Adventures in Eberron - The Elder Brain

We played some Eberron yesterday. I'm a 10th level sorcerer.

We had gone to get a harp for our NPC friend. Last session, we had entered into a house warped by the Far Realm and found the office where the harp was.

The harp was sitting on a desk. Cranium rats started skittering around. I grabbed one and kept it. I stuck it in my bag of beans! I'm sure that will go well.

Guess who popped into the room? A mindflayer. Good gawd! It mindblasted us and only the wizard made her save.

I rolled really, really bad all day today. 3's over and over. It was amazing. I was stunned for the majority of the encounters in this session.

The mindflayer grappled the wizard. You know.. to eat her brain. Yarg.

The fighter snapped out of his stupor, busted out an arrow of slaying and killed the mind flayer.

We had the harp and noticed a weird window. In it, our fighter saw an event from his past. We climbed through.

In this session, we went through surreal versions of events from our character backstories, intermingled with mindflayers and other similar entities.

The Fighter's Origin

The fighter's story is that, in the Last War, he overheard his commander planning to pull off an attack that would lead to a slew of unnecessary civilian casualties.

He did nothing to stop it, and he has felt guilty ever since.

So here we were, outside the tent as his commander went over the plan. The fighter busted in, and after some back and forth, she became a mindflayer. Another mindflayer jumped in, too.

We did better this time around. I trapped one in a dome of force so that we could handle the bad guys one at a time. That worked out quite well!

When it was over, I said in the Sean Connery voice "My friend, there was nothing you could have done." The fighter, who talks like batman from the Christopher Nolan movies, began to cry. I gave him a big bear hug and the wizard got in on it for an epic group hug.

The DM declared that since the fighter had faced his past, he no longer had his flaw. I thought that was a cool idea.

The Wizard's Origin

Then we went into the wizard's past. She has this mysterious Book of Shadows that she won't tell us much about.

We walked into a scene where a band of adventurers were trying to trade with a green dragon - a bunch of magic rings in exchange for the Book of Shadows.

The dragon refused. The party included a warforged who had a baby in a sling. I squinted and determined yep, that was baby wizard. The adventurers grabbed the book and ran. The green dragon turned into a neothelid!

I've never fought one of these before. We came very, very close to dying.

It mindblasted us. Two out of three of us were stunned. It swallowed the wizard, who dropped to zero. The fighter snapped out of it and hacked into it, and was able to get it to barf up the wizard.

Then it swallowed him!

The 5th round in, I finally made my save. I grabbed the wizard, dimension doored out of the room and used a healing potion to revive her.

The fighter was inside the neothelid. We had obtained these yellow potions that are explosive. D&D grenades, sort of.

He used one. The explosion and rocketed him out of its mouth. He was down, but rolled a natural 20 on his first death save.

I dimension doored back in with the wizard and we killed the neothelid.

Was intense!

My Origin

Then we went into my past. My character flew an elemental airship in the Last War. It crashed and my memories are vague. I know that this admiral onboard might have done something shady.

We ended up seeing the admiral grab young me and bring me into the ocean in an air bubble. We have potions of water breathing, so we drank them and followed.

Long story short, he and some sahuagin did a ritual that siphoned the life force from a gold dragon into my character! That dragon was guarding a cave that the bad guys wanted to get into.

We went in the cave . It turns out the admiral is a deep scion, which is some kind of fish-thing that eats aboleth brains!?!

Here comes an elder brain! Yep! We got mindblasted and I was stunned once more. We somehow whittled it down to half its hit points as it crushed the wizard and I in its tentacles.

It stopped fighting and said we have common enemies. The admiral wants the city of Sharn destroyed. The elder brain needs the city... for brains.

We went back and forth a bit. We hesitantly agreed. Then the others quietly started talking about killing this thing! I was a little shocked, but amused.

I pointed to my wand of wonder subtly and look at them for the signal to attack. DM asked me to roll a bluff check. Total of 7. D'oh.

The elder brain mindblasted us and actually dropped the entire party!

That's where we stopped.

We'll be 11th level next time, have no idea what will happen now.