Sean's Campaign - Session #20

This session consisted of a lot of role-playing and a lot of screwing around. (The podcast has had a lot of editing, but at some point I gave up. I just took out things that could get us in trouble. Good luck!)

No Allen this week. It’s probably for the best because he gets a little twitchy when we screw around too much.

Then again, Joy and Brian were probably a little sick of the screwing around when it got later. But oh well, Dale, Aaron, Justin, and I were having fun.

Aaron was in rare form too. He’s usually pretty ready for gaming once we start, but not this day. He was really into thinking up acronyms for Artemis’s title or offering “helpful” advice on non-gaming stuff.

Justin was his usual self.

In spite of the screwing around, they were able to get quite a bit done; mostly because it was a 90% role-playing night.

We finally came up with an acceptable title for Artemis – Commandant of the Maratheelian War College. All it really means is that Artemis has a place that won’t throw him out immediately.

We resumed the game at a point about an hour after the assault on the city began.

The last of that suicide wave had been repelled, but with great cost. Several sections of the city wall were heavily damaged, but not ruined. Much of the city guard did not make it through that hour. And even though the monks and knights of Lataan average from eighth to tenth level, they do not have any combat clerics or mages, making things much harder on them.

The party was exhausted in many ways. Although we only played out the one battle, I told them that they had spent the rest of the hour moving to a new section of the wall, repelling the attackers, and then moving to another section of the wall and repeating.

The party started discussing options about what they could do. Afterwards they made a decision and needed to get the cooperation of the city leaders.

They found the two leaders of the Shining Orders on a raised platform with a mob of angry and scare people harassing them with questions about the safety of the city and their plans. The leader of the Order of the Shining Fist was serene and not speaking. The knight captain of the Order of the Shining Shield was not fairing as well as he was trying to calm down a mob of people that were unwilling to listen. His short temper did nothing to help things with the crowd now his rapidly thinning hair.

Artemis, being the most socially adept and charismatic person of the group who hadn’t ticked off one of these two leaders, disrupted the mob’s attention by using his flying boots to fly over them to land on the platform and talk with the leaders.

As discreetly as he could, he told them that the group had a way of raising the money get the aid of the dragon and to possibly get help from Endrin and Maratheelia. Ari (escorted by Sorra) would teleport a handful of scared, rich merchants to Endrin at 10,000gp a person (with a return trip in two weeks if needed) (remember I’ve changed Teleport). Then the rest of the group would take that money to the dragon and get his aid. While in Endrin, Sorra and Ari would talk with the king there to get any aid he could possibly give. After that was taken care of they would teleport to Maratheelia to attempt gain aid from the elves as well, and then they would return to Lataan.

The leaders agreed to this and put the party in protective custody (the good kind) and taken the basement of the mayor’s mansion.

Side note: luckily the party had not mentioned anything about the mayor, as the city had not released to the public that the mayor had been murdered. That could have led to something unfortunate.

The party spelled out their plan better to the two men in private. The knight captain had trouble comprehending that outsiders to the town were willing to do so much when they could simply leave. The leader of the monks wanted to be sure that the party understood that they were exploiting the fears of desperate people in order to help a larger number of people.

The party was told to go ahead and prepare to execute their plan in the morning while the knights gathered the merchant house leaders for the decision-making process for the morning as well. The knights would also guard the mansion as well as they could, but were told to be prepared for anything as several (but not all) of the merchant houses were not exactly the nicest people in town (opportunists and bullies are good descriptive nouns for them).

The party rested as well as possible and they posted guards to make sure they were safe.

The next morning the party took an hour and prepped for the day. During that time they could hear some arguing upstairs but couldn’t make it out (they found out later it was from the merchants wanting to bring their bodyguards with them to the meeting, which the knights prevented).

Eventually 12 men were escorted to the meeting by knights, 2 men each (father and eldest son) from 6 merchant houses.

The group really enjoyed the role-playing for this bit.

It was safe to say that these men were not good-aligned and they were definitely the alpha-male type.

But the party held their own; when the merchants pushed, the party pushed back, and then some.

The party explained to the merchants that they had this one opportunity to help the city and save their skins at the same time. Leaving by boat is impossible and the roads are dangerous and probably guarded. Immediately one man pushed and demanded special treatment. Artemis told him no, so the man argued with him, so Artemis to leave and not return. Guards escorted the man and his son out before it came to blows.

Next one of them tried to negotiate the price down to 1000gp from the 10,000gp. That fell upon deaf ears.

Another promised to pay once he and his family were safely in Endrin. That went nowhere as well.

One family had to bow out because there is no way they could afford the price. The party paid no mind.

Eventually one family bought 4 “tickets for Ari Airlines” and another jumped in for 5.

This left only one open slot, and one older man jumped in and bought the last one for 15,000gp. This infuriated the man’s son.

The merchants who were going were told to be back in an hour with the money and just enough to get by.

During that hour someone tried to set the mayor’s mansion on fire, but the knights took care of that quickly enough.

When the 10 passengers returned they were thoroughly searched (against their will) and then presented to Ari and Sorra.

They noted that the last passenger was not there, but his son was. When they questioned him about it, he reported that his father had a horrible accident when they got back home and was killed. That didn’t help the party’s feelings of the situation much, but there wasn’t much they could do about it other than keep a close eye on the fellow.

One casting of a spell later and Ari and Sorra teleported away with 10 aristocrats/merchants in tow.

Artemis, Zelast, Ysilia, Lindo, Trebor, and a few guards gathered up 100,000 of the 105,000 gold onto a litter, and began their journey to the Ring of Death to meet with the dragon.

Endrin only took minor notice of 12 new people appearing at their town fountain.

Ari and Sorra headed straight to the king of Endrin’s castle. They had ten followers at that point whether they liked it or not.

Just before entering the main gates a nervous young gentleman introduced himself to the party and asked to speak with Princess Arianna privately. When pushed he told her that he was sent by the daughter of the king of Endrin. Ari agreed to go with him and left Sorra to talk with the king (and deal with the merchants).

When she finally was able to meet with the king, she explained to him the situation. The king was unable to help as he had to men to spare, especially not for something such as that. But Aaron did roll a natural 20 on his diplomacy check, and since I (slightly) screwed Sorra over last time for rolling a natural 1, I had to give some help from the king. It was in the shape of healing wand, some Keoghtom’s Ointment, the weakest Necklace of Fireballs, and a pair of Eyes of the Eagle.

(The merchants were more or less ignored after that as well.)

While Sorra was talking with the king, Ari was talking with that king’s daughter.

It turns out that in just a couple of weeks the king will be holding games to entice heroes to come to Endrin from all around. The centerpiece of these games will be a one on one gladiatorial competition, with the grand prize being the princess’s hand in marriage (not Ari).

The princess understandably does not like this idea, but is unwilling to defy her father as Ari did hers.

So the princess needs a champion on her side. Someone who understands her situation and does not qualify as marrying material (and isn’t from Rhode Island).

Ari agrees to return to fight for the princess, but only if the princess helps with the situation in Lataan. The princess agrees.

Later, after some scroll shopping, Sorra and Ari meet up again and have a chat with Bull and the Roaring Bull Inn. They ask if he knows of anyone willing to help. He doesn’t, but he’s also surprised that the party is doing so much help.

Then 3 large, armored soldiers and a wizard enter the inn.

“Are you Ari?”
“Um…yes.”
“We were sent by the princess. We are yours to command.”
“Sweet.”

Shortly thereafter 6 people ported from Endrin to Maratheelia.

Their luck wasn’t so good in Maratheelia. The elves, still recovering from their recent shake up had less than Endrin did. The group was able to get one volunteer warmage from the academy, and she only joined when Artemis’s name was mentioned.

Some more scroll shopping and 7 people ported from Maratheelia to Lataan.

At that point in time the rest of the group was near the Ring of Death, with the expected 500’ high red dragon honor guard keeping tabs on them.

This time the dragon talked directly with the party. They explained to him that the previous talks were sabotaged by the mayor’s wife, who they believe to be a succubus, and now they’ve brought 100,000 gold in treasure with them.

Note: This next part Brian totally predicted. The word “godfather” got tossed around a bit at this point.

He explained to them that he didn’t care about the city’s minor issues, and the price was no longer 100,000gp. He demanded the 100,000 gold plus 50% of the city’s port profits for the next 100 years.

The party said that they didn’t have that kind of authority from the city so they couldn’t accept that deal. The dragon understood, so he told them to drop the litter of treasure and return to the city. At that point the party realized that they were in no place to bargain and had no good options. Their options were to head back to the city with nothing, head back to the city with a dragon as a highly paid ally, or to fight the dragon (and more) without two of their strongest members.

The party agreed to the dragon’s terms. In return he gave them some useful information.

First off, the city was doomed without his help. Probably wouldn’t survive an hour.

Next the kraken was controlling the weather to make it dark enough for the horde’s orc forces to be able to attack at nearly any time of day. The dragon stated that neither he nor his brethren would attack the kraken as it could pluck them out of the skies with its tentacles and he had no intention of fighting that thing under the water.

With that the party headed back to the city.

The next afternoon the party reunited in the city and told the knight captain the situation. When they got to the part about the dragon, he had to be held back until he calmed down. He cooled down and accepted the issue when the party made it clear to him that the city would be doomed without the dragon’s aid.

Next the party decided to try to take out the kraken, somehow. They didn’t.

The kraken sent some sea trolls and drowned (from MM3 and nerfed by me) to the shore to attack the party. With a lot of difficulty (combat and breathing) the party took care of that inconvenience.

They heard a roar in the distance that they believed to be an irritated kraken as it left the nearby area…for now.

Next week, another big fight.

Sean's Campaign - Session #19

Another good week and this one had its fair share of role-playing and combat.

No Brian this week, and Dale cancelled at the last minute (literally) due to him feeling ill. Allen played Zelast and Aaron played Artemis. Justin showed up this week so we poofed Trebor back in.

Since everyone that was going to show showed early, we started a little early.

The leaders of the town had to meet that red dragon in the Ring of Death in two days time, leaving one day for the party to get in on that meeting.

Lindo reported his year long expedition to his brothers at his order (I think I called them the Order of the Shining Fist). They thanked him and offered him an opportunity to be their addition to the city mayor’s escort to the meeting. During the evening he used his skill in acrobatics and tumbling to perform for the crowd at the inn.

Sorra reported to the local knighthood (the Order of the Shining Shield I believe) to offer aid to them as a trainer, mercenary, or whatever she could do that they needed. But a natural 1 on a diplomacy check gathered her the ire of the knight captain. Something about her just irritated the guy (maybe he’s a misogynist), so he sent her off to be the bodyguard of the mayor and his wife for the meeting with the dragon.

Ari didn’t bother trying to get in on the trip to the meeting. She chose to hang around the selfish and arrogant upper crust of the city’s merchant families until she found out that all of the available talking to her were more interesting in her potential money and crown than anything else about her.

Since Dale and Brian weren’t around, and Justin was still updating Trebor, only Sorra and Lindo went on the trip.

The next morning an escort of 11 city guards, Lindo, and Sorra joined the mayor and his wife for their journey. The mayor seemed somewhat detached from the world, mixed with impatience and arrogance. His wife however was the icon of politeness and diplomacy.

The area north of Lataan is a volcanic area, and the Ring of Death is a grouping of hot springs that form a ring.

Late in the day the party arrived at the ring, as did the dragon (who had several smaller dragons scout for him before hand).

The dragon asked for the money, and the mayor’s wife said they brought 25,000 in gold plus a magic bag it was brought in (a simple bag of holding). The dragon scoffed as he knew that the merchant families of the town could afford much more than that paltry sum. He demanded 100,000 gold and told the town good luck. With that he flew off.

Some well rolled spot checks later and both Sorra and Lindo noticed a tiny smile on the face of the mayor’s wife.

Lindo questioned the mayor’s wife (while the mayor himself barely noticed a thing the entire time), and accused her of holding out. Of course she denied it. (Later on the knight captain would place the blame on Sorra for it.)

When that group returned the next morning, Lindo and Sorra told the group what they saw and Ari told them what she saw during the night. Late at night she saw some large shapes coming out of the water, but couldn’t make them out quite clearly. She alerted others, finding that she wasn’t the only one to see them. A few moments later and a rainstorm started pouring down.

In a rare bout of “ballsiness” Lindo decided to spy on the mayor’s wife, alone.

The following is the result of some of the most amazing rolls I have seen in nearly 5 years. Lindo spotted her leaving the mayor’s mansion while wearing a disguise (natural 20 on spot). He followed behind perfectly with a couple of move silently and hide-in-shadows skill checks (all 4 results were above 25). And when she went into the sewer, he continued to follow her (2 more sets of rolls, same results – not a single roll under 12 before his +18’s from his skills).

She finally stopped at a large intersection of the sewer where she stopped to converse with a huge creature. It had the general shape of a hydra, except its single mouth was in it abdomen and each of its ten heads ended not with a head, but with an eye.

Amazingly, Lindo’s hiding check beat the spot check of the thing with ten eyes!

His listen check was enough to get a little information.
- The dragon would not be helping the city.
- General Takral’s troops are eating more food than is available, so he will be sending his weakest troops in first as a suicide strike to thin out the numbers.
- The kraken is doing its part.

Then she left the “eyedra” and went into her own room in the sewer.

Lindo snuck away and ran back to tell the party what he saw.

They weren’t sure what to make of the eyedra, but they wanted to find out what was in that room. So the next morning they prepped up and entered.

They were able to catch the eyedra by surprise (it was sleeping and botched a listen check while they rolled well enough to not have to worry about it).

It had a not-so-great initiative roll, and they had a surprise round. Even though it was a CR14 with the same powers as a beholder (minus the central eye), the party took it down before it had its second action.

Note: Lindo’s amazing rolls ended the moment combat started.

But it did cost the party. Artemis did 63 points of damage to it with a Sudden Empowered Orb of Cold on the first round, making him a huge target. So it cost him all of his d20 re-rolls and his only d6 roll to survive the Disintegrate, Flesh to Stone, and Finger of Death eye rays. (This is why I gave them the d20 re-rolls – it’s hard to balance an encounter for 7 PC’s.)

Next they checked out the door. Trebor found no trap, but there was one. When Zelast or Sorra opened the door they had to save against a Phantasmal Killer, they did.

Inside the room they found a large plush bed with some naughty things on it (like handcuffs), a large mirror, a dresser, and a large pentagram on the floor.

They avoided the pentagram and Sorra checked out the bed. The bed was a mimic with some rogue levels, and hit her for about 20 points of damage. That was all it did because it was summarily slaughtered by the party.

They did find a chest of treasure hidden in the wall behind the mirror. Other than a Rod of Wonder and a gold and emerald necklace (which Lindo knew to be the ceremonial necklace to be worn by whoever is mayor), there wasn’t all that much of interest in the room other than a book found by Trebor. It was pretty much pictures of the mayor’s wife with bat wings performing acts best not described here (but you can find it just about everywhere else on the net if you look hard enough).

Trebor felt the book trying to draw him in, but he was able to close the book in time. Though when checked with a Detect Magic spell, the book exuded no magical aura. Trebor held onto it anyway.

Next the party decided to sneak into the mayor’s mansion to get some more information. As usual, things didn’t quite go their way.

The mansion was in lockdown, so Ari, Trebor, and Lindo invisibly climbed in through a window on the second floor. Had Ari not rolled a 6 for her move silently check they might have something more. But instead they heard a woman casting a Teleport spell, and entered the room.

The smell of brimstone was in the air of the mayor’s bedroom, and they found the mayor alone in his bead. He was ashen white and dead with a very recently slit open throat.

They all knew that if they were found they’d be blamed so Ari cast Teleport and sent the three of them to the town’s fountain.

All this happened while the rest of the group was watching the mansion from a distance. All they saw was about 30 minutes after half their group entered the house, all hell broke loose in the mansion when the guards found the mayor.

Once the two halves of the group got back together, they went to their rooms and tried to be inconspicuous.

They carry the mayor’s necklace, no one knew where they were during the time the mayor was killed, and the mayor’s wife is missing. Things don’t look good for the party in the near future.

Nothing happened on that little story arc as of yet, but another part of the story occurred.

The weak first wave attacked the city shortly after 4pm the next day.

First the party saw two large tentacles rise up out of the water past the harbor. The tentacles moved around and light shimmered around them as they cast a spell, then the weather darkened as storm clouds gathered.

Then the alarms were raised that the monstrous army had returned.

By the time the party made it to the nearest wall the horde was less than 300 away from the city wall and the city guard stood ready with spear and crossbows.

The horde consisted of orcs (x24), ettins (x4), ogres (x8), hill giants (x4), and athaches (x4), all with class levels. They charged the city wall.

We only dealt with a fraction of the overall combat itself. On the party’s side was themselves, 10 city guards (level 4 warriors), and a sergeant (level 6 fighter).

It is safe to assume that where the party wasn’t there were knights, monks, and city guards.

The party started off strong and stayed there.

The horde had to clear nearly 200’ of distance, which was hindered much when Ari placed Solid Fog spell in their path. This happened while the guards, Zelast, Lindo, Sorra, and Trebor filled the air with arrows and bolts (Trebor usually did more damage than the rest combined). And of course Artemis nuked any mass of creatures he could.

By the time the horde made it to the wall, they were down by a third to a half of their original numbers.

When the horde made it to the walls the orcs began climbing while the huge and large creatures attacked the guards and the party. Most of the guards didn’t last too long in that mess.

Sorra, Zelast, and Lindo were able to do much more damage in melee than through ranged attacks. Artemis was much more effect at handing out the damage with all of the horde getting bunched up at the wall. Ari was flying invisibly (greater) and otherwise control the combat with her spells.

By the time they realized how much damage that Artemis was doing, it was too late. Only one attach escaped, and even then only barely.

The combat was won in this area, so the party ran to aid where they could.

And that is where we stopped for the evening.

Sean's Campaign - Session #18

Sorry for being late, so I guess I’ll jump right into the game itself.

No Justin for the third week in a row, so Trebor was still poofed out.

I still haven’t thought of a good honorary title for Artemis. The best I’ve heard so far is Provost of the War College of Maratheelia, but I’m kind of “eh” on that title. Provost is not a title for a warmage, even if for an effeminate little elf.

I also had to prep for two different adventures because the party had two options for directions. They could stay in the northern lands and figure out what to do there, or they could head to Lataan (birthplace of Lindo and Caspar) to find a guide, but instead find some adventure.

I could have forced them down one path, but I’d rather railroad on when I have to.

We last left the party as they neared the pass in the mountains but smelled the smoke of a large fire in the air.

They decided to check out the source of the smoke, hoping maybe to find a guide if they’re lucky.

Instead they found devastated forest. A large fire had recently burned down a large swath of land (about half a hexagon on the map).

The party searched for any clues as to the source, and found none. They did meet a group of green-skinned giants that looked a lot like elves, only with very short tempers.

The giants asked the party if they started the fire, and the party tried to get help from the giants. The giants rudely told the party to scram. Reluctantly, the party gave up and returned to the pass to head to Lataan.

The pass’s occupants had only been cleared out a couple of weeks ago, but already some denizens of the mountains were returning. In this particular case, mountain trolls.

The party stumbled across a pair of them looking around one of the above ground sections of the pass. The trolls thought “food!” while the party thought “XP!”

These trolls were tough too.

In the first few rounds of combat the party found out how much of a wallop these trolls can hand out when Sorra was hit twice with a couple of swings from its greatclub for over 80 damage. This prompted Ysilia to use a Sudden Maximized, Sudden Empowered Cure Critical Wounds that was converted to a ray to heal Sorra from 20 feet away. She rolled a natural two and Sorra has a ridiculously high touch AC of 19. So Ysilia used one of her 1d20 re-rolls, which didn’t do any better. Then Aaron bribed the DM with Gummi Savers. I rolled another natural two.

The next round Sorra was squished down to -20 hit points. Ysilia then risked attacks of opportunity and was able to cast the group’s favorite raise dead class spell, Revivify. Sorra was then placed at one hit point.

That was the highlight of the combat though. The party got serious about the trolls after that and took them down. It also helped that I couldn’t roll well either.

While the partying was doing their post-combat looting and healing up, a third mountain troll went crazy at the sight of his dead and looted brothers and attacked the party. Although he was able to get some level of surprise on the party, my poor rolls guaranteed no real danger this combat.

Besides the trolls the party found nothing new of interest in the pass.

A few days later they were on the road to Lataan and a few days after that they found some of their good old friends from long ago.

Four huge fiendish ankhegs burst from the ground from the rear and a side of the party.

Once again, horses bought the party a round or so of near-safety as the ankhegs were going for food. But since the horses were summoned via the Regal Procession spell, the ankhegs had to find a different source of food.

The party, being of much higher level than last time (level 10 this time, level 6 last time I think), was able to withstand many of the ankhegs grapples and a Solid Fog spell helped keep two of the ankhegs at bay.

One particular ankheg had only 3 hit points remaining when it successfully grabbed Zelast and went underground with him (he used a d20 re-roll to prevent it, but failed). During Zelast’s next action he grabbed his father’s masterwork silver dagger, swift cast Magic Weapon on it, and killed the ankheg from the inside.

But the ankheg had already retreated below ground. By the time Zelast had killed the ankheg, its head was 5’ beneath the surface.

I gave Brian a 50/50 chance that he might be able to find a way up above ground, but if the rolled failed the path the ankheg had dug had collapsed behind it, leaving nothing but loose soil and Zelast to die of asphyxiation.

He failed the roll. He probably would have used a reroll, but I goofed and had him use percentile roll instead of a d20 roll. Had he mentioned something about it I probably would have let him. It’s too late now though.

After the other ankhegs were finished off, the party began digging to get Zelast. Eventually they found him, raised him, and traveled on.

Their next obstacle was a large barricade of boulders, planks, and debris that blocked the road.

When Artemis started flying up to get a look, a small rain of arrows came from behind the barricade. So he turned invisible and scouted from a better angle.

Long story short, 8 ogres and a dozen orc barbarians (level 1) had set up that barricade then the party came along. When the party returned fire, it was brutal. A Fireball fried 5 of the ogres and the orcs were baked by a Wall of Fire from behind and in front.

Any clues as to why the ogres and orcs were there were probably roasted by those walls, but there were definitely no survivors.

The party moved on until and in a couple of days they made it to the port city of Lataan, which was at that time being attacked by orcs, giants, and sea monsters.

The attack was over though as the creatures began retreating moments later thanks to the city being a center of training for knights and monks of the realm.

The party head to the gates to enter the city, but were told they could not enter at that time. The city was on high paranoid alert and would not let anyone enter until morning. The party persisted so a couple of arrows in the ground in front of the party drove the point home.

But Dale isn’t one to take “no” for an answer, so Ari cast Protection from Arrows on Artemis and he went back to talk some more to the trigger happy guards.

Warning shots did nothing, so they started shooting at him. He eventually turned invisible and flew away when hails of arrows were coming at him.

The next morning a troupe of knights came out to see the party directly. First they took Artemis away, potentially to jail.
(Artemis spent the entire day doing some work to replace the arrows he “wasted” the previous night.)

The rest of the party was escorted into town and otherwise were left alone.

First the informed Caspar’s mother of his death over a year ago (and they weren’t very sensitive about it either).

Then they went about getting information in their own ways.

They heard various rumors and facts; the mayor of the town had remarried, the horde of orcs and giants were landing their boats a few days away and were on their way, large wall-crushing constructs were among the horde, the horde was being led by someone named General Takral a fallen knight who has tried before to take the city, monsters with large tentacles destroyed nearly the entire fleet the night of the attack, and so on.

At one point a huge red dragon flew over Lataan and announced to the city that if it wanted his protection, the city should send representatives to the “Circle of Death” just north of the city, and to bring money.

Sean's Campaign - Session #17

I want to rant about something, but there isn’t much I can put on here without pretty much shattering the no religion/no politics self-imposed rule, or repeating myself.

So I’ll go with something relatively minor; being a jerk is not always a bad thing.

I can’t find the source now, but a couple weeks ago I read that Harvard’s Business School is having an issue with their students; they’re too nice and are too willing to compromise and that is not a good thing for business.

Think about that for a minute; being nice is not always a good quality for a business. Hell, in my opinion, being nice all the time is a bad thing period.

I had that opinion for a long time but had never really cohesively thought about it. I have had my share of worthless bosses whose primary mode of motivation was yelling and the rare overly nice ones that would give you a large bit of freedom and both had about the same level of effectiveness. The best bosses were the ones that were nice until being nice wasn’t offering the right answer to the solution.

My father-in-law brought the whole ideal to cohesion with a simple sentence, “Every good company needs one jerk.” Put another way, the person in charge needs to recognize that there is a time to say “no” and a time to say “get to work”.

I believe that on some level, the same thing works for gaming groups, and a lot of other things in life a well.

I am the jerk of our group. I have been a part of way too many groups that simply fell apart by letting the wrong person into the group or by letting everyone have a chance to run their own campaign (none run longer than 2 weeks). Because of that, I’m a bit quick to say “no” to a lot of things.

Now being the jerk is something that I’m a bit overqualified for. But it is a job that has to be done. In a weird way, me being the jerk allows others in the group to relax because they know that I will say something if it needs to be said. I can think of a few examples but it is best I not list those (even if I’d like to on occasion).

On the other hand, I can think of a lot of times where being too forgiving of others or being too willing to be friendly with people has caused problems, sometimes leading to the collapse of a group.

It’s amazing how fast a group can collapse once you’ve invited someone into your group that can ruin the fun for just one person even.

What you’ve done is replaced a good player with a bad one.

If you’re group was going great until the “new guy” showed up, stand up and speak out. Be a jerk if you have to.

Just be careful about it, otherwise the new guy will have replaced you.

My only regret to the above semi-rant is that there are going to be nutbar gamers out there who now think it’s a good think to be a jerk 24/7. Refer to my previous post a few months back about bad gamers. If you qualify for that, do not try to be a jerk.

But anyway, let’s move on to the session’s synopsis.

No Justin or Joy this week. Joy had a going away party for someone at work, so she chose booze over D&D. Justin was a no show, so who knows what’s going on there.

Dale played Ari and we poofed out Trebor as his character sheet hasn’t been updated for awhile now.

I retroactively gave Artemis an honorary title from Maratheelia’s military for his work as mentioned in the previous session. At game time I still hadn’t decided what that title exactly was, and I still can’t think of a suitable title.

If you’d like to offer help for that, feel free to leave a message in the comments part here or send me an e-mail. I’d appreciate it.

The group lost their only scout and that means they are stuck on the path of the pass. And that means they have to go through the DM’s set up encounters whether they like it or not. Railroading, no it’s not. It’s the result of their choices in the classes they took.

First up on their encounters was a simple black pudding, lying still in a chamber. Lindo investigated and then ran away when it attacked him and a sword spider jumped and attacked from its hiding place.

The party finished off those things without issue, but when the balhannoth joined in, that worried the party a bit. It’s a creature from the nearly worthless Monster Manual IV. It has a nice long reach with its bite and tentacles and if it grabs you, your spells are suppressed. Other than the worry and some nice damage from the thing, the party was able to deal with it and move on.

Next on the path was a group of 4 normal umber hulks and one huge umber hulk bursting from the walls. They surrounded the party and attacked. Everyone in the party was easily covered to exploit many attacks of opportunity.

The umber hulks’ confusion ability only worked on Ari, which caused her to run away and talk multiple attacks.

But it didn’t last long. Ari’s fleeing actually helped and when she was given a second chance at a saving throw (from Sorra), she made it. This put her in a better position to cast spells from. The party’s teamwork served them quite well and they took down all of the hulks in just a few more rounds.

The final encounter on the path to frozen north was a young adult red dragon.

This fellow had found a nice spot for his lair and set it up to his liking. He even made a few of those skulls on a spear warning signs just so people would know to stay away.

Those obviously didn’t work.

The party knew something was inside, and knew it was a warm kind of creature, so they cast their preparative spells – including the anti-fire damage spells.

That’s ok; he knew they were there so he prepped up as well. He only had access to first and second level spells, but he put them to good use and upped his armor class to 34.

He toyed with the party for awhile with generic chatting. Then the party had to go and do something rude and cast a spell while chatting.

The party scattered out a bit (invisibly) while he clung to the walls (invisibly), far above the party’s melee weapons but still within reach of his bite.

When Zelast cast See Invisible the fun began, and the dragon started with Zelast.

As much as I’d love to say this dragon took down one of the party, I can’t. He did a good job of corralling the group into the center of his lair, but the lack of the proper feats prevented him from exploiting his terrain well enough. I rolled “1” three times for his breath weapon delay (the party was standing nicely within range of it) and he nearly “sandpapered” away their Protection from Fire spells but the poor dragon couldn’t withstand multiple empowered Orb of Ice spells from Artemis.

The party of course looted his hoard. Yeah, Sorra was poisoned for 15 points of strength, but it wasn’t that interesting thanks to Ysilia and her healing.

After that the party finally made it the frozen north. Well, it was really late August, so it wasn’t quite frozen where the party was. But when kept heading north they found plenty of frozen places.

They couldn’t travel the wide open frozen lands because they had no one with the survival skill, so they stayed along the coastlines. That worked for a few days until even the coast became too treacherous to follow.

They didn’t like the idea of teleporting back to Maratheelia, so they went the only other option; backtracking through the pass and finding a suitable guide in Lataan (birthplace of Lindo and Caspar).

They began their trek back, killed a slug the size of a house, and had nearly made it back to the pass when they smelled fire burning coming from the west.

And that is when we stopped.

It was an action and traveling night without much role-playing.

Next week I will have to prepare for a lot as there are many paths the party can take from here.