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Post by Greatshot on Feb 29, 2020 0:33:08 GMT -5
Yup, it's gonna be that kind of campaign... Yup. Not far off from where we are in-game Session 4, solo sidequest and an unintentional cameo by one of my favorite Patriots players of all time: We pick up right where we left off, party decides to raid the other tomb. This one I built up to be sort of an intro to dungeoning. If they play everything right they'll be leaving with a good chunk of nice low level treasure i sort of built around their characters. This one, the main door is sealed. The plan was for the thief to pick the lock, but the barb decides to Hulk Smash the door instead. Okay. Successful roll, the heavy door is pushed back enough for them to slip inside. This tomb, though sealed, wasn't built quite as well as the other one, and there's signs of water damage to it, a few puddles here and there on the floor, and a moldy smell. Those two players both immediately decide they should stop and investigate and check for traps. I'm impressed, I planned room 1 to be the "hey guys, you should check for traps" tutorial, as I put a few triggers on the floor that'd cause arrows to shoot from slots in the walls. Good roll, they see a pressure plate right next to them, and another sealed door at the other side of the room. Thief's player fails his IRL wisdom check and decides stepping on the plate would unlock the door. It does not, and he gets an arrow in the shoulder for his efforts. At this point, they successfull avoid most of the other trigger traps, the barb getting arrowed at the end of the room. Ranger squeaks by unscathed, and as having leveled up after the last session, now has a pet wolf (which we handwaved as saying he found in the nearby woods and it decided to tag along as the bandits killed the rest of its pack as no one felt it questworthy and I was fine just being like "yup cool, you have your animal now" to get on with the game. The player is determined to train an Owlbear and is totally cool with THAT being a quest, so I figure that will be when I make him work for it once we get a few more levels So they get to this door, and pick this one successful, and the thief gleefully bounces down the hallway not having learned a single lesson from the last room (amusingly, he rolled good int and terrible wisdom, so the player is TOTALLY in character with this), and after rounding the corner, gets absolutely frickin chonked by the giant pendulum blade I put there. He survives, but it did a number on him. He falls back, ranger takes the lead, has his pooch sniff out the path. They fail their perception, and blade number two swings thru. He rolls a good dodge, and I opt to say it simply passes over the doggo, because I'm not a total monster. End of the hallway, another locked door. Lockpick attempt fails. Barb smash! Barb does damage, but fails to break the door off the hinges, so... thief smash? He rolls a twenty, and opens the pickle jar after the barb loosens it for him. They pass thru, and hit a T path, and head to the right. Puddles. Ranger does the smart thing and asks if he can have his wolf sniff out the area, the wolf detects one of the puddles is "wrong" and they roll for initiative against the grey ooze lurking in the hallway. After being introed to the dangers of oozes disolving a few arrowheads and severely damaging a couple of shortswords, they kill it. Thief: "I'm gonna loot it." Rest of party , me, reaching for damage dice "..Wait no, that's the worst idea possible, I'm not gonna do that." They find a dead end and don't look too hard at it, and head back the other way. The other way is a large open room with an altar and a family crest. They investigate the altar very thoroughly and notice a couple of tracks in the stone, but none of them can move it. After trying to force it as a group they head back to the dead end and find the switch there, which causes the altar to move aside revealing a hidden door. Through the door they find another one of those animated plate armors, this one damaged by years of dripping water so it's partially rusted (an excuse for me to lower its AC and HP a couple of notches because it took way too damn long to kill the last one). Critical hit from the ranger takes off one if its arms, bringing it down to a single attack per round, and it is killed(?) fairly quickly. Further exploration finds another hidden stairwell which leads to a treasure room and a sarcophagus. Three chests, one for each player, each with two items in it. The thief gets a bag of holding and a magical rope of climbing, the barbarian gets a multiuse healing ointment (that also cures diseases) and a potion of growth so he can extra hulk smash, ranger gets a quiver full of magic arrows and a gem that is a one time use elemental summon (which he's treating with a strong case of elixir disease). Inside the sarcophagus is a magical hand axe they give to the barbarian, and after the skeleton briefly awakens as they take his axe, they decide to attack it in case it comes to life. I had intended the reaction to just be a jump scare for them, but hey, if they're gonna desecrate the corpse... bonus skeleton battle! ...unfortunately, they had just stolen his weapon, so the poor (un)dead bastard didn't last very long. At this point, the ranger's player wasn't feeling very good, so he decided to tap out, barb player left with him. Thief isn't ready to call it a night, asks if he can do some sort of solo thieving sidequest. I'm cool with it if they are, the other two agree to basically assume a few in game days pass where they're just chillin' and recovering. Thief decides to explore the great trade city and get into shenanigans. First, he explores several blacksmiths, looking to see if he can find a magic bow. I secretly roll to see if he does... and i roll a 20. Well, I'm not GIVING him something top tier this early into the game, but I'm certainly willing to drop it as a plot hook. One of the shops has a great, golden recurve longbow that looks like a pair of angel or dragon wings in a glass case above the sales floor. Talking to the shop's owner, who is an old man and a wizard (his grandson, the blacksmith, actually runs the place now), they learn this was the weapon of a heroine of legend who was supposedly his ancestor due to family legend. They and the majority of this city are human, so said ancestor is long gone. I get asked for the name, and as I'm making this up entirely on the bloody spot, and I have an absurd soft spot for Phantasy Star, the first thing that comes to mind is Laya's Bow from PSIII. I'm not gonna steal that outright because 1), When I homage/borrow/steal I prefer more of an angle than outright cribbing, and 2), I don't want googling to give anything away, so I sort of mumble something like "....layla's...bow?" Somehow by next session all of my PCs have decided her name was Lydia, so it's now Lydia's Bow and Lydia of the Dawn will rapidly blossom into an actual legendary heroine of ancient times due to further out of my ass improv-ing in the following weeks. And this is how all of my games wind up with notebooks. So he asks the shopkeeper how much the bow costs, shopkeeper tells him it's not for sale, but he's willing to consider exchanging it for the right price. Supposedly inside the bank vaults is a spellbook containing lost magics, an invaluable treasure he could make more use of than a bow. Knowing I've got a giant golem down there (plus the actual act of getting into the vault), I know the bow is safely out of reach for now and have set up a questline for once they're higher level. Cool. Moving on. Thief decides to go visit the local Thieves Guild, which is allowed to operate in the open in Klahjesi so long as they play within the city's tolerances -- if you've ever seen The Wire, similar concept, rules of The Game. City police can't control all the crime but as long as they're not murderin civilians and other truly terrible things, petty theft against travelers and the like is overlooked. Into the guild they go. After lurking about the bar, the bartender points him out to the Guildmaster, who is a pretty easy going old thief, semi-retired. Content to hang out in the guild's front hall and smoke.. er.. something. Still has the final say, and is probably a lot more dangerous than he lets on. Party thief asks for work, Guildmaster gives him an "easy" test. There's a tavernkeep in town that visits the guild, is a degenerate gambler. Owes the guild an obscene amount of money in gambling debts, something like 2000 gold. Guildmaster wants his money, doesn't care how he gets it. Prefers it quiet, but is fine with intimidation or breaking kneecaps if need be. Thief agrees, heads out to the tavern, it's the middle of the day. Welp, he is also an older gentleman, and his son is the bartender. Son is a fairly big fellow (though just an ordinary citizen, no combat skill. I soley made him big for descriptive purposes to make the player consider their actions). Is protective of dad, but after a strong persuasion roll, he agrees to let the thief talk to his father. Who is upstairs. Losing at a dice game to his friend. Thief joins the game, and proceeds to lose a nice chunk of gold to his intended target while trying to intimate him, and absolutely, completely, failing. In fact, by the end of it, the tavernkeep has told him the guild owes HIM money because they were cheating him at dice. The thief leaves and ponders this information for a bit, and decides to return to the guild with his report. Unsurprisingly, the guildmaster is less than impressed. Thief decides he's gonna wait til nighttime and then break into the tavern as the upper floor is their home (he learned this while visiting earlier). He scales the outside of the house, gets in thru a window, is the old man's room. All of this goes quietly until he starts rustling through drawers to look for the loot. At this point, the old man starts to wake up, and the solution to this, obviously, is murder, because yes, this is one of those campaigns. Old man is a harmless old man, so he has 1d4 worth of HP and is killed effectively instantly by even the panicked dagger shank. Thief decides to go out into the hallway to see if he's been detected and to search the rest of the house for further loot, and the noise had woken up the son. Clearly, the only thing to be done here is further murder, so the son dies too. At this point, thief decides to gtfo before anything else goes wrong and escapes the way he came in. I roll to see if he's noticed, he is not. Next day he goes back to the guild, and there's guards there, inquiring about the murders. He doesn't get ratted out, but the guildmaster is... less than enthusiastic about the visit, explaining the need to be a bit more subtle and a little less stabbity in a city like this. But he does get his gold, so he's happy enough. Thief is then given his first real job, to sneak on board a ship in the harbor carrying a valuable (magic) cloak and steal it for their client. Thief spends a couple in game days studying the harbor and figuring out a way on the ship, ultimately he bribes his way on board by bribing a salty dockhand to carry him on in his bag of holding (this is how the player figures out it's a bag of holding, when he realizes he fits inside of it. Neat). Thief also spends the time to get clothing like a dockworker so if he's caught on board he can just pretend to be helping unload the ship. After a close call being almost detected, he finds the locked captain's quarters where the cloak is being kept as it's so valuable, as well as raiding the captain's personal effects for a nice dagger (non magical, just nice quality), and a VERY expensive bottle of fine rum. A successful bluff on the way out gets him past one of the ship's actual crew, and back to the guild. Guildmaster is pleased at the success, and the low profile takes the cloak and vanishes behind the bar. The guild's mage (who is clearly a Tekker because the party hasn't bothered to even try to ID the treasures they've found, but doesn't suck at his primary job function) confirms the cloak is what the client is looking for, and at this point the thief gets to see the ACTUAL guild, not just the front bar. Beyond the back wall is a thieves bazaar, where there's nice gear to be had if you're not picky about where it comes from. He spends some gold getting a magical shortsword, and IDing the magic rope (which would have come in handy a couple nights ago). He will later ID the rest of the stuff for his teammates. As I'm describing some of the other thieves, I mention the huge guy that buys, and and immediately consumes, about half of that expensive rum -- in my mind, I'm thinking of something like the big thief dude from the Aladdin sequel -- kinda meaty but with some serious muscle under it. As I'm describing it, I make the choice of words "built, yanno, like someone on the line in the NFL". Player: "Haha, so he's like Andre Tippett?" Me: "Well, I was thinking more lik-- you know what? Screw it, his name is Tippett."
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 3, 2020 23:59:27 GMT -5
Session 5: Goblins are tricky bastards, don't steal things while at sea, and other valuable life lessons. This episode picked up right where we left off, but added a new player - another rogue, this one focusing into Assassin, with a bit of eastern/ninja flair. Was an easy fit into the party, they just decided he was in the thieves guild, they bump into each other and join up. I'll allow it, easy peasy, gets on with the game. Likewise, I allow him to join at the same level in the interest of fairness/fun. Meanwhile I ask the thief what he ever did with his magic earing. He put it in his sock, thinking it'd buzz when Sila contacted him. After explaining it was a magic earring and not an iPhone, he puts it in his ear. I decide to give them the option to Break Bad and have her contact him, letting him know that her master is willing to meet them in the capital city of a country on another continent. I further specify that this meeting will be held in the castle, so I'm pretty clearly implying that SKL works for a fairly powerful ruler. This was my initial backstory plan for when the campaign initiator (the thief) was going to start in his home town with our coworkers who bowed out. No sense letting it go to waste. I imply that he vaguely recognizes the names even through his memory fog, and he rolls a wis check (successfully) to get more info, info dump on Atrus, lead by Avernia, who's enemies refer to her as the Witch Queen. Her father, leader of a small barony declared himself king years ago claiming that title should be his by rights, and died only a year or so later. Since taking the throne herself 20 or so years ago she's waged war on the countries in the region, seeking to expand. Again, I'm being pretty blunt here to them about "guys, she's the BBEG". Thief discusses their options about where to go, and the party random decides to go murderhobo the goblin cave they were supposed to deal with week 1 before getting on a boat to go overseas. Okay, wasn't expecting that. Wasn't prepared for that. Goblin gave was only mathed out for 3 lvl 1 dudes, now I have 4 level 3 dudes. So quick mental rejiggering, and we're off. They climb through the seaside cliffs and find the natural cave the goblins are using as a hideout, sneak into it, and the assassin decides to open (out of successful sneaking) with a fancy attack, describing leaping off the wall matrix/anime style and chopping off the goblin's head (he rolled good, so sure, I'll go with rule of cool descriptors). BUT, goblins are a panicky lot, and the other 3 in the front of the cave now freak out, screaming and retreating down a hallway, while the two bow using ones in the back ready arrows and fire. The party takes "goblins running deeper into the cave" as an invitation to forego caution, abandon any premise of stealth or caution, and charge in. As they get into the cave, they go around the corner and find the other goblins coming back. With a bugbear (a BIG, angry goblin, basically). And then they learn the valuable lesson that goblins are sneaky bastards that love traps, and I have the archers sitting in the upper level of the caves open fire. This proves to be a fairly tricky fight, but Legolas continues to possess the party's ranger and they pick off the sniperblins and manage to bring down the bugbear. At this point, I have a few more goblins in the back of the cave hiding, easy mop up except a few traps. They decide to pull a move out of video game RPGs and retreat outside the cave to tent and recover HP. So yep, now there's much more stuff in the cave. So they charge back in, turn that corner, completely heedless of the lessons they've learned about running into dangerous places, and the roof falls on them as they hit the tripwire. Two of them manage to pass the save to dive out of the way, but the noise activates the fight. Two bugbears, 4 regular goblins, only half of each engage up front. This should raise a flag, it doesn't. One goblin just chills and as the party gets closer, steps aside and pulls the lever he's in front of, opening the spike trap on the thief. He dodges this with stupid luck, and the other goblinoids get into the fray. In the far corner of the room is a small pool of water - I had planned this to serve as flavor text (source of water for the goblins) or possibly an environmental hazard. Nothing deeper than that. After they just barely escape this battle with their lives courtesy of a ridiculous double critical by one of the bugbears, they explore the room. Then it happens, the crocbarb asks to go in the water. Well, shit, I have nothing planned for this, but okay *reaches into the BS book*. There's a small tunnel in there, he swims through it, finds himself in a dry empty room. But it's pitch black and he can't see in the dark, and obviously his torch went out going thru water. After a few minutes of panic bracing to be stabbed in the dark, the thief eventually decides to swim in after him. He succeeds in navigating to the tunnel, and pops up, and asks me what he sees, i tell him to roll, and it's a bloody 17. I have NO CLUE where I came up with this, I'm literally coming up with it as the words are coming out of my piehole, but I decide there's an old statue there. Faded, worn down from time, but good craftsmanship originally. The hands are broken off, but it looks like she was holding something once. Thief: I touch it to see if there's any hidden switches or anything like that. Roll. 20. Mother-f%^*. Thief suddenly has a vision of a warrior woman that matches the appearance of the statue, holding a beautifully crafted golden longbow and fighting off a horde of flying demons. She turns, looks at him, and tells him they're coming back, then poof, he's back in the cave, having spawned Lydia into an actual character by the power of pure nonsense. He freaks out, drags the party back to the city to try to get more info from the shopkeeper who currently has the bow. I give a bit of backstory to them as a reward and am beginning to come up with a different angle on the plot I was constructing. Hmm. So at this point they finally decide to embark on a sea voyage. Here, things go almost entirely off the rails again. Feeling flush with success from previous adventures, the thief decides to press his luck and attempts to rob (by breaking into their cabin) a wealthy merchant on the vessel. Barb and Ranger want NO PART of this plan, and decide to just chill in the room they hired. Assassin decides to go see if the earlier fight they saw on deck (2 drunk sailors) could be turned into something more and offers sailor A that he'll kill sailor B for a very paltry fee (like 4 gold, as the sailor only makes a basic living wage). Night falls, thief puts plan into action and completely muffs picking the lock. I tell him he no longers hears snoring inside the cabin. I've decided the merchant is awake, and is paranoid, and has a hand crossbow ready. Thief doesn't take the hint, and tries the lock again. He goes in, and gets hit with the surprise attack. No real damage of merit, but enough noise (and blood trail) to wake pretty much the whole dang ship. Merchant wants the thief tossed over the side, crew agrees to put thief in improvised brig while they wake the (drunken) captain who wants no part of it til morning so he can sleep it off. I'm doing this to buy them some time to figure out a solution, obviously. At this point, the assassin decides to go on a charm offensive. First he sneaks into the brig, unlocks the thief but tells him to stay there, then goes up and charms the captain into not tossing the thief overboard in the morning. In the AM, charm-offensive continues, assassin manages to talk the merchant down into being paid for his troubles, the merchant asks for 500 gold. All the thief has is 250. With another good persuasion attempt, he agrees to take 235 as long as they kick the thief off at the next port. Which is now a generated island village they stop at to take on food and water. Rest of the party continues on to Tyr, the port city in Atrus, where they decide to wait out the arrival of their friend, who takes a few weeks to find a new ship going there. I decide him losing all his money is enough punishment for something that could have realistically been a death so I don't cause any further hardship beyond the lost time. Meanwhile, the rest of the party takes up stock in this port city and finds a few bits of info about the war, the population (reasonably happy despite the armed patrols), and crocbarb starts a bromance with Sir Desmond, a knight in the Queen's service. Desmond is recalled to the capital after a few days and states he'll put in a good word for them. At this point, the team reforms and that's the end of the session.
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Post by Optimal Megatron on Mar 11, 2020 9:59:06 GMT -5
I find it funny that I've apparently never played in a game where I just randomly decided to start up with the murder and robbery unless, y'know, explicitly running a character where that was the point (i.e. the old Echoes Decepticons). It's interesting to see where that pops up here and where the rest of the party is like "nope". Aside from apparently bribing one sailor to order a hit on another for pocket change.
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 11, 2020 22:55:39 GMT -5
Oh, the fact that sailor was left high and dry on the murder to hire is ABSOLUTELY coming back to bite them in the ass. I haven't decided how or when or where, but it absolutely is biting them in the ass. But yeah, the rest of the party is... I wouldn't say heroic or lawful good, but.. less murdertastic than the pair of rogues for sure. But onwards to session 6 since I kinda forgot about this blogish thing for a bit! Session 6: Avernia, The Witch Queen: I make the team each roll a D20 at the start of this session, to meet a DC check that will become apparent soon. So after reforming, and debating it for a bit, our band of rarely do-wells decides to head to the capital city of Atrus, Zolthandria. Having had some time to reformulate my plottings a bit, I've decided to go less pure evil and more evil out of necessity for the Queen. She's rapidly developing into a fairly interesting character in my head and I see opportunities to expand on previous sessions frantic improvising through her position. So they march to the capital, which I describe as a large, old city that appears to be going thru a heavy duty modernization and fortification, and the castle is likewise being renovated from being let fall into a state of disrepair. The castle, dubbed the Wyvern's Sting, is made of obsidian black stone, with several large towers, and central keep structure, and rising over it, a tower designed at a curvature to mimic the scorpion-like tail of a wyvern (as a wyvern is the heraldic symbol of her house). Eh, magic. It's magic architecture. Don't question it, it sounds ominous and rule of cool. Anywho, as they learn from their stuff they know about the world insight, their characters know that Atrus was once, long ago, a great kingdom that spanned a large chunk of this continent. It was founded by a legendary wizard named Zolthan. (Though they've yet to put 2 and 2 together, Zolthan was an ally of Lydia in the ancient war, and in the aftermath formed a kingdom from the ruins) Unfortunately, his kids and descendants were... less competent and the kingdom dissolved into many smaller fiefdoms and holdings over the centuries due to infighting and the like. Avernia has learned she has the strongest claim to the bloodline and feels it is her birthright to rule the region, see previous entry. She has also inherited his skill in the arcane arts. It's "common knowledge" that she is seemingly immortal, hence the title her enemies bestowed on her - despite being human, and somewhere in her 40s, maybe closing in on 50, she doesn't look a day older than she did when she took the throne - in fact, she's seems to be in physically perfect shape, to an unsettlingly creepy degree - like absolutely flawless skin, no birthmarks, no scars, no wrinkles - almost to the point she doesn't actually look human. But as they prepare to head south to the capital they encounter a monk, who will be the 5th and final member of the party (5 is my hardcap for players, anything beyond that and the game rapidly becomes unwieldy to manage). His backstory is that he was once a soldier in one of the federated states at war with Atrus, and his father, a high ranking officer, lost a battle and was utterly scapegoated for it. Disillusioned, the monk deserted and became a wanderer. He keeps this hidden from the other players initially, learning their destination. But in a show of good faith, he pays for transport south via horse and carriage for everyone. They arrive in Zolthandria, and spend zero time exploring the city, heading straight for the castle. They meet up with Bloodthorne there, who is less than impressed at the length of time it took them to get there. Thief asks her if they're working together because he's a hopelessly sweet dumb puppy, she reiterates again that she works alone. Assassin attempts to flirt with SKL, fails miserably, she tosses a knife into his boot. It finally dawns on them that they are actually going to meet the queen herself and not some guildmaster or other politician when they're summoned to the throneroom. The queen arrives, escorted by her personal bodyguard, a Helmed Horror, a ridiculously over-named construct - they're basically much more powerful, and slightly "intelligent" versions of the animated armor constructs the party's already encountered. It makes a perfect "secret service" agent though, as they don't eat, or require sleep, are 100% loyal, are immune to most manipulation magic (like charm), etc. Among the court are a few other knights and the general of her army. Avernia is introduced and with a subtle hand gesture, commands them to tell her truthfully why they came to meet her, what they can offer her, and what they hope to gain from serving her. The gesture is her casting a Mass Suggestion spell, which with the way I builtout her statblock (because again, she was supposed to be a bloody endgame boss!), required a roll of 19(!) to "save" and not be manipulated by. This was my start of the session roll request. Both the monk and the ranger rolled 20s, of course. Now, per the actual in game rules of the Mass Suggestion spell, the save only grants you immunity from that spellcaster using that spell for 24 hours, so technically there's no reason she couldn't just do this every day, but out of the fun of RPing it, I opt to just run with these scores going forward. The queen is smart, and has an abundance of caution, but she isn't paranoid crazy so while the failures concern her, she isn't going to be outright disturbed by them at least initially. So the Thief answers honestly, stating his only true master is gold. If she pays well, he will be utterly loyal. Great. Easy enough. More than enough shinys in the coffers. Honest answer from the crocbarb - he's not really sure what he's looking for. He's trying to find a new place to belong. Again, Avernia feels this is an easy one to fill. He's a lifelong soldier, given time she can give him rank and he'll be loyal. Assassin - tries to be snarky, implies he knows a guy that can kill people if she needs him too, for gold. Avernia points out SKL IS her royal assassin, but she could find uses for another (more disposable) one, asks him point blank if he means himself. He confirms he does, and tries to be flirty again. Again, easy to control - gold and the slightest, vaguest hint he might have a chance with her (he absolutely does not) is enough to keep him in line. Monk - he doesn't have to be honest, but decides, yanno what, he's gonna tell her the truth anyways, figuring if she found out he kept it from her, she'd probably have him killed. The monk is a wise man already. She acknowledges she respects his integrity and then proceeds to have Sir Desmond reveal that he used to be a mercenary who fought *against* her, but Desmond's honor (he kept some of his men from killing civilians) won him a chance to serve her instead of the gallows when he was captured, and he has gone on to become one of her most valued knights. Ranger - Doesn't have to be honest. Is vague as all getout, basically stating he's not really sure what he wants, that he's always been a loner and is just seeing where life takes him, basically. Confirms he'll be loyal if she's got the gold to pay him though. The queen is concerned by this answer, but does not show it. After the "interviews", she invites them to a grand feast in their honor. They eat incredibly well, as she spared no expense on the meal, and then has them shown to living quarters in the castle proper, and as a show of faith, is told they are free to explore. Obviously she's keeping some sort of eye on them, but they aren't outright told this. Barb, monk and ranger all retire to their rooms, deciding they want to err on the side of caution and not piss this potentially very dangerous woman off. The two rogues go off to shenanigan a bit -- the thief explores, talks to a couple of servants, one, an older lady, confirms that as far as queens go, Avernia's.. not so bad. Much kinder to the servants than her father was, and while she's seen a few moments of anger, and "the queen can be scary sometimes", she's not unhappy working in the castle. He then goes looking for a library, which he finds. Upon asking the librarian if there are any magical books there, he's told those are kept in the queen's own personal library in her tower. Apparently she's quite the scholar of magic and in general very much a bookworm. Thief decides NOT to try to find that library and instead heads up to the main "tail" spire to see what's up there. Answer, the queen. The queen is up there. That's where she goes to think. I describe the tower as being an open air space with a roost in the tip of the tail. "Oh, no way", the player starts getting concerned. As Avernia senses the thief arrive, she confirms her family *used* to raise wyverns here, but as the city has grown exponentially over the years, it is far too dangerous to keep such ferocious and difficult to train monsters so close to a civilian population (OOC: this was one of my changes to her character - when she was straight up the badguy, there very much were wyverns here. I had already sketched out the castle in my notes, so i decided to keep the lore but make it less brutal). As she turns to talk about them, the thief sees there is absolutely no joy in her emerald eyes. He attempts to ask if she's ok, and is very sternly rebuked that he is greatly overstepping his bounds. Thief apologizes and GTFOs, very much having learned his lesson on the boat. The assassin explores a bit, asking me if he can detect any hidden passageways, reasoning it's a huge, and very old castle, of course it has them. Well, he's not wrong, and he rolls well, so he finds one. It leads down a hidden corridor behind the throne room and into the western tower. It opens into a small, book filled room. The door outwards is locked, and he critically fails his lockpicking skill, breaking it off in the lock. So, he opts to read a few books. They're all indecipherable magic tomes, and he takes psychic damage from one of them. It dawns on both of the players that he's stumbled into the queen's personal library. After some time, the door rattles like someone's attempting to open it, failing until the lock magically disables itself (I knew when I made her she'd need the Knock spell, I didn't realize it'd be the second bloody thing she'd be casting. In her own damn home). She comes in, is mildly bothered by his presence. The assassin rolls well on his persuasion roll as he does politely point out she told them they had free reign of the castle. She allows this, but asks him to be a bit more... considerate of her personal effects. They discuss magic for a bit, he wants to learn (genuinely - out of character, the player and I discuss if wants to multiclass into a wizard, which he does). Avernia gives him what's basically a beginner's tome (OOC I allow him to pick a single cantrip spell that he HAS to cast 3 times before he levels up to be able to put that level into wizard. Him having the Fire Bolt cantrip will end up being hugely helpful in an upcoming battle, so it works out pretty cool). She lets out a vague notion that not all of her abilities come from books, that the player decides not to pursue before retreating back to their quarters. To be continued, not the end of the session.
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 13, 2020 21:19:02 GMT -5
Ok, so now that I'm a bit more coherent, continuing onwards! So after a night's rest, they begin working for the Queen. I had built up 4 little miniquests, one sort of focusing on a skill or backstory of each character, before learning of them adding a 5th character. But the earlier comment about "disposable scapegoats" is verrrrry much in Avernia's thinking - a team of random hirelings not from her lands, acting under the radar that she could disavow while waging a "clean" war politically? Oh heck yes. So I present their 4 options, and let them choose which one they want to hit first. They were, as follows: 1. There's reports of a Hobgoblin band raiding near the eastern borders (which are some distance away, this has become a fairly large country already) of Atrus. Queen is fine with either A), killing them, B), forcing them out, or C), hiring them as mercenaries and sending them north to the disputed border, but they need to be removed from her country as they're killing the peasantfolk. Keep these options in mind. Tracking the hobgoblins effectively will be in the ranger's wheelhouse. 2. Head north to the border to assist in a siege being lead by Desmond. This is a small border fortress along a major road, so it's not a huge battle, but it is an important one. Many of the Federated Cities are too small to field large standing armies and make heavy use of mercenaries. This one is for the barb, as some of those mercs come from a dwarven nation his people fought a war with some years ago (a war the PC played a sizable role in). 3. Sneak into a steadfast near a farming village in territory near the border. The army's already passed through here, but this is a lone holdout. Avernia's orders here are very specific, the civilian population, the peasantry, is NOT to be harmed. The keep should be taken intact if possible, again, to minimize casualties. Idea here is for thief sneakiness. 4: Assassination (No points for guessing who this one was for). In a town not far from the capital, is someone the queen wants killed. He's living under the protection of a low level lord in the lord's keep. The description is that of a young man with dark hair and green eyes. So, I always expect them to do something I don't expect, and this comes up now, as they decide to split up, and take on 1 and 4. The two rogues head to do some murderin', and the other 3 head off to deal with the hobgoblin threat. Assassination!: So off the rogues go, they arrive at the town near this keep, and decide to hang out for a bit at the inn, initially deciding to wait until nightfall, but then they decide to do some scouting during the day. During this scouting, the thief's player has a bit of a brain fart/misunderstanding and confuses keep with innkeep. He describes walking past the guards at the door. I make him roll for it, interpeting this not as a brainfart, but as deliberate boldness -- the old "act like you're supposed to be there" gambit. And the mofo rolls a 18, so I let him go right in. The assassin follows, and rolls a 3. He gets stopped, and sent away. Unfortunately here's where the thief's confusion betrays him, as he realizes what he did and RUNS BACK WITH THE ASSASSIN instead of committing to it. So they decide to wait til night, get up on the roof, easily dispatch a couple sentries, sneak in, go downstairs, and try to locate their quarry. They make some noise unlocking the door to a room, and end up ambushing a guard. The thief kills him as the assassin gets into the room, confirms it's the target they're there for, and completely screws up his murder attempt. The thief steals the guard's clothes, but ends up having to fight off another guard while they kill the sleeping dude. The assassin decides to cut off the poor bastard's bloody head as proof of death. They escape the way they came in, but are by now under serious fire from archers and soldiers. The stolen clothes let them send the persuers off in another direction once they get back down on the ground, and they return to the queen. When they get back to the castle, they present the head to her grace, and she responds with a quiet "Rest in Peace, brother." I get exactly the response from that I want, they all freak the heck out. Now that they're bound to her by their deeds, she reveals that he was her father's illegitimate son who was born right before dad died, and that lord was planning on using him to stake a claim to the throne. Hobgoblins!: This goes.. surprisingly, impressively well.. until it doesn't. Due to the large distance they need to travel, they request, and are granted, horses (including a very beefy warhorse for the crocodillian). Off they go, and they find the hobgoblin encampment without much difficulty, the remains of a farm near the border. The farm is burned, and there is the remains of.. something over their cooking fire. After discussing their plans for a few minutes, they decide to simply approach peacefully and try to talk to them. The monk takes the lead here, and with convincing argument and rolls, he talks the leader of the hobgoblins into coming back to the capital to talk to the queen with them. They also promise him lands within Atrus, and give the other hobgoblins one of their horses as a show of good faith. As you may have noticed from the quest description, this is not at all what was requested. So they march the hobgoblin captain into the capital, right into the damn castle, and into their quarters so they can go tell the queen their "success". Avernia is very much not impressed with their equivalent of bringing an intelligent grizzly bear into the White House and giving him property. She tells them flat out to kill him and that the rest of the hobgoblins are now their problem to clean up. So they go back to their room, and attack the captain, who's more than a fair fight for the 3 of them, but he does eventually fall. And that's where that week ended.
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Post by Optimal Megatron on Mar 13, 2020 22:44:20 GMT -5
And this is why all digital RPGs have quest logs now. Always fun to pull the rug out from under them. I'm curious, was the queen intending for the kid to be killed off not-horribly? I mean, I imagine she probably accepted "killed horribly with a lack of subtlety" as a potential outcome given their....thus far demonstrated competency.
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 13, 2020 23:16:51 GMT -5
She really didn't *care* all that much, to be frank. She'd have preferred a cleaner death if possible, and she definitely didn't want him tortured, but in her eyes he had to die, and he had to die before anyone rallied around him. She's more results over methods. By doing it thru "unofficial" channels like that, she avoids a potential uprising of nobles, and since they so kindly brought her his head, now she's got the additional benefit of using Speak with the Dead on it to get a bit of info and *confirm* the attempted treason so she can get rid of that lord via official channels. I'm sticking (mostly) to rules as written for her magic just to put logical limits on her powers, so she's been able to observe them to a degree with Scrying spells, so she knows they're capable, but perhaps not... very competent sometimes The irony of the subsequent sessions is they're an absolute wrecking ball of chaos, but they keep acing their charisma rolls talking to her and they keep succeeding (despite doing so in absurd fashion) on furthering her agenda, so she's like "these idiots are giving me an ulcer but they're also some of my best men." I'm beginning to understand why Megatron kept Starscream around.
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 25, 2020 0:38:12 GMT -5
Casting raise dead because I lost track of this again with everything going on Session 7: One bold gambit, one mostly successful occupation and one terrible tactical error. So picking up from where we left off, the party heads off to deal with the other tasks they were assigned by their new patron queen. First things first, Ranger, Barb and Monk need to go clean their mess with the hobgoblins up. They ride east again, taking the thief and assassin with, as they fully anticipate a big fight. They arrive at the Hobgoblin camp, and are dismayed to see that the hobgoblins ate their gift horse. After that, they inform (outright lie to) the gobbos their boss has been executed as he failed to bow to the queen. At this point, the Monk decides to declare that the hobgoblins now serve Avernia. They will be paid well as mercenaries, but they need to ride north immediately to join her forces there. He rolls pretty well, I roll middle of the road for a reaction check, and decide to play that straight - the goblins are divided into two opposing factions who are now arguing with each other whether to do as they're told (as it's been established in my gameworld that these guys respect and follow the strongest), or to kill the people that killed their leader. It becomes clear one of the hobbs is the strongest remaining and he's starting to convince the crew to attack the party. Crocbarb decides to intimate them into serving, flat out saying they killed the captain and they'll easily kill all of them too, and he rolls a 19. I was pleased they 1) followed orders (learning from their mistake), and 2) actually made an effort to resolve something WITHOUT stabbing the problem away, so I ran with it. One of the indecisive hobgoblins sticks a lance through the "new leader" and kills him, the rest fall in line and head north to do as they're told. They opt next to try to occupy the fortress and arrive in the town it's built near. They actually learned from their previous errors again, and properly scout the town. They do act a bit too out in the open, visiting a shop and a tavern, so the garrison knows they're coming, but they actually heeded the request to not kill the civies. They determine there's a freshwater stream following under one of the walls of the fort, the front (southern) gate has a small trench with anticalvary spikes and the barb, monk and assassin decide to try to swim under the wall and get in that way. Thief and Ranger opt to try another strategy. Thief wants to try out his magic rope, and climbs up onto the keep roof. The ranger decides to stay back by the treeline and snipe one of the archers patrolling on the roof. He misses his first shot, but as it's night time, the human guard never sees the arrow. Thief successfully gets onto the roof undetected, and completely fails on sneak attacking the other guard. This goes bad quickly. Neither of my players can land a shot in this fight, and the enemy archer can't see the ranger, so he shoots at the thief. Hits, the guard near him lands a sword hit, things are going badly. Inside the fortress, our seal team comes up in a small water basin in the courtyard. There's a barred door south, they correctly figure this leads to the front gate they bypased, and one north leading.. somewhere. They opt to head north, and are immediately greeted by footsteps coming down the hall. They fall back to the courtyard to set up a killzone. 4 guards, two of which they wipe in the first round. The other two fall very shortly afterwards. Easy win. Back up top, things go from bad to worse. The thief misses again, the swordsman he's fighting doesn't. Ranger finally manages to kill the archer up there. The thief finally lands a hit, but the swordsman criticals him in return, and the thief has like 4 hp left. He disengages and runs back to the rope, which he attempts to slide down quickly since he knows the soldier would be trying to cut it behind him. The dice hate this guy tonight, and he fails his dex check(!). He falls like a rock, and is put on death's door via the falling damage. The ranger manages to salvage victory from defeat, lands a critical hit and knocks the guard off the roof and to his own death. He then quickly moves to stabilize the thief and save him. Back inside, the other group heads down the corridor and sees a path downstairs to their left and upstairs to their right. They decide to head up knowing the thief's plan to attack from that entry (though they have no idea how badly that plan is going!). They turn the corner and arrive in the keep's meeting room, and find, flanked by two guards, the boss of the encounter - the lord of this town is a wizard. This was my intro to combat magic fight, and I really should have expected them to split up, but I didn't, so I just Thanos snapped a chunk of his guards out of existence before they met him, hence the light support staff. I built his statblock in a way to make him fairly glass cannon, he only has a handful of HP and virtually no armor to speak of (I used one of his spell slots to cast preemptive Mage Armor to 1, burn a slot, and 2, make it so he'd maybe at least be able to take one hit. In retrospect I should have trimmed his spells more too but I didn't think of that on the fly). The Crocbarb and Monk engage his two guards, dispatching them with relative ease. The assassin tries to beeline for the wizard, but can't close range that quickly. He takes a shot with his bow, misses. The wizard casts Cloud of Daggers (focused on the assassin), one of my favorite low levels spells just because of how fun describing it is (though it's nerfed in 5e as you can no longer magically "throw" daggers at people in subsequent rounds). The thief takes a nice ol' chunk of damage. Next round, the assassin flees from the knives and shoots the wizard with his bow. he connects and the wizard fails his concentration save, cancelling the daggerstorm. Then, the Barb and Monk make a very big mistake I'm hoping they took the lesson from - they both straight charged the wizard, putting them right next to each other and in the crosshairs. The wizard turns, points at them, and fires off his one big gun, Lightning Bolt. And the monk fails his saving throw, taking ALL of the damage from the spell. He drops like a rock. The Barb closes rank and clobbers him, but he hangs on. Assassin misses, the wizard casts Vampiric Touch. He lands the hit on the Barb, who falls. But the healing of the spell gives the Wizard a bit more life. The assassin renders it inconsequential, as the player called in his one fate of the gods die roll he earned by treating us all to pizza a couple sessions ago, making this an automatic critical hit. The critical hit brought the Wizard down to freaking 1 HP officially (!), but yeah, it killed him. The party is revived, searches for loot, finding a pair of scrolls on the wizard and a fistfull of gold, and limps back to Zolthandria. The scrolls are a higher level spell scroll (I forgot to write down what it was, I know they took notes, it was something 3rd or 4th level though, so a nice oneshot or something the assassin can copy to his spellbook if he does go down the road into wizard multiclassing) They are handsomely rewarded for their efforts. She asks what they would like. The thief just wants straight cash homey, and gets it, 1000gp worth. The ranger asks the queen if there's any way to weaponize the elemental gem he received earlier. She does enjoy tinkering with new spells, and the player has been OCD paranoid about running out of arrows, so I see a fun solution here (a bow that shoots magic ice arrows and does cold damage + the ability to summon a much weaker elemental once per day, basically much less use in a fight but can soak up a couple of hits), but she tells him it will take some time to research (also she still doesn't trust him, so this is a way to try to test that). The assassin asks for another magic lesson from her personally. Avernia humors him as it kind of gives her a chance to flex and demonstrate what a *real* mage can do. She has him target her with the Fire Bolt cantrip as she doesn't want anything catching on fire, and she totally shrugs it off before explaining how to cast a spell from a scroll and advising him not to use it before he's ready as them backfiring can be catastrophic (full disclaimer, I didn't realize at the time 5e vastly toned down casting via scroll's danger level - in 2nd these things could end up casting with you as their target among other horrifying results). The barb and monk surprise me, both saying that they felt the queen should choose something she felt fitting. So Crocbarb is officially made a Knight of the Realm, and the Monk is given the village and keep they just liberated - Avernia has looked into his story and has decided to title him as both as a way to restore his family name and earn his loyalty, as well as hopefully sow dissent amongst supporters of his former country's ruler. I do, of course, have plans for this piece of land, it's not just a shiny moneymaking reward. Lastly, as one last piece of randomness the thief has gotten it into his head that he wants to make money via a, of all things, pie shop. He asks the queen to authorize and set this up in the capital. Avernia looks at him like this is one of the three dumbest things she's heard in her entire life and tells him not to waste her time with nonsense, there's a reason the city has officials. She okays him bringing it to one of the magistrates to handle it, which he does for an upfront cost of like 200 gold, which will cover construction of a shop and its equipment. We'll tackle the tactical disaster next post.
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 25, 2020 10:43:04 GMT -5
7.5: Should NOT have gone for the head:
So at this point the party is ready to join Sir Desmond at his siege of Cassan, a border fortress. Out of game, the Ranger's player needs to call it a night and taps out. In game, the Ranger opts not to accompany the party on their mission and stays in the rooms they're provided in the castle. So they're already down a man, but should be okay.
They arrive as Des is overseeing construction of a trebuchet, digging of trenches, etc. He expects it to be a prolonged seige, and again, due to the queen's orders - this is indeed a *seige*. He's prepared to starve the defenders out if he can rather than destroy the fort. Now, once place where DnD has always really struggled is in playing large scale warfare. I've learned over the years you're much better off treating the main battle as a "cut scene" and hyperfocusing on the PC party - think the Battle of Wakanda in Infinity War - the generic mook Outriders are absolutely no match for the Avengers themselves even in numbers(and DnD does offer "mob rules" for combat to represent that) and the rest of the fighting between the low level soldiers on both sides is background. But at level 4, they're not ready for a pitched battle yet, so Desmond sends them off to follow up on a report of mercenary reinforcements being sent to the region. As mentioned earlier, these mercenaries are former soldiers from a Dwarven land fallen to ruin after losing a war with the crocbarb's people. The player has decided his normally fairly friendly character HATES dwarfs, to the point of it being racial enmity. The Dwarves feel the same. They track the mercs into the woods and encounter 5 dwarves - 4 of them are generic grunts roughly equivalent to a 3rd or 4th level fighter - no real threat, should die in a turn or two each, and the captain of the mercenary band, a fairly strong boss encounter. He's tanky AF for this point (something like 90HP), and while I only gave him one attack per turn with the big ol' maul he's carrying, it's a strong hit. There's also a few more soldiers in the woods who are moving something heavy (the PCs can hear the noises), but I don't intend on them entering the fight unless they're really overwhelming the initial encounter, this is more intended to be story fodder. In my mind this fight is going to play out pretty straightforward - a successful ambush might kill or at least severely wound a dwarf before combat begins in earnest, the rest of the grunts probably won't make it past the end of round 2, and then the captain will be a 5 on 1 tank encounter where he's a "tough" boss but should be easily winable as their DPS output should outpace his 1x attack a round no prob.
Well, the party fails at any attempt at setting an ambush or surprise, and combat begins. And rapidly goes VERY sideways. The barb decides to play up his hatred, enrages and charges at the captain. Everyone else decides to do the same. This is a TERRIBLE idea, as it now means all the troops are going to get several more rounds of attacks then I expected them to. Three of the dwarfs (the captain and 2 men) attack the barb, the two bringing up the rear throw their javelins at the monk and assassin respectfully. Already things are starting to look grim as all but one of the javelins hit and do some decent damage. At this point instead of switching strategies, they press ahead at the captain, only the assassin opts to fall back a bit and start sniping at the other dwarves with his bow. By the end of this turn the Monk and Barb are both in pretty banged up shape. Normally this would be when I'd start fudging dice rolls but since my players want to SEE combat dice, I can't do that. Round 3, the Captain critical hits the barbarian and drops him. His troops finish off the monk immediately thereafter, and the thief is badly injured. Total party kill incoming, but since we've established these guys fight for coin, and being dwarves they're pretty honorable fellows, the captain offers the 2 still standing a chance - drop their weapons and surrender and they will all be spared except the scaly piece of excrement (obviously I'm not going to actually execute this character though). The rogues comply and the party is taken prisoner, and that's where the session ends as it's getting late (and I'm glad for this as I need to brainstorm some new content and/or an rescue mission for them).
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Post by Greatshot on Mar 27, 2020 9:46:25 GMT -5
Session 8: Abusing Dwarves sense of fair play:
So going into this week I came up with 3 plans for getting the party out of the mess they got themselves into. The first involved the Ranger going out and looking for them, turning it into a sort of Forest Gear Solid. The Ranger's player, does not love the idea of him being thrown into the wild alone and opts to stay in the castle. OOG he's working on figuring his character out more as he's never really come up with a solid backstory and is thinking of multiclassing into a wizard. I'm fine with this, we say he's taking advantage of the royal library to do some research, as he has no in character reason to know the rest of the party was captured.
Option B is the queen sends a rescue party. As I don't really feel like playing the game against myself, my tradeoff for this session is to allow the players to one-shot the Dwarves as temporary PCs, let them effectively play Redshirts for a session. This idea was inspired by the half dozen questions (that I had no intention of giving a straight answer to) about what exactly Avernia is capable of. The "surprise" to the mission I hadn't informed them of was she was just going to go in to where they're being held (a natural cave the Dwarves have turned into a forward base of operations) herself using an illusion or polymorph spell to disguise herself as a random ambassador. If negotiations failed, she was going to unveil, and fight the mook dwarves. Would have been quite one-sided, but given the players in character knowledge they couldn't get otherwise.
Option C was for them to figure it out themselves. They choose this option. Actually went pretty well too. Mostly.
I did the ol' movie cut where the story picked up with them already *in* prison, they got there with their heads covered so they don't know exactly where they are, they're just in a cell in a cave. All of them are together except our poor crocbarb, who's hung up by his arms down the hall and is being used as a punching bag. There's 2 dwarves in the main prison room playing a card game at the table, and the monk decides to try to call out their honor and bluff a solution. All of their gear/loot is piled up on a table on the far side of the room.
Rolls pretty well, one of the dwarves agrees to a good old fashion fist fight, non leathal, no tricks, just a boxing match. Monk is a monk. He's got an advantage here this dwarf doesn't know. I love the fact he's taking advantage of his characters strengths in an RP way so I roll with it. The dwarf unlocks the cage, they box (basically just unarmed, weak combat) he gets the better of the dwarf, and then tries to steal his weapon. This is when shit hits the fan. The other dwarf draws his axe, calls for help, and the fight starts. He's able to dispatch the wounded Dwarf and grabs a bow from the pile (to hand to the thief) and the keys from the dwarf, and heads back to the prison. The other dwarves are coming from deeper in the cave so they're not here yet. The assassin takes advantage of the fact he has Fire Bolt and casts it, dwarf burns, but lives. The monk finishes him off and unlocks the door, but the body is keeping the gate from being opened. As dwarves are fairly heavy this is gonna cost a turn to move. His friends will be in range next turn.
Cut to the barb, who along with his torturer, a dwarf vet of the war with barb's people (who has a replacement metal left forearm that was bitten off by one of the crocpeople), hear the commotion. He manages to taunt his way into being semi-released (the dwarf releases the chain holding him up like a cut of beef, but doesn't actually undo the chains). He falls to the floor and attempts to fight lefty, who uses his metal arm as a weapon. This battle is the frickin keystone cops, as *neither of them* rolls higher than like a 6 for about 4 rounds in a row. Eventually the barb will prevail with a bite attack but this was hilarious helpless flailing for awhile.
Back in the main room, the other dwarves close in. We have the captain and 2 other troops. The monk opts to throw one of the magic darts he picked up at one of the troops. The darts are weak, but have a low level sleep spell effect. Not only does it hit, but the spell is a success on the trooper and he settles down for a 1 minute nap. The other trooper chucks a javelin at him, the captain closes the distance. On his next move the monk finally shoves the body out of the way.
The Dwarf captain charges into the fight and takes a swing at the Monk. Thief pops him with an arrow and then uses his ability to run away to make a dash for the weapons cache. Assassin uses another firebolt, this one is a nat 1 and sets a banner on the wall on fire. The rest of the cave is rock (because it's a cave. duh.), so this is just flavoring plus a clue for them that hey, fire works in non damaging or no-combat situations too and has no real danger outcome.
They do the dance with the burly captain for a few turns, the other awake dwarf is dispatched pretty quickly. Down the hall, at long last, someone scores a hit in the survival slapfight and barb starts getting the upper hand. The Dwarf captain hits like a mack truck, but he only hits once per round, so *now* this is playing out how I intended it to in the initial encounter. He's got them sweating but he's starting to bleed HP every round at this point. He's on the ropes via a combo of firebolts (as the dwarf has taken up the position between the monk and the cell door keeping the assassin in), monk flurry of blows, and the thief literally hit and running him with the magic +1 sword he has. 6 rounds have now passed, and the remaining dwarf wakes up. A professional soldier, he quickly shakes it off and jumps into the fray with his javelin thrown at the thief, who's hurt pretty bad at this point. Down the hall the croc finally scores a fatal hit, using his jaws to rip the other dwarf's throat out. He enters the fight just in time to see the captain fall, grabs his own javelin from the weapon pile and throws it at the remaining soldier, who's then killed off by the thief's bow. Victory. They recover their stuff, everyone pats the monk's player on the back as he MVP'd the heck out of this fight, and that brings this session to an end as a couple people have an early work shift the next morning.
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