Game 8...the end of the begining
Posted 8th May 2009 at 04:49 AM by HardcoreDandDGirl
So we started off with a skill challenge. We were all asleep (Except cap, witch lead to some funny lines) and we entered some sort of shared dream thing. It started in black with the whole party standing there. This lead Renard to make an Arcane roll to identify the lucid group dream, then lead Lucen to threaten Cap because he was on guard duty/ watch.
So Cap quickly explained (With an untrained bluff) that he was a figment of our group Subconscious, and not really our dwarf ally, who he was sure was still on guard duty. So every time he said anything for the whole dream he started with “If I was the dwarf I would say…”
It was a really dark dream of the world 1 year from now. It started in the ruins of Winterhaven, were renard pulled our first success with streetwise. We learned that it was winterhaven for sure, and he saw the place he was born ripped in half by tenicals of a shadow monster. The ruins of the city are being controlled by undead goblinoids.
Up Next we say another set of ruins, and we were unsure were, so we tried some geography, and failed. The next scean was thousands of ghouls and zombies overtaking a city within a mesa known as Thunderspire. Lucen made a religion check and found they were lead by “Linus” the daughter of the ghoul king.
Then not really cap* made a history check, and Syl made an insight check and the two of them saw this was the world that orcus would create. The world where we failed.
We woke up really more confused, but with a raven sitting in the middle of us, with an eye in it’s mouth. It flew off through a wall. We are divided as to weather it was a threat, or an aid. Weather this was good or ill we may never know.
So renewed and level uped, we went down into the next room. Here are our new sheets:
Ok, through the door is a large temple above the main temple. It is a sacrifice chamber full of dead bodies, and mostly dead bodies, with blood flowing through these channels into a grate and raining down on the subtemple.
In the room is a Teifling death priest of Orcus, and 6 ghouls (each with ghoul king blessings to boot) and 2 half golem bezerkers, and 2 Dark Creepers.
Tor went first, and screamed out a primal yell, charging the priest. It was 21 squars ao we never thought he would make it. But he move action run 8, then move action run 8, then action point Agelic Alacrity shift 5 or 6 and attack. Oh and at some point in there calling minor Oath. First round first attack roll CRIT, and not just any crit, but both d20s came up as 20.
Up next was Cap who moved into a ghoul, and one hit killed it. Minion, well sort of. It had a surprise.
Then came those damn dark creepers. The burst into shadow, vanish, then reapper next to one of us and attack with surprise and sneak attack bonus dice. In this case it was Renard that got double teamed, oh, and 1d4+1d6+5 may not sound like much, but when your warlock gets hit by two it doesn’t look good.
Renard gets to return the favor with his Otherworldstride, good damage to both and teleport 7, followed by a move of 6, minor curse, then an action point to witchfire one of the terminator like fellows.
Syl got to go next and decided to use her first strike to slam that same terminator like bezerker with a sly flourish, and hits. This is two strikers hitting, and it had to be atleast 25 if not 30 damage between them, and it was not bloodied.
Next came the ghouls, and DM dave called “Blessing of the ghoul king” if these guys are not killed by radiant, they get back up. How nuts is that respawning minions. It gets worse though. These guys slow until the end of your next turn on a hit. They got to slow cap, and renard and syl. Yea, big bad fight.
Then came me. I was unsure of what to do, so I made the best of it. I hit two ghouls with green flam blade (knocking them down but not killing them) and marked One of the terminator like guys.
Speaking of witch they were up now, and they tour us a new one. The one that was hurt moves (Provoking from syl) and hits me. It did 13 pts of damage, that is my surge value, it was very plane to see just standing and exchanging blows was a bad idea.
Then came the death priest. We got real lucky, he was afraid to shift away, so he was stuck with his basic attack.
Lucan goes next and drops Blades of Astral fire centered on me. I get +4 AC, the two downed ghouls take some radiant (Killing them) and the terminator takes a crit (Good), but is bloodied, and gets a free shot at me for it (Bad) he hit and did more then 13, more then enough to bloodie me. Then he moves, and action points to do his abjur undead and kill the rest of those minions.
By the time my turn came up again we had a plan, I moved to the two creepers, foe snared one, and Action pointed to booming blade the other, with out CA, and unable to move they were easy targets, and the big guy was still marked by me (Well one of them) so I could negate damage.
The only one of us not falling apart at the end of the fight was TOR, because he had the priest (I am sure he was bad ass at range) locked in melee. He had less damage on him then any two of the rest of us had hp left.
With a short rest, and a religion check we figured out what was going on. This guy was bringing a shadow called “Tenebrous” into our world. It was once a piece of orcus, but now grew into it’s own shadow form and is an exarch of the big fat demon lord. I guess it was way weak, and could bearly survive out of the abyss though, so it needed to bound to some one (Que lots of venom/carnage jokes here) so this Kalarel was planning on taking it on, and getting a promotion out of it.
So we prepaird to lower ourselves down, and that was our mile stone. So well Dave set up the maps and mini’s I went for a smoke. Kelly asked if I minded company, I said no, but I didn’t think she smoked. I guess she use to and had just relapsed. I feel sorry for people starting or restarting now, these things are almost $10 a pack, and they might be in a month or 2, and she didn’t even do regs, she smoked cloves. I use to buy them sometimes, so I know that isn’t cheap.
So after my shock wore off we talked a bit. I guess she is having some problems getting into the game though. She asked me if I ever felt there was too much combat. I guess coming off White wolf, this would seam like a lot. I think she made her character thinking we would spend more time in town, so it isn’t quite what she had in mind.
So we are back, and the battle map is a nightmare. We have Kalarel, 4 vampires, 2 skeletons, and 2 Wights. Then he shows us a picture of the thing coming out of the portal. (It realy did look kinda like venom).
This fight took forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Real time about 2 hours, maybe a little more. Kalarel had defenses between 20-24, and just shy of 200hp. Then the magic circle he spent ¾ the fight in uped his defenses by 2 and gave him regen 5. Oh and he had weaken on an atwill. Oh, and everytime Tenebrous hit, it healed Kalarel. The vampires were just minions, but the wights could reanimate them every turn. And on top of that the skeletons could mark.
Oh, and Kalarel had a power that healed all the undead in a burst and gave them a free shift 3.
Then just to make this perfect, syl almost (Dm dave gave a save) died because the stupid thing in the portal drags everyone that hit 0 into it. The next round it was Cap making the save (He did).
The aftermath of this fight made me feel drained out of game. I think it was just too much. And on top of that we are higher level, and have an extra player, 5 3rd levels would never have survived this.
However when Kalarel died, Lucan got to say “Your evil plan, and your masters dreams end here monster” and Kalarel smiled, and with his last breath said “You think you stoped HIM…I was just running point on this” then the shadow thing pulled him in to the portal ending the ritual.
So we sealed the rift, and grabed some stuff of Kalarels. His spell/ritual book, his magic dagger, his magic tomb (The necronomicon of course), some scrolls, and a bunch of gold and headed out feeling pretty good. I mean even if we only delayed orcus, we still saved the world right. I mean this is a big win in the good side. We headed back to town, and when we got there, there were signs of battle, even town guards still lying dead.
Remember back a few games ago we let a group of hobgoblin leave just as we got to the keep. Guess where they came. As we got into town that good feeling wasn’t exactly there anymore. Somewhere deep down we all knew this was somewhat our fault, we let this happen.
Then we saw the tavern, or should I say the remains of the tavern. Renard lost it. I mean totally lost it totally awesome role play that he though his lost love was dead. But the truth was worse. She was alive, but taken by the goblionids as a slave along with about 30 other people. They only took strong young men and attractive women. The men to work, the woman…well we don’t have to spell out what type of slaves they would be.
He just started eldritch blasting random rocks and pieces of debris. Syl and I tried to say we would help him go after her. He just stared off and said “There are more of them, and we let them go because we weren’t sure we could take them” Then he stormed off, I was going to go after him but Tor stopped me “Let him get his head corrected”
Syl, Tor and I did what we could to help people, and fix building, meanwhile Cap and lucan went off to talk to the mayor. It turns out the hobgoblins are from thunderspire, and they hit hard and fast taking out most of the militia in the first assault. They then held the tavern overnight, and blew it up to cover there withdraw.
Then came the surprise of the night. Remember Renard is a fey pact warlock, he went to a sight under the town were devils were once worshiped, and summoned an imp. The imp and he made a deal years ago when he was a boy. He later made the deal with a fey lord to nullfy this one. This imp was now giving him the chance to ‘take it back’. They talk for a few moment, then the imp gives him a ring to slide onto his pactblade. He made a new deal of sorts, he gets the power to get Salvana Wrafton back alive.
Mechanic his pactblade now also counts Master’s Wand of Hellish Rebuke. And rp wise he is building toward a double pact feat from DDI (I think it might be a paragon feat though.
Although now that I think about it, he wants the half elf versatility and this double pact thing, so he is going to have 4 at wills. That just sounds sick.
So now atracking we will go. I think this is mostly DM Dave now, but we may use some of the next mod (Being thunderspire), but I was also told that the shadow pyramided sucks, so this is where we most likely leave the story.
We still next week need to comeup with some reasons for us sticking togather, but i think fixing our own mess up/ saving Renards lost love is a good start.
Also 8 games for 1 mod, close to 40 hours of play I figure. I am impressed. In 3.5 most mods were 1 or 2 nights. Heck when we did sunless citadel it was 1 game about 6 hours.
So Cap quickly explained (With an untrained bluff) that he was a figment of our group Subconscious, and not really our dwarf ally, who he was sure was still on guard duty. So every time he said anything for the whole dream he started with “If I was the dwarf I would say…”
It was a really dark dream of the world 1 year from now. It started in the ruins of Winterhaven, were renard pulled our first success with streetwise. We learned that it was winterhaven for sure, and he saw the place he was born ripped in half by tenicals of a shadow monster. The ruins of the city are being controlled by undead goblinoids.
Up Next we say another set of ruins, and we were unsure were, so we tried some geography, and failed. The next scean was thousands of ghouls and zombies overtaking a city within a mesa known as Thunderspire. Lucen made a religion check and found they were lead by “Linus” the daughter of the ghoul king.
Then not really cap* made a history check, and Syl made an insight check and the two of them saw this was the world that orcus would create. The world where we failed.
We woke up really more confused, but with a raven sitting in the middle of us, with an eye in it’s mouth. It flew off through a wall. We are divided as to weather it was a threat, or an aid. Weather this was good or ill we may never know.
So renewed and level uped, we went down into the next room. Here are our new sheets:
me
cap
Renard
syl
lucan
Tor
Ok, through the door is a large temple above the main temple. It is a sacrifice chamber full of dead bodies, and mostly dead bodies, with blood flowing through these channels into a grate and raining down on the subtemple.
In the room is a Teifling death priest of Orcus, and 6 ghouls (each with ghoul king blessings to boot) and 2 half golem bezerkers, and 2 Dark Creepers.
Tor went first, and screamed out a primal yell, charging the priest. It was 21 squars ao we never thought he would make it. But he move action run 8, then move action run 8, then action point Agelic Alacrity shift 5 or 6 and attack. Oh and at some point in there calling minor Oath. First round first attack roll CRIT, and not just any crit, but both d20s came up as 20.
Up next was Cap who moved into a ghoul, and one hit killed it. Minion, well sort of. It had a surprise.
Then came those damn dark creepers. The burst into shadow, vanish, then reapper next to one of us and attack with surprise and sneak attack bonus dice. In this case it was Renard that got double teamed, oh, and 1d4+1d6+5 may not sound like much, but when your warlock gets hit by two it doesn’t look good.
Renard gets to return the favor with his Otherworldstride, good damage to both and teleport 7, followed by a move of 6, minor curse, then an action point to witchfire one of the terminator like fellows.
Syl got to go next and decided to use her first strike to slam that same terminator like bezerker with a sly flourish, and hits. This is two strikers hitting, and it had to be atleast 25 if not 30 damage between them, and it was not bloodied.
Next came the ghouls, and DM dave called “Blessing of the ghoul king” if these guys are not killed by radiant, they get back up. How nuts is that respawning minions. It gets worse though. These guys slow until the end of your next turn on a hit. They got to slow cap, and renard and syl. Yea, big bad fight.
Then came me. I was unsure of what to do, so I made the best of it. I hit two ghouls with green flam blade (knocking them down but not killing them) and marked One of the terminator like guys.
Speaking of witch they were up now, and they tour us a new one. The one that was hurt moves (Provoking from syl) and hits me. It did 13 pts of damage, that is my surge value, it was very plane to see just standing and exchanging blows was a bad idea.
Then came the death priest. We got real lucky, he was afraid to shift away, so he was stuck with his basic attack.
Lucan goes next and drops Blades of Astral fire centered on me. I get +4 AC, the two downed ghouls take some radiant (Killing them) and the terminator takes a crit (Good), but is bloodied, and gets a free shot at me for it (Bad) he hit and did more then 13, more then enough to bloodie me. Then he moves, and action points to do his abjur undead and kill the rest of those minions.
By the time my turn came up again we had a plan, I moved to the two creepers, foe snared one, and Action pointed to booming blade the other, with out CA, and unable to move they were easy targets, and the big guy was still marked by me (Well one of them) so I could negate damage.
The only one of us not falling apart at the end of the fight was TOR, because he had the priest (I am sure he was bad ass at range) locked in melee. He had less damage on him then any two of the rest of us had hp left.
With a short rest, and a religion check we figured out what was going on. This guy was bringing a shadow called “Tenebrous” into our world. It was once a piece of orcus, but now grew into it’s own shadow form and is an exarch of the big fat demon lord. I guess it was way weak, and could bearly survive out of the abyss though, so it needed to bound to some one (Que lots of venom/carnage jokes here) so this Kalarel was planning on taking it on, and getting a promotion out of it.
So we prepaird to lower ourselves down, and that was our mile stone. So well Dave set up the maps and mini’s I went for a smoke. Kelly asked if I minded company, I said no, but I didn’t think she smoked. I guess she use to and had just relapsed. I feel sorry for people starting or restarting now, these things are almost $10 a pack, and they might be in a month or 2, and she didn’t even do regs, she smoked cloves. I use to buy them sometimes, so I know that isn’t cheap.
So after my shock wore off we talked a bit. I guess she is having some problems getting into the game though. She asked me if I ever felt there was too much combat. I guess coming off White wolf, this would seam like a lot. I think she made her character thinking we would spend more time in town, so it isn’t quite what she had in mind.
So we are back, and the battle map is a nightmare. We have Kalarel, 4 vampires, 2 skeletons, and 2 Wights. Then he shows us a picture of the thing coming out of the portal. (It realy did look kinda like venom).
This fight took forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Real time about 2 hours, maybe a little more. Kalarel had defenses between 20-24, and just shy of 200hp. Then the magic circle he spent ¾ the fight in uped his defenses by 2 and gave him regen 5. Oh and he had weaken on an atwill. Oh, and everytime Tenebrous hit, it healed Kalarel. The vampires were just minions, but the wights could reanimate them every turn. And on top of that the skeletons could mark.
Oh, and Kalarel had a power that healed all the undead in a burst and gave them a free shift 3.
Then just to make this perfect, syl almost (Dm dave gave a save) died because the stupid thing in the portal drags everyone that hit 0 into it. The next round it was Cap making the save (He did).
The aftermath of this fight made me feel drained out of game. I think it was just too much. And on top of that we are higher level, and have an extra player, 5 3rd levels would never have survived this.
However when Kalarel died, Lucan got to say “Your evil plan, and your masters dreams end here monster” and Kalarel smiled, and with his last breath said “You think you stoped HIM…I was just running point on this” then the shadow thing pulled him in to the portal ending the ritual.
So we sealed the rift, and grabed some stuff of Kalarels. His spell/ritual book, his magic dagger, his magic tomb (The necronomicon of course), some scrolls, and a bunch of gold and headed out feeling pretty good. I mean even if we only delayed orcus, we still saved the world right. I mean this is a big win in the good side. We headed back to town, and when we got there, there were signs of battle, even town guards still lying dead.
Remember back a few games ago we let a group of hobgoblin leave just as we got to the keep. Guess where they came. As we got into town that good feeling wasn’t exactly there anymore. Somewhere deep down we all knew this was somewhat our fault, we let this happen.
Then we saw the tavern, or should I say the remains of the tavern. Renard lost it. I mean totally lost it totally awesome role play that he though his lost love was dead. But the truth was worse. She was alive, but taken by the goblionids as a slave along with about 30 other people. They only took strong young men and attractive women. The men to work, the woman…well we don’t have to spell out what type of slaves they would be.
He just started eldritch blasting random rocks and pieces of debris. Syl and I tried to say we would help him go after her. He just stared off and said “There are more of them, and we let them go because we weren’t sure we could take them” Then he stormed off, I was going to go after him but Tor stopped me “Let him get his head corrected”
Syl, Tor and I did what we could to help people, and fix building, meanwhile Cap and lucan went off to talk to the mayor. It turns out the hobgoblins are from thunderspire, and they hit hard and fast taking out most of the militia in the first assault. They then held the tavern overnight, and blew it up to cover there withdraw.
Then came the surprise of the night. Remember Renard is a fey pact warlock, he went to a sight under the town were devils were once worshiped, and summoned an imp. The imp and he made a deal years ago when he was a boy. He later made the deal with a fey lord to nullfy this one. This imp was now giving him the chance to ‘take it back’. They talk for a few moment, then the imp gives him a ring to slide onto his pactblade. He made a new deal of sorts, he gets the power to get Salvana Wrafton back alive.
Mechanic his pactblade now also counts Master’s Wand of Hellish Rebuke. And rp wise he is building toward a double pact feat from DDI (I think it might be a paragon feat though.
Although now that I think about it, he wants the half elf versatility and this double pact thing, so he is going to have 4 at wills. That just sounds sick.
So now atracking we will go. I think this is mostly DM Dave now, but we may use some of the next mod (Being thunderspire), but I was also told that the shadow pyramided sucks, so this is where we most likely leave the story.
We still next week need to comeup with some reasons for us sticking togather, but i think fixing our own mess up/ saving Renards lost love is a good start.
Also 8 games for 1 mod, close to 40 hours of play I figure. I am impressed. In 3.5 most mods were 1 or 2 nights. Heck when we did sunless citadel it was 1 game about 6 hours.
Total Comments 4
Comments
-
Congrats on beating Keep of the Shadowfell (at least I think that's the adventure you just completed). My party got wiped at that
That dream skill challlenge looked cool/fun. Have fun at the Thunderspire!Posted 8th May 2009 at 06:44 AM by MichaelSomething
-
Hey!
I loved your reflections on smoking and cigarettes and it's price in the middle of your story! LOL
So, isn't your friend enjoying the game?
Keep telling us how your game's going. I love to read about it! (the spelling errors are fun too
Posted 8th May 2009 at 12:14 PM by Wepwawet 
- BTW, great roleplayers you have in there!Posted 8th May 2009 at 12:45 PM by Wepwawet
- We are all easily captivated by monster stories. And now, many are again into this monster thing. The Montauk Monster is starting to make headlines. If you haven't heard about it, don't worry, but the Montauk Monster is a carcass that appeared on the beach of Long Island, New York. It defies classification, as it looks like no animal known to science, and a lot of people would give installment loans to figure out what it is. It washed up not too far away from Plum Island, AKA Anthrax Island, an uninhabited isle home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a known animal testing facility. The corpse is thought to be a hoax, but some insist its real, or Amy Winehouse sunbathing. Still, many would pull out credit cards to unravel the Montauk Monster mystery.Posted 20th May 2009 at 11:31 AM by AleenaD
Total Trackbacks 0
And yet another word from our sponsors
