Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

[Luther Lansfeld]

Desmond today: One hit from death on two separate occasions. Godlike. -17 and -26 HP respectively. I was gonna be emooo~

[Magetastic]

Marza the same day: Went down to negatives, got up to about... 3/4's maxHP, and then gets knocked down to 1HP in a single shot, the same round.

Luck was very weird.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Starting a War, Destroying Temples of Holy Worship, and One Almost Lethal Lightning Bug

I’m going to keep the first part short because it was a while ago. So basically we went into Bane’s territory to deliver a letter to the King of the Bane area. In this we encounter a lot of evil tieflings who serve the king’s rival who wants to steal his throne, kicks their asses, steal their banner, and run toward the king’s realm. While doing this we accidentally start a war because due to Desmond’s charming skillz we are thought to be Bane allies and we charge with the banner toward the other kingdom. We sneak into the enemy side and get ambushed. We fight those folks and then we escorted to the king, who we deliver the letter to. He doesn’t seem to question our actions; after all, war is pretty damn common in the realm of a Lawful Evil bunch. He then sends up back to our realm.

We get to Level 7 and we celebrate. After that, we are sent by the church to ransank Richard’s little hideout. We go down there, beat up some lackeys, and then we go down where we get in a second battle in which is really tough. Desmond is almost killed twice and is in fact used as bargaining tool so the enemy can run away! Yay. The third battle is a joke and Excal almost throws the dice across the room.

So we desecrate the temple of Richard which is totally irritating anyway, and we discover something quite interesting. This temple has been here MOCKING ERATHIS FOR YEARS!! CURSE THE NAME OF RICHARD!!

So we sent a SWAT team to destroy it completely and then we are sent to House Ekhard to deal with foul invaders. My daddy’s home! Hooray! I’m sure everyone will be perfectly fine and happy and~

Yeah, right.

So we arrive at Payton, where Father Charles is chillin’ and we talk to him. He tells us my brother Henrik set out for House Ekhard to save my daddy, so we go over there to kick some ass.

And now… for the longest day of our lives so far~

First, we fight some low-levelled scrubs.  Feth takes them on alone for a couple of rounds and gets rather severely injured due to this, but the rest showing up allows the party to crush the battle just fine. A messenger sent to talk with us was mauled by the evil bastards. There was a mage that liked to inflict -4 to AC WITH A MINOR. This will prove to be a pain in our asses soon.

We progress to the castle, where the orcs already have the upper hand on us by staking out the defensive areas. Fuckers. Hidden inside of the guard posts are two guys who used their standards to inflicted -5 to defenses or to inflict ongoing 5 to everyone in Burst 1. Across the drawbridge were two more guys who inflicted -4 to AC with a minor. Ouch. Other guys were archers but not tooooo tough. We decided to kill off the mages and Feth killed someone TWICE and was countered and downed. It was hilarious times.

We managed to wipe up the battle pretty quickly after Feth brought down the whoopass; we threw one of the enemies into the water and killed the others.

We then did a Skill Challenge to try to get through the castle. Feth epically failed at leading us through the castle and managed to land us in an orc birthday party. How upsetting. It was supposed to be a surprise, too!

Anyway, we pass the skill challenge after losing a healing surge, and then we use a secret passage in the chapel (after all, Desmond knows his way around this place). We go down into the catacombs and run into an orc chieftain ruling over some ogres. Joy. Fortunately we sneak up on them and we get a surprise round. Also, Rachelle uses her ability which gives a +5 to all initiative rolls (in other words, your speed in battle). So basically we got two rounds to lay some whoopass on the enemies before most of them even moved.

We meet up with my brother, who has a cut on his arm. It seems to prevent any magical healing from being done on him, but it should heal naturally. So we talk to him and we send Feth off to protect him and we are sent off to be a distraction. Anyway, we try to send some servants back to inform people that we are trying to go through the main exit of the catacombs (which we aren’t). We hear people beginning to gather around the door and we decide that’s the time to go upstairs, back into the chapel.

…and this is when things get ugly.

…and we run into behir spawn, little monsters that behirs make. Unfortunately, this means a behir is near, and an adult behir could lay some major whoopass on us, so we try to run back into the catacombs. We hear tons of soldiers gathering, but fortunately we locked the door and hid in the secret entrance. Rachelle realizes that we may be able to kill the behir because it’s just an adolescent, so we go back up to fight it…

Several rounds and lots of spawn-spewing later, our party is almost decimated. The bastard acts three times a round and has decent damage (and MT 1/3 recharge. Die bastard). Alexander and Desmond are downed and Rachelle and Marza are still barely alive. Rachelle needs to crit or else the bastard will kill us almost certainly, and she does! We end up having two people with single-digit HP living and that’s it. >_>

So we are all patched up and we are all down to 0 or 1 healing surge. We try to escape from the town but we are caught by orcs, but fortunately Lord Ekhard saves us. We ride to the bridge where we promised to meet our brother. Lord Ekhard and Henrik embrace, and the next thing you know, ‘Henrik’ is holding the still beating heart of Lord Ekhard. He crushes it in his hands and throws it behind us and makes demon hordes appear to fight the elite cavalry that are coming to assist us. This battle’s gonna be fuuun.

Battle recap later!

[Luther Lansfeld]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU RAT BASTARD! YOU MUST DIE!!!

Desmond’s screams could wake the dead. And they did, as tons of zombies (okay demons) arose to take on the cavalry. An epic battle was about to begin, and there would be no reinforcements nor running away for us. In the first round Desmond charged to the front and attacked the evil demon man (called an Oni). The allies followed suit. Unfortunately, his allies had the ability to drag us into his range, where he dazed three of us.

As you may not know, daze is something that is sometimes inflicted by Oni (and Wizards) before you fall unconscious. If you make your saving throw for the daze (which is the ability to only take one action), nothing happens. But if you don’t… you fall unconscious. So Alexander, Feth, and Desmond were hit by Daze and the bastard boss shifts so we can’t charge him.

Marza to the rescue! He moves Desmond with Telekinetic Lift one square so Desmond can whack the boss. Rachelle uses her super-move that gives every ally in the range +3 to attack and makes all enemies within burst 1 (so nine squares) vulnerable 5 to all damage. So it is action pointing time!!

Desmond goes next and he pours damage into the bastards; ends up doing about 40 damage to the boss and then falls unconscious.  It was very upsetting because unconscious is -7 TO ALL DEFENSES. And I had just challenged folks! So bad news for Desmond.

The boss hits Desmond for 48 damage in one hit (he has 68 HP and had already taken damage.) Desmond falls and is in bad shape. Next, the other enemies wail on Marza and Feth. Fortnately, Alex and Feth make their saving throws so they don’t fall unconscious. Yay! Feth also wails on the boss for about 60~ of his HP. Pretty soon, the boss is dead.

Marza then Telekinetically Lifts me closer to him and then revives me with Energizing Strike. I have only 4 HP and I’m still asleep, but I wake up. Downed again, but that’s okay, because Rachelle revives me. I come in, take some more damage, and then Marza starts getting wailed on. He is healed by Rachelle and falls again and is hit with 5 Ongoing Damge even when he is down... so it’s a race against the clock. He has -21 HP (and dies at -24) after his ‘turn’ and he doesn’t make the saving throw. This is when Desmond needs to revive him with Invigorating Smite (which heals 5 HP) and it barely succeeds. Awesome! I then heal his status as well and thus Marza lives.

We then run away from the enemies, doing a skill challenge in the process. We have to succeed in order to be able to sleep. And sleep we need. Marza has 5 HP and no healing surges, I have 20 HP and no healing surges, and Feth has 18 HP and no healing surges. We really don’t want to get run down by orcs so we try to succeed.

Marza, along with 4 of the remaining soldiers who were killing the demons, got hit with Moon Frenzy, which is a disease that makes you go crazy if you fail saving throws for it. Fortunately our party is full of Divine folks and healers, so everyone was fine, but we weren't sure if you could really tell Moon Frenzied Marza from regular Marza anyway.

We do, and we get to sleep. Precious, beautiful sleep.

Next thing we know we are on another skill challenge, this time trying to get back to the fort city. Feth finds Grallax using a wind spell to get to the main stronghold, Greenhelm. Feth sends a message to try to tell Greenhelm, but the asswipes think they are UNSTOPPABLE! Whatever.

So we sneak into Payton after Desmond scares the orcs and Alex leads us through them. We run into Charles, tell him what’s going on, and then we will see where we are sent next~

[Dark Holy Elf]

It should probably be mentioned that Feth scored two critical hits (action point involved, naturally) on the boss during the turn he was vulnerable 5. That wasn't especially pretty.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Sooo awesome. Well I said she did 60 damage! Just not the crit part~

[Just Another Day]

Die in a fire, dead topic warning.

Desmond, you should post more here. Or I suppose I could, but I miss too many sessions and writing makes me angry. But it's been an eventful half year for Desmond & crew. I think there may have been wolves, and probably undead, and presumably civilian casualties, maybe a demon or two?, and lots of hobgoblins, and the sack of at least one city, and a repressive totalitarian utopia that probably isn't nearly as repressive or totalitarian as we keep expecting it to be, and Marza's gone, and didn't big D go through a Peter-Parker's-terrible-hair-in-Spider-Man-3 phase? Did all this happen before or after the steam crab? Clearly my memory is imperfect. But the people need to know!

Rachelle is still perfect and Feth is still grumpy and Alexander is still blue and hilariously tall due to a metric conversion error of a sort I hear are quite common on the supernal planes. How did we lose Marza? I think he may have been possessed by his cat when he jumped into that dimensional distortion to travel to Lezard's Graalax's personal universe shortly before a suspicious-looking monk with a name too embarrassing to print here and a cute comic-relief animal companion started following us around and I don't know if we've figured out how to make him go away or promise to stay with us forever and either way not become another one of the chronicle's Main Villains.

*deep breath*

Although Feth is looking forward to using Marza to salt her driveway back in Thranton. Or maybe turning him into mantelpiece geode display to go next to Richard's preserved eye sockets...

I jest, of course. Feth doesn't have a driveway. Or a mantelpiece.

I think I need to sleep more. And you or at least someone needs to write more! Here!

<3,
JAD

[Grefter]

This thread doesn't even have exploits of punching tiger corpses.  Most disappoint.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will write this weekend. I pwomise.

[Just Another Day]

This thread doesn't even have exploits of punching tiger corpses.  Most disappoint.

It's true! I can't believe I forgot about Pete. Whom I think we left behind in Bane's kingdom in the middle of an endless civil war, but I'm sure he's fine.

[Grefter]

Once you have punched a tiger you know no fear.

[Just Another Day]

Water Margin, the ~16th century chinese novel upon which, among other things, the Suikoden series is based, agrees. Wu Song punches a tiger to death and he's pretty clearly not afraid of anything. Most of the Water Margin heroes die in an assortment of painful, grisly and ignominious ways, mostly at the hands of imperial soldiers, which is probably a direct consequence of them not punching tigers. Wu Song lives to 80.

Hmmm.. he's the 14th of the heavenly stars of destiny which means (...wikipedia...) that he shares stars with Valeria, Tomo, Hugo, Keneth, and Zegai, which is a decent enough assortment, I suppose.

So, Pete is the 14th star of destiny and will be fine all alone in Bane's kingdom, QED.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will write this weekend. I pwomise.

Write or I'm forcing you to replay XS3 disc for me.

[Excal]

Two notes of interestingness.

First off, Pete's last location is not on the Warplane of Bane, but instead in the Erathian Grain Sea.  There he has been quite busy since the PCs left, herding the vast herds of Orcs left behind, with nothing to aid him but his trusty Hellmoose steed, Steve, and a dull stick.

Secondly, it has recently been made clear to me that this world is, in fact, Kingdom Hearts, where each solid pocket of the Material Plane not only looks a bit different, but also works a bit differently based on the assumptions and desires of its founding God.  This means the main difference is that these worlds are based less on Disney worlds, and more on D&D Gods and random themes I pick up.

Worlds so far, since I don't think these will be real surprises to the players.

Erathis - Rome/London/Eagleland
Ioun - Girl Genius, Zombie Horror
Bane - Grimdark Futures, R/TBS worlds of infinite warfare.
Pelor - Golden Sun, Brave New World, Get Smart
Richard - Motivational Speakers, 80's Sitcoms, Dr. Claw

The rest I am keeping under my hat for now.  However, hopefully they will eventually give me a reason to invent a Hong Kong Kung Fu Movie World.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

No Lilianne Valendorf world? 0/10.

[Excal]

The party would strike if I ever stepped onto their turf.  Since they're already revolting, I'm kinda loathe to push the issue.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I resent that

[Just Another Day]

Worlds so far, since I don't think these will be real surprises to the players.

Erathis - Rome/London/Eagleland
Ioun - Girl Genius, Zombie Horror
Bane - Grimdark Futures, R/TBS worlds of infinite warfare.
Pelor - Golden Sun, Brave New World, Get Smart
Richard - Motivational Speakers, 80's Sitcoms, Dr. Claw

Have we been to Richard's world? It sounds terrible.

I haven't played Golden Sun or [experienced via whatever media it inhabits] Get Smart, but I had always sorta envisioned Pelor's realm, aesthetically, as an idealized Greco-Roman sort of place. I mean, a bit like the super cheesy renditions of Heaven, right? Lots of majestic white columns and wide open atria. Is it higher tech, or were you more getting at the creepy paternalistic totalitarianism of Brave New World?

Erathis' world I've always seen as a bit dirtier. More London less Rome (though I'll happily admit that if I knew as much about Rome historically as I do London, i.e. anything at all, I probably wouldn't think of it as clean). Y'know, a big busy bustling place full of productive social interactions and the awesome power of commerce, but probably also with sewage issues and terrible traffic.

I missed the sessions in Bane's kingdom where we did anything other than fight things or run away, but it seemed pretty low-tech (my mental image of it was something like the Orcish architecture from the Warcraft series).

So from a setting theme standpoint, here've been my perceptions:

Erathis: baroque (17th-18th C)-tech, mid-magic but highly codified, technocratic, everything has a price, and the co-decision of that price leads to civilization. Diverse within certain confines (lots of core races, relatively few of the weird ones).
Ioun: 19th century-tech, magic is prevalent, powerful, but unpredictable, anything is possible, everything is dangerous. Super diverse melting pot of everything.
Bane: ~early medieval-tech, mid-magic, magic is prevalent but carries a toll, not in the Erathian transactional sense but in a more primal, maybe Nordic pieces of your body and soul in exchange for power sense. Segregated races constantly at war. But like I said, I didn't see much of Bane's realm.
Pelor: Roman-tech, high-magic, but only in the hands of the worthy (mean power might be the same as in Ioun, but concentrated in a much smaller portion of the population, while the common people live more or less mundane lives)... Probably reasonable diversity of "good" races, but with a more generally human population than Erathis-land?
Richard: aargh

Some of these are probably a bit off, and all coloured by my terrible memory and spotty attendance.

Anyhow, needless to say, I think this is all really cool.

[Excal]

Crap, you're right, I totally forgot that most of the architechture in Sol Sanctum is, in my head, looking like what the Victorians thought Ancient Greece was like.  That will still be floating around when I get back to that part of the place.  So yeah, I was thinking more like the society for the BNW stuff.  Mostly, in the populace and less in the government (not actually as bad as you guys think it is, you're just not used to being the outsiders as opposed to Government agents).

As for Bane...  I'm thinking mostly of Warhammer's Old World, as well as that Blood God guy.

[Random Consonant]

Wait, you mean the gnome has actually made progress on the road to godhood?

DETAILS

[Excal]

If I tell you now, then I don't get to see the look on the party's face when they discover them.

[Luther Lansfeld]

~ Pete Appears and Punches a Tiger ~

After arriving in Payton, we are assigned to go in the basement to fend off horrors until the guard shows up. We are assigned Pete, a dwarven fighter, to assist us. He doesn’t talk much but he does kick ass. This fight is epically boring.

We, including Pete, were then sent out to kick some bitches’ asses, specifically the orc chieftain. We had one battle that Pete gripped some people by the balls but I don’t remember anything else. Then we are attacked by tigers, owlbears, and a druid. Desmond and Feth beat on the druid and an owlbear. Fuck those owlbears and their AT HALF HP BURST 1 STUN. We got lucky and pushed one away before it could do that, though. (Stun is the status that removes all your turns and makes you -2 defense.) Pete punches tigers. Life is good, but this battle is tough stuff.

After this near death experience (whew!) we continue on our quest. We got attacked by frost birds, some guys who made the world dark near them and grabbed onto people’s heads (dark mantles), and a giant, supposedly chained ogre. Desmond kept the giant guy distracted while the rest of the party deals with the frost birds and the dark mantles (which I imagine as a Dracula Mantle attached to someone’s head). The dark mantles did something nasty if we let them grab on to our heads for too long but we didn’t let that happen often.

The last battle is when dearest Pete leaves us. He solos a bunch of orcs while we take on the orc chieftain, and he kicks lots and lots of ass. This particularly battle isn’t too memorable to me, so I won’t recap it. We are sent to Grainhelm!

~ FIGHT IT OUT! in Grainhelm ~

We visit Rachelle’s parents who are in charge of the operation in Grainhelm. Rachelle’s mother doesn’t seem to particularly like Desmond for sooome reason… even though he was a perfect gentlemen! They offered to send another paladin in his place. ;_; Damn nobility. Always bringin’ a man down.

We fought some scouts who didn’t like Dishearten much (-2 to attacks, -5 if it is augmented). But really, no one does. After that battle we fought a deity and kicked its ass. No sweat, right? Well, it was a pretty nasty fight, but we prevailed thanks to the almighty Desmond.

After that, Marza was possessed by his cat Steve, who apparently has more deductive reasoning than Marza and started looking at the teleportation device that Grallax employed and then he wanders off for some reason! Whatever, Marza is crazy. We fix the ley line and head back to stinky, overpopulated Thranton. (Don’t tell Rachelle I said that.)

On our way back, we encounter undead. AND A LAND SHARK. And earth elementals. And some fucking guy with a hawk named, you guessed it, Hawk Heart, but we just call him Buddy. (Why is he called Buddy?)

Uh anyway, we fight peeps, and after we down the undead foe, the fucking land shark steals him away. The land shark is his loyal transporter or some crap. Desmond wanted to ruin that guy’s shit more but he couldn’t. Oh well. We ask Buddy about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (or just his name and where he’s going) and he fails to provide good answers but we are caring and loving people so we take him anyway. For some reason.

~ Desmond’s Crisis of Love ~

We head to the church where a very stuck up bishop tells Rachelle very snottily that she will be seeing a tribunal of high-ranking church staff in a few days, which either means very good or very bad things for us. Rachelle is worried, but Desmond tells her everything will be okay and surely we won’t be punished we’ve worked so hard. Cuz Desmond’s a swell guy and he doesn’t like to see ladies gloomy. Maybe that wasn’t his ONLY motivation… Everyone’s a little edgy over maybe being punished by the church; after all, Marza and Alexander were criminals not long ago. >_>

So in our downtime we did retcon work. We found out a few things; everyone in the city is nervous about the variety of crazy shit that’s going on. There have been an increase in undead around the area, there were the incidents in Grainhelm, there have been ambitious anti-Thranton-leadership folks clamoring for different government or something, there has been a volcano eruption in Pelor-land (which is quite unusual since it is controlled be Pelor or something, I don’t know). Lastly, and possibly the most disturbing, the Ioun capital Sturmhalten (the place of the steamcrab) has closed off its ley line from Thranton, making it more difficult to go there than before.

Rachelle and Feth are whisked away to deal with the tribunal while Buddy, Desmond, and Alexander are left to continue retcon work. Instead they buy silly outfits and dress as flaming superheroes, but don’t tell Rachelle.

I mean, Bishop Rachelle. Hoity-toity I must say. Desmond congratulates Rachelle and hugs her.. and then she harshdisses him by saying “Normally bishops don’t hug.” Excuuuuse me, princess. No love for the big D.

Desmond is pretty annoyed by this; he feels like she’s being all haughty and shit (did he really just notice?) and now he wants to join the church of Pelor or something. But fuck Pelor, bunch of prudes. You’d think the god of the sun would be a little more free with the love, but no. They can’t handle Desmond’s sexy vox. So he just sulks like a bitch with a skinned knee instead of confronting Rachelle like a man.

Desmond and Al have heart to hearts and cry a little bit, and then we head out to check out the volcano!

~Why Do Bitches Cry When Desmond Waves Bye Bye Bye~

Pelor is a hella creepy cult, bro. Hawkheart is convinced we’ve stepped into 1984 a crazy cover-up job, but whatever. We go to church and Desmond and Buddy play or something like civilized adults. Rachelle and Alex go to a winery to waste time/because they are forced to, and Alex asserts his authority on all his slaves, including making one lay on the floor. Such a terrible person.

Meanwhile, gah Pelorites. They won’t let us into the volcano but we will go ruin some shit in the Blight. Desmond is still emo but he gets to hit things with a giant ham-

WHAT?! MY GIANT HAMMER IS GONE?!!?

In Pelor world, the rules work a little differently…

… everyone manifests into different parts of themselves. Desmond is now a Cleric, Rachelle is now a Swordvenger with a giant, Emolicious-like sword, Feth is now a Monk and HAWKHEART DISAPPEARS!! Apparently he actually worshipped Richard. Dammit, another sub-boss! Marza comes back though because he is reading runes or something, and he is a WIZARD!

So we ruin some shit in the Blight with tons of crits and hax, and the DM is displeased but life is good.

To be continued… next week!

[Magetastic]

Pete's Rules To Survival:
#1 - If it has balls, punch them.
#2 - If it doesn't have balls, punch them anyways.
#3 - If it is a tiger, grab those balls, and slam it against walls for all of eternity.
#4 - Rinse and repeat

[Grefter]

This topic is now awesome again.

[Dark Holy Elf]

#3 - If it is a tiger, grab those balls, and slam it against walls for all of eternity.

I'm pretty sure that was some sort of hobgoblin or orc, actually. Tigers get punched in the face. You have to think about what is easiest for a dwarf to reach.


Also, while Desmond would like to imagine Rachelle with her hands gripped firmly around an impossibly large phallic object, I feel the need to point out that the type of sword she does wield is listed as only 10 pounds and appears to be quite a lot shorter than she herself is, so she'd be booed out of an Emelious cosplay convention.

It should be noted the winery Alexander visited is one he himself owned in a past lifetime, leading to all the servants worshipping him in a rather creepy manner. Gah, Pelorites. Why focus on worshipping the past when you can focus on what makes you a profit today?