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very controversial opinion here, but sometimes customer service workers are the problem 😶

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Season One: Puzzles, Villains, and Poor, Poor Alber (and also Jarvilli)

What do you mean you haven’t read the plot so far? I used gifs and everything.

Spoiler alert; I’m writing this like 92% because I want to show off my brilliance as a DM and 8% because Dots told me she wanted to know what our plot was like so this is heavily edited and in no real coherent order. So. Good luck.

The Puzzle

Really the only relevant bit here is those weird pieces they kept picking up at each stop on the map. As it turns out  each piece was actually one of a set of tangrams. 

Everyone they’ve met with so far (including the dwarf, Alber, poor guy - more on him later) has been dropping hints that their Arch Nemesis the Evil Planner of this Weird Mind Game Thing is nuts. And very evil. So they roll up to his house and surprise surprise, not only is it a gloomy-ass day and he apparently lives in a mini castle, but he’s got a cool tower and oh yeah the whole thing is built on an ancient burial ground. 

So they scope out the tower first like any rational human being would, and find among other things an interesting scrap of paper.

Thus bolstered by the act of surrender, the flow of battle at last ebbed. Having kept tabs on the seashore it was no surprise to hear that the low tide had laid bare the bodies of the slain, now made rich and stinking by the bright sun.  

Weird, right? But easily forgettable. 

They move on and start scoping out the house/castle. They break in the back, snoop into the first room, and there’s Evil Villain’s mother snoozing in a chair. They try to talk to her, villain himself shows up.

Now Vodal was an interesting one for me. Bottom line is he sold his soul to a deity in return for “eternal life” via vampirism (I share this only because they figured it out already) and enough power to keep around some minions, including the dead, possessed body of his mother, who was killed in a war on those very grounds about 700 years ago. 

Mirasha got to wrestle with the concept of what it means to be an orc, as Vodal’s conversation at her was about reclaiming the glory days of the orcs (he’s an orc himself). 

Eirlys got faced with the concept of having someone you could count on to always be there for you - especially since they’re not gonna die of old age. 

It game them both something to chew on but I had to laugh when Eirlys eventually decided to sacred flame him ;D 

So they start fucking him up, mom gets involved, they end up chopping off a good chunk of his health and he books it for his lair. They barricade mom in the parlor and are faced with the grand puzzle of the hallway.

Remember those tangram pieces they’d been getting for 13 sessions? Oh yeah.

Turns out under the hall rug was a set of floor tiles that their gold pieces just so happened to fit in. And that scrap of paper from the tower? Each bolded word was an anagram for a particular animal on the floor; solve them in exactly the right order and the tiles cascaded down into a staircase shape, letting them into the tunnel under the house. How long they took on it determined how much health Vodal got to recoup in the process.

It’s simple on the surface and didn’t go exactly to plan, but I still like the concept of this puzzle. Next time I need more hints and less handholding though, that was a mistake on my part as DM. Live and learn!

Vodal

I’m also pretty happy with Vodal. I homebrewed him by combining the orc spellcaster with a toned down vampire and got this weird mash of brute force and possession/summoning combat. His focus for the second part of the encounter was pretty simple; get to the alter at the back of his lair and start summoning. He had to preform 5 rounds of successful attempts to request help from his deity...but without chickening out. (Wisdom saves abounded). 

I couldn’t roll for shit and he made four of them in quick succession and then failed something like four turns in a row. It added a certain fateful beauty to the encounter however as they just managed to defeat his summoned minions and get up to wail on him as he completed his last attempt. Some sort of horrible hybrid between gorilla and human the size of an 18 wheeler was starting to push its way between the planes, sporting the same blazing eyes everyone posessed by Vodal had. My players got the last swing in just in time and watched as the portal collapsed but not before Valkek (they found his name later on a number of spellbooks upstairs) got a good look at them. Hopefully he’s stuck to his plane for the foreseeable future, but he did manage to get out I  W I L L  R E M E M B E R so maybe they didn’t get off scott free ;D

The Aftermath

Eirlys picked up a cool new bow to finally have a shot at hitting things. Maybe. Mirasha confirmed Vodal had been a vampire. The house collapsed into a giant sinkhole without Vodal’s magic. All in a day’s work. 

They decided to swing back and check on the two NPCs they’d met along the way. Alber was first - they’d found him bound to a pond inhabited by a baby krakenling a couple session earlier. As it turns out, freed from Vodal’s control he’d finally been allowed to pass on and join his long-dead wife in the afterlife. They gave him a proper burial and it was very moving, props to my players. 

Then it was back to Jarvilli’s house for tea and axe shenanigans. 

Good shit. 

Next Up

Well that wraps up a solid story arc. We made a ton of mistakes (myself most of all) but I learned a lot, built some solid plot hooks for the future and made almost as many good choices as bad. 

We’re heading into Neverwinter next, to visit Stephanie at the Lady Finger Inn and I can’t wait.

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i have so much i want to share and i cAN’T BECAUSE THIS BLOG IS ALSO OWNED BY MY PLAYERS

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You know it’s been a good battle when...

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Jesus Chr--errr--Gruumsh above.

-Mirasha blaspheming, every time.

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Discussing the newly-acquired bag of holding's contents

Kat: We know some of what's in it. Like...a hammer...and...

Alex: Shit. I wrote that down somewhere because I knew it was going to be relevant and I can't find it...

KH: I also wrote it down... uh, candles, rope, waterskin, and a hammer.

Kat: You're a blessing.

Alex: She's a packrat.

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Streaming

Did we mention that we’ve started streaming our sessions? ;D

https://www.twitch.tv/dungeonsnderp

Might make it slightly easier to keep up with the plot. Or make it worse. Who knows. 

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The team! Clockwise from top: Alex (GM), KH (Eirlys), Kat (Mirasha) (me).

Super pleased with how these came out! Pretty representative. Yes Alex's screens have timed out, yes KH's pikachu beanie exists, and yes I exist to yell in a snowleopard onesie. WHAT, IT'S LATE FOR ME.

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ReBrandeninginging

We kept accidentally calling it Critical Role so we negotiated a new title. 

Introducing.... Dungeons and Derp! 8D

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I can’t wait for Friday

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Session 9

I don’t even have a funny quote from this session, it just went really well and was a super satisfying bit of plot. 

I’m not saying there wasn’t a shitton of fuckery and laughter like usual, but I got a kick out of letting them get a glimpse of the bad guy, slapping Eirlys upside the head as the local deity, AND I got to fight as bear twins who each took half of the other’s damage when injured. What’s not to love?

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But do you lick the poop?

Possibly the best worst time for KH’s power to go out at.

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Just grope it then, if you're that much of a pussy.

-Mirasha, on what Eirlys should do with the stone structure mostly submerged in seawater, after being told that trying to look underwater would sting the half-elf's eyes.

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And when we say "Mirasha did put it on though reluctantly", we mean "Mirasha flung it at Eirlys's face, stared at her in horror for a while, then stuffed it down the front of her breastplate where her pet mouse Snack made a nest out of it. Then she used it as a towel after swimming."

The Capening

Session 8:  This had been in planning for days as Alex and kh were waiting ever so patiently for the right moment to put the capening into action.

It was a rude awakening for Mirasha as a pair of hands hovered over her throat only to find out it was Eirlys attempting to and failing to sneak a cape onto the half-orc’s shoulders as she slept. After asking for an explanation and some coaxing, “Capes are cool!” Mirasha did put it on though reluctantly. Some Backstory: Mirasha and Eirlys happened upon a piece of drapery that concealed the metal piece while in the Maleah Tower. Unbeknownst to Mirasha(and Kat), Eirlys made sure to collect this piece of cloth as it turned out to be Mirasha’s random trinket! The irony. Go Team Cape!

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Originally I was going for more bored-silly lumberjack and less metro-sexual forest druid.

OOC conversation about the direction a new NPC had taken

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The Capening

Session 8:  This had been in planning for days as Alex and kh were waiting ever so patiently for the right moment to put the capening into action.

It was a rude awakening for Mirasha as a pair of hands hovered over her throat only to find out it was Eirlys attempting to and failing to sneak a cape onto the half-orc’s shoulders as she slept. After asking for an explanation and some coaxing, “Capes are cool!” Mirasha did put it on though reluctantly. Some Backstory: Mirasha and Eirlys happened upon a piece of drapery that concealed the metal piece while in the Maleah Tower. Unbeknownst to Mirasha(and Kat), Eirlys made sure to collect this piece of cloth as it turned out to be Mirasha’s random trinket! The irony. Go Team Cape!

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Just a little preview of what I've received XP for for Mirasha so far.

What do you mean it's not specific enough