Campaign Journal - Lost in Chaos, or "How The BBW shot himself in the foot. 3 times"

[GrayDeath]

Preface: This Journal will span about 2 years of paly, and I will post between 1 and 3 posts per week, depending on how well I can get all the stuff that happened into a form both readable and fun.

So here we go:


Campaign Special Rules: Starting at Level 5, we were informed we would be starting without equipment except what we could hie in/on our bodies and the central most important item (So Spellbooks, Main Weapon or armor, that stuff).
W were also told to build nonhumans, and with at least 1 Template of LA +1 which would be free.


The starting Team in alhpabetical Order:


Bongo, a draconic Ilithidheaded halfling Bard//Ranger (Lets call him P)


Karnrak: A Dark Warforged Warblade//Rogue (moi)


Sierochae (writing of my brother is horrible^^): A Sorcerer/Favoured Soul/Mystic Theurge Petal. (my Brother lets call him M., also we are using Houserules that allow a MT to only ned 2 preMT Levels of each class if hes spontaneous, in case qustions would hav been asked.)


The Last things we knew where totally normal.

The Petal was petaling around on a huge flowery Grassy Hill with at least 2 other petals, crafting Flower arrangements.

Bongo had just finished his evening work by making the whole tavern pay him his Dinner (and he needed that he eats a lot, even for a halfling).

And Karnrak had been standing in Standby for the last 13 months. Yay.



///


We awoke in a clammy, dark (luckily we all ahd Darkvision, less lucky it was dirty and ratty) Dungeon. Each in a single cell. In total there where 8 Cells, and all contained people of various Races, but none of them "pure" Standard race.

Karnrak got up from the steel "bed" (more alike to a morgues Table, if rusty and obviously old), and quickly ralized his normally deep gray/Black Body had some kind of tron lines in electric blue ovr arms and Legs, which obviously where transmitting Electricity.
Nut, awake, no Pain, and whoever got him had not found the inbuilt Lock Picks in his fingers.

So he picked the lock, got out, and started by getting a closer look on the 2 cells clostst to him.
In one there lay a very small, greenish Petal with added treelike skin on about half her body.

The other cell contained a Dwarf with a nagas Tail, obviously dead.

Checking who else was alive, he saw a very fat and very muscular Halfling with 2 Batlike Wings sitting on his "Bed" and looking gloomy. And having tentacles instead of a lower face.

Introductions where made, and Bongo explained that he was missing his Bongo. And blurbled while saying so. Karnrak found it funny enough not to dig deeper.

Karnrak let him out, and together they foundf a horror cabinet in the other cells.

Some where people simply combined, one was a half elf who had a lot of tubes and metal aprts (half Golem) but also Faery Wings (he was dying slowly), a Dwarf with the legs of a Minotaur who had obviously killed himself via ramming his head into the wall.

So we got back to the Petal, Karnrak picked the lock (and found out that indeed, the locks were all rubbish, as even rolling a 2 with at that point only a +11 modifier was enough).

Awakening the Petal proofed that she could still fly, and screech. Obviously, for her, she had been made a Woodling Petal.

We had more than enough proof to be sure that we were in the Dungeon of a mad Scientist Type. Karnrak assumed it had to be House Cannith.

Just as he was about to tell that to the others, the only door out of the cell block opened, and half dwarf "hovered" into the room. His legs replaced by a kind of bucket, and a second replitoid Head behind is.

Whatever had been done, it made the Dwarf itself very slow tor eact. But hsi second ehad shot a mixed Acidf FIre Bolt at the Petal...and missed.

Luckily for me, ahving HiPS, that was enough to hide and flank the bugger.

Our bard did what bards do, eg nothing useful at first glance, and our Petal Cast Scorching Ray, which hit but didnt seem to do much.

Next round, Karnrak combined SneakA ttack with assassins Stance (ergo at the time 4D6) with Emerald Razor, and instakilled the...thing.

A little looting and many a Knowledge Roll alter we knew...we had no idea.
Whatever habeen done to the Dwarf wasnt magic, the Petal Said.

it wanst any form of magitech Karnrak knew from Eberon, and Fat Elan, ahem Bongo, failed his Bardic Knowledge Check.

We decided to pick every lock and see what we could loot.
Which wasnt much, but at least I had a nice mastercrafted Greataxe.

We also found out that all 3 of us had similarly been modified without magic. The Bard found his newfound wings much cooler than the Petal found the woodiness (badumtiss^^) of her situation.

Karnrak kinda liked the electric look, but so far I had not found out what it actually DID.

So, we sneaked out the door and further onward.

We found a mostly empty Guard Barrack.alike, manned by 2 Elves with similar heads on their necks as the Dwarf had had, and our first Human, whos legs were the same thing as the Dwarfs, and whose Arms ended in what to karnrak looked like Automatic Crossbows.

Realizing our Petal could cast Invisibility, and the fact ALL of us had good stealth basics, we decided to ambush now, ask later.

Worked like a charm, the only surviver an Elven Woman where we ahd removed the "Shooting Head" however proofed that we were in deep ****.

Namely that we had been captured, as we had assumed, by a "Mad Science" Wizard. What we ahd not known was that he was a big C Chaos Cultist (Check the Chaositk book for details) and that as far as the dying Elf knew, he was both a Wizard and kind of an amorphous, nearly immortal Blob.

We decided to do what we though could keep us alive, and went towards the lower reaches of the strange buoilding (I mean, Wizard, Evil, etc, and it wasnt a Tower? Didnt the guy know what was expected?^^).

After all, the only access to the upper parts was obviously some magical Portal, that needed codes. And well, aside from being suicidal anyway, the elf was dead now.

A few smaller encounters and 8 hours of rest in the looted Guard barracks, we came to what seemed like the exit of choice, namely the Severage access.

Sadly, it was behind 2 Doors behind which the (as she told us now) Petal could do and had done at will, MAgic Detection said "there is a small sun of power".

We paused until the next session. Unnoticed to us at first, we also seemed to continue to change/mutate.
Namely the Petal became even woodier and seemed a bit tougher as well, my Warforgeds Slam attacks suddenly dealt Piercing Damage (I liked the Spurs on the hands^^) and I gained +2 natural Armor, and ...nothing obvious for the Bard.
Should have known there was something wrong with that...


Returning to the problem, we decided to Storm the first one first, as the Magic in it was moving, and we didnt want anything in our backs.

Cue karnrak ins tealth opening the door...and being charged by a Minotaur on a centaurs Body. With a Golden glowing greatsword.

I ate a full Smite Evil Charge, and dropped to only 7 HP left.

With 2 Scorching rays, the Bard for one doing something and attacking the Minotaur with the expected Stone, and me ignoring death and putting my all in a Iron ehart attack, we barely killed the stupid Paladin. Not that we didnt try to get him to be peaceful. But seeing that his smite ahd worked (well, karnrak IS LE^^) he decided to continue smiting.

After that we decided we needed the rest.
Sadly, Warforged are hard to heal, so only the Level 1 Repair and a made Craft Armor roll by myself helped and got me back to 31 HP in the morning.

Sadly none of us could use the Paladins Armor or Sword (stupid LG no fun enemies^^).

With much more care, ergo the invisible Petal right next to me qwith a readied scorching ray, we opened the next door.

And wow. On the wall was a Ritual Circle in which hang a hound Archon, being bleed, pierced by a deep black Flamberge that made the whole room feel cold.

Karnrak immedeately shouted "Mine!", and was obeyed.

We "freed" the Archon by killing him. Then Bongo decided to eat his brain. And drink some of its blood. And overall giving in to his Implanted Ilithid parts.

Karnrak was OK with that, the Petala rgued a while, but in the end was outvoted.

I got the sword, we filled some blood for "futre projects" in some bottles, and luckily found a Bag of Holding to store the stuff that had been collecting the Archons Blood (among others 2 roughl 45cm wide and 1cm thick Braziers of Pure Gold (each weighing 39kg). Yay, Money! But no stores anywhere..

The sword showed to be an intelligent Weapon, and cursed. Luckily, the curse didnt work on Warforged, and its Goal was "kill chaotic Good Guys, especially Priests", so my LE Warforged found it a very nice partner.
(as UI later found out, it had another power that needed a specific event to activate, for now it was n intelligent +2 Cold Burst Flamberge with at will mage hand, Detect magic, and 3/Day True Strike, Yay! Still the worst AC in the group as the main Frontliner, but a great weapon is a great weapon.

We decided to rest one more time, then leave through the Severage.

In that Severage we found out that a medium sized nest of Formians had burrowed into it.

At those levels, these things are insanely hard.

In the combat our bard found pout he had a weaker version of an Illithids Mind Blast, and Karnrak finally activated his special Circuits. They give Init bonus and extra Electricity Damage for 5 minutes.
Sadly the battle laste´d longer.

Still, with good palcement of Blasts, Grease, and me charging the firstmost enemies after the 2 had weakned them, we managed it.

Half dead and barely getting some loot, we exited the Building and quickly ran towards the closest Forest, where we found a hidden spot and recuperated. And levelled up to level 7 in Karnarks, and Level 6 in the Casters Case (more expensive Templates).

At the very well hidden Fire, the Cthuloid Bard showed us another item he had found looting the Archon, but forgotten to tell us. A simple Deck of Cards....:smallamused:

[remetagross]

Neat stuff :D I hope more is incoming! What the hell with these PCs though :smallbiggrin:

[Crake]

Question: What do you think BBW stands for?

[GrayDeath]

Question: What do you think BBW stands for?

Its
Big Bad Wizard(oid)^^



And well, we did start this thing off knowing we were not "normal" and that there were chances (high ones) of becoming even less so.

So while its not my usual cup of mutatea, it was fun

Expect the next episode either tonight or tomorrow.

[GrayDeath]

And here we go:



After arriving in the Forest, and making sure we couldnt be easily spotted, our Tentacled bard pulled out a simple set of cards in an old looking box he had "found" in the NotTower.

Outgame I instantly knew what this was, and as our DM is not a Gotcha one, he let us make a Knwoeledge Arcane Check to identify the Deck of Many Things (which, he told us, the bard had actuallynat 1ed^^).

My voice of reason sadly got overvoted, and since simply leaving alone would be likely as deadly and not quite as potentially fun, I could haggle them down to each of us drawing one card and then getting rid of the thing.

The Petal went first, and drew....Ruin.

Since all she had were her nonmagical Clothes and a looted Dagger, this was more lucky than it would normally be (yay for me going "if I ahve to carry everything, the Gold is Mine! and getting my wish^^).

I was next. And I drew the "Gain a Castle somewhere". Great....just that we had no Idea where we where, where the Castle would be (I am assuming Eberron, near my "home"^^) or how to get out of...wherever.

So now it was time for the Bard. And the ****ing little Prick drew 2 Wishes. ugh.

He instantly used one to Retrain (he was unsatisfied with the Character and had an interesting idea, see below) from his Gestalt into a pure Psion (Kineticist).

Then we decided to keep the last Wish as emergency Insurance. (I was glad that they at least listend to me in that regard).

However, the Bards strange actions made me insist on clarifying what was going on, and why he seemed unaffected by that Mutations.

Luckily, even without rolling Intimidation, a Strong, well armed Warforged with a Blade whispering "Kill the prick" was enough to clarify the situation.

It was revealed that the actual Bard, Bongo, was now imprisoned in the Psions Psycristal, and the steering Intelligence was the half lobotomized, half Halfling (ergo fully lobotomized^^) Illithid.

Who, at elast for my Warforged, was much more palatable than the happy go lucky Bard would have been. And given he was honest about ti AND had noone else to help, we made a pact to get out, and keep any grievances until we were somewhere far far away from the Chaos Wizard.

The Petal found the fact she was the only nonEvil party member less than thrilling, but I was able to persuade her that my Word was Adamantite (whichw as true^^).

Now with the most pressing stuff done, we decided to go scouting. we moved away from the Building andf the medium sized Hill it was part off, through the Forest.

Some small attacks from the usual animals gave us a hint that not everything was mutated. Sadly none of us ahd to eat, so we left the slaughtered Pigs and 2 Wolves where we killed them (something that would come up later).

While we all ahd good to great Stealth, noone had skilled Survival but me and that was a measly 2 pts (stupid nonexistant wisdom mod^^).

So navigating the forest and reaching the next settlement took us almost a day. For 4 miles. Yeah....^^

Looking at the settlement from aafar we could see that most, if not all, of the Inhabitants seemed mutated as well, but noone seemed to care.

Soo, all around mutated people, spooky forest, acting like Innsmouth. I didnt like it much, so the Petal used the her spells to scout out the Village.

She found out it had roughly 400 inhabitants, and that it was relatively new.

We decided that we didnt want to risk direct contact yet, so the poetal scouted straight up, noting that we were close (arounr 5 miles) to a huge lake, with a curved coast on which other side there was a settlement of Hobgoblins.

I immedeatly voted to rather contact them, but again was outvodted (Democracy, my eternal nemesis^^).

We went back into the Forest, intent to rest for the night and decide who to contact in the morning.

When we got close to the area where we had killed the last Boar a frickingly huge (rather Colossal) Dire badger came out of the underwood (or rather the wood).

My Knowledge Nature Nat 20 told us this was probably an animal Companion, and far out of our league.

The Petal had a glorious Idea, offering it the Nuts and Berries and 2 Mushrooms she had, why we dont know, collected. Laying it on the groun, aiting for it to eat (handle Animal nat 20^^).

So we bypassed a CR 14 encounter.
(Still got the EXP though, our DM always rewards different solutions).

We followed the now friendly badger to his master, a Gnome Druid, living in a Tree with his roughly 20 Gnome Friends/Children, and 2 Dryads.

Lots of talking alter, we finally knew where we were, kind of.

This was a demiplane around 75km radius, with an island in the middle and a few surrounding it, and as far as the Druid knew, he had lived here for 65 years, up to around 15 years agoe, whoever controlled it had dumped between 2 and 10 people per year, and mostly left them to their own devices (the area was obviously designed to allow for different habitats, the Fomorians in the Mountain, the Hobgoblins at the Fishing friendly coast, Dryads in the forest etc).
Said time ago it suddenly changed.
The Starange Wizard set up shop, the Mutations started, and at elast 40 people arrived per year (the Village was younger than 10 years for example).

He agreed to trade some with us, finally getting me a new enchantment on my Mithral Body (+3 yay^^, the Petal got a Ring of lesser Invsisbility, the Bard finally got a Bongo^^)), but didnt want our Gold, isntead he tasked us with finding out whatever the Village people knew, as he ... was suffering from strong agoraphobia.

he gave us small Oak leaves made of dark wood that "would make us look like typical lightly mutated Humans" (poor Gnome, thought itw as typical already).

But a quest was a Quest, and we would have likely done it anyway.

But first, a night of rest, and levelling up (shows if you ignore the max 1 Level per Encounter, beating an encounter Double your CR is neat^^).
With another Set of Mutations. The Bard now had 8 fingers on every Hand and a Tail (like a Succubus, combined with the Wings he could be thought an exceptionally fat one^^), I grew a full Set of pointy Horns, somewhere between a helmet and Bulls Horns, and luckily gained 2 pts of natural Armor (yay!), and lost a point of Charisma (ugh, already oonly had 9). The Petal however ... became Diminutive AND gained 2pts of Charisma. Caster Barbie Doll of Doom!^^

And we still had no diea what was mutating us.

The Theurge finally got Level 4 Spells in one area, and I decided to go for Telflammar Shadowlord (I remember asking for recommendations here, nice result). The Psion Psioned ahead.

Now at Level 9 (8 for the casters) we went to work.

So off we went, to "infliltrate" Innsmouth 2.0...

Only to realize as we got within around 500m of the town, the townspeople and we ourselves didnt look mutated any longer.

Petal theorized a wide spread Illusion, but since we didnt suddenly look like ourselves again, we continued with the plan.

Some talking from our not Bardy any longer but still charismatic (Cthulhoid halfling" later we found out the Villages Name was Refuge (how innovative) and that most inhabitants came from "rejects" of the "Master in the Mountain".

Doesnt sound creepy, not at all...

However, we got let to the Mayor, and he explained to us that the master was experimenting to create "Beings of Power" for some unexplained Plan to get out of here. That kicked hard. The Guy we had more or less identified as the Big Bad wasnt even in control of the Area?

****.

We rented a room in the Inn and decided to paly along, after all, we had been seen beating the Fomorians by "someone" so it seemed we where considered "succesful experiments" so far.

And had tried to remain unknown without any reason (or success)...ah well.
At least we made contact with the local Alchemist, and 2 strangely dressed and 4 armed Smiths. And an Artificer, at elas tthats what he said he was. karnrak, ahving experience with Artificers as lone member of the party, found the fact that his sword didnt see any magic around the guy VERY suspicious.

Next we decided that if the Big Bad Wizard wasnt the reason, whoever was would likely have agents in place to watch for problems/Heroes/Murderhobos as well.

So we asked if there were any problems in the Town we could help with (for a very high fee in form of the local Smiths/Artificers being made to craft for us, of course. What, did anyone expect us to do stuff for FREE?).
I ordered some modifications to my Mithral Body and a belt of Strength/Dex, the Petal something none of us understood exactly (magic^^), and the Psion wanted a self reloading Crossbow.

All orders were accepted, but would take some time (ergo they didnt want us to take the stuff and elave, a sentiment I coulkd understand.).

Lots of bad Knowledge Local, Perception and Stealth rolls (well, the alst few not so bad) alter, we found at elast onee problematic point. One of the 3 local "Clinics" (seems even if they no longer looked it, Mutations required additional treatments) had been silent for 3 days.

And on we went. to find the Guards standing to both sides of the very Arkhamesque entry ... dead and reanimated.

Finally, something to fight!


To be continued.

[Yahzi Coyote]

Question: What do you think BBW stands for?
You tried, man. You tried. :smallbiggrin:

[GrayDeath]

And on we go.


Last time, our 3 very nonheroic protagonists qwere faced with the old Classic of "undead infested Insane Asylum".

Something I tended to do to my players a lot. Probably why the DM did it to us, though he wasnt in any of these rounds now that I think about it.

Dispatching the Arkham-Zombies in front didnt take long, but my Rogue Gestalt assumed, correctly, that this would be a trap ridden Encounter.

And so, utilizing our insane Stelth Mods (qwith the Exception of the freshly aquired Dragon Cohort I left to scout above and our Arcane Hierphants Huge Monkey Animal THingy we all had a base mod above 20 at this point) we opened a windo and sneaked in.

Dispatching a andering Ogre (who near death tried to run away just to be level drained to death by a Ghost trying to come at us from a wall, haha^^) we avoided and disarmed around a dozen traps.

Then we met a door where my Swords Detect magic palyed a big role in us assuming it was a magical Door.

Trying to open it via lockpicks however showed that it was, in fact, an animated Object: heavy Metal Door. With a high Int score, and scathingly sarcastic way of talking.

A lot of laughter and some Intimidation/Diplomacy attacks löater, the Door decided to accompany us to ur less udnead infested "lair" (wehich, actually, we didnt have at the moment, but our Petal bluffed well).
It also introduced us to jeff the Table, and John, the Ear Chair, also animated and awakened Objects.

Our general thoughts of whoever had made this lair went lower and lower, but the laughter was a nice change of pace.

After a little more searching,w e found a barricaded Door, behind which my Sword saw 2 "normally magical sources", so as I failed to open it we decided a well palced Shatter would do, followed by me intimidating whoeve rwas behind.

Sadly whoever was behind showed to be a well prepared Blasting Sorcerer, and so the Psion and I ate a 14D6 Fireball, followed up by a (luckily saved, yay for Diamond Mind) Ohatnasmal Killer on their turn.

Deciding that being at 14 HP meant pulling out the stops, I teleported to the sorcerer, charged the body guard, then teleported back (TF Shadowlord ftw^^).

Results. A Dead Body guard, and a dying Sorceress. We diced we needed some info, stat, and fedf her a "healing Potion", our Psion ahd found. He told us it might be part of the reason for our Mutations. Having not much Spellcraft I ahdnt thoufght about healing potions doing it, but grew more paranoid now.

The Elf aquired a Mutated Tempalte, luckily only changing her into an Albino and boosting her Int while reducing Her Con. Fair trade, and giuven we saved her she started to talk.

And boy, did we need that Info.

She explained she and her 3 Colleaguies (2 we had killed, one was missing) ahd been sent here by Baba Jaga (yes, THAT Baba jaga( to combat the Wizard mutating people in the Pocket Realm, and in long term plans, kill him,a s he had partially taken over the realm and prevented her from finding him somehow,

It became pretty obvious that where in the Pocket Dimonesion.

IN BABA JAGAS HUT Pocket Realm, in the Middle of an Epic LEvel Wizard Battle behind the scenes, and jsut only realized it... of course we were...:smalleek:

[remetagross]

That's nice as heck :D

[GrayDeath]

We return to our 3 "very nonstandard Player Characters".

Last time, we had just gotten told that, indeed, we were in the deepest **** outside of "exactly Spellplague FR" or "In front of Bane" we could imagine.

baba Jaga does not ahve a reputation for nothing, after all, so we applied the required deep measures of thought (and quite some panicking) to our situation.

...


After roughly an hour of progressing paranoia, we decided there was nothin g we could do NOW anyway, and focussed on the Insane Asylum. Which, interestingly, the other Group had been doing as well, as their original Contact in the City, a small mask Cult, had gone silent, and its headquarters ahd been below the Asylum.

Paranoia intensifying.^^


For once, Karnark won the vote on "jsut kill everything on site, and you, Sporceress, follow behind us after vowing to aid us in this" (luckily she was LG^^).

Roughly 3 encounters of some kind of Undead or other, we were pretty sure what to expect in the lower area....but isntead found partially eaten/obviously sick Mask priest giving his Temple over to Karnrak if he cleared it (as the only rogue in the Group, we wanted tio debate, but exactly after that and mentioning "Rats and a Dragon" he died).

Weeeell, I have a Mask Temple. Yay?

Not so yay we now expected to find a caster focussed Dragon as the big Bad, and aside from the insanely agile AC 34 Petal, we were all wounded.

We used all healking and repairs we had, and went on...straight into an Ambush of 3 Wererats. Luckily, none of us were Humanoids, and we were buffed far outside their league.

less luckily, I ate another 2 attacks, again landing below the 20ies. (Note to self BUY ARMORPARTS FOR BODY!!).

The actual Bossd fight was pretty easy, my (Darkstalker be thanked) Character sneaked in, found an undead Black Dragon swimming in some kind of rainbowcolored fluid, went back, got the Sorceress to become invisible and cast Command Undead.
Boss Done.

And then the Illihalfling made a heads first jump intop that same Fluid. :sigh::biggrin:

A few intense mutating moments alter, he todld us he had fully embraced mutation as path to power, and we should do the same.

We politely declined (but could not prevent another small mutationa ffecting us due to time spent near this...stuff, in Karnraks Case he lost 2 fingers on one hand and gained +2 Str, while the Petal rolled Charisma AGAIN, ugh^^).

We left, commanded the Dragon to keep the Asylum safe for us, collected our awakened Furniture, and...actually for the first time, went back to our Quest Giver and reported COmpletion.

Yay for a bit of Familiarity^^!

In the following Downtime, we found a Chaositek Artificer in the Town, and got our reqard from the smith and him.

Finally making my Armor better (adding some Grav Iron to the Mithral what I effectively got was +1 base armor only, but Spiderwalk 3/day, and a buckler with +2 enchantment, finally getting me past AC 20, sheesh, the other 2 where pretty...paranoid about not saying what they got exactly.).

I had the technitian optimize what had been done to Karnarak, allowing me to use the Electricity to passively speed me up (permanent +2 Dex and Initiative) and installed a Rod of Repair in my second Wargforged Parts slot, usable as move action, as I was fed up with almost dying every battle).

All this cost us around 22k Gold, so we only had around 35kg left. ^^

We also all elvleled up, and stopped the Session there.

At this point, we were:

Karnrak, total level 11 Warblade/TF Shadowlord/Rogue Gestalt, "Unspeakable and often changing Name" Petal Sorcerer/FS/MT 10 ECL, and Kineticist 10 Tentaclehaded Halfling (with many halves^^).

Even given we had gained some "kind of allies", we still were in the Middle of an Epic Cold Wizard War, and hence decided to for now focus on the mask Temple and generally finding out what ELSE was going on (ergo we could abu...I mean Solve to level^^).

[GrayDeath]

So, after the last session, like with this post, we ahd to have a longer break (2 months actually), so after doing a recap (and me once again explaining (high Rolls in Knowledge Planes even allowing it to be entirely IC) HOW ****ed we were because of where we were, our group decided that "hidden Temple of Mask that has trouble" counted as both a nice story hook and a good plan for our new ... Lair, so we stocked up on potions from both the ... less than trustworthy seeming Chaositek Guy (including a few Upgrades for each of us for relatively low Gold costs, yes, we only let one of us be operated on while the other 2 watched with True Seeing and such, we are Evil and kinda reckless, not morons) allowing my Warforged to remove one of his 3 Semi Dump Stats (yes, up intil that moment, I palyed a Rogue with Dex 16, so sue me^^), some Lock openers in his fingers, and built in lenses with 3 View Modes (regular view with +4 perception, Dark and Lowlightvision 120ft (due to already having the Dark Template), or far view (-5 melee, +12 perception for range and +4 ranged attacks), our Halfilithidfthingy mutated a bit more and didnt need an operation, and the Petal let him remove some (mechanically only applying a -1 penatly to Bluff/Seduction) ugly groths she gained from being half Woodling.

We spent msot of the rest of our Gold for the Druid making the Petal a living Armor Set (granting AC +3 in total (impossible to improve), Max Dex 7, and no ASF, but sucks HP from her and prevents her from heealing naturally).

Time to fulfil the other Mission: Get rid of the Hobgoblins!

We though we were ready for everything that the Wilds of the Island/The Hobfgoblin Encampment on the other side of the Bay could throw at us, and given we had a really wsell hidden hideout to fall back to AND great mobility (except for the Psion, who while able to fly only did so with Speed 60).


That was some disappointment.

Their Forest Guard Posts (2) had been attacked by wild animals, so they were fully alert....but half of them ahd been wounded, and a handful of Level 4-6 Hobgoblin Warrior Types agoisnt our group was....done qwquickly.

We were eager, buffed to the gills, and had just spent over 20k in Gold, and all we found were a few dozen totally normal, unmutated, noncaster Hobgoblins. JHeck, only 9 even had ranged weapons. It was a Massacre.

I was never this dissappointed with achieving all goals we set ourselves, and the Treasure we found at least made Karnrak r4ealize another hidden ability of his sword (the DM said as soon as I qualified otherwise this would allow me to awaken its Legacy later on (ergo take Levels in Legacy Champion, which I intended toi use to get more out of Mo9 anyway, so yay!^^), but until then was totally random regarding the result) in the form of "eating" other weapons (it actually showed nasty teeth bulging from its curved areas, and crunched them, nice description of the sound by the DM^^), and maybe aquiring one of their abilities.
In this case 2 weapons where not claimed by anyone, and I lucked out once and lost once. It ate the Vorpal +4 Dagger and actually gave it Vorpal (with the side effect of dealing 1 HP per HD to its wielder whenever it triggers), but eating the Fiery Humanbane +3 bow had no effect.

For "eating" that much, I didn´t claim anything else but a pair of Dexterity +2 Gloves noone needed otherwise.

Sow e returned to the "City" having gotten rid of their only "known Opposition" meeting the Mayor again, who was almost dancing from happineess, said he couldnt give us much gold (500 per head) ...BUT: He also gave us 3 black, gold encrusted, books (a +4 Book of Str, Cha and Int to be specific, which was the Highlight of the day) which he claimed noone in the Town knew how to sue...yeah, right, I se a Wizard Bribe here...rightly so because...we also got an Invitation from the Big Bad (Chaos) Wizard (TM), as he had been "watching our every move" (of course...) and thought we were showing a lot of Promise.



Now, we had a really wsell hidden hide out, lots of money, a more or less allied LEvel 13 Sorceress controlling a Black Shadowdragon, a Monkey with AC 29, and my little blue Dragon as backup.
Oh, and the 3 Animated Object Stooges.

Against either Baba Jaga or an ultimate Chaos Wizard (TM).

We did a lot of talking but could not decide if we should accept the answer until our little Cthulu Baggins said he would keep his ring ready and spend the wish with "get out of this situation" effects. And we were tired of arguing, so onwards to the Dark Tower of Chaos and Wiazrdry we went.....