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Amidus Drexel
2013-05-26, 02:12 PM
Greetings.

This is a small campaign that arose after a series of discussions with a friend (my current DM for the longer-running campaign that I’m playing in (see sig)) that involved getting the cleric’s player in the aforementioned campaign to DM a game for an all-cleric party. The idea was brought to this player (who shall be referred to as “DM” hereafter), who immediately declared the idea awesome and decreed that we should be evil. I made a slight attempt at warning him what that would entail (especially given the players in question...), but without much success. And so, we set to work.

Apologies in advance for confusing tense usage, adverb abuse, and excessive parentheses. (nested and otherwise). If you have a problem with commas, you should probably stop reading now.

The characters:

Vlad Durankov: a chaotic evil dwarven Cleric 5/Divine Oracle 7 who worships Erythnul. He speaks in a Russian accent, and generally serves as artillery for the party. Unlike me, he didn’t give up any casting levels in his build, so Vlad’s just a bit ahead (although my higher Wis score gives me roughly the same amount of spells) of Fletcher in that regard.

Fletcher Kingsley: a lawful evil human Cleric 6/Master of Shrouds 6 who worships devils. He speaks in whatever accent I feel like at the time (honestly, it’s been a pretty decent mix), and has specialized in summoning undead (normally shadows). I’m a bit behind on the spellcasting end of things, but I’m definitely harder to kill, mostly because I run around with spell resistance and greater vigor up all the time. DMM Persist rocks.

The setting:

Logner (pronounced Lowe-nare, as per the DM), a place basically thrown together on the spot with bits and pieces of it interjected from my backstory (as it was written independently of (and, I would add, before) the setting doc) Many, if not all, of the towns are ruled by giants. It has your standard fantasy kitchen sink of everything else, though; elves, dwarves, humans, undead, dragons, etc.

The story:

Disclaimer: Much of this campaign was planned on the fly or just straight improvised (pretty much the same thing) and if something doesn’t make sense, it’s likely an inconsistency due to that. I’ve tried to put in-character explanations for some of this, but I make no promises as to how much they make sense. We haven’t made the DM cry yet, but... it’s still a work in progress. :smallamused:

I'll gladly answer any questions that I know the answer to.

Session the First - Of two priests, a vase, some giants, and shadows. Lots of shadows.

So, the first session starts out with us being accosted by three guards to “give it back.” I declare a Wisdom check to remember what we took, and discover (to some surprise) that we are in possession of a vase/flowerpot of some significance. I (less than politely) decline the offer of returning the thing, and toss it to Vlad, who promptly turns invisible, leaving me to attack the guards by myself (at least it looked that way to start). Uninterested in wasting spells (and fairly confident in my armor class of 28, which they couldn’t reasonably hit), I walk over to one and attack him with my whopping Strength score (and, coincidentally, attack bonus) of 7. Vlad charges another guard and bashes him over the head with the vase (which somehow survives unscathed, due to a lucky roll per the DM), and does something in the order of 2 damage. Somewhere in here, I cast deeper darkness on a rock, partially blinding everyone except for me. (as I can see through magical and non-magical darkness, per the Baator domain). We’ve used that rock to great effect so far. At this point the guards call for backup.

Unconcerned (I mean, they’re guards, and have yet to successfully damage either of us), we continue to thoroughly thrash the guards, when a storm giant they refer to as Steven walks over and chain-lightnings us. Both Vlad and Fletcher promptly fail their reflex saves, and take 62 and 31 damage, respectively. I make an attempt to talk our way out of it (not expecting much, as we did just kill three guards), and Steven, much to my surprise, tells us that we should take the vase to Lord Tangram in Stonewatch (a city to the north). We hastily accept these terms, take the guards bodies (yay, bags of holding!) and leave the town to make camp.

I immediately began making plans of revenge that essentially amounted to “come back tomorrow, kill Steven, and take his stuff.” One guard was turned into a ghoul, and the other two into skeletons, and they guarded us for the night. We returned the next morning, armed with extra flame strikes (Vlad), and resist energy: electricity (Fletcher).

Vlad’s player had the bright (and I use “bright” lightly) idea of sticking me in the bag of holding, turning invisible (he’s got a ring of invisibility), and then carrying me around with just my head and arms sticking out. We questioned (and subsequently killed) a few townspeople as to where Steven lived, and then found a museum. Seeing the opportunity to grab some loot (or at the very least, cause some mayhem), we proceeded as follows: entered the museum, stole the little bell thing they use to let people know you’re at the desk and want to talk to someone, shoved the ghoul out of the bag of holding into the museum and commanded it to attack everything, ran out of the museum, and stone shaped the door shut, so the people inside couldn’t escape. This petty act of vandalism completed, we returned to searching for Steven.

We found his house, which was really more of a castle. I took out the little bell thingy we stole from the museum and rang it for a while, until a human appeared and asked us whom we were. I immediately cast dominate person (as per the Baator domain), and then Vlad casts geas on the guy (who we name Kat), and forces him to essentially be our personal slave. (if he ever disobeys us, he takes 3d6 damage and some ability damage. He’s got 2hp. If he disobeys us, he dies). We then rob Steven of everything we can reasonably fit in our bag of holding. The skeletons are removed, and per Fletcher’s instructions take one of Steven’s throwing rocks to use as a battering ram.

We then return to the museum to get my ghoul back. The skeletons break a window open with the rock (more like a boulder, really), and we climb inside, retrieve the ghoul (and laugh at all the dead bodies), then exit. Vlad takes the time to attempt to convert a commoner to Erythnul, and after being unsuccessful, Fletcher summons some shadows and kills the guy. I then rebuke the shadow that he turns into, and have it go kill someone else.

At this point the townspeople start screaming, and Steven shows up. I immediately summon more shadows, and the storm giant is Str-damaged to death before he can even attack us. Satisfied with our completed “mission”, we turn to leave, but are confronted with an adult bronze dragon that claims to be a friend of Steven’s. The dragon stone shapes a wall around me (presumably to keep me from attacking him), and Vlad casts a sudden-maximized blade barrier around the dragon, who is not maneuverable enough fly out of it (straight up). I summon more shadows from the relative safety of being walled off, and they fly over the barrier and Str-damage the dragon to death. (points to the dragon, though; it managed to kill one or two with its breath weapon).

We were then joined by a fire giant and a frost giant. Vlad, who was fairly close to the two, was attacked, and he sustained a not insignificant amount of damage (I can’t remember what it was) before my shadows dispatched them. I set my ensemble of worthless peons walled in with me (the ghoul, the two skeletons, and Kat the commoner) about breaking through the wall, and cast deathwatch so I could see what was going on. Our final opponent was a cloud giant, who was quickly brought to his knees via a fourth summoning of shadows. Somewhere in here, one of the skeletons was destroyed. I think the cloud giant did it, but I’m not sure. We took their stuff, and I dismissed my summoned shadows and directed the two “real” ones (that I controlled by rebuking) to kill the rest of the townspeople. (I ended up with 23 shadows at the end of this. It was a small town). A few speak with dead spells directed us to take an emerald we found on Steven’s person and use it to get into the town’s vault. (which was hidden under the museum). More looting occurs, and we begin to develop plans to turn the town into a fortress. Vlad animates the bronze dragon as a skeleton, which is christened “Bony”. We then animate the rest of the giants (save the cloud giant, as we don’t have the available HD to control it), and call it a night.

Session the Second – Of travel, a tortoise, an armorsmith, and a brief reminder of Fletcher’s past.

Note: between sessions, Vlad’s player and I decided that we were going to cause a big war between the giants by playing them against one another. With any luck, they’d mostly kill each other off, and we could take their stuff. A fair amount of the things in this session were done with this in mind. He even wrote up a speech for us to read for this purpose. (if I can find it, I'll post it).

The second session begins with Fletcher, Vlad, Bony, and the remaining human skeleton leaving the small town of Corpsewood (now far more appropriately named), leaving all the other undead and Kat behind to defend the fort. (the DM decreed that we took a month or two to fortify the town with stuff, said we could work out the details of it later, and got on with the “plot”). We headed north in a horse-drawn cart, shrouded in darkness from the stone. (I drove the cart, as I was the only one who could really see).

After a few hours, we were attacked by two basilisks, who could best be described as, well... lazy. They did manage to destroy my remaining skeleton before some summoned shadows and Bony the skeletal dragon cut them down. I animated one of the basilisks, and we put the other body in the cart and proceeded down the road to the crossroads-tent-city of Wyom.

Fletcher borrows 1,000 gold from Vlad and goes to search for a nightstick (a small black rod that gives its user 4 extra turn/rebuke attempts per day. Rather useful for me, as it put me up to 20) while Vlad sells some of our loot. The wizard I find, however, tries to con me out of a fair price, and the situation deteriorated from there. The negotiations went something like this:

Wizard: "Here, I can sell it to you for 8,000 gold."
Fletcher: "How about I offer you a discount? I buy it from you for 5,000 gold, and I don’t just take the thing from your lifeless corpse."
Wizard: "Hey, man, no need to get violent! Come back to my tent, and let’s talk there."

Upon arriving at his tent, however, he fireballs me. (his tent, his belongings, and himself all were warded against fire, as it happened. Presumably this happens often enough that he’s prepared for it. *shrug*). Fortunately, he fails to beat my spell resistance (I am saved again by DMM Persist), and I just flat ignore the fireball. He, however, does not fare as well against a harm spell. I procure the desired nightstick from his person, dispel (with a spectacularly good set of rolls) all of his buffs, and flame strike him to death for spite. I liberate a fireproof (but empty) chest from his tent, and return my newly acquired belongings to our cart, then go find Vlad.

Fletcher returns the borrowed gold to Vlad, who was busy arguing with an armorer over the sale of the magic weapons we took from the giants. (he had successfully sold all of the looted gemstones). The argument between the two progressed to threats (this seems to be a recurring thing...), and led to this exchange which had us laughing for quite a few minutes:

Vlad: "You see Bony here." *gestures to the skeletal dragon* "I will have him tear down wall."
Armorer: "Do it, I don’t care. This’ll be the third time that happened this week."
Vlad: "As you wish. Bony, make bigger door in front of store."

I honestly can’t remember whether or not we actually sold the damn things there or not. We finish up our business and leave Wyom, heading southwest to the desert city of Sundial. (pronounced Sunn-dee-ahl, as per the DM). We are briefly detained by a dire tortoise, who we kill, animate (abandoning control of one of the giants back in Corpsewood), and ditch the cart in favor of as a ride. This party is now basically operating from a skeletal tank that always gets a surprise round. :smallamused: We meet a small group of travelers at an oasis, and I put the darkness-stone to good use and completely hide the fact that we have a bunch of powerful(ish) undead with us.

Fletcher takes this opportunity to impart our (largely falsified) tale of how the four giants died in Corpsewood. We portray Steven (the storm giant) and the cloud giant as traitors, and the fire and frost giants as loyal and just. (and I impress upon the DM that Fletcher plays up how awesome the fire giants were). They actually buy our story, and we tell them to spread it around. Our primary objective in progress, we continue southward to Sundial.

Upon arriving at the city, we bury (sort of. It has a burrow speed) the undead tortoise a ways outside of the walls, and have Bony and the basilisk skeleton guard it. I put a greater glyph of warding on the tortoise to cast a geas (to serve the two of us for life) on anyone besides Vlad or me that touches it, and we enter the city. After talking to a few guards, we are directed to the fire giant’s palace steward, an elf. He’s eager to help us (especially upon hearing the “news” from Corpsewood); however, after learning that we are clerics, he asks us to cure his wife, who somehow got poisoned. Vlad and I quickly check our prepared spells, and while I have a remove curse prepared (one can never be too careful), I don’t have remove poison. Thankfully, the Heal skill is almost as useful, so I fix up the elven maid while Vlad (now invisible) looks around the palace for things to steal.

The “help my wife” thing sparked an OOC conversation that went something like this:

Me: Heh, I should just cast slay living.
DM: Really?
Me: Nah. We don’t have to be wantonly violent to everything we meet. It’ll be nice to have some friends.
DM: I mean, you could probably get away with it. It’s not like he’d be able to tell the difference. Just say she died from the poison and there was nothing you could do.
Me: As tempting as that sounds... I’ll pass. I might need slay living later today.

Anyway, I saved the steward’s wife, and he showed us to the throne room to meet King/Lord (the DM uses the two terms interchangeably.) Blaze. Blaze hears our story, and tells us to inform Lord Tangram in Stonewatch. (he’s probably a pretty important dude, we figure. I mean, that’s two giants now that told us to talk to this guy). I finagle a token from Blaze (a flawless ruby decorated with elaborate etchings) and we leave Sundial, departing straight north for the dwarven city of Hubris. More plans are made to protect Bony and the tortoise, and we decide to see an armorsmith to make a set of full-plate for each.

The armorsmith’s name was Mamek, and despite some difficulty getting him out of the city to see the undead and take measurements for the armor (he had apparently had some trouble with the town in the past, and tried to keep his head down. I teleported us out. Word of recall to the tortoise (yes, I had that prepared) managed to be useful somehow). While initially skeptical, a down payment of 3,000 gold quickly changes Mamek’s mind, and he tells us that he’d give us a discount if we could get him some iron from the Glimmer Caves, although he warns us that no one has successfully mined them due to “the dead.” We laugh this off (I mean, we’re evil clerics. I can straight-up command a great deal of undead, no save. We’re not particularly well-equipped to fight ones I can’t control, though), and head straight east to the caves (skirting around Stonewatch, as we don’t want to cause any trouble there (and the DM told us he forgot to prepare anything there...) before we talk to Lord Tangram) to get our iron.

Upon arriving in the cave, we were confronted by a cloaked skeletal figure wielding a scythe (one Fletcher identified as an entropic reaper) that claimed to be exacting justice on Fletcher for crimes committed against demons. This conversation provided a some funny exchanges:

Reaper: "I’m here to kill you for crimes against the demons!"
Fletcher: "I didn’t really kill many demons. Most of my work was corrupting people to do evil."
Vlad: "Hey, I can get behind that."

--

Reaper: "You’re a traitor, and you will pay for your treachery!"
Fletcher: "I think you’ve got me confused with someone else. I never broke any promises. I just neglected to promise not to kill some people. I assure you, I’m quite a trustworthy person."

This was said despite the rather obvious fact that Fletcher had been lying the entire session about the events of the last session to pretty much everyone. :smallamused:

Then the thing attacks us. It actually manages to hit me once, but I pass my save against its destabilizing (entropic something or other) scythe, and pretty much laugh off the 28 damage as I fast-heal it away (DMM Persist saves me once again) over the course of the next few rounds (where he fails to hit me again, at all. It was almost sad). Fletcher casts flame strike, (beating the thing’s spell resistance), and Vlad drops a sudden maximized blade barrier on the reaper. Although I’m forced to catch Bony with the pillar of divine fire, the skeletal dragon makes his save, and quickly is moved out of the way before Vlad attacks. I cast spiritual weapon, and back away as much as possible, and Vlad continues the barrage of flame strikes on the reaper while Bony and the Tortoise slowly wear him down through his damage reduction. Eventually, he plane shifts away with an SLA, and we heal up Bony (the only person besides me to take any damage) and call it a night. I make plans with Vlad’s player to ensure that we’re prepared for whenever the entropic reaper comes back.
Further Sessions:

Session the Third (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15352109&postcount=5) - Of dungeoncrawling (sort of), the making of a plan, and petty revenge. Utterly thorough petty revenge.
Session the Fourth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15571701&postcount=13) - Of lies, some more travel, a modicum of plot, and Vlad being repeatedly screwed over by random chance.

Astral Avenger
2013-05-28, 11:46 PM
Please tell me that more is coming to this delightful story, its quite wonderful :smallbiggrin:

Amidus Drexel
2013-05-28, 11:48 PM
Please tell me that more is coming to this delightful story, its quite wonderful :smallbiggrin:

Actually, we had a session tonight, so there'll be a writeup... when I get around to it. I should have some time in the morning; if not, then later this week.

Glad you like it!

Marlowe
2013-05-29, 12:25 AM
You're horrible, horrible people. Well done!:smallsmile:

Amidus Drexel
2013-06-01, 10:14 PM
Ah, sorry it took so long to get this one up; I've been busy all week.

Session the Third - of dungeon-crawling (sort of), the making of a plan, and petty revenge. Utterly thorough petty revenge.


The third session begins with the two of us further exploring the Glimmer Caves. After a few seconds of exploring, we find a small tunnel (about 5ft by 5ft), and proceed onward through it. The tortoise is unfortunately left behind, but since Bony can squeeze through the space, he gets to go with us. (for now, Fletcher leaves the basilisk with the tortoise). Bony goes in front, (so as to not endanger any of the important people should there be a trap or monster), followed by Vlad (it’s his dragon) and finally Fletcher (the back of the line is a safe place to be). We walk through the tunnel for a while, and reach a fork; horrible puns ensue, and we eventually take the left passage.

After walking for some time, we reach a door. As the skeletal dragon is in front, it gets the honor of opening the door with as little subtlety as possible. In doing so, Bony triggers a trap and falls 20 feet to its doom and sustains a tiny amount of damage. It climbs out and at Vlad’s instruction ferries us into the room (a comparison is made to a mother cat picking up kittens), where we all promptly fail spot checks. Seeing nothing else in the 30ft by 30ft room, Fletcher decides to just stand in the corner while Vlad searches for things (it isn’t like I’d have been much help anyway; I’ve got a -2 to search).

Upon beginning to search, however, Bony is attacked by a roper. The dragon (who is immune to the Str damage from the roper’s strands) begins to beat the living crap out of the roper. Vlad tries to get off a flame strike, but fails to beat the roper’s spell resistance, and I start to summon some shadows. The next round, the roper hits Vlad with three strands (and he takes a big hit to his Str with some bad Fort rolls), and Bony with another two. (Some discussion was had about me sitting in the corner the whole fight after this part. The DM was sort of frustrated he couldn’t hit me with the Str-damaging strands, as there was a large dragon skeleton in the way :smallamused:). Bony continues his barrage of attacks, and the shadows I summon ruin the roper’s chance of actually doing any damage to the dragon. Vlad’s player seemed hopeful that it would die to actual HP damage... A round later, my shadows finished the roper off.

Seeing as we hadn’t rested since the fight with the entropic reaper, we go to sleep, leaving Bony and the basilisk skeleton (which I retrieve from the front part of the cave) to keep watch. We are “surprised” (they’re not particularly subtle, but it did get pretty close to us before we noticed) in the middle of our rest by an iron golem. Not equipped (at all) to fight one in our normal manner, we resort to a slightly different tactic: HP damage. While Vlad figures out what he and Bony are doing, I look at my spell list to see if I can be any help, and... there isn’t much I can actually do. A lot of my spells were gone, for one, and golems aren’t really easily targeted by spells in the first place (magic immunity sucks when you rely on, well, magic). My regular tactic is useless against something immune to Str damage, and I’m certainly not going to be able to hurt it in melee with a penalty to damage; however, I still have summon undead 4, and I figure that two huge skeletons have a decent chance of hurting the thing, so I summon two dire tortoise skeletons.

They take up half the room. Fletcher sends the basilisk skeleton running around the iron golem to provoke attacks of opportunity (it’s not like I care if the thing dies again), and we slowly deal damage to the golem. Too slowly. As the two tortoises are only there for a few rounds, we decide that whittling the thing down 2 or 3 health at a time won’t be a very effective tactic. Following this reasoning, we grapple it. The golem outclasses both dire tortoises, but Bony has a slight edge (a difference of +2), and after a quick (okay, not really all that quick) check of the grapple rules, the three massive skeletons set about dragging the iron golem into the pit by the door.

This takes a while. While this is happening, the basilisk skeleton gets dangerously close to being destroyed, and Fletcher calls it back to get some healing. Vlad casts wind walk on the three of us, and we sit up on the ceiling and watch the non-living creatures wrestle. The golem breaks free once, but is quickly caught again, and they all drag it slowly to the pit, and a final push by Bony throws it in. It manages to grab the dragon (well, more like it’s still holding on) and Bony is pulled in too (the summoned tortoises are unable to enter the small hallway, so they just sort of sit at the entrance to the room), although he quickly extricates himself from the pit. However, the golem begins to climb out as well...

We say “screw this” and fly out to the front cave, leaving Bony to outrun the iron golem in the passages. As we can fly for about twelve more hours, we decide to spend the night floating at the top of the cave, and prepare spells before we come back down. I make sure to prepare summon undead 4 and 5, so I can summon six more dire tortoises, should I need to.

When we get up, we remember our original purpose of going to the Glimmer Caves: iron. The DM deigns that Bony and our tortoise are more than capable of mining the stuff (probably an attempt at moving the “plot” forward combined with some degree of rule of cool), and we set about mining. We soon notice the iron golem approaching us from the tunnel, and I summon four more tortoises (because why not?), and Vlad quickly stone shapes the tunnel entrance shut. We get our iron - about 5,000lbs of it - (shuffling some things around to make it work, including putting half a ton in Vlad’s bag of holding), and with a new casting of wind walk (which catches Bony and the tortoise as well this time), quickly return to Hubris to see Mamek.

We have a quick conversation with the guard at the mountain gate that went something like this:

Us: *we fly down out of the sky, and land in front of the gate*
Guard: “Who are you?”
Vlad: “What, do you not remember me from few days ago? I know we dwarves all look the same.”
Guard: “Ah, yes, we do all look pretty much the same. I’m just not used to seeing dwarves come out of sky.”
Fletcher: “Well, see, he’s a sky dwarf.”
Guard: “A what?”
Fletcher: “Yeah, a sky dwarf. They live in the sky.”
Vlad: “Yes. You see, we mine the clouds for... cloud metal.”
Guard: “I see. And you can stand on clouds?”
Vlad: “Yes, clouds are like rock. You can stand on them.”
Guard: “So, there is... ground in the sky?”
Fletcher: “Well, not anymore. See, the sky dwarves already mined it.”
Guard: “Oh, okay. You may come in.”

Vlad (OOC): We need to actually find something to call sky metal and sell it to these guys.
Me: Heh, indeed.

That bit was completely ad libbed - neither me nor Vlad’s player had any sort of planning for that... it just kind of happened. :smallamused:

Anyways, we find Mamek, and after a brief conversation, I cast word of recall and return us (with him in tandem) to the tortoise. We give him the two and a half tons of iron, and end up paying 13,000 gold (that’s all of our money, by the way) for the full plate for Bony and the tortoise. We have to wait some time for him to finish the armor, though, so we come up with things to do in the meantime.

The first of those things concerns revenge. Vlad, being a divine oracle, quickly gleans as much information on the entropic reaper that attacked us as he can, learning his name (Kilgrim), and his location (the plane of Limbo) before scrying him. We prepare a slew of searing light spells (something like ten or so between the two of us), and I make sure to have two dimensional anchors so he can’t run away, and both of us prepare divine power (mostly for the BAB increase, although Vlad actually gets a significant benefit from the Str bonus). We each prepare hide from undead, heal and plane shift; then Vlad casts scrying... which fails anti-climactically (the bastard made his save).

So, we repeat the process the next day, and the scrying succeeds. We cast hide from undead, plane shift to Limbo, cast divine power, and teleport to Kilgrim’s location. I open up with dimensional anchor, and Vlad steps in from the other side and hits the entropic reaper with heal (and beats its spell resistance), dealing 120 points of damage. Kilgrim turns around and fails to successfully hit Vlad, and then the reaper’s spell resistance wastes one of my castings of searing light. Vlad takes a 5ft step back and casts a sudden-maximized searing light, beats Kilgrim’s spell resistance, and vaporizes the thing with an additional 60 damage. The DM says something to the effect of the entropic reaper being the first thing we’ve ever killed with HP damage. Vlad’s player and I laugh evilly at this. (on another note, he seemed a bit surprised at the efficiency of this procedure... perhaps he forgot that clerics are pretty damn good at fighting undead when they prepare for it :smallamused:) Fletcher takes his cloak (non-magical – it’s just a trophy), and Vlad his scythe (which apparently was +1 and keen, which is pretty sweet), we return to the material plane, and I cast word of recall and bring us back to the tortoise.

The next day, we set about finding a huge dragon to kill+animate, and decide to consult the Hubris library for any information on the matter. We discover that we are in need of a library card, and after a quick (and not entirely friendly :smallbiggrin:) discussion with the librarian (who turned out to be a rather high level caster), we decide to pay for one... forgetting for a second that we don’t have any money. Thankfully, it’s only one silver, and we leave the library for a minute to get the coin. Vlad casts locate object, and the closest piece of silver is with a nearby dwarf. Some summoned shadows quickly deal with this problem (and Fletcher instructs them not to animate his soul into another shadow; we don’t want to depopulate this city just yet), and we recover a silver tooth from the dwarf. Luckily, the librarian isn’t picky about the form his silver takes, and we are allowed to read a tome on local dragons. We find a suitable dragon, and then call it a night.

And we leveled up, which reminds me that I need to update my character sheet at some point before the next session. :smallcool:


Hrm... I think I'll put links in the first post to each update.

Ninjadeadbeard
2013-06-02, 05:25 PM
See now, this is why I can't understand people who say evil campaigns don't work.

Awesome log so far!

Amidus Drexel
2013-06-02, 06:26 PM
You're horrible, horrible people. Well done!:smallsmile:

Thanks! Well, horribleness comes naturally to us. :smallbiggrin:


See now, this is why I can't understand people who say evil campaigns don't work.

Awesome log so far!

Well, you have to have a group of people that understand "stupid evil" quickly turns into "dead". Evil campaigns are definitely loads of fun once you clear that hurdle, though.

Thanks! :smallcool:

TaiLiu
2013-06-02, 10:04 PM
This is highly amusing!

Amidus Drexel
2013-06-29, 12:03 AM
Okay guys, sorry for the delay - it's been a real pain getting the three of us together for a session in the past couple of weeks. :smallannoyed:

The good news is, we actually managed to have one, so I'll post it as soon as I've got it written up.

TaiLiu
2013-06-29, 12:08 AM
Okay guys, sorry for the delay - it's been a real pain getting the three of us together for a session in the past couple of weeks. :smallannoyed:

The good news is, we actually managed to have one, so I'll post it as soon as I've got it written up.
Yes! I'll read it once I get back.

Arkhosia
2013-06-30, 10:13 PM
Excellently amusing evil actions!
Now to find a dire tortoise and reanimate spells for 4e...

Swordprince
2013-07-02, 11:20 AM
Jesus lol, the stuff your evil group does is insane, I really had some good laughs!

Amidus Drexel
2013-07-07, 02:19 PM
Session the Fourth - Of lies, some more travel, a modicum of plot, and Vlad being repeatedly screwed over by random chance.


Ah, the first session as lv13 characters. We each continue to advance in our respective prestige classes; Vlad gets 7th-level spells, and Fletcher gets three more spell slots between his higher spell levels. Not that they did us much good...

The session begins with Vlad and Fletcher failing to find (through divinations or regular research) any significant information on Thornir, the silver dragon. We watched the DM fail to roll lower than a natural 15 on several will saves against scrying. Bored with the lack of information, the two set out towards Stonewatch, to speak with Lord Tangram. Bony, the tortoise, and the basilisk are all left with Mamek (he’s still working on their armor, and the basilisk is just going to get in the way or die again).

Upon failing some cursory spot checks, the two of us finally notice a beholder in the middle of the road, about 30ft away. It gibbers incoherently, and Fletcher orders the creature to stand down or die. Unsurprisingly, it does not do so, and combat begins. The beholder wins initiative, and immediately petrifies Vlad with its flesh to stone ray.

*cue several minutes of OOC laughter*

I’ll have it be known that I suggested the DM just disintegrate the statue, but he chose to be nice. :smallamused:

It then trained the rest of its available eye rays on Fletcher, choosing inflict moderate wounds (which would have healed me, were I not already at full health. I reminded the DM about that after he rolled the attack), and disintegrate. It fails to beat my spell resistance on either one, and I laugh off its ineffectual attacks. Fletcher repeats: “stand down or die”, but only receives gibbering in return, so he casts a blade barrier through the beholder’s space. It fails the save and takes something in the order of 45 damage or so. The beholder then shoots a flesh to stone, disintegrate, and finger of death at Fletcher, all of which are saved against or negated by SR. It also conveniently forgot to leave the blade barrier, and fails its save again, taking around 40 damage. Fletcher repeats “stand down or die” one last time (again with no coherent response), and annihilates the beholder with a flame strike.

I’m then asked to un-statueify Vlad. Not having prepared break enchantment, I leave his statue where it is and rest to regain my spells. I restore Vlad to his normal state (after some joking suggestions that I stone shape him some wings while he’s a statue), and we continue on towards Stonewatch.

Stonewatch is a city that consists of a few huts, two large buildings next to a massive wooden gate, and some homes hollowed out of the mountainside. At the first large building, a pushy steward directs us to the second large building, where we speak to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper, however, directs us back to the first building, and with the gatekeeper’s word, the steward admits us to Lord Tangram’s chamber. Introductions are exchanged, and a lucky series of bluff checks (and some horrendous Sense Motive rolls) later, Vlad convinces the stone giant ruler that he is a distant relative who is getting married. He manages to procure 10,000gp as a gift from the old fool, too. We recant our version of what happened in Corpsewood, and all but convince Tangram to go to war (unfortunately, he’s drug-addled and not completely sane) when Vlad drops and breaks a vase in his throne room. (the vase was almost identical to the one we stole in the first session, too, so this might be plot-important. Might. I've honestly got no idea where the DM comes up with this random stuff.)

At this point, I sneak off with the steward (who went to the vault to get the money), kill him with shadows, take his stuff, and then disguise myself as him. When Fletcher gets back, Lord Tangram is getting ready to attack Vlad; a few hasty promises to get a new vase (and I, disguised as the steward, “kick him out” when we leave) cover our asses as we scramble to get out of there before the giant changes his mind. The vase-maker we need to find lives in Ambrose, north of the Marillion mountains.

We speak again to the gatekeeper, and he opens the gate to the mountain pass. We’re told that the mountains make teleportation magic unreliable, so we have to walk the whole way. Yay. After a few minutes of walking, we’re confronted by two stone golems. Vlad’s player and I say “screw this”, and Fletcher hops into Vlad’s bag of holding, and Vlad turns invisible and flies over them and away for the next few minutes, after which we resume walking.

We leave the mountains, and enter a forest, where the two of us fail some more spot checks, and are attacked by a colossal monstrous spider. (I think the DM didn’t see quite how big the hide penalty was for it). I win initiative, and drop a blade barrier through it, making sure to put the circle completely in front of the party (so it has to pass through it twice to attack us up close). The spider passes its save (no big surprise), and charges forward, biting Vlad. The damage is pretty much laughed off, but he fails his fort save and takes 11 points of Str damage... which paralyzes him (he’s got a Str score of 10). I remind the DM that it’s still in the blade barrier (I didn’t make it a very large circle, and the spider is pretty damn big), so the spider takes more damage from that, and then I find a leg and cast harm on the spider. The next round, it picks up Vlad and starts to eat him. Fletcher drops a flame strike on his turn, and that downs the spider.

Unfortunately for Vlad, I don’t have any way to remove the poison prepared that day, so I drag his paralyzed body to the side of the road and rest. The spell best suited to this task happened to be heal, which would reduce him to a fraction of his hit points. Some OOC laughter ensued from the irony of this situation, and I drop Vlad down to 1hp in the process of removing his poison. He casts harm to bring himself back to full health, and we call the session there, outside of Ambrose.

----

In case you were wondering/I forgot to say it earlier, both of us took Tomb-Tainted Soul, so that we weren't impaired by spontaneously casting inflict spells. (plus, a mass inflict can heal us and our undead allies, while simultaneously hurting our enemies).

Amidus Drexel
2013-08-20, 10:37 PM
All apologies to those of you reading this, but I doubt the campaign will continue any further... all three of us are moving away, and in different directions. :smallfrown:

Thanks for reading, and sorry... :\