Dale's Campaign - Sessions #8 & #9

Sorry for the delay.
I’ve been busy with a variety of little things and some not so little.

When I record our sessions, I usually listen to them at work and take minor notes as a kind of memory refresher. It also aids a lot to getting quotes right.
Well this past week I’ve been training someone new at work, meaning no MP3 player for several days.

So that impeded my progress.

And here’s the true reason, I gave a new PC game a try.
It’s called GalCiv II. It’s basically a civilization style game in space.
At least that is what it is supposed to be.
Once again a game company has release a PC game that is not even 50% ready for market. It has too many little bugs and is still quite poor with the interface from the original game.
Heck, I can’t even reload a saved game.
Don’t bother with this so-called game for now.

But anyway, let’s move on to our game.

Dale “warned” us that because it was Saint Patrick’s Day for this session, there would be a whimsical part to the adventure.

I shuddered. Dale’s whimsical parts grate on my cynical nerves. But Dale likes them and everyone else enjoys them, so I just gripe about it and move on.

Our last session ended with us resting via a Rope Trick scroll.

From that point we moved on down the swampy river and came to a construction that reminded us of a giant beaver damn, with an entrance and all.

Sensing a DM plot trap, we prepped up and entered the thing after Mark detected a vague evil throughout the thing.

To make a long story short - we killed a shambling mound, then a trio of hags (but not a covey) and their owlbear pets.

Sean: “Never mess with a druid in the woods.”
Said because Kal’s summoned creatures prevented the last hag from escaping.

Then the place started falling apart and we heard some screams for help. We quickly tracked down the screams and find a poor dryad who had been captured by the hags.

And thus begun the whimsical part of the night.

The dryad was too afraid to return to her tree alone, so she guilt tripped the paladin Mark into helping her.

One moment we were rowing down the river, and then all of a sudden the druid moved us to solid ground.

Kal’s knowledge of nature told him that we were no longer on the southern side of the continent, but rather back up to the northern side.

Although Kal comes from that area, we had a job to do and were on a deadline.

But the selfish dryad couldn’t care less. Once we were there she said thanks and walked away.

We asked about getting back and she said, “Oh there’s a human city not far that way.”

Were I playing a non-good, non-druid, I’d have fried her right there.

We walked to the city and inquired about getting back.

Well the townsfolk knew how to get us back, but they needed help too.

Lo and behold there was some leprechaun that was wreaking havoc with the local populace. He wasn’t killing anyone, just irritating them.

“Boo-freaking-hoo”, thinks Kal.

So we followed the forced-DM plot train.

(Note to Dale: no more plot trains please.)

We found where the leprechaun lived and confronted the little twerp.
Without making a single offensive movement, we talked to him, even while he was trying to get on our nerves.

Well we found out what was wrong was him.
He was a candy-assed-pansy-boy.

Some nymph came by and swam in his pond and he fell in love. But she rightfully wanted nothing to do with him.

We told him we’d fix the problem, and he promised us 20,000 in gold. I think the 20,000 gold promise came first though.

Now if you’re thinking to yourself, “Just nuke the little punk, turn evil, and let the maiden in Darken Moor be sacrificed.” well I didn’t think about it at the time. I was too busy protecting my sanity from the whimsy. Rational thought was not working for me at the time.

So we tracked down the nymph and talked to her. She said she’d have dinner with him the next evening.

Then we went about helping the pathetic little lepper-chaun.
We trained him, had hand signals, summoned cute little birds, cleaned his area of the forest, and basically did every little thing we could think of the make the little twerp presentable to the nymph.

Then it all came down to a die roll.
We let Mike roll it. And we were rewarded with a nice natural 1.

Good thing I had a contingency plan.
When the leprechaun offended her, Kal summoned in a dire wolf to half-heartedly attack her so the leprechaun could save her.

That almost worked, but she saw through it.
But she apparently liked pathetic & desperate 2’ tall, green freaks.

The next day we attended their wedding, took our 20,000gp, and got teleported out of that place with a magic mirror.

Note to self: When Kal turns evil, return to that town, decimate that forest and steal that mirror.

Well one good thing did happen, at level 6 Kal took the leadership feat and now he has a cleric, Jaxil, at his side at nearly all times. He doesn’t like the leprechaun either.

We returned to near where we left, but it was at night, and we were immediately set upon by a will-o-wisp.

One dead will-o-wisp later we decided to see how well we could do in the swamp at night.

Well we can do pretty well apparently, because the hound of the moors and his pack are now dead.

And that was the end of session #8.

And this is the start of session #9.

I was in a much better mood this time around. I think it was the lack of whimsy and that I would be going to Windsor, Canada the following day for some Texas Hold’em while the wife went to a baby-shower in Toledo. Result: I only lost $27 US.

After the hound of the moors and pack (all shadow mastiffs) attacked us, we thought it was a good time to return to Darken Moor.

So we were rowing along and minding our own business. Then we saw something dark in the distance flying right towards us.

It was a juvenile black dragon, out looking to have fun and wreak havoc.

At first we were a little nervous because we don’t fight dragons that often. But we really had nothing to fear. Our combats with Dale’s dragons usually go really well or really bad.

A couple of Scorching Rays and Lightning Bolts from Kineo & Kal sent it packing with less than 10hp.

No treasure or anything from the little bugger either.

I’ve got a bad feeling that it was one of Growlgretch’s brood, and he or she will be coming for us, and soon.

Next we returned to town and spent a few days crafting 5 +1 Vests of Resistance. We need bonuses on our saves. Our reflex saves are in bad need of improvement.

During the evenings we all did our own thing.

Kal did his usual bit of evening fun while working hard during the day.

Culan & Mark went to their temples and healed the sick, offered up money to help the poor. Kal and Kineo made fun of them behind their backs for that.

Culan also had drinks with the Brother’s Grimm at the inn. It was nice and pleasant in a creepy sort of way. Now he’s friends with them in a way. They’ve promised to kill him last and he promised to kill who ever is last in line.

As a joke he changed out the water in their morning wash bin and replaced it with holy water.

And Kineo returned to see Lindepohl and spent some time there learning some dark things. And none of the rest of us knows about it.

Once all of that was said and done, we returned to the swamps with the intent of finding that dragon and putting it down for good.

After a long while we came to a new temple. But it was not a ruined temple of the old gods. It was an abandoned, but immaculate, temple & graveyard of Mahnway, Mark & Culan’s god (I think).

We checked it out closely, while being very nice to everything (read that as – we didn’t plunder it for riches).

All we found was some clay golems guarding an underground area. Otherwise the place was utterly immaculate.

Kal had Jaxil fly up 240’ to get an aerial view, and it looked as good from up there as it did from the ground.

We then left the temple and decided that it might be a good resting point if need be.

Next stop on our journey was an odd group of ruined buildings. Probably the remnants of a small village long abandoned.

Kal, aided by Kineo, was able to get a total of 40 on his Knowledge: Nature skill roll.

Using the knowledge that only a skilled druid would have, Kal was able to determine that the evil plaguing the Darken Moor area dated back much farther than the coming of the hags and their stories.

They are just taking credit for the evil that is about.

So something else, much more powerful than the hags, is causing all of this, and possibly calling evil creatures to the area as well.

Dale: “When the control group went through this area, they had a little trouble.”
Said by Dale prior to our excursion into the land.

We started with the closest building of interest, a collapsed mill.
The main level of the building had nothing of interest, but it did have stairs leading down to the basement.

And in that basement was a hydra, hiding and waiting to rip us a new one.
It won initiative and took Culan to under half of his hit points.
So Kal stepped away and cast Haste on everyone.
Jaxil cast a Prayer spell.
Then Mark and Culan did a collective 60 points of damage, but would have missed had Haste not been cast. (Yes, it’s a shameless bragging of Kal).
Then Kineo cast Scorching Ray, critted with one of them, and did over 65 damage with the spell.

The hydra, even with a regeneration of 10 just couldn’t hold up to that.

So we looted what we could find and checked out the next closest place, an old ruined house.

“Do you like gladiator movies Billy?”
I don’t know why we said that, but it always gets a laugh.
And it’s certainly funnier than anything said in Napoleon Dynamite.

But anyway, Mark detected something evil in the building, so we checked it out nice and slow.

Inside was a Slaughter Wight from the Libris Mortis.

It was dead by round 2. And that ankh of Mark’s saved him from a potential level drain attack.

We looted and moved on again.

Then we met a group of evil thugs searching thoroughly through a big pile of what was once a building.
We tried to be nice to them and give them a chance to lay down their arms and leave.

Yeah, I knew it wouldn’t work, but we can’t just go around nuking first and then asking questions...yet.

Then we were on initiative, and our initiative just wasn’t quick enough.

They were just a group of level 3 punks, but their caster had a Wand of Fireballs (8d6 damage – only 2 charges left).

We got nuked once (and it hurt), and one of us was backstabbed nicely by their rogue, but after that initial round, they were nothing.

We used the teamwork options from the Dungeon Master’s Guide II and they faced a Fireball from Kineo followed by a Flame Strike from Kal.

After that only their rogue still stood, and that’s only because he wasn’t hit by the spells.

He refused to surrender, and paid the price.

So we took their stuff and finished searching through the building rubble that they were searching through.
We found a great big pile of 90,000 coins. Every last one of them copper.

That’s ok; we found a good use for 900gp worth of copper.

We returned to the temple and put 100gp of copper into the offering plate and received a vision from the past.

Long ago was an evil wizard of great power that came to these lands while they were under the sway of the forces of good.

The wizard and the powers of good fought for reasons unknown to us so far.
The wizard was stopped from becoming a lich, but he did become “something else”.
Whether the powers of good were defeated or killed, we don’t know, but they certainly aren’t around now.

But the fouling of the land is caused by the existence of the powerful evil wizard.

And so ended session #9.
It was slightly shorter than usual, but we seemed to have gotten more done.