsurprised looks between the other elves.

As a few of the elves start conjuring Mage Hands and using them to remove the arrow heads still embedded in Avadele, Rosania walks over to talk to Javier. She asks if he's ok and he just looks at her, then quietly says that he just wants Jayfice brought back to life. She nods sympathetically, then decides to go through with her plan and asks if they might need therapy after they come back.

Javier pauses for a moment, but tells her that aside from the missing leg and injured arm, theoretically they should be fine. Rosania explains that she's asking because she's not sure how traumatizing being dead would be, since she's never been dead before. Javier agrees, muttering about how he's never actually been dead before either. He tells her about a therapist he knows and tells her that if she's looking for therapy he highly recommends that one, and Rosania nods to herself and comments that "Therapy can be very useful" before walking away.

It's as she's walking away that she realizes Javier's wording. "If you're looking for therapy." She stops walking and blinks a few times, then turns and looks over at Javier, who's moved to the side and is currently sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the walls. Does he think she was trying to get therapy recommendations...for herself?

She rolls her eyes at the idea and turns away from him. She doesn't need therapy. Sure, a camping trip on her own to get over her feelings for her best friend that ended up being three years of isolation and only ended when she accidentally became a druid was weird, and turning into a...dinosaur, as Jayfice called it...every time she got extremely scared was probably a little concerning, but she was fine. Nothing another camping trip wouldn't fix, anyway.

As she reaches this conclusion, the head elf walks over to her and rests his hand lightly on her head. She realizes that he's just trying to heal her and allows the contact before silently pointing him towards Javier. She wasn't attacked during the fight so she doesn't need healing, and as soon as the head elf turns away she turns and walks towards Harmony.

She asks Harmony how she's feeling, and Harmony explains that she's feeling ok since the head elf healed her. Rosania nods and asks how she is mentally, and Harmony admits that she's a little shaken up after everything that's been going on, but is more worried about Javier. Rosania nods sympathetically and says "If you ever need to talk about it..." but trails off as she's unsure of what to say. Harmony thanks her for the offer and heads over to Javier, sitting down with him and running her hands through his hair as he snuggles up to her.

Despite neither of them watching what she's doing, Rosania feels it'd be a little suspicious if she just asked them how they were and not the others. She walks over to Ned and asks how he's doing and he tells her he's ok, and satisfied for now she walks over to ask Quint the same question.

Quint seems calm enough as Rosania approaches him, but when she asks how he is, the full gravity of the situation hits him. He starts panicking, rambling about how he didn't expect any of this to happen and asking why the fuck we even need diamonds in the first place.

Rosania has no idea what to do. She can feel her own fear starting to bubble up in her chest, which only escalates as she wonders what the hell she's going to do if she turns into a dinosaur in here. Thankfully though, Harmony has also noticed Quint's panicked state. She quickly brings the group together and casts Calm Emotions, and a state of calm falls over everyone. Quint stops panicking, Javier and Harmony seem more at ease, Ned looks calmer than before, and Rosania feels pretty relaxed herself as the emotions just seem to dissolve.

The head elf comes over to check up on us himself, and Harmony reassures him that we're fine now. Quint asks if we can stay here at the temple for tonight, and he responds by saying that if we're happy with sleeping on the pews since all of the rooms are filled up, then that's alright with him.

Later that night, Rosania and the others start to make themselves as comfortable as they can on the pews. Rosania's mind is buzzing as she tries to relax, thinking over both Javier and Harmony's words. Since it seems that Harmony may share her concerns about Javier's mental state, she makes up her mind. As soon as Jayfice is brought back to life, she's going to get Javier some therapy, no matter what.

Satisfied with this conclusion she slowly slips into her trance, only to be jolted out of it again by a loud noise coming from outside. It's loud, and annoying, and...familiar. Her mind kicks back in as she tries to work out where she knows it from, and as the others start sitting up and looking around she realizes what it is.

It's a signal horn.

(cue dramatic cut to black with text that reads "To be continued..." since that's where the action ended)

#recap #Cookie's recap #Cookie #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday Night's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain AKA Cookie (09/04/2021)

The session picks up with a brief recap of last week; the group approaching the cleared area of forest and a sense of dread washes over Rosania as all the feasting animals suddenly flee. Rosania is currently a pony, as she has been pulling the cart containing the dead body of Jayfice as well as the sleeping form of Ned.

However, instead of jumping right into the action where we left off, we jump a little backwards in time and meet Quint, a lone hunter who Locke lovingly describes as a Reynard Ferehorn fan and wannabe. He's walking through the forest some distance away, following some animal tracks to track down some game he can eat. He's also Pigeon's temporary character since Jayfice is, of course, dead.

As Quint follows the trail, he comes across a place where the snow seems to be pressed flat in quite a large shape. Several of the animal tracks, as well as some markings that seem to resemble animals or humanoids being dragged along go up to the flattened snow, then disappear. Quint starts feeling uneasy, and he readies his crossbow before continuing to follow the animal tracks.

Eventually he finds where the tracks he's been following stop, and they lead to a building that gives off a horrible smell of death and decay. Quint throws up in a nearby bush and places the scent as something akin to that of Zombies. As he starts walking away he hears a strange noise, and turns around to see the building MOVING TOWARDS HIM. He lets out a scream of terror and runs away as fast as he can.

Back in the clearing with the party, as the wave of dread washes over Rosania she starts to hear screaming, intermingled with trees falling. As the group walk into the clearing a man with a crossbow (Quint) sprints out opposite them while screaming, before spotting them and running over.

When Quint reaches the group Aiac walks over to him and asks what's wrong, and Quint explains that there's a building chasing him. He's still extremely panicked as he explains, and Aiac calls over to Inora to ask her to give Quint medical attention since he seems to be a little...out of it, so to speak.

As Quint starts protesting, a tree falls down in the background and the building appears at the edge of the clearing. Aiac pauses, taking it in, then grumbles under his breath before having the rest of the group remove the cart from Rosania and move it away from the clearing. As soon as the cart is detatched, Rosania turns into herself and walks fully into the clearing, accompanied by Javier and Harmony.

Rosania stares at the building for a moment, but it's stopped moving by now and just seems to...be there. If she hadn't known better she would have said it'd had always been here, but she'd spotted it make its approach.

She pulls out her wand and instinctively swings it, and the thorny vines she'd used to whip "Klilic" back at Firstlight came spilling out of the tip of the wand, smacking the side of the building. It doesn't seem to have any effect however, and for all intents and purposes she seems to have just whipped a regular building.

Javier raises an eyebrow, and a weird glowy hand appears by the doors to the building. It grabs the handle and opens the door, but again, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly concerning about the building from what he can tell.

Harmony focusses on the walls of the building for a moment, seeming to try and do something. Whatever it is doesn't work, and she turns to the others and speaks up. "I just tried to Mold the walls of that building, since they seem to be made of stone...whatever it is, I wasn't able to do anything to it."

Quint definitely feels concerned hearing that. "Maybe we should just...walk away and...leave it alone maybe." He turns around and starts walking away, but as he steps on what seems to be a small pile of snow near the edge of the clearing his feet get stuck. He casts Inflict Wounds on the snow and starts trying to pull himself free, but can't get out.

Small, sharp icicles come shooting out of the snow pile and start trying to embed themselves in Quint's ankles, almost as if the snow pile is trying to bite him. The icicles don't succeed in hurting Quint, but the snow pile also isn't letting him go, that's for sure.

Rosania glares at the building, unsettled by it and seemingly unaware of Quint's predicament at the moment. She swings her thorny whip again, striking the building much harder than before. She thinks she sees the building shudder ever so slightly from the impact, but she can't be completely sure.

Javier turns to walk away from the building and go back to the cart, but stops when he sees Quint trying to pull free from the snow. He pauses for a moment, then spins back around to face the building and casts Witch Bolt, striking the building hard. This time the building definitely seems to be hurt, and Javier does his best to focus on continuing the bolt.

(Harmony tries something and fails it.)

Quint manages to pull himself free of the snow pile and stumbles a little closer to where Javier and Harmony are standing. The snow pile rockets towards the group before the icicles shoot out of it again and jab Javier in the back of the leg. He doesn't seem to even notice, concentrating on the bolt still shooting at the building.

Suddenly a zombie walks out of the open door. It limps slowly towards Javier and lunges at him, but loses it's balance and ends up face-planting in front of him. Just like with the snow pile, Javier doesn't even react to it, instead focusing on continuing the bolt.

At this point Ned wakes up in the cart and clambers out of the cart before leaping across to where his friends are. As soon as he lands the scent from the building hits his nostrils and he starts wretching. Harmony also starts being sick, but Javier and Rosania both block out the scent as best as they can.

Rosania swings at the building with the whip again, but just like the first time she doesn't seem to hurt it at all.

Javier's still Bolting the building, and the expression on his face is completely dull. He just seems completely done with everything.

Quint casts Turn Undead, and the zombie that had faceplanted in front of Javier gets up and runs away. Quint notices how much damage Javier is doing to the building and spots the puncture wounds from the icicles, so he heals him.

The snow pile bites Javier again, trying to break his concentration on the Bolt. Javier doesn't even acknowledge it, still just focusing on the Bolt.

Rosania lashes out with her whip again, striking the building harder than before. As the building seems to shudder slightly again she grins to herself, secretly enjoying swinging her whip around.

Javier doesn't seem to be reacting to anything at this point, still just Bolting the building and dealing even more damage. Quint heals Javier again, amazed at how focused he is.

Ned and Harmony are still being sick as the snow pile bites Javier once again. Once again Javier doesn't acknowledge the snow pile. He's just completely done with everything at this point.

Rosania swings her whip again, striking the building but not causing any damage. She happens to glance over at Javier and the grin fades as she registers the blank expression on his face.

Javier keeps blasting the building as Quint heals him again. Ned and Harmony are still throwing up, which is definitely concerning.

The building suddenly sinks away underground, and the snow pile that had been biting Javier vanishes as well. Rosania runs towards it and briefly considers trying to follow it, but dismisses the idea.

Javier stops blasting as soon as the building vanishes. He walks over to Harmony, who has thankfully stopped being sick now, and walks with her back to the cart. Rosania watches him go, her brow furrowing as she thinks to herself.

Quint walks over to Ned (who has also stopped puking) and asks if he has any idea what that building was. Ned tells him that it was probably a mimic, although he's never heard of one that big before.

Rosania walks over to the cart to go see Javier and asks if he's ok. He looks up at her and nods before going back to hugging Harmony. Rosania pauses and asks if the group should get back on the road, and Javier just shrugs, not even looking at her this time. She takes that as a sign that yes, they should all definitely get going, and calls out to everyone to start getting ready.

Aiac walks over to Quint and thanks him for helping in the fight against the building. Quint asks if he can accompany the group wherever we're going and Aiac tells him to do whatever since we're all heading to Hallow to revive Jayfice, although he warns him that it will be very dangerous. He starts making a comment about idiots following Jayfice around but stops himself, then abruptly turns away and starts ordering everyone around.

Rosania turns back into a pony, and Ned reattatches the cart to her. Once everyone's ready they all set off, following the road through the forest.

A week or so passes on the journey with nothing of note occuring. Then one day, with the edge of the forest nearing, the group happen to spot a small pile of clothing and adventuring gear. Quint stops to have a closer look and notices that everything is of high quality, perhaps belonging to a noble. He also notices that the skin seems to smell of wine, and spots a necklace sitting among the clothing. What's more, there's a name engraved on it; "Ingwin".

A little further along the path there's a smashed up pillar with some kind of sigil on it, though nobody recognises what it is. As we carry on along the path, we spot another pillar with the same sigil on it. Nobody gives it much thought, and we keep on walking.

All of a sudden the pony vanishes.

It takes a few moments to realise what's happened, but Rosania's turned to smoke and is blowing towards the forest. Quint is the first to react, grabbing a Bag of Holding and racing after the smokey form to try and catch it. He loses sight of the smoke pony for a moment but catches up again, and in that time Harmony charges over, grabs the bag from him and scoops up Rosania herself.

As they walk back to the cart Quint asks Harmony what could have caused Rosania to turn to smoke, and she thinks for a moment before responding that it was probably a cult of some sort. She remembers hearing that traps like these were used to forcefully lure people to places, and that things didn't always end particularly well for those caught up in them. The effect should wear off eventually though, so it's just a case of waiting until it does and checking on Rosania every once in a while so she doesn't suffocate.

As they arrive back at the cart they see someone approaching from behind them. Turning around they see an elven woman dressed in fine clothes, much like that of a noble, approaching them. Quint asks if the clothing on the ground belongs to her and she says they aren't, however she leans closer to look at them and remarks that they look like Ingwin's clothes. She explains that the pair had been hunting together when they got seperated, and that if these are his clothes then something bad must have happened to him.

Quint offers to help her look for him and she agrees, and the pair head off into the forest together. She walks a little bit behind him, but makes sure to keep him in sight. Once they're some distance from the cart Quint suddenly becomes paralyzed, then something attacks him from behind and he falls unconscious.

Back at the cart, after some time the noblewoman comes running out of the forest, carrying Quint who seems to have been stabilized. She tells the group that she got seperated from Quint briefly and when she found him again he'd been attacked, but she'd done what she could to stabilize him and brought him back here. Javier asks Inora to heal Quint, which she does.

As soon as Quint comes round he sits up to try and spot whatever attacked him, sending Inora flying. He tells the others what he remembers of before the attack, including that he was paralyzed just before the attack. The cause of the paralysis isn't clear, and while the noblewoman suggests a few theories none of them completely add up.

The group discuss their plans to head to Hallow and offer the noblewoman to accompany them. She thinks it over and agrees, although she points out that they'll need a horse. Quint explains that that won't be an issue and checks in the bag again, but Rosania's still in smoke form.

After another hour Quint pulls Rosania out of the bag as she's finally stopped being smoke. The cart is reattatched to her and we all head off again, this time without incident.

Eventually we arrive at the gates of Hallow. The guards stop to search us due to the rumours of a war being on the horizon and as soon as they see Aiac they send us to the sheriff. The sheriff checks us all over himself but decides that we don't pose a threat and lets us in to Hallow.

Rosania wanders through the city with the others in tow, thinking back to how Javier had been during and after the building fight, as well as after both fights with Ivan. She eventually finds a building that appears to be a therapist's office, and she starts thinking about how she's going to bring it up to the others.

She makes a mental note of it and asks Inora and Javier what sort of diamonds they need to revive Jayfice. Inora explains that it's a special type of diamond that needs to be cut and refined a certain way, and that it'd probably cost about 300gp in total. Javier muses that they could probably get it from a jeweler's or the mines, and Rosania decides to head to a jeweler's shop first.

The man at the counter greets the party as they walk in, asking what they need. Unsure of what to say Rosania glances over at Javier, who reluctantly takes the lead; he explains that we'd like to buy diamonds for our dead friend. Initially the shopkeeper assumes he means a funeral gift, but when Javier specifies it's for revival purposes and Inora explains what exactly she needs, he explains that it'll take a while to order in since he'd be sourcing from another town. He has his concerns about the shipment being attacked but voices hope that another shipment would be attacked instead.

Rosania is unamused by this comment and stares at the man, who explains that that hope is from a business standpoint rather than a moral one. He says that the total would be about 500gp, prompting Rosania to ask where the extra 200gp is coming from. He asks what she means and she tells him that she was told it'd only be 300gp (although she didn't specify who told her) and he tells her that if she has a receipt of him telling her that then he'll gladly give her a discount, however he doesn't recognise anyone here so doesn't think any of them have been in this shop before.

Unamused that her question has gone unanswered, and put off by the comment about another shipment being attacked instead, Rosania decides to check out some other options first and calmly tells the shopkeeper that "We'll be in touch" before leading the way out of the shop. Javier brings up the rear, and he overhears the man muttering something about how we can't care all that much about our friend after all. As Javier walks out he remarks that the shopkeeper's an asshole, however the comment accidentally comes out at a loud volume.

The others ask Rosania where she plans to try and source the diamonds instead, and she thinks things over before telling them that the mines might be worth checking out.

Will Rosania find the diamonds needed to revive Jayfice? Does Jayfice even want to be revived anymore? What was it that attacked Quint in the forest?

We'll have to wait until next session to find out.

#recap #Cookie #Cookie's recap #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday Night's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain AKA Cookie (02/04/2021)

The session picks up from where we left off last week; everyone who'd been fighting Ivan is recovering from what happened. Jayfice has drunk the potions they took from the potion shop, Rosania has cast a healing spell on Javier and apologised for hitting him with the flour bomb, then he and Harmony have shifted to lean against the potion shop wall. Oh, and Ned has gone off somewhere on his own, possibly back to the tavern to have a drink.

When Jayfice realises that they can understand the grass around them, they try asking the grass if Ivan is standing on any of it. All they get however is the grass screeching that so many of them are dying, why were they being burnt, why were they being trampled on, and everything is agony.

Jayfice glances towards the group of Ivan's crew who are setting up camp; there's probably about 40 of them that they can see and they're working in smaller groups that are all spaced out around the area. Some of them are setting up a fire pit and tents, while others are foraging around for supplies. As much as Jayfice wants to try and take them on, they know that it isn't practical and that they'd swiftly be outnumbered.

Inora comes towards the party with some salves that she'd made with ingredients in the potion shop, and goes over to give some to Javier and Harmony first. Jayfice starts trying to taunt Ivan to make him show himself, but unbeknownst to them they're still talking in plant language; all anyone else hears coming from their mouth is the rustling of grass.

Rosania walks over to Jayfice and tells them they're rustling, but Jayfice doesn't understand what Rosania's saying. They get the idea that Rosania can't understand them and tries talking in Infernal, but all that comes out is more plant noises unlike anything heard on the Material plane.

Rosania has no idea what to make of this and starts muttering to herself, causing Jayfice to panic a little. They start shouting at their friends asking if they can be understood, but nobody can answer. After some thinking Rosania comes up with an idea; they grab a stick from Jayfice's bag and write "youre rustling" in the snow.

Thankfully Jayfice can still understand written common, and writes back that the plants are screaming. When Rosania asks how Jayfice can hear the plants they write "HOW THE FUCK WOULD I KNOW. HELP ME"

Inora comes over to see if either of the pair need salves, and when Rosania explains Jayfice's situation Inora explains that essentially, Jayfice is cursed. It'll take a skilled magic worker to undo these effects, but thankfully it can be done. She asks whether Jayfice wants a larger salve or a smaller one, and Rosania takes the smaller one for them. Inora doesn't question this since Rosania seems to be a druid, and druids can understand plants right?

Jayfice heads into the middle of town so they can see if any of the other groups need help fighting Ivan's forces. So far though things seem to be going ok, and the fights seem to be reaching some sort of middle ground. Neither side is actively advancing on the other, and at the moment it seems that they're having some kind of trench warfare.

Rosania walks over to Jayfice and takes the stick from them again, writing out "you are cursed" in the snow. Jayfice looks at the words, then at Rosania, then at the words, then at Rosania, then stares at the ground in disbelief. Rosania asks what Jayfice did to get cursed, and Jayfice responds that they drank the "special liquids". Rosania smirks when she sees that although doesn't comment on the word choice, and Jayfice glares at her.

Javier and Harmony move to sit by the temple, and Jayfice goes over to ask if they have any writing tools since it would be easier to write on than writing in the snow. Javier takes Harmony's calligraphy kit from her bag and gives it to Jayfice before going back to hugging her. Jayfice goes back over to Rosania and explains via the parchment that there's magic of some kind in the temple that they might be able to use to defeat Ivan.

The pair head into the temple, and Jayfice hears breathing in the back room. They start being as quiet as possible, and Rosania picks up on that and stays quiet as well.

Jayfice tiptoes over to the desk where the egg is and writes on the parchment that they're back and need help fighting before pressing it against the egg. When they take the parchment back they see that their words are gone, replaced with the sentence "What's it worth?"

They ask what the egg wants and press the parchment against the egg again, much to the confusion of Rosania who walks over to the desk as well. A draconic voice in Jayfice's head responds to Jayfice's question with "Treasure," and Jayfice offers to give them the stick, only for the dragon heads on the wall to shoot fire at it. Jayfice yanks the stick out of harm's way and asks what sort of treasure the being wants, and gets the response "Powerful treasure." It's then that Jayfice works out who they're talking to here.

This temple seems to be set up as a place of worship for a dragon arch-devil called Tiamat who has a lair in one of the layers of the 9 hells. If she wants a powerful treasure, there's a chance it might be for an evil cleric that she's the patron of, although she does also like hoarding treasure so it could be for her own collection.

Jayfice explains that we need help to fight Ivan and his army, and Tiamat tells them that due to contractual agreements she can only help with the army, but she is at least willing to help us fight. A contract forms on the parchment which Rosania and Jayfice both look over, however Rosania doesn't understand the language it's in and thus can't determine if there might be any unsavoury clauses.

Jayfice decides to sign the contract, and when they do the sound of wing beats can be heard outside. They run to one of the windows and look out, and sees a dragon swooping down on Ivan's groups and wiping out a large amount of them.

All of a sudden the door to the back room slams open. Rosania and Jayfice turn to see what's going on but there doesn't seem to be anything there. However, they do both sense some kind of movement in the room as someone moves towards Jayfice, and it seems like it might be Ivan.

Panicking, Jayfice strikes out against where they think Ivan might be standing but doesn't find him. Rosania runs towards Jayfice and shouts to Javier and Harmony that Ivan's in the room before striking out herself, however she also fails to hit him.

Harmony makes it into the room first, running to the middle and looking all around to try and work out where Ivan might be standing. After a moment she casts Witch bolt, managing to hit Ivan with it.

Ivan stops being invisible right as he swings at Jayfice with his war picks. He catches them in the shoulder blades and rips towards their chest, and as Jayfice falls unconscious and falls over Ivan stands on their leg and rips it off, causing Jayfice to let out a shriek of pain, which to everyone else is just an agitated rustling.

It's at that moment that Javier walks into the room.

He spots Jayfice and screams, and sensing something bad is about to happen Rosania stumbles backwards out of the temple. Javier ends up zapping everyone else in the room before firing two Scorching Ray beams at Ivan as Rosania runs back inside.

Feeling extremely panicked (and admittedly rather guilty) over having narrowly avoided being zapped by Javier as well as seeing Jayfice be brutally attacked, Rosania turns into an Allosaurus again. She spins round and bites Ivan, although it's not as effective as it could be due to her being really panicked right now.

Knowing he doesn't have much health left, and satisfied at having made the bird unconscious for now, Ivan walks past the Rosaniasaurus towards Javier and Harmony, then attacks them both twice with his war picks, taking down Harmony before turning invisible.

Javier sees Harmony fall down and loses it. He grabs his fire rapier and stabs at where Ivan had been standing but misses. He thrusts forward again, stabbing Ivan through the heart. Rosania spots this and as Javier yanks his rapier free she stomps on Ivan.

However, she didn't count on Javier stabbing at Ivan again.

Thankfully for Rosania, Javier manages to narrowly avoid stabbing her, angling the rapier to stab between her toes at the last second. She swiftly moves her foot away as Javier stabs Ivan one last time before using up all of his spell slots launching his most powerful spells at the now very dead Ivan to make sure he stays down.

As Rosania starts trying to calm herself down so she can turn back into herself again, she suddenly notices something.

The grass noises in the corner have stopped.

Jayfice finds themselves standing on a dock. In front of them standing in a small, 2 person boat is a skeleton delicately engraved with pristine runes and wearing black robes. They walk towards the boat and ask where they're going, and the skeleton explains that that's not up to him and he's just the ferryman. Jayfice can say where they'd like to go, but ultimately it's the gods who would decide.

The ferryman notes that Jayfice has sure made a name for themselves among the gods, and that they seem to be fairly restless. He says that Jayfice possibly has some unfinished business, and that if they were extremely desperate they could try and return to the Material Plane as an Undead. However, he notes that he's never seen anyone do that before, at least not with their soul still fully intact.

Jayfice decides that they want to go to Aborea, but is worried about how their friends will be without them. The ferryman explains that he can't see far enough into the future to say for sure, but that if Jayfice wanted he could show them how their friends were right now. Jayfice agrees, and the ferryman uses his oar to stir the water a little. An image appears of the inside of the temple, and Jayfice moves over to take a look.

Inora walks into the temple having heard the chaos from the potion shop. She spots Jayfice in the corner and runs over to them, desperately trying to stabilize them. After reaching the conclusion that they're dead, she glances over at Javier. Seeing the state he's currently in though, she attempts to lie and says that Jayfice is going to be fine.

Javier looks over at Jayfice and starts saying "No" over and over, grabbing his fire rapier and stumbling into the middle of the room. He stabs himself with it as Rosania turns back to normal, and she runs over to him and tries to knock the rapier out of his hands. She doesn't manage to do that, and Javier stabs himself again and almost falls unconscious, but his hair starts glowing and he sends out some kind of magical effect, stabilizing Harmony. When he realises that it didn't help Jayfice he crawls over to Harmony, hugging her and crying.

Inora casts some kind of spell on Jayfice's body as the scene fades away, and the ferryman explains that the spell would buy them some time to try and revive Jayfice, but that Jayfice would only return if they wanted to. He explains that Jayfice would be able to wait in whichever afterlife they go to, but Jayfice decides to stay at the dock with the ferryman.

They ask the ferryman for his name, and he introduces himself as Kalvaxus. Kalvaxus gets off of the boat and walks over to Jayfice, wobbling around a bit as he does so. He sits down next to Jayfice, and the pair start to converse to pass the time.

Back on the Material Plane, Rosania hurries out of the temple. She knows that people will be making their way there soon enough and doesn't want to be around when they find out Jayfice is dead. She has no idea how they'd react to that, but she doesn't want to be around when they do. She runs back to the tavern to have a drink, and as she steps inside she sees Aiac, Vannessa and Gorgak walk into town.

The trio spot Rosania dart into the tavern, but don't think too much of it. They head over to the temple to find Jayfice and the others, with Aiac walking in first and the other two following a few seconds later. The other group of fighters return from their battles as well, and having seen Vannessa and Gorgak go into the temple they head there as well.

Rosania isn't sure of what happened in the temple. All she knows is that everyone came back in complete silence. Nobody said anything to each other, they all simply bedded down for the night. She knew she should follow their example, but she just couldn't shake the images -- and the guilt -- from her mind.

She could have saved Jayfice. They didn't die immediately, she was sure of that, and she could have made it over to them and healed them. But no, she just had to panic and turn into that big lizard creature again didn't she? Was it a curse from the druids she'd possibly accidentally stolen the wand from, to turn into that thing whenever she got scared? Talaya did say it was possible that she would have upset the druids by taking it...

She sat in the corner trying her best to slip into a resting trance, but all she could think about was her panicked transformations. It hadn't hurt to transform, it was just annoying really. She took out her wand and looked at it, thinking. Maybe this whole transforming thing was a power that druids had that she was really bad at controlling?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of wings outside. Remembering Jayfice signing the contract earlier she stealthily moves over to the window to see what's going on, wondering whether or not to wake the others before deciding not to in case it's a false alarm.

As she reaches the window she begins to hear a voice talking. Looking out the window she can see a devilish woman talking to an elvish woman, and she recognises the elvish woman as the one she'd met during her isolation who'd talked about guns. As she listens, the devilish woman explains to the elvish woman that she was feeling generous and was willing to say that the elvish woman had successfully killed Jayfice and let her go free.

Rosania keeps listening as the elvish woman asks if she'd still have to do the "dirty work" for the devilish woman, and the devilish woman tells her that she wouldn't if she took this offer now. The elvish woman thinks it over for a few moments before agreeing, and the devilish woman flies up into the sky before nose diving towards the ground. A portal of some kind opens up below her, which she swoops through before it vanishes.

On the docks, as Jayfice's conversation with Kalvaxus pauses, they happen to glance towards the other end and sees the devilish woman they'd spoken to the previous night walking towards them. She greets Kalvaxus before telling Jayfice that they're going to be going with her now since she owns their soul.

Jayfice asks how that's possible when it was Ivan who killed them, not the assassin that the woman had sent, and she explains that she proposed the idea to the assassin who was happy to take it. Jayfice counters with the fact that it wasn't the assassin's soul to give in the first place, and after some thinking the devilish woman decides to leave them for now.

As she leaves, Kalvaxus tells Jayfice that it would probably be safer for them to go and wait in Aborea or, well, whatever afterlife they end up going to. Jayfice agrees, and the pair get into the boat and Kalvaxus starts rowing.

After a few minutes Kalvaxus stops rowing, leaning over the side and stirring the water with his oar. He announces that Jayfice is extremely lucky, and that they're going to get to go to Aborea after all. Sure enough, a small portal seems to have formed under the water, and there's a view of some mountains that can be seen. Jayfice thanks Kalvaxus then steps off of the boat into the portal and enters freefall.

Jayfice scrambles around flapping their wings in a panic as they fall, unintentionally slowing their descent. Turns out that in the afterlife their wings work fine, although they don't quite register that fact until they land. As they get to their feet and look around, a woman comes out of a cottage nearby and walks over to them before nodding.

Back on the Material Plane, Rosania muses over what she heard outside. She figures that Jayfice is probably in danger wherever their soul is now, and starts thinking through her options. She remembers that Inora revived her and Ned after the fight with "Klilic" and decides that she could ask her if it would be possible to do the same for Jayfice in the morning. Satisfied for now at least, she finally manages to slip into a trance.

As soon as Rosania comes out of her trance she goes over to Inora, who is already awake, and asks what it would take to bring Jayfice back to life. Inora explains that she needs 300gp worth of special diamonds, and there aren't any in this town. Rosania nods, knowing that she doesn't have nearly enough, but hoping that perhaps the others could pool their funds to pay for Jayfice's revival.

Javier happens to overhear this conversation and gives the money to Inora himself, and adds that they'll also need a way to transport the body. Rosania nods again, already piecing together an idea. It'd rely heavily on this magic that she seems to have now, but figures it'd be worth a shot.

Once everyone is awake she raises her voice, asking if anyone knows how to build carts. A few of the group who are fairly knowledgeable about land vehicles figure that they could give it a shot, and head off to get the materials and put it together. Rosania then turns to Gorgak and asks if he could go get Jayfice's body, but Aiac cuts in and asks to go and get them instead. Since Aiac is Jayfice's brother Rosania immediately agrees, knowing that Aiac would probably want some time alone with them in case the revival does fail.

Rosania walks out into the town square and paces around for a few minutes, trying to figure out what she keeps doing (aside from being scared) to turn into that weird lizard creature. Vannessa comes over and shows her the cart, and it...it certainly looks like a cart. Everything has been nailed in pretty good. Was there supposed to be a nail sticking out by the back wheel? Eh, it'd be fine.

Aiac comes out of the temple with Jayfice's body wrapped up, and he doesn't really look at anyone as he places them in the cart. Everyone else comes outside, and Rosania attempts her transformation. And...well...she's certainly a horse. A small horse. Actually, she's turned into a pony. At the very least, she does seem to be able to think as herself in this form, which she'd not really stopped to think about during the times she'd been that lizard thing.

She also hadn't told the others what her plan is.

Thankfully they get the idea, attaching the cart to her before several of them climb into the cart. She’s initially surprised that nobody seems to be going to ride her, but figures that if she can think for herself in this form, it might have just annoyed her having someone on her back.

The group all set off, and Rosania notices that despite her not being a full-sized horse and the cart not running particularly smoothly, they seem to be making fairly good progress for the first day. Every once in a while they come across some kind of small marker leading onto a different path to the one they're heading along, and when they follow that path instead it turns out that the original path was blocked up ahead. She thinks it's strange that they keep finding these markers, but figures that maybe someone was travelling a little further ahead of them.

After about 6 hours Rosania suddenly turns back into herself, and despite her best efforts she can't seem to change into the pony again. The others seem to expect this however, and go about setting up camp. Once they've got everything set up Javier announces that he thinks if we keep making good progress like this we should get to the city in about three weeks. The others seem surprised at this news, but Javier explains; one of the wheels keeps catching on a nail sticking out of the cart which slows them down, and Rosania's pony form isn't quite as strong as a horse would be which slows them down more. Rosania feels a little bad about slowing them down, but decides that any progress is better than no progress.

The next day as the group travel onwards, they stumble upon a small camp. Thinking back to her time in isolation, Rosania figures that it'd be best to leave this as it is and carry on. Before we can do that however, a bunch of orcs come, seemingly out of nowhere, and surround the group. One of them addresses the group in Orcish, and Gorgak walks over and responds. The pair seem to converse for a couple of minutes, then the orcs all walk off. As we continue on our way several of the cart's occupants ask Gorgak what he and the other orc were talking about, but he just grins to himself and shakes his head.

Over the next few days we make steady progress, until one day we come across an area cleared of trees. The scent of rot and metal is thick in the air, and as we walk into the area it becomes clear why; the remnants of a fight between various humanoids and frost giants is spread across the clearing; there's about 13 humanoid corpses and 4 frost giant corpses. They haven't just been sitting rotting though; large carnivorous birds and several dire wolves are feasting on them.

As we try to process this gruesome scene, an immense feeling of dread falls over the group. The wolves and birds suddenly all flee, and Rosania gets the feeling that something powerful -- and dangerous -- is about to make itself known.

That's where we ended the session, and Locke revealed that the conversation that Gorgak and the other orc had was the lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up" translated into Orcish. I spent quite a few minutes laughing about that one! XD

#recap #cookie #cookie's recap #dnd #d&d

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday Night's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain AKA Cookie (26/03/2021)

The session picks up from where we left off last week; Jayfice keeping watch at the window and spotting a group of people in black and blue, led by someone in front dressed in green. Jayfice recognises this group of people; these are the Brokensky, and the person in green is their leader, bounty hunter Ivan Pierce.

Jayfice starts going round waking everyone up, grabbing a couple of pans to bang together to speed up some of the slower wakers. Once everyone is awake Jayfice explains that the Brokensky are on their way to the town right now. Javier simply doesn't have the mental capacity to deal with this information after everything that's happened and goes back into his resting trance despite Jayfice's protests.

Inora and Jayfice discuss what to do and Inora asks permission to inject Javier with some kind of substance. Javier untrances and points out that he can see and hear what's going on in his trance, but agrees for them to do whatever they need to do. Inora injects Javier with some kind of golden, glowy liquid while Jayfice starts making plans.

After some thinking Jayfice sends Javier and Harmony to go and look through the mailroom to see if they can find anything that could help them in a fight against Ivan. They then take Inora and Rosania to go and look through the potion shop.

In the potion shop, Inora looks around and explains that the potions haven't been made properly at all so would probably do more harm than good. She does however think there will be enough ingredients here to make medicine stuff to heal anyone who needs it during or after the fight. After some contemplation Jayfice tells her to do that and leads the way to the blacksmith, grabbing a few potions at random as they leave.

On the way over to the blacksmith, Jayfice introduces themselves to Rosania and formally welcomes her to the team. She rolls her eyes, prompting Jayfice to remark that she's going to love it.

Inside the blacksmith, Jayfice climbs up onto a shelf to get a good view of the room while Rosania judgingly stares at them. The pair look through the room to see if there's any weapons or armour, but there doesn't seem to be anything. Jayfice finds some coal and contemplates trying to set a building on fire with Ivan inside, but decides against it.

The pair head over to the general store next, meeting up with Ned on the way. As they walk over, Rosania starts thinking about trying to run away. She ultimately decides to stick around, but only because she feels slightly responsible for getting Jayfice's brother shot (long story) and wants to try and make up for that somehow.

In the general store, Jayfice picks up a pack from the counter while the others look around. The food stalls are all empty, and judging from the mess it was probably the potion-seller who took all the food. Since there doesn't seem to be anything of use here, Jayfice leads the group towards the bakery.

On the way over, Jayfice glances towards where they saw the Brokensky approaching, and while they're still some distance away they're closing in fairly fast. They head towards the bakery, but as they pass the small temple they decide to go in there instead. Rosania simply carries on towards the bakery, and Ned follows her.

In the bakery, Rosania clambers over the counter while Ned searches the main room. A door at the back catches her eye, and determining that there isn't much of use in this room she walks over to it. After one last glance around the room, Rosania gently opens the door.

Meanwhile, in the temple, Jayfice is looking around. There's five dragon heads on the wall around a desk, and a bunch of couches set up like pews. There's also an egg and an open book on the desk, but they decide to leave it for now, instead walking over to a door to a back room and opening that.

In the room Jayfice walks into, there are tables lined up with burnt bodies on them. Dragon heads are mounted above the bodies, angled in such a way that the mouths are pointing down at the tables. If anything were to pour out of the mouths, the bodies would be directly hit. Jayfice walks over to the dragon heads and touches one of them, and is unnerved by how...strange...it feels. Too smooth and detailed to be made of stone, but too pristine and whole to be dragon scale.

Jayfice walks back through to the main room and tries to grab the egg to look closer at it, only for four of the dragon heads on the wall to shoot fire at them. They manage to dodge most of the fire, but do get singed. They let go of the egg and walk out of the temple, deciding to come back to this later. As they leave they hear a strange sound, and turn around to see the fifth dragon head shoot a frost ray and put out the fire. They announce to the room that they're not done with this place yet, and they get the feeling that the temple returns the sentiment.

Meanwhile in the bakery, Rosania walks into the back room. There's a lot of flour, sugar and honey, but apart from that nothing of interest. She goes back to the other room and climbs back over the counter, then she and Ned head outside to meet up with Jayfice.

Outside Jayfice looks over to see how close Ivan and the Brokensky are, and is worried about how close they're getting. Rosania tells Jayfice what she found, and Jayfice heads back to the inn to talk with their brother and find out if Javier and Harmony found anything.

After some back and forth the group in the inn decide on a plan; they'll set up some barricades to force Ivan through one small area, and as he goes through someone will drop a flour bomb on him. They'll need all the time they have to tear down some of the other buildings' walls and set up their barricades, but they reckon it could be done.

Jayfice and their brother go to find Rosania back at the bakery again and Jayfice asks her to be the "dump boi" for the plan. Seeing her confusion their brother attempts to explain what Jayfice means, but ends up making Rosania feel nervous. Jayfice interrupts and explains themselves, and once Rosania understands the plan she agrees. The feathered siblings tell her that maybe she could turn into that "big lizard thing" again and attack Ivan as well, and while Rosania nods along silently she secretly panics.

You see, the thing about Rosania is that she's only been a druid for just over 12 hours at this point, so she's had no real time to get to grips with her powers yet.

So she has no idea how she did that or even if it could be done again.

She keeps this unfortunate fact to herself however, instead grabbing all the flour she can from the bakery and climbing up onto the potion shop roof to wait for Ivan to come.

As Rosania walks off with the flour, Vannessa walks over to Jayfice and shares some worrying news; a small group of Ivan's men split off from the main group and are circling round to the west side of the town. As Jayfice processes this info the elven woman they heard last night telepathically tells them that there's another group of Ivan's men heading round the eastern side.

Jayfice calls everyone available to the main square and tells them about Ivan's group splitting up, then they and their brother split up their own group to try and take on Ivan's units, with Jayfice, Javier, Harmony and Ned taking on the main group and luring Ivan through the flour bomb trap. Satisfied that they have all grounds covered, everyone splits off to fight their respective opponents. As Jayfice is about to head off with their group, they see a flash of green to the north. As they watch, they notice that it's someone in a green cloak, who stands facing away from them and waiting for combat. Then suddenly they vanish, and Jayfice hurries to catch up with their group.

As Jayfice gets into position, Ivan finishes his trek to the town. The Brokensky members still with him stay back and seem to set up a small camp, while Ivan starts talking to Jayfice and trying to convince them to surrender and just go back to their home with him since neither of them actually want to be in this situation. Jayfice stands their ground, although worryingly Ned seems to be pretty interested in Ivan’s plea.

Eventually Jayfice gets fed up of talking and fires an Eldritch Blast at him. All it really does is piss him off, and he starts making his way over to attack them as Jayfice Eldritch Blasts him again and Harmony casts Fireball at him. Up on the roof Rosania is waiting for the group to run past so that she can spring the trap on Ivan.

Ivan makes it over to the group and attacks Jayfice, Javier and Harmony. He doesn't attack Ned however, hoping this would help convince him to hand over the bird.

And Ned slowly walks up behind Jayfice, hand outstretched to push them into Ivan's grasp. Jayfice glances back at him, knowing what's about to happen and already accepting it.

Ned hesitates, seeing the expression on Jayfice's face.

Then he pats them on the back and Moonbeams Ivan instead.

Relieved at having not been betrayed by their friend, Jayfice goes back to trying to follow the plan and runs into the main square. Meanwhile on the roof Rosania keeps waiting to spring the trap, although having seen Ned almost hand over Jayfice she's feeling very concerned.

Ivan taunts Jayfice for running off and attacks Harmony with his two war picks, dragging her to the ground with them and spraining her unbroken arm. He swings round to attack Ned, but Ned is able to dodge out of the way.

Ned dives back towards Ivan and attacks him with his hand axe, not doing very much damage.

Javier is mad that Ivan's taken down Harmony. He glares at Ivan for a moment, and a weird mist forms around Ivan. As quickly as it appeared it's gone again, and Javier dual-fireballs Ivan.

Hearing their friends in trouble, Jayfice spins round and races back to the fight. They cast some kind of spell to knock Ivan prone, then Ned attacks Ivan again.

Rosania realises that there’s very little chance of the plan working out now. However, she keeps waiting on the roof in case she does get a chance to enact the plan, although the longer the fight goes on the more nervous she's getting.

Javier casts some kind of spell and swings at Ivan with his fire rapier, surrounding him with booming energy in the process.

Jayfice runs over to Harmony and casts Spare the Dying, stabilizing her and preventing her from dying.

Up on the roof Rosania decides that since the plan has already gone off the rails there's no point waiting any longer to see if it gets back on track. She carefully shuffles along the roof, then throws the flour bomb at Ivan. Unfortunately Javier gets caught up in the explosion, and he ends up more affected by it than Ivan. Needless to say she feels pretty guilty about that.

Ivan heals himself as the explosion settles, then attacks Javier with his war picks and drags him to the ground. He then gets up and moves over to Jayfice as Ned lashes out with his axe, barely doing any damage. He attacks Jayfice with his picks as well, sending them to the ground.

Ned rushes over to Jayfice and heals them, then casts Moonbeam at Ivan again.

Jayfice scrambles to their feet as soon as they come round, then looks Ivan in the eye and calls him a bitch. Then they cast firehand at Ivan's face.

Up on the roof, Rosania freaks out. She jumps down from the roof to try and help, and in the process she turns into an Allosaurus. As an Allosaurus she runs over to Ivan, and Jayfice finally works out what sort of creature Rosania's been turning into; they point at her with a massive grin and shout "Dinosaur!"

Rosania makes it over to Ivan and slashes at him with her claws.

At this point Ivan is pretty injured. He starts coughing up blood as he tells us that "This is the first...of many." Then he throws his war pick in the air and it multiplies itself before launching the clones at us. As we all get hit with picks Ivan turns invisible.

Ned is the first to notice and shouts for everyone to throw snowballs to try and find Ivan. He throws as many snowballs as he can, but eventually determines that Ivan isn't standing in the area any more.

Javier somehow manages to get back up on his feet, and his hair starts glowing a little bit. He outputs a warm, comforting energy, and it relaxes Rosania enough for her to turn back into herself. She runs over to him and heals him, muttering apologies for when she hit him with the flour bomb.

Jayfice brings out the three potions that they grabbed from the potion shop; one of them is a brown oily substance in a work glove, one of them is a glowy teal liquid in a capped horn, and the last one is a gassy azure substance in a tankard. They decide to drink from the glove first, and they poke a hole in one of the fingers before drinking as much as they can. The glove has clearly been used for it's original purpose before being a potion holder, which makes it even more disgusting. However, it seems to have relieved their hunger and thirst.

Emboldened by the success(?) of the first potion, they remove the cap from the horn and drink the teal potion. For a few seconds nothing happens. Then suddenly they start to hear agonized screaming. They wonder for a moment if they're hearing the screams of the damned before working out what it is; the potion lets them understand plant language, and all of the grass around them is screaming in agony. It's pretty disorientating to say the least.

Deciding to tempt fate, they drink the azure potion and...there doesn't seem to be any effect? Maybe it's just faulty. A faulty potion. Or maybe it was supposed to do something that Jayfice is already experiencing. Either way there doesn't seem to be an effect, and all of the potions have been drunk.

Unfortunately that's where the session ends. Guess we'll have to wait until next session to find out what's going to happen next!

#DnD #D&D #Cookie #Recap

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

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how is the dnd tonight?

-Nervous Laughter- We’re in danger!

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dnd-drunks-n-debauchery · 3 years

Text

Recap/Highlight reel of Friday Night's session

Brought to you by @nevergonnarollagain AKA Cookie

Before we started the action, Locke asked me whether or not I wanted him to be a nice DM or a meaner one. I chose for him to be meaner because I thought it would be funny.

We join the action as our party approaches the gates of the city on our way out. In front of the gates stands an Aaracroakra wearing an apron and regular clothes. Jayfice recognises this Aaracroakra as Klilic; the pair had been dating at one point, which is how they know him. Klilic's appearance seems fairly normal apart from a greatsword on his back. (This is important for later on.)

Both Jayfice and Klilic are confused at first, with Jayfice believing that this is some sort of illusion created by their mother (who, spoiler alert, is kind of an asshole). Klilic holds out his hand for Jayfice to examine, and upon determining that Klilic is not an illusion, Jayfice grabs him into a hug which seems to make him a little uncomfortable although he does reciprocate.

Jayfice eventually pulls away and asks Klilic to come with us out of the city, but Klilic counters with staying in the city instead. Klilic has lived here all of his life and runs a bakery here, which would probably explain why he's so reluctant to leave. When Jayfice tries to explain that the city isn't safe due to their parent's plans, Klilic simply responds "Then make it safe."

As Jayfice continues to try and persuade Klilic to come with us, Klilic turns and looks up at the top of the gate. Jayfice's father walks out, speedwalking slightly before slowing down to do a slow-mo walk in an attempt to look cool. It didn't work.

Jayfice's father tells Jayfice that their mother is very upset, and that whatever argument that they've had can be sorted by coming back to the castle and having a diplomatic discussion. Jayfice tells him that they've got no room on their schedule, but their father counters with the fact that Jayfice doesn't have any bookings listed in their diary.

Jayfice's father attempts to persuade Jayfice to come back to the castle, also talking to their brother and trying to persuade him to convince Jayfice to go back to the castle. When Jayfice declines he tells them he won't stop us leaving, and as a show of good faith he opens the gates and offers to answer any questions Jayfice has about the plans.

Jayfice decides to take the opportunity to ask about the full details of the plan, and their father explains; the plan is basically to conquer the whole of Arrack. They've enlisted the help of the Brokensky (a well-known gang of criminals who coincidentally want to capture/kill Jayfice) and plan to act through the Brokensky to attack other cities and drive a divide between them to make it easier to take them all over.

Since Jayfice's father is aware of the Brokensky hunting Jayfice, he offers to help resolve the situation if Jayfice goes with him to the castle. Jayfice shows a split-second of interest, and their father notices this.

He extends his offer to answer questions to the whole group and Rosania speaks up, grumbling that anyone who works alongside the Brokensky is bad news. Jayfice's father admits that he felt the same way at first, but that things have run surprisingly smoothly with them, aside from a few contract issues which he blames on his wife making comments in the meetings.

Jayfice thanks their father for his time and sends the rest of the group ahead, staying back to talk to Klilic and try one last time to convince him to come with us. Klilic really doesn't want Jayfice to leave, and draws his sword in an attempt to persuade him to stay. The pair have an intense conversation about Jayfice not trying to keep in contact during their exile, then Klilic casts fireball at the rest of the group, knocking out Ned.

Javier attempts to zap Klilic but only succeeds in giving him a light static shock, which unusually doesn't ruffle his feathers. (Literally. His feathers don't react at all to the shock.)

Rosania reacts next, preparing to cast Dancing Lights in an attempt to distract Klilic from the fight. However, her wand seems to tell her that that isn't going to work, so thinking fast she instead runs closer and casts Thorn Whip, and the magical whip drags Klilic closer to her.

Harmony follows Javier's example, zapping the fuck out of Klilic. Again, much like what happened with Javier's static shock, Klilic's feathers are not affected by the energy from the shock.

Klilic yeets another fireball at us all and Harmony gets knocked out, breaking her arm as she falls backwards.

Javier gets pissed off when he sees Harmony's arm break and fireballs himself, knocking out Rosania and killing Ned. When he realises that Ned is dead he spins back round to face Klilic and starts glowing like fuck. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Klilic is doomed unless Javier is calmed down.

Jayfice is conflicted. They don't want to hurt Klilic but he literally just killed one of their friends. They eventually make the decision to Eldritch Blast him, much to the amusement of their mother, who briefly appears as a hologram and taunts them for this decision.

Klilic is upset at Jayfice for attacking him, and they shout at each other for a moment before he starts to attack them, slashing their chest twice and prompting Jayfice to use their Hellish Rebuke. (They're a cambion who keeps the form of an Aaracroakra, that's why they can do that.) Despite Klilic being burnt by the Hellish Rebuke, his feathers, once again, show no real traces of it.

Remember how I said that Javier was pissed that Ned is dead? Yeah. He shoots some kind of lightning out of his chest that temporarily blinds Klilic. Then he charges at Klilic and attacks him with his fire sword as Jayfice shoots Klilic with another two Eldrich Blasts.

Jayfice asks the others to help snap Javier out of his rage, and they respond by fucking shooting him. Harmony, who has been healed and is back up on her feet, sends a death glare to Jayfice before attacking Klilic as well.

Badly injured, Klilic attempts to fly away and escape, but Harmony casts a Void of Tentacles spell and grabs him in it before smashing him into the ground, killing him.

And while all of this is happening Rosania quietly fucking dies in the background.

As Harmony dispels the tentacle spell, Jayfice approaches Klilic and casts Spare the Dying to ask why the hell he attacked them all like that.

But it turns out that this wasn't actually Klilic at all.

The creature we had been fighting was actually a Grey Slaad (a shapeshifting creature from another plane), and he has a mind-control gem in his brain. He explains that the gem told him what to do and that he'd likely be made to attack again if he was released, and Jayfice stabs him to prevent that from happening. While Jayfice and the Grey Slaad are talking, Inora revives Rosania and Ned, getting them back on their feet with 1 HP each.

Jayfice's mother appears as a hologram again and mockingly congratulates Jayfice for slaying an innocent creature, then flies up above the city and announces that Jayfice made a deal with a devil and attacked the city, ruined their crops, and declares that there is a reward for whoever can kill them and bring them back. Then she turns to Jayfice and declares "Let the games...begin." (Like I said, she's an asshole.)

A whole bunch of people start charging to attack Jayfice and our party, and Rosania (who, bearing in mind, just died and got brought back to life so will be feeling rather disorientated at best) goes into a full-on panic and turns into a fucking Allosaurus. Jayfice attempts to take advantage of this situation, yelling at the mob to stay back lest they send their "Uh, uh...creature" to fight them. They also threaten them with a boomstick and pleads with their father to close the gate, but the mob gets through the gate because their father hesitated. Jayfice asks the "big creature person" (Rosania) if she can help them, and Rosania turns and runs away.

Jayfice attempts to intimidate the mob again by changing to their cambodian form and yelling at them, but it just makes the mob angrier. With no ideas left Jayfice asks the rest of the group to help and dives behind them.

And the group gives the mob the same treatment they gave Javier.

Which is to fucking shoot them.

The entire fucking mob dies much to the horror of Jayfice, who casts Spare the Dying before turning and running away. The rest of the party follows them, and Locke comments that the Spare the Dying that Jayfice cast saved like one person in the mob.

Rosania leads the sprint from the city, noticing up ahead that there's a group dressed up in black and blue, led by someone out in front dressed in green. She finally calms down enough to stop running and turn back into herself, and decides not to tell the rest of the party about the group approaching. Jayfice announces that they'll need to find somewhere to shelter for the night and Rosania takes charge, silently leading the group to look for shelter.

Rosania leads them towards a group of trees, and while it would be a satisfactory place to shelter for the night a little voice in the back of her mind tells her to go just a little bit further. Trusting this voice, she leads them past the trees and we eventually arrive at a small, abandoned town. All of the buildings seem to have taken damage, but most of the buildings would be safe to shelter in. While there does appear to be smoke further in the distance, the party collectively decide to settle in at the abandoned town for the night.

We all head inside the tavern, noticing a rotten carrot and some rotted tatters that may once have been from some extravagant clothing in the corner. Upstairs there seem to be a lot of yuletide decorations, and one room in particular seems to be decked out in yuletide fancies.

During the night, Jayfice wakes up with a weird feeling that something's wrong. They can hear the crunch of snow outside, and sneak over to the window to see what's out there. They see a man standing next to the tavern looking shocked to have seen/heard activity in the town, and as they watch the man begins to cast some kind of spell.

Jayfice sneaks outside to talk to the man, and he explains that he's a potion-seller who lives in the potion-shop across the street. Jayfice offers the man some crackers, and as soon as they hold out the cracker box all the crackers are eaten.

Jayfice spots a fiendish woman and an elvish woman walking around talking, and lures the man inside before spying on the women. They seem to be talking about taking people's souls, and mention "the exiled one", before going their separate ways. Jayfice attempts to follow the elvish woman, but loses track of her in the dark. They go back to the inn and fall asleep again.

Jayfice wakes up again a short time later, hearing what sounds like hooves on the floor somewhere upstairs. They go to check it out and find the fiendish woman from earlier, who demands to know what makes them special enough that the assassin would spare them and change an agreement she made with her. Jayfice admits that they don't know, but that if she wants their soul she can take it. She decides to spare them for now and leaves, and an uneasy Jayfice stays awake watching in case she returns.

As they look out of the window, Jayfice sees someone walking around watching their window, occasionally stopping to flip a coin. Then off in the distance they spot the group Rosania saw before; a group of people dressed up in black and blue, led by someone out in front dressed in green.

This is where we ended the session, although Locke revealed during a conversation afterwards that when I chose for him to be meaner at the start of the session, I was determining the Grey Slaad's AC and how many fireballs he had, essentially making him a tougher opponent. In response to that revelation, I announced "Guess I'll be choosing route B more often!"

#dnd #d&d #recap #Cookie

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