Dale's Campaign - Session #4

Alright, we are back on track with this session.

Every new campaign usually needs a few sessions to “get its legs”. That is, you need to do through some slow, repetitive, or boring stuff to get to the main storyline.

And tonight was the first session of our new player Mike. And it looks like he is going to work out too.

We’ve had some trouble with potential people in the past. Usually our screening process (talking to them) weeds out the psychos.
And we don’t want any psychos.

As Aaron’s wife told Aaron, who then relayed to us, and now I’m telling you that Oprah said, “If you see crazy coming, cross the street.”
(Hey that sentence made it past the grammar checker.)

It’s not easy finding players that are a good match to us, but we manage.

So Mike and his new character... Mark... a paladin-fighter, joined us tonight.

Mark is surprisingly a suitable name. With Dale’s campaign there is a Gallic group and an Anglo group, with names to match. So Mark is not a bad name, even for a D&D character.

But before he could join up with us, we had to find him.

And it just happened that we found him pretty quickly and irritated the DM in the process.

The entry area to these ruins we are in is basically a circle. And rather than leave one side of the circle unexplored, we decided to check it in case a hasty retreat was needed.

What we found was an irritated grick guarding a chained up man.
Initiative was immediately rolled.
Kineo’s job was to try to help the chained up man.
Culan’s and Kal’s job was to deal with the grick.
Dale’s job was to roll like he usually does.

The grick’s damage resistance was foiling us pretty bad. But luckily, Dale was doing his job.

Sean: “Alright! Dale’s back!” said after Dale rolled 8 misses in a row.
And Said shortly afterwards, Dale said, “Good god! Retire these dice.”

Kal summoned a brown bear. When the bear’s damage didn’t do anything to the grick, Kal summons a scorpion, but that didn’t work either because the scorpion’s attack bonuses were too low.

Culan was forced to step back and cast Magic Weapon on his bastard sword. When he did, the combat was over.

Kineo used some acid spells to free Mark from his chains.
We quickly introduced ourselves and were all quickly the best of friends.
(Ugh, I could never write a light-hearted book.)

Since we were low on resources, we left the ruins to rest.
During Kal’s and Mark’s watch (we didn’t 100% trust Mark just yet) a group of 5 wolves approached. But they never made it closer than 30’ to any of the party.

The moment Kal caught sight of them; he cast Entangle to encase them all.
Of the 5 saves Dale rolled for the wolves, all failed. And four of the rolls were 1, 1, 2, and 3.

Dale: “If I were you guys I would want to play as much as possible with me on this rolling streak.”

Kal used his handle animal skill to impress to the wolves that there was no food for them here. Once the wolves were properly cowed, Kal dismissed the Entangle and the wolves ran off.

The next morning we returned to the ruins and found a knight chained to the wall.
But something wasn’t right about the whole situation and we discovered that the knight was not who he said he was. His story started to fall apart and we eventually knocked him out.
He then turned into a doppelganger.
So we tied him up nice and tight, and left him there until we could come back.

In the same room we found a trap door leading down into a strange area. The make was of a strange wood and stone and had murals and hieroglyphs of a very Egyptian style, with beast-headed men and all.
It was all very alien to us.

There were several rooms to the whole place, all in a row.
We were accosted by several varieties of undead, but we defeated them all, but not without difficulty or worry.

After one such fight, we found an area with many magic weapons and armor. But all of them were made of either brass or bronze. Since those are weaker than steel, we decided to only use them if needed and sell them as soon as possible to a collector replace them more modern weapons.

And in another area we found a small library that was a treasure trove of scrolls. Some were even magical spells that needed translating.

This was all very odd to us. And on a meta-gaming level, I felt that this won’t be the last time we discover an ancient ruin with some Egyptian inspired architecture.

Once we were sure the place was emptied, we left.

After a few more days on the road we finally arrived in Darkenmoor.
We discovered that, in spite of being a cursed city, it was still had a healthy 4000 people inhabiting it.
After searching around we found a nice inn that served our needs, the Snorting Boar, and discovered that there were several wizards in the city.
We only talked to one, Ian de Magi, a good and noble wizard.
He bought all of the magical items we did not keep, mostly to keep them out of the hands of his nemesis Lindepohl.

Ian de Magi also told us that he could not decipher the hieroglyphs, but Lindepohl could.

We aren’t going to check out Lindepohl just yet. So far we’ve heard nothing good about him other than that he knows much about things long forgotten.

We also heard several odd rumors. Some of which were believable; hags come from the south and some hound haunts the area. Other rumors were not believable; such as anyone can turn skeletons and zombies in the swamps.

So then we stopped for the night.

What did we learn this session?
Every session we learn a new rule or find something about a rule we thought we already knew.
Aaron does not like my excessive honesty.
It’s hard being a player after 2 years of DMing. I was almost too much like Joe at a couple points. Time for some electro-shock therapy.
And we’ve learned the value of the spot skill with Dale as DM.