#anyway how are yall doing this is like 2000 words of nonsense

[isaacathom]

greetings bitches, im back for no particular reason except i wanna gush about last nights dnd session and im sure my gm is so tired of seeing me do this on twitter so, hi

tl;dr we fought a mind flayer and his minions, i nearly fucking died, afterwards the majority of the party got drunk on rice wine and passed out. it was very tense and then very cute. i love this group sm man

for... context? we are a fleet come to set up a trade relation with this empire, right. travelled a fuck of a ways for it. we arrived in this city of many noble houses. one thing leads to another and we find out that the city administration has been infiltrated by mind flayers in some capacity, and that they are preparing to take over the city. they're hosting this dinner with all the noble house leaders, which is also the first time the admins talked to any of these bitches in like, six months.

the night before this dinner, half the player party got arrested for various crimes, most of which, to be fair, we had actually committed. this happened bc we were trying to warn one of the houses about the threat and to beg them not to try and launch a strike against the *other* houses. we got out, but the OTHER half of the party had been forced to sail out of the city by the admin and had to sneak back in. we're doing great.

we manage to sneak into the dinner in three groups - three of us go to the house of inventors and ask them to help us disguise our warforged as theirs, since, well. kinda hard to hide a warforged. three of us go with the house of the dead, with my character posing as an "honour guard" and the others being servants (this made no practical difference but was because naielle is the only 'normal sized' individual of the three, with the others being an orc and a dwarf). the final two party members just fucking snuck in through a secret tunnel or some shit. superb.

so we get there, and it starts great. foods nice, folks are chatting. then the administrator stands up (under heelllllla duress) and accuses one of the houses of plotting an assassination, even bringing out a guy they caught earlier. and, like, yea they definitely were. fucking choke the house leader out, esp when he tries to also assassinate the admin right there in the dining hall. props for initiative.

then the admin goes 'also im gonna disband all the houses' and thats when We Fucking Move. because at least two of the houses present have actually alliances with us (inventors and dead) and, among the other houses - the assassin one has been generally on our side, the fighters havent reaaally but of the three present, one of them was on our side a while back, and the law clan is... complicated. point is this is the exact shit we were worried would happen and so its TIME. TO. GO.

and that battle goes swimmingly, mm, yup, perfectly. when Naielle finally gets her turn, she guiding bolts this guy in yellow next to the admin, since a) hes sus and b) her warlock patrons going 'his vibes are fucked' in her head and shes not one to not believe that. doesnt do that much damage, but it does show her that he's actually a mind flayer in a disguise, which is nice.

however the next person in initiative was one of this guys minions, he immediately crits naielle for 34 damage (her hp is 44) and then second attacks to knock her out. this was not the last enemy crit of the night. fucking terrifying

the mind flayer challenges the party leader (a commodore, how fancy) to a 1v1 duel, which he refuses outright. when he does, he gets hit by this fucker so hard he goes to 1 hp.i get resed by the party doctor and try to bonus action heal the commodore, rolled shit again, did some ~eldritch blasts~. the party paladin vaults a table and grabs the poisoned dagger that one guy tried to use to assassinate the admin and throws it at the mind flayer, and MAN. fucking MVP of the match to my guy.

then the commodore, a ~fighter~, just fucking unloads on this asshole, 6 attacks in a turn. half of them miss but he uses his funky spider bite to actually finish the guy. meanwhile an older man is beating one of the minions to death while they are both covered in grease, that guys son trips one of the others, its a whole shit show.

we finally get rid of all the minions, a victory! fucking hell! and the first goddamn thing that happens is one of the law clan bastards goes "... you were banished from the city!"

and my character, who is broadly a polite and friendly lady inclined to diplomacy, but who was also knocked out about 2 minutes prior and has a splitting headache from both that and the ambient ~fuckery~ in the room, just goes 'DO A BETTER JOB NEXT TIME. YOU'RE WELCOME' and goes to eat some of the remaining dinner food bc she didnt get any earlier.

the party manage to convince those assembled to, yknow, Fucking Believe us, and to rally together to defend the city from an oncoming threat that the admin talked about. also the admin is openly weeping. his wife, incidentally, hasn't moved the entire fight, and its cause, uh, ohhhh boy. she's fucked up man. like. the mindflayers fucked her upppppppp. its not good. so while naielle is, yknow, Full Bitchy Mode, she does go with the doctor to have a look at her and then sends a message off to the rest of the fleet to ask for someone with Greater Restoration, if we have one, because, well, she needs help and she hasn't fucked with Naielle at any point lmao.

we then get given a wing of the admin's place to fucking crash at given around half the party got hella fucked up (naielle was the only one to go unconscious, but a few of us got crit and, again, commodore to 1 hp). and most of the party proceeds to get sloshed. naielle, who does not drink generally on account of being a fucking lightweight, snags some wine from the dinner feast and then tries some russian vodka the party orc has. said orc then has her bf arrive and they go to one of the bedrooms. very cute.

Naielle then passes the fuck out in the lounge area of that wing. just. on the floor. there she goes. goodnight.

and then, right. cause im saying this as a joke, and not expecting anything to happen - naielle will just end up on the floor, mb someone will get her a blanket but like, she'll be fiiiine.

the commodore is a kinda grumpy guy. he's not very diplomatic, he's not great at being nice or polite, but he's a good leader in combat and all that. He's not exactly the kind of guy to show undue concern or affection.

He fucking throws naielle over his shoulder, carries her to one of the bedrooms in the wing, and then gently tucks her into the bed and leaves.

and i, the player, am just going 😭😭😭 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. like it was just very cute. like there was the contrast of the orc bridal carrying her bf to the bedroom vs my commodore just fireman carrying my drunk ass, but just 😭 it was really sweet.

being drunk meant i missed the remaining intrigue of the session, being the party warforged trying to steal and mutilate the mindflayer's corpse (long story). but aaaa.

that session lasted 6 straight hours plus 2.5~ hours of chatting afterwards about some of our plans for the next part of the arc and just shooting the shit. but it was so good. obviously most of my notes concern my character because im a selfish bitch but also, damn. like, ooh, when the commodore and the party rogue entered the battle, as the sneaking party, they actually dropped down from a balcony to drp attack some of the minions, which was rad as shit.

when naielle got crit, the orc was able to use a reaction (through one of our homebrew things) to get a free attack on the guy who hurt me, which was great, even if it did highlight why naielle usually hangs around the party paladin instead (he has interception fighting style, iirc).

aaaa. oh yea also the party dwarf, sorry i fucking forgot, she wasnt disguised as a servant with the dead party, she was hidden in a fucking incense urn, because the majority/entirely human populace of the city means theres no... real way to sneak someone of her stature in as a servant, because shes the height of a child. when combat started she fucking thunderwaved that urn, BWAAAAH, nearly couldve hit naielle but we positioned that shit properly. superb shit.

aaaaa! it was such a fun session. its our final one of the year for this group overall, and it was such a fun note to go out on. it was so hectic and so tense! like im an anxious bitch so the moment i got crit for over 3/4 of my hp (which is not! a bad! health pool! naielle has the same fucking health as the party paladin, shes not the lowest health by any stretch, her con is fucking superb) my life flashed before my eyes. like i had a fucking pit in my stomach. i was trying eat snacks and they sat like SHIT i was so nervous and nauseous. it was chaos in there.

i even went and did a letter pass on a thing, bc i have an in character thing where Naielle has written letters to three people in the event she dies - Her Commodore, her twin brother, and her fiance. its a whole thing she has, where she saw some ghosts trapped to haunt places because they weren't able to resolve things and she went 'oh fuck thats gonna be me if i dont get to say sorry' and so she's covering her ass with very sappy letters to her loved ones and also her superior officer saying 'heyyy sorry i missed you a lot and im sorry i lied and wont see you again, love you' or, in the commodores case, 'heyyyy sorry you put trust in me and then i fucking died hoooly shit'. its great. and as my characters lies unconscious im like 'ah well she wouldve had a chance the previous night to do a pass on the commodore letter at least'

except then - cause naielle has a hat and coat she wears. shes very identifiable by this hat and coat. and she had to leave them behind at this cafe in order to pose as a member of the honour guard for the dead house. which means the updated version of her letter to the commodore is... in the cafe... in her coat... because she would have completely forgotten about it. and so if naielle had actually died, unless the group specifically went back to collect her hat and coat and then found the letter copies in the inside pocket, the version of the letter the commodore would receive is an older version that isnt as detailed that he, or rather one of Naielle's retainers, would find in her captains quarters. its basically the same letter, because i like the wording, but its missing a sentence where naielle goes 'in spite of everything this expedition has been, honest to god, one of the most fulfilling experiences in my fucking life and i am SO sorry' which i think adds some spice. its a nice bit. obviously its more formal than that, she knows what she's about.

she has more letters to add to the three. when i told the other players about the letters existing, one did say 'should write one for each party member' and i think thats the plan eventually, but at the moment she's sticking to the ones she knows best or has something specific she wants to say. so NEXT night, after she wakes up from being sloshed and goes about her day, she'll probably update one or two of them and then add 1-2 more - her priority is the party paladin, who she owes for nebulous reasons she doesn't understand, and the second letter would probably be the party doctor (artificer). aaaaaaa

aaaaaa. sorry im fully rambling i just love this game so much. its my favourite of my current campaigns. i was so emotional. aaaa. i love it.

#anyway how are yall doing this is like 2000 words of nonsense #i mean its just a plot summary and then some vibes afterwards but tl;dr we kicked ass and i nearly died for only the second time