So me and my friends were running a mini-campaign and I decided to play as Danny Devito as the Trashman. So we’re making our way through this dungeon and we come across this guy, and before us he lays out (and I may be remembering the exact foods wrong) a delicious looking pie, a bottle of vintage wine, a juicy ham, a loaf of fresh bread, and a rotten apple. He tells us four are poisoned, and one is fine. I don’t remember why we had to eat it or if we even had to (I hope we didn’t even have to because it makes this next part better).

So I could tell right away that apple was the non-poisoned one (because of course the unappetizing one would be the one that’s correct). But I was the Trashman. I eat garbage and I like it. The second the guy finished his speech, I blurt out “I eat all five”. Everyone burst out laughing and my DM wanted to make sure that I knew that four of the items were poisoned, I knew.

I start with the apple, which of course was not poisoned. But I don’t stop. I devour the ham and make a constitution roll. Pass, I eat the ham and take no damage. Next I eat the loaf of poisoned bread, and once again make a successful constitution roll. People are laughing their asses off, I’ve never rolled this good before. I drink the bottle of wine/cyanide and roll a 15. The Trashman throws up all over the guy and takes significant damage, but this does not deter the Trashman.

My DM asks me, begs me, “Are you sure you wan-“ “I gO fOR THe PiE!” I say all the exsasterpation and desperation I can fill my voice with. The Trashman dives for the pie even as the guy tries to take it away, trying desperately to save some semblance of his pride. I roll for constitution. Nat 20 (it was actually 19 but 20 is funnier). Everyone is losing their mind, and I wipe my mouth, burp, and below out. “THANKS FOR THE MEAL, NOW TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH!” And I hit him over the head with a trashcan (my primary weapon and storage device).

After the brawl I confirm with my DM that watching his attempt at a game be foiled by this 4ft tall disgusting blob man consciously shove these clearly poisoned foods in his gullet was the worst moment of this guys entire life.

The artifact-Echoes of life

"You will see me again..."

"[RELIEF!!!..."

The various roars, cries, calls and shrieks of animals. The fearful gasps of the living. The snarls, moans and shrieks of the dead.

"Thank you, Momma..."

The cries of pain and grief of the living. Sister crying for sister. Husbands crying for their children and wives. Wives crying for their children and husbands.

The magic the artifact released was an ancient, arcane magic that hasn't been used for centuries. The process was forgotten, the power of it, forgotten. The artifact itself needed the souls of the living to become active. Acererak saw to that when he used the souls of few children left from Chult. He knew if he divulged what needed to be done, the family wouldn't do it. They would fight him and die, while everyone else around them would fall to the dead. The Sword Coast would become like Chult and Cambria, a dead land. The dead would then spread passed the Sword Coast, until the last batch of living survivors would make a grand final stand against them. But instead, the family, even in their fresh, painful grief after witnessing the death of Kiora, would help the Time Dragon and the Time Dragon would help them.

The magic held the echoes of life. The sounds, the feelings, sensations. Lovers, friends, enemies. The echoes of laughter, screams, shouts. Anger, fear, pain. The magic was working. But after this, the artifact itself will no longer exist on the plane. The Magic in a tremendous clash of sound would then burst, vanishing from the plane.

Cambria-Six years and three days reversed, the three days before the fall of Cambria-Icktha

The arcane magic reversed time as it was meant to. Reversed the deaths of everyone and everything affected in their old reality. However, this effect also brought the memories of that reality with everyone over the age of 8, including the mutant Elf from Ravnica.

Belial woke up with a gasp in his bed chamber. His body drenched in sweat. He checked his arms to see if they were still there and they were, then he checked his neck. He can clearly remember the events before he woke up, but his rational brain was trying to convince him it was just a dream. That it didn't happen like that. He didn't feel himself die. But he knew it was real. He knew his experiments succeeded, and his fate was destiny.

"They will be coming for me. Especially her" he muttered and got out of bed. He was naked and found himself staring into a mirror. At the various mutations that made up his body. The seemingly random design of fish scales to reptile scales from his calf's, going up to his thighs and hips. The colors, besides his pale flesh, ranged from light blue that blended into a light purple. That light purple shifted into pink, then crimson on both his sides, leaving his belly and chest pale. Other than those splashes of color, and his right hand, he passes for ordinary half the time. An old anger flared up inside him when his gaze went down to his crotch and the anatomy that was missing. He growled softly and forced himself to move, to get dressed and prepared for confrontation.

Belial was in his usual attire. dark blue leather breeches and tunic and boots, black robes on top of it. The robes were meant to hide his mutations unless he was forced to reveal himself. He used magic to disguise his hand, to hide the octopus tentacle that was his index finger. He barely stepped out of his bed chamber and instantly felt danger. He instinctively brought his hands up and something strong struck his blue shield, but the force sent him flying down the hall, forcing him to roll into a crouch.

A purple suit of armor was glaring at him. The suit of armor had a feminine design and glowing red eyes. Then the Tiefling woman came into view. Her orange eyes seem to glow with rage, recognition was in her eyes as well as his. He was too late; she was already here. Two different Elves he's never seen before, came into view as well. The female of the two had purple skin and dark hair. She could pass for a Drow, but she wasn't a Drow. Then a Gorgon of all things appeared, and he could tell she was a Planeswalker like himself. He witnessed her bronze eyes flashed briefly and could feel the anger aimed at him.

"You killed millions. You experimented on me. I killed my own baby! You are not safe. I will butcher you. Have Slithera heal you, only for me to butcher you again!" the Tiefling woman snarled. That's when Belial finally noticed the sounds of fighting outside his hidden laboratory.

In and outside the town of Icktha-At that moment

The six figurines led the charge against the dead. The invasion of Cambria was put together so fast after the world was reversed back to before Cambria fell. Wizards, Sorcerers and Mages that fought and died in the Sword Coast had knowledge from their old reality which helped them utilize their spells. Including using teleportation spells.

Haldir and Damir now stood amongst an assembled host from the Sword Coast that consisted of Neverwinter soldiers, Underdark soldiers, and anyone else that was ready, since more were still steadily arriving. The combat tactics were also changed concerning the dead. Replenishing spells were being used for arrows and destructive magic became the default method. Shield Guards would only use their spears if the arrows failed to take down the dead or things like Magic Missile failed. So far, besides those elements, it was the six figurines that were doing the brunt of the work.

"It's a shame the time magic couldn't save these people" Damir spoke up, she was in her full plate and leather combat armor. No skin, other than her face, was exposed. Her helm was a custom made, old High Elf design. It was a gift from Haldir some years prior, while Haldir himself was also in full plate and leather armor, though his scales were natural armor for him, he took no chances. The colors for their armor matched what they had before, which was dark blue and gold and the sigils from their old home before coming to the Sword Coast.

"I agree. The best thing now is to put them down quickly before it spreads. This time, we rallied and came to the source. Hopefully the family can get the individual responsible" Haldir replied. The unified force arrived via teleportation spell just mere hours before and with the help of the family that was apparently waiting for them, informed them of the plan and where to stop the advancing dead. From what he gathered, the Gorgon, Slithera, took the children, the Monarch and Patriarch of the family, as well as the servants and a very displeased, pregnant, Lanara to a place called Ravnica for safekeeping, while the rest of them, marched with the assembling host.

"Now it's up to them" he added and barked further orders.

Cambria-The Estate-Some hours Prior

The estate came alive in the early morning hours with a chorus of gasping from everyone waking up. Then followed by a chorus of happy crying and laughing.

"My loves!!!" Vaylin sobbed and hugged both Fangir and Lashara tightly. All three kissing each other. They woke up as if it were a dream.

Inara and Vlaad embraced each other and kissed deeply. In their own room, Lanara and Tommen embraced and kissed. Hannah and Kaila hugged each other since they shared a room.

The children then invaded their respective parents' rooms and a whole new chorus of crying and happy laughter rang through the estate. Even with what happened, Ferra could still remember, but she didn't care. She embraced her father and mother and cried happily. As did little Samus.

Kiora and Roth lead the charge into their parents' room. The only boy amongst the girls, Riki cried loudly and clung to his father who in turn wept along with him, holding him tightly while his girls, all of them clung to his legs, but then moved onto Momma Lashara and Vaylin.

Lilianna, Vaylin, Varina, Burai and Kou hugged each other and cried as well, then met up with their sister Lanara and Tommen, and their niece and nephew, then went into their mother and fathers' room. Eventually the entire family, along with the servants, converged on the main dining hall where more hugs and tears were shed.

Slithera watched, still feeling like a stranger since the death of Annabella, tears sliding down her face and a small smile spreading. Until Vaylin spotted her and approached her. They both emitted a sob; their hands going to each other's cheeks and embraced each other. "Annabella was with you. She wants you to thrive" Vaylin said softly and Slithera broke down completely. The family comforted her, taking away her refreshed pain of Annabella not being with them since she died before the new nightmare happened.

Yayoi then came down the stairs and the children flocked to her including the eldest of Inara's children. The three Dragonborn also finally appeared, and they were given the same treatment, much to Koshar's amusement and even Dasha's and Bombata's. The children showed just how much they grew to love them, even Kiora and Roth, even though their first meeting was less than ideal.

"Those of you coming with me, prepare yourselves. Slithera, get the children, servants, Lanara, Inara and Vlaad to Ravnica. We're going to Icktha and deal with the person responsible" Vaylin then spoke up, after wiping her tears away. The protests came mostly from Kiora and Roth. "Momma! Why can't we stay!? We can fight!" Kiora spoke up and Roth nodded in agreement. They didn't even shrink away this time when their mother gave them a parental glare.

Vaylin softened, got on her knees and spoke directly to Kiora. "I'm sorry my little love, but no. You already fought me, and I killed you. I am not having you sacrifice yourself when you're only ten and 1 (11). You did me proud when you were ten and seven (17). Now, be a child and do as I say. Please. Don't make me watch you put yourself in danger. Neither of you. Your siblings need you" Vaylin said softly, tears sliding down her face, as well as new tears sliding down Kiora's. Roth was quicker to lose her defiance and placed a hand on her sister's shoulder. "Sister, Momma's right. I saw you die too. We must let the adults handle this, this time" she explained.

Lashara was addressing her two daughters as well, with Fangir talking to the rest of his children. Sasha was still too young to truly understand and began to cry. Astra and Wicca comforted her. Riki and Layra just missed the memory effect of the magic, so they didn't realize they died in their old reality and at the hands of their aunt Kaila.

Hannah, Kaila, and Tommen, in an act of retribution on his part, promised to look after them all. Hannah looked at him and they both knew they remembered what happened, but now wasn't the time to address it. Kiora and Roth also remembered, though they didn't witness it perse, but chose to pick and choose their battles.

"Right. Everyone, get ready" Vlaad spoke up, which got the younger children spurring into action. Lanara went over to Vaylin and she knew instantly what she wanted to say. "You're pregnant. My biggest regret was not having Slithera take you with the children, out of here the first time around. I'm sending you away because your son, your daughter, need you. Tommen needs you. Your unborn baby needs you. Please sister. Do this. For me" Vaylin whispered and embraced the young woman she met when she was ten and five (15) during the first Nightmare. "Don't sacrifice yourself. Your children, wife and husband need you" she replied. They both smiled, letting out a little laugh with tears still flowing. Lanara then let go and joined her Tommen, and two children to change and prepare to leave.

It took the children, the older sets of twins, and the servants nearly an hour to get ready. They were then assembled in the main dining room, while Slithera, Vaylin, Lashara, Koshar, Dasha and Bombata were dressed for combat and ready.

"Most of you have never been off of this plane. Two of you are not from this plane. I am taking you to Ravnica, while it has its own dangers, it also has its safeties. Trovic and Mammoth will be looking after you until I come back for you" Slithera explained. "I cannot stress this enough. When it's time, you All must hold onto each other and onto me. Do NOT let go, the danger of being lost in the blind eternities is very real. I'm sorry little ones, I do not mean to scare you, but this is what I feared each time I took Kiora and Roth off plane. Then the whole thing of them being lost happened due to an outside force clashing with my magic" she added. As an act of extreme caution, Sasha and Samus, the two youngest of the children, were placed in slings. Luckily, they did not resist this and accepted it.

"Go Slithera and return, you will be needed" Vaylin spoke up, keeping herself together in front of her children, even though Astra and Wicca were struggling while grasping onto Kiora and Roth. Riki and Layra were also struggling, but were comforting Tyranda, Freja and Sasha. Then everyone placed a hand on each other and held on tightly. All the children made sure they held onto someone's breeches leg, tail, tunic sleeve, so on. In a flash of light, Slithera, the servants, the children, Inara, Vlaad, Lanara, everyone who wasn't participating in the final battle, left their plane.

Vaylin actually burst into tears first, causing Lashara to do so. Fangir wrapped his arms around his wives and kissed them both. "Oh! My Warrior Queens!" he said softly, and they both embraced him tightly. After allowing themselves a few minutes to calm down, Slithera would return and with her, their eldest daughters four figurines. "They wanted you to use them" she said softly and held out the four figurines to Vaylin, who took them and handed one to Fangir and Lashara, handed one to Slithera, then they attuned themselves to the figurines.

Yayoi filled them in on the location and were about to leave for Icktha, when several winks of magical light appeared, and a decent sized host of soldiers were in place of the magical light. Haldir and Damir were seen, and they spotted them.

"Haldir! Damir!" Vaylin said with a smile and hugged them both. Haldir and Damir returned it, then shook hands with Fangir and Lashara and the other three Dragonborn. Yayoi waited, the Pterosaur figurine in her hand. The commanders, besides Haldir and Damir, that were present, were informed of the plan and the location of the source supplied by Yayoi and Vaylin.

Slithera got together with what Mages, Wizards and Sorcerers that were there and together with them, helped use a Teleportation spell and in an instant, their trek to Icktha was hastened. Before them was the large field leading to Icktha and there they saw what was left of the survivors from Icktha fleeing. Some soldiers rounded them up since they got there before those with bites could spread out and go into the other towns which would then lead them to where the Estate resided. They cut off the infection and even under protest, the survivors were searched and separated and bound since they didn't have mobile cages this time.

The two Golden Lions, Chompy, Clubs, Sorna, and Horns sprang to life while the pike lines were formed as well as the archers. Chompy got the dead's attention by taking in a gulp of air and roared in challenge. Sorna did the same, as did Horns and Clubs. Then the two Golden Lions roared in unison and then charged the advancing dead.

The blue Pterosaur came to life, and it was able to hold Slithera, Vaylin, Lashara, Fangir, Yayoi and the three Dragonborn. It lifted off and headed straight to the hidden laboratory and to the individual responsible.

Cambria-Icktha-Secret Laboratory of Belial

Belial attempted to flee and at the same time, the Gorgon's eyes flashed briefly, her attempt to freeze him in place caught him in the left forearm. In his quick thinking, he produced a hidden short sword and to their shock, cut his arm free at the elbow. The lack of blood did not escape their notice. Instead of blood, black ink dripped but stopped relatively quickly.

"Don't let him escape!" Vaylin growled and gave chase, along with Yayoi. The others followed shortly thereafter. She went by their old reality memory since he was dumb enough to allow her to explore this place while he experimented on her. He was square in her sights again and she reached out her hand, causing purple tendrils to randomly erupt out of the floor, walls and even ceilings. Her control over what she can do was terrifying when she was hellbent on going after her target. She snarled and sent a pair of destructive blue balls of magic soaring at him, striking the wall to his side. The mild explosion sent him flying sideways, rolling into a crouch.

"Enough of this!!" he snarled and vanished in a display of light. Slithera, on instinct, had everyone place a hand on her and she followed him, even though she had no idea where he actually went to, but where they ended up must have been correct because all around them were tables, cells and even large liquid filled tubes. Some of them had occupants, others didn't.

Vaylin remembered it all, she even looked directly at the cell she was held in, in their old reality. New tears slid down her cheeks as she looked at the table, he used to experiment on her with. Fangir and Lashara noticed the tears, noticed she was shaking. They just didn't know if the shaking was from fear, stress or rage.

"My love?" Fangir whispered, placing a hand on her shoulder, when she turned to him, he could see it in her orange eyes. He could see the pain and fear she went through in their old reality, and he pulled her to him, tears of his own sliding down his cheeks.

Lashara comforted Vaylin and Fangir, her own anger rising for what she went through in their old reality. "He experimented on me. Injected me with variations of the disease that caused the first Nightmare and the new one. I was turning, but my own powers and my will was making it go slowly. Then he took me. It was after I shoved you inside to buy you time to flee. I was bit on my tail several times. When he took me, he started experimenting on me. For six years in our old reality, he slowed down the process further, but I was still going to die and turn. What kept me going was the memories of you. Of our babies. Until I found my moment and killed him. I let myself turn completely after killing him" she explained, looking up at him, then to Lashara.

"Did my experiment work?" his voice spoke up, causing Vaylin to arm herself, as well as the rest of her group. She growled in rage and looked around her. It was Fangir who spoke up next.

"You violated my wife! You injected her with stuff. Here I thought she died a Warrior! But you treated her like a Specimen!! My WIFE!!! One of the women I love!! For Six FUCKING YEARS!!! She should have been home with her family, her children. ME!! It may have been an old reality, but I tell you now, you will pay for what you've done!!" Fangir snarled, while the rest of their group prepared themselves and spread out.

"I don't know what you were trying to accomplish and to be honest, I can tell you didn't either. I have a feeling thats why the Simics of Ravnica tossed you out!" Vaylin spoke up, composing herself and looking for him.

The mention of the Simic guild was the cause behind him revealing himself when he angrily responded back. "Those Gods damned hacks couldn't fathom my intellect woman! They were threatened by me! Threatened by what I can do! What I did!! My goal was to create something they couldn't then unleash it on them! Your world was just the step to achieving that goal!" he snarled. His scales were shifting colors brightly under his clothing, a similar effect Vaylin does with her hair and eyes when showing mostly anger and annoyance.

"Are you telling me, you murdered millions, just to create something your former guild couldn't, then if we didn't reverse time, and everyone died, you what? Would have taken a specimen to Ravnica?! Even though most magics didn't work on them! Or whatever it was you created and threw it on someone?!" Vaylin's own hair and eyes shifted colors rapidly now, rage building up as she stepped towards him slowly, her grip tightening on her scimitars. Lashara watched the interaction, and her own anger flared for her wife, she even had three arrows armed and ready, thought she did keep an eye out at the liquid filled tubes that held occupants.

"I would sacrifice an entire reality, no, multiple realities just to see my experiment see results!" he replied as if what he was doing was trying to discover a cure for an illness.

"I have heard of you. You were tossed from the Simic Guild because you nearly brought the Boros down onto them due to your experiments. Your experiments were due to you being experimented on yourself. I get it now. Your goal is Revenge and you're willing to murder millions of innocents just to get it" Slithera spoke up, her eyes flashing briefly again.

Belial glared at the Gorgon and knew what he had to do. These troublemakers already reversed time, costing him results. There was an army outside dealing with the dead that weren't able to be saved from whatever magic they used in their own reality. But then a thought hit him, and he had to know.

"If what happened in the old reality is true, how did the magic used, affect them if they were magic resistant?" he asked, his mutated hand preparing to strike the Gorgon first. Slithera didn't let on that she can sense his movement; however, she still wasn't prepared for his speed.

"It was an ancient, arcane magic from an artifact that no longer exists" Vaylin answered, her own danger sense flaring up. The mutant Elf simply smirked then in a motion so fast she almost didn't react in time, he shot out his right arm and hand and several inky black projectiles shot out, aiming for Slithera.

Yayoi was faster and blocked the multiple projectiles with her shield, which emitted metallic clangs, while Slithera gasped, but in the next second, spun from around the shield and set loose an arrow to Lashara's three arrows. One of Lashara's arrows struck him on his right side as he dodged, but she heard it clang off him while ripping the robe and leather underneath. She caught a glimpse of the scales that was still shifting colors.

Belial snickered manically while hitting a seemingly random button on one of his research tables, which caused the liquid filled tubes that had occupants in them, to drain in muffled sounds of draining liquid. There were 8 tubes that had occupants and when the light of the laboratory hit the liquid just right, Vaylin knew what it was.

"Fangir, Lashara, prepare yourselves!! Everyone prepare yourselves!!! That liquid is the substance that caused the new dead!!" Vaylin cried ready to fight. "That coward!!" she hissed in her head in anger as the 8 individual beings started to move in the same way as the dead in their old reality and the ones outside. They can all hear the snarls and shrieks, but the glass was a form of clouded glass that hid their features. However, one of the individuals had the distinct shape of a Dragonborn, while the others could be any humanoid, from any Elf variant to human.

"Now my specimens can truly test themselves! Since I was killed by you in our old reality, I'm assuming I never had a chance on letting them out, so now, here they go!" Belial chuckled insanely. The sound of cracking glass could be heard and the first one to emerge was the Dragonborn after shattering the glass and shredding its rotting arms.

The dead Dragonborn used to be a green Dragonborn, but it was so badly discolored and rotted, Koshar, Dasha or Bombata couldn't tell if they knew the individual or not. It looked at them and shrieked, while the other 7 individuals finally broke through the glass. They consisted of three Elves, which they couldn't tell what type due to the skin and hair being that of the dead, two humans, a male and female, two big Orc males. All of them were naked and rotting, but had the coordination enough to wield weapons, when they reached back into the tubes they came from and brought out swords, clubs and axes.

Lashara and Slithera sneered then quickly shot three arrows each, catching six out of the eight of them square in the head, but to their stunned horror, the ones with arrows in their heads snarled and charged.

The Battlefield outside Icktha-At the same time

Clubs honked and swung its gunk-soaked tail, obliterating several dead at once. Horns charged, stomping even more while its horns skewered a few more. Sorna picked up a couple of the charging dead while snapping and stomping more with its jaws, feet and tail, then crushing the ones in its hands. Chompy stomped, swung its tail and bit.

Talon and Talon charged ahead into the town while taking down any straggling dead still lurking within. The ever-growing assembled host from The Sword Coast was spread out, all throughout Cambria. Setting up defensive lines in the towns that were directly in the path of the dead when the survivors fled in their old reality. Even Cambria's local militias were assembled and stood side by side with soldiers from another continent. So far however, the battle was going overwhelmingly in their favor, mostly due to the figurines taking on the brunt of the dead and they only had to deal with a single town instead of a whole continent. The town of Icktha still had a population of well over ten thousand souls, though that number was drastically reduced in the recent days with there being barely 100 survivors. Sadly, even that 100 survivors were further reduced by 70 more turning while bound and being put down.

Additional forces from the Underwater realms, Sea Elves, Merfolk, so on, also positioned themselves and patrolled the areas under the ocean around Cambria. Demons, Aasimar and Dragons were in the air. Almost all those involved in the last battles in the Sword Coast in their old reality, was present here in this new reality at Cambria. The Elementals and wildlife of the Sword Coast were not present. The forces of Chult, and even Acererak remained there.

Belial's Laboratory-At the same time

Koshar snarled and blocked strikes from the dead Dragonborn, then kicked it away, the blow crushed in the chest bones and ribs and sent it stumbling back. He quickly burned it to charred remains ending it, while the fighting around him continued. Bombata and Dasha found out these dead were laughably weak to ice. Encasing them in streams of ice, they witnessed the two humans seem to shatter inside the ice.

Lashara, Slithera, Fangir and Yayoi took on the remaining dead while Vaylin charged Belial. His right arm was revealed to morph into a blade as well as his left arm. He finally got to see her combat prowess and made the right decision to experiment on her after letting her fight in their old reality. But his more logical side was telling him it was a bad idea. While this Tiefling woman was in her 40's, she was still in her prime, she was still young, and she honed her anger and bloodlust at him for what his old future self-did. However, he wasn't some random foe for her to overtake. His right hand morphed again and splashed her in the face with ink, causing her to yelp. His left hand morphed and tentacles grabbed her by her arms, legs, tail and body. Her scimitar's falling from her hands as she grunted and growled in anger, spitting the ink out and even at him.

"I'm going to kill you!!!" she shouted as another tentacle wrapped around her neck. He smirked up at her and finally got the others attention when he snapped her right arm at the elbow, causing her shriek in pain.

"VAYLIN!!" Fangir shouted after putting down one of the dead he was fighting. Lashara gasped but forced Fangir to stay away when she saw the tentacle around Vaylin's left arm tighten.

Belial smirked, his other tentacles tightening, the Tiefling was gasping for air while struggling to fight him still. "Don't be reckless, or you will watch me rip her apart and your efforts in our old reality will be for nothing" he said arrogantly while at the same time, breaking her left leg, causing Lashara to actually scream a combination of fear and anger.

Vaylin gasped for air and struggled through the pain. Her fingertips touched the tentacle as it brushed against them, and she struck. The tentacle wrapped around her right arm burst into blue flame, distracting him as he cried out in pain. Yayoi then threw her shield, severing the rest of the tentacles, spraying blood and ink everywhere as Vaylin fell to the floor with a thud. Belial screamed in pain and used his injury to his advantage by spraying hardening, sharp ink shards at the group, causing them to duck for cover. Fangir used his body to shield his wife, Lashara dodged behind a table, as did Slithera. Yayoi blocked a few with her sword, while a couple bounced off her armor or left marks. Koshar, Bombata and Dasha dodged with a pair of shards impaling his left thigh and calf causing him to hiss in pain and anger.

"YOU STUPID BITCH!! NOW YOU WILL DIE WITH YOUR HUSBAND AND ALLIES!!! THE NIGHTMARE WILL HAPPEN!!!!" Belial shrieked insanely and sent a pair of sharpened ink flying at Fangir and Vaylin. It was all in slow motion. Fangir was bringing his sword up to block, Lashara was rising from her hiding spot to launch three arrows again. One of the Golden Lions then appeared taking the two sharpened ink projectiles in the side. He looked confused then his danger sense flared up and turned to see a second one leaping at him. He swatted the lion away, then he heard her snarl, turned and saw the Gorgon, her eyes starting to glow and he lashed out impaling her with his right blade arm impaled her through the belly as she ended Belial by turning him to stone.

"NO!!! Slithera!!!" Vaylin screamed while Fangir helped her up. Lashara burst into a sob and was terrified to approach. Yayoi carefully broke the now stone blade, while Koshar firmly took hold of the piece that was still in her and removed it. Her blood flowed, she coughed, blood spattering onto her lower lip and chin. When Fangir got Vaylin close enough, she placed a hand on her shoulder, healing Vaylin rather quickly.

"No! Slithera! Heal yourself!! Please!!!" Vaylin pleaded, placing her best friend's hand on her chest. Slithera smiled, just as Haldir and Damir entered the lab, along with a couple of Mages they've never seen before. Talon and Talon rejoined them and nuzzled Slithera.

Slithera was feeling herself weakening, her hand ceased to glow and then she collapsed, her vision going white. The startled shouts around her muffled and echoey.

To Be Continued.

So I've been playing with the same group of friends for about 5 years now, I'm very grateful to have them and I've just introduced one of my newer friends into the party and his very first few sessions have had the best endings I've in my DMing career.

The Party consists of my Little Brother, Assumer Bard, my two life long friends, both playing dragonborn, one barbarian and one monk, and finally the newest party member a dwarf paladin. Even though we've been playing since middle school, we never really had a name for the party. But one fight were the party was tasked to investigate a colony of Thrai Kreen in the desert, they found themselves getting captured and set to be roasted alive. In the middle of combat I had the cliff they were on start to fall, and had a set number of rounds until the party had to be done with combat until the rocks crumbled completely as they skid down this cliffside.

Their idea was that the Bard casted polymorph on the newest player, turning him into a giant eagle, and within accouple of rounds, and some crazy rolls, everyone successfully hopped on the back of the dwarf now eagle right before the rocks they were standing on got destroyed. I never play dnd without music, and the setting is half western half African desert, our players are all from the more western region so I play cowboy music when it's down time. The first playlist I selected, just called "DND western" just started playing "The Ecstasy of Gold" and the music hit exactly at the part where the players started to catch their breath. I almost skipped it but the players asked for me to keep it. We all laughed at how funny the perfect timing was.

Our dwarf turned eagle asked, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

The bard, looking majestically into the sun set, "... Home."

It as a blast, then out of the blew the newest player said a name, "The Desperados," and it's stuck since.

That's not even the best part. Warning to all DMs, Polymorph is one heck of a spell.

next session, some tension rises with the discovery of a tribe far away from the western settlement, the Bard's family now lives in such settlement, and the tribe begs them not to fight the Thrai Kreen because if they do, they might start attacking their tribe again. Long story short, they work out some mutual agreement on what to do and head back towards the western settlement, only to find Thrai Kreen have been attacking it. Combat insures, the Barbarian and Monk do cool fighting stuff, I played some anime music to fit the fight, it was fun and hilarious, the music was hitting just at the perfect times as well, like perfectly timed. But the Bard, latter said he saw all the cool stuff they were doing and thought that he needed to one up them. Near the end of the battle, I threw a reskinned "Molduga" at them (from breath of the wild) and after reeking havoc and destroying the town hall, the bard casted polymorph on himself, turning himself into a giant gorilla. I allowed it because I just searched up "blood ape" on google and just sent him the image. But what he did next surprised me, the bard then casted Enlarge/Reduce on himself, making his size even bigger. For Context, I didn't see how big the gorilla stat block I gave him was, it was large sized, I allowed it because I'm down for funny monkey. But when he said he casted Enlarge/Reduce, his size category goes up one level...

So now there's this storm giant sized gorilla on the church steeple like King Kong, when the Molduga swam by he just leaped on the thing. My Brother is a pretty big dude too, and can do the perfect monkey face, so he was just monkey mode his entire monkey rampage. This is the type of stuff I live for while playing with the boys, this was hilarious, I started playing "Attack on Titan" from the Attack on Titan soundtrack and the bard used his bite attack to go for the Molduga's throat and it killed it, and after the bard described how he wanted to do it, the music hit right at the cinematic part. The music was on point for the whole session it was wild. But now the combat was getting long and as the DM I wanted to throw in a lore advancement as a surprise at the end of combat to keep some momentum going and probably wrap up the combat with a big reveal. Basically I surprised the party by suddenly explaining loud explosion's and huge impact on the monkey's shoulder, he'd been shot. the Party turned around and out of the dust a tank was immerging from the evil empire the party is all trying to hide from. Honestly I didn't know what to expect, I thought maybe they'd just try to retreat or something...

Pro tip, unless you literally paralyze your whole party, they will never retreat.

So what did big monkey bard do?

"... I kick the tank"

but I said he already used his attack, the bard just ended his turn, but then he gave me his stat block, and revealed he had multitrack, and still had his bonus action... I said he was out of movement, thinking it was still 30 ft, but then he asked that if he was so big wouldn't that increase his speed of movement. Regardless of actual dnd rules, his logic was to true, I allowed it.

Big monkey, got up, mad monkey, kick tank halfway across town, uses rest of turn grabbing the rest of the party and started to book it out of town. At this point the table is hounding with laughter, I'm just flabbergasted at the bard's shenanigans, but he's full monkey mode now, he's only speaking in one to two syllable words and making gorilla noises. the final words of the session went a little like this...

me: "where are you going!!!"

the Bard: "To the mountains - THE SUNSET EVEN!"

then I just lost it, I was on the floor laughing my head off, the party leaped to my laptop to find the song, they started playing it.

First it was the eagle, now it was a giant monkey hauling the whole party back into the sun set, while only one phrase was on everyone's mind...

The Desperados strike again.

TL;DR

polymorph is one heck of a drug.

I just had a really fun game come to an end (for now) and I did a silly amatuer write up of my character and my adventure. I thought I'd share it here just for fun. Sorry in advance for weird spelling and strange capitalization, I wrote it in notepad.

The Tale of Alurora the Dragon Slayer Bard

ABATHOR: THE DWARVEN GOD OF GREED

Leaving Neverwinter on a Weller's Stable horse, "Ellicot", after an almost fatal run in at "the Leering Eel", the Bard known as "Alurora" or "Al" traveled south toward the mining town of "Phandalin" accompanied by a hired hand. A mysterious loyal fellow, named "SanJan"

Al arrives in Phandalin with little trouble, collecting herbs and minerals on their journey. They speak with the self proclaimed 'Head-Hancho' Halia Thorton. After locating the town's job board, they quest off to find, "The Rock Seekers" a trio of dwarf brothers named, "Gundren, Dezlin, and Norbus." The party tracks them to a nearby temple being unearthed by the group.

Upon Entering, Al is able to use their historical knowledge to recognize some of the designs as emblems of, "Abathor, The Dwarven God of Greed." The Adventures explore the area a bit more and discover a hidden door leading to a hallway. Norbus, one of the brothers, found the group just before entering the previously hidden passage. The group locates a dead dwarven cultist clutching a magic dagger, which enchants it's wielder to...Desire MORE.

Suddenly! Our heros are ambushed by a Jelly like Monster who takes advantages of the party's dropped guard! With some difficulty they are able to dispatch the foe. With injuries suffered the explorers decided to return to Phandalin, to rest.

The party arrives back in the town. They meet up with an enthusiastic preacher named, GABRIEL GLOW, A cleric in service to the God of Light, 'Apollo'. Gabe and Al bond almost immediately over being Half-Elf and general demeanor to help, they decide to clear out the Temple of Abathor

The Party uses precision combined with brute force to clear the temple of cultists and spread the light of Apollo. Sadly in an attempt to get fresh air during a battle Norbus the only remaining dwarf brother was slain by Goblins waiting in ambush. Hearing his scream they eradicated the goblins with great haste. As Norbus lay dying he whispered he was going to see his brother's again. The party, victorious in their mission, haul their dead friend back to town for a proper burial.

MIRIAL: THE CURSED SEA ELF

A quick scan of Phanalin's job board and a conversation over breakfast with Town historian, "Winslow Cotton" revealed the existence of a Lighthouse due west on the coast. An eerie blue light has been emanating from it. The light luring ships and sailors to their demise on the semi-shallow shores, disrupting the towns supply lines. Meanwhile in Town a Significant effort into the improvement of The Church of Apollo. During a Meal at The Stone Hill Inn after building all day, An unexpected sickness befalls the owner Toblin beloved by the town. The group's quick thinking and Alurora's Medical herb and poison training were able to stabilize and save Toblin's life.

The next morning the party set out for the lighthouse, Traveling 2 days journey with small groups of monsters quickly dispatched. Arriving they see the eerie blue glow surrounding the lighthouse and dock. On the beach a large Crab Spider approaches the group. After a rocky start the party beckons for the creature to approach. It does, and then introduces itself as, "Clawface: The Giant Spider-Crab" and then asks for help. Clawface recounts the story of his mistress, the sea-elf, "Mirial" who had been cursed by and Acolyte of Tawlos. She now protects the entrance to the lighthouse through the coves as a banshee. The two half elves Alurora and Gabriel are able to convince the Banshee (with music and magic charms) to let them pass into the lighthouse unhindered with their human. As they approach The Lighthouse they are remined of the Warning Crabface gave of a large shark that has terrorized the sailors of the shipwrecks.

The Party Begins to explore the lighthouse, with extreme difficulty. Several times falling victim to Harpy control magic. Notably causing Al to both plummet from a second story balcony, and a second time into shark invested waters. After dispatching the Harpy and the Shark with Arrows and Lightning Bolts and Song, The party discovered the Shrine of Tawlos which when touched appeared to Kill SanJan, however when he awoke unscathed, he was imbued with a limited about of lightning magic. This discovery was crucial to the final faceoff with the Acolyte of Tawlos and his group of Harpys. The Battle went in the party's favor, but the group took severe damage. By defeating them, they found the OPULENT CONCH, which when returned to the Banshee, changed her back to MIRIAL the sea elf, removing the curse. Returning to Clawface who as per their deal had procured several chests from abandoned ship wrecks. Inside was treasure that would make the journey and ordeal worth it, including several helpful items to all members. Knowing great adventures still lay ahead, the party of adventurers return to Phandalin eager for some well earned rest. Alurora Fills in Winslow Cotton on the happenings of the lighthouse and secrets they had unraveled.

THE DRAGON MOUND OF AZDRACA and the QUEST OF LADY TALIMYR'S SWORD

Upon Returning home to Phandalin the party hears there have been sightings of a great beast. A Dragon. The party isn't sure they are ready to take on a dragon, so first they decide to quest for a legendary weapon, The dragon slaying sword of Lady TALIMYR of THRAGARON which she used to slay the great beast, AZDRACA. the weapon is rumored to be buried beneath the dragon mound of AZDRACA itself. After a rest and refill on supplies the journey towards the Dragon Mound commences. Moving closer to the burial mound they run into contact with a centaur named, ZANTH who gave specific directions to it's location and offered to watch the horses Ellicot and Ginya while they entered the cave system.

The party had extreme difficult moving through the dungeon, some very complex locked doors made traversing the floors harder than needed, and SanJan's lack of dark vision ended up causing him to fall into a Pit Trap, of course The undying SanJan remained a mystery, but also remained with the party. The party encountered some tricky whisps causing great difficulty for our adventurers, however the party emerged victorious. The Dragon Slayer's sword had been found, wielded by Alurora. The party discovered several very rare treasures Al taking the THE LUTE OF ILLUSION, and a NECKLACE OF FIREBALLS for themselves. Thanking ZANTH with some treasure and recovering their horses they head back toward Phandalin before hunting the dragon.

The journey would come to them however.

The party find their town, their church, and the STONE HILL INN under attack by the dragon itself, burning structures to the ground as well as feeding on livestock. Most of the townspeople running into the wilderness with their families to avoid the growing inferno. Alurora, Gabriel, and SanJan square up to the Dragon. A small group of local capable citizens and customers of the inn also stayed to fight.

In a fierce battle, Alurora's Bardic inspiration and Gabriel Glow's Divine light were champion actions, able to make the dragon flee with back to back INCREDIBLY LUCKY attacks. Al's blowdart flute from cover and not the dragon's focus was able to pierce the dragons wing, numbing it. Allowing the group to massively damage the monster. As the dragon attempted to limp-wing away, Alurora took one of the beads from the NECKLACE OF FIREBALLS and with a NATURAL talent flung the bead onto the dragon delivering the final blows. The fires were then extinguished by magic users and travelers. Gabriel said tomorrow they would clean up the town and rebuild the church, and Alurora pledged to rebuild the Stone Hill Inn, already wanting some more of their famous soup.

The Dragon's Corpse was looted. Scale, Bones, Eyeball, teeth, claws were collected. both for some magical properties and some for bragging rights. The townspeople were very pleased and they began to rebuild the town. Our Adventurers have earned their rest. they stay and assist the town in it's reconstruction. They stay at the newly renovated Stone Hill Inn, welcomed by new friends who will hopefully someday be old ones. What adventure will our party encounter next?

Thanks for reading.

I was the dungeon master and decided to give the wizard a new spell as a joke “Summon ice cube”, “99% chance of summoning a 1x1x1 inch ice cube 1 feet in front of caster. 1% chance of summoning the American music artist ice cube”. This spell had no negative effects and can be cast as many times as the wizard wanted to cast it. He only used it to keep drinks cold until eventually the rapper ice cube manifested in his mug causing it to explode and almost killed him with shrapnel to the face and neck.

From the beginning...

Cast

Part 2, Chapter 31

The old woman gestures to a dark gentleman seated at a corner table. “There is someone here to see you. He asked for you in particular.”

“We don’t know anyone here,” responds Dagrim, but he gamely joins the group to see their visitor. He has dark hair and lightly tanned skin, as is common for northerners, but a long scar across his face is distinctive. He’s nicely attired in a dark red jacket over a cream shirt, dark leather trousers, and high boots. A twisted iron ring adorns his right hand. A longsword is placed against a nearby wall.

“Good evening. I trust your errand went well?” He speaks with a deeply northern accent.

“It went rather poorly, actually,” Arthur says, each bruise and cut still stinging.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps you need to rest a bit.” The dark man gestures for drink and food to be brought out. The group takes seats, cautiously. “And… you seem to be down a member. Where is young Novos?”

“He has disappeared. We believe he perished a couple of weeks ago,” Arthur responds, cocking his head. “I’m sorry, just who are you, and how do you know us?”

“I do apologize. I am Glathos. As for how I know of you, I am in the business of knowing such things.”

“Glathos. That sounds Vaasan.” Dagrim makes it a statement rather than a question.

“Good ear, dwarf. I was born in a small village near Mirror Lake in Vaasa.”

“And what business is it of yours that you know things?”

“I am, much like you, Dagrim Prowlstone, a keeper and dispenser of knowledge. Speaking of such,” Glathos returns his attention to Zander, “I understand you are the bearer of quite an unusual artifact.” Everyone at the table freezes. Mel slides a hand closer to her sword.

“Well, we do have a sword, but Arthur has it. He’ll have to decide.”

“We do have an unusual artifact, as you put it,” Arthur confirms.

“May I see it?”

“Are you going to take it?”

“How could I possibly do so with all you around me? I merely wish to lay my eyes on what is causing such … excitement.”

Arthur takes a moment to gently remove the sword and Dillium’s cloak from his back. He lays it out on the table, pushing aside plates and mugs, then unwraps it gingerly. The sword appears brighter and shinier than it did just hours before, as if the maelstrom itself has cleaned it. Specks of bright metal appear in places through the dark patina, and the hilt appears straighter. Glathos looks at it in awe as he takes in the sword from one end to the other. “The Sword of the North. It’s true,” he whispers.

Mesmerized, he asks, “May I… May I hold it?”

“You can try. It may not like you. It doesn’t seem to like anyone.” Glathos glances up at Arthur, then slowly he reaches for the hilt of the sword. Everyone sees the flash of lightning that flares up from the hilt to Glathos’ hand. With a howl of shock he jerks it back. His hand is blackened and smoking slightly. He stares at his wounded hand and reaches into a pocket. Pulling out a glass vial of black liquid, he yanks the stopper out with his teeth, spits out the cork, and swallows the contents. His hand stops smoking, then it loses its blackness and becomes whole and pink again.

“I guess I won’t hold it,” Glathos says sadly. With another look, he retakes his seat. “I would, however, gladly take this burden out of your hands,” he says, looking around at the group.

“You can’t even hold it. What would you do with the sword?” asks Dagrim.

“You can’t either. I would use it to hasten the end of the war.”

“End the war? How?”

Glathos's eyes gleam as he leans forward. "Think of it - with that sword, I could end this war in weeks. No more villages burned than necessary, no more families torn apart. With the Warlock Knights and under my guidance, of course."

“And what will you do then?” Arthur's hand unconsciously tightens into a fist.

Glathos smiles. “Peace requires some ... maintenance. Impiltur is weak. Thay plots in the east. The Dales are full of dissidents.” He spreads his hands. “But with the Sword of the North, we can ensure peace. Permanent Peace.

Suddenly, Dagrim realizes where he’s heard the voice before. The same cadence. The same seeming sneer, barely detectable in the way he forms his vowels. Dagrim remembers it from the man just outside the mage’s tower. [1] “25,000 gold pieces,” says Dagrim. “I’d be willing to part with the sword for that, and your word that you will spare us.”

Glathos looks at the dwarf. “25 thousand? Done. I’ll have the coin here in the morning.”

Arthur pipes up. “I don’t think we’ll take you up on that offer, Glathos. We have another avenue to pursue instead.”

“I see. Well, do give it some thought. The offer is still open. What is this other avenue, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“We are going to Aetherholm to meet with the giants.”

“Ah, the giants. Yes. They are sitting this war out. We were… most persuasive.”

“So you know where Aetherholm is, Sir Glathos?” asks Zander.

“Please, it’s just Glathos. The Warlock Knights aren’t a prestige order. And of course I know where the giants live. Do you not?”

“We do not. Perhaps you would tell us.”

“I can do better than that. Aetherholm is anchored at the top of a long, giant-sized stair. The stair starts on a high mountain on the other side of the Pass. I can take you to Virdin, the nearest village.”

“How do we know you speak the truth about this?”

“It is not in my best interest to lie to you. When the giants are of no help to you, perhaps you will take me up on my offer. Be ready in the morn. I shall come back then and we will go to Virdin.”

The night passes. Once again, the party is locked in their rooms, and the nightmares keep them up much of the night. By sunrise, the group rises, weary and bedraggled. A hearty, if plain breakfast awaits, and just as they finish, Glathos returns. Today he wears a dark cloak trimmed with the fur of some great beast, dark red coat and soft leather trousers. The party saddles their ponies, noting that Glathos’ is similar, but completely black. As they leave the stable yard, he seems to note the crows settled on all the nearby buildings. “Go away! Go on, shoo!” he calls, scattering them.

“Those things have been following us around for months,” complains Zander. “I think someone is spying on us.”

“I can imagine. Perhaps they just like you,” Glathos replies.

“I don’t think so. We keep chasing them off.”

The party takes the road out of Windless, through small stands of trees and over hills. They pass small camps, but Glathos steers clear of them, leading the group around Lake Midal. Across the lake, they can see the ruins of Bloodstone City and occasionally, the remains of the old cathedral. Glathos pays it no mind and continues to steer clear of the numerous camps whose guards and lookouts all seem to look the other way.

At mid-day, the group approaches a bridge. It is a small rickety thing, guarded by goblins and hobgoblins. The guards lower their spears menacingly. “HALT!” one of the larger creatures shouts. “Nobody gets past here!” Glathos raises his hand, as if in greeting, and whispers something under his breath. They squeal as they cower back, allowing the group to cross unmolested.

“Hmm. The commoners really seem to respect this guy,” Zander remarks to the party. Arthur notes with interest that the goblins didn’t recognize him until he raised his hand, so they don’t actually recognize his face. He ponders this through the early afternoon.

Ahead, the group spots four mounted soldiers. They wear dark metal armor and ride light horses decked in light barding. They prance around, charge at something, then break off with what looks like gales of laughter. As the group gets closer, they see that the soldiers have trapped and are tormenting a group of halflings, mostly women. There is also a dwarf in the group, though the beard makes it hard to tell gender.

“Those must be Warlock Knights!” exclaims Zander.

“Hardly. They’re just some light cavalry.”

“Do you condone what they are doing?” Arthur asks, somewhat menacingly.

“I care not. The troops need their amusements, too. What do I care of the vermin they play with?”

“So you won’t object if we handle this?”

“If winning the war depends on this small cavalry troop, we’ve already lost.”

As they watch, one of the soldiers carelessly skewers a halfling. This prompts Zander and Arthur to set off across the field at a gallop. Mel dismounts and takes careful aim with her bow. Dagrin gestures and the cavalry finds themselves Slowed. Zander pulls out his flaming sword and charges into battle. The warriors clash, trading blows, but it’s clear that Zander and Arthur are more than a match for the light cavalrymen. Mel’s arrows take down one, while Zander and Arthur slay the others. Glathos observes the scene thoughtfully, seemingly taking notes. Dillium stops to aid the halflings and dwarf, tending to their wounds. Mel retrieves some of her arrows, but after a discussion, the team decides to leave the mounts and armored figures as they are, allowing the army to collect them or not.

The group reaches a low hill barely an hour later. Near the top is a sign pointing to Virdin [2] and a reasonably well-marked trail. It is here that Glathos tells them he must leave. He points them in the right direction and tells them he will meet them again after their visit with the giants, should they wish to take him up on his generous offer.

“How will we get in touch with you?” Dagrim asks.

“Oh, I’ll be around. Just… say my name three times, and I’ll hear of it.” With that, they part ways without a “farewell” or a backward glance.

A couple of hours later, a dusty and tired Task Force arrives in Virdin. “We have to find a guide to the stairway,” Zander notes.

“We have to find a bed for the night,” Mel remarks, noting that the pavilionsol is on the other side of the Damaran Gate [3]. The group agrees and then finds a large public house with rooms for them to share. They also learn that a local prospecting guide can show them anything they need to see. According to the innkeeper’s wife, Mathrik is frequently passing the time at the general store.

Sure enough, Mathrik is shooting the breeze with the general store proprietor and half a dozen other men. After some colorful banter, he agrees to take them to the stair the next morning.

End of chapter 31.

[1] Part 2, Chapter 23

[2] Virdin is named for the King of Damara at the beginning of the first Vaasan war.

[3] Atticus, Mar, Pocky, and most of their gear were left behind last chapter.

Many years ago, I was running a megadungeon (Rappan Athuk). As it is with D&D, perishing is not necessarily the end. So last year I made a video to commemorate an indomitable spirit, and a player who was just willing to lean in to whatever weirdness I would throw at him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlrNXuUfQcc&feature=youtu.be

So this is a fallow up post to my post called "dnd party" but if you haven't seen it it's fine I'm just gonna give a quick recap of what I said so I'm a DM who made my own ttrpg system and my players are a paladin who's God is the god of the mondaine a animalhugger (the animal version of a treehugger) also know as a animal pact druid named mischief who's known for causing bar fights (remember her) and a pet seagull named food who's only had tree thoughs in his life ("food", "I'm hungry" and "cocked food is better food")

The story kicked of with them being kidnapped and told there gonna fight in the area (I thought hey a area good way to get some xp at the start nothing could go wrong) Npc:so it seems one of our sponsors decides you to are gonna fight in the area Paladin: immediately pises of the npc Mischief: pises of paladin Both get thrown into the area fullide dead bodies with a big white tiger tebackci and a small fire Marge White tiger tebackci: cracks someone's skull open and starts eating the brain like it's a bowl of nudes Paladin with out any weapons: loots the bodies and rolls a nat20 Mischief: tells the seagull that the fire Marge is foodfoodfood Seagull: start to eat the fire Marge alive Fire Marge: trys to cast fire ball but rolls nat 1 dying to burn damage Paladin: hits the white tebackci and rolls another fucking nat20 and on damage rolls two nat10 and a nat7 on a d10 (btw on damage rolls if you roll the highestnumbero you get to roll again) one shoting the white tiger tebackci Mischief: tries to seduce the entire audience rolls a nat15 The audience: tries to get to mischief Mischief: tries to seduce the audience again rolls a mother fucking holy ducking nat20 and rides the wave of seduced people out of the area

(The player playing Mischief tells me after the game that their gonna try to seduce every encounter from now on)

I'm not the typical DM in my group. However, one day before a session our DM said he couldn't make it because of schedule stuff that popped up. Instead of canceling the session entirely though, I volunteered to DM it and run the beginning of a future campaign I wanted to do. I kinda expected it to be a one-off thing, but afterwards the typical DM told us that he needed to take a break from DMing to focus on school and sports, so I got to run my campaign for a month. So, with the context out of the way, I hope that you enjoy the session I managed to whip up in 7 hours as much as me and my table did.

BTW: this is my first long post on this subreddit. Please feel free to give any kind of advice.

Content Warning: a bit of crude humor towards the end (namely references to "family jewels"). Nothing intense or descriptive.

The party (all level 3) includes;

- Lupus Galanodel, a shadar kai lycan bloodhunter and the only halfway mature character.

- Snaax the Loathsome, a kobold necromancer who is racist towards the undead.

- Grumba, a ghostwise halfling gunslinger (and also a 10-year-old child).

- Gnoku Nus, a long death monk and a literal monkey (but with tabaxi racial features bc why not).

And so it begins. I describe this scene to the party;

You all meet in a tavern. There is music, drinks, food, and jubilation. People dance and laugh and drink and throw witty jokes across the room, relishing in the greatest party every thrown. You laugh and drink with your friends all siting at the same table. You do not remember what you are celebrating but it doesn’t matter. You have never experienced such joy in your life.

Just to feel it all crash down in a second.

From one heartbeat to the next, the room changes. It is still the same tavern, but the room is now dark, only illuminated by the cold moonlight shining through cracked and rotten boards in the ceiling. The tables and furniture are in their same places, but the wood is rotten in some areas. The tavern patrons are also in the same places are before, but this time they are strewn across the floor, tables, and bar. Each sports various injuries, some with severed body parts and some with blood pooling out of their eyes and mouth; all dead. This includes the friends you were sitting with. You stand, as if you do not control your own body, with your eyes locked on the main feature in the room- a throne, built of a dark grey stone that is cracked and crumbling. More interesting is the man that slumps in it- if it is a man at all. Their body is shadowed so you cannot see their features. However, you catch a glimpse of a rusty crown upon their head and can see their old, corpselike hands clutching the arms of the throne.

It is absolutely silent. A suffocating silence, in fact. You feel as though you cannot move without this corpselike king’s permission. You are hyperaware of your beating heart, and the sweat trickling down your cheek. You gasp for breath in the suffocating atmosphere, hoping that the figure does not take offense to such action and order you to kill yourself. After what seems to be a lifetime, when the silence reaches its most deafening pitch, the figure tilts its head up to look at you. You cannot see its eyes and yet it chills you to the bone. It speaks, in a voice that pierces the silence and your very soul.

“You should have chosen the axe.”

Then you wake.

The characters all wake from the same dream to find themselves in prison cells in the underbelly of the Ruby Rose, and imperial ship currently en route to what could be their redemption- or their doom.

Some important context: each PC is a death row inmate who committed a horrible crime and have been given a chance at a pardon if they find a certain missing person- Princess Mayla Vinci, the eldest child and only daughter of the emperor, who went missing three years ago. What makes this task so daunting is where Princess Mayla disappeared. That being a place called the Forsaken Land.

Discovered 147 years ago, the Forsaken Land has been a place of mystery and rumors. Such mysteries have remained unanswered, for no one who has gone into it has ever returned, neither dead nor alive. In the earlier days of its discovery, it's novelty and mystery spurned groups and expeditions to venture into it, believing that great treasure lay somewhere beyond the tree line. In recent generations, interest has declined. The last expedition into the Forsaken Land was in fact Princess Mayla's, who, being the warrior princess and general she was known to be, said that she could conquer it.

The party is briefed on all of this by the ship's captain at their customary last meal (while Grumba and Snaax fight over food like toddlers). Their goal will be to find the princess- dead or alive- and bring her back to the same spot that the party will be dropped off at. The ship will return for one week every month, during the week of the full moon, for nine months. After that, they will not return at all, and the party will be left stranded.

(If you haven't noticed already, this campaign was inspired by Hell's Paradise)

Soon after being briefed, they arrive. The ship has stopped, and the Forsaken Land they've heard so much and yet know so little about lies 300 feet away. All they can see of it is a beach stretching beyond sight in either direction. 100 feet up that beach is a dense forest, stretching just as far as the sands.

A priest speaks a few words of prayer over the party before they are rowed to shore, given their equipment, clothes, and supplies, and left alone as the ship prepares to depart for now.

Finally, the party is left to their own devices. The first thing they notice is that on the beach itself there are no signs of life. There are no aquatic plants, no algae, no animal sounds, not even any shells. Only sand, rocks and water. Plant life only seems to begin at the thick tree line.

Lupus is the first to set off into the forest, followed closely behind by the rest of the party. A few hundred feet in, Gnoku climbs a large tree to get a better look at the area around them (or to catch a fly. I can't remember). What he ends up seeing is nothing but dense forest as far as the eye can see- even in the direction they came from. Although they hadn't gone that far, the beach or ocean was nowhere in sight. Just trees.

They continue traveling due east for a while, until encountering their first foe- a seemingly normal elk. Key word being "seemingly." Because as the PCs approach, the elk begins to deform and change. The sounds of cracking bones and tearing flesh can be heard as the elk doubles in size, its legs start growing joints where joints shouldn't be, and it's now three antlers twist and grow horrifically. It's vertebrae stab though its back and its teeth malform into jagged spikes. Standing before them is a horrific monstrosity and totally not a skinwalker.

What the party finds out later is that this thing is a homebrew monster of mine called a Dread. Basically, a dread is an animal that appears normal at first glance but will undergo this abominable transformation and go on a murderous rampage upon being threatened (or if it just feels like it). The party kills the dread elk and then like 5 minutes later kill two dread swans before making camp for the night. The also end up skinning the elk and taking its meat for food.

The next day, they travel for about half of it before finally exiting the forest into a grassland that after half a mile goes back into another forest, one much less dense this time. Soon after, they come across a hobbit hill-like house built into a mound of dirt, occupied by an old, disgruntled satyr named Crest. Crest tells them that he faintly remembers seeing a large group of armored knights passing by a few years ago, accompanying a woman matching the princess's description. However, the rest of what he knows does not come for free. He would tell them which direction the knights went if they pay him in return. However, he wouldn't take coin (not that the PCs had any). Apparently, this place uses a barter system, so trading goods for goods without the use of currency. After giving Crest the dread elk's hide and a hand axe, he tells them that he had told the knights and princess of a community called Fairmeadow, which he thinks they went too. It was a full day's worth of travel east through the new less dense forest, called the Lupin Woods (meanwhile the woods they just left were the Barken Bars). He used to visit it occasionally himself, so he had markers set up that would lead them to it. The party then heads off in that direction for, you guessed it, more walking. Before they leave though, Crest warns them to be wary of people. Everyone and everything in this place is fighting for survival, no matter the cost.

The spend the rest of the day traveling before making camp. At that point, they hear footsteps as someone else approaches their camp. That someone being the 5th death row prisoner who was aboard the Ruby Rose, and the next PC; Smith, an armorer artificer and the one and only warforged in my world. This is actually our normal DM's character. He managed to slip in some time to play so he made a character quickly and hopped in. The in-game reason that his character showed up late was that he was being kept powered off in a broom closet and the crew kinda just forget about him until sometime later. They turned around and dropped him off, and he's been spending this time catching up with the party. As he arrives, the characters get into a discussion of how they ended up on death row. Their crimes were;

Grumba: shot and killed a noble.

Lupus: accidentally killed a few people.

Smith: purposefully killed a lot of people.

Snaax: raided the royal catacombs to make a xylophone out of a dead royal's bones, then played said xylophone in the middle of the market.

Gnoku: Disrespected a noble and then slept with said noble's wife.

This group is insanity personified (with the sole exception of Lupus), and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Setting off the next day, they travel for most of it before finally reaching Fairmeadow. It is a very small community, with only about 120 residents. Their houses are all in a circle, the inside of which acts as the market and place of business. In the middle of this circle is a 60-foot-tall gray stone obelisk. It's a rather sleepy little pocket of civilization, but regardless people bustle around, seeing to their business and interacting with others. The party is welcomed warmly and invited by a nice old lady named Margaret to stay at her inn for the night. Before going there though, they decide to shop around. Smith casts detect magic as he and Lupus go around trying to find magical items (to no avail), Grumba trades for a crap ton of metal, and Snaax has his eyes set on an amber amulet that he can't afford.

Suddenly, Smith's detect magic picks up a faint magical aura coming from the obelisk. He investigates it, followed by Lupus. That's when Lupus's sharp hearing picks up a sound like a faint heartbeat coming from it. He listens in closer, and as he does, he can hear the sound become louder and more distinct, and it is definitely coming from within the obelisk. Suddenly, every resident of Fairmeadow instantly stops what they are doing and turns to face Lupus, standing stock still, with perfect posture, like something out of a horror movie. They just stare as Margaret steps forth, coming closer to Lupus, she asks him what he is doing. In response, Lupus transforms and begins to attack the obelisk. Then all hell breaks loose.

The residents go feral, attacking all of the PCs, although most converge on Smith and Lupus's position. Gnoku and Snaax climb up onto the rooftops to escape. Grumba tries to barricade himself inside a house and finds out that it is occupied by one murderous resident. He shoots her dead, only for her to rise up again like a zombie (foreshadowing). He just keeps shooting her. Lupus and Smith continue to strike at the obelisk, surprisingly able to crack the stone. As more and more crazed people reach them to attack, one last blow breaks through the remarkably thin stone slab, causing it to fall off. Like a domino effect, all of the other slabs slide off, falling to the ground as what was under them is revealed. It is like a 60-foot-tall spike of red flesh. It has no visible eyes, mouth, of any other features besides a footlong, bone-like spike protruding from its tip like antenna.

The fight continues. Snaax, Gnoku, and Grumba manage to remain relatively safe as Lupus and Smith get crowded by the attackers. They keep striking at the flesh spike, whittling it down, doing their best to ignore the attacks of the residents. While the flesh spike does not seem to take any physical actions itself, it does periodically let loose a great psychic scream that tears at the PC's minds. They manage to kill it after Gnoku uses all of his monk speed + tabaxi boost to drop kick it from 100 feet away, snapping its long spine. As it dies, as horrific shriek comes from it, and the residents of Fairmeadow fall to the ground. The thing begins to swell and bloat, before rupturing and exploding in a great burst of blood, covering absolutely everything.

The party investigates and loots the scene (Grumba collects even more metal). Upon inspecting the bodies of the residents, they find that they all had some form of mortal wound that was very old, and was being hidden under their clothes. With this, they realize that the residents must have been zombies somehow controlled by the meat spike.

Snaax goes looking for that amulet that he had wanted earlier, only to find that someone had beaten him to the punch. The figure is crouched down, humming to themselves as they dig through the wreckage of the trampled stalls. They are small and skinny, kinda twinkish. Their clothes are somewhat odd; they wear long white pants with what is the medieval equivalent of a white hoodie, with the hood pulled over their head. Perhaps most strangely, white rabbit ears pop out of holes cut in the hood for them. They are facing away from Snaax so that he cannot see their face. The stranger picks up an item, the amber amulet Snaax was after. They whistle and say in a male voice “finally, something of some value.” He stands to his height of about 5’6”, and turns to face the party, which by this point have taken notice of the stranger, showing that his face is covered by a white porcelain mask. The features of the mask are mostly humanoid, but the nose and marks for whiskers hint towards a more rabbit-like appearance. He says “Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you need something?”

Snaax demands that the mysterious twink gives him the amulet, to which he basically says, "lol no." He briefly remarks on how the party managed to kill the flesh thing, which he calls a "corpse needle", and how it is rare to find one "this far west." With his detect magic, Smith can see that there is a strong magical aura around this stranger. After seeing that, he decides that it's a good idea to try and take the amulet from him, but as he touches him, Smith suddenly finds himself standing on nothing 60 feet up in the air. He manages to save himself by shoving his ass into his bag of holding before hitting the ground, but the second he reemerges it happens again, and this time his heavy metal frame is dropped through a roof. Gnoku attempts to speed blitz the twink, but before his fist can make contact, he suddenly finds himself teleported to a different position, and accidentally tramples Snaax instead. Meanwhile, the mysterious twink seems to be enjoying himself, obviously being the cause of this. Then says his goodbyes before disappearing entirely, without so much as a single movement, leaving the party very confused and Snaax very angry.

They rest up for a couple hours before meeting yet another new face. A middle-aged man with reddish auburn hair rides into the remains of Fairmeadow on a mule. He holds a crossbow in one hand as he approaches the party warily. He asks them if they are the ones who killed the corpse needle. They say yes. Suddenly, the man's demeanor changes. He becomes much more lively and less wary, thanking the party from the bottom of his heart for what they did. He introduces himself as Henry and says that he lives in a cabin several miles away. He and his family used to come to Fairmeadow to trade, until the corpse needle showed up a few months ago. During their last visit, its undead minions managed to kill his wife, although he and his daughter were able to escape. He came to Fairmeadow this time because he heard the death throes of the needle and had some hope that it might have been killed. As thanks, he offers to let the PCs stay at his home for the time being as they tend to their wounds. But first he wants to find his wife's body so that she can be buried.

After doing that, they walk northeast for a couple hours before arriving at Henry's domicile. It is a small log cabin but looks quite cozy. There is a sizable vegetable patch and a chicken coop outside, as well as what looks like a small stable for presumably the mule. Out of the corner of their eyes, the PCs also notice two small dirt mounds marked by large rough stones. Graves. Out of the cabin comes Henry's daughter Kestrel to greet the party, taking them inside to tend to their wounds.

They stay the night at the cabin, conversing with Henry and Kestrel and recovering. Grumba uses the time to put together a new gun- a bad news- while Lupus starts writing down descriptions and info about the unique monsters they have encountered so far in a journal he found, aiming to create a monster manual of sorts.

When the party asks Henry if he would know anything about the princess, he mentions that a few years ago an armed group of knights came through Fairmeadow, but continued quickly on their way further east. On their trajectory, its likely that they ended up hitting another community in the Lupin Woods called Mountainside.

The next day is rather sleepy as everyone goes about their business. Henry and Kestrel bury their wife/mother, alongside the other two graves containing the small family's long-dead young boys, both of whom died of sickness. According to them, they have only one other living family member- Henry's eldest daughter and Kestrel's sister, who left home several years ago.

Lupus, Grumba, and Snaax end up going out to collect some firewood for the evening (Gnoku and Smith's players had to leave) when they encounter a familiar masked face perched upon a tree branch. Behold, the mysterious twink has returned- this time with an offer. Well, its less of an offer and more of a demand. The twink threatens that he'll kill the entire party and Henry and Kestrel unless the three PCs before him play a game with him. A game of 20 questions, as simple as that. When asked why he was doing this, he simply says that he's bored. "I can kill anyone I want. At a certain point it gets boring. But a game of intellect can be unpredictable. Anyone can bear a sharp mind- even if their bodies are... fragile."

Not having much of a choice and deciding that it would be a bad idea to fight back against someone who humiliated them earlier, they agree to the game. However, the twink throws in a twist; if the PCs win, he'll leave them alone.

But if they lose... he'll take one random PC's nuts.

Yeah, that's right. He would take someone's family jewels like its DanDaDan. I know its crude but, in my defense, we had gotten further in the session than I thought we would so I was kinda winging it at that point. Also, my players thought it was funny.

So, with that little tidbit in the back of their minds, the twink decides what the word to guess is and the 20 questions start. The PCs make some progress in the beginning but also gets a whole lot of nowhere. Meanwhile the twink dangles from his branch, not talking much except to egg on the party or complain about being bored when they take too long to ask a question. About 11 questions in and they are not close to solving the game, so the twink drops them some hints to what the word is; 1. it is related to a specific game, and 2. it is what he is.

The second hint just confuses the PCs more because they had already deduced that the word wasn't a living thing. But they eventually started whittling down the possible answers. A few questions from the end and the found out that it was a chess piece, and by question 19 they have whittled it down to either the knight or the bishop and had no other clues to decide between the two. Snaax insisted that it was bishop, and after arguing over it, they agreed that they would go with it, but it was nis nuts on the line if they were wrong. Boldly, Snaax asked his final question, "is it the bishop?" The twink stood upright, and with a dramatic flourish of his hands said, "No!"

After relishing in the PC's despair for a moment, the twink asks an odd question, whether or not they've heard of the "Royals" yet. When they say no, the twink begins to explain:

The Royals are 5 powerful individuals that are like the demigods of the Forsaken Land. Each one bears a title that takes its name from one the royal chess pieces; the rook, the knight, the bishop, the queen, and the king. While they aren't a part of any larger government, as the Forsaken Land doesn't have one, the Royals' presence and power is feared across the continent.

The twink spins around so that his back is to the PCs and lifts his top up enough to see the large tattoo of the knight piece on his back, revealing that he is the royal known as the Knight.

He drops his top back into place and turns around. "Now that the lesson's over, its time to reap my reward. Eeny, meeny, miny... you." He points his outstretched hand towards Snaax. "Hold still. I'd rather not take more than necessary."

Despite their loss, the PCs decided that they wouldn't take this injustice lying down. Lupus uses the bloated agony blood curse, causing the Knight's to bloat uncomfortably, and then Grumba shoots him. And crits.

The golf-ball sized bullet hits the Knight in the forehead, knocking him off of the branch and shattering his mask into pieces. He falls to the ground on his back, unmoving for a few seconds. The bullet continues on to impact with a tree behind him, punching a hole in the bark. As the Knight sits up, his face is now visible. The PCs can see his pale skin, pale eyes, and white hair- all made red by blood from the wound the bullet gouged in his forehead as it scraped him. Quickly, his left hand shoots up to cover his face as much as possible, but even through his fingers the PCs can see as the shock in his eyes turns to malice. He speaks in a scarily deadpan tone, "You broke my mask." Initiative is rolled as the ass-kicking begins. Throughout the fight, the Knight keeps one hand blocking as much of his face as possible.

Grumba manages to get another shot off, clipping the Knight's ear, before it's the twink's turn. He charges Lupus head on before teleporting behind him and stabbing him with his dagger, doing enough damage to drop him instantly. Snaax and Grumba manage to survive a bit longer, but only a bit. Grumba manages to do the most damage while Snaax tries to negotiate with the Knight, trying to calm him down. But the murderous twink isn't hearing it. He only sees red. He teleports Snaax 100 feet into the air as he continues to chase Grumba, soon downing him. Snaax uses misty step to reduce the damage of the fall, managing to remain conscious- for the moment. Lupus nat 20s a death save and tries to run away, only to get dropped again by the Knight's thrown dagger. The Knight starts throwing straight hands with Snaax before grabbing his throat in one hand and lifting his small body off the ground with strength unbecoming of his stature. He speaks, slow and steady and full of malice.

"I have lived and survived for fifteen hundred years. I have fought the other Royals and could even defeat two of them. And yet you sorry lot think that you could take me on?"

The dirt beneath Snaax begins to disappear as if draining out, creating a neatly dug grave. The Knight drops him into it, and from his new position Snaax can see that the dirt has reappeared up in the air and begins to fall into the hole again, filling it quickly and violently. The last thing he hears is the Knight finishing his sentence;

"Remember your place. Six. Feet. Under.**"

And with that, the grave fills, trapping Snaax until he eventually suffocates and dies.

And yet death was not the end.

Snaax found himself standing in a large, dark space. It would have been entirely empty if it wasn't for that thing in front of him. Snaax could not see it, but he knew it was there. Perhaps he could tell by the chill down his spine, or the pressure in the air, or maybe it was simply because he could see the only visible features the thing presented- two giant hollow eyes and a great face-splitting grin that somehow penetrated through the empty void, towering far above the insignificantly small kobold and looking down upon him.

Then something else comes out of the infinite void- a hand like a human's, but a thousand times larger, and colored a faded purple with fingers that were too long. It emerges relatively far away from Snaax. Then from the tip of it's middle finger, another entire hand grows, this one a little bit smaller than the last. The from that hand's middle finger sprouts another hand, rinse and repeat until the branching hand has reached Snaax, now reduced to the size of a normal hand and poised as if offering to shake. Seeing no other option, Snaax takes it up on its offer, and as he does the world fades to black once more.

Several hours later, back in the world of the living, Lupus and Grumba wake to find themselves back in Henry's cabin, with their wounds having been tended to. Henry says that they found them injured in the forest, with no one else to be found- neither Snaax nor the Knight. They rush back to the site of battle to try and desperately find Snaax. They find the freshly turned up dirt that was his impromptu grave and begin digging it up. After a few minutes, they pull out the cold, dead body of Snaax the Loathsome.

A cold dead body that, in that moment, gasped back to life.

And that brought a close to session 1.

One other thing that happened in the time after was that Lupus, Snaax, and Grumba collected trophies from their fight. Grumba kept one of the pieces of the Knight's shattered mask and built it into the handle of his gun. Lupus found the Knight's earlobe that was severed when Grumba shot his ear, put a string through it and wore it as a necklace. As for Snaax, he found the amber amulet that the Knight had looted from Fairmeadow and had apparently dropped on accident. So, despite losing and gaining a dangerous enemy, they were all in high spirits.

Good god this session was a lot, but my party and I had fun with it. We've managed to get a few more sessions in, and I want to write follow up stories about those ones too in time if this one goes over well.

Thanks for reading.

Im the dm of a homebrew adventure and the party - consisting of a barbarian, a fighter, a wizard and a paladin - just finished battling an intense boss. As a result of this fight, they were scattered around the continent in unknown land.

The paladin, was sent to a weird swamp, with huge (and i mean fking giant) trees. The place was cursed with a magical darkness, which meant the player was only able to see around 5 feet around. The player got scared because of this, and decided to climb the first tree. Fine, i thought. The other party members were also looking to get a nights rest, i could argue for sleeping on a branch. Which the player did. After climbimg for a long time. The branch found was also huge, halfway up the tree.

Think of the trees like the tall boab trees, with only really leaves and branches at the top.

A bit after waking up, the player hears a little girls voice in their mind, which tells the paladin to come find her, to help her. The voice guides her through a mental connection, Aka, follow the voice that only i can hear in my head. Instead of climbing down the tree, when the voice is clearly heard from below (i pointed this out multiple times), the player decided to walk from the singular branch they found, to the next tree.

Just a note, however, because darkness makes me swear there is something right in front of me, which i will be walking into in just a step or 2 (even if i wont), i decided to say the same to the player, although with a little sarcastic tone.

Now, the player keeps walking to the end of the branch, with no tree's located. Player looks at me with a confident look and hits me with the most unexpected:

"I walk back, so i can sprint at full speed off the branch, to try to reach the next tree. I want to try to jam my sword into the tree to sort of slow my fall :)"

There were no trees in that direction. I was stunned, because i felt bad to just let the player fall, all the way up there, 500ft above the ground, to almost certainly their death. But i like consequences, so i said fk it. Rolled fall damage and that was the end of the paladin. Neither forgotten, nor buried, in a swamp.

Now it just happens that the player had talked beforehand about wanting to playba different class, so this ended up working out in the end. But nothing can prepare me for these... trials.

Ted talk thank you for coming!

Ok I know this technically isn't dnd since it's my own ttrpg system but anyways

Me and my friends just started a new campaign were I'm dming and even drought we just started the campaign I all ready know it's gonna be good here are the characters

A paladin named Diago thats 90% Mexican and who's God is the God of the mondaine and this God even has a 9-5 job

A walking talking black cat lady who is the animal version of a treehugger named mischief and is locally known for breaking fram pens and starting huge bar fights sending bar owners everywhere in the city into dedt from the repair costs

A pet seagull who's only had 3 thoughts in his life which is "I'm hungry","food" and "chocked food is better than food" 🤣

No, I’m not joking, here’s how it went.

Context: Me and my friends are running a semi-homebrew campaign, and we got to a point where we were dealing level 6 damage at level 3, so our DM set up one-off scenarios to power scale us, and the most recent one(at time of writing) was an Ancient Blue Dragon on top of a 50+ stories tall mountain. No I’m not joking with that either.

So, we knew that we wouldn’t win, so we tried to find a way to get away from it.

Our Warlock, who had a ring that allows wearer to cast Shadow Step, was trying to get down using Shadow Step, but couldn’t.

Our Cleric just decided to go full pancake and fall off the mountain after gaining a save to slow their decent with a greataxe.

Our Rogue wasn’t doing anything.

The Artificer tried the same stunt as the Cleric, but with a regular axe, but ended up actually succeeding at the cost of an arm and almost guaranteed fatal injuries.

Want to know what my fighter did?

I decided “Fuck it.” and go full Kratos and just walk off the edge(Yes, it’s the Kratos falling meme). On the way down, I grabbed the Artificer, and they got on my back. I rolled to PUNCH the AIR to NEGATE FALL DAMAGE, and the DM made me need to make a NAT20… NAT-F***ING-20.

Right at the last second, my Fighter punched with his left arm so hard that I negated fall damage… at the cost of said left arm, and the Artificer getting launched back up the mountain and landing up there at 1HP in the Peter griffin death pose.

TL:DR - I made a psudo Galaxy Impact to save my life from fall damage.

Context: This was the second campaign I have ever DMed, I was very new and didn't understand how game balance fully worked. My players were level 6, one of which was a Bugbear barbarian (named Gort who was a tank and dealt a crap ton of damage but was incredibly stupid (I think he had a 6 in INT) and had a Crab named Carb.

The main goal of the campaign was that they were protecting a bunch of Emeralds that would have destroyed the world or something (I honestly forgot).

I also misread a section about Vecna's stat block, and I thought that he found a new body after he was slain, like he possess and takes over a body permanently and that becomes his new form till he is stained again.

Story:

So I have been having trouble with my players killing all my enemies very easily, and D&D Beyond, around the same time, released The Vecna Dossier for free, I wanted to try it out. So my players proved themselves to the Slime King so he wouldn't kill them, and he gave them a gift. This gift was something his people found in a dungeon, and he had no idea what to do with it. I then gave them the hand of Vecna so I could introduce Vecna into the campaign.

My players rolled an arcana check, and my dumb DM brain told them it increased their Strength to a total of 20, and they could cast spells. Then, Gort (who 100% knew this was Vecna's hand) decided he was going to CHOP OFF his hand and reattach VECNA's hand to it.

Now, this was something Gort would usually do, and most of the time, our party would usually stop him. But most people at the table that day were apparently barely listening and didn't stop him. Then our Human Paladin (who was very new to the game and didn't know about Vecna's hand) offered to chop it off for him. So, no one stopped our most powerful player from cutting off his hand and reattaching it with the literal god of secrets' hand.

Then, when he put Vecna's hand on his stub, it reattached itself to his hand, and he became Chaotic Neutral. However, he interprets that as he is now evil. At this point, the group realized that their most powerful member was evil. They kept trucking along until they got to this library cave.

Originally, they were supposed to meet Vecna here, he would have taken his hand back and would reveal he corrupted the main villain of the campaign. However, because Gort is now attuned to Vecna's hand, I decided to make Vecna have him try to take the Emeralds. He failed a wisdom save and attacked the party. The party quickly casted Entangle on him, and he became retrained.

Then Vecna Soul came in and tried to possess Gort, and he had to succeed in a wisdom save. He then succeeded in the Wisdom save, and I didn't have a vessel Vecna could possess, and then I remembered his crab, Carb. I then made Vecna miss Gort and crash into Carb the crab and Vecna's new form was a crab

My players loved it, and they thought it was hilarious, so I ran with it. After the session was over, Gort's player made a new character and Gort became a villain, who fought along with the BBEG and Vecna.

So, for context, this was a one-shot that was building off of a previous campaign I had not been a part of. In that campaign, Zariel was ultimately purified and another devil named Bel essentially took over the devil side of the Blood War for her. He was currently working on building a massive war robot to turn the tide of the war. However he needed a powerful soul as a power source. So he chose our favorite living furnace, Karlach, to power it. Partly because the engine in her chest made her suited for it, but mostly to flip Zariel the metaphorical bird.

Wyll hired our party to rescue her. A few of the adventurers who were from the previous campaign, and some newcomers including my character Thaum. Thaum is a Cthonic Tiefling who primarily works as a deal broker for Yugoloths, securing contracts behind a slightly more approachable face for mortals. He primarily deals in souls, of course, but in this case he was promised the spoils of this adventure and so decided to help the party rescue Karlach.

After a dangerous journey through the wastes, our party arrives at Bel's Forge, a massive fortress city where the machine is being built. Once there we see from outside the gates that this thing is the size of a 40k Titan. I manage to bluff our way in by claiming we were here involving the construction project. A cambion leads us in and demands to know what exactly we were meant to help with.

I hazard a guess that because a project like this has so many working parts, both literally and metaphorically, that many fiendish contracts must be involved. I pretend that I am a broker sent to look over all the various contracts and ensure that they all fall into order and don't entangle one another, and also to make sure every bargain is being kept. I finish by saying, "I'll be straight with you. I don't want to use the word audit, but..." *shrugs*

Naturally this only works because of some godly deception and persuasion rolls, and we are given not only access to the archives, but the schematics of the robot. It is here that we realize that none of us have any clue how to get Karlach out of that thing without killing her.

Luckily for us, the original party members have a solution. Back when they were working with Bel to stop Zariel, they gave Bel an item. A sentient magic shield, in which a fiend is trapped. What Bel doesn't know is that that fiend is in fact on the level of a demigod, and according to the DM from that game, "the second strongest being in the Nine Hells". So we decide to go to Bel and offer him a deal: He gives us Karlach, and we give him the true name of that being so that he can utilize it for his machine. (The sorta-paladin of our group learned the true name whilst dealing with it before)

So we walk into Bel's throne room, my devilish "Internal Affairs" pin fresh and shiny on my chest, and start dealing. I completely accidentally drop hints that I work for Asmodeus and due to some more godlike rolls Bel takes this to mean I actually have the authority to make this deal. The bargain is not only struck, but Bel ends up hiring me as a consultant for future contracts, and agrees that he will not involve himself in matters involving the Material Plane, so long as we make no efforts to meddle with his affairs, under threat of soul consumption.

At this point, my evil character thinks that there is no way they will go along with that, but after some deliberation they do, and the bargain is struck. Karlach is returned to us drained into unconsciousness, the fiend in the shield is chosen as her replacement, and the rest of the party besides me and another pc who wanted to stay back and become employed as my bodyguard planeshift themselves and Karlach back home.

It is only after this resolution and the end of the one-shot that I am informed that this fiend's one desire is to kill Asmodeus, that with this body it will be more than powerful enough to do so, and will probably not only end the Blood War, but also kill so many devils before getting killed itself that the demons will be able to resurge and begin a Blood War II. To say nothing of what this will do to the balance of the other planes.

So yeah, exactly how badly did I mess with the multiverse here? Anybody do anything worse? Because I would absolutely love to hear about it.

I'm DMing in the Doomed Forgotten Realms setting. If you are unfamiliar, the basic idea is "every published adventure failed, and now all the bad guys are in charge." It's a very dystopian setting.

Two of my players (A & B) decided they wanted to play the children of a bard that Player A has been playing for multiple years. I have heard countless stories about Character Alpha here. But A & B are playing her twins.

At the beginning, I asked them where their mother was, and they couldn't agree, so they let me decide. I thought about it for a while, and eventually decided that she had gone out trying to fight against the rise of the monsters and never returned. They aren't sure if she's alive or dead.

Player A decides their character thinks his mom is dead.

Player B decides their character thinks her mom is alive.

Perfection.

Amongst the many stories I'd heard of Character Alpha was that she has had run-ins with Halaster Blackcloak and hates him. Further, in the setting, it states that Halaster has unmoored the dungeon from Undermountain and now has, essentially, his own little demiplane. So my decision was that Alpha had been kidnapped by Halaster, and had a Geas cast on her to make her act as one of his seven acolytes, and in the many years she's been cast, her memory has been modified to make her believe this was of her own choice.

It's taken 10 levels and 77 sessions for this to pay off. I had the characters raid a secret vault where the Red Wizards of Thay have been capturing Chosen and taking their souls (this is, essentially a concept from Dead in Thay from Tales from the Yawning Portal, just without a whole 100 room dungeon). In the process, I was finding pictures for living chosen when Player A pipes up with, "Wow, that one looks a lot like Alpha's cousin!"

Well, now it's Alpha's cousin they're rescuing. Cousin left the same time as Alpha and tells the twins that one night, while they were camping, Alpha was sitting watch, and when Cousin woke up she had just disappeared. Cousin doesn't know what happened

So, they send the Chosen somewhere safe, clear out the vault, and head out of the vault. The forest next to the mountain is mostly dead and gloomy, and as they walk, they realize, the forest should have ended by now, and also why is the moon up? It should be about 3 PM. Halaster has pulled them into Wyllowwood.

Puzzles and battles commence. I basically set it up as an "Escape room" where you have to solve the puzzles and get the green bladed sword to activate the only remaining gate to get out. But all 7 of Halaster's apprentices are standing between them and the door. It took the group a moment to realize this was the Kobiashi Maru, but they did figure it out, and that was when I took action. All the acolytes are dressed in nondescript robes with their faces covered. They're all identified by their robe color.

Blue does a steel wind strike and just devastates 4 of the 5 people and lands next to Character A. Several other 'this is bad news' spells commenced. Character A turns to Blue and screams about how dare they use his mom's favourite spell against him, pulls out his mom's sword, and stabs Blue.

Whose nose begins to bleed as their eyes raise to meet his. The same eyes he hasn't seen in a decade. He stabbed his mother with her own sword. And seeing her child referencing her, gave her the wherewithal to fight the Geas.

When we get back around to her turn, Blue yells at the characters to run and puts her palms down and casts Bones of the Earth. Another signature spell I've heard Alpha described as using many times. She casts it under all the other acolytes sending them up into the air and away from characters. The characters make a run for it, but as Character A turns back, he sees Blue's hood fall back, revealing a messy bun and the pointed ears he definitely recognizes. She casts Shatter which goes off with a lion's roar (another signature) and shatters two of the columns under the acolytes.

And then our Paladin bodily threw him through the gate so he couldn't try to go back.

It was beautiful. And now the twins are big mad and big sad and trying to figure out how to get their mom back.

DMing for a campaign nearing its end. Only one room between the party and the BBEG. And all the while, there was one thing on the minds of the party. The same warning I had been giving them from the end of our first session to this very last moment.

Beware the White Rabbit.

Despite us being on the thirty something session, they really have no idea who or what the White Rabbit is. But they know it is extremely dangerous. The right-hand man of an Arch Lich, whose minions included a Beholder, a Dragon, and a Cabal of Mindflayers, it must have been truly something. Every other session, they received some ominous warning about confronting it. From the last survivor of a decimated village calling out in fear at his final breath to one of the major villains, the head Mindflayer, choosing to throw himself onto a fire rather then face its wraith for failure. I had already thrown some harsh and tricky fights at the party. So they knew I was saving something special for this one.

While I can be rather cruel with my major encounters, I'm also very generous with loot. So the part was very well supplied. The Barbarian had an Axe of Ice and Fire called Frostburn. The Paladin had Dragon armor, which raised her AC to 23. The Wild Mage had an amulet with a mystic gem created by the Mindflayers, which gave not 1 but 2 rerolls if they should roll a wild. The Ranger had a rifle with so many upgrades and enchantments that we started calling it the M-16. And the Priest had a staff carved from Unicorn horns, which doubled their healing power, ironically making him the most damaging member for the first half of this last mission do to most of the opponents being undead. He basically soloed the resurrected Dragon Corpse, who was the first major boss. They also spent all their gold at a merchant prior to the mission buying as many potions and other items as they could. With all of them around 15 or 16 in level, they were as powerful as they ever were. Still, they were worried.

As they approached the room with the White Rabbit, they started to wonder aloud what the fight was actually going to be. Now, given this is a DND campaign, some in the party thought this was all going to end up being a Monty Python reference. So you can forgive them for panicking the second one of them, poked their head into the door, and saw a single, small white rabbit sitting in the center of a boss room.

It did not take long for them to come up with a plan. The Paladin and Barbarian both pulled out large barrels full of gunpowder and tossed them at the Rabbit. The Priest and Ranger did much the same with a bunch of smaller hand bombs. All capped off by the Mage shooting the highest rank Fireball he could. The door slammed, and they heard a massive explosion, which shook the whole tower. I described it as if a whole days worth of artillery from the Western front had gone off at once. They peek in once the chaos has settled, seeing nothing but broken ground, ash, and a few tuffs of white fur. One of them asks for an Insight check, but I don't even make them roll, confirming from a fully meta angle that the rabbit is, in fact, totally dead.

There's a collective sigh of relief. They skipped a major battle and beat the DM. Or so they thought. As the last one enters, the doors shut. Trapping them in. All attention is turned to me as I give them a slow clap.

Me: Congratulations. You just beat phase 1.

Mage: Wait, I thought you said we killed the White Rabbit.

Me: No, you killed A white rabbit. This is the White Rabbit.

I pull out a knight figure painted dark green with a red flaming sword and a shield with a Rabbit painted across it. I turn on some music.

Barbarian: Is... is that Rip and Tear?

Me: Roll initiative.

The fight immediately goes south. The Sword does insane damage, tearing down the HP of even the Barbarian and Paladin quickly. Meanwhile, all their attacks seem to do nothing. After 10 rounds, the two frontliners start used whole turn just downing potions to keep up with the dps. It quickly becomes apparent that they will lose a straight fight. The Ranger decides that the sword needs to go and blasts it out of his hand with a lucky Nat 20.

This turns out to be for the worse. The Knight pulls out an oversized shotgun and unloads at them. While it does less damage than the sword, it's still very high and has range. The first volley hitting both the Ranger and Mage who were too close together, taking out nearly half their health. The Priest decides to do an insight roll, asking his God what to do.

Their God tells them that the armor of the knight is indestructible, being forged by dark Gods from the remains of slain Primordial and enchanted many times over thousands of years. However, only the armor is indestructible. The Priest, along with the rest of the party understand, and make their plan.

The Priest and Mage cast spells to heal the Paladin and increase her AC. The Paladin rushes directly at the Knight, willingly taking a point blank hit from the shotgun. The Barbarian takes the opportunity to grapple the Knight and force the shotgun up in the air, giving the Ranger a perfect shot, breaking the shotgun.

The Paladin spends two turns being healed up as the Barbarian continues to grapple with the Rabbit. He takes a few good hits, but the damage is way lower than with the gun or sword. With the Paladin and Barbarian combined, they are able to wrestle the Knight still long enough for the Ranger to make their move. Charging forward, she digs her knife into the neck, cutting the restraints keeping the helmet on. As the last one is removed the Knight makes a high enough roll to toss them all off. Lucky the Mage used Mage hand and successful yanked off the helmet.

Me: Welcome to Phase 3.

Under the helmet, they see White hair, red beady eyes, and two long floppy ears. The armor falls to the floor, revealing huge padded feet and a quadrupedal body covered in fur. Before them is none other than a gigantic man sized White Rabbit.

The Rabbit attacks first. Kicking the Barbarian and Paladin, then rushing off to tackle the Mage. The damge is only marginal, but the blows knock all of them flying back, hitting the walls behind them and forcing them to make a save against being stunned, which only the Barbarian succeeds. The issue is that they are running out of potions, and the Priest is almost out of spell slots.

The Ranger takes her shot and manages a hit. The Rabbit bleeds, finally starting to take damage. Thanks to the stunning effect, retaliation is low, but the damage is stacking. It only takes a couple of rounds to get the Rabbit down to half health. At which point it rushes to the flaming sword still lying on the floor. With three slashes per turn, it does three times as much damage as it did before, tearing through the already failing team health.

That's when the Barbarian decides to make a final gambit. Charging in to point blank with Reckless Attack and full rage, striking two heavy blows. Unfortunately, the Rabbit just barely survived. It slashed once, cutting deep into his flesh. It stabbed, embedding its blade all the way through his chest, putting him at 0 health. Then it kicked, intending to throw his body off its blade.

The Barbarian asks to make one action. He wants to hold onto the sword with all his strength. He passes the check and has a full death grip on the blade so that when he gets kicked away, the sword comes with him. He is sent flying into the wall, the blade still pierced through his chest and embedding itself into the wall. The Barbarian goes limp, still clutching the sword.

With its weapon gone and hanging on by just a few health points, the Paladin is able to finally slay the White Rabbit with a single blow. They have no time to celebrate, rushing to the Barbarian's aid. Even with all our of them working together, they fail the strength check with some bad rolls and are unable to remove the sword from the wall. The Barbarian tells them to go on. They still need to save the world after all. He hands Frostburn to the Paladin, makes her promise him they will end this, and he dies before them.

Compared to this, the Arch Lich was a breeze. After using up the last of their potions and other items, they went all out. The Priest was keeping the Lich down all by himself, destroying its body every couple turns and forcing it to have to regenerate. The Paladin engaged the supporting enemies in extreme close quarters, often pinning the stronger ones down so the Mage can hit both of them with his strongest spells. Thinglk that scene in Dragon Ball Z where Goku grapples Radditz and let's Piccolo kill them both except done half a dozen times.

All this gave the Ranger ample time to destroy the phylactery. Huge and suspended above them by chains, she blows one away after another until the remainder can't hold it up anymore. The phylacyery falls, dropping a hundred stories until it shatters far below. The Lich dies, his army crumbles, and the day is saved.

They bury the barbarian, using the sword as his headstone. Then they go their separate ways. The Paladin had hoped to die in the name of their lost honor but failed. So she went off to a far of land, fighting against countless evils in Wars across the known world. It is said she still lives, fighting evil with abandon to this day.

The Mage gains enough confidence in his magic to return to his home. Reclaiming his place by his father's side to rule his land. One day, he became King.

The Ranger retired to the forests, having had their fill of adventure. They found love, became a mother, lived a full peaceful life, and passed quietly in her sleep.

And the Priest built a church not far from the Barbarian's grave. A small community soon forms around the holy site. They became most known for raising rabbits for meat and fur, ironically enough. One day, well into the twilight years of the Priest's life, there was a thunderous noise. He ran out to the grave of his long fallen friend, only to find it empty and the Flaming sword gone. The Barbarian was never seen again, and the Priest died, never knowing what had truly happened on that day. Still, he died with a smile, believing that somewhere out there was an old friend hunting White Rabbits.

Novos Tenebris

Novos, the deceitful ruffian from Task Force Chimera (and before that, Dragon Force), picked up a cursed amulet, and unadvisedly attuned to it and attempted to exploit it. That... did not work out well. This is what happens after.

(Read from the beginning)

(A Brief History...)

Chapter 9

Turnbrull and Novos have returned to the stone butte where Turnbrull has his lab and mine. Novos thinks it is useful to stretch out as far as possible to make a containment sphere. Turnbrull demonstrates that he can stretch his arms across the length of the butte to construct a sphere.

“Novos says, ‘I think I can distract Jericho while you stand very far away and stretch out to build one of your terrariums.’”

“So what? He can see me, no matter how far away I am. And he can see my arms stretching out to him. He’ll know something is up and counter.”

“But you can shrink your arms very tiny. He won’t even see.”

Turnbrull sighs. “How are you so stupidly optimistic? You can totally see another holder, no matter how tiny. Do you remember when I shrunk down to the size of a bee to get into Fibblewick’s cave?” [1] Novos nods. “We can see each other. No amount of size is going to change that. Watch.” Turnbrull walks over to the other side of the butte on the other side of the lab. Novos watches as two arms, thread thin, come snaking around the building. They stretch all the way across the butte until the fingers slip over the edge. They slap the side of the mountain in a rhythm. Turnbrull walks back around, his arms curving back to wave in front of Novos’ face as he walks.

“Did you see?” Novos did see. He could clearly pick out the arms of the amulet holder, no matter how small. They stood out from the background and all the other shadows, somehow. They were… Different.

“Then… how far away can you make a terrarium?”

“You know the process. You have to form it with your hands. I have to be able to enclose him with it, with my hands.”

“Oh. Oh yeah.” Novos thinks for a bit. “How far away can you make a … I don’t know, a dagger?”

“How do you mean?”

“Can you make a dagger all the way over there?” Novos points to the far side of the butte. Turnbrull doesn’t even give it a thought. He creates a giant ten-foot-tall dagger standing on the ground. “So why can’t you just make a hundred daggers above Jericho’s head and have them all crash down on him?”

“You fundamentally don’t get how this place works, do you? Watch.” Turnbrull dismisses the giant dagger, then creates five giant daggers in the air. The daggers drift downward slowly, like the air bladders that they sometimes have at the circus. [2] Novos can easily see how someone would just step out of the way.

“Hey, can you show me how you used the diamond to make that dagger before?” [3] Turnbrull explains how he reaches out with his will through the diamond to form a dagger. It glows dimly as it drifts down to the ground.

Novos tries. He summons a shadow. The one that appears is an indistinct six-legged creature. “Oh, it’s YOU! Are you ready to help me now?” The shadow just stands there, sullenly. “Fine. We’ll use you.” Concentrating on the gem, Novos feeds his will through to touch the shadow, carefully forming it into a box. Success!

“What is it like inside the terrarium?” Novos asks.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been inside one.”

“Can the amulet holder break out if they have a magic weapon?”

“I guess we could try. Stand still.” Turnbrull rapidly forms a ball around Novos, trapping him inside. ‘I could just walk away now…’ he thinks to himself. Instead, he waits a few moments, then dissolves the terrarium. A quivering pudding falls to the ground, unresponsive. “Get up.” There is no response, “GET UP!” Turnbrull shouts at pudding-Novos. He quivers. Turnbrull pokes the pudding. Novos quivers. “Well that’s a poor outcome.” Turnbrull picks up the white dagger and stabs Novos until he dissipates into a shadowy puff.

When Novos returns, he finds Turnbrull in the lab, working on the box Novos created. “Fascinating. It is harder than anything else in the realm that I can find, except for the diamond itself. And yet, you can poke it with your magic dagger and it crumbles to dust. Let’s go outside.” There, Novos throws the diamond up in the air, and Turnbrull reaches through it with his will. It’s quite easy to do with some practice. He tosses it over to the edge of the butte, and they practice reaching through the diamond at some range.

AMULET HOLDERS APPROACH

Dozens of shadows yell at Turnbrull. He quickly turns and spies three amulet holders in the shapes of dragons flying toward the top of the butte. In the distance, he sees two other holders and quickly identifies ZigZag as one of them. ZigZag saw Turnbrull’s multi-bladed fan and has copied it. Novos tries to create twenty dragons of his own, but he just can’t do that many at once. Settling for ten, he turns to find the dragon-shaped holders bearing down on him. Fortunately, the amulet holders don’t have a lot of practice in this form because though one lands and tries to bite, the others simply try to do it as they fly past. None are particularly successful. Unfortunately, Novos’ shadow-dragons aren’t much better.

Turnbrull races around his lab to confront ZigZag and the other amulet holder. He suspects it is Voktar the Half-Orc from their previous meeting. ZigZag starts the fan blades turning and takes down a few of Turnbrull’s workers who didn’t know what to expect. Voktar breaks for the mine shaft, but Turnbull pulls out the glowing white box from his apron pocket. Using it as a kind of shield, he deflects a few of the fan blades, and they wink out of existence.

Novos is having a hard time. The amulet-holder dragons have split up. One is killing the flying dragons with ease, though he is taking a battering to do so. The other two are scoring hits with their large mouths. Novos’ dagger is wounding, but it’s a close fight. Suddenly, the larger dragon snaps down on Novos, fitting him completely in his mouth. With a crunch of his jaw, Novos dissipates into a puff of shadow.

Turnbrull is also having a hard time. Voktar is in the mine killing his workers. As each dies, Turnbrull feels the presence leave his mind. Summoning all of his remaining workers from everywhere, he hides them in a tiny terrarium and drops it in his pocket. He’s just in time as ZigZag conjures a giant flyswatter and brings it down on Turnbrull’s head.

Novos and Turnbrull return to the butte to find a shattered mess. The building, constructed of the inert shadow material of the butte itself, stands, but the contents are strewn about or have dissipated. The mine is empty, and shadow dust is everywhere.

“We have to figure out how to defend this place. Then we have to strike back.”

[1] In chapter 7 

[2] A Brief History, Part 1, Chapter 9.

[3] Last chapter.

From the beginning...

Cast

Part 2, Chapter 30

“Atticus, tell us of this acquaintance of yours,” Arthur says as the party nears the northern fortress. [1]

“Brother Bjorndred and I were briefly at the Priory of St. Dodard in Daggerdale. When he learned of my intention to return to Damara, he rode with me much of the way. We parted company last year when I stayed at the Abbey of St. Elestat to study the ways of the Triadic Knights. Later in the year, he sent me a letter about his new position here.”

“And will he help us?”

“I believe he will do what he can,” Atticus replies.

The Damaran side of the Northern Fortress is dirty and cramped. Numerous taverns and bars separate soldiers from their coin, but few services exist, as those within the fortress itself supply them. The party occupies a couple of tables at the least seedy tavern while Atticus leaves to find his friend. Dillium brushes the dust off her chair before seating herself, and Pocky stares wide-eyed at the rustic décor. An hour later, a huge mountain of a man accompanies Atticus into the taproom. After introductions, the party explains they want to get into the Bloodstone Pass and need help getting through the fortress. Bjorndred looks skeptical but agrees to take them to the commander, Sir Daffid. He warns them that going in full armor and with holy symbols prominently displayed would not be wise.

Atticus, Mar, and Pocky are sent to camp some distance from the “village,” along with all the spare horses and gear. Reluctantly, Arthur doffs his armor and wears the simple clothing of a pilgrim, while Mel puts a heavy cloak over her chain and blind Dagrim adds more dirt to his leathers. Dillium’s disguise is a simple cloak with a hood. Together with their riding ponies (Zander leaves his riding horse as well), Arthur, Dillium, Dagrim, Mel, and Zander head to the gates of the Northern Fortress. [2]

As they enter the main gate, Bjorndred meets them and leads the group through a small side door. Up through the levels of the fortress, they are eventually escorted into the small room of Sir Daffid Rodencranz. His quarters are austere, but obviously lived-in. A wide balcony overlooks the wall, with stunning views of both the Damaran and Bloodstone Pass sides.

“Why should I allow you through to the enemy lines?” Sir Daffid asks after introductions.

Arthur responds, “We are on a matter of some importance.”

“You’re a Paladin. You think everything is a matter of importance.”

“The matter we’re on carries consequence for the entire realm, and perhaps the entire planet,” Dillium adds.

“Uh huh,” Sir Daffid replies, unconvinced. “And what will you do amongst the Warlock Knights?”

“We have to see someone in Windless. I am told it is on the other side of the valley.”

“Windless? My gran used to have a house up there. Good hunting, or used to be. It’s mostly deserted now. Nobody important. Who are you looking to see?”

With a glance at the others, Dillium replies, “A hermit in the hills. His name is Tamarand.”

Sir Daffid’s eyes briefly widen. “That old goat? I can’t imagine who would send you to see him. Still, if you know who he is, I suppose it might be important.” With that, he shows the party a map of the valley, pointing out a little-known ford across the river. He cautions them to travel at night, quietly, and to avoid roads, and everything and everyone until they get to Windless. It is best, he says, to travel closer to the hills, and above all, stay out of the forest, as it is haunted.

The team prepares for the rest of the afternoon. They tie bundles of straw around the hooves of their ponies to quiet them on the rocks. And they wait. Periodically, Dagrim touches the bundle on Arthur’s back, glamoring the whole package to look like a bundle of javelins. Most are, but the large blanket-wrapped bundle most certainly is not. All the while, the occasional “thump, thump” on the walls reminds them that the Vaasans are still hurling boulders at the Damaran gate.

After nightfall, but before the moon rises, the party sets out through a postern gate. They walk their ponies for some way, sticking to the hills on the north side of the valley. Rounding a curve, the sight of a thousand campfires burning sends shivers up their spines. The faint oily smoke carries on the slight breeze, along with the musk of thousands of unwashed humanoid troops. Below, they see the siege engines and hear the thump and thud of the catapults contrasting the whoosh of the trebuchets. It is a race to see if they can knock the wall down or build a ramp over it.

Later, the party sees the first bridge across the Beaumaris River. Even from a mile or more away, it is obviously heavily guarded, with squat misshapen forms marching about in the torchlight. “Orcs,” Arthur breathes in the cold air.

“It’s just another half-mile up river,” Mel hisses, having had a good look at Sir Daffid’s map in his quarters. “Hopefully they still haven’t discovered it.” True, there are no guards another half-mile upriver, though the ford doesn’t appear very shallow. Arthur and Zander take the reins of Dagrim’s and Mel’s ponies, and the crossing is uneventful, if cold and wet.

Shivering, they see the Warrenwood looming in front against the star-filled sky. Dillium longs to run through the woods that she would find so much like home, but Dagrim is absolutely against ghosts, and Arthur reminds everyone of Sir Daffid’s words. Turning, the group skirts the dark forest. Small camps of sleeping soldiers are skirted at a distance, and though Dillium is certain the forest is calling her, they continue on. A wolf howls in the night, joined by several others.

Hours before sunrise, Zander is certain someone is following them. Quick glances behind reveal nothing, but the feeling grows stronger. Despite being cold and tired, the group breaks into a trot, hoping to keep ahead of whatever is tracking them. The wolves howl again. A small trail is visible ahead, but it runs through a copse of dark evergreens. Their breath is visible in the cold night air as they struggle to keep quiet. “We should take the trail. It must lead to Windless.” “We were told to stay out of the woods, and off the roads.” “They are gaining on us.” Three dark shadows flit in and out of their sight as they do appear to be gaining. The group breaks into a gallop, turning onto the trail and cross a bridge over a stream. Ahead, there are few lights lit in a small cluster of buildings.

In a sweat, the group comes to a sudden stop in front of the largest building in the village. A stable in the back and a sign out front identify this as the Windless Inn. The structure is dark and the entire village is oppressively quiet. A whispered conversation leads Zander to knock politely on the door. There is no answer. Another hurried exchange leads Arthur to bang on the door heavily. After a few moments, a voice is heard.

“Who is it?”

“We are travelers, looking for sanctuary for the night.”

“Go away, we ain’t open!” Another voice is heard inside. “We can’t leave them out there.” “We certainly can!”

“Please. It is cold and dark, and our horses are tired.”

Zander pipes up. “We have coin.”

“They’ve never knocked before. They’re people.” “Don’t invite them in. They can’t come in if you don’t invite them.”

The door creaks open and a beady eye peers out into the darkness. “One only.” Arthur steps up, and the door slams behind him. Inside, an old man bears a huge meat cleaver, while a teen has a short sword drawn. An old woman, holding a wicked-looking dagger, peers at him. “What is your name?”

“Arthur Corinthus.” He bites off the automatic addition of “of Torm” that he normally provides.

“Open your mouth.” Arthur opens his mouth and stoops down so the old woman can see inside. The teen waves the sword around unsteadily. “Show your hands.” Arthur takes off his heavy leather gloves and shows his hands, both sides. “Why are you here?” Arthur says they are here to meet someone, and it is very important. Seemingly satisfied, the old man roughly grabs Arthur by the shoulder and pushes him into the common room with a command to keep silence.

The door opens. “One only.” Dagrim steps inside and the door slams shut. The same questions and investigation are offered. Dagrim answers that the party is here to meet an old man. The old man shoves Dagrim into the common room with Arthur, who waits to steady him, though the blind dwarf is used to walking about in the dark.

Dillium enters next. “An elf!” “I don’t take no truck with no elfs,” the younger man opines. “Shut it, Toma.” The investigation of teeth and hands, and the questions are the same.

“We are here to speak with Tamarand,” Dillium tells the trio. “Himself! I knew they was bad luck.” “Hush, if they know him, they can’t be one of them.”

Outside, Mell and Zander are left with the ponies. From the darkness, a voice says, “Aren’t you two just delicious-looking? What brings you to this tiny village so late at night?” A sultry, heavily accented voice is accompanied by a shadowy form barely visible in the darkness.

“Zander…” Mell starts.

“We are just going to the Inn here,” Zander responds.

“You would be welcome at my house. It is very cozy.” The shadowy form appears to be quite shapely and dressed in a flowing dress.

“Ah, no, I think we’ll just stay here in the Inn, thank you. You are very kind.”

“ZANDER!” Mel says sharply as she pulls her bow out.

The shadowy form appears to be wearing a long flowing dress best suited for a boudoir. As she sidles up to Zander, she runs her hand down his chest.

“Zander is such a nice name. Are you sure you wouldn’t want to spend the night with me instead of a vermin-infested inn?”

Mell looses two arrows at the woman, one of which hits with a sickening thud. Zander snaps out of whatever had him enthralled and pulls out his sword, which springs to life with a burning flame. The woman is unhealthily thin, with stringy hair and long claws. With a screech, she slashes Zander across the face and down one arm, then bites him, tearing a huge chunk from his sword arm. He winces and slashes at her with the flaming sword. Another arrow embeds itself in the creature, who turns and races off, the fringe of her dress still aflame.

“What’s going on out there?” The voice comes from inside.

“Ah, nothing! Just meeting your neighbors!” Zander responds.

The couple let both Mell and Zander inside at the same time, but the horses are left to whatever fate awaits them. Inspections concluded, Dillium Cures Zander’s wounds, and the party is locked into their rooms (from the outside) for the night.

In the late morning, the party wakes to find their doors unlocked. There is tepid porridge for them, and the old woman tells them that Toma was able to round up their ponies once the sun rose. They are fine in the stable.

“What can you tell us of Tamarand?” asks Dillium as she dutifully chews her slightly crunchy porridge.

“He’s nobody you need to deal with!” the old man says from the back room.

“He lives up in the mountain,” the old woman replies, gesturing vaguely.

“How do we get up to see him?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know. But Yohan might know. He wanders all around the woods and mountains.” After telling the innkeepers that they would return for their ponies and another night, the group spreads out to find Yohan. It isn’t long before they find him, and he agrees to show them the start of the trail up to the old man’s cave.

The group sets off with a few supplies, Mel in the lead. They find the trail easily enough, though the path is rocky and exposed. The wind is chill. Behind, the dark smears of the Vaasan army camps mar browns of the late autumn dead and dying grasses. Ahead, the path winds upward.

A skinny old man sits on a rock, contemplating. Below his rock, a broad terrace lies, and here the party stops. After a moment of silence, Zander coughs.

“Lo, mine eyes do rest upon thee.” The voice is deep and gravelly, as if he were a lifelong smoker, and his language is archaic and heavily accented in some strange, foreign way. “What doth thy heart seek from mine own presence?”

Dillium speaks up. “Lady Zee told us to bring this to you. She says it is the Sword of the North, and that knowing was too much for her. You, she said, could tell us what to do with it.”

“Aye, Ilnezhara hath spoken unto me, saying thou wouldst make thy way hither. Rarely doth she err in her reckonings.”

Arthur takes a few moments to unlimber the package he is carrying, though he does not yet unwrap it.

“What can you tell us of the sword, elder?” asks Dagrim.

“Verily, the Sword of the North be known well in ancient lore, and legendry. It hails from an age foregone, older than races entire, e’en the grandsires of our grandsires scarce recall its first forging. It be an omen of ill or a portent of greatness yet to unfold.” [3] The old man unfolds himself from his seat and walks down the few large steps that are carved into the stones. As he stands before Arthur, he says, “Let it be shown unto mine eyes.”

Arthur unfolds the blanket that surrounds the Sword. To his eye, it is different than it was before. It is smaller, though still huge. It is straighter, though not yet straight. And it is shinier than he remembered. The hilt is straighter, and a small pommel appears at the end. All in all, it looks less like a demon sword and more like a giant forge apprentice’s mistake.

The old man reaches out his hand and holds it open above the sword. The weave moves, though Arthur only recognizes that it is similar to the feeling of calling a deity. Dillium can see that it feels something like communication with an elder, such as a deity with perhaps a touch of divination thrown in. Smoky tendrils lazily flow from his fingertips, and when they touch the sword, sparks fly.

The wind picks up. Gusting, it quickly increases to a shrieking howl as it swirls around the sword. Small stones are picked up and flung at the party, pummeling and slashing at exposed flesh. Only moments of the pain are enough for most of the group to retreat from the sword and the old man, but Arthur holds firm, his arms bruised, his face scratched and bleeding. After several minutes, the wind dies down as if it were never there. The old man, eyes closed, continues to hold his hand above the sword.

His hand glows slightly. A huge pillar of rock rises from behind Arthur and crashes down upon him, Tamarand, and the sword, breaking up into boulders and then into rocks and then into pebbles before another pillar does it again. Arthur stumbles, nearly dropping to a knee as the stone falls upon his broad shoulders. Dillium casts a major healing spell targeting everyone, but it isn’t enough.

The old man squints slightly. His hand glows more brightly. A long tendril of smoky essence lances down from his hand to strike the sword as it quivers gently. Storm clouds gather, rushing in to blanket the mountain top as if in some sort of sped-up film. Sleet, then huge icicles lance down from the clouds, striking the old man, the sword, and Arthur. Arthur sinks to his knees, then falls over as a ten-foot-long icicle pierces through him like a lance. The sword hovers in mid-air, shaking violently as the old man, serenity on his face, remains. Dillium casts Cure Wounds in a vain attempt to stabilize Arthur.

After a few minutes, the clouds disperse. The ice stops coming down and begins to melt rapidly. The old man maintains his pose, and a flicker of lightning shoots back and forth between his hand and the sword. The sword shakes violently, shimmying from side to side as if trying to avoid capture. The ground softens, and liquid lava sparks and shoots up, covering an area around the sword. Pools of hot stone join to become a lake of fire shooting flames up into the sky. Arthur’s lifeless body bursts into flames as it sinks down into the lava. And still the old man stands, hand held out over the sword.

***

Arthur finds himself on a wide plain. In the distance is Celestia, the mountain of Goodness and Law, while before him is the smaller mountain of Truehart, the home of Torm. [4] The plain is covered with knights, priests, and laity of Torm, each with their arm out to welcome their brother. Brother Preceptor Sir Nigel, Arthur’s teacher and the teacher of all young paladins at the Order of the Golden Lion abbey, stands in front of him.

“Brother Arthur! Well met, and welcome to your reward!” The warmth of Sir Nigel’s hand and the feelings of welcome and love from the souls of the dead all wash over Arthur.

“Well met, Sir Nigel. However, I am afraid that my welcome is premature. I still have much to attend to in Faerûn.”

“I understand, my brother. Live your life well and return to us an old man.”

Arthur feels a tug at his soul, and then he is gone.

***

Dillium finishes casting the Revivify that returns Arthur to the realm of the living. The sword lies on the cold stone, and old Tamarand sits atop his stony outcropping again.

“Hearken well, for this be the Blade of the North, Dragon’s Bane. Ancient is its craft, a tool wrought of old—yea, for some, a weapon in war, yet for others, a balm in sorrow. To me and mine, it be but a harbinger of death.  It cares not for me. To find that which ye seek, thou must carry it to the giants, for your answers lie yonder. Seek thee now the heights of Aetherholm.”

No amount of talking to the old man will get him to respond, so the group packs up. Dillium lends her cloak to wrap up the sword, as the blanket was turned to ash by the lava. The return to the Windless Inn is long. It is after dark, and although there are lights on and people inside, the party is put through the same one-person-at-a-time inspection before being allowed in.

“Did you find what you sought?” the old woman asks.

“We found… something,” Arthur replies.

“Ah, that’s good. By the way, there is someone here to see you.” The old woman gestures to a dark gentleman seated at a corner table. “He asked for you in particular.”

End of Chapter 30

[1] Last chapter

[2] https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Damaran_Gate

[3] See “The Sword of the North”, Part 2, Chapter 17

[4] https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mount_Celestia

So, I'm vaguely aware about a squirrel being shot in the States recently I thought now was as good a time as any to share a story I've been planning on telling eventually.

So, for context (and this is me really editing it down) Mage: The Ascension takes place in the same setting as Vampire: the Masquerade which is basically just modern day Earth (with monsters and magic). Mages are people able to use their own willpower to alter reality but the "Illuminati" of this world are the Technocratic Union; an all-controlling, all-seeing entity that tries to protect humanity from the supernatural. One way it does this is by dismissing anything "magic" as nonsense, science is real and serious (spoiler: it's magic, it's all magic); and as humanity begins to believe in science it reinforces reality in what's called the Consensus, that makes it harder for Mages to use magic without it blowing up in their face ("that guy in the robe shouting about casting fireball, officer? Nah, he was just a crazy dude beside an open gas main, no wonder he blew himself up when he flicked on his lighter"). Technology is magic that's been "approved" for the masses; and as the motto goes: We Will All Go Together (aka, no single mage will ascend to a higher state of being without all of humanity having the option). Just a point of order but anyone who denies this basic fact is a REALITY DEVIANT AND SHALL BE REPROGRAMMED BY THE NEW WORLD ORDE--- is not to be trusted....

Okay, all that out of the way, our tale begins with fresh eyed freshman college students in Boston University: Freya, Tony, Eleanor, and Copper. After a party full of weird drugs (which involved Copper failing the first roll of the game, going up to someone with a drink and saying "hey does this taste of Roofies to you?") our intrepid ~~idiots~~ heroes are scooped up by some mysterious organization and recruited into the Technocracy as agents (or so they think, long story, involves an island). The mission is quite simple: HOLY FUCK VAMPIRES EXIST and we should hunt them down.

Naturally a team consisting of 20 year olds with a few weeks of training isn't the most professional. Tony, (the professional soccer-playing athlete with suits that let him blend into the background and a typical "Man in Black" M/O), keeps agitating and getting agitated by Freya (the medic who is the kind of person who went to protests so she can boast she was there; not making a political statement there just making a character). I'm gonna be honest, I play Freya and I just really liked the idea of making her as annoying as possible towards Tony because she was secretly in love with him (there's a HR printer that works overtime because of the shit she says, she's been claimed to "stalk him" when obviously she just happened to be running on the same route he runs every day after she found out he runs that route, and eventually she ends up bulking out up to Leenbeefpatty normally to Primarch levels in combat to catch his eye but that's another story). Basically, me and Tony's player just fucking love messing with each other's characters.

So, (and I swear this is where the fun stuff begins I'm sorry for the context) after a usual "let's bitch about each other" Tony decides to blow off some steam one evening by doing some detective work in the area where the current vampire we're hunting was last seen an--- That's a vampire, right in front of him, in an alley; all on his own. Vampires in WoD are *pretty damn* tough and he's a relatively new agent on his own against one. So after a bit of a tussle which only causes *some* serious injuries to Tony, his first decision is to take out a flashbang and blind the vampire. It worked... He just also forgot it would blind himself. Tony hurt himself in the confusion, and while blinded the vampire legs it and gets away.

Calling for the whole team for backup, Tony is stitched up by ~~his soon to be waifu~~ ~~that annoying bitch~~ Freya, and the team start trying to track the vampire. Copper, the tech guy ends up deducing he's gone so far but after spending most of the next day tracking the vampire (I can't remember why it took so long, probably because of IRL time running out, but I remember we got there only just before sunset) to a local park just before sunset. The trail goes cold, or rather it's like the vampire is *everywhere* in this park, but there's no sign of him. The only life is a small squirrel on a fence post casually looking into the dista---

**BANG BANG BANG** as Tony shoots (and player declares he'll shoot) the squirrel. >!In the nuts, and all!!<

Freya naturally is appalled, and the poor squirrel falls to the ground dead... as the sun begins to set and from the ground beside it rises the Vampire we're looking for. We fight it, and I can't remember much about the fight other than we win. Our GM explains that the vampire has the ability to meld into the ground and was, indeed, using the squirrel as a lookout (basically "talk to animals" and said "if you see people tell me and i'll give you nuts"). Tony was in the right... But that didn't stop Freya from scooping up the squirrel into a sandwich bag and bringing it's remains back to the lab.

And back to life. >!The worst part about this is that, from the start, Freya's last name had been Stein. I didn't make the connection. I've since decided it's technically double barreled because Hanah Rankin and Bob Stein didn't want to change their respective names!<

Y'see, give a Life scientist a reason for petty vengeance and a dead body and they can do wonderful things. And so, Bartholemew J. R. Castro (bonus points for anyone who gets all three references) came back from the grave due to project name Ratatoskr; but we just call him "Bart". Of course, this being WoD what Freya *technically* did was pour some of her soul into Bart to turn him into a familiar, but we're scientists we don't believe in that magic crap (that is definitely real..). Bart adjusts to lab life relatively quickly; fetching test-tubes for Freya, managing her Twitter account and taking pictures of her for Instagram as she desperately tries to get attention, being a little spy who can sneak into vents where we can't go, y'know the usual stuff... Until Freya logs into her Twitter one day and finds that everyone is calling her the "Squirrel Girl"\* because all she ever does is retweet Nutella saying "nut" "gief nut" "me want" "me nut give me". But it's a small price to pay to hold over Tony's head the fact that HE SHOT AN INNOCENT SQUIRREL (no, the squirrel being a lookout for a vampire is not relevant even if the GM said Tony's player was objectively right) and all she had to do was transcend "ethics".

... \*I mean, it also doesn't help that Freya has "squirrel juice" that's like a super effective squirrel pheromone causing anyone soaked in it to be trailed by squirrels who want to... Yeah. One time I threw it on an escaping robber by sheer luck, and we found him later in a little cabin in a park **terrified** because every squirrel in the city had followed the scent and was now sitting outside the cabin like Hitchcock's The Birds. It was fine for that guy (until the antagonist turned him to goop and killed him after we sent him to her promising she'd keep him safe, but that's another story).

Bart became so integral that I have a little plushy ([this exact one](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qkYAAOSwephdMmu5/s-l500.jpg)) that I bring to games with me. Over time he'd be joined by cocaine-addicted robot spiders, a Pandaghost obsessed with violence and [biscuits](https://youtu.be/KHhUWgwlkmo), a walking slot machine and not-Cortana. He is the bestest boy and hides in Freya's hoodie when on missions.

I am both fortunate and unfortunate enough to have a rather rambunctious party as my first ever DnD party for my first ever DnD campaign. DM said no murder hoboing but we ended up doing a very little bit of it anyway and also managed to escape the consequences.

The beginning.

I chose to be a lizardman that was totally not a slightly scaled down version of a Kroxigor (fan of Warhammer fantasy) that had been raised from a stolen egg by humans in the gladiator pits but later massacred his captors when he reached adulthood and escaped.

Some of the others were flavors of human, a wizard and a cleric and the last 2 were an aasimar and a rabbit-person (hop-something something i think, i forgot the exact race name).

Anyway, we started off with a minor goblin encounter that we won and eventually led us to attacking the main goblin base. Was pretty generic as fights go but the important part was that the Cleric and the rabbit person absolutely INSISTED on keeping a goblin alive as a pet. (I think they wanted to "reform" him or something)

I, being a soulless and true neutral lizardman did not oppose this, I already ate my fill of other goblin faces. The wizard also didnt care. The Aasimar, the only "normal" person in the group it seemed, didnt want this but saw he was outvoted so let it happen.

The DM was sighing big time at their insistance to keep a goblin as a pet but grudgingly let it happen. So after that, we continued on to town and stopped by the General Store to buy some things.

This is where shit hits the fan. The items the general store were essentially just anything from the starting equipment from the dnd handbook. We were perusing and saw that a spyglass, a fucking spyglass was 1k gold. I'm sure that there's some lore explaining why this was but I as a first time player (and probably a few of the others) were horrified and stupified by this.

Anyways, did we attempt to negotiate with the Shopkeep? No. Did we attempt to barter? No.

The rabbit rogue and cleric duo INSTANTLY decided to steal it.

The wizard noped out of there and the Aasimar and I unfortunately weren't quick enough in buying our things.

Shopkeep notices and confronts them while calling for the guard. Rabbit rogue attempts to deceive but the the DM said that shopkeep literally saw it happen with her eyes so no amount of convincing would work.

I stayed true to not-so-intelligent lizard man form and bopped the lady over the head to knock her out. This worked.

However, the guards were already on their way and closing fast. Cleric and rogue were busy regretting their actions, the DM had a "i warned you so" energy and I was trying to think of a solution.

Then, I had it. I freed the pet goblin which we had on us the entire time and gave him a knife. An unfortunate side effect from this was that the goblin killed the shopkeep with the knife but hey, it also tied up a loose end.

The guards came, killed the goblin cuz it was a gonlin and then believed (praise RNGesus) our fake story about how our captive gonlin (which we had totally wanted to turn in as a reward) had gotten loose and killed the shop keep and how we were trying to save her.

Then the guards even thanked us, and we just found it so funny in that moment. The cleric and rogue ofc helped themselves to the store's wares in the mean time before the guards arrived.

We then later went to the local Inn where the Aasimar bought a gallon of mead with which to wash away his stress from an understandably very stressful day.

I just find it absolutely hilarious that a goblin that the party had decided to just keep as a pet for shits and giggles ended up saving our ass later on.

We will never forget your sacrifice Mark.

This is a story that happened a year ago. We're a party of 6 players in a mix of Dragon Icespire Peak and Mines of Phandelver campaign.

We just arrived into the broken castle where the dwarf has been kidnapped. We go from the back, we reach him and there is an encounter. We make some noise and eventually some enemies start to come to us.

I play a Wildfire Druid, I summon my Fiery companion, tell everyone to gather next to me with the dwarf in tow as well as another NPC we met earlier and I use the Fiery Teleportation through the murder slit of the broken castle.

We end up outside and we can flee without having to fight. Now comes the turn of my companions and each and every single one of them went back inside to fight.

I spent approximately 2-3 turns running with the two NPCs and my familiar to return to safety while the party fights their way back inside. Keep in mind, there is a single reason for them to go back in. One of the characters left his longbow inside and wants it back.

While I'm about to rest with the dwarf (who's in bad shape) and the other npc. It turns out it is a doppleganger and he attacks me.

This is where I realized I might be in danger because I'm fighting against a CR3 creature while I'm a 3rd-level myself. He tries to punch me, twice per turn, but I happen to have a good armor and a shield. I summon my Flame Blade to hit him while my fiery cat bombards him with flame seeds. It felt like every attack the DM was making could have been my downfall and I felt adrenaline run down my body in real life.

My character and I were one, every attack I landed was decisive and every attack I blocked was relieving.

I get out victorious and that ends the session, mid fight for the other players.

Has anybody felt something like this before ? I think it's the only time I really felt this way playing this game, but damn it was good.

Me and my friends started to play "Icewindale: Rime of the frostmaiden" on mondays...
(I am playing dwarf barbarian named "Brok"), and this week we capture one of the duergars that has been spying on the village we are in, and also stealing goats and other stuff

When we captured him, he was swearing a lot (saying stuff like F*ck you, sh*thead, and so on).

My character asked him multiple times to not swear, be nice, and cooperate, and that we maybe ask the village speaker (speaker is something like a mayor in the culture of the village) to not send him into the prison...

My character ordered 2 beers in the tavern where we were asking him questions, and he said: "As a fellow dwarf to another, here is a beer, please be nice, cooperate, and this will be all over soon..."

The duergar said "We will capture all of Icewindale, starting with this village, and as a fellow dwarf to another, f*ck you"

and my character had enough, and I said "Okay, so I RAGE, and I fist him"

After I said what my character does, whole table, including the DM burst out laughing, and we had a break cuz we couldnt stop laughing

PS: to those that may not get the joke, I wanted to say I punch him in the face

First: non-English speaker Second: we are a group of seven (though started as nine) people that started playing DnD back in 2005, stopped around 2013 and began again in 2019. We play a lot of homebrew, because our DM is also a writer and she uses us as guinea pigs to test her worlds. We have a long running campaign, but when we have people missing sessions, she runs one-shots. This is what happened to the last one.

Our little group (2 fighters, a ranger, a cleric and a wizard) had entered the capital of a small kingdom. We were low on funds and looking for some easy cash. We learn that the king himself has posted a bounty with a reward of 5000 gold. We manage to meet the king and learn about the bounty. Apparently, the king is a horse person and when his favorite stallion got very sick, he paid 10000 gold to a "reputable" doctor to cure it. But only the doctor failed, but killed another horse and ran away with the gold. We manage to get his last known location and his name: Dr. Frank E. Stin of the Shelley University, Professor of Natural Philosophy.

After a two day trek and three villages later, we end up in the entrance of a Dungeon that we deduce the Doctor has set up lab. During our information gathering in the capital and in the villages, we know that he presented himself either ad a wizard, an alchemist or a druid. We enter the dungeon carefully (melee upfront, casters in the back). The dungeon is pretty straightforward: a long corridor ending in a large room that a monster awaits. Behind the monster are stairs leading down to the next level.

From the first room, we (our characters) understand that the good doctor is all of the above (wizard, alchemist and druid) plus a touch of necromancer. The first an undead cow with a snake stiched on as its tail. All the monsters we meet are a combination of dead and living things stiched together . We clear 8 levels (and yes, the infamous Monster was on level 8). We have two levels to go. We take a rest to replenish HP and spells. We have noticed a pattern on the monsters: every odd level, the monsters were fast but dealt light to medium damage; every even level, the monsters were slow but heavy hitters. The next is odd and we talk strategy. The wizard will either entangle or freeze it and the melees are going close to chop.

We enter level 9 and strategy goes out for a walk. First, the room is much smaller ( from around 5000 square feet the previous rooms to about 800 square feet). Second, the room contains potted plants. To be exact, six tall, stalky plants on each side with squid tentacles coming out of the soil and a giant Venus trap with kraken tentacles almost reaching us across the room. One of the fighters that is a bit closer is "bitch slapped" by one of the tentacles for 3d10 damage; she is injured, talking a step back. The cleric steps to heal her and the ranger nooks an arrow, but the wizard steps forwards.

"I got it" he says, before anyone else can say anything. "Fireball".

The spell hits, the Venus trap starts and along with it the rest of the plants, producing a lot of smoke. We start coughing, but are also getting more relaxed. Very very relaxed. You see, nobody used perception or nature check on the plants. The good doctor had made a mix of Venus fly trap with Marijuana and added the tentacles.

We spent 8 hours completely stone and then we had the munchies. After no consideration at all, the ranger tasted the kraken tentacles left from the Venus trap. After being roasted by the fireball and smoked for 8 hours, they were tasty but a bit chewy.

The good doctor took our baking time to finish his "masterpiece", a construct made with hill giant and giant crab parts, which to be honest was an almost TPK if not for a couple of critical hits and a couple of failed saves from it.

And because our DM likes to paint the wall with cheese occasionally, the good doctor met his demise in the middle of his villain monolog, when his monster tripped on some lab equipment after a critical hit and fell on him.

So I'm new to being a DM and my friends who I was playing with were playing D&D for the first time. I was doing a One Shot to see if they wanted to play D&D regularly and also so that I can get used to being a DM. I had an epic One Shot boss but we were running out of time but I had to get to my boss... I literally just brought in Smaug. They finally arrive at the dragon and my friend who was playing a bard decides he wants to try and convince the dragon to let them go... obviously this being the boss fight the difficulty level was 30 but he made a rather good lie saying: "That book(the book they needed to get back for someone) doesn't quite look right with your collection of gold... it lowers the quality" or something close to that. Because it was good I lowered the difficulty level to 25 to simply get the book... he had +11 to his roll and rolled a 19... the dragon gave the books back and threw them out... and that's how they defeated the dragon, that had killed 3 out of the 4(DM played character was fourth) party members when I did the same One Shot with my dad, brother and my dad's friend, without taking any damage.

Me and the barbarian in the party are practically immortal, and then we have the rogue, who is always invisible. The DM decides to throw a Tarrasque against us. We’re all level 20 and have some epic boons, so while I’m practically immortal, I can’t do much else. On the first turn of combat, I hug the Tarrasque while the barbarian and the rogue are beating it into submission so that it eventually becomes our pet. Then, we knock the Tarrasque unconscious and hire some wizards to cast enlarge/reduce: reduce on the Tarrasque and enlarge on the barbarian. The barbarian then throws the damn Tarrasque, carrying it to the next town while keeping enlarge/reduce active the whole time. Eventually, the Tarrasque becomes our pet, and it’s genuinely afraid of us after being completely unable to harm us. Now, we’re 20th-level warlords with a pet Tarrasque.

So this is from a homerule campaign we did back in 2023, using rules from another game - Swan Song, basically in return for failing our death saves we get one final major action in the vein of a last epic decision, auto success, can't be used to cast a spell that would somehow negate the death. Once a char used their swan song, they couldn't be revived. It was a final death, and we burned the character sheet. My cleric was a Scion of Lathander, a rough drunkard that did the bare minimum of priestly duties and prayed like "Hey light dude, hope you're doing well..." Totally chill. Didnt believe in hating people, always was saying that anyone he really didnt like wasn't worth the effort of hating. Now this was a fairly high level char, during the campaign we had done some tasks for Lathander and got offered a major boon. Major boons in our sessions are like "You gain divine 0 domain" level stuff, you're now immortal as long as you're under the sun, et cetera. My priest turned it down, saying thanks to sun dude but we were cool, just keep up the lasers and we'd be good. Smashcut 6 months, and we're fighting the BBEG. He's an Aceerak tier lich, darkened the sun across an entire Sphere to create an entire world of the dead. Theres a bunch of divine red tape keeping the gods from smiting him, so we go to deal with him. He otks our monk, and brings me to -2, and the DM is realizing he overstatted him, since we beelined to him instead of doing any of the plot hooks. Instead of an offered do-over I stare the DM in the eyes and say "I'd like to do my swan song. I send one last prayer. 'Hey sun dude... sorry, I got blasted... but I figure a cleric calling for aid can get through at least some of the red tape. Please smear this bony asshole across the realm." I pass the DM a note saying what I want to ask for as I activate divine intervention as well. He looks at it, looks at me, and grins before nodding. He describes as Lathander's serenity is overcome for a moment, a moment of pure fury as his favored mortal, a young man who had never asked for much but the power to help others. A man who treated him as the man he once was before ascending. And in that fury, he called for his greatest servants and sent them forth to answer the final prayer of his friend. 3 solars manifest as my char expires, his last action being to give a thumbs up at the clouds obscuring the sun and say a simple "thanks." It was a good death.

a Rouge, a Druid, a Wizard, and a Bard walk into a bard. The druid finds the help he hired to transport a magical artifact to the other side of the continent

fast forwards a few sessions and as debt for the rouge getting a cool magic item, they have to get some dragon scales. Long story short it was the dragons birthday and they became its friends.

The dragon then asked them to play cards, with its deck of many things

The druid, pulls 8 cards the Key card, then the balance card, then the Jester card, he divers to draw more cards, then the talons card, then the donjon card.

Welp... that was bad, but hey, maybe they draw a better card

the rouge draws the void card

oh... oh no

the bard had already drawn and gotten good results, so the wizard draws one card.

they get the sage card, and they find where the druid and rouge are (together)

the dragon then pulls the knight card, (one of the characters new temp pc)

then, the bard asks "wait, what happened to the staff the druid was carrying?"

it's gone i guess. now they need to find it again.