Power Score

Last Sunday, we played some more Planescape. We've started doing a big storyline involving the blood war, the eternal battle between devils and demons.

Devil Book: I started listening to an audiobook, Brimstone Angels by Erin M Evans. I had been poking around online reading up on devils and I saw that those books have Glasya and Asmodeus in them!

I thought it would be cool to check the first book out to see if I could mine material from it. I'm on chapter 6 and sweet jaysus there is a PILE of good stuff.

I generally don't read fiction so I was more than a little wary going in, but she won me over almost immediately with some absolutely fantastic subtle eroticism. She has a real way with words.

The main character is Farideh, a tiefling who winds up becoming a warlock. Her patron is a cambion named Lorcan. When she first sees Lorcan, there is this epic description of her feelings about seeing him and how she can't stop looking at his mouth and that things were getting untied in her stomach.

I howled with delight and from that point on I was sold.

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Chapter 5 is entirely about Lorcan in Malbolge, the 6th layer of Hell. We get great descriptions of what Osseia, Glasyas palace, is like. We meet an erinyes named Invadiah and a succubus named Rohini, both agents of Glasya. TONS of useful material!

I will definitely write it all up. It is stuff you could definitely use for your game. Erin M Evans really brings it to life and she really knows D&D Hell extremely well.

I was also fascinated with the depiction of a warlock interacting with her patron. It makes the whole class much more interesting when the patron is visiting the warlock and advising them. Meddling, even!

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

The heroes own a cluster of buildings in Sigil called Deadbook Square.

Last Time: The heroes waded into a massive battle riding a death hurler, a devil siege engine made of damned souls. They took a castle in Lamashtu's abyssal realm and made friends with the Mother of All, a demon-thing that lays monster eggs and uses them as projectiles.

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In the castle was a portal to the infinite staircase. The devil army would need time to rest and regroup. The heroes decided to use the infinite staircase to go back to Sigil.

The Sphere of Annihilation: I had Theran's apprentice ask to try to mess with his sphere of annihilation. I did this because there was a rule I missed - if you fail your arcana check to move the sphere, it comes ten feet closer to you. I wanted to demonstrate that, and did so. She wasn't hurt, she was far enough away. I just want to set that up because it might come into play somewhere down the road.

Demon Breeding: Bidam went to his settlement in Grazzt's realm and introduced the Mother of All to her demon breeding program. Being incredibly fertile, the Mother of All was popping out demon eggs in no time.

I decided to use obscure/weird demons as "new breeds" created by the mixing of different demons. So when the Abat Dolor (the reace that Graz'zt may belong to) mates with the Mother of All, their children are Magnodemons, a gargoylish 4th edition demon type.

I just had an idea, a really stupid idea that I can’t wait to use. You know how they have those dog shows, where dog breeders trot out their well-groomed pets? I want to do a monster breeding show where creepy weirdos trot out their well-groomed monsters, competing for some kind of special prize.

Bidam then went to visit his new dragon baby, Pyranica, and his son, Pyranicus. He wants to make an army of demon-dragon children, so he got to work on number 3.

The next day, the group rejoined the devil army.

Marching into the Staircase: Drokkarn, the pit fiend leader of the devil army, wanted to actually go in and occupy the infinite staircase. The devils would have control of many portals, some of which go right to layers of the abyss.

So 5,000 soldiers and our heroes went in and got to work.

In the books, a Forgotten Realms goddess lives at the base of the infinite staircase. Earlier in the campaign I had established that Vecna, god of secrets, had kicked her out and taken her place.

The heroes started heading down the staircase, leaving devil soldiers on each landing to guard the doors and clear the area on the other side.

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Vecna has these creatures called nothics, one-eyed information gatherers. One approached Theran and tried to read his mind, but Theran resisted. It left.

Vecna’s Secret: Soon after, the image of the Lord of the Rotting Tower appeared in the air above the army. The Lord is an agent of Vecna that I made up and used in some other campaigns.

Also flying above them was Vecna's Secret, an angel of Vecna who is from the 4e Dungeon Delve book. The name cracks me up, so I made sure to use her.

The Lord ordered them to leave. They didn't. Vecna's secret summoned a pillar of coldfire in the middle of the army, whch began spinning and moving, sending many devil soldiers falling off the staircase and vanishing into the planes.

The group's hellhound buddy, Fireball, slid to the edge. Bidam dove and grabbed him.

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Lord of the Rotting Tower

Planning for a Failed Save: One thing I learned the hard way was that, if you make a situation like this, think out what happens if they fail the roll.

I didn't want Fireball to fall. In fact, I don't want Fireball to ever get hurt. I guess if things work out that way, we'll see, but I am not going to engineer any situation where he gets hurt. Hurting a dog in D&D, that's just depressing to me. I know NPCs die in every D&D game, but still, I don’t want to do that to a tail-waving buddy.

So the plan for failure was that if the group couldn't stop Fireball from falling over the side, Feurina the warder devil would save him but fall off and vanish into another plane.

The reason I am having devils fall into random planes is to set up a situation where the group needs to go find a certain devil who fell and we can have a session where the heroes sail the river styx. There is this fantastic F. Wesley Schneider river styx article that I want to turn into an adventure.

The heroes chased off Vecna's Secret.

The Repository of Ciphers: They continued down the staircase and found that Vecna had destroyed a staircase, making it quite difficult for the army to continue going down.

The heroes rode the flying throne of the devil slave Nin to get across. Drokkarn the pit fiend and the hellknights riding nightmares crossed, too. The rest of the army had to stay behind.

The group got to the bottom and there was the Repository of Ciphers, one of Vecna's sanctums.

The Time I Talked to Chris Perkins

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I don't think I've ever told this story before. This repository came from a conversation I had with Chris Perkins in 2009.

Back then, on the D&D website, it had announced that they were opening a DM hotline for just one day. You could call the company and talk about D&D. I wonder now if maybe this was the beginning of their new mindset where they listen to what the fans want and then put that in D&D books.

I was a manager at a movie theater. I had an hour between sets where there was nothing to do but sit in the office and work on D&D stuff.

I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I heard someone pick up and say, "DM Hotline, this is Chris Perkins."

Way back in the early 90's, I was always scouring Dungeon Magazine for material. Chris Perkins was all over those issues.

Also, at the time he was writing a fantastic weekly column called the DM Experience (which everyone should read, IMO).

I crapped my pants a bit and started talking. For ONE HOUR we talked about D&D. I told him about what it was like running D&D games in a game store, the good and bad of 4e (which I loved), and more. At the end, he actually helped me with my campaign.

I told him that my Scales of War group was about to go fight Vecna. They were 28th level. I told him I was having trouble figuring out cool ideas for Vecna's lair.

Chris proceeded to describe to me... the Amber Temple from Curse of Strahd. At least, I think that's what it was.

He told me that to get there, you have to light these candles of black flame and do a ritual to open a portal.

I asked him what was in the repository of secrets, and he responded with a question: "Did you ever see the first Mission Impossible movie?"

I immediately knew what he was talking about. The NOC list! A list of the names of every undeclared spy, where they were and what they had done.

There's a billion things you could do with that. A list of divine spies in the courts of other gods? What demon lords had spies in other layers!?

He blew my mind and we talked a little more. Then I had movies to start (Our theater had old movie projectors, where we had to actually run film through the projectors).

The following Monday, I ran the battle with Vecna with a fully-developed repository and it went extremely well.

Secrets of the Primordial

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So, basically, there's a repository like that one at the bottom of the infinite staircase. But this one doesn't have the D&D NOC list, it has a dreaming primordial in it that Vecna is trying to siphon knowledge from.

The approach to the repository is a walkway made of tombstones with the names of the heroes on them. They passed by statues of themselves that uttered actual secrets of each character out loud.

Their spiteful slave Nin was there, listening very, very carefully.

Secrets:

Theran's soul was going to be devoured by the Codex of the Infinite Planes
Bidam was married to a demon lord. The hell knights were shocked by this, but said nothing.
Drokkarn was going to betray the heroes. That one really threw them for a loop.

Were the statues just making stuff up and messing with them? They didn't know.

At this point, the group were at the doors of the repository and the Lord of the Rotting Tower was nervous. He told them he would let them occupy a stretch of the staircase if Theran would use his dream well powers to adventure into the dreamscape of the dreaming primordial to discover ancient secrets for Vecna.

This set up an encounter where Theran explored a dreamscape, while the primordial shuddered and spawned physical shard-creatures that Bidam had to fend off.

I used stats from Volo’s Guide to Monsters for the shard-things. The Mouth of Grolantor, page 149. Each round, those creatures roll on a chart to see what they do - attack the hero, attack another, etc.

A new one appeared in each of the 5 rounds that Theran was gone. Bidam got very lucky. I kept rolling results where the shard ended up hitting each other.

In the dreamscape, Theran found himself in a memory of Death's Reach - a sealed off primordial realm full of ancient secrets.

He spotted 5 structures in the distance, each containing a secret of the primordial.

Theran had to sneak and doge his way past a dream version of the 50-foot tall primordial to get to each one.

Theran did fantastically well, and actually learned all five secrets.

This was a nice way for me to give the group all sorts of info. Here's what they learned:

Lamashtu and Iggwilv: Lamashtu, the main demon lord opposing them in the blood war, is a puppet/ally of Iggwilv the Witch Queen.

Lady of Pain Origin: They learned the Lady of Pain's origin, a stupid idea I came up with years ago that I'm kind of stuck with. She's the child of a god and a primordial and was an angel who eventually transformed into the Lady of Pain as her immense power manifested.

As an angel, she had had a daughter. Centuries down the road, she actually passed the mantle of the Lady of Pain on to the daughter.

The secret here was that the daughter had a daughter. This secret granddaughter of the original Lady of Pain might someday become the third Lady of Pain and.. the group has already met her! Who it is, they don't know.

Secret 3: They learned that Bidam is linked to Rule of Three, Theran is linked to Unity of Rings, and Center of All (the nameless one, main character in Planescape: Torment) has been reborn. The group didn't get the full picture, but they will learn that they are about to become the embodiment of two of the three laws of the multiverse.

The Blood Storm is Coming: There's a demon lord named Codricuhn who is climbing up this abyssal rift. Once he gets to the top, supposedly he will begin destroying the multiverse. The group interacted with one of the 6 six quasi-demon lords who live in the storm that surrounds Codricuhn a while back.

They learned that Codricuhn is near the top and will emerge soon.

Vecna’s Goal: This is the secret Vecna's looking for. Theran learned half of a ritual that could be cast that would altar a portal to Sigil. This portal would permit gods and demon lords to enter Sigil!

This means that Vecna could enter Sigil, kill the Lady of Pain and take over the whole city. It's my version of Die, Vecna, Die.

Theran was successful and he re-entered his mortal body. Bidam trashed the shards with his sword of sharpness.

Theran handed the ritual right over to the Lord of the Rotting Tower, no hesitation at all!

The Lord of the Rotting Tower revealed that he is, in fact, Vecna. It's a clever disguise!

I love roleplaying Vecna because I do a wobbly Mumm-Ra voice that amuses me to no end.

The heroes learned a lot and next session they are going to defend that castle against a demon army in another mass combat situation.

Pretty good session!

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We played this a little over a week ago. I like playing through the Perkinses because you can experience ideas he still uses today.

I am still making my way through Brimstone Angels. There’s a bit too much arguing in it right now for my liking, but there is a lot of stuff that I enjoy about it. I am looking forward to peeling it apart once I have gotten through the whole thing.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian

Last time, the heroes had come to find missing ambassadors and a crystal dragon. They had a weird encounter with a deep dragon who ran from them after breathing on Kyrin.

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The heroes were partnered up with their new buddy Gazgar the wereboulder. They made their way to the cavern where the crystal dragon, Glittershard, was digging. Glittershard explained that he was told that if he stopped digging, the ambassadors would be killed.

That's a nice little way to avoid a pitfall. The map of this adventure provides a straight line to the bad guy and this dragon. The group can skip the entire complex. This adventure accounts for that possibility and the group has to backtrack to find the ambassadors.

The heroes checked out a clear pool of water. They saw big pipes in it. These pipes connect to a dwarven bathtub in an abandoned area of the fortress.

I was sitting there expecting the group to zip right to the ambassadors and, in my head, I was mapping out where the bad guys were and how this was going to work. Then Ramrod decided to swim into the pipes. He jerked the grate open and in he went.

Suddenly we were off on a complete detour. Ramrod emerged in the bathroom and hopped into the tub. There was translucent goo in it - a crystal ooze! It began to engulf him.

The heroes had tied a rope to him and swam through the pipe to help their goliath chum.

They killed the ooze and began to explore this crumbling section of Thunderdelve that the dwarves left alone.

They ended up opening the door to a room with a crumbling floor. Two dwarf heads with bat wings screeched and flapped toward them. Vargouilles! They're pretty cool, they are from Volo's Guide to Monsters.

The group shut the door. They assumed that the vargouilles couldn't turn a door knob. From the other side, the heroes heard chomping noises and saliva glooping. They were right.

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They then proceeded to explore right to the area where the secret bad guys were. I did not expect this at all. I kind of assumed that the adventurers would never even run into these creatures.

The bad guys are derro, crazy blue gnomes. They're behind this whole scheme. The group beat them down. One tried to flee, but Ramrod threw the wereboulder at him and he was down.

The derro had a book on them that contained a clue to a dwarven vault. The heroes eventually found the vault, which contained many dwarven treasures. One such treasure was the hammer of Vitroin! It was a dwarven artifact that could heal and telepathically communicate to the wielder in a mighty, heroic voice.

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Ramrod was very freaked out by this. The hammer could sense what was going on in this place. Someone was using a diadem of thought draining to fog the minds of the dwarves, making them easy to manipulate and control.

The hammer declared that he could destroy the diadem in a single blow! All the group had to do was to find it.

The heroes showed the hammer to Drull, the ruler of Thunderdelve. Drull was still recovering from his wounds. His beard had been burned off, but the group had made a pretty snazzy fake beard for him last session.

The players asked me if the hammer could fix the beard. Can the hammer fix the beard?! Hell yes! That's why they call it.. Vitroin THE EMBEARDENER!

By burning one of the cure light wounds spells, the hammer could embearden someone. Thanks to the magic of Vitroin, the king had a full lustrous beard that left the other dwarves in awe.

By the end of the adventure, Kyrin was wielding the hammer and he had a thick black beard, which he says he is keeping.

Fully embeardened, the heroes strutted off to break the ambassadors out of the prison. When they got there, they found the deep dragon waiting for them!

It breathed flesh-eating mist which dropped Kyrin. Again, his flesh wasn't eaten. Weirdly, the dragon seemed scared.

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A Baldandar

The heroes boldly charged in and pounded on the dragon. It turns out that this creature wasn't a dragon at all. It was an illusion-created creature known as a baldandar. It turned out that the derro had brought the baldandar here to wreak havoc and subjugate the dwarves.

They took it down and saw that it was wearing the diadem! Mighty Vitroin indeed shattered it in a single blow and the ambassadors were freed.

The dwarves slowly became less stupid and Glittershard no longer had to toil. The bad guys were having him dig a connecting tunnel to the underdark settlement of the derro. They had wanted to use Thunderdelve as a staging ground to raid the overworld from.

From outside came shouts and mighty roars. Glittershard's draconic parents had arrived!

The group brought Glittershard out there. I read this big box of flavor text that made the players groan. The parents hugged their little child and he learned a valuable lesson about life and the dangers of strangers.

The dragons gave the heroes two gifts:

An ioun stone that gave resistance to cold damage.
An orb that allowed the group to call on the dragons one time. As long as the dragons were within 100 miles, they hear it and fly to the group.

Drull agreed to finally go and meet with his brother in Underduin. The group went along.

In the adventure, it says that the group is invited to stay in Underduin for a while. The dwarves want to make statues of them, and the process takes four months.

The heroes agreed to stay.

Next session, we'll play through some of that time.

Good group, good session! I didn't prepare this adventure like I should have and I wasn't really happy with what I did with it. The players made it fun, though.

I am getting the hang of sitting back and letting the players chew scenery. It seems like all I have to do is be mindful of the pacing.

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Episode 35: Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum

On Reddit, they made a really nice index of the episodes right here.

No Anna this week! We do have a special guest star, Satine Phoenix from Maze Arcana, the show where they play through an Eberron campaign. For me, that’s about as good a guest star as you can get.

That said, it’s just not the same without Evelyn.

The Party

(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Satine) Lafaria - Dryad

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Hooty McHootface the owlbear is part of the party now. Strix actually rides around on him as if he was a mount. She has to sort of lie down on him, as he moves in a weird way and can’t be ridden like a horse. She feeds him lots of waffles.

The group are about to head out into the wilderness with Zog, the dwarf on stilts. They'll be helping Zog deliver a message to a citadel. The journey will take about 20 days.

As he packs for the trip, Zog drops some stuff. He has a giant diamond. It’s worth at least 1,000 gp. Hmmm…. Diath can use that for his resurrection power! The group gets all bug-eyed, but decides to play it cool for now.

The crew travels for a week without incident. During the nights, they let the owlbear sleep in the hut. Strix needs him for warmth. Murderbot is still a good buddy of Paultin's. I guess Murderbot stares at them while they sleep.

During the second week, a huge windstorm hits. Evelyn is separated from the group. She was riding on Mourning Glory and was enjoying the splendor of nature when… poof. Chris says this is his way of explaining her absence. I like that better than the old “she’s there but doesn’t do anything” gimmick, but it gets weird if players miss a lot of sessions.

In my games I ended up just not worrying about it, saying they didn’t “log in” for that session. When you keep a PC around as an NPC, all kinds of bad stuff can happen.

The Dryad

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The heroes come upon a hill with a tree and a cave. The group messes with the tree and suddenly Lafaria, a dryad appears. This is Satine's character.

She asks them why they are damaging her tree. Strix and Diath are freaked out, and they run. Eventually the group befriends her, sort of. They’re still creeped out.

Zog is shocked when he finds out that Strix is a female.

Lafaria lets the group sleep in her cave. Giants are coming. The dryad wakes up the group and warns them. They can feel the earth trembling as the giants get close.

A giant bellows, "I smell the blood of a human!"

The group takes a look. One giant is twice as big as the others. She sends her three underlings toward the cave.

Paultin tells Murderbot to get ready to kill. Wow, murderbot vs a giant.

They are hill giants. The big one is female screaming for food. Her name is Fum. Hmmm I guess the others are Fee, Fi and Fo.

Paultin tries to convince the giants that the heroes aren't a filling meal. The giants decide to eat the tree instead. The tree is Lafaria’s home and she is not too happy about that idea. The group goes to battle with the giants.

Hill Giants

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The dryad has the tree pick up Strix, who launches off a fireball. The owlbear attacks a giant.

They should have a race between the owlbear and Mourning Glory. How fast is an owlbear? Would the owlbear even understand it was in a race?

Hootie bloodies the giant. Hootie gets hit for 38 points! He's almost dead!

A giant tries to push over the tree. Paultin casts fear on Fum and she fails her save. She flees, but her husbands are still fighting. The group is quite amused that all of the males are her husbands. This is part of the hill giant storyline in Storm King.

A giant drops Diath, big time. Poor Diath is about to start making death saving throws.

The chat alerts the group that Murderbot hasn't gone. Chris says that Murderbot is just hanging out next to Paultin. It never fails in D&D… everyone forgets the NPCs and animal sidekicks.

A giant bites Lafaria for 12 points. Murderbot fires a dart into a giant's butt and kills it.

Diath rolls a death save... natural one! That counts as two failures. One more and he's dead for good. Strix misty steps over to him and tries a heal check to stabilize him, but she rolls a 5. Uh oh. She stuffs snow in his mouth. Doesn't help.

As the battle rages on, Diath rolls another death save.. eep... he rolls a 14! Strix tries to stabilize him again. Fails. Wow. Zog actually comes over to help. Zog does it! I don’t know why, but I kind of felt like Diath should just die. That was the story the dice were telling.

I know they’d be stuck if he died. Could someone at the citadel raise dead? Probably. But Jared might have to sit out for a portion of the session, which is a bit lame I guess.

Wow... Lafaria goes down. Paultin goes down!! Both making death saves! It's just Strix and Zog versus two hill giants. No... Zog is down! It's just Strix!

She tries to scare off the giant with thaumaturgy, creating a shadow demon bigger than it. She rolls really bad.

She should run into the cave, the giant can't get in there...

Oh no. She is hit. 16 damage. she's still up! She lets out a hellish rebuke. The group is pining for Evelyn.

It staggers back. Murderbot fires a dart into it.. kills it! The other giant flees, trying to catch up with his wife.

Lafaria is about to die.. she doesn't go by PC rules. I think she rolled a natural 20 on a death save but she didn’t pop up.

Lafaria rubs sap on Strix's head. She utters a weird phrase: “Hellstroth dons his elven crown.” Strix has gained a boon - the power to polymorph. She can cast the polymorph spell on herself a few times. That should be fun. She could assume the form of an owlbear!

Overall

Fun show. It was fun to see the groups fight some giants. They were pretty much in over their heads.

I always like how Chris doesn’t always have his monster mindlessly attack. They have goals. The giants wanted something to eat, and when they decided to eat the tree, they shifted their focus to that.

No show next week!

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I just finished reading Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans, a D&D novel that involves the Nine Hells, Glasya, Asmodeus, the erinyes and Malbolge, the sixth layer of Hell. I recently wrote a bunch of guides to the Nine Hells and when I saw this book, I felt like I should check it out.

I have mined the book for material that you can use in your D&D campaign. Let’s go through that and then I’ll do some bloviating.

Glasya's Agents

Invadiah: Glasya’s favored erinyes, Invadiah runs the elite guard known as The Pradixikai. She has a mane of deepnight hair that cascades nearly to the floor. She is known to wear either char-black armor or a gown of chain adorned with carapace-like plates of smoldering gold. She answers directly to Glasya and she owns a number of magic items that her children steal from her now and then.

Invadiah is not nice at all. She is thoroughly evil and very violent.

The Pradixikai: 58 erinyes warriors, Glasya's personal guard. All of them are daughters of Invadiah.

Two members are Namaiah and Aornos, weak, vicious erinyes who like to bully lemures and Lorcan. They guard Invadiah’s treasury in Malbolge.

Saorche: I’m guessing on the spelling, here. It’s pronounced “Say-ur-CHAY”. She is a daughter of Invadiah, clever like Lorcan. I think she’s a cambion. She meddles in Lorcan's schemes and is a mischievous creeper.

Rohini: A succubus agent who goes on personal missions for Glasya. In this book, she infiltrates the city of Neverwinter and ends up getting involved with aboleths who try to control her. She has red hair, black wings, and pale skin.

It is revealed that some time ago, she killed one of the commanders of Levistus, lord of the fifth layer. When she returned from that mission, she was covered in blood and had his severed hands with her as proof.

The Ashmadai: This is the name of the cult of Asmodeus. Even Lorcan fears them. They have a saying: “What benefits us benefits Amodeus, and what benefits Asmodeus benefits us all.

A lot of the ashmadai are tiefling warlocks, they sacrifice people. They're in the book but I don't recall too many unique details. The Forgotten Realms wiki has a lot of info right here.

Warlock Pacts

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Probably the most interesting thing in this book from a D&D perspective is the depiction of how a warlock pact works.

In D&D, most warlocks I've seen don't really mention their patron. In this book, the warlock's patron is a pivotal character who shows up constantly. He's not some distant godlike entity, he's a dude who hangs out at his mom's job.

The Pact: Farideh had to agree to the pact. When she did (he smooth-talked her while she drooled over him), he touched her and lines appeared on her skin, like a magic tattoo. The magic tattoo was connected to Lorcan, and through it she has a bit of an empathic bond with him. Sometimes when he's near, the tattoo pulses.

Monitoring the Warlock: Most of the time, Lorcan watches her through a magic mirror in Malbolge. He can use this device known as the Needle of the Crossroads which lets him travel to the Forgotten Realms and back. He uses a magic ring attuned to it to teleport to and from the Realms.

Changing Patrons: Farideh eventually learns she can switch patrons if she wants. She has to find another one, but it can be done. Lorcan knows this and tiptoes around the issue.

I think it's a great way to use a warlock. I've tried this kind of thing but I wasn't too good at it. This book gives a very clear and well-thought-out example of how it is done.

What Happens when a Devil Gets Demoted

The various D&D books give a lot of different gross ways for devils to be demoted. Many of them involve a devil being dragged off for torture over the course of weeks or years.

Glasya demotes a barbed devil into a spined devil in this book. Here's what happened:

She waved her hands and the devil’s muscles contorted. It screamed as if its intestines were being pulled out with a single hooked finger. There was an explosion of energy that burned hot and thick with soot and the devil tore apart with a sick wet ripping sound. All nearby felt a burning wind pass over them.

In the tattered bloody midst of its former body is a smaller form. It twitched and jerked, tearing muscles. The spined devil form broke free and stretched its delicate wings, flinging gore everywhere.

Succubi

In this 4e-era story, succubi can be promoted to an erinyes and an erinyes can be demoted into a succubus. The succubi were on the side of the demons, but they joined the devils when Asmodeus became a god. Erinyes and succubi hate each other.

In 5e, some succubi work with devils and others work with demons.

Malbolge, the Sixth Layer of Hell

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It is specifically mentioned that Malbolge, which is the massive fleshy remains of the Hag Countess, is still alive. The suppurating ground actually devours any who die here. I wonder if the Hag eats enough people, can she transform back into the person she was?

Invadiah’s Tower

Invadiah has a treasury in one of the Ten Towers. Each of these bone spires were once fingers of the Hag Countess. Lorcan goes into the treasury to “borrow” magic items fairly often. Sometimes it is guarded by two erinyes, members of the Pradixikai.

Exterior: venomous flowers twined their way toward tall bone spires, fed by streams of shimmering effluvia that changes color by the hour. The ground is ruddy.

Special Door: The door to the treasury is very cool. The door is made of bone, crisscrossed with sinew strong as steel. In the center of the sinew is an infernal seal. Lorcan merely has to touch the seal to open it. I would guess that devils with the blood of Invadiah can activate it. Anyone else probably sets off some kind of alarm or is hit with a gory trap.

Interior: The hallways throb and fleshy pink walls tremble with tortured ghosts of the previous ruler's thoughts. The walls are lined with bloody mucus and bone juts out from corners.

The Needle of the Crossroads: Lorcan spends quite a bit of time in a room containing an artifact. It is a small room with a green obelisk enclosed by fleshy walls that ooze sickly yellow fluid. A polyp lights the room, which is full of treasure.

The needle of the crossroads is an artifact that creates a temporary portal tied to anywhere in Toril.
Near it is a large iron mirror. Lorcan uses a magic pin that allows him to peer into the mirror and observe his other warlocks. He can hear through the mirror, though the sound is warbly.

Throne Room of Osseia

Glasya sits on a throne carved from the ivory of the teeth of the Hag Countess. Glasya has bat-like wings, coppery skin, and dark hair. She radiated like a star and she swallowed up the light around her. To look upon her is a special sort of madness.

She is served by hellwasps, who have stingers the size of swords and bladed legs. Glasya is flanked by two pit fiends with whips.

Exterior: On the exterior of Osseia, which is the massive skull of the Hag Countess, are two sharpened fangs on which Glasya frequently impales those who displease her. In this book, two cultists of a rival archdevil actually tried to sneak around Malbolge. Both were impaled and scream in pain for hours as their blood drips down on those who enter or exit.

The Brimstone Angel

The book mentions her a few times. Farideh is a descendant of hers. There are some hints that Farideh might also be linked to the deity Selune somehow. I have no idea who the Brimstone Angel is, I am guessing it will be explained in future books. She sounds like a potentially really cool NPC.

Overview

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I don't really read fantasy novels. I'm more of a non-fiction kind of guy. I obtained this book through a free audible trial, so I didn’t read this, I listened to it.

Overall the book is very good. Erin M . Evans writes extremely colorful descriptions, her plotting skills are fantastic and she is able to bring characters to life. She stopped me in my tracks by using the word “insouciant” in a sentence.

I assume many of you have tried to or have written a fantasy story of some kind. I once tried to write a novel, and I had to stop because I actually bored myself. What started out as a tale about time-traveling shenanigans with gatling guns and planar spiders ended up mired in relationship drama on a pirate ship.

I don’t want to spoil the story too much. Basically, Farideh makes a pact with Lorcan, she ends up in Neverwinter and she ends up embroiled in a conflict involving aboleths, Glasya and Asmosdeus. The whole thing unfolds naturally. The characters drive the story and nothing feels contrived.

She has an adventuring party:

Havilar: Her twin sister, a fighter who is pretty funny.
Bryn: A guy with a lot of secrets, somewhat inept but a good dude.
Mehen: A gruff dragonborn who is a stepdad to Farideh and Havilar.
Lorcan: Lorcan, the cambion, is pretty much a party member, even though everyone hates him.

The Narrator: The audiobook is narrated by a woman named Dina Pearlman. She was pretty incredible when it came to depicting a scene and saying dialogue as it would be said when things are exploding. She could convey a sense of urgency, drama and nuance.

She's good, but there were a few things she did that would take me out of the story. Here we go.

Story Time: There were times when it felt like she was reading the story in a patronizing tone, as if she was reading to little kids.

Man Voice: The voice she did for the males, especially Lorcan, was just no good. It's not her fault, really. She doesn't have a man's voice. But she did this throaty "making fun of the way dad talks" voice that was very jarring.

"Brim-sta-NAY Angels": She pronounced everything differently. By the end of the book, I was convinced I've been saying everything wrong. Listening to this, she says "Wyvern" is "WEE-varn" and Erinyes is "erih-YEEZ".

When I see the name "Farideh" on a piece of paper, I hear "Fair-ih-DAY". It's not. It's "Fah-REE-da". When I see "Invadiah" I hear "INVADE-eeya". It's "In-va-DEE-yah." My pronunciation world got rocked from chapter one all the way through to the epilogue.

My pronunciation confidence is so shattered that I will never try to say "halberd" out loud in D&D again. I'm still not saying "Siggle", City of Doors, though.

My Favorite Part

The book won me over pretty quick with a stellar description of Farideh meeting Lorcan for the first time. We learn that he is red-skinned, cinder-haired and black-eyed. He has “shapely horns” and veiny wings SO BIG they almost scrape the ceiling! He’s slim, well-muscled and clothed in snug leather.

I was already cackling at this sideways eroticism. Then I heard this part:

"To Farideh, he looked like sin. He looked like want. He looked like all the thoughts she couldn't let herself have bundled up in a skin and watching her drip snowmelt on the floor. Handsome was a paltry word for him. Tiefling, human or anything else, boys didn't look like this. Boys didn't make her feel as if someone was pulling seams loose inside her."

I died laughing. That’s five stars right there. There is no question I am going to work this quote into a D&D session ASAP.

The central theme of the book is the relationship between Farideh and Lorcan. Farideh thinks he’s hot. Lorcan has a thing for her. She’s important to him because she’s one of the descendants of the Brimstone Angel.

Lorcan

I really don't like how Farideh has a thing for Lorcan even though he's a complete prick and he manhandles her. Maybe it’s realistic, but it is very off-putting to me. The solution the book comes up with is not for her to ditch him, but to have her obtain a magic item which magically blocks Lorcan from hitting her.

That said, toward the end of the book I found myself desperately wanting this dude to help the group and was quite happy when he did.

Character Development: What was interesting was that Lorcan is evil, but he changed slightly. As the book progresses, you can see how tempting it must be for the author to have him completely change alignments and become a true ally, but she resisted it big time.

Lorcan changes for the better, but just a tiny, tiny bit. You get the feeling he might change more as the books progress, but right now he's still very evil.

The 4e Curse

These books should be more popular than they are. I think what happened here is that this series was launched alongside the most reviled edition of D&D (not reviled by me, I loved it). This was a time when a lot of players were immersed in Pathfinder and anything D&D was radioactive.

On top of that, from what I understand, Forgotten Realms fans really didn't like how 4e advanced the timeline of the realms and made massive changes to the setting. This book utilizes 4e concepts like the wingless monster-erinyes, the Elemental Chaos, the 4e Neverwinter, spellscars, and the spellplague.

She had 3 billion strikes against her right from the start.

The thing I got most out of this book is a reminder of what a good adventure feels like. As a DM, I slip into a rut sometimes where I run the game too much like a game. This is a nice way to reset your brain and keep your game running as a story rather than numbers on a piece of paper.

You can read a sample chapter here.

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Last Saturday, we played some more of the KEY RING campaign. This was session 4.

I had decided to bust out a heist adventure I tried to run when I was a kid. It is from a 2nd edition supplement called Thieves of Lankhmar.

The Days Before Online Shopping: When I was a little kid, there was a hobby store near my house. This place was my main source for D&D stuff. The guy running this store was nice, but he knew nothing about D&D. He ordered the least desirable products on the market. Maybe people just bought up the good stuff. All I know is, every time I went there my choices involved Dragonlance: Otherlands and lots of Lankhmar products.

I didn't know anything about Lankhmar but my options were extremely limited. I ended up buying Thieves of Lankhmar. In it, there is an adventure where the heroes can infiltrate a costume party and steal a magic gem.

As a kid, I could not wrap my head around all of the details and I ended up running a very loose version of it. In that session, I learned an extremely important lesson that has held true for my entire life: Players love in-game parties. Why? I don't know. But they do!

I decided that the key ring would go through this scenario, and this time I would run it the right way. I transplanted it from Lankhmar to my campaign world.

Lankhmar vs. Monty Haul: I actually put the city of Lankhmar in my campaign setting back then, as the sister city to my homebrewed city of Olwynn. The cities eventually went to war.

This war culminated in an epic battle where the characters of 12 year olds fought Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the heroes of the Lankhmar books. The heroes completely slaughtered them. The party consisted of 12 characters absolutely overloaded with magic items. These heroes were so spoiled that nobody wanted Wave, the artifact from White Plume Mountain.

In my campaign, that war took place about 1,610 years ago. A new city was built in the ruins of Lankhmar - Dunwynn, city of scumbags. It's a sleazy dump and nobody likes it. I have been meaning to run a scenario there for a long time. Dungeon Crawl Classics has all of those Lankhmar adventures out, I should probably get one.

The Key Ring

(Andrew) Finy Teetoe - Halfling Rogue
(Pat) Gurn Sirensong - Gnome Bard
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

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The heroes had just defeated a dog-sized dragon. They returned to Pollidemia's tower to rest. Pollidemia is a fallen, formerly evil goddess.

The heroes got her goblin sidekick, Slurp, some juice. Then Finy gave Slurp an epic belly rub and regretted it immediately. The adventurers went to sleep in the attic full of creepy, evil artifacts.

Infernal Contract: Gurn had a dream about Zotzpox. They have this weird connection, because Gurn worships him as if he is a god. Gurn has been instructed to sign an infernal contract, which means that when he dies, his soul belongs to Dispater.

Unleashing the Brainhole: They'd rescued a devil cultist named Sekelith last time. They stabbed him in the head, but he lived. He had this big hole in his skull that was really freaking him out. Pollidemia has been tooling with a magic crossbow that has a drow brain affixed to it. The Crossbrain was fired into the hole. Sekelith gained memories and powers of a drow elderboy. The 4e elderboy has powers that make me laugh called "shift blame", "endure torment" and others. The guy was confused, but overall it went pretty well. He’ll probably serve Pollidemia as if she was a drow matron.

Somewhere in here, the quote "Unleash the brainhole" was uttered, to my great amusement.

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Dragon Items: They took the dog-sized dragon corpse to a guy who could make magic items out of it. This is based on an old dragon magazine article. The items received:

Lemuel got an elixir of blindsense and a dragonskin vest.
Gurn obtained a dragonsong music instrument made using the dragon's vocal chords.
Finy got a fundamentum flask, a one-use grenade-type item made from the dragon breath gland.
Someone got wyrmblood ink, ink made from dragon's blood. It helped with making scrolls and writing spells into your spellbook.

Their friend Loren the sage, who they had just rescued from the devils, has no place to live. To make money, he started cooking up some D&D drugs like the cerebrospinal fluid of the mind bat (from the dungeon dozen site).

Somehow Finy got involved. He went into the city to buy the ingredients for Loren.

The heroes heard about this gem called The Star of the East. The devils were afraid of it. The belief was that it is connected to angels in some way and could completely ruin their evil schemes.

A snooty noble had it. The group ended up deciding to steal it.

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The Litterer: The heroes scouted out the guy's mansion in the rich part of town. In this city, there are weird god-like immortals that protect each district. This one is guarded by Malificia the Hag, who rides around on a carpet of ladybugs. Anybody who litters here is turned into a ladybug.

On their way to the mansion, the heroes were stopped by cultists of Vecna handing out pamphlets. In my campaign, Vecna was slain in my Scales of War campaign and he was a sentient cloud for about 500 years. This cult brought him back to god status.

Gurn handed them a pamphlet that extolled the virtues of Zotzpox the imp. The cultist rolled his eyes. When the group turned to leave, he chucked it on the ground.

The players started laughing. I forgot! He littered! Malificia the hag appeared. The cultist of Vecna shrieked and was transformed into a ladybug and added to her carpet.

She advised the heroes to keep the city nice and clean, and went on her way.

The group scoped out the mansion. They learned that there was a costume party in 4 days time.

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Costume Fitting: The group went and had costumes made. For some reason, they decided to all wear owl costumes. That's when we learned that Ashley works with birds, and she began rattling off different bird types. That's one of the great things about D&D. Players can utilize their skills and real world knowledge to add a ton of great stuff to the campaign and everybody benefits.

Finy the halfling and Gurn the gnome decided that they were going to wear one costume together. Gurn was going to be on Finy's shoulder while Finy wore stilts. They ended up getting the freshly-severed arms of a satyr to use as well (long story). Gurn used the tendons to make the fingers move.

They needed gold invitations to get in. The group found out who made the invitations and decided to go steal the plates to make it. This plan went very poorly. Gurn chatted up the shopkeep while Finy and Dornella the NPC tried to break in the back door. Finy couldn't pick the lock.

Finy and Dornella got in, but the shopkeep ended up going back there to show Gurn the plates. He saw the rogues and freaked out.

From there, the group basically grabbed the plates and ran away as fast as they could.

Once they'd made their phony invitations, Finy and Lemuel actually broke back in to the shop to replace them. They almost got spotted by Malificia the Hag, who happened to be roaming by, but they successfully hid.

After a few days of stilt practice, the group took their fake invitations and headed to the party. The party started at 8. They decided to get there at 7.

They got in with no problem. There were servants setting up snack platters.

Party Pies: Andrew told us about 'party pies', which I'd never heard of. They're little pies with meat in them. They sound delicious. Did they have party pies at this nobleman's party? Hell yes, they did. All sorts of party pies, real fancy.

The group needed to find this gem. Zavagor asked a guard (there are quite a few guards at this place) where the bathroom was. To his dismay, the guard actually escorted him there.

The bathroom in this adventure is really cool. Anything placed in the toilet is teleported elsewhere! Zavagor was quite intrigued and I can just imagine all the zany things the group might do with that thing.

That's where we stopped!

Overall

Normally, I'd have run this adventure in a way where I would relentlessly force things along so that we can get to the party. I've been sitting back more and letting them do their thing. I want the characters to be center stage, so I am trying to let them do what they like. I crack the whip only when it feels like there is no momentum.

This was a hilarious session that would have made a great youtube episode. We'll be starting those in about 7 or 8 weeks, so it should be awesome.

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This past Saturday, we played some more online D&D. In this one I wanted to use the backstory of the characters, kind of bring it out and moosh it into the story.

Kyrin has a whole thing going with his deity, the Raven Queen. Mistletoe has all of these amusing NPCs that live in the city. Ramrod has a sort of classic past that lends itself to a good adventure or two.

I love NPCs, so I worked a bunch of the Mistletoe NPCs into this thing.

I decided to play through some downtime and start The Chained Coffin, an adventure I've waited a long time to fit into a campaign. It is made for the DCC RPG, but I am converting it to 5e.

I love the premise: There's a dude trapped in a coffin and the heroes need to bring it to a specific location before time runs out.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian

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Gwynharwyf, Patron of Mistletoe

Last time, the heroes saved a crystal dragon and a dwarf clan from derros and a shapechanging monster. These dwarves decided to at last reunite with the dwarves of Underduin.

I wanted to start off with an encounter as that's fun and interesting. I think that every Indiana Jones movie starts with an action scene and I really like that, it's fun.

The group has agreed to stay with the dwarves of Underduin for 4 months. The dwarves want to make statues of them, to honor the heroes for reuniting Drull and Galvan Ironstar.

Mistletoe sent a dwarf to go to the city to get his druid friends. It would soon be time for an important ritual.

It ended up that the druids were ambushed by Chitines (pg 131 of Volo's Guide to Monsters). They were dragged into a cave.

The heroes found the cave and saw the druids in web cocoons. The main area of the cave had a pit with a thick web stretched over it horizontally.

Ramrod charged in and we had a rumble. Mistletoe used a gust of wind to send a chitine hurtling into the pit (which turned out to have a deep pool at the bottom).

Kyrin summoned a scythe and hacked a chitine's head off while Ramrod took a pile of damage and almost went down.

The druid and satyr NPCs:

Marigold: A pacifist lady with a crown of sunflowers
Vervain: A druid with a crown of thistle
Wormwood: A fuddy duddy druid with a crown of hemlock
Mister Naf Rangel: A satyr with a top hat and monocle, has sticky fingers
Zot: A road warrior satyr faun, she has spiked shoulder pads and a rock with an owl carved into it as a weapon.

Zot broke free of her cocoon and bashed a chitine's skull in. Mister Naf Rangel got free and started looting anything he could. Marigold begged the heroes not to kill them.

One the battle was done, Ramrod and Zot got into a bit of a scuffle. Both are barbarian types. He stood over her and patted her on the head. She grabbed his legs and took him down.

He monkey-flipped her into the pit! She couldn't swim because she was holding her owl rock in both hands, so someone had to go get her.

Once that cooled down a bit, the group returned to Underduin.

As the days passed, the dwarves found that their statues weren't coming out right. Some of the rocks chipped off floated of their own accord. Eventually they'd get a rough look at the statues, which appeared to be entities the group was unfamiliar with:

Ramrod: A hovering woman in robes
Kyrin: Hovering, empty robes
Misteltoe: Some kind of fox-headed humanoid

They had no idea what to make of this. The dwarves assumed Moradin was guiding their hand.

The Feast

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The Dwarves had a big feast to celebrate the clans reuniting. Basically I tried to set up a thing. I gave the heroes a chance to reveal something about themselves. Then, later on, something would be revealed about them in an unexpected way. So basically, if they lied, their lie might be exposed later.

The feast consisted of "dwarven ham" (boar) and lots of alcohol. Mistletoe got drunk on dwarven grave ale.

The dwarves asked the heroes to tell a little bit about themselves for the Underduin historian to record. Mistletoe gave a rambling, drunken speech and passed out. Kyrin said he was a simple traveling priest. Ramrod said he liked to smash things, more or less.

Then the dwarves discussed hat to do with Thunderdelve, the dwarven complex the heroes had driven the derro from.

The mighty hammer known as Vitroin the Embeardener told Kyrin he had the power to repair Thunderdelve.

The hammer of Vitroin is a 2nd edition magic item. It doesn't normally like to leave Thunderdelve, ever. For this campaign, I declared that Vitroin wants to travel the world and the planes to learn more and better serve the dwarves upon his return.

The hammer had made Kyrin swear that, no matter, what, he would return Vitroin to Thunderdelve one day.

Basically, I wanted the players' input on what they thought should happen with Thunderdelve. They decided that it should be given to the crystal dragons, which is a pretty cool idea to me.

Kyrin spent a few days in Thunderdelve using Vitroin to repair the place.

The Ritual of Whirling Fury

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Vorkhesis

The player of Mistletoe gave me some free reign with his background, so I tied his character to my Savage Tide campaign from 2010. It's a long story, but basically:

A deva and a fey entity named Gwynharwyf got married secretly.
Queen Morwel, ruler of the fey hates the deva because she thinks he set off a shadow pearl (a demogorgon monster-bomb) in the Court of Stars.
He was framed! He's been in hiding ever since.
They are Mistletoe's patron, and they have asked them to clear the deva's name.

The deva is a character from that campaign. I love to work in old campaign and characters, the old players really get a kick out of it.

There have been a few times at the game store when an old player of mine came in and I'd say to the group, "This is Thenrynnia" and they'd all go "holy crap!" like he was a celebrity, it's really awesome. I want the characters to count and become legends whenever possible.

In this case, I'll probably email the player of the deva and he will laugh and give me some ideas on what his character would do in this scenario.

We did a big ritual where Mistletoe got in contact with his fey patrons. During this ritual, energy passed through the heroes and scenes from their life appeared in a big bonfire for all to see and hear. We learned:

Gazgar the Wereboulder: Galvan Ironstar had secretly ordered him to keep an eye on the Hammer of Vitroin and to kill Kyrin and bring it back to Underduin if necessary. The heroes let it slide.

Kyrin: The heroes saw a massive skeletal humanoid with no eyes, horns and a burning halo. Weird, small balls of energy swirled around him as he lurked in a vault.

Kyrin knew who this was. It's Vorkhesis, Master of Fate, son of the Raven Queen. He is a caretakes of special souls that the Raven Queen sends his way.

Kyrin has a huge tattoo of Vorkhesis on his chest. The heroes don't know that, and Kyrin didn't mention it.

I LOVE Vorkhesis and by gawd it is way past time for me to use him in a major way in a campaign.

Ramrod: They saw a scene where another goliath was pointing out to an entire clan that Ramrod "was no worthy." As Ramrod watched this scene unfold, he hung his head in shame.

When this whole ritual was done, the heroes did not ask each other about anything. They'd learned some secrets and decided to leave it be for now.

Days and weeks passed. Kyrin has a power called Eyes of the Grave, which allows him to sense undead. He sensed some behind a stone wall.

The dwarves needed to dig out a new section of Underduin to accomodate the many dwarves who had come here from Thunderdelve. They dug into the undead section. Kyrin couldn't wait to get in there.

The digging revealed a tunnel which opened up into a cavern.

Seven skeletons were in there and wow, did they get destroyed. Kyrin turned four of them. All of the heroes have bludgeoning weapons, which skeletons are vulnerable to. It was a massive explosion of bone shards.

I here, buried under heavy stones was a coffin. A voice spoke in their minds, asking for help.

They removed the stones. The coffin was made of orichalchum and was wrapped in adamantine chains secured with a magical lock.

The person in the coffin dumped a huge backstory on the group:

He's a follower of the Raven Queen, he's been trapped in here for decades or centuries.
He was put here by Boak, an ally who betray3ed him and joined "the forces of chaos."
Boak can telepathically communicate with and taunt the prisoner.
Soon, Boak is going to go through a ritual that will transform him into some kind of chaos entity.
The group needs to get the chained coffin to a place called the Lusaahl Wheel to free the prisoner and to stop Boak.
The Lusaahl Wheel is located in Deep Hollow, an area in the middle of the mountains where Underduin lies.

Kyrin wanted to help his fellow cleric of the Raven Queen. The heroes agreed to help.

The players then asked me, "We have to carry this thing there?" Yup! That's one of the things I like so much about this adventure.

The group got a cart. At first they wanted to get a whole bunch of dwarven ham (boars) to pull it, but we decided to have the group go into the woods to capture a creature to pull the cart. I'm going to dig up a list of fun monsters and basically let them pick and capture one.

That's what we'll do next time!

Good session! I felt like working in their stories was long overdue. Their characters deserve the full treatment!

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We played some more of the Key Ring campaign this past Saturday and, as always, it was hilarious. We went through a 2nd edition Lankhmar adventure converted to 5e.

In a month or so, I will start putting sessions of this campaign on youtube. They will take these characters through an old adventure that I’ve always wanted to run.

I am thinking that during weeks where a few players can't play that I'll run some other thing for some other group. I was thinking maybe Shadowrun. I love Shadowrun, even though I will never understand the rules. I think it would be really cool to record playthroughs of classic adventures like Mercurial, Dreamchipper, and maybe Harlequin. Harlequin has a reputation as being an epic adventure, but honestly what I've seen of it doesn't look so great.

Mostly, I just love running games with motorcycle chases, gun fights, and tough-talking people who smoke all the time.

The Key Ring

(Andrew) Finy Teetoe - Halfling Rogue
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

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Last time, the adventurers had planned to infiltrate a costume party to steal a magic gem called the Star of the East. The star apparently has properties that can foil the plans of the devils who have infiltrated the city.

Pat, who plays Gurn, couldn't make it. His gnome was standing on the shoulders of Finy, sharing an owl costume. I declared that he was sick and had to go home. Dornella, the halfling NPC, took his place. She used these severed satyr arms as part of the costume.

Handling Absent Players: Long ago, I used to worry about 'writing out' characters of players who couldn't make it to the session. I'd do backflips and spend a lot of time thinking of a plausible way to write them out.

Over time, I learned that it really doesn't matter. Nobody remembers that they were gone! This kind of thing has never hurt my campaigns at all.

There are a number of pitfalls when figuring out how to deal with an absentee. If you say that the character is present but "doing stuff in the background", that can become a problem. The entire group might be on the verge of a TPK and then the players will remember that the vacant character is technically there.

At that point, you're in a weird bind. They need that character or they are doomed! But it feels kind of cheesy. The character was scenery for the entire session, and now we're going to activate him?

There's also the possibility that the character whose player is absent dies. That really, really doesn't go over well when the player returns in the following session.

The Party: The heroes were in the noble's mansion. They'd arrived at the party at 7 PM, an hour before it was supposed to start. Zavagor used the bathroom upstairs and had discovered the magic toilet that teleported waste to some unknown place.

The heroes ate some canapes and slipped into a hallway. They split up (!) and explored. Zavagor and Lemuel wandered about and found a door to the backyard. They went out there and looked at the windows. They wanted to get into the master bedroom. On the second floor, there was just one massive window, clearly for the bedroom. This adventure has a handy map of the mansion that shows exactly where the windows are.

Finy and Dornella, on stilts and using corpse arms, wobbled around. They were astonished at the number of doors and rooms there were in this place.

The group ended up in the backyard and took off their fancy owl costumes. They decided to try to climb up to the second floor. Finy drank a potion of climbing, scaled the wall and slipped into the window of the master bedroom. The group had established a warning sign if something went wrong: "Hoot hoot." They're owls.

The Master Bedroom: Finy slipped in, rolled an epic stealth check. The master bedroom had a canopy bed and valuable statuettes. He stole one of Mari, goddess of luck in my campaign. It's funny he did that, as Lemuel is connected to her, unbeknownst to Finy.

There were two walk-in closets in this bedroom. Dornick and Varena, the hosts of this party, were each in one getting ready for the party. They were carrying on a conversation. Finy hid behind a curtain and eavesdropped. They were worrying about whether this guy Lord Lethos would show up, as he has a drinking problem.

Finy was able to pretend to be a guard and threw his voice a bit. He made up a story about Lord Lethos causing problems downstairs. Dornick bought it and left.

Zavagor and Lemuel climbed up and joined Finy in the room. They looked around the room and found that there was a safe behind a painting of Dornick. The safe had no lock or dial.

Finy grabbed the handle and was hit with a glyph of warding. They'd eventually learn that this safe was protected not only by the glyph, but also by a unique spell called timed stasis. The safe could only be opened at a time of day specified by the caster. In this case, it would open at 9:25 PM. There was also a password that could open it.

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Zavagor took the opportunity to steal a diamond piercing.

Finy got electrocuted for about 10 points of damage. Varuna came out of the wardrobe and was aghast. Intruders! Zavagor cast friends on her and the group gave her this BS story about being members of the cult of Vecna (in this city, there is a huge cult of Vecna that gives out pamphlets).

The heroes fled. They put their costumes on and tried to rejoin the party, which hadn't even started yet. The one thing they had going for them was the fact that the nobles would be looking for two halflings.

There were a number of guards at this party. They questioned the heroes and took Zavagor up to meet Dornick. Dornick took Zavagor's stuff and threw it on the bed. He gave Zavagor a choice - he could be arrested (and be placed in a magic cube) or he could brave... the teleporting toilet. Where did the toilet teleport you to? Zavagor had no idea. I love the toilet.

Zavagor chose the toilet. They led him to the bathroom, but found that it was occupied. Lemuel was in there! He opened the door, grabbed a guard and shoved his head into the toilet, teleporting him to parts unknown!

Battle: This kicked off a sprawling battle by the bathroom and down in the ballroom. Dornella and Finy pulled the cord, which undid their stilt-owl costume. They fought the guards in the ballroom, trying to stop them from running upstairs to help Dornick.

Varuna ended up getting toilet-teleported. Dornick screamed. He shouted that his wife was in the sewers and in grave danger. The sewers in my homebrewed city are full of wererats, a giant waste-eating monster and that drill-machine from Labyrinth.

Dornick ran, calling for a necromancer. In this adventure, there is a necromancer named Jubal. He's the one who cast timed stasis on the safe to begin with.

Zavagor took this opportunity to get his gear and put it on. Lemuel flushed another guard. Dornella and Finy dropped the two guards down below and joined the group upstairs. The necromancer showed up in his party costume, which unsurprisingly was a grim reaper type of thing.

I was nervous about the necromancer. He's powerful! He's on page 217 of Volo's Guide to Monsters.

The heroes ambushed the necromancer. They rolled real high and pulled of an awesome maneuver where Zavagor hit him with a spell that sent him flying into the bathroom and Lemuel toileted him! It was epic.

Dornella was wrestling with Dornick and now the noble was in big trouble.

The group quickly brought him to the room and got him to open the safe with the password. Inside was the Star of the East, and two other very fancy pieces of jewelry.

I thought that they'd leave. But they didn't. They stole all of the valuables from the bedroom, including a massive pile of Varuna's expensive jewelry.

Then, they still didn't leave. They decided, to my surprise, to flush Dornick! In he went.

The group fled the scene. They had used my beloved teleporting toilet to full effect, just as I hoped they would.

Overall

I don't think I can convey the hilarity of this session through the typing. The whole thing unfolded and surprised me constantly.

This adventure is designed thinking that the group would be at the party and mingle with the many NPCs. There's a whole timeline and everything. But they were in and out before the party even started. Only one guest had arrived, a bard named Llewel. He walked in to see Dornella choking Dornick with the zombie arms.

The group committed some major thievery and now they'll try to fence this stuff, I guess. They will probably also study the Star of the East.

The Star leads into another Perkins adventure, which we'll start next time!

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This is a hub and episode guide for season 2 of the show Dice, Camera, Action. Legendary dungeon master Chris Perkins is running a group of delightful youtube personalities through Storm King's Thunder, an official 5th edition adventure.

Links

What Did I Miss?

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If you missed season one, the heroes had been sucked into an evil realm called Barovia. They escaped by trapping the lord of Barovia, Strahd, in an evil puppet.

Now they have returned to the Forgotten Realms only to find that giants are rampaging all over the place.

The Waffle Crew

These heroes were on a quest for waffles when they got sucked into Barovia in season one. They fear vampires and love owlbears.

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Diath: He is a tomb-raiding rogue. Here is his character sheet.

He was given a key ring from a mysterious person long ago. He eventually learned that one of the keys unlocks the Tome of Strahd.
In Barovia, Diath became a disembodied spirit and inhabited Paultin's body for a time.
Diath was once accidentally fed a potion of youth. Diath de-aged and is currently 18 years old.
Diath has the power to cast resurrection one time. He needs a diamond worth 1,000 gp to cast the spell.
He killed a little girl named Arabelle. She cursed him as she died.
Diath drank the ashes of Saint Markovia to cure himself of an undead curse.

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Evelyn: She is a paladin of Lathander, who is also known as The Morninglord. Her character sheet is here.

Her pet mouse is named Juniper.
Her axe, Lightfall, is double-bladed, has the symbol of Lathander on it and it is gold-colored. It has the powers of a mace of disruption.
In Barovia, her horse named Mourning Glory was undead, but in the Relams it is a gleaming bastion of goodness.
Sometimes Evelyn didn't pay attention in paladin school because she was drawing horses. She had a teacher who wore the Icon of Ravenkind
She once hugged Strix into consciousness.
She has a second special axe called "Treebane."
Evelyn has been a werewolf in the past and she loved it, although she almost ate a baby one time.

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Paultin: He is a bard who is working on a drinking problem. His character sheet is here.

He plays the lute and the bagpipes.
Paultin has a magic item: Eyes of charming. He can charm people with them.
Paultin's shadow is a living creature that has separated from him on at least one occasion.
Paultin can summon a Waffle dome (Leomund's Tiny Hut) that the group can rest in.

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Strix: A tiefling spellcaster from a the planar city of Sigil. Her character sheet is here.

Her pet cranium rat is named Stinky.
She is or was a member of The Dustmen faction.
She has an aunt, a brother and three cousins.
Her brother is Izek Strazni, an evildoer with a demon arm.
Strix actually died in Barovia. Her spirit wandered the mists of Ravenloft with a boy named Jesper until Van Richten brought her back to life.
She used the Strahd puppet to trap Strahd.

Season Two Episodes

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Episode 32 - No Place Like Home: The heroes befriend Zog the dwarf, fight some orcs and realize that at least one terrifying entity has followed them from Barovia.

Episode 33 - Were and Tear: The Waffle Crew completes their epic quest to eat waffles. Then, they make friends with an owlbear and battle werewolves who are intent on freeing Strahd.

Episode 34 - Thine Own Elf: The group fights alongside the legendary hero Drizzt Do'Urden. They give him the Strahd doll for safekeeping. Drizzt decides to take it to Gauntlgrym, the legendary home of the dwarves.

Episode 35 - Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum: The Crew rests at the grove of a dryad and ends up in a deadly battle with a band of hungry hill giants.

Episode 36 - Small Packages:

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Episode 36: Small Packages

This is one of those episodes where I can’t avoid spoiling the jokes. You might want to watch this session first before you read any more.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

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The heroes are in the Silver Marches. They just survived a hill giant attack and they are quite wounded. Evelyn had gotten separated from the group last session because.. she got carried away catching snowflakes on her tongue.

Evelyn finds the group and drops some healing on Diath and Paultin. She checks on Zog, the dwarf NPC. He's not breathing. Hmmm.. will Diath use the gem? Zog has a diamond that Diath can use to bring him back to life. I think this is a one shot deal. Once Diath use the power, it’s gone.

Evelyn prays to Lathander to apologize on behalf of her allies. Her friends let Zog die and she wants Lathander help them be the party he wants them to be. Anna is in rare form today.

The group looks through Zog’s stuff. Here’s a list:

Diamond!
Abacus
Ball bearings
Cow bell
Empty bottles
Caltrops
Climbers kit
Crowbar
Hammer
Pitons
Copper jug
Lantern with no oil
Lock with no key
Manacles
Mess kit
Whetstone

It’s basically a list of what every level one character has on their sheet and never uses throughout their entire adventuring career.

They also find a map with dwarven scrawling on it. Nobody in the group can read dwarven.

Evelyn say that she wants to give the diamond to an heir of Zog, or maybe donate it to the poor. The group is appalled.

Strix puts the cowbell on Hootie the owlbear. Hootie begins to chow down on a giant’s corpse. Hootie is still wounded. Evelyn lays on hands and heals Hootie, who is female, for 10 points. I’m not sure if it was ever declared that Hootie was a lady before today.

Raising Zog: Wow. Diath is going to use the diamond to resurrect Zog. He makes this decision very quickly. I’m shocked that there’s not more debate. I mean… it sort of feels like a waste. I guess maybe that’s meta-game thinking, but still...

Diath is thrown into a trance. His eyes turn black, his skin turns pale. Energy flow through him, and after an hour, Zog is back among the living. Diath’s power is now gone.

Apparently, Zog’s spirit was traveling into the ethereal plane. Spirits of the recently deceased wandering the ethereal plane, you can do all sort of cool stuff with that. Don’t ghosts live in the ethereal?

The group rests. We learn that even Hootie and Mourning Glory can fit in the waffle hut. Next morning, time to go to Citadel Adbar. Will Hootie come along? Yep.

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More Giants: The group travels for a bit and come upon a wounded hill giant. It’s Fo, one of the giants the group fought last session. He has a rock, ready to heave it at the group. The female is nearby.

Fo calls out: “Fo unhappy!”

The female shouts, "Bring me food!"

The battle begins and the female flops onto Zog. Oh no, imagine if he's dead.

The male giant is slain. Paultin thunderwaves the female off of Zog using a 3rd level slot, rolling her off of him 10 feet. Zog is alive! Wait.. she does a flying butt drop on Zog. Horrible scrunching sound.

It seems like the DM wants Zog dead for some reason. Maybe he didn’t expect the heroes to resurrect Zog and it messes with his plans?

At this point in the session, we experience what the people in the chat refer to as The Paultercation.

The Paultercation: Strix and Paultin are next to each other, casting spells. Paultin casts suggestion on the female hill giant, and points out that if she's hungry she can eat snow. She loves this idea and starts to do so.

Strix sees that she is buying it, but Strix tells Paultin that she really wants to destroy her with a fireball. Murderbot takes exception to this and immediately fires a dart into Strix's neck, doing two points of damage and knocking her unconscious! As she drops, Strix calls out to her owlbear: "Avenge me!"

I am wondering if Murderbot will now steal the Strahd puppet.

Hootie the owlbear is confused and ambles over. Hootie looks at Murderbot. Murderbot tries to shift the blame to Paultin. Hootie nudges Strix with her beak.

Evelyn runs over and tries to lay on hands to heal Strix. It does heal damage, but it doesn't make Strix conscious.

Paultin chastises his "son" Murderbot, who Paultin has re-named Simon. Paultin encourages him to channel that energy against the giants. Murderbot shoots a dart into the female giant, which breaks the suggestion spell.

Evelyn immediately starts referring to Simon as if he is her son and Paultin is the father. She flies over and does a massive pile of damage to the female giant. Paultin casts dissonant whispers, which does psychic damage and kills the giant.

Evelyn says, "That's what I call a brain freeze." My god, the dad jokes are just exquisite this session.

With the battle over, Evelyn says that they might need to put their son into some kind of after school program

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Hootie: Diath is not happy at all with Murderbot. He questions the evil little thing and makes an insight check. He rolls a natural 20, so he knows that Murderbot went out of his way to use a sleep dart rather than a more deadly dart. Diath also sees that Murderbot is hiding something.

Paultin picks up the still-unconscious Strix and puts her on Hootie. The way he describes what he's doing definitely sets off some emotional alarm bells. He doesn’t “pick her up,” he “takes her in his arms.”

Murderbot tries to settle thing with a handshake, but Diath refuses.

They check on Zog. He's dead! Once again, Diath went to great lengths to help a dead ally and it didn't work out at all. The group is dying of laughter and somebody asks Jared, "How much do you think Chris Perkins hates you?"

What else is there to do but loot Zog? Strix comes to and digs out the heart of the female giant. Strix is covered in blood now. The heart is the size of a soccer ball. Then she decides to cut out some fat to use for candles. The sight of this make Evelyn vomit violently.

This is a really good episode. Fun and funny right from the start.

Strix threatens Murderbot. Somebody points out that Diath is basically the dad of the entire party. Very true!

The group buries Zog. He's flat so it doesn't take long to dig a hole. Zog's mission was to deliver a message to Citadel Adbar. The group doesn't know what the message is! They decide to head there anyway, at least to let the dwarves know what happened to Zog.

The Waffle Crew travel for 3 days and they are running low on food. They make camp in the magical waffle hut (Leomund's tiny hut). They estimate they are still one week away from the mountains.

Last session, Strix was given the power to change into animal forms. She could turn into a bird and fly around, looking for animals that could be hunted, right?

The group comes up with an awesome idea. Strix can turn into a mammoth and they can cut a hunk of meat out of her and cook it up! That's D&D right there. The group is up for it, but we don't really get clarification from the DM as to whether that would work or not.

That's because something happens. Paultin wants to eat Hootie. The group notices Hootie is not doing well. Dying from hunger? No! Hootie is pregnant and about to give birth!

Evelyn tries to deliver the baby. Animal handling check: total of 3. Oh wow that is... yikes. Strix assists, giving Evelyn advantage. Evelyn rolls again and gets a total of 10.

Can't Paultin add dice to skill checks? Or is that just ability checks? I am pretty sure he can use bardic inspiration to add +d8 to people's rolls 3 or 4 times per day.

Welp.. Hootie dies giving birth! The baby lives. Chris points out that for all they know, owlbears always die when giving birth. The baby is gooey and squeaky.

The group proceeds to eat and make jerky out of Hootie while they think of a name for her daughter. That cracks me up. Strix calls it Baboo, bu that's not the name. The baby owlbear's name: Waffles. Perfect!

That's where we stop. The heroes hit 8th level.

Overall

I loved this episode. It's probably one of my favorites out of the entire campaign. It was funny the whole way through.

I really need to look through Storm King and see what the deal is with Citadel Adbar, I don't remember anything about it.

Great show, definitely check it out!

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We played through the first half of The Chained Coffin on Saturday and it was really good. The guy who wrote this, Michael Curtis, is my favorite current adventure writer.

If you picture an adventure set in a mountainous region like the Adirondacks that contains farmers, it seems like it would be boring. But here's what he gets out of it:

The group has to drag a magic coffin around, searching for a holy site.
The terrain is alternately magically beautiful and darkly threatening for unknown reasons.
The group comes upon a grave where a spirit prods them to dig up the dead body.
The group meets a big, smelly hag who lives in an elevated hut protected by hanging skulls that seem to whisper to her,.
The heroes need to steal a fingernail from an ogre who has magic glasses.
The group comes to a crossroad where an infernal entity appears.

Every encounter is short and inspired. This adventure is part of a boxed set, yet really you only need to read 24 pages to run it.

As a bonus, we added in a new player. She is Annalise, a fellow Dice, Camera, Action fan. She fit in perfectly and will be a part of the game going forward.

Her character is Val, a tiefling sorcerer with a backstory that has not yet been revealed. My first challenge was to get her character to meet the group.

We ended last time with the group about to look for a beast of burden who could pull their cart that contained the Chained Coffin. My plan at the time was to dig up a few cool monsters and let them pick.

When I sat down to prepare this, I thought it would be a good idea to use Volo's Guide to Monsters as much as possible. Since early in the 4e era, I've found that it is best to use the material in sourcebooks as soon as you buy them, otherwise they tend to never get utilized.

So I flipped through Volo’s and didn't find many suitable creatures.. until I landed on the Froghemoth. The search was over! These creatures are very powerful, so I whipped up a smaller, albino version of a froghemoth that was more sympathetic and much less deadly.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
Valiant "Val" Westwinter - Tiefling Sorcerer

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Val was traveling through the Thunderdelve Mountain region alone, passing through a swamp. She spotted a band of bullywugs (frog-people) picking on an albino froghemoth. They had it in a cage suspended over the swamp water. They were poking it with spears and throwing garbage at it.

Val immediately emerged from the brush and called out, "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

As fate would have it, the heroes happened to be within earshot. They'd heard that the swamp might be a good place to find a large creature.

They saw the bullywugs preparing to rush the lone tiefling. Mistletoe conjured up a spike growth spell beneath the feet of the bullywugs as Ramrod charged.

Val used mage hand to open the door of the cage, freeing the froghemoth Confused, it plopped into the water. It kept its three eyes above water, watching everyone.

One Bullywug made a mighty leap (they can jump 20 feet from a standing position) across the water to where Val was standing. The bullywug stabbed her.

Kyrin killed one bullywug with the Hammer of Vitroin and his allies pummeled more. Ramrod jumped into the water and swam over to help Val. The froghemoth watched him intently. Ramrod isn't so great at swimming and he struggled to keep afloat in the viny, murky water.

Val hit the bullywug with a ray of frost, then Ramrod popped up and destroyed it with his maul. The bullywugs were dead.

The froghemoth crept up and offered Ramrod and Val some delicious lilypads. Val declined, Ramrod ate some.

Introductions were made and basically we got a long form version of the old "You look trustworthy" trope and boom, new member added.

The heroes were able to lure the froghemoth along using delicious vegetation as bait. Both Val and Ramrod quickly befriended the creature.

The group affixed a harness to the frohemoth. They named him... Hoppy. They began the search from the Luhsaal Wheel, pulling the cart containing the chained coffin.

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After a day of traveling in the forest, they made camp. Val used Hoppy's slimy bulk as a pillow. As the night wore on, they spotted some kind of creature flying overhead. It was humanoid, had moth wings and fiery red eyes. It looked right at Kyrin, but flew off into the night.

The next day, the heroes came upon a hut on stilts. There were skulls on pikes around it, and more skulls hung from trees at the edge of the clearing.

Ramrod boldly walked out there, messing with the fluffy dandelions. The door to the hut opened, and out stepped Granny Huldah. She was ten feet tall, had furry arms and legs, and her long hair mostly covered her face. She had a pet dire boar at her side.

Mistletoe immediately recognized that she was a hag of some sort. She questioned the heroes, and offered to make them a deal. She would direct them to the Luhsaal Wheel if they would get her the fingernail of an ogre. She needed it for a potion brew.

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The group agreed and followed her directions to the Bigginty Farm, home to the Bigginty ogre clan.

The Biggintys lived in a cabin made of massive logs. Mistletoe cast Pass without trace and Val made herself invisible.

Somewhere in here, Hoppy saw a rabbit and reached a tentacle toward it. Nobody did anything. It grabbed the rabbit. Nobody did anything. It put the rabbit up to is mouth. Nobody did anything. It ate the rabbit. I was shocked nobody tried to stop him.

Hoppy spit the rabbit out after a few chews. Mistletoe theorized that Hoppy was a vegetarian. Later, Hoppy tried to chew on a squirrel but that time, the group stopped him.

Val peered in the windows. She saw a male ogre bossing around two females. He had glasses hooked on his overalls. There was another room in the cabin that she didn't peer into. They'd soon learn that it contained Ma and Pa Bigginty.

Ramrod threw his voice and pretended to be an ogre, another sister who had done something stupid. The male bought it and stepped outside.

The group paused. They hadn't really thought this through. They didn't know what to do next!

Ramrod ran up, jumped in the air and headbutted the ogre. The ogre's glasses went flying.

The group charged forward and had a chaotic battle. Mistletoe ended up hanging on the ogre's arm. The sisters came outside and one hit the druid with a broom, doing 13 damage and knocking him to the ground.

The other sister quietly snatched the glasses. The group never did find out why the glasses were so important to the ogres.

Val and Mistletoe quickly made up a story that they were doctors and needed to do a procedure on the male ogre. Val used the spell friends to get the one female off track.

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Kyrin had a hilarious idea. He cast the spell command. The one-word command: Fingernail. The ogre made an intelligence check and rolled abysmally low. He reached down and tried to pull off one of Mistletoe's fingers. Thankfully, Mistletoe resisted.

The group knocked out the ogre and Mistletoe cut off the fingernail on his right index finger.

One of the sisters called out for Ma and Pa. Ma came out with a massive rolling pin. Pa hobbled out. Pa has "the gout" so he couldn't walk too good. The group ran away as the Biggintys shook their fists at them.

The group gave the fingernail to Granny Huldah and got their directions.

After a few days of travel, they spotted a lone grave. Val and Mistetoe approached it. They felt a breeze and heard a quiet voice whisper: "Go on and take it. I ain't got no use for it."

They heard a fiddle playing in the distance. The inscription on the grave:

"Here lies Japthon of the Fiddle, who died helping the mountain people he loved. Never one to back down from a fight against evil, we Thunderfolk owe him more than we can ever repay.”

The heroes decided to dig up the grave. In the coffin, lo and behold, was a magic item! It was a medallion of clear thought, an item that lets the wearer cast detect thoughts three times per day.

The group agreed that Val should have it. The heroes buried the coffin and continued on.

At some point in here, the group had an amusing conversation about how inanimate objects are always talking to them. The hammer of Vitroin, the Chained Coffin, and this dead fiddle guy. The Coffin was getting on their nerves, constantly asking "Are we at the Luhsaal Wheel now?" and "Did you get the fingernail yet?"

The adventurers came to a weird crossroad in the middle of nowhere. Each road branched out from the cent in four directions, then petered out after about 100 feet.

Suddenly, standing in the center of the crossroad was an individual clad in black. He had a pointy goatee, one hoof and one regular foot, and he was wearing a cloak made of cat fur. As in, housecat fur.

He whipped his cape around with a flourish and smiled at the heroes.

That's where we stopped!

Good session, everything went smooth. Both of these groups have come together real nicely. This group will be heading to Sigil to go through some Planescape adventures in about a month.

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Episode 37: Royal Rumble

I finally sat down and looked in the adventure to get a look at the material Chris is running the group through. Citadel Adbar is detailed on page 78. You can read up more on the citadel here, it's been in a number of older D&D products.

Without spoiling anything, the events that occur in the citadel will likely lead to the group going to one of the coolest places in the adventure. That locale is very large and will likely take up many sessions.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

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Last time, the group fought hill giants and their owlbear, Hootie, died giving birth to a baby owlbear. The heroes made steaks and jerky out of poor Hootie. I hope you appreciate how hard I've been fighting off the urge to make an extremely dated dad joke about Hootie and the Blowfish.

The heroes arrive at Citadel Adbar, the place that Zog was trying to deliver a message to. Zog died last session, too.

The group is permitted to enter, and they explore the settlement inside. Chained to a dais is an ogre. Children are pelting it with rocks. Diath has flashbacks to when that happened to him in Barovia. This is not in Storm King, so I wonder why Chris put this here?

The group is happy to see that there are shops here. Evelyn buys some clothes and is quite excited to get out of her Barovian garb. She wants white and gold clothing and plops down 20 gold for it!

Diath wants to buy actual adventuring supplies. Strix tries to sell a hag's heart but it doesn't go so well. Simon aka Murderbot holds Paultin's hand and looks around suspiciously. The dwarves seem to be quite curious about him.

Simon starts juggling, Paultin plays accompanying music. The dwarves gather round. Evelyn says proudly, "That's my family."

Elizart Urgray, a dwarven noble, wants to hire Paultin to be a performer. He offers a five year deal. The group can stay with them. Paultin doesn’t agree to the deal, but the crew will stay with them, at least for the night.

The group eats with the clan. They learn that the king has a bounty out on certain monsters. He pays 10 gp per orc head and 100 gp per giant head.

The adventurers learn that these dwarves mixed with a "lower" clan and there are still some lingering racial divisions over it. The dwarves suffered during the War of the Silver Marches and apparently King Harnoth isn't doing so well. The dwarves say that the King has been acting strangely.

The group avoids drinking dwarven booze, except for Paultin. Paultin is able to handle it just fine. He does get pretty drunk, though.

A drunk dwarf has taken a shine to Strix. He kind of follows her around and tries to work up the courage to ask her out. Strix becomes alarmed at this and casts a spell to turn herself into Strahd. The other heroes see Strahd and freak out. Strix then turns herself into gaseous form and slides into the vents to make a strategic withdrawal.

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Later, a nice old lady dwarf gives Strix a 1,000 gp diamond to replace the one that the group used to bring Zog back to life.

Paultin sleeps in a dwarf-sized bathrobe. The group is extremely amused by this, particularly when it is determined that he is not wearing any pants. He's still a bit drunk.

The group is roused that same night and go before the king. His advisers are unsettled and somewhat upset. A large group of dwarven guards with mithril shields looks on.

The king explains that he he had sent out a dwarf champion named Jasper Dimmerchasm to check out giant activities and he has gone missing. He goes on to say that Fire Giants are gathering in an old forge called Ironslag. The King wants to know why and what they’re doing there. See what's happening there and report back.

Ironslag was at one time a place that forged magic weapons.

Diath says they'll do it if the dwarves will help them get to Waterdeep. Agreed! This is the least greedy D&D group ever. The advisers are not happy with the king and are mumbling to each other.

The King wants someone to accompany them. This person’s name is...

Suddenly, the honor guard dwarves drop their shields, pull out their crossbows and one takes a shot at the king. Roll initiative!

Eep. Evelyn didn't bring her weapons. Diath chucks her a dagger. Would have been funny if he rolled to hit and missed.

The dagger is tiny and Diath passes his low-rolling curse to her. She is not pleased.

The King is curled up in a ball. A dwarf comes over to defend him. Some of the dwarf guards are attacking, others are trying to stop them.

There is banging on the door. The king says reinforcements have arrived and that the group needs to open the door. That’s where we stop.

I wonder if whoever is behind the door will be a guest star for next week or some kind of special NPC? Chris went out of his way to delay the announcement of the person the king wants to accompany the group.

Overall

I like these laid back episodes the best. It is fun to watch the group chew scenery and goof around. It never drags and they are very careful not to step on each others toes. I think they’re a really good example for new players to follow.

I am wondering how long Chris is going to use Storm King material. I would LOVE to see this group go through the Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain (from the upcoming Tales from the Yawning Portal). I mean… wow. Maybe once they get to Waterdeep?

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You can read this issue right here.

It seems like it has been forever since the last issue, doesn't it? This issue contains some pdfs that I wasn’t able to download, so I can’t give as thorough a look as I’d like.

We have begun the hype for the new book, Tales from the Yawning Portal. This book takes classic adventures from previous editions and updates them to the 5th edition rules.

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Catlantis: We start out with a massive article where an author takes art of cats and creates personalities and a world around them.

This is so random that I don't even know where to start. Is it bad? No. I just don’t understand why it is here. I guess they want to draw in people who are very casually acquainted with D&D.

My favorite line: "Claire does not tolerate wiffle-waffle of any sort." Good things will happen to those who work this into a sentence in real life.

You can definitely lift the personalities and use them in your game. There’s some very good ideas for magic items too. My favorite: The Staff of Confounding Questions. It answers questions and questions answers.

Then it gives a broad description of an adventuring locale called Catlantis. A lot of this seems more like prep work for a novel.

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Then there is an interview with the artist who did the cat art, Tahra. This artist does some really good stuff. There is a point in the interview where he mentions how cool it would be to paint a dragon or a beholder.

Now, let’s keep in mind that the cover he did for this issue is of a cat wizard. Not a beholder or a dragon. A cat wizard.

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Yawning Portal: Mike Shea writes up a big article about Tales from the Yawning Portal. It is full of advice and ideas, ways to modify the adventure to fit your liking. He mentions that it is almost expected that the DM is going to modify the adventures. I imagine new players might not be aware of that, so I'm glad it got mentioned. I really love the idea of people brand new to D&D playing through White Plume Mountain or the Tomb of Horrors.

He drops in some hooks and all sorts of handy stuff.

There's a free pdf of a conversion of Kaladesh, a locale from Magic: The Gathering. Weirdly, I could download this one but not the other pdfs.

Premium Board Game: There is a premium edition of the Assault of the Giants boardgame. Normally, these games come with unpainted minis. But in the premium version, they're painted! I'm not even interested in the board game, but I might get that just for the minis.

Portal Art: Then we get a look a Tales from the Yawning Portal. They list who all of the people are on the cover. Mialee's on there! I had no idea. Honestly I've played or run most of these adventures and I didn't recognize any of them.

We get a TON of art from the book. Holy crap. Really, really awesome! Here's Acererak, the bad guy from Tomb of Horrors:

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Here's an update of the classic White Plume Mountain map:

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I really love that map, they did a fantastic job with it. White Plume is one of my favorite adventures of all time.

Free Adventure: There's an adventure, but I can't download it for some reason. I heard amazon was having problems. This is by Jason Thompson, the creator who does the walkthrough maps. Here, he did a walkthrough map of his own adventure! So while I can't read it, I can look at the map and pretty much see the whole adventure. It seems like it is absolutely loaded with xvarts. I might try to run this in the next few weeks.

Storm King Maps: More maps from Storm King's Thunder, tagged and untagged! Get them! They are very useful. One of these maps will be very useful for those following Dice, Camera, Action.

Dragotha: We get a pdf of an old article on Dragotha, the undead dragon mentioned in White Plume Mountain. Again, I can't download the pdf, which is a bummer. I'll try again later.

Overall

This issue is a lot like the others. It's decent and has a lot of useful stuff. Don't forget about it! The maps are awesome and a free adventure is nothing to sneeze at! It also does its job, at least in my case, in getting the reader fired up about Yawning Portal.

I believe that they decided to make this anthology because people are still playing through the other adventures. This is sort of like a "filler" while people plow through Curse of Strahd, Storm King and Out of the Abyss. Curse of Strahd seems like it is mega-popular. I still get more emails about that adventure than anything else.

I am wondering if they will do this again in a few years. Another anthology? What would be in that one? I'd like to see an anthology of NEW adventures by awesome adventure writers. Heck, maybe they could take the best adventures off of the DMs Guild and give them new art and maps. That would be really cool.

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We played some more of the Key Ring campaign last night. We're gearing up for the big classic adventure that I am going to run them through soon. I started planting the seeds tonight.

Tonight we started to go through Wyrmsmere by Chris Perkins, from Dragon Annual 1996. It's very short. The story in the adventure is about the heroes going to find another band of adventurers that stole potions of green dragon control. The group ends up exploring Wyrmsmere, a small keep on an island.

Problem: A thing happened that I dreaded: Technical difficulties. This is the reason why I don't want to do live games on Twitch. I want to post recordings on youtube so that way if something goes wrong with the recording, it's not live, no big deal.

I ended up accidentally doing something stupid with my power cord and it made things so the group had a hard time hearing me. They said my voice had a robotic quality.

I was quite dismayed, but I decided that this was a good opportunity for me to be quiet and let them do most of the talking.

Silence is Golden: They took over and all sorts of things happened. It was very eye-opening. There was a lot of character development and they pretty much sat there and made me laugh for two hours.

Ever since I ran that game for kids at the game store, I have a slightly different DMing mindset. I don't have kids. When I run these games, sometimes I feel like I'm the dad and the players are my kids. Not literally! I don't take them out for ice cream or anything like that.

I mean that I take pride in their achievements. I feel like my responsibility as a DM is to make sure they have a good time. That's the ultimate struggle, avoiding the billion pitfalls that can ruin sessions.

So tonight I had to sit back and with some groups I've run for, the game would have died. Either nobody would say anything or one person would try to take advantage of the situation and ruffle everyone else's feathers.

These players are all contributors. They work together to build something and seize on opportunities without ego. I would say that they saved this session tonight.

The Key Ring

(Andrew) Finy Teetoe - Halfling Rogue
(Pat) Gurn Sirensong - Gnome Bard
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

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Last Time, the group stole a gem called the Star of the East. This gem apparently has the power to defeat the devils that are infesting the city.

Gurn had gotten sick, so I started off with him going home alone. He ran into some gnomes from out of town. They asked him for directions to an inn and were acting quite suspicious. They gave him a scroll and warned him that once he read it, his life would change forever.

Gurn went home to the tower and read the scroll. He felt energy enter his blood and a presence meld with him in some way. He remembers little of the contents of the scroll except for a giant letter "K."

This is all stuff linked to the future adventure, which I've started preparing.

The rest of the group fled the mansion, having successfully stolen the star of the east and a ton of jewelry.

On the way home, they passed by nobles heading to the party, unaware that the group had ruined it. The wife of Lord Lethos was wearing a key on her necklace - one of the keys Zavagor needs to complete his quest.

I had found an article in an old Dragon Magazine about magic keys, and looted it to use for this game.

Zavagor sweet-talked this lady and made up some story and got her to "loan" him the key in exchange for some of the stolen jewelry. The lady seemed quite charmed by him.

They continued heading home. A big procession was heading down the street towards them. It was the queen, carried on a palanquin. She was actually going to the party!

Lemuel recognized the Queen. We did a quick flashback. Lemuel used to work in a casino in the astral sea (created by one of my old players in the Scales of War campaign). The casino hosts major NPCs and entities from all over the D&D multiverse.

The Queen was a guest and Lemuel's job was to escort her around. Lemuel had 3 challenges:

Stop Elminster from hitting on the Queen. In my campaign, I run Elminster like he's an overbearing jerk.
Catch cheaters in three-dragon-ante games. Lemuel let the cheater cheat. The Queen has lots of money.
Lemuel had to make a choice - Stop the drunk Queen from embarrassing herself or help her friend out of a jam. She helped the friend, who was dealing with an angry fire genie. The group learned about this backstory a bit later.

The heroes headed to Pollidemia's tower and studied the Star of the East. They learned that it has two powers:

It has a power that can be used only once, something that brings forth immense heavenly energy.
It can summon a creature.

When Zavagor held it, it actually did radiant damage to him. The gem seemed did not burn Lemuel or Finy.

The group studied the key of inquiry. Basically, you can used it on a bound creature (as in, tied up with a rope). You touch it to their head, and if they fail the saving throw, they must answer the next three questions truthfully.

Once the key is used on someone, it never works on them again.

The group decided that they should be immune to it so nobody can use it against them. So one by one, they tied each other up and used the key on each other.

This was a really amazing way for them to share their backstories with one another. The group learned a ton of stuff:

Origin of Lemuel: Lemuel was once some kind of planar entity. He was punished by Mari, he goddess of luck and cast to this world in mortal form. Lemuel had gotten involved in a love triangle with Mari and Lemuel lost.

What's funny is that Finy had stolen a statuette of Mari last session. For the rest of the evening, Finy would use it and sort of tease Lemuel with it. The group seemed to come to a consensus that Mari is a jerk.

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Old commission of Mari, Goddess of Luck

This is when being the audience for your players is so great. Mari is a character who went from level 1 to level 30 in 4th edition. I would say that out of all the people I've ever played D&D, Mari’s player was the best player I've ever run for. She could see "through" the game in a unique way. Sometimes, when I would start to read the description for a trap or puzzle, she'd solve it before I finished talking!

Mari was hilarious. She made fun of everyone. She said some pretty vile things to Vecna to his face and lived to tell about it. She was part of the group that actually killed Tiamat in my setting.

So here I have players who have never met this person giving me their take on her character. Old players of mine love to hear when my new group runs into their character in some way.

Gurn actually admitted he really did believe in Zotzpox the imp as a god and that he would betray the group if Zotzpox asked him to.

Finy refused to answer questions. Zavagor answered some and Pollidemia, the somewhat evil sorceress did, too.

That night, Zavagor the warlock was summoned by his patron, Eeman. She's a fiery demon lord. I'm using some of the warlock ideas from Brimstone angels. Eeman marked Zavagor with infernal tattoos on his arm. Through this mark, they could sense each other's feelings and she could scry him much more easily.

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Warduke

Zavagor also met another warlock of hers - Warduke! In my campaign, Warduke's helmet is passed from person to person. This Warduke is a fighter/warlock. Zavagor learned that Warduke was taking care of some things just a few hundred miles from the city Zavagor was staying in.

Warduke looked him up and down, said nothing, and left.

The next day or two, the group sold their stolen goods and met again with Aryzon, the guy who is secretly a silver dragon.

He dropped the adventure hook on them - potions stolen by adventurers, went to Wyrmsmere... and off the group went. They were aware that Wyrmsmere is where Toxin the green dragon and the devils lived.

They journeyed through the forest, dodging winged cats who tried to swat at them.

They heard noise. Dragon wings, flapping. They looked up and saw a green dragon. Toxin! It didn't see them. What would they do? I had no idea.

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Finy said something not in a quiet voice and Toxin heard him. Toxin swooped down toward them. Panicked, Finy held up the Star of the East and summoned the creature linked to it - it was an angel wearing gold and white. She was Aurora, Angel of Love.

Angels of Love are from the 4th edition Ecology of the Succubus article. Angels of Love are what the succubi were before they fell into hell. So an Angel of Love is a sort of good version of a succubus. They have powers which amuse me greatly.

Aurora is a goody-two-shoes. She flew up at Toxin and tried to give him her pacifying touch, but she missed.

Toxin breathed acid on her. The group started laughing as she fell from the sky and crashed to the ground. She was summoned and killed all at once!?

The group spread out and fired off ranged attacks, rolling a series of critical hits which actually staggered the young dragon.

Aurora got up. She was alive! She flew at him again and missed him again. The dragon gave her a claw/claw/bite and did piles and piles of damage. She fell from the sky again. She was still alive, but just barely.

One more critical made Toxin decide to flee for now.

The heroes joked around with Aurora, asked her if she could heal herself. She actually can't. She can heal others, but not herself with her power.

The summoning lasts for one hour, and can be done once per day. The group realized they had a new NPC sidekick on their hands if they wanted one.

While they were talking, Gurn noticed a presence in the forest. He slipped away. His "god" Zotzpox the imp was there, invisible! Zotzpox told Gurn he had a plan. He gave Gurn an infernal contract. If Gurn signed it, his soul would belong to Dispater for all eternity when he died. Gurn immediately signed!

That's where we stopped.

Good session!

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It's been a while, but we finally got back to playing the Planescape campaign last night. This whole section of the campaign is based on the Hellbound boxed set, which details the war between devils and demons.

Tonight was another attempt by me to run an adventure inside of a mass combat. I think I've got it down pretty good.

D&D Snipers: I had polled the group a while back about what scenarios sounded appealing to them, and the group loved the idea of being D&D snipers. The things that come to mind when I think of sniping are that scene in Saving Private Ryan and Metal Gear Solid 2. I remember MGS2 having this scene where a young girl has to cross this narrow path above the ocean and you have to snipe all of these drones before they kill her. I remember it being very intense, so I wanted to put that in tonight in some fashion.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

The heroes own a cluster of buildings in Sigil called Deadbook Square.

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A dretch

We started out with some downtime. The group owns a Festhall and were the victims of sabotage from the dark elf festhall. The group figured it out really quick and ended up hiring an ogre to solve the dilemma.

Demon Babies: Theran runs a settlement in the abyssal realm of Azzagrat. He checked in, and saw there was another baby in the nursery of Grazz't's babies. Theran looked at it and quickly deduced that Graz'zt is making babies with Lamashtu, the demon lord the group is currently fighting against. He was alarmed.

Disinformation: Bidam runs this procreation facility where they make new types of demons. I decided to go ahead and use my Donald Trump NPC. I didn't use him for awhile because it just didn't feel right. My Trump NPC is Gonard Flumph, and he runs the town of Samora in Azzagrat.

Bidam found his facility in chaos. There were all these rumors about diseases and there was friction between the different types of creature. After some investigating, the group realized two demon agents of Flumph were spreading fake news to sow dissension and destabilize the facility. The heroes were quite angry and sent the demons packing. Bidam gave a big speech and was able to get everyone back to work.

Back to the Castle: Then it was back to Onstrakkar's Nest, Lamashtu's abyssal realm. The devil army had taken a castle there and used a portal in it to take over a section of the Infinite Staircase. The demon army had fled. Now they were marching back to destroy the devil army.

The pit fiend general general, Drokkarn, had devised a strategy. The devils were going to set up and defend in a settlement attached to the castle. The devils were going to herd all of the demon soldiers into the main street. Then, the group was going to get on their Death Hurler (a kind of steamroller with damned souls attached to it) and just squash them all. I thought that would make for a fun final encounter.

The heroes set up on a castle wall, each manning a magic ballista. I always have a hard time finding the ballista stats in the book. +6 to hit, 16 damage, 3 actions to load, in case you're wondering. The group was given a bunch of magic bolts they could fire:

Bolts of Demon Slaying: Con save DC 17, 6d10 damage
Bolts of Force: Re-skinned beads of force.
Oathbolts: These ignore the long range penalties and do +3d6 damage.

I tried hard to again stick to just a few races so I can try to get the group familiar with each type. I made handouts for the players. This is their devil army:

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This is the demon army, led by Korramzadeh, a special balor from the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path:

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Protection: A chaos hammer spell shattered a retaining wall and dretches poured into the settlement. The heroes spotted their friend, Feurina and the hellhound, Fireball. They were getting swarmed. The heroes proceeded to carefully snipe them. Feurina actually took quite a bit of damage as my dice were on fire.

When a dretch dies, it creates a toxic cloud. That plays into sniping really well, as now the group has to contend with penalties to hit due to the cloud obscuring the area.

Hell Knight: Having saved Feurina, their next task was to help a hellknight. It was in the on its nightmare, battling two vrocks. A bolt of slaying dropped one, but the group's dice went cold. The hell knight was stunned by a stunning screech and eventually feel to the ground below. The vrock flew down and finished it off.

Enemy Sniper: Then we got to a part I was pumped up about. A rival sniper opened fire! From somewhere in the chaos of the settlement, a magic crossbow bolt came flying at them. I burst into a bunch of bolts, hitting everyone in a cone. I thought this would be cool, because the group would have to somehow spot the sniper. I made the Perception DC high - a 20! - and figured they'd come up with something clever to find him.

Well.. it's D&D. Jessie rolled a perception to spot the sniper. Natural 20! Theran swiveled his magic ballista in that direction and fired off a bolt of force, trapping the sniper in a globe of force. Problem solved!

The Whispering Valkyrie: An NPC had teleported behind them. She's the Whispering Valkyrie, a green-skinned demon. Bidam drew his sword of sharpness while Theran stayed back. They made quick work of the valkyrie.

MGS2: Then we did the Metal Gear Solid 2 encounter. They saw Feurina and Fireball fighting their way across an elevated walkway full of dretches. The group had to snipe the creatures that tried to come up behind them.

I dangled the dog in front of them again. The hellhound, Fireball, is a goofy NPC. He barks at the monsters and thinks he's helping. Bidam can talk to him because he is a hell hound whisperer just like Feurina.

The dog actually fell off the walkway due to bad rolls. I had planned for that in case it happened. Fireball disappeared into the stink cloud below. Once the group had sniped enemies and Feurina got to the other side, they saw Fireball come up the stairs wagging his tail. He fell, but he was fine.

Using NPCs as Bait: I really get touchy about using NPCs as bait too much. If you do it a lot, the group will start to avoid interacting with NPCs, assuming they're all just metagame traps waiting to be sprung. That's why I always say that the vast majority of NPCs should be nice and helpful to the heroes.

Then we got to another part I was a bit pumped up about. Another chaos hammer appeared above the heroes. It came down and crush the castle wall they were perched on. I decided to try to make a more elaborate falling sequence. So it went like this:

Save vs the chaos hammer: fail = damage. Either way, the stone beneath their feet is shattered and falls away.
The heroes fall into the top floor of the castle wall interior. Save again. Failing the save means damage.
Then, THAT floor gives way and the group falls to the bottom. Save vs. falling rubble. Fail = damage and restrained. Take more damage each round until you escape.

It worked great. The hammer came down, the group fell. Theran's dive went cold and by the time he got to the bottom he had just a couple hit points left and he was buried.

Bidam tried to find him in the rubble but couldn't. Theran thankfully was able to escape on his own.

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It just so happened that the group emerged right by their buddy the Death Hurler. And look at that, the demons had been forced into the main street.

Hurling Death: The Death Hurler started telling the heroes in their really bad Canadian accents to get on board and start hurlin' some Death.

This final encounter was basically about them surviving the trip from one end of the settlement to the other. Each round, they needed to make a DEX save DC 10 or fall prone due to the many dretches being squashed under the rollers of the Death Hurler.

They also had to save against the toxic cloud that came from each slain dretch. Pretty much the entire battlefield was obscured by green poisonous mist.

On top of that, each round dretches climbed up the death hurler and tried to kill the heroes. I had made three waves of them, and it worked out absolutely perfectly.

Theran used thunderwave to great effect, sending many a dretch flying off the Hurler. He was hurt bad from the wall collapse, and a dretch dropped him. Theran has a devil imp named Barbagg as a sidekick. Barbagg fed him a special goodberry the group had been given a while back. He was revived.

Bidam was dretch-killing machine, and the group made their Dex saves. Theran got poisoned by the cloud but he made his save soon after.

Once the group got to the other side, they saw that their hurled had slaughtered many, many dretches. The demon army fled. The devils cheered.

Special Mission: Later, the pit fiend general, their friend Drokkarn, wanted them to go on a special mission. Last session, some devil had fallen off the infinite staircase. One of them was a spy who knew way too much. The heroes had to go find him.

Where was he? Captured in the palace of Malcanthet, the Succubus Queen! The heroes will sail the river styx and I'll get to use the material from that hilarious dragon magazine article I read a few months back.

War in D&D: Good session! More combat-y than normal, but I really want to give them an actual "war" experience. A lot of times in D&D, if there's a war going on, it happens in the background. I want the group to be right there on the battlefield, taking cover in bunker, charging across open ground amid explosions, and fighting among thousands of other soldiers.

It was a success! I want to do more, but I don't want to turn the campaign into nothing but combat. I'm going to try to alternate. I'll do one or two sessions of a mass combat, and then one or two sessions of a special mission involving exploring and talking.

This next session should be hilarious. I am very much looking forward to it.

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Episode 38: Icebreaker

No Nate this week. Joe Hills is here playing an NPC - Harshnag! That should be cool. Joe does stuff on youtube.

Harshnag is a pretty major NPC in Storm King’s Thunder. He triggers a very important scene about halfway (?) through the adventure.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Joe) Harshnag - Frost Giant
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

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The group is at a dwarven stronghold called Citadel Adbar. Some of the dwarves there are possessed by evil creatures and turned on the others. The heroes helped to subdue the insurgents.

With the battle done, the traitors are taken to the dungeon.

A dwarf wearing black armor with glowing golden eyes enters the throne room. Strix rolls a 20 on an arcana check and deduce that the armor is magical and aiding his perception in some way.

Diath learns a bit about another clan in Adbar. Azon Bronzefire runs the most influential clan. They are master forges and smiths. His bodyguard is Krak Dragonspore.

The dwarves try to figure out what the message Zog was trying to bring to them. They think it has to with... the Ring of Winter! It is an artifact that can control white dragons and all sorts of other stuff. Chris had said on twitter that the ring will play into a future storyline, so this should be interesting. The search for the ring is part of Storm King’s Thunder.

There’s a lot of discussion and planning between the king and the heroes. The heroes agree to go check out the fire giant lair of Ironslag and see what they are up to. The dwarves are nice enough to equip the heroes with whatever the need. Here’s some of the stuff:

Gold bracers for Evelyn.
Baby harness for Waffles the baby owlbear.. and another for Simon aka Murderbot.
Black cloak for Strix

An adviser, who Chris does a version of the Barmy voice (my favorite) for, says that the group should team up with Harshnag, a frost giant.

Simon needs darts. The dwarves want to dismantle him. Evelyn shuts this idea down. We learn that Murderbot reloads his darts through a panel in his stomach.

Evelyn gets her new clothes as well as two matching kerchiefs - one for Waffles and one for Simon. She should matching clothes for Paultin, too. Maybe when he’s passed out drunk she could put them on him.

Diath is quite thrilled to have such a simple mission. All they have to do is scout out the fire giant lair of Ironslag and find out what they are up to. An adviser warns Diath not to let the fire giants discover them. He doesn’t wan the giants to come after Citadel Adbar.

As the group walks through the citadel, they see the chained ogre again. He's been stoned into unconsciousness. The dwarves have been beating him down. The group feels bad for him but doesn’t do anything. What is the deal with this ogre? I wonder if Chris has a voice ready for him.

Strix can't stand Evelyn's super-clean gear so she puts a piece of dirt on the back of Evelyn’s cloak. Evelyn immediately senses it and gets angry Strix blames Simon, who gets scolded.

The group starts their journey through the snow. They come upon a tower encased in a sheath of ice. Krak, the dwarf bodyguard who always wears a helmet, is with them.

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A giant hawk is circling the tower. Diath spots multiple shadows up in the tower. They are watching him.

Nearby, Harshnag eyeballs the group. The heroes greet him. Krak introduces them as the waffle crew. I find it quite amusing that they are called that in the actual campaign world. Harshnag thinks that yakfolk have invaded his tower.

The heroes and Harshnag enter the tower and they come upon the yakfolk. As the battle plays out, Evelyn rolls a lot of 20's. She is being really hilarious today, she keeps talking to Harshnag about being friends and he has no idea what to make of her.

The group makes relatively quick work of the yakfolk. Harshnag does not take one point of damage, something the group is quite proud of. Somewhere in here Anna teases the chat about how some of them complain she can't remember stat stuff. She is cracking me up left and right today.

After the battle, Evelyn needs to clean the blood out of her fresh new clothes.

Harshnag says he had run into some fire giants earlier. They and their hobgoblins were searching for adamantine.

The group cleans up and that’s where we stop.

Overall

Fun show! Ironslag is really cool, this should be very interesting. Also, Holly said she's going to make a Waffles doll. That's pretty awesome. The Strahd puppet was fantastic, I can't wait to see this one.

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We had what was my favorite session of the campaign so far yesterday. We are continuing to play through a conversion of The Chained Coffin.

The group is trying to bring a coffin to a holy site known as the Luhsaal Wheel. There, the spirit in the coffin can be freed and the group can stop a guy named Boak from becoming a huge, demonic beast.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
Valiant "Val" Westwinter - Tiefling Sorcerer

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Blackcloak

When we left off last time, the group had just run into a guy wearing a cloak made of housecat fur. He called himself Ol' Blackcloak. He's a devil, and he tried his best to convince the group to hand over their souls to him, but no takers. I think Ramrod threatened him and he did the classic D&D cartoon exit: he walked behind a tree and.. he's gone.

The heroes soon camped for the night. While taking watch, Mistletoe saw a huge owl up in a tree, staring at him. Mistletoe cast speak with animal and actually got some useful directions to the wheel.

The Ghost Farm: The next day, the heroes arrived at the farm. By this point, they were quite sick of the guy in the coffin constantly asking, "What's going on? Are we there?"

Ramrod had taken to kicking the coffin just to mess with him. The coffin warned him that he might be sorry one day soon...

The heroes arrived at an abandoned farm. Kyrin can sense undead with his eyes of the grave power. He saw that there were skeletons in the cornfield and a ghost in the cabin.

Using Abilities: The group decided to deal with the skeletons, and deal they did. The heroes excel against skeletons because of their vulnerability to bludgeoning. I purposely put them in there for this reason. A lot of times in D&D, us DMs tend to shy away from using monsters that we know are ineffective against the group.

For example, a group might have a lot of characters resistant or immune to fire. So you might not want to throw a fire elemental at them. I think you should. Players wait a long time to get to use a certain power sometimes, I think it's good to make sure they get to use it.

Once the skeletons were destroyed, the heroes went into the farmhouse. The ghost was an old feller with a long beard sitting in a rocking chair. He was a bit ornery, but the group put him at ease.

The players noted my excessive use of southern accents in this adventure. I told them they should try to get used to my five stupid voices because they'll be hearing them forever.

Bad Licking: Somewhere in here, the heroes learned that the weird creature who flew over their camp last session is called the Bad Lick Beast, and he guards the Bad Lick Bridge. This is why I love the stuff Michael Curtis writes. Who else comes up with stuff like a cloak made of cat fur and a Bad Lick Beast?

The group declared that their albino runt froghemoth, Hoppy, was the "Good Lick" Beast. This cracked me up. For the rest of the session, Hoppy gave the group good licks when appropriate.

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The Bridge: The heroes arrived at Bad Lick Bridge. Far below, a river raged. The bridge was in extreme disrepair. There were actually holes in it in places where the stone had fallen away.

It turned out the Bad Lick Beast lived here. It flew up through a hole and swiped at Ramrod, but missed. It soared into the air as the group pelted it with throwing axes, arrows and magic missiles.

As I noted that the magic missiles left smoking holes in the beast's chest, I looked at the player playing Mistletoe and declared them to be Mistleholes. Or Missleholes? I was beyond pleased with myself.

The heroes got a good look at the creature. It has a man's torso, goat legs, a goat head, moth wings and flaming eyes.

It swooped down, trying to divebomb Ramrod. Mistletoe had readied a gust of wind. He ended up hitting both Ramrod and Bad Lick with it. Each made a DEX save to avoid plummeting far below. Ramrod made his save. Bad Lick didn't! Battle over.

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The Door: The heroes crossed the bridge and came up a massive puzzle door. Basically, you have to line up the correct three runes to open the door.

I had sent Ramrod's player an advance email about this. He can read these runes, as they were made by ancestors of the goliaths over a thousand years ago. They were seers.

They actually wrote things directly to Ramrod, telling him secrets and warning him about future events.

The puzzle was complicated. Basically, the group had to line up the correct set of gods from my campaign. On their first try, they failed. The door exploded with energy and sent two heroes hurtling over the side of the bridge. Thankfully, they both made their saves. Hoppy helped them up and gave each of them two Good Licks.

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The Wheel: The group got past the door and entered the complex. They came upon a room with a table depicting a constellation. There were three orcs in an adjacent room. They were eating, and they lived among their own filth.

The group was appalled at this. The orcs were afraid of the heroes and didn't want any trouble.

The heroes headed up some stairs and came to the Luhsaal Wheel outside. There was a big monolih inside a massive bowl.

Once night fell, a the event happened - the Black Conflux. A massive moon appeared in the sky, actually taking up about 1/4th of the total sky above them.

The air crackled with energy. A portal opened. Out came Boak the bad guy. He was accompanied by a maw demon and 4 dretches.

Boak immediately was hit with energy, as was the coffin. The group looked in horror as Boak transformed into a 20 foot tall two-headed demon-thing of Demogorgon!

The spirit rose out of the Chained Coffin and shot into Kyrin's body. Kyrin began to grow! He too was 20 feet tall and was under the effects of enlarge, bless and heroism.

Kyrin heard the voice of the spirit in his head say, "Please get revenge on Ramrod for me."

Kyrin looked down at Ramrod, who'd been teasing the coffin all session.

That's where we stopped.

It was really fun and the group is great. Adding Val's player has really enhanced the campaign. The way she runs her character makes the game feel more real, if that makes sense.

Everyone is really good. I was very fortunate to find that every reader I have run games for are really, really good players.

Next week we'll get to see Giant Kyrin fight a giant monster. Should be awesome!

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You can watch this show on twitch here.

If you missed it, you can watch the Acquisitions, Inc holiday special right here.

It is time for another Acquisitions, Inc show! They are in a weird, transitional time. This live show is going to set up the new season of the youtube show, where Jerry, the guy who plays Omin, will be the dungeon master.

The animated intro to this thing is so great. These things are really well done and really funny. I would love to see them make an animated version of one of these entire live shows. I'd imagine that would be ridiculously expensive to do.

Viari is staying with his Dunstucker family, for now, so we’ve got Kris Straub jumping in. He does all sorts of internet stuff.

The Party

(Jerry) Omin Dran - Half-Elf Cleric
(Mike) Jim Darkmagic - Human Wizard

(Morgan) Morgaen - Elf Ranger

(Kris) K'thriss Drow’b - Drow Warlock

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The heroes are 9th level and the group is still staying at the Yawning Portal. At the end of the last game, Omin learned that his sisters are dead. Their bodies are in Waterdeep’s temple of Tymora, goddess of luck.

Chris starts us off asking each player what their character’s morning routine is:

Omin: Spends up to 10 minutes picking boots to wear and then he goes over his crusty files.
Morgaen: She takes an anti-bath bath - makes herself smell like forest and animals. Then she eats ancient leftovers.
Jim: He wakes up next to some stranger and sneaks out. He casts mage armor. We learn that he sometimes uses the spell as a prophylactic.

We learn that K'Thriss was invited to join Force Grey. He's been spying on Acquisitions Inc to see if he should join them instead. He likes to watch people sleep.

His morning routine is quite weird. A long tentacled shadow merges with his shadow every morning.

The group meets and interviews K'Thriss. At first, Jim is threatened by the idea of having another caster in the party. But by the end, he thinks K’Thriss is cool and he wants to get matching tattoos.

With K’Thriss joining the group in what seems to be an unofficial capacity, we move on to the temple. We learn that Auspicia died when the cloud castle crashed. Portentia committed suicide when she found out Auspicia died. Wow, that’s pretty crazy.

Omin casts raise dead on the corpse of Portentia. It doesn't work. Omin senses that something has stolen her soul. Omin breaks a stained glass window in anger.

To try to figure out what is going on, Omin convinces K'thriss to cast contact other plane. With this spell, he must make a save. If he fails, he goes insane.

His roll: Natural one.

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Crowd flips out. This is the really great thing about live D&D. Things like this happen in sessions quite a bit and the crowd reaction makes it so much better.

He rolls on the insanity chart. His result: "I can't take anything seriously. The more serious it is, the funnier it is." Since he’s hanging out with Omin and his two dead sisters, K’thriss starts cracking up.

The priestess in the temple casts Divination for Omin. It is successful, and the priestess reports that Tymora knows why the raise dead failed, but because he broke the window, Tymora is going to make him go on a quest first.

Omin must seek out the Eye of the All Father. He must offer it a gift worthy of giantkind and it will tell what he needs to know. This is right out of Storm King's Thunder.

The heroes will need to bring the Allfather a gift and they have no idea what to get. Omin knows of one giant in Waterdeep... Harshnag! Harshnag was on Dice, Camera, Action this week. I love even the hint of continuity between all of these shows.

Harshnag gives the group a magic ring to give to the Allfather. The heroes board their airship and head out to the north. There is huge video screen behind the group on stage. It changes to show falling. That's really cool and the crowd likes it.

Jim notices something’s not right with his arms. He has black veins and his arm is necrotizing. He's got some kind of curse. Remove curse is cast... doesn't work.

During the journey, Morgaen repeatedly spots a white dragon in the clouds. This is a dragon the group has encountered before. I wonder if it’s the same one the heroes spotted on Dice, Camera, Action back on the first owlbear episode.

Over the course of the trip, Jim's curse gets worse. He loses two of his max hp! Yikes.

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They arrive at the Allfather's place. Outside of it are carvings of giants. There are huge glyphs written in ancient giant. There's a rune for each type of giant.

To the dismay of the adventurers, there are frost giants inside. They may also be here to meet with the Allfather. The group tries to stealth their way closer. Omin rolls bad. A giant hears him and investigates, but doesn't find the group.

The group continues stealthing. Omin rolls another stealth.. he rolls a natural 1! We have ourselves a combat.

The giants are on ice skates and they are wielding hockey sticks. They actually have pucks, too.

One puck hits Omin and does 56 points of damage! He's hit again and now he's dying. Poor Omin spends most of the encounter rolling death saves.

Jim casts animate object and animates a giant statue. It can't walk but it can swing a sword.

As this fight progresses, the crowd gets real shout-y. Individuals keep yelling out rules stuff and suggestions. At first, it’s helpful, but it gets annoying as the rounds pass.

Eventually, a female frost giant arrives and says something to the other giants. They leave. That was a rough fight for the group. It was looking quite grim.

The heroes make their way to the Allfather. They stand in a magic circle and hold up the magic ring, their offering. It vanishes. Morgaen speaks giant and communicates with the Allfather.

They are allowed four questions. Here’s what we learn:

Portentia's soul is inside an artifact called The Soulmonger.
Look for a lost city in a distant land. Let the children of Uptau guide you.
The Soulmonger is draining life from those who have been raised from the dead.
It's in a dungeon under a city. The heroes must defeat the Sewn sisters and their child (?).

That’s where we stop!

Overall

They do a really good job of picking people for these shows. It seems like the most important thing is a quick wit. There is definitely a sort of improv comedy element to these things. Kriss was excellent, as was Morgan.

Something was off about this show. It definitely needed something, a twist or event. Couple that with new players and it makes for a different experience than normal.

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This past Sunday we played some more of the 5e Eberron campaign. I am running an 8th level sorcerer with a big beard.

Our group in this castle trying to rescue the soul of a warforged. Apparently, this situation occurred as the result of the warforged drawing from the deck of many things long ago.

The Sleeper: We headed to the torture room and in there, we found the soul. The warforged's soul appeared as a light-skinned elf that was strapped to a torture device.

I don't know anything about Eberron and I really like learning about it through playing. I learned that in Eberron, where warforged souls come from is a bit of a mystery.

The soul was bound by three chains, each with a padlock. We had found one of the keys already. We needed to find the other two to free the soul.

We continued to explore and ran into a really strange gravedigger. He talked about how once we freed the soul, "The Sleeper" would awaken and kill us. The Sleeper was a shadow dragon!

I couldn't figure out what we should do once that happened. When we freed the soul, should we fight the dragon or just try to escape the castle?

We headed upstairs and actually came upon the sleeping dragon. It was resting partly on a throne. We saw a secret compartment in the seat of the throne, but couldn't get to it without risking waking up the dragon.

Fighting Babies: After that, we headed to the top floor, which is full of bedrooms. We ran into a little kid who could transform into a giant. This little crapper tried to push us down the stairs. We beat him up.

It's a little weird fighting kids in D&D, even giant ones. I remember reading about how they were going to put a monster called a "carabum" in the Fiendish Codex II. A carabum is a devil baby with wings, like an evil cherub.

They decided they probably shouldn't put babies, even devil babies, in the book.

I think it might be OK if you have it where the baby is clearly made of goop, or it's a construct. When “slain,” it reverts to liquid form and will reform soon.

I think cherubs need to be in D&D. I think they are hilarious. Maybe that's just me.

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The Succubus: Moving on to the next room, we ran into an NPC who pops up quite often. She is Tanya, a succubus with big 80's hair.

Tanya said all this mysterious stuff. Clearly she was up to something. I decided to lay it on the line. I told her that she needed to pick a side. We needed to know if we could trust her (I know we probably can't but I think it will be fun to see what happens).

We got into this big conversation and she revealed that she wants to draw from our deck of many things. We have hidden it in a special place.

We heroes discussed it. The fighter and I were cool with it, the wizard was not. We were obviously wary that Tanya was going to try to steal it or do something nefarious. I said I would hold the deck and she could draw from it.

I told the succubus that I was going to trust her from here on out, and as far as I was concerned, she was an honorary Interloper. That's our group name: The Interlopers. We interlope regularly and are always defeated by our greatest foe: locked doors.

Later, I brought her a bunch of flowers with a note attached that said: "Interlope responsibly."

The Shadow Blossom: We continued exploring. We came upon a conservatory with a crazy gardner-type. He attacked us and I thought this was a good time to put out the old wand of wonder. Unfortunately, it filled the room with a stinking cloud.

That's the thing about the wand. I'd use it all the time, but I don't want to hurt the other heroes. I always make sure they are cool with me using it before I do so.

There was a shadow blossom in this room. It fed on blood. I put the dead body of the gardener at the base of the blossom. It grew quite large quite fast as it drank the blood.

The White Bride: After that, we found the white bride, one of the owners of this place. She was a cambion. It's tough to pick the right spells as a caster. I knew that taking fireball would be a problem as a lot of creatures have fire resistance or immunity.

I made sure to take magic missile as a backup. The thing is... magic missile is boring. Fireball is awesome. Anyway.. she was immune to fire.

I have a dagger of venom. I drew it and used an action to coat it with poison. I repeatedly tried to stab this lady but melee isn't my thing.

Our fighter took her down. The poison on the dagger lasts for one minute. I charged blindly into the next room hoping there was an enemy to stab before my poison ran out. I ran right into... a swarm of bats.

I stabbed at them and rolled... a natural 20. I killed a swarm of bats with a single swipe of my dagger of venom. I like to imagine it as if I stabbed a single bat and they all dropped somehow because of it. Or maybe I hit one, which caused a chain reaction where the bats bumped into each other and caused a bookcase to fall on them or something.

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The Final Battle: We found one key in the bride's room and another in a temple. We rested and then freed the warforged soul.

The dragon came right after us! We all spread out, using the interconnected rooms to our advantage.

Our wizard is very smart. She ran to the throne and pulled open the secret compartment. In it was a chest full of the dragon's treasure hoard! She put it in a magic container and rejoined us. I had completely forgotten about that compartment!

Our fighter had two arrows of dragon slaying, but he had a hard time hitting. The dragon breathed on him, and down went our fighter!

The dragon turned and went at the wizard. I ran over and administered a potion of greater healing to him.

The dragon breathed on the wizard, and she went down!

I ran through some side rooms and was able to give the wizard a potion while the fighter fought the dragon.

Then we unloaded on the dragon with all of our big spells. It's immune to fire, consarn it.

It had two hit points left, as I understand, when it breathed on the fighter again. He actually died. Not death saves... just dead.

The dragon had two hit points left. One level 1 magic missile took care of that!

Our fighter is dead and our excursion through the castle is over. We still don't know what the heck is going on with the deck and the Lords of Dust.

Next time, we're going to bring the fighter to a temple to get resurrected. Honestly, I kind of like it when characters die once in a while. As a player, I want to feel like there is legit danger in an adventure. If someone is going to die, it should be during a fight with a shadow dragon, right?

It was a good game as always. We're playing online and it works just fine.

The DM just emailed me the dragon’s treasure hoard. Here's the loot:

270 cp
4,200 sp
1,500 gp
99 pp
Assorted Treasure:

Silver necklace with a purple amethyst gemstone pendant, and the image of a red dragon's face inside the gem (worth 250 gp)
Box of turquoise bullette figurines (250 gp)
Large gold bracelet with the Ring of Siberys, the Saturn-like ring of dragonshards floating above the world, carved into it (worth 250 gp)
Gold ring set with bloodstones - opaque dark grey gems with red flecks - bearing the insignia of a gnomish goldsmith from Zilargo who's been dead for 100 years (worth 250 gp)
A Large well-made tapestry depicting the Feast of Boldrei, an old Sovereign Host fable about the civilized Sovereign Host gods and the wild Dark Six gods (worth 250 gp)
A carved ivory statuette of the last monarch of unifed Galifar, crying over a dead baby - likely made at the start of the Last War (worth 250 gp)

Magic Items:

Ring of Spell Storing (DMG p. 192) containing a 4th-level cure wounds
Longbow +2
Cloak of Displacement (DMG p. 158)

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Episode 39: Fortune Favors the Cold

This is a really good episode, so you might want to watch it before reading about it. The first hour is especially fantastic.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Joe) Harshnag - Frost Giant
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

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Ironslag side view

Last time, the group fought some yakfolk and met Harshnag, the frost giant. Teamed up with him and Krak Dragonspore, the Waffle Crew is heading to Ironslag, home of the fire giants. Krak wears lots of armor and he has golden glowing eyes.

After 3 days of travel, the adventurers arrive at Ironslag. It’s a huge place that has a number of entrances. There is a path that winds hundreds of feet up to the mountain. It leads to the yakfolk village.

Evelyn flies up to check things out. She notices a cave halfway up the winding path. She yells into it. A creature inside responds with animal noised. After careful consideration, Evelyn thinks it sounds like a snakehorse. Nope.. it's a chimera!

Yikes. Good thing she can fly. The chimera lunges for her. Evelyn had been hoping they could be friends. It bites her and she continues to call it a snakehorse, or "Snorse". Or maybe Snh'orse.

It breathes fire on her. Far off, the group sees a gout of flame erupt from the cave mouth. She takes 31 points of damage! The heroes try to figure out how to get to her in a swift manner.

Evelyn is dismayed. Her brand new clothes are destroyed. Later, the players are alerted by the chat that prestidigitation can fix up the clothing.

The group is 150 feet below the scene of the battle. Paultin uses dimension door to take himself and Diath up there. Strix Hollymorphs into a vulture and flies up. Poor Harshnag has to hoof it. He sends his giant bird to go help.

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Meanwhile, Evelyn is taking a lot of damage. She has 10 hit points left. The chimera hits her again and drops her.

Paultin and Diath appear in the cave. Paultin has an awesome idea. He casts crown of madness, forcing the lion head to attack the dragon head.

As the battle progresses, Diath ends up on the chimera as it flies out of the cave and fights Harshnag's giant hawk. He's 350 feet in the air. Diath stabs the chimera and tries to run on its back and leap back to the safety of the cave.

Oh no.. Diath rolls a 4 on his Athletics check. He falls! Strix is in vulture form and catches him. It’s a good thing he got off. The chimera kills itself due to the crown of madness.

Strix wants the corpse. Harshnag tries to catch it as it falls, but he tweaks his back and it falls all the way down.

The heroes try to make a heal check on Evelyn. Paultin uses his bardic inspiration to give +d8 to the roll. Nate is on fire today! The group is so impressed that they demand he get an actual inspiration point. Chris gives him one.

There's loot in the cave:

Dust of Disappearance
Potion of Slipperyness
Other random stuff, like a gnomish music box

Everyone rests. When it is done, Evelyn is up and healed. She apologies to the group for failing to protect them. Harshnag consoles her, talking about danger. Paultin: "In the end, the chimera's greatest enemy was itself." Truly, this is Nate’s finest hour.

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The Yakfolk Village

Diath scouts out the yakfolk village. He comes back and tells the group the layout. Strix feels bad about disrupting the lives of the yakfolk. She wants to polymorph into the form of a yakfolk to infiltrate their place.

Wow. She doesn't know this, but the yakfolk are extremely evil. She should not do this!

The group ends up making an elaborate plan and execute it. Harshnag and Krak attack an area of the settlement while Strix ends up blowing up a bridge. The heroes rush for the entrance amidst the chaos.

Then they see the yakfolk dragging their slaves out of their huts. The yakmen begin killing them! That’s where we stop.

When you read Storm King, that yakfolk stuff really sticks out. That “kill the slaves” thing is right out of the text.

Great show, maybe one of my favorites! Everybody was hilarious and Nate was really, really good.

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You can listen to this on soundcloud.

It’s only and hour long and it is good.

There's an online Binwin's Minions comic here.

This game was held a few months ago. Scott Kurtz, who played Binwin on Acquisitions Incorporated, has left to do his own show. Binwin’s Minions will be released as a pen and paper RPG product, and the plan is to make other things like video games out of it, too.

There weren’t any formal introductions. The Dungeon Master is Chris Perkins. Three of the players are Scott Kurtz (Binwin), Tavis Maiden and Bill Roper. There are two other players whose names I can’t find..

Binwin is 7th level, and the minions (the other characters) seem to be like 4e minions: They have one hit point.

The Story: Binwin’s mother gave him a dwarven queststone. The queststones are ancient dwarven stones that contain the soul of a dwarven adventurer. The stone chooses a dwarven warrior to continue questing so that the dwarf spirit can live vicariously through the bearer. The stones can bring people back to life.

So basically, the heroes go through a deadly dungeon. They die a lot, but they’re brought back to life almost immediately. It seems like the stone doesn’t raise the dead until whatever room the group is in has been completed.

Binwin has a map to a place called Keep Ikillya in the Dessarin Valley. The keep is in ruins but the dungeon below is intact.

The Party: Binwin is bringing along 4 minions: Thief, Druid, Wizard, Warrior.

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The heroes arrive at the keep. They spot a hole in the wall with a staircase leading down. The queststone in hand, Binwin shoves the druid toward the stairs.

The d20 Room

At the bottom of the stairs is a long hallway. There's a yellow gem that glows faintly. There's a lever near it in the up position and a ramp sloping down. There's a message scrawled in the back wall in dwarvish.

The druid is all alone. She decides to.. pull the lever! Wow. There's a yellow flash of light and silence... the rest of the group calls to her. No response.

Binwin pushes the warrior in. The thief quietly follows behind him.

They go down and see a stone d20. The writing on the wall says: "The odds are good that even you will die." He grabs the d20 and rolls it down a ramp.

I think the druid was polymorphed into the die. Chris asks the druid to roll a d20. It's even. Crunching sound. Warrior is dead. So when the heroes roll the stone d20, an even number means they die.

The thief pulls the lever. Flashes of light. Silence. Binwin is at the top. He takes the wizard and they go down. They see two stone dice on the floor.

There's a huge stone hammer floating at the bottom of the ramp. Each of them picks up a die and rolls. It is confirmed that the warrior and rogue have each become one of the dice. They both roll. One odd, one even. The guy who rolled even has a power called "roll backwards." He rolls again and gets odds.

The magic hammer apparently has been crushing killing those who roll even. Binwin pushes the wizard down the ramp. The hammer smashes him to a pulp.

Binwin slides down the ramp. The mallet pounds on his head and he takes 20 points of damage.

At the bottom of the ramp is a door of blue stone. Binwin's the only person left, so he goes to bash it open. Strength check, he rolls a 20! He smashes the door open.

The two dice turn back into the warrior and the rogue. Binwin uses the quest stone to bring the others back to life.

The Costume Room

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Beyond the door is a long hallway. There's a row of TEN pulsating yellow gems embedded in the ceiling. There are a few side rooms containing kobold masks, bat costumes, windup metal rats, and a suit of dwarven armor covered in mirrors. There is also a carrion crawler carcass.

Binwin puts on the mirror armor. The wizard puts on the bat costume. Binwin winds up a rat and sends it down the hallway toward the yellow gems. Yellow-colored lasers shoot from the gems. Four miss, one hits and destroys the mouse.

A hero puts on the carrion crawler carcass, thinking it might offer laser protection. One character looks up the carrion crawler in hi monster manual, which his character actually has. He learns that they feed on waste and can walk on walls and ceilings.

The carcass is heavy. All of the minions get in it. Human centipede jokes flying left and right. While in the carcass, the group can actually walk on the walls. They climb across the ceiling and apply green paint to the gems. They paint all of the gems with green paint, which stops them from firing lasers.

Room cleared! Blue stone door. Binwin takes off the mirror armor. I wonder if that armor would have reflected the lasers at his allies. That would have been fun to see.

The Puzzle Room

Binwin bashes the door open. 4 statues of dwarves with levers near them. It’s a puzzle that the crowd figures out right away. Binwin takes their advice and pulls the correct lever. A staircase forms in the floor, leading down.

The Stone Roller Room and the Huge Dwarven Face

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Binwin pushes the warrior down the stairs. Down below is a hallway block by a massive, turning stone roller. Carved into the roller are humanoid shapes. Wow, are they going to have to jump in and ride through.

Binwin wonders how he's going to fill these holes.

The thief has an ability: Disarm traps slowly. He decides to try it. The thief jams his crowbar into the side.. the crowbar snaps. A piece of the crowbar flies into the wizard's skull and kills him. The druid is covered in gore and fluids.

The druid tries to jump into one of the holes. She rolls bad... she gets squashed and the roller is covered in druid blood.

The warrior jumps into a hole... rolls a 20! Gets through. On the other side is the room with a huge, stone dwarven hear. The dwarf’s beard carpets most of the room. There are more yellow gems in alcoves. In the alcoves are treasure chests overflowing with gold.

The warrior tests the beard by dropping something on it. The stone dwarf’s mouth opens and lets out a mighty belch of methane gas. A blast of flame consumes the warrior.

The thief tries to go through the roller. Rolls a 12. Dead! Gore.. his green paint splatters everywhere.

Binwin is all alone. He doesn't want to go in, but he's going to have to. He rolls... 16! He makes it through the roller. What would happen if Binwin died? He has the stone and everyone would be dead. Maybe the stone would raise all of them.

Once he is safely through, Binwin uses the quest stone to resurrect the minions.

The wizard realizes that he has color spray, which probably can nullify the gems.

Binwin throws the wizard over the beard. In mid-air he casts color spray at two of the gems. The spell indeed disrupts their power. The gem and the treasure disappear. The treasure is illusory.

Binwin throws the druid to the other side. She lands safely. She throws her fetching stick toward a treasure chest. It is disintegrated. The druid finds a hidden lever.

She pulls it. A thunking sound comes from the stone head. A stone comes tumbling out of the dwarf's nose. It rolls to Binwin's feet. It is a new quest stone.

The group is dismayed to find out that's all they got. Binwin is pleased. That’s the end!

Overall

This was a very fun show, nice and short but a lot of stuff got done. I didn’t really get a sense of what the other players are like. Scott was very into it, and that made it a good listen.

I've always loved deathtrap dungeons, especially as a player. The problem has always been that my fellow players hate them. I have literally had players refuse to even try a deathtrap dungeon, even after much cajoling.

So I really like this show and I would love to run this dungeon.

Planescape – Blood War II. The Taking of the Infinite Staircase

Dungeons & Dragons - Dragon's Delve by Chris Perkins Part 2

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 35 - Storm King's Thunder

Dungeons & Dragons - Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans

Dungeons & Dragons - The Star of the East

Dungeons & Dragons - Ritual of Whirling Fury

Dungeons & Dragons - The Teleporting Toilet

Dungeons & Dragons - The Dice, Camera, Action Storm King's Thunder Index

Dice Camera Action: Episode 36 - Storm King's Thunder

Dungeons & Dragons - The Chained Coffin

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 37 - Storm King's Thunder

Dragon Plus Issue 12

Dungeons & Dragons - The Key of Inquiry

Planescape – Blood War III. The Siege of Lamashtu's Castle

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 38 - Storm King's Thunder

Dungeons & Dragons - The Bad Lick Beast

Acquisitions Incorporated: Pax East 2017

Adventures in Eberron - The Shadow Dragon

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 39 - Storm King's Thunder

Binwin's Minions - PAX South 2017