Fralex
Explorer
I started attending a D&D encounters thing, and I've always wanted to try doing a campaign journal (ever since I read these amazing ones from GitP), so when this one turned out to be very... unusual... I decided to record my memories eternally on the world wide web! I hope you find the recountings as entertaining as I found the actual campaign!
Prologue: In which my story begins, as is known to happen, in a tavern
[sblock=Well, sort of]Miss Risa Huntly was an unassuming, middle-aged cook who ran a modestly-successful tavern. Unfortunately, this was a fantasy game world, so the tavern soon became a magnet for weird, violent characters, mysterious figures with quests they needed to send other people on, and all manner of miscellaneous contrived plot hooks for stuff she really didn't care about. Bar fights broke out so frequently that she began suspecting some people were doing it just out of sheer boredom, but she soon learned how best to put them to a stop (the trick is to bludgeon whoever's causing the most trouble with whatever object is closest to you, grab them while they're dazed, and toss them out while yelling at the rest to leave). Look, it's for paying customers, alright? I don't know why you all have to come here if you just sit around hoping something exciting happens!
Unfortunately, exciting things continued to happen. First, there was a fierce storm that just descended on the town one day and stayed over it for weeks. Every day the winds and thunder got worse, until finally it faded away. I came to work the next day, only to find my beloved tavern in ruins. The storm had blown it apart. Digging through the wreckage, I found very little that could be salvaged. Some cutlery. Some cooking oil and bottles of grease I'd been saving. A single frying pan. That's when something caught my eye: a flickering light coming from what I discovered to be a fist-sized glass sphere. Inside the orb was a tiny replica of yesterday's storm, miniature bolts of lightning arcing silently between whirling black clouds. I'd heard the rumors before: some idiot conspiracy theorists were saying a secret cabal of elemental-worshiping cultists were behind this awful weather. But now I had proof. The stormy glass orb lying amongst the wreckage had to be some mage's lost arcane focus, and surely only one who cared a great deal about weather would have one like this. I had someone to blame this whole disaster on! They were going to face cast-iron JUSTICE at the end of my lone remaining skillet.
I begrudgingly went to the other tavern in town, putting my faith in the natural tendancy of taverns to give people convenient leads. I had brought a dark cloak and went to the corner of the room, looking mysterious. Half the tavern immediately walked over to me to find out if I had a quest or what. Speaking in a low voice, I told them about the orb I'd found and asked what they knew about elemental cults. One person mentioned there was "suspicious activity" around Rivergard Keep and that they're not saying it's cultists, but it's probably cultists. They were planning to investigate it but wanted to try somewhere easier first to level up some more. Whatever. I had a name, and although on some level I knew setting out to investigate a shady keep unarmed was a really bad idea, I was still too angry at everything to care. I got as far as the shore of the Dessarin River when I realized someone had been stalking me. Before I realized what was going on, I was unconscious.[/sblock]
[sblock=Out of Character]So, as you may or may not have guessed by now, my character is going to be a paladin whose only weapon is a frying pan. I've taken the Tavern Brawler feat to make myself proficient in it, as well as things like oil and alchemist's fire (which in this case I am fluffing as flasks of leftover grease I set fire to and hurl at an enemy). I am not female in real life, but every now and then I get an idea for a character that just pops into my head with a fully-formed image, and I simply can't imagine them looking like anything else. In this case, it was that of a permanently angry, middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun, tightly gripping a large frying pan. I designed her almost subconsciously, realizing only after the mental image was complete that I had, in fact, already decided exactly who this character was. Brains are weird.
Everything up to this point has been backstory. What follows is my first game session, to which I showed up nearly 45 minutes late and a little lost. I just got back from the second session, which I will post afterward, and in which I got a slightly better handle on the story so far, but I have a terrible memory and might have missed some important details. Avoid spoiling anything, but if there's something that I would've known based on what happened in the journal, like important names and places, etc. feel free to share them! OK, enough talking. Back in-character:[/sblock]
Day 1-
Part 1: In which I get rescued, possibly by a nudist
[sblock=No, really]When I woke up, it was pitch black. I was tied to some sort of post, and there was a gag in my mouth. I stayed there for hours, fuming silently, until I heard what sounded like a struggle coming from another room. There was the sound of a door opening. I couldn't see anything in the dark, but I heard at least one pair of footsteps, and I did my best to get their owner's attention making muffled noises through the gag. I heard the footsteps get closer, and a small voice coming from down low ask me if I needed help. I responded with an exasperated gag-grunt. "OK, OK, just wait one minute," the voice answered, sounding a little uncertain. "I need to... um. I uh, hold on."
There was a bizarre noise, like someone putting on their clothes. At this point in the game I didn't have any better idea of what was happening here than my character did, so we were both really confused, but when the gag was removed I declined to comment on it. I explained how I got here and what I had been trying to do, he untied me, and a light was lit. My rescuer was a figure in a cloak, a whole lot taller than I had previously thought, with disproportionately-stubby arms and legs. Apparently he was here alone, the rest of his party was in another part of Rivergard Keep. The room now illuminated, I recognized my pack sitting in the corner. To my relief, everything I'd packed in it was still there, including the weird glass orb, which I had been sure would be confiscated. I suppose since everything else about me suggested I was an ordinary commoner with a pack full of regular items (I had no weapons or armor), they didn't realize I had that orb buried at the very bottom.
Wow. Starting the game captured, but finding all my starting gear immediately after escaping? What were the odds, right!? When we came out of the room I saw the guards had been slain. One of them was roughly my size and shape, and had some nice chainmail armor which I took for myself (this was the armor I had in my starting gear, but once I saw the opportunity I decided it made more narrative sense to get it this way since tavern keepers don't buy expensive armor). The tall, cloaked guy who freed me, whom I later learned was a sorcerer, said we needed to get back to the main group, but we should get what he came here for first. He then lead me to a small dock in which resided a couple rowboats. We rode them along the coast of the island for a short time until we reached what I assume was the main fortress.[/sblock]
Part 2: In which it turns out my character build is far from the only weird one
[sblock=Player response to my PC's description: "You'll fit right in!"]The Keep was made of four corner towers, three of which were currently on fire. I asked the sorcerer if I was right in assuming his friends were somewhere near the huge fire, to which he replied no, of course not, they're obviously in the corner of the fort they haven't gotten started on burning yet. Let's see if they're ready now. We entered the fort and eventually found the area they were fighting guards in. Or rather, the area in which they had just finished killing everyone in (during my rescue scene, the DM was simultaneously running a fight in this area, and finished it around the same time we got there). He briefly introduced me to the group, told them about the boats, and we all got in and headed for the mainland. As of this post I have not yet familiarized myself with the party's exact composition (no thanks in part to the fact that this was an AL game, and at least one player was absent in the next session), but from what I've gathered it consists of the wild sorcerer who rescued me, a goliath fighter with a level of warlock, a valor(?) bard, a wizard with a wand of magic missile, and I THINK also a rogue, equipped with a +1 dagger and having apparently just acquired a robe of useful items. I'm sure I'm forgetting some people, and if you read this I apologize for my poor memory. I'll make corrections later.
The goliath was completely enamoured with his rowboat, and, when we reached the mainland, insisted on dragging it with us. His reasoning seemed to be "it could totally be useful later!" and "I have a huge carrying capacity, and I'm gonna use it." There was talk of plans that I didn't understand at the time, having something to do with a guy they'd met and caused the death of named Meister. Apparently the place they had just ransacked was part of a water cult, which explained the altar in one of the rooms we'd passed through. Now we were somewhere in the Sumber Hills. We traveled through them for a time then stopped for a long rest. It was then, I believe, that I learned the individual who'd rescued me wasn't actually an individual; he was two kids in a cloak standing on each other's shoulders, the bottom one of which was a sorcerer. This revelation, of course, answered any and all questions I might have had about the sorcerer and raised no new ones whatsoever. I can safely say that this is one mystery I've completely solved. Two kids in a cloak? Sure! Makes perfect sense. Don't know why I didn't figure that out from the beginning. Moving on...[/sblock]
Day 2-
Part 3: In which we learn there is more to lying than just being convincing
[sblock=And I finally get to hit something]We continued our trek though the hills. We were interupted by an angry pair of ankhegs. The goliath attacked them gleefully, tackling one to the ground and wrestling it furiously, the pair rolling over each other on the ground several times as each struggled to get the upper hand. I made my only attack for this session, hitting the other with my skillet. I was starting at level 1, but the rest of the party was at levels 3-4 by this point and the acidic beasts posed little trouble. We slayed them and moved on.
Eventually we came upon a tall, ivory tower. A moat with the bridge raised kept us from entering. At which point the goliath triumphantly put the rowboat he'd been carrying down in front of us. He excitedly slid it to the edge of the moat... and found out that it was actually just a really deep chasm, with no water until the bottom. Instead, we just had our wizard teleport across with misty step and knock on the doors. They opened and a woman stepped out. We later learned her name was Savra.
And so ended the first session. The DM decided to be nice and give me XP for all the encounters the group had won this session, even though I showed up late and only made one attack roll in one fight. That brought me up to level 2! I can use paladin magic now! But since my backstory implies I wasn't really becoming one deliberately, I'm gonna RP it like I don't yet realize I have special powers until I use some by accident. I also got to adopt a Fighting Style; I went with Dueling for the extra damage whenever fighting with a single, one-handed weapon. Which for me is all the time. My frying pan now does a respectable 1d6 + 5 damage on a hit. Yay.
Prologue: In which my story begins, as is known to happen, in a tavern
[sblock=Well, sort of]Miss Risa Huntly was an unassuming, middle-aged cook who ran a modestly-successful tavern. Unfortunately, this was a fantasy game world, so the tavern soon became a magnet for weird, violent characters, mysterious figures with quests they needed to send other people on, and all manner of miscellaneous contrived plot hooks for stuff she really didn't care about. Bar fights broke out so frequently that she began suspecting some people were doing it just out of sheer boredom, but she soon learned how best to put them to a stop (the trick is to bludgeon whoever's causing the most trouble with whatever object is closest to you, grab them while they're dazed, and toss them out while yelling at the rest to leave). Look, it's for paying customers, alright? I don't know why you all have to come here if you just sit around hoping something exciting happens!
Unfortunately, exciting things continued to happen. First, there was a fierce storm that just descended on the town one day and stayed over it for weeks. Every day the winds and thunder got worse, until finally it faded away. I came to work the next day, only to find my beloved tavern in ruins. The storm had blown it apart. Digging through the wreckage, I found very little that could be salvaged. Some cutlery. Some cooking oil and bottles of grease I'd been saving. A single frying pan. That's when something caught my eye: a flickering light coming from what I discovered to be a fist-sized glass sphere. Inside the orb was a tiny replica of yesterday's storm, miniature bolts of lightning arcing silently between whirling black clouds. I'd heard the rumors before: some idiot conspiracy theorists were saying a secret cabal of elemental-worshiping cultists were behind this awful weather. But now I had proof. The stormy glass orb lying amongst the wreckage had to be some mage's lost arcane focus, and surely only one who cared a great deal about weather would have one like this. I had someone to blame this whole disaster on! They were going to face cast-iron JUSTICE at the end of my lone remaining skillet.
I begrudgingly went to the other tavern in town, putting my faith in the natural tendancy of taverns to give people convenient leads. I had brought a dark cloak and went to the corner of the room, looking mysterious. Half the tavern immediately walked over to me to find out if I had a quest or what. Speaking in a low voice, I told them about the orb I'd found and asked what they knew about elemental cults. One person mentioned there was "suspicious activity" around Rivergard Keep and that they're not saying it's cultists, but it's probably cultists. They were planning to investigate it but wanted to try somewhere easier first to level up some more. Whatever. I had a name, and although on some level I knew setting out to investigate a shady keep unarmed was a really bad idea, I was still too angry at everything to care. I got as far as the shore of the Dessarin River when I realized someone had been stalking me. Before I realized what was going on, I was unconscious.[/sblock]
[sblock=Out of Character]So, as you may or may not have guessed by now, my character is going to be a paladin whose only weapon is a frying pan. I've taken the Tavern Brawler feat to make myself proficient in it, as well as things like oil and alchemist's fire (which in this case I am fluffing as flasks of leftover grease I set fire to and hurl at an enemy). I am not female in real life, but every now and then I get an idea for a character that just pops into my head with a fully-formed image, and I simply can't imagine them looking like anything else. In this case, it was that of a permanently angry, middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun, tightly gripping a large frying pan. I designed her almost subconsciously, realizing only after the mental image was complete that I had, in fact, already decided exactly who this character was. Brains are weird.
Everything up to this point has been backstory. What follows is my first game session, to which I showed up nearly 45 minutes late and a little lost. I just got back from the second session, which I will post afterward, and in which I got a slightly better handle on the story so far, but I have a terrible memory and might have missed some important details. Avoid spoiling anything, but if there's something that I would've known based on what happened in the journal, like important names and places, etc. feel free to share them! OK, enough talking. Back in-character:[/sblock]
Day 1-
Part 1: In which I get rescued, possibly by a nudist
[sblock=No, really]When I woke up, it was pitch black. I was tied to some sort of post, and there was a gag in my mouth. I stayed there for hours, fuming silently, until I heard what sounded like a struggle coming from another room. There was the sound of a door opening. I couldn't see anything in the dark, but I heard at least one pair of footsteps, and I did my best to get their owner's attention making muffled noises through the gag. I heard the footsteps get closer, and a small voice coming from down low ask me if I needed help. I responded with an exasperated gag-grunt. "OK, OK, just wait one minute," the voice answered, sounding a little uncertain. "I need to... um. I uh, hold on."
There was a bizarre noise, like someone putting on their clothes. At this point in the game I didn't have any better idea of what was happening here than my character did, so we were both really confused, but when the gag was removed I declined to comment on it. I explained how I got here and what I had been trying to do, he untied me, and a light was lit. My rescuer was a figure in a cloak, a whole lot taller than I had previously thought, with disproportionately-stubby arms and legs. Apparently he was here alone, the rest of his party was in another part of Rivergard Keep. The room now illuminated, I recognized my pack sitting in the corner. To my relief, everything I'd packed in it was still there, including the weird glass orb, which I had been sure would be confiscated. I suppose since everything else about me suggested I was an ordinary commoner with a pack full of regular items (I had no weapons or armor), they didn't realize I had that orb buried at the very bottom.
Wow. Starting the game captured, but finding all my starting gear immediately after escaping? What were the odds, right!? When we came out of the room I saw the guards had been slain. One of them was roughly my size and shape, and had some nice chainmail armor which I took for myself (this was the armor I had in my starting gear, but once I saw the opportunity I decided it made more narrative sense to get it this way since tavern keepers don't buy expensive armor). The tall, cloaked guy who freed me, whom I later learned was a sorcerer, said we needed to get back to the main group, but we should get what he came here for first. He then lead me to a small dock in which resided a couple rowboats. We rode them along the coast of the island for a short time until we reached what I assume was the main fortress.[/sblock]
Part 2: In which it turns out my character build is far from the only weird one
[sblock=Player response to my PC's description: "You'll fit right in!"]The Keep was made of four corner towers, three of which were currently on fire. I asked the sorcerer if I was right in assuming his friends were somewhere near the huge fire, to which he replied no, of course not, they're obviously in the corner of the fort they haven't gotten started on burning yet. Let's see if they're ready now. We entered the fort and eventually found the area they were fighting guards in. Or rather, the area in which they had just finished killing everyone in (during my rescue scene, the DM was simultaneously running a fight in this area, and finished it around the same time we got there). He briefly introduced me to the group, told them about the boats, and we all got in and headed for the mainland. As of this post I have not yet familiarized myself with the party's exact composition (no thanks in part to the fact that this was an AL game, and at least one player was absent in the next session), but from what I've gathered it consists of the wild sorcerer who rescued me, a goliath fighter with a level of warlock, a valor(?) bard, a wizard with a wand of magic missile, and I THINK also a rogue, equipped with a +1 dagger and having apparently just acquired a robe of useful items. I'm sure I'm forgetting some people, and if you read this I apologize for my poor memory. I'll make corrections later.
The goliath was completely enamoured with his rowboat, and, when we reached the mainland, insisted on dragging it with us. His reasoning seemed to be "it could totally be useful later!" and "I have a huge carrying capacity, and I'm gonna use it." There was talk of plans that I didn't understand at the time, having something to do with a guy they'd met and caused the death of named Meister. Apparently the place they had just ransacked was part of a water cult, which explained the altar in one of the rooms we'd passed through. Now we were somewhere in the Sumber Hills. We traveled through them for a time then stopped for a long rest. It was then, I believe, that I learned the individual who'd rescued me wasn't actually an individual; he was two kids in a cloak standing on each other's shoulders, the bottom one of which was a sorcerer. This revelation, of course, answered any and all questions I might have had about the sorcerer and raised no new ones whatsoever. I can safely say that this is one mystery I've completely solved. Two kids in a cloak? Sure! Makes perfect sense. Don't know why I didn't figure that out from the beginning. Moving on...[/sblock]
Day 2-
Part 3: In which we learn there is more to lying than just being convincing
[sblock=And I finally get to hit something]We continued our trek though the hills. We were interupted by an angry pair of ankhegs. The goliath attacked them gleefully, tackling one to the ground and wrestling it furiously, the pair rolling over each other on the ground several times as each struggled to get the upper hand. I made my only attack for this session, hitting the other with my skillet. I was starting at level 1, but the rest of the party was at levels 3-4 by this point and the acidic beasts posed little trouble. We slayed them and moved on.
Eventually we came upon a tall, ivory tower. A moat with the bridge raised kept us from entering. At which point the goliath triumphantly put the rowboat he'd been carrying down in front of us. He excitedly slid it to the edge of the moat... and found out that it was actually just a really deep chasm, with no water until the bottom. Instead, we just had our wizard teleport across with misty step and knock on the doors. They opened and a woman stepped out. We later learned her name was Savra.
Savra said:
One pair of successful Deception and Performance checks later...Us said:
Savra said:
[/sblock]Us said:
And so ended the first session. The DM decided to be nice and give me XP for all the encounters the group had won this session, even though I showed up late and only made one attack roll in one fight. That brought me up to level 2! I can use paladin magic now! But since my backstory implies I wasn't really becoming one deliberately, I'm gonna RP it like I don't yet realize I have special powers until I use some by accident. I also got to adopt a Fighting Style; I went with Dueling for the extra damage whenever fighting with a single, one-handed weapon. Which for me is all the time. My frying pan now does a respectable 1d6 + 5 damage on a hit. Yay.
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