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springvaletales · 15 days ago

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((Session 78 is ready!))

We return to the Braincell Gang (affectionate) sitting around the ouija board in the creepy necromancer’s keep’s dungeon mere seconds after the ghost “Vee”/Vekrom revealed his visible (towering, ominous, threatening by appearance alone) shadow form (humanoid edition).

After a few more questions and some history checks, Sir Carl asked if Vekrom knew about the other ghost that was rumored to be haunting the Deadlands - one known to chase travelers who risked trying to cross the barren landscape and avoid the trouble of a proper border crossing between Kendara and Salance).

The answer was yes, but also that there was no other ghost; Vekrom was still affected in death by the arcane corruption that drove him mad in life, and when he grew too upset or angry, he transformed into a spikier, more hostile form that he called ‘the Emperor’.

Vekrom tries very hard to NOT transform into the Emperor, as he feels a massive amount of guilt, shame, and regret for those 10k years.

Bagelby: “So Vee…what can you tell us about your….darker self? Your other half?” Vekrom: "Only bad things."

Vekrom - headcanoned (on the blog that only Atlas reads and maybe not even there I don’t know if I ever posted that one) lover of fusion food - describes his memories and their clarity as “soup days” and the blending of soups.

Good days with clear memories: One soup day.

Bad days with foggy memories: Two soup day.

Horrible days with no memories: Three soup day.

Bagelby: “I think I’m putting the soup together here.”

Mentioning Velenna’s name causes a visible freezing to Vekrom’s otherwise always-moving shadow form, and while he tries to play it off, the party picks up on it bc they never miss a chance to harass my NPCs (affectionate).

Oh yeah lore drop Velenna is the one who basically raised Vekrom from wyrmhood to adulthood and while he never called her ‘mother’ out loud that’s really what she was to him and he KNOWS she’s disappointed in him.

Bagelby: “VelennaVelennaVelennaVelennaVelennaVelennaV-” Vekrom, increasingly distraught: “No. Stop that. Stop it. Stop. Stop. No. No. No. No-”

Bagelby’s harassment-via-mother aside The more the group talks with Vekrom’s ghost, the more he relaxes and his real personality comes out.

He has unmedicated ADHD (and a little bit of timey-wimey memory stuff going on).

Trains may or may not exist in this setting (and if they DO exist they may or may not exist at this exact moment in time) all because I had Vekrom use the phrase “train of thought” but then realized that wouldn’t exist if TRAINS didn’t exist and didn’t stop using the Vekrom voice while thinking out loud so now Vekrom knows-but-doesn’t-know about trains and if they exist.

At some point in between questions, Bagelby got distracted and wondered if he could steal a piece of Space. Not, like, the starry kind of space. Just Space.

I wanted to see how he would describe it, so I let him roll for it, and while it wasn't a crit, it was juuuust high enough that I allowed it.

Bagelby now has a keyhole-sized piece of condensed Space-Time that he can just put into the slime pocket now. Looking through it shows you a view of the other dungeon, where Michael was found.

Sir Carl’s Player, above the board: “Hey has Bagelby ever explained that he’s stealing Concepts when he does his weird god magic?” Bagelby’s Player, cheerfully: “No!”

When the party saw how excited Vekrom was to hear about his grandchildren, they offered to bring them down to see him (Vashael and Maji are still sleeping in the camp above).

Vekrom immediately panicked and went as far as physically pulling Thiori back down the ladder to stop him from waking the prince and princess.

Vekrom (correctly) assumed that neither Maji nor Vashael would have been happy to see him - they only know Vekrom as an evil Emperor, after all - and asked the party to just…tell him about his grandkids instead.

His grandkids are, according to Thiori:

Kemat: Smart but edgy. Has something to prove but is the only one who doesn’t realize who doesn’t realize he’s already proved everything he’d ever need to.

Vashael: Kind of a dumbass but means well. Super reliable guy (when you need a meat shield). Not the smartest but in an endearing way.

Vekrom, nodding: “Ah, he takes after my son-in-law, then.” (I’d say this is Manon-Val hate but that’s painfully accurate)

Maji: Very self-assured and practically perfect in every way. [respectful silence]

Sir Carl: “They’re all very good people.”

Bagelby convinced Vekrom to explain what he’d meant when he’d said (earlier in conversation) that Chaydziel had “used his family against him” (lore below):

Ten thousand years ago, Vekrom had fallen in love with a woman. He could no longer remember her name. He could no longer remember her face. But he remembered the sound of her voice and the ‘tsk’ing sound she’d made while bandaging his hand after he’d tried to lean alluringly against the wall in her forge, missed, and put his hand right in the embers instead.

He was a dragon, so he wasn’t actually hurt, but he liked the attention and didn’t want to lose it.

Vekrom spent forty years courting this woman, asking her to marry him every day. She always said she would when he could “give her the world”, so he gave her a bigger, better forge. He gave her a mansion, sprawling gardens, beautiful mountain overlooks and shaded villas, but she never said yes.

Until one day, while walking her to a picnic he’d set up (in an ivy-covered gazebo in the corner of a covered garden so that the rainy weather wouldn’t spoil it), Vekrom tripped and fell down a hill.

He rolled head over heels all the way to the bottom, stood up completely unscathed, then slipped in the mud and twisted his ankle.

Vekrom: “She wouldn’t marry a king….but she would marry an idiot~”

I made myself cry trying to tell the story as Vekrom hang on I need a minute here

Dawn was starting to break by now and the ash storm had completely dissipated, so Vekrom herded the Braincell Gang back up the ladder to the keep proper and once again reminded them to not mention him to his grandchildren please and thank you.

Thiori, Bagelby and Sir Carl returned to the party camp with the sound of the trapdoor closing behind them, and settled down to try and get a little sleep juuuuust in time for the rest of the camp to wake up.

#Quarantine D&D

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springvaletales · 16 days ago

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((Session 77 time!!))

Despite the fact that I’ve had three weeks to prepare for this one I have been too overwhelmed by the Endless Parade of Existential Dread and Horrors that is the current American political sphere and have done very little to prepare.

I have an in-universe ouija board and an ancient half-lost-to-time language whipped up an hour and a half before session start time. Let’s fuck with some ghosts.

We last left the party hiding out in the ruins of the Ashen Keep, hiding in one of Michael’s pre-marked safe hiding places to wait out an ash storm with NPCs Prince Vashael and Princess Maji. Michael is still unconscious and NPCs Whitescale Sr. and Jr. hopefully found shelter from the storm after chasing down the bandits (and pony!) that fled two sessions prior.

Thiori had just spotted a shadowy figure watching the party through a hole in a crumbling wall to another room, and I believe was the only one who had noticed it.

Goal for the night: Mess with ghosts. Try not to get haunted. Maybe get lore.

A few hours have passed since the party settled down to wait out the storm and everyone is asleep except for Thiori, Bagelby, and Sir Carl.

Without telling anyone else his thought process, Thiori just walked away from camp and crawled through the hole in the wall (which he barely fit through btw).

Bagelby and Sir Carl are the only two still awake (also Ena and Asahi’s players had IRL things to do/Curd’s player’s sports team was getting farther in a tournament than they anticipated so the Braincell Gang were the only players available and I didn’t want to disappoint them by postponing more than we had already) so they followed Thiori into the other room out of sheer curiosity.

The ash storm outside has died down from dangerous to just inconvenient, so the fact that this room is missing one of its outer walls isn’t a major problem.

There’s windblown ash all over the floor of this room, but that just makes the trapdoor that’s sitting propped open in the far corner all the more obvious.

Sir Carl notices them first, but all three of them roll decently good perception checks, so the ‘safety sheep’ carved into a brick on the camp side of the hole in the wall and on the edge of the trapdoor’s frame do not go unnoticed (yay!)

Bagelby brings up the idea that the ‘safety sheep’ they’ve been following thus far may be forged.

Sir Carl points out that the trapdoor couldn’t have been open during the ash storm, as there’s no ash at the bottom of the short drop or on the rungs of the old ladder leading down to the bottom. Someone - or something - had to have opened the hatch after the storm calmed down.

Sir Carl: “Does anyone feel like we’re being lured somewhere?” Bagelby: “Yeah but I’m not against it.”

The Braincell Gang hasn’t actually taken any serious damage from any of my bosses yet bc I’m terrible at Being Mean so they feel pretty confident that they can handle anything that might be trying to lure them into the basement and jump down the hatch without waking the rest of the party).

At the bottom of the drop, they find another dungeon like the one they found Michael in, though this one has fewer cells and most of the cell doors have deteriorated away into piles of rust and crumbling chunks of iron.

There is also a strange series of symbols akin to an ouija board carved into the dusty flagstones that cover the floor, although the letters that are marked around the board are from a language that none of the group recognizes.

Luckily, someone else has carved letters of modern common above the ones on the board to make it legible for them.

Surprisingly no, Michael had nothing to do with this. Directly. The ‘safety sheep’ were, in fact, forged.

Bagelby finds a wooden planchette on the ground nearby and picks it up to find it has a very unusual wood grain.

The crochet hook Wand of Entangling Bagelby stole back in session has the same wood grain as the planchette found beside the board. This burst of wisdom is the only use this honestly would be pretty combat breaking if he actually used it magical item has gotten since he stole it.

Logically, the Braincell Gang sits down and tries to summon a ghost with this creepy ancient ouija board carved into the floor of a hidden dungeon in a crumbling keep in the Deadlands.

Which is great, because that was the entire point of this (and the next) session.

Almost immediately, the party gets a response from something that can move the planchette with relative ease - and without input from the party, as a regular ouija board would need.

The party asks many questions, mostly pertaining to things they already know are associated with the Ashen Keep, such as: Michael, Senn-Dugaal, the Sunfell cult, etc.

The spirit admits to knowing Michael in some way, but claims that Michael doesn’t know them. They they ask questions of their own, including (among other things) “Did he die again?” (yes), “Who rules the empire now?”, and “What does the palantir taste like?” (in response to Bagelby rambling about the party’s history with the Sunfell cult and mentioning that he had first met The Shadowed One by licking said palantir and accidentally connecting through it).

Bagelby, suddenly figuring it out: “Did you LEAD the empire?” The spirit, sadly: “Yes. :c”

There were many questions asked and I wanted to be creepy but only had Discord text chat to do it so I didn’t write down the questions while I was typing out the answers letter by letter BUT I did have a record of the answers by the end of session so here they are:

Ouija carving messages:

HELLO

PLEASURE

V-E-E

CAREFULLY

DON’T WANT TO SCARE YOU

NOT MANY VISITORS HERE

YES/NO/YES

STUCK

SERVING PENANCE

WHO RULES THE EMPIRE'S HEARTLAND?

TOO LATE

YES/NO/YES

GOOD

I WISH I HAD BEEN

YES

YOU KNOW WHO I AM DON’T YOU

WHAT IS LEFT OF ME

I WOULD RECIPROCATE IF I COULD

HISTORY WOULD SEE ME FORGOTTEN

YES/NO

YES

SICKNESS/ARCANE

YES/NO

YES

NOT MINE

YES

CHAYDZIEL

YOU HAVE MET HIM

SENN-DUGAAL

I KNEW HIM

NO/NO/NO

HE LEADS FROM THE SHADOWS

WAS IT SALTY

I ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW

YOU WILL MEET HIM AGAIN

YOU MEDDLE WITH HIS PLANS

GOOD

YES

SUNFELL

YES

BUT AFTER

I FELL HERE

SHE IS NICER THAN THAT

USUALLY

YES

THE MONSTER

NO/NO/NO

DANGEROUS

IS THIS TOO SLOW

I AM STRONG

DO NOT WANT TO FRIGHTEN YOU

By the end of the session, the party had convinced the spirit to reveal itself visually to them and that they wouldn’t run away if he did so…so he did so.

The ghost of King Vekrom, fully realized shadow person: “Hello~”

#Quarantine D&D

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springvaletales · 17 days ago

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((Session 76 is here!!))

We’re back and we should have everyone this week, so it’s time to get ready for the lore dump!!

Still disguised as Richard the Cultist, Bagelby threw his hands in the air and shouted “we surrender!” as two dragons, three Prism Paladins, and Thiori surrounded them.

The actual Richard the Cultist is still struggling his way through a number of crises and doesn’t have the brain power to argue.

Ena’s Player: “Aww, only one crisis?” Me: “He can only handle one at a time, the poor guy!” Ena’s Player: “Pfft. Rookie numbers…”

In the distance, Forest the Pony is still on the run, visible only by the cloud of ash it’s kicking up as it leads the two other hapless cultists on a merry run.

It took a few nudges to remind the party that poor Michael was still trapped in the box in the wagon.

Vashael is setting a pattern of storing his brain cells in the boyfriend, as he failed his roll to break the lock on the crate and instead tried to pry it open veeeeery carefully with his teeth. When will I learn not to trust his rolls to the dice.

Maji is just sitting back and watching her brother struggle bc while they are dragons and royalty they are siblings first and she’s going to watch her brother suffer a little now that the danger has passed.

Worried that Vashael was going to accidentally hurt Michael by using his teeth, Thiori tried to shove him (really just his head) aside to smash the lock with his crab claws.

Thiori also rolled too low, and a shoving match began between Bloodhunter and dragon akin to two large but affectionately stupid horses both trying to be the first one through a small fence gate.

As this happened, Sir Carl passed a perception check to notice two figures falling from the sky; a very grumpy Asahi and a motion-sick Ena.

Asahi was reaming out the party before her feet even touched the ground for getting into trouble when she ‘only left them alone fOR FIVE MINUTES-’.

Whitescale silently signaled to Sir Carl that he and his son were going to pursue the two fleeing cultists before leaving, unnoticed by the rest of the party bc I need to separate the NPCs for some story reasons.

Thiori then tried to get Bagelby to break character and open the lock for them, but Bagelby is determined to hold on to his character of “Greg I-Guess” and it took SEVERAL tries.

When he was convinced to open the crate as “Greg I-Guess”, Bagelby first tried to get Richard the Cultist to open the crate, but Richard doesn’t have the key - only Jerrod had the key, and he was one of the two cultists who ran off to try and catch the pony when it spooked.

With one of his usual plan-breaking rolls, though, Bagelby was able to pick the lock on the chest AND untie Michael’s bound wrists (the knot wasn’t that good) before Vashael shoved him aside to get to his boyfriend.

Ena: “Damn, boy, you get kidnapped a LOT. I’m starting to think you have a kink~” Michael: “BITCH stfu you know damn well the gods themselves are against me.” Ena: “Yeah…because you don’t have a safeword for your weird kinks.”

Ah, siblings. XD

As Michael is trying (and failing) to flail his way out of the crate, limbs asleep and trading antagonistically-friendly barbs with Ena, Thiori starts to hear a weird…scratching noise.

Asahi hears it too, after Thiori remarks on it.

Being the party’s best tracker (and having an…unfortunate experience with knowing what bones sound like when scraped), Thiori narrowed down the sound to a dune of ash and sand behind the dragons - which he promptly stabbed with the butt of his glaive.

It hit something solid in the ash dune, and that something then grabbed Thiori’s glaive.

Senn-Dugaal (a 12ft tall Dragonborn skeleton missing the lower jaw animated by ancient magic and held together by green lightning) was lying in wait beneath an ash dune and arose from it like the zombie he is, unaffected by the ash and sand spilling out of his armor and skull.

Thiori, now forced to look up: “It’s rude to eavesdrop.” Senn-Dugaal, now forced to look down: “I was not eavesdropping - I was meditating. You are the ones who walked up on me.” Thiori: Thiori: “You know what? That’s a good point. I am very sorry.” Ena, angrily: “Don’t be sorry to HIM-” Bagelby, confused: “How long was he meditating??”

The scratching sound was Senn-Dugaal carving something with the tip of his claw into what Asahi called out as a human femur - specifically, Michael’s femur. How’d she know that? She’s got Secret Lore Knowledge.

The party - even the two dragons - are all sort of frozen and tense, bc Senn-Dugaal IS actually an incredibly powerful warrior and historical war criminal, and they don’t want to get into an unnecessary fight with him.

For his part, Senn-Dugaal is weirdly chill during the standoff; nobody hates his boss more than he does, and he’s only here to perform some ‘malicious compliance’.

Senn-Dugaal, flicking bone dust off of his claw and still not looking up as he’s ‘interrogated’: “No, no, go on. I’m listening.”

Asahi asked what he was doing underneath the ash dune, and he made a joke about ‘trying to let the ash reclaim him for good this time’.

Ena’s Player: “I, too, wish to let the ash reclaim me sometimes.”

From within his hollow torso, Senn-Dugaal pulled out a tiiiiiiny little candle made of light blue wax, already burning with a white flame and sitting on a gilded little plate with colorful markings.

Ena recognized the candle as one of many types of prayer candles seen around Skadaan; the colors tend to be consistent across the continent with which deity they represent, and it’s mostly just the plates and their details that differ.

No-one knew what he was trying to do so no-one stopped him as Senn-Dugaal used the candle’s flame to light the bone on fire (really just the flammable dust ground into the markings to make them stand out but the whole femur ends up in flames in the end) before very carefully putting the candle away.

Senn-Dugaal, to Maji and Vashael: “This is nothing personal, your majesties.” Senn-Dugaal: /snaps the femur in half, generating a powerful magical shockwave that forces only the two dragons to shape change back to their humanoid forms/

Extra lore! The scratching was Senn-Dugaal adding Maji and Vashael’s names to the script on the bone, which was basically a magical legal contract that required a burned sacrifice (the bone + the blessed flame) to give it enough power to work.

It was given to him by The Shadowed One for emergency use only. This is not what The Shadowed One would consider an ‘emergency’.

Also there’s something (a lot really) to be said about Vashael and Maji considering their humanoid forms their ‘true’ forms and their natural dragon forms the ‘other’ forms but we’re on a tight schedule here so we’ll get back to that later-

Senn-Dugaal took one half of the broken femur and stored it back inside his empty torso before using the other half to viciously-but-quickly murder Michael

Sir Carl is seeing Senn-Dugaal for the first time, and isn’t able to save Michael from getting merc-ed while his fiance and future-sister-in-law are writhing on the ground unable to help, but he gets a good and angry punch in on Senn-Dugaal after the fact.

Senn-Dugaal is impressed by the attack’s strength and ferocity, and also (pleasantly?) surprised to see another Prism Paladin armor repaired and functioning.

Senn-Dugaal: “I was beginning to think Whitescale would let those relics rot.”

New party theories: Senn-Dugaal used to BE a Prism Paladin OR Senn-Dugaal has been punched by the Prism Paladins before.

I’ve talked about Michael’s curse and how it works a lot more on the blog but this is my players’ first time actually witnessing it so they were all pretty Shook to see him dissolve like an old PowerPoint transition.

Lore that Asahi explains to the party as they follow the Michael-cloud to the keep ruins but done in bullet points:

Senn-Dugaal was only dead for a few hundred years before he was resurrected by The Shadowed One to be their enforcer/servant.

He has some free will bc The Shadowed One isn’t a micromanager and didn’t want a minion who had to be constantly directed, but he does have some Standing Orders that he is obligated to follow when the circumstances are met.

One of those Standing Orders is to return Michael to the keep if he is discovered outside of its walls…and the most effective way to do that is to kill him.

Killing him quickly is kind of a mercy when you think about it.

Michael isn’t gone for good - he’s under a curse that makes him ‘respawn’ (like in a video game!) but….he can only respawn in one spot. And he’s in a coma for a day or two after it happens. And also suffers from magical levels of exhaustion for, like, a week afterward.

The party’s destination was an ancient, crumbling keep that had leaning walls, crumbling stones, ceilings worn down to the fittings of rafters long rotted away and chunks missing from the upper staircases.

Maji and Vashael ran ahead of the party, having apparently been here many…many…times before.

Thiori didn’t like the similarities he was seeing between The Shadowed One’s work and the work of his ‘father’, Tasslour Krell (creator of the mutant bosses the party has fought thus far), and went around from room to room Investigating for any lore he could find.

Most of what he found was scuff marks on the flagstones and light patches where rugs, furniture, tables, chairs, and etc. had once sat for hundreds of years before either being moved or rotting away.

Oddly, though, there are fresh scuff marks and chips in the stones on the doorways/walls just outside the doors in the halls, as if someone had moved a lot of stuff very quickly and VERY recently.

He also found a series of little images scratched into the walls in various places; one image was found in places that were later deduced as exposed or too easily seen say, by someone who was 12ft tall? and another was found in places that were covered and secluded.

Thiori, with sad realization: “He was…he was marking places were safe to hide and places that were dangerous.” Bagelby, also with realization: “A sheep with antlers, a flower crown and flaming hair…is that…Ena??”

Ena quietly told them that Michael used to draw these little sheep in the margins of letters he’d send her on his adventures after he left their Archfey Patron’s home.

Bagelby, tearing up: “He used you to mark his safe places. You’re his safe person!” Ena, also tearing up: “And he barely remembers me…”

The party then moved down to the dungeon of the keep to find Maji, Vashael, and Michael, and along the way, they (most of them) noticed increasing signs of a battle….slash marks on the stone, blast marks from spells, dark stains that were proooobably blood that didn’t get cleaned up until it deteriorated naturally, etc.

Bagelby missed all of that and marched right on ahead to the last room where the dragons were.

Thankfully, he got there after the royals had broken into the emergency supplies that were kept there, and Michael’s dignity was preserved.

In this room (circular, about the size of an empty two-car garage) he found a ton of battle damage and what might have been arcane symbols and circles carved into the stone floor (keyword: might. A lot of the stones were broken, upturned, straight up missing, etc.), as well as a number of shallow cells carved into the walls.

Most of the cell doors had either fallen apart or deteriorated entirely, so Bagelby was able to get a good look into them and find their walls covered with more scratched tally marks and danger-marking sheep.

He got the distinct feeling he was being watched, but didn’t roll very high for perception and shrugged it off.

Vashael and Maji got Michael dressed in a back-up set of clothes from the emergency bag and packed up what they didn’t use for the next time (and there will be a next time).

As the party headed back up the stairs, Sir Carl accidentally stepped on what turned out to be a large tooth or fang with the tip scratched and stained the color of the surrounding ash and stone.

Ena saw him stop to pick it up and wandered over, and remarked that Michael must have been using it as a tool to scratch his little markings and tallies.

Sir Carl handed the tooth over to Ena, and she sullenly dropped it in her pocket before they followed the rest of the party up the stairs.

While they were in the dungeon the weather outside took a turn for the worse, and a fierce windstorm is sandblasting the keep outside with ash, so the party decides to make a temporary camp in one of the marked safe spaces (under the broken stairs to the upper floor, as that was the only space large enough) until the storm died down.

Once they had all settled down, that sensation of being watched struck Bagelby and Ena, but neither rolled high enough so both brushed it off as nerves.

Thiori, however, rolled plenty high, and got to catch a glimpse of the shadow figure watching the party through a hole in the wall of the keep before it ducked out of sight and we wrapped for the night.

We’re going to aim for another session next week in the hopes of timing it as a sort-of present for another friend who likes to listen in, so hopefully that works out!

#Quarantine D&D

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springvaletales · 18 days ago

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((Aaaaaand we’re back from our (long) holiday break with session 75!))

As much as I love following around the party like a camera crew there ARE some plot details that I need to get rolling so there’s gonna have to be a bit of cat herding tonight.

Ena and Asahi are still off doing in-game wedding-prep things while their players do IRL things, and Curd’s player had a practice to attend, so we’ve got a brand new episode of the Braincell Gang!

We last left off (I think), with the party visiting the estate of Whitescale Twyllhopper, former mayor of Lightbell and secret Batman/Power Ranger knockoff, and Bagelby immediately searching for, discovering, and invading the Batcave (again) by jumping onto the hidden spiral slide and surfing it down into the dark.

Thiori “I don’t take fall damage” Bloodhunter said “Fuck the stairs” (out loud) and just dove headfirst down the pit in the middle of the slide.

Whitescale, Lyle, Sir Carl, Chess, Curd, and Lord Wiggles all chose to take the stairs like regular people.

Thiori, in the style of the “I’m a GIRAFFE-” vine, as he falls past at terminal velocity: “HI BAGEL BY BAGEL-”

Bagelby is very unhappy to be “out-speeded” by Thiori.

Bagelby’s Player: “Bagel is going to remove the essence of friction from the slide.” Me, wanting to see how he’ll describe this: “Okay. Roll me…arcana.” Bagelby’s Player: “That is….a 25.”

With a roll of 25 (flat + arcana bonuses), Bagelby successfully removed the friction from the slide.

The essence of friction looks like thin, curly wood chips made of sandpaper particle effects that get bigger and bigger the faster you go.

How deep is this slide pit? Just deep enough to give the players a cool moment and not die. Yet.

Bagelby rode the frictionless slide juuuuust long enough to catch up to and pass Thiori falling at his terminal velocity, and then, with a smug grin, he put the friction back into the slide.

All at once.

He nat 1’ed his Dex roll and went flying head over heels right into Lyle Twyllhopper who - luckily for him - was just returning from a patrol and was still wearing his Whitescale armor.

Lyle came back to deliver a message to his father from a concerned civilian in Lightbell, and tells Bagelby and Thiori that many citizens have been flagging them down on patrol - day and night - to pass along these leads and tips on the town’s growing problem: Sunfell cult kidnappings.

The cult’s influence has grown massively in the last two and a half years, and their members have started acting like common thugs on the streets of cities and larger towns where they think they can bribe/intimidate/control either law enforcement or those in power.

Port Covekeel actually has a massive cult problem that’s bleeding over to Lightbell, forcing Whitescale Jr. (that’s his new hero name now, just said in ancient draconic) and Whitescale Sr. to cover both town and city, and even spread out to other nearby towns to try and combat the spread of crime.

Whitescale Jr. mentions other vigilantes working in other cities in Salance (and possibly other countries) that he’s worked with, though not by name.

The note Whitescale Jr. brought back is from a little Tabaxi child that waved him down who saw a person getting “boxed up by bad people in robes” from their bedroom window the night before.

They were too afraid of the cultists to say anything when it happened, but convinced themselves that the town hero would be able to help where the local guards either couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Thiori has an ability (I did check) that allows him to roll to see a ‘psychic vision’ of a past moment of an object that has ‘trauma’, and he used it on the note.

He rolled too high, so instead of a mild sensation or a loose thought, he got a full POV experience from the Tabaxi child witnessing a person across the street from their bedroom window getting manhandled into a crate by Sunfell cultists and thrown into a wagon.

So it turns out that none of the Braincell Gang were ever formally introduced to Michael by name - which is WILD - and it took a few prompts, some history rolls, wisdom saves, hinting of draconic marriage traditions, and the pointing out of glowing eyes to make it click that NPC Michael (Velenna’s son, Vashael’s betrothed, Ena’s bROTHER-) was the one who got kidnapped.

It had been a day or so since the party had returned to Port Covekeel, and while the party stayed overnight for the intro adventure with Curd, the NPC party (Prince Vashael, Michael, Haaruma, Naoka, Bashur) had left for Kendara immediately bc…well…Vashael wasn’t supposed to be outside the Palace City due to ‘current events’ (ie: things that happened in the outside world during the Pirate Island arc)

Which is TECHNICALLY enough time for a group of tired NPCs fresh off an adventure to get ambushed, right? Right.

Now knowing that there is an international political disaster on the table on top of a kidnapping, Whitescale Sr. told the party to get ready and went to change into his armor.

While his father changed, Whitescale Jr. explained their ongoing theory that the Sunfell cult was taking the people they kidnapped (and who couldn’t be rescued in time) to the Deadlands, which is a large area of scorched and barren land on the southern border between Kendara and Salance where nothing can survive or grow in the ash and burned soil after (according to legend) the Dark King and former Emperor of Kendara was cast down from the sky by his usurper daughter, Queen Almaea, in a great fireball.

Not quite nuclear, but now that I read that back it sure can read that way, huh?

After suiting up, Whitescale Sr. approached Sir Carl (who is still without any kind of actual armor) and offered him any one of the *Prism Paladin armors that were still on display - and repaired since their last appearance - in his hideout.

Lyle: “I call it the ‘Dragon Den’!” Whitescale: “We’re not giving the cave a gimmicky name.”

*Notes for context: The Prism Paladins are/were an in-universe Power Ranger group from the Kendaran Empire days whose original roster included and was sadly ultimately outlived by Whitescale Sr.

Sir Carl chose the blue armor and suited up, and then Whitescale Sr. asked Lord Wiggles and Curd to stay back at the base where it was safe, as he did not know their combat capabilities as well as he knew the Braincell Gang’s.

He also asked Chess to stay back with them and keep them safe (re: please make sure they don’t touch anything).

Chess refuses to take orders from anyone but Sir Carl, but unfortunately for Chess, Sir Carl also wants someone who is aware of the danger of the Sunfell cult to stay back and safe in case the rest of them don’t return (and also I needed to cut down on the NPC count just bc that’s a lot of characters to juggle and I wanted to make sure Curd would be safe until his player is available), so Chess stayed back at the base.

Whitescale Sr. has a semi-permanent teleportation circle at the back of the cave that can be modified to reach a number of destinations, and the party used this to teleport from the Twyllhopper Estate to an area near the edge of the Deadlands.

Sir Carl failed his Con save and threw up.

Bagelby failed his Con save and threw up.

Whitescale Jr. tried to comfort Sir Carl by admitting that he threw up his first four teleportations.

Whitescale Sr. flashed six fingers behind his son’s back when Sir Carl looked over.

As everyone else tried to adjust their vision from the spell’s bright light to the after-sunset darkness, Bagelby wandered out blind into the trees to try searching for clues in a hands-on way.

He actually did roll high enough to find the first clue - a pendant made from a brass dragon scale on a high quality cord with inlaid gems and draconic writing on the back.

This pendant belongs to Michael, which means he and the cultists have been in the area, which is a good sign….but it’s a bad sign, as it’s an engagement gift from Prince Vashael, so Michael would never willingly part with it.

Everyone crushed their perception rolls, so they all spotted or heard movement in the foliage between their landing spot and the Deadlands border; following the lead of Whitescale Sr., they tried to sneak up on two figures hiding in the dark, but ended up meeting them behind a rocky outcrop instead becAUSE…

The figures are Prince Vashael (previously injured and not fully healed but visibly angry) and his older sister Princess Maji (fully armored, just as angry, very clearly the sibling with Sole Custody of the Family Braincell).

Whitescale Sr., long-sufferingly: “Your magesties….why?” Vashael, vibrating like a wound-up Chihuahua: “Why not?!” Maji, eerily calm: “Why not? :3”

Bagelby returned (reverse-stole!) Michael’s pendant back to Vashael after a quick reminder nudge from Sir Carl.

Vashael, flashing through every shade of grief, relief, and resignation: “Thanks. He…he would have been devastated to lose it.”

Maji explains that Captain Astaroth suspects the cult has some form of teleportation circle near the Kendaran side of the border, but hasn’t gotten the permission from the Queen yet to take any guards to destroy it, as any sort of armed infiltration into the no-go zone might be seen as an act of war by cult-controlled fledgling country “Dragonfall” (formerly the Salancian city “Dragonfell”) and its single ally, Belven (historic Kendaran-haters) and won’t risk a war on a “maybe”.

Maji suspects that’s where the cult is trying to take Michael, though Vashael’s insistence on acting now and explaining later keeps her from elaborating.

Now traveling together, the larger group catches up to the cultists just over the Deadlands border; the four cultists are 100% convinced they got away with this kidnapping and aren’t even bothering to do their perception checks.

They’ve traded their larger wagon for a smaller cart pulled by one pony and only driven by one cultist, with the other three walking.

One cultist bangs on a crate in the back of the wagon, and Maji has to physically hold Vashael back from shape-changing and blowing their stealth advantage.

A plan of attack is quickly discussed and is thus: Sneak attack the cultists before they have a chance to react and never even get into turn-based combat in the first place.

I forgot to prepare HP, attacks, or spells for the cultists so this plan sounds great to me.

Bagelby uses Disguise Self to make himself look like one of the cultists and - with a crushed performance roll - walked right up to the wagon from behind, cracked a joke about ‘needing to stretch his legs’, and unhitched the wagon’s simple pin-latch while it was still in motion.

The sudden detachment pitches the driver into the dirt and nearly tips the wagon over (poor Michael still stuck in that crate!), spooks the pony who then bolts off, dragging the rest of the harness, and separates the cultists as one is now prone, two are chasing the pony, and the other is having a quick crisis while staring into his own face.

Cultist: “What the FUCK, Richard?!” Cultist: Cultist: “Wait….I’M Richard. Who the FUCK are you?” Bagelby’s Player: “Cue the ‘To Be Continued’ soundbyte!”

We left off on Bagelby, grinning, no longer disguised, with Sir Carl, Whitescale Sr. and Whitescale Jr. Power Ranger running, Thiori Naruto running with all four arms, and two angry Young Brass Dragons at the peak of their pounce framing him in the background.

See y’all next session!

#Quarantine D&D

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springvaletales · 19 days ago

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((WHOOP-! Here’s Sessions 72, 73, and 74 because I’m a silly goose and didn’t finish my DM homework~! : D))

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Session 72:

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Normally, Machina doesn’t like organic beings. She respects them - they’re her mother Skaadi’s last creation, after all - but she doesn’t like them.

She is, however, fascinated by this little group of…things…that somehow bypassed all of her security measures and transported themselves to the heart of her workshop by accident.

Out of respect for this momentous task, if nothing else, Machina offers the party a safer way back to the Mortal Plane and walks them all the way to the far wing of her workshop to transport them home.

Machina supposedly runs on Windows 95 bc I accidentally almost-replicated the logo color order in her HeroForge model‘s wings and didn’t notice until my players called me out for it.

I forgot to finish these notes the night-of and now it’s been three weeks SEVERAL MONTHS and I can’t remember things so here’s a quick list of the quotes I did write down:

“We can’t ABANDON Lord Wiggles!”

“You can waterboard a muppet but you can’t make it drink.”

Asahi: “You could just ask Velenna.”

Bagelby: “Hmm…that would be smart. But un-Bagel-like.”

“I met god and she’s a giant robot.”

Normally, Machina uses her lever-strewn teleportation hub to send refurbished Warforged back to the Mortal Plane to live another life. But it’s safe enough to send the very organic party through. Probably.

Does jokingly naming Machina’s teleportation hub “The Levers of the World” make the SCU (Slimecicle Cinematic Universe) canon to my campaign??

The party then got tasked with letting Machina’s dog out for walkies, essentially, and Ena got to hold the summoning item (the pop up tunnel).

Ena chose to summon the demidog Mauler (“Mollie”) at 4:23am in the back garden of the inn and - after watching the demidog leap the wall in a single bound and run off into the town - went back to sleep feeling accomplished.

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Session 73:

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We’re adding a new player/character to the party tonight! : D

Asahi’s Player: “I would like to know who in our party is NOT autistic.” Thiori’s Player: “Chess?” Sir Carl’s Player: “Chess is autistic about Carl.”

The party left the inn to do some shopping and found a series of strange vandalism and misfortune all around the city - including a very distraught halfling whose traveling soup wagon had had one of its wheels stolen in the dead of night.

Sir Carl tried to console the halfling by telling her that insurance would surely cover this ‘act of a god’, but he rolled a nat 1 and she began to wail louder because she is not insured.

Introducing: Curd! A goblin chef whose familiar/mount, “Spatula”, is a homemade chicken mech big enough for him to ride around inside.

Spatula is covered in/made up of random bits of metal junk and cookware, and can/will fall apart if hit too hard/slapped in the wrong place. It’s a bit!

Curd cannot speak Common, only Fey and Orcish, but that’s okay bc this party is an amalgamation of knowledge and languages.

Curd wears no armor, but he does have a human-sized chef’s hat and apron. It’s adorable.

Curd also travels with “Whisk” - another creation of utensils and metal that can shift forms between an actual whisk and a mourning dove.

Me: “Moss Cat can come off the wood, but for travel purposes, you can still flat-pack them.”

New quest: Tracking the mechanical, Huge-sized demidog Ena unleashed as the favor to the goddess Machina and getting back the frying pan it stole from Curd (it has sentimental value). And maybe some of the other stuff we’ll see what we remember.

After tracking the demidog outside of the port city (really Thiori tracking and the party following), they realized the demidog’s path of destruction was stretching out - it was moving faster.

Ena suggested blowing something up to try and get its attention and make it come back towards them. Sir Carl - a legitimate member of A Government and known Follower of the Law - said no.

Her second suggestion is catapulting something (or someone) up high. Curd has a catapult in Spatula, but Sir Carl still says no.

Asahi attempts to summon the demidog back toward them by shouting her summoning phrase, but no-one can agree on how it’s spelled or pronounced (even though I put it in the game chat last week).

Me: “You pronounce it differently with every attempt. No demidog is forthcoming.”

The party finally tracks the demidog down to a small valley filled with a creek-fed pond, where the demidog has hoarded piles upon piles of random objects she’d picked up/found/stolen on her rampage through town and across the countryside.

Curd’s frying pan is sitting on top of a pile near the center, and Sir Carl spotted the wagon wheel belonging to the devastated halfling on another pile.

Thiori ripped up and threw a sapling as a ‘stick’ for the demidog to chase, and Ena threw it again with Mage Hand to keep the demidog distracted long enough for Curd to steal his frying pan back (and Sir Carl the wagon wheel).

With one final full-strength throw from Thiori, the demidog ran off into the sunset in pursuit of the thrown sapling, and the party hurried back to town before it could come back.

She will become a problem later. I’ll make sure of it. >:3c

The party returned to the inn and bought a room for Curd as a thank you for his help…after arguing over the alternative of putting him in a room with Chess and Sir Carl, of course.

Sir Carl’s Player: “Introducing Chess to strangers - let alone other goblins - is like introducing cats. You have to let them see each other from a distance first or else there will be blood.”

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Session 74:

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Early in the morning as the party’s eating breakfast, Ena and Asahi say their temporary goodbyes - they have some “wedding prep” to do, and will meet up with the party back in Kendara in a few days.

“If the British government stopped at Parliament, that’s Belven.”

Bagelby successfully persuaded Lord Wiggles to return to Belven and get back into politics by showing him the letters he’d stolen from the desk of Councilman Rondellion of Belven waaaay back in the early sessions when he’d impersonated Lord Wiggles to break into the building.

The joy I feel at a player using something from near the beginning of the campaign in a clever way to move the story forward cannot be described in words.

The letters - written from the Sunfell Cult spy ‘Rondellion’ to his leader, The Shadowed One - contain numerous confessions to treason and murder, including the poisoning of a beloved councilwoman and her entire apothecary staff, orchestrating Lord Wiggles’ kidnapping, and numerous instances of first degree murder and corruption.

Bagelby sat down with Curd to ask a bunch of questions, both relevant to character lore and very much not.

Curd is on the continent of Skadaan because he won a contest against an Archfey who didn’t like to lose and got magically banished across the world ocean.

Bagelby: “Wanna join us on our quest to defeat an evil, vaguely shadowy necromancer from 7,000 years ago who’s trying to take over the world?” Curd: “That sounds like a pretty good cause, so sure.”

After consulting a map, the party decided they had three routes they could use to get back to Kendara quickly:

One route that went through the Kendara-Salance crossing (quicker, too easy, slight risk of detention for prior coup attempts in neighboring Morraine).

One route that took them through the Salance-Tavar crossing through Tavar and THEN the Tavar-Kendara crossing (longer, more difficult, double the risk of detention for prior coup attempts in Morraine AND Tavar)

One route that would take them through a dangerous, barren area between Salance and Kendara known as ‘The Deadlands’.

I really hope they take that last one. I have some plans for what they can encounter there. They do!!

Bagelby’s Player: “Hmm….Bagel is very intrigued by that last option.” Me: >:3c

Sir Carl has become Bilbo Baggins coming home from his adventure - Traunia has thought him dead for two and a half years, and his title has passed to his adopted sons, Wayne and Zayne.

Me: “You have to prove you aren’t a fishing scam, first.”

The party hesitates on the idea of having to sneak through one or more border crossings with missing or false paperwork, and Bagelby successfully sells them on the idea of sneaking through the tiiiiiiny bit of Salance-Kendara border between the Deadlands and the Skyreach Mountains.

“Because that’s the series of syllables that came out.”

On their way out of town, the party passed through the town of Lightbell again and stopped in at the mayor’s office to try and see Mayor Twillhopper, whom Sir Carl had become good friends with after their last time in town.

In the two and a half years they’ve been gone, Mayor Twillhopper chose to retire from politics (“for now”), and there’s a new mayor in the seat. The Tortle receptionist, however, recognizes the party and happily points them in the direction of Twillhopper Estate so they can stop by and say hello.

They weren’t in the mansion more than three minutes before Bagelby started poking wall tiles and pulling on wall sconces.

Bagelby has once again discovered that Whitescale Twillhopper (Bruce Wayne) is the White Prism Paladin (Batman).

Me, joking: “Asahi, come get your Hobgoblin - he broke into the Batcave again!”

#Quarantine D&D

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springvaletales · 20 days ago

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((I’m gonna count the beach party flashbacks we’re on session 71 now.))

Thiori I’m sorry in advance you aren’t going to like this fight but I need to make this a challenge for you without guaranteeing everyone else as collateral in the crossfire.

Ena’s Player: “Fair warning, I have a -2 to my intelligence tonight due to being Eepy.” Me: “That’s fine. Tonight’s going to be mostly Eldritch Blast and DEX saves, anyway.”

The mutagen Thiori took before the end of last session gives him disadvantage on DEX saves. I actually did not remember this.

The first room the party moved into was some sort of tea room or sitting room, though it had been destroyed some time recently; furniture had been overturned, cushions shredded, wallpaper torn, crystal drinkware shattered on the floor, etc.

Ena correctly deduced that the crystal drinkware was actually made out of the same magical crystal that grew in spires around the island (the magical memory-retaining kind), and would have been prohibitively expensive and taken hours if not weeks of skilled craftsmanship to make

She picked up a piece, crunched it like rock candy, and immediately began experiencing several decades worth of lipstick and tea-flavor memories.

It has been two minutes and Ena has already put another magical rock in her mouth.

Ena will move as if on difficult terrain for the next five minutes and have disadvantage on her first DEX saving throw.

Whiiiiiich gets immediately used bc Thiori used the butt of his glaive to bang on the ceiling in response to hearing a few thumps and gravity spontaneously reversed itself.

Only Sir Carl passed the Dex save to not smack his head on the ceiling-floor, but thankfully no-one got hurt from the crystal shards or furniture pieces that flew up with them.

He did fail the save when the gravity flip timed out five minutes later, however, and landed flat on his face.

Related: The party spent five whole in-character minutes arguing over what could have reversed gravity and I had to let it time-out so the story would keep moving.

After picking up themselves and their shattered egos from the floor, the party moved on from the destroyed sitting room and up a zig-zagging flight of stairs to the final floor.

Luckily for them, they all passed their stealth checks.

The room at the top of the fortress isn’t actually the final floor, but the patchwork of raised stonework, stripped wooden wall supports and exposed rafters make it clear that it was very recently renovated to BE the final floor. The rafters will be a surprise tool that will help the party in just a few rounds!

The Pirate King is standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by a sloppily-painted arcane circle, an empty burlap sack covered in bloodstains, random crystals, and the severed head of his murdered wife.

The lore here is that he destabilized the time loop after murdering his wife in a drug-fueled rage, feeling immense guilt and regret in the aftermath, and trying to resurrect her into a crystal-based form that wouldn’t be able to die again BUT he’s a novice necromancer driven mad by magical crystals growing on his body/into his brain from long-term exposure to jewelry made from these unique, fast-growing sources of condensed god-magic and instead he caused an island-destroying explosion that resonated through so many of the giant crystal spires around the time loop bubble that it imprinted itself into the loop and shortened it overall by approximately twelve hours.

The party jumped straight into combat tho so I didn’t get to infodump. T0T

The next group stealth roll failed and the Pirate King reversed gravity with a large purple crystal he held in one hand, leaving the party to scramble for handholds on bricks/remaining stonework/any ledge they could find to keep from flying up to the high ceiling.

The Pirate King whirled around to berate the party as if they were newly-hired recruits who’d ignored a ‘do not disturb’ sign, but quickly grew suspicious of their identities, as he did not remember hiring any fire genasi to work on his wooden ships.

Asahi: “Wait, you don’t know the people you hired?” Pirate King: “I don’t handle the hiring - I have people for that. I just handle terminations and payroll.”

Ena’s crystal snack debuff has finally worn off, so she pulled out her trusty Eldritch Blast to try and get a surprise hit in before initiative was rolled.

Both blasts rolled critical hits: The first one severed the rope tied around the Pirate King’s waist, forcing him to suffer the effects of his own swapping of gravity, and the second one pretty much vaporized the severed head of his wife.

Uh oh. That was actually a plot-relevant item. Uhh come on come on brain think of something new. That crit shot was actually really cool and you don’t want to retcon it.

Only now do I remember that Thiori’s DEX saves do not matter. He has a ‘manta gliding’ ability. He physically cannot take fall damage. I have played myself.

With the Pirate King literally up in the air, the party channeled their inner astronauts and jumped headlong into a short but intense battle with constantly-reversing gravity that was basically zero-g’s but with more motion sickness.

Item: Amethyst Shard. A magical chunk of gemstone about the size of a beer stein that allows one to change the direction of gravity within a 50ft radius once per combat round. Hmm…where has the party seen a large amount of amethyst before?

Hint: It’s Velenna.

The Pirate King gets himself back down to the floor and attempts the ritual he’d set up anyway, using the bloody sack he’d been carrying his wife’s head around in instead of the head itself. This…doesn’t work correctly, but it does work. Sort of.

The botched ritual backfires and fuses the Pirate King with the Amethyst Shard in his hand and the Vesnali crystals that have been slowly growing over his scales from the jewelry he’d been wearing for hundreds of years, turning him into a new monster created at the very last minute for the party to fight.

In a very rare show of poor luck, Bagelby failed his Dex roll, and dropped his open Bottle O’ Death while floating up near the rafters of the multi-story room.

Since gravity was still reversed, the Cloud O’ Death poured upwards toward the ceiling, leaving a very alarmed Bagelby with an empty bottle.

In the next round, the Pirate King reversed gravity again, which forced Bagelby to roll another Dex save to not land on his face from a story up. He had Asahi and her natural levitation to help so he was okay!

It might not be for long, however, as gravity returned to normal at the end of that round and the Cloud O’ Death started to fall back down.

I failed to finish my DM homework and it has now been SEVERAL months so we’re going to wrap up these notes with an incredibly simplified summary of events.

The party successfully swarmed the Pirate King-Construct just as the Cloud O’ Death fell down around them like a horrific and fast-moving fog.

The air tastes like decay and suddenly gets hard to breathe. Even Asahi, who doesn’t have to breathe, starts to feel weak and dizzy. But the party can’t leave now - Sir Carl is elbows-deep in the monster’s chest with his hand around the Amethyst Shard, attempting to rip it out like a heart in an Indiana Jones movie.

The magical ‘spark’ caused by Sir Carl ripping the Amethyst Shard out of the Pirate King’s hand (where it had fused itself after multiple time loops of constant use) interacts with a spell Bagelby is trying to cast and causes a bright flash of light that blinds everyone for several seconds, and when the light clears, the party is….not where they remember being.

The stone floor of the fortress is now solid metal (battered with scratches, pothole-sized dents, and gashes), the Cloud O’ Death is gone, and the ceiling is….a giant eyeball??

No, no, not a giant eyeball - a giant magnifying glass! Which is then pushed aside by Machina, the Mother of Warforged, Goddess of Innovation Deceit and Creativity.

The party has - by some fluke teleported themselves off of the Mortal Plane and directly into the workshop of the goddess herself.

#Quarantine D&D

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