The Return of D&D Stupidity!

Yes, we are returning to these posts, as I have returned to playing D&D on Monday nights. This post would have been done yesterday, buuuuut Warcraft happened instead. Anyway, here we go again.

In our last installment, the party had just commenced storming an abandoned keep in order to try and stop a ritual to open a portal and let an underworld god through.

Unfortunately, the party's failure to stop the two goblins that were running to warn everyone else in the keep of their arrival was their downfall. One of the goblins accidentally ran into the ritual circle in his haste, and as a result, the thing blew up. The next thing the party knew, Damakos and Carric were screaming something incoherant and running away, while the rest of them were caught in a big flash of purple light...

We now cut to the realm of Eberron; a world of vast oceans, mountains, deserts, forests, swamps, tundra and various other geographic features spread across six continents. More specifically, we cut to the  city of Sharn, a great city of towers that lies on the south coast of the continent of Khorvaire.

Wandering through the shopping district of Sharn were two companions; a human and a halfling, artificer and rogue respectively. The two have been through their own harrowing adventures, and so were taking the time to have a relaxing wander around the shops. However, as they turned a corner, a pair of thieves ran out a jewellery shop, hurling threats and trailing jewels. A couple of elven archers also began firing into the crowd to thin them out and aid in the escape.

Before the two companions could react, there was a gigantic purple flash, which caused everyone in the immediate area to cover their eyes and prompted many a cry of 'holy shit!' When people finally got their vision back and thanked respective deities that they had retained use of their retinas, our beloved trio was found looking bewildered and bedraggled in the middle of the road.

Well, Illyria wasn't so much bewildered as severely pissed off, as Larrsinan found out when she pulled her dagger on him and started demanding to know what he'd done now. Bob, ever the practical thinker, simply wondered if there was any chance he could get some grilled chicken any time soon, since he had a craving. He also decided that if this was the sort of thing that was going to happen in the service of his chosen deity, then Bahamut could stuff it; he was still bloody handy with a weapon with or without paladin status.

In any case, the jewellery shop owner suddenly remembered that he had been robbed, and promptly started yelling for someone to catch the thieves, which prompted them to continue running away, while the archers resumed shooting. The party, shrugging and deciding that taking their confusion and irritation out on other people was probably better than taking it out on each other (this was highly grudged by Illyria), gave chase.

The rogue and the artificer, shooting glances at each other, took off up a side street after them, figuring that this could at least be interesting.

The party chased the thieves for a little ways, until the thieves actually noticed, at which point they pulled their pet drake out from a handy alleyway and hurled a dagger at Larrs. This missed horribly, so they settled on throwing a few insults instead. Not good ones, but they didn't look all that bright, so it was to be expected really.

Larrs, taking the lead, ordered Bob into an attacking position and then lunged for the theif in front of him, only to somehow trip over his own feet and miss, leading to more insults from the thieves. Again, not good ones, but when you're faced with a tiefling warlord and a dragonborn paladin both around the six foot area in height, you're obviously not really in your right mind anyway.

The two archers took advantage of the small window to fire at Larrs and Bob, but they both missed completely. Bob, now annoyed at Larrs for just shoving him into position without asking, took out his frustrations by crunching the nearest thief into a wall, causing him to see pretty lights and multiple Bobs.

Meanwhile, the rogue attempted to get a better vantage point, and made a very graceful leap up to the balcony of a nearby pub. Graceful that is, until she fell just a few inches short and dropped straight back to the ground. She then got herself up, dusted herself and tried again, more successfully this time, but less gracefully. The artificer, after watching her friend, decided that she'd just take the stairs like a normal person, in order to get into position to snipe the thieves with her crossbow.

The drake, pushing past its masters, lunged for Bob's leg, only to be met with a mouthful of plate armour that didn't move under its teeth. Bob was less than impressed. Illyria, getting bored, hurled a curse at the nearest thief, but her follow-up eldrtich blast missed, singing a wall instead.

Feeling emboldened by Larrs and Illyria's failures to hit them, and also by concussion on one part, the thugs moved to flank Bob. After doing this, they both completely failed to actually hit him, and one took a chunk out of a nearby wall instead.

Larrs, noticing the artificer and the rogue, asked the artificer nicely if she'd shift her position a little bit please. He then yanked Bob backwards to stand next to him, much to Bob's displeasure. Ignoring this, he proceeded to smack the concussed thug with his axe, adding bleeding to the list of his injuries.

The archers, now able to see the artificer more clearly, both took shots at her and both hit her fairly severely. Her friend is annoyed by this, and confused as to who is working with who, as Larrs was the one who told her to move, only to get her shot.

Bob, now even more annoyed, decided to forgo hitting things, and instead opted to breathe fire on everyone in front of him. The concussed thug was now singed on top of everything else. Meanwhile, the rogue began heading down a side-street and hid behind a fountain as she made her way towards the archers. Her friend hastily healed herself a little, and then tried to shoot one of the thugs, but missed.

The drake made another attempt to chew on Bob's leg, but was again foiled by the plate armour. Illyria placed another curse, and then managed to aim wide with another eldritch blast. Concussed thug tried to make a swing with his mace, but instead just sort of fell short and stared at the ground for a moment instead. His mate tried to throw a dagger at Illyria, only to manage to hit the sign on the pub and knock it crooked.

Larrs yelled an inspiring word to the artificer in order to pick her up a bit, despite the fact that he didn't know her name. However, she was still grateful, as she now felt a lot less almost dead. However, one of the archers immediately landed another arrow into her, while the other moved round to attack the rest of the group.

Bob landed a solid thwack on the drake's head to try and make it let go of his leg. It did, but relecutantly.

The rogue managed to sneak up behind the archer that had shot her friend, so stealthily that she could probably have pulled off a song and dance routine without him noticing. Instead of doing that, she just shanked him in the back. Repeatedly.

Then, in a stroke of vengeance, the artificer displayed her true talent by casting a thunder charm on the rogue's armour. The electric charge passed straight through into the archer, killing him instantly and blasting his body off the ledge he was standing on. The other archer did not seem happy about this, given the amount of obscene elven swearing that he came out with.

The drake made yet another attempt to eat Bob, only to smack into a wall as he side-stepped it. Naturally, this greatly amused Bob. Illyria, taking advantage of this, cursed the drake and then blasted it. Now seriously worried, the concussed thug staggered off to hide behind his pet, while the other ran up to Bob, only to fail to wound him. Concussed thug then reasoned that he should try to do something useful, and threw his knife at Illyria. The pub sign landed three feet away from her.

Larrs took a swing at the other thug, but missed, only to be stabbed by the remaining archer, who charged down a nearby set of stairs with a short sword. Bob, distracted by this, failed to hit the thug in front of him. With everyone confused and incredibly inaccurate, the rogue leapt off the ledge and made her way up behind concussed thug, who she finished off with a knife to the back.

The artificer made an attempt to repeat the thunder armour trick on Larrs, but was only able to produce a small spark. The drake, now seeing something edible looking that was not wrapped in unyielding plate mail, immediately made an attempt to eat the rogue, but she managed to dodge him. Illyria threw a blast into the remaining thug's chest, but unfortunately failed to budge him. For his part, the thug, in desperation, finally landed a hit on Bob, dazing him.

Larrs broke out the wolf pack tactics and smacked the archer in the teeth. However, this backfired when he immediately backed off, drew his bow and shot Larrs critically. He attempted to follow this up with another shot, which luckily only glanced off Larrs' armour.

Bob, still dazed, managed to connect with the thug's skull with his next strike, making him a lot worse off, and the rogue stabbed the drake for attempting to eat her. This didn't stop it trying again, but it walked into a wall for the second time, clearly suffering from the blow to the head Bob gave it earlier. Meanwhile, the artificer healed Larrs, as thanks for doing the same for her earlier.

Illyria, apparently distracted (possibly by that good looking waiter in the bar there...) failed to do anything productive, and the thug tried to hit Bob again, emboldened by his success last time. He did, however, fail, and so ran away like a little girl, yelling insults at Larrs to try and retain his masculinity.

Larrs healed himself while muttering encouraging things to himself because dammit his horns are not small, whatever that damn thug says. He then chased after the archer, but didn't notice that he'd stopped short, and was thus simply flailing ineffectually at him. The archer whipped his sword out again, but for all that he'd stabbed Larrs already, he didn't seem well-versed in edged weapons, as he completely failed to do any kind of damage to anyone.

So Bob smacked him around the head. Hard.

The rogue finished off the remaining thug, since someone had to do something productive. The artificer also managed to be useful, successfully putting another thunder charm on Larrs and electrocuting the elf, which leads to even more profuse elven swearing. Illyria took offense to this, for her own arbitrary reasons, and proceeded to kill him with an eldritch blast.

The drake, taking advantage of the situation, tried to eat the rogue again. She dodged it. Again. Larrs then charged at it, shifting the rogue into position for an attack and then didn't actually manage to hit it himself. So Bob hit it again. There was a bit of a crunching sound. The rogue the finally killed the damn thing off, and as everyone looked around each other, the general consensus was "pub?"

-next week: introductions, and probably some looting, and definitely more killing-

D&D Stupidity: Week Four, in which the party doesn't suck, and Illyria and Bob have some bonding time.

This week, due to horrible weather, we were again down our regular players for Damakos and Bob. As a result, Lucifer was still sleeping in some bushes somewhere or something and Damakos was in the hands of someone else. Bob decided to hang around with the party, now under the hand of flatmate Claire.

After clearing out the kobold lair last week, the party grabbed the tons of weapons left lying around and headed on back to Winterhaven to report the good news to Lord Padraig. However, on returning to the town, they found the gates closed, the guards alert with their weapons drawn and a rather high militia presence. On seeing the party approaching Lord Padraig called out to them, telling them that people have disappeared from the town and undead monsters have started appearing. The party exchanged looks, and then grudgingly agreed to go look into the problem, the Lord promising them payment for doing so.

Heading off to the nearby cemetary, the party wondered if undead horrors would be any worse than kobolds. They decided they probably couldn't be, since Carric and Larrs had both developed nervous twitches whenever the 'k' word was mentioned. The cemetary loomed up in the distance, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. As they neared it, they noticed that some of the earth around the densely packed gravestones had been disturbed, and behind one of the three mauseleums a sickly glow was pulsing. As they neared the gateway, a horde of skeletons emerged, joined by a pair of zombie hounds. Behind them stood a female elf, armed with a sword and a longbow. If any of them had been paying attention at the time, they may have recognised the elf as the same one who had been sitting in the pub a couple of nights prior. As it was, they had totally ignored her, and so she seemed completely unfamiliar.

Carric, wasting no time, moved forward and lobbed a shuriken at one of the skeletons. He missed. Larrs then pulled Bob up to the front lines along with him, and then just sort of stood there trying to look menacing. Damakos, doing something useful, used his Cloud of Daggers spell to take out one of the skeletons. He then took a shortbow bolt to the arm along with Bob, while the elf narrowly missed hitting Larrs with her longbow.

Illyria made her way along the perimeter of the cemetary, concealing herself but ultimately failing to set off her Dire Radiance spell successfully. Bob, on the other hand, smacked a skeleton in the face so hard that it fell apart. Bob was happy with this. Swiftpaw was then made equally happy when Carric sent her to gnaw on a skeleton's spinal column. She got a bit carried away and proceeded to shake the thing apart as she tried to choose between vertebrae.

Larrs, finding that all the closer targets had been disposed of, took a shot at a skeleton with his sling and crushed its skull in with the shot. Damakos then downed and took out three of the skeletons by turning the ground to ice beneath them. The elf, severely annoyed, missed shooting the wizard in her frustration, and the skeletons swarmed the party, along with the two zombie hounds. One of them failed to bite Bob, but the other knocked Carric over, delivering a nasty bite to his leg which was unfortunately necrotic. To make matters worse, he was stabbed with a longsword. Larrs was also shot twice and Damakos took a stab wound of his own.

Illyria, still hiding behind the outer fence, took out one of the zombie hounds with Dire Radiance, while Bob took a hefty chunk out of the other one. Carric managed to get to his feet as his fox savaged another skeleton in her excitement. Larrs ordered Bob to help him flank the remaining hound, but the attack he made afterwards failed. Damakos attempted to use his Thunderwave spell but failed to do so, and then got stabbed in the leg while Larrs was shot in the chest. The zombie dog attempted to chew on Bob's leg, but didn't penetrate his plate mail, however Carric was shot in  the back.

Illyria exploded one of the skeletons that moved to surround Damakos and Bob took a swing at the hound clinging to his leg. Unfortunately, this didn't put an end to it, but it wasn't looking too healthy by the end of it. Carric, apparently fed up of this, pulled out his Five Storms kung-fu awesomeness and smashed two skeletons to pieces, and Larrs decided on a very efficient course of action, healing himself, Damakos and Carric, pulling Damakos out of danger and shifting himself closer to the elf. Damakos, hoping to join in on the awesomeness, tried to pull off Thunderwave again. He failed again.

A skeleton lunged at Damakos and missed, but the hound finally managed to sink its teeth into Bob's leg, pulling him over and giving him a nasty necrotic wound. The elf made to move past Larrs and he tried to get an attack in, but unfortunately failed. And then the elf shot him.

Illyria missed the hound with a shot of Dire Radiance, but Bob, now angered, got up, shook the thing off his leg and used his dragonbreath to burn it to death. Or whatever the zombie equivalent is. He also singed the elf a bit, since she had wandered a little too close. Meanwhile, Carric made his way around the back of the mauseleums and took a look at the magic circle that was the source of the glow. On attempting to analyse it, he determined that it was magic. And glowy. And circular.

Larrs tried to fire a glue pot at the elf to hold her still, but he missed and settled for moving away a little bit and healing himself instead. Damakos tried to use Thunderwave again and finally hit something with it, downing the last of the skeletons and leaving only the elf to deal with. The elf, reacting badly to being burned, shot Bob rather seriously, and Illyria attempted to use Vampiric Embrace on her, but didn't quite manage. Bob healed himself quickly and then made his way over to the elf, landing a hefy Holy Smiting as he reached her. This left her very badly off, adn when Carric and Swiftpaw moved to flank her, she was downed in the resulting attack.

On looting the bodies, the party picked up the usual ton of weapons and a bit of money from the elf. They also found a sheet of vellum with a message for the elf written on it:

'I received your report on the adventurers. Next time you see them, put an end to their meddling. Mix the blood of ten people with the elixir my messenger brings. Then trace the following pattern on the ground of a graveyard and pour the liquid into the lines. That should supply you with a force to thwart them. I'm very close to completion; see that I'm not interrupted. As you already know, if you do come to the second level of the keep, the pass phrase is 'From the ground, some magic was found.' - Kalarel

After reading this and feeling vaguely worried, the party decided that they should really destroy the magic circle. Larrs and Damakos did fine with their end of things, but Illyria got distracted and messed up on her end of things, leading to an ominous creaking sound from somewhere. Damakos managed to fix it, however, and the circle disappeared.

The party returned to Winterhaven and were allowed into the city by a very happy Lord Padraig. He took them to the inn and bought their first round, as well as paying Larrsinan for their trouble. On the way to the inn, they dropped off the huge piles of looted weapons at the blacksmith's, but didn't bother staying around to pick up the money for them, instead agreeing to have it dropped off at the inn later. Larrs and Carric did stay around long enough to pick up some magic armour for Carric and a pact blade for Illyria, while the warlock in question took herself and Bob off to the pub where they found the grateful townspeople ready to buy drinks for them all night.

The night that followed was much fun for everyone except for possibly Damakos and Carric. The former spent the whole night huddled in a corner pretending not to know anyone in the party while Carric meditated. Larrs proceeded to seduce one of the waitresses and had a pleasureable night and morning after. Bob and Illyria seduced a waitress of their own, although they were so drunk that they couldn't actually remember much of what happened. They figured it had been pretty good though, given the general nakedness when they woke up. Swiftpaw also apparently had a good night, slinking in early in the morning looking awfully smug. Lord Padraig was heard remarking the next day that one of his pedigree hounds was looking rather pleased with itself.

However, resigning themselves to going and investigating the keep and hopefully putting a lid on the cult, the party got themselves together and headed out. As they neared it, they noticed how overgrown the general area was, seeing that not many people had come this way in a long time. They entered a clearing surrounded by old ruined pieces of masonry, at which point complete silence fell. Even the wind stopped blowing. Feeling more and more worried about this, the party moved on until they found a set of stairs leading down into darkness. The rubble had been cleared away from the area here, shoved aside to allow access to the entrance.

Slowly, the party descended the stairs towards a light at the base. A cold wind started to blow as they did, carrying the scent of unwashed bodies and the sound of chattering squeaks. As they neared the doorway at the bottom, a goblin came into view. As it sighted the party, it taunted them, and they got ready to attack.

Larrs started off by firing his sling at the goblin, but he missed, the shot glancing off one of the many pillars in the room. Bob charged forward to attack on Larrs' orders, but found himself landing in a spiked pit trap full of rats. The goblins advanced but didn't actually make any attacks, and so Damakos used his ice spell to knock two of them over. One of them lobbed a javelin and got Carric it in the shoulder. Illyria landed a Dire Radiance on a goblin that was sneaking up a side corridor towards them, and Bob got chewed on by the rats at the bottom of the pit that managed to get into the elbow joints in his armour

Larrs made the executive decision to haul Bob out of the pit, but had buried his rope at the bottom of his kit and had to stop and dig it out. While he was doing that, he ordered Carric to to hit the goblins, but he missed due to them being too far away.

Bob languished in his pit, managing to pull himself off the spikes and try to stop the rats chewing on his elbows. Carric then landed a hit on a goblin with Swiftpaw's help. One of the goblin archers got up from the patch of ice further up the corridor and fired on the fox, but thankfully missed and Damakos managed to lower the rope down to Bob to get him out of the pit. Another of the goblins threw a spear past Carric's ear while the one down the side corridor managed to hit Illyria. Distracted by the injury, she failed to retaliate.

Now out of the pit, Bob brushed the rats off his elbows and advanced on the goblin down the side corridor. He marked it, but when trying to hit it with a Holy Strike, he apparently forgot how to use his sword. Behind him, the goblin archers took a chunk out of the fox and Carric with some well-timed shots and Damakos tried to take care of the side-corridor goblin with Cloud of Daggers. Unfortunately, it only took a little damage before sidestepping the cloud and stabbing Bob. Illyria, unhappy that her new best friend was being attacked, proceeded to blast the thing to bits with an Eldritch Blast and Larrs was quickly healed by Bob, while Carric hid himself and did some healing of his own.

Bob, now bored with the proceedings, moved round the corridor hoping to come across a bar or drinks cabinet of some sort. Instead, he found a heavy tapestry curtain that he paused in front of, wondering if there were any goblins behind it. Illyria followed him through, in her opinion, lack of anything better to do.

The two remaining goblins suddenly high-tailed it away from the party, which was considered a bad thing since they were probably heading off to regroup with other things that wanted the party dead. In order to stop them, Carric, Larrs and Damakos came up with a plan that was either brilliant or really, really, really dumb.

Damakos, having illusion magic, proceeded to project what he hoped was the image of (since this was not something the party was familiar with) a sexy female goblin in hopes of luring the fleeing goblins back. This failed miserably, and the goblins disappeared into the darkness of another staircase leading deeper into the keep.

Regrouping, the party shared nervous glances at the staircases and hesitated before moving on.

D&D Stupidity: Week Three, in which the party are maimed horrifically and we witness the remarkable return of Bob

Y'know, there's a reason D&D players are funny about their dice. Three out of our four players (and the DM) have their own set, me included, except that now Garry (Carric) and Cameron (Larrsinan) are seriously considering changing theirs after the horrific amount of bad rolling last night. The god of dice rolls was apparently very unhappy with us.

So uh... expect lots of instances of the party failing horribly. Thankfully we have a nice DM, who I may or may not have bribed with the promise of discount beer in order to get a reroll at one point. We were also down a paladin and our wizard was in the hands of someone else due to there being a stupid amount of snow for this early in the year and their players being unable to get to my flat. But anyway, let's get cracking, shall we?

Last week we left off with the party regrouping oustside the waterfall entrance to the kobolds' cave lair. Everyone was rather excited about this, since once they cleared this out, there would be no more bloody kobolds to fight. Lucifer, we have to assume for the sake of the blog, was so excited that he passed out or something. After listening to the gang inside the cave talking about whatever kobolds talk about in their spare time, Larrsinan (henceforth referred to as Larrs for brevity) and Carric sat and had a brief argument as to what sort of approach they should take, eventually deciding that a full frontal assault would be quicker and easier. And so, yelling like idiots, onward they charged, with the two magic users following at a safe distance. The kobolds were indeed rather surprised.

Pausing to briefly analyse the enemy, there were rather mixed reactions. Carric had a nervous breakdown, Illyria was pretty much indifferent and Larrs seemed rather happy about the situation. Damakos just sort of stood there staring at the ceiling, until Carric snapped, rushed forward and sort of... flailed... at two of the kobolds, somehow managing to kill one in the process. And then everything started going straight to hell.

Illyria got off to a bad start by being stabbed in the leg, while Carric, Swiftpaw and Damakos also obtained stab wounds. In retaliation, Damakos roasted three of them. Carric, apparently startled by the sudden bright light and heat, was then stabbed twice more. Illyria, highly unimpressed, exloded her attacker with Dire Radiance, because concentrated and very painful starlight is the best punishment, while Larrs got in a good solid thwack on one of the tougher ones that was menacing Damakos.

Carric then made a brief recovery, killing two of the things in rapid succession and beating another round the head. Distracted by the kung fu, Illyria was stabbed in the leg again while two more kobolds sailed past Swiftpaw as they tried to attack her. Damakos threw another one of his by now trademark fireballs, hitting one of the tougher kobolds, dodging a spear, and getting another one in the ribs anyway. Carric was then stabbed repeatedly, catapulting him straight back into the gibbering mess he was at the start of the battle, while Illyria fried one of the kobolds attacking him. Larrs then just succeeded in landing a blow on another one, and Carric frantically healed himself before launching himself at one of them, missing, then punching straight through another's chest, missing another one, and then smacking the first one that he missed on the follow-through.

Illyria was attacked again, being grazed by another spear which made her rather... unhappy. And so the unlucky kobold found her sucking out part of his life force and healing herself a little in the process. In the background, Larrs failed to hit anything.

Just when it was starting to look like the end of the battle was nigh, a horn sounded at the back of the cavern, exciting the remaining kobolds. A few more of them trickled out of various places in the cave, as well as an old, battle-scarred goblin armed with a big battle axe that had seen a lot of use. He was not a friendly looking guy, probably due to the ram skull and wolfskin adornments. Carric freaked out upon seeing him, although this did lead to him mangling a kobold.

Then it got worse.

Damakos and Illyria got some solid hits in against a few of the mooks, although Illyria's target managed to get her with his spear before he was seared to death. Thinking that she was being injured entirely too much, Illyria proceeded to move herself, going invisible in the process. A kobold spellcaster who had snuck out of the back of the cave attempted to throw some acid at Larrs, but thankfully failed. Larrs, apparently hyped up on adrenalin or something, made the stupid mistake of trying to taunt the goblin. This ended up amounting to him pulling silly faces at it and the goblin looking severely unimpressed. Then, in a smarter move, he moved Carric around so that they could coordinate attacks against the thing. This did, unfortunately, end up failing.

Then, in the midst of his nervous gibberings, Carric pulled off a bit of kung fu that was so epic that he beat the shit out of two kobolds without touching them. And then he got hit with the goblin's battle axe. In order to try and help even the odds, Damakos tried a Ray of Enfeeblement on the goblin warrior, failing, but hitting one of the kobolds hard with a scorching burst. Illyria, now frustrated and rather sore, levelled her Flames of Phlegethos spell at the goblin, taking a massive chunk out of him and setting him on enchanted fire. Then another ball of acid flew past Larrs' head while Swiftpaw sunk her teeth into the goblin's achilles' tendon. In response, it smacked her and her master around with its axe, while its kobold flunkies severely stabbed Larrs twice.

Larrs managed to land a solid blow on the goblin and get the party some hit points in the process. Carric then rolled up his sleevs and prepared to kick some ass. And then didn't.

Illyria was attacked again, but avoided any serious injury. Carric, on the other hand, took a heavy blow and Damakos levelled another scorching burst, followed up with Illyria killing the unfortunate target with a magic missile.

The kobold mage aimed for Larrs again and missed, presumably because it was not very bright and was just sort of standing there drooling and waving its staff around in case it actually hit anything. Larrs ignored it and made to attack the goblin again. He failed. So did Carric.

And then, to the sound of a cheering studio audience (sound effects provided by flatmate Claire), Bob reappeared to save the day. Bob may have been slightly drunk at the time and hoping that the cave was another pub, but since the party was dying horribly, they didn't really care.

Damakos, in celebration, hit the kobold mage with a fireball to the gut, while Illyria blasted the goblin and the pulled her invisibilty trick. And then the moronic scaled mage actually managed to hit Larrs with his next ball of acid, although this didn't stop him from hitting the goblin.

Bob then set a dude on fire in epic fashion. Isn't Bob awesome?

Carric failed to land another blow and his fox took a severe wallop to the face and fell unconcscious while Damakos launched a magic missile at the goblin and Illyria failed to connect with her eldritch blast. Larrs then took another glob of acid to the face and subsequently missed everything. So did Carric, who was then rendered unconscious.

Damakos landed another magic missile, Illyria missed again, and the Larrs was hit with even more acid and joined Carric on the floor of the cave. Things did not look good.

And then Bob swept in in magnificent fashion and cleaved the kobold mage in twain with a holy strike while Larrs and Carric struggled and failed to get back to their feet and failed to manage it. The fox, however, got back on her feet. The goblin, now unconcerned with the prone figures, moved to attack Bob, landing a blow on him. It was then killed with a magic missile to the back of the head, courtesy of Damakos.

While Larrs and Carric gingerly picked themselves up, Illyria took the liberty of going over the body of the goblin, finding a small silver key and a message scroll. The message was not good news for the party, as it informed them that someone was apparently rather close to opening up that rift hidden in the old keep in the hills.

However, the mood was improved somewhat by the big chest full of gold and a suit of magic chainmail that was opened by the key.

Three guesses who wasn't allowed to get her hands on any of it.

D&D Stupidity: Week Two, in which Carric learns kung fu, the party exemplify incompetence and some new challengers appear!

Current caffeine levels [///////////////               ]. Probable post coherance, minimal.

I hate Tuesday mornings. Anyway, here is the second installment of our epic D&D misadventures. Just in case you weren't paying attention last time, here's a quick run down of our characters, introducing our two newcomers.

Larrsinan: The party leader, a tiefling warlord favouring axes and with an apparent predisposition for having the shit kicked out of him.
Carric: A half-elf ranger who's been reading books on martial arts since last time, and so now has some crazy kung fu skills going on. His fox companion, however, does not.
Illyria: Antisocial half-elf warlock with hugely destructive powers, and rather alcoholic tendencies.
Damakos: A tiefling wizard who's just as much of an antisocial git as Illyria, although without the alcoholism.
Lucifer: A human paladin who is unfailingly polite and under the unfortunate impression that Illyria is in any way ladylike. Also very handy with his broadsword, much to the relief of our party.

We left our heroes at the Dragon Graveyard where they had just killed off a group of bandits and rescued the friend of the sage. Said friend, who will now be known as Rescuee, was very grateful, but when the party was confronted by a gang of kobolds on the way back to Winterhaven, he wasn't exactly what you might call useful.

This group of kobolds had a shaman in their midst, and were much better armed than the last lot. They also got the drop on everyone since the party had apparently decided that being somewhat competant in the last battle meant that they could stop paying attention. Thus we started off with Larrsinan taking a ball of acid to the gut while everyone else just sort of stared. After much flailing and being useless, Carric finally managed to get some hits in against one of them and Illyria blew another one to pieces. And then they went straight back to being utterly useless, as Swiftpaw took a heavy blow and went down, and Carric, instead of raising her, opted to charge through the kobolds with his shiny new Steel Avalanche attack, possibly as some form of vengeance. This, while doing some damage, ultimately was not very helpful, as Carric was then downed almost immediately after, while Larrsinan limped about with exactly one hit point left, managing an Inspiring Word to at least get Carric conscious, if not upright.

In the midst of our failtastic flailing, the first of our shiny new party members appeared on the horizon. Being a paladin, and noticing that the party were not exactly doing well, he immediately charged in and landed a hefty Holy Strike on the back of the nearest kobold's head. It didn't kill it, but it was better than almost anything the rest of them had managed. Illyria attempted to level a blow at the shaman and missed it completely, although thankfully it missed her too, although the ball of acid winging past her face at high speed was rather alarming,

It was then that our second new addition arrived. Damakos stumbled out of a bush and took a chunk out of the shaman with a Magic Missile, thus earning Illyria's ire for being a better shot than she was, although she still held herself as one point up because she had actually killed something. Then she got distracted by one kobold stabbing Lucifer in the leg, which led to her getting a stab wound of her own; her first wound in the campaign so far. Rescuee was then briefly useful as he smacked one of the kobolds in the face. Larrsinan, still limping and still useless, proceeded to run away to a safe distance and order Lucifer to attack another of them. Illyria, severely pissed off, attempted to ruin her attacker with Dire Radiance and Vampiric Embrace. She spectacularly failed at both and Damakos took a ball of acid to the stomach a moment later. His response was to summon a Flaming Sphere (christened Fred) which thoroughly toasted the offending shaman. In the background, Carric finally got up and kung fued one of the few remaining to death.

One of the hardier kobolds took another chunk out of Lucifer while another tried and failed to hit Rescuee. Lucifer, in one of his worse moments, decided to try and intimidate one of the kobolds, which basically entailed him standing over it and going 'ooga booga' while it blinked at him stupidly. Illyria, rather pissed off at this point, then exploded it all over Lucifer's nice shiny white plate mail. Meanwhile, Fred the Flaming Sphere proceeded to miss his next target and the last kobold spearman went for Rescuee, except didn't actually connect in any way, instead sailing past and landing in a heap. Lucifer, since he's a nice guy and all, challenged the thing, and then utterly failed to actually hurt him. Illyria then attempted to kill the last of the kobolds, only to find that everyone was in her way, so she simply healed herself and grumbled about the lack of violence.

Fred, in fine flaming fashion, then lightly roasted the kobold. And Damakos. And Carric. And Lucifer. Thus everyone in the party learned to dislike Fred, except Illyria, who found all of this hilarious. Finally, after much yelling at Damakos to get his damn fireball under control, the kobold was intimidated into submission and tied upside down to his own spear. The party tried to interrogate him, but he was a gibbering idiot, so they all just kicked him on their way past, especially Larrsinan, who hadn't actually hit anything for the entire duration of the battle.

While looting the bodies, Lucifer introduced himself, in typical very polite paladin fashion. Illyira decided that they could keep him, while Larrsinan and Carric sniggered at the fact Lucifer called her a 'lady'. In the background, Damakos helped himself to an amulet that one of the kobolds was carrying, namely one bearing the sign of the Underworld god Orcus.

Finally, the party returned to Winterhaven, beaten and bruised and very, very annoyed at all things kobold-shaped. However, they also noticed that the field around the town were awfully empty looking, and the guards standing on the gate suddenly looked terribly attentive. However, nothing was actually wrong per say, everyone was just a bit on edge. The party members looked at each other, shrugged, and went to give the sage a beating for sending them into kobold territory. Well, most of them did. Lucifer excused himself and went to the pub instead.

On reaching the tower and presenting the sage with both Rescuee and the Orcus amulet, he stopped them before they gave him the kicking he totally deserved and told them a story:
Hundreds of years ago, a group of powerful sorcerors opened a rift to the Shadowfell. This rift was eventually sealed in the time of the Empire and a keep was built over it. However, the knight, Sir Keegan, who was tasked with defending the keep, descended into madness, killing his wife, his children and his lieutenants, before going on to slaughter his men until he was subdued. The keep was subsequently abandoned, and has since fallen into disrepair. The few who knew of the existence of the rift assumed that the remote location in the hills would remain secret, and even if the seal was found, it would take an extremely powerful sorceror to open it.
The sage explained that the rift opened onto a section of the Shadowfell that was sacred to Orcus, and that the cult the party had been sent to investigate may be attempting to open it up again, using the kobolds to defend and distract from their efforts. He also told them that the kobolds are camped out in a cave to the south east.

With this in mind, the party moved on to the inn to rest up and, in Illyria's case, get something to drink. The others filled in Lucifer and Damakos on their mission, before being distracted by the town leader, Lord Padraig, entering the inn for a drink.

Everyone, minus Illyria who was propping up the bar, sidled up to him to inform him that the cult may have moved into the old keep and that they may have something to do with the numerous kobold attacks. Padraig admitted that the kobold attacks have been becoming more of a problem, and also acknowledged that his town militia have been less than effective since they cannot operated outside of the town limits. Given their new grudge against all things kobold, Carric volunteered the party to clear out the kobold lair, and Padraig hired them as mercenaries.

The next morning, the party (with a hungover Illyria, of course), stopped off at the blacksmith's to offload some of the loot they picked up, as well as dropping by the sage's tower to sell off the dragon scale shields they had picked up from the kobolds and to get directions to the lair. They also invested in some ranged weapons at Lucifer's suggestion. Except for Illyria, who is a ranged weapon. They picked up some lanterns too, because, you know, cave.

Then they headed off to kill themselves some kobolds.

After a nice long kobold-free walk, the party came across a pleasantly rugged area with a waterfall. And a ton of of little dragony bastards. There was also a big glowing magic circle, and after much muttering and scratching of heads, Illyria and Lucifer finally figured out that it made any attacks made inside the circle a fair bit stronger. Unfortunately, one of the aformentioned little dragony bastards was standing right in the middle of it.

Deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, Carric and Larrsinan took the stealthy approach and moved along to get a proper look at the enemy. Illyria pulled her own ninja act and moved along the side of the cave, and Lucifer, who is actually incapable of stealth, just sort of wandered along after her. Damakos was apparently asleep in a bush or something at this point.

Then in a stunning display of rangerly sneaking, Carric blew everyone's cover, not that it made much difference because we're talking about kobolds here; they ain't bright. Larrsinan, eager for violence after his spectacular failure to take part in any other than the receiving kind last time, rushed the kobold in the circle and bludgeoned it, followed swiftly by Carric who flanked it along with Swiftpaw and proceeded to beat the tar out of it. Over on the left flank, Lucifer challenged a lone kobold, while Illyria moved into the surrounding woods and laid a curse on an unsuspecting enemy.

Back at the magic circle, Larrsinan killed off the kobold and moved himself firmly into the circle, while Lucifer continued beating his little friend over in the corner of the area. Carric distracted another one with Swiftpaw killed it. Illyira, from her position in the trees, heavily singed a rather confused kobold who had no idea where this was coming from or why it was happening to him, and then his day was made even worse as Damakos finally woke up and re-summoned Fred the Flaming Sphere, who proceeded to menace the poor kobold and his friends.

Larrsinan was then hit with a glue bomb, which unfortunately stuck him in place, yet left him still able to attack. Inside the magic circle, which gave extra power to those attacks. A tragedy. Then, Carric removed the needs for this effect by killing three kobolds thoroughly to death with one hit. Three more tired to stab him, but only one was successful, and the rest were roasted by Fred. Lucifer finally dealt with his mate on the left and Larrsinan chucked a rock at one of the few remaining around the circle. It hit the thing between the eyes and dropped it. Finally, Carric mopped up the couple remaining with another mighty kung fu display and then the ritual looting of the bodies commenced.

Illyria was still not allowed to hold any of the money.

And that was the end of the week's adventures. Next week: Kobold Extermination Funtime!

D&D Stupidity: Week One, in which our heroes meet, kill some kobolds and nearly get eaten by some drakes.

I feel I should start this post by telling you that I am a gigantic nerd. Of course, you probably already guessed this due to the fact that the title of the post begins with D&D, but I just thought I'd reassure you that you were correct in the assumption. I'm the vice president of the Stirling Uni Sci Fi Society you see, so it's basically my job to be a gigantic nerd.

Anyway, a few of us got started on a D&D campaign last night, and so many silly awesome things happened that I decided that a weekly feature of my blog should be the strange misadventures of our little band of weirdoes. I will try to keep it entertaining, but I won't judge you if you decide you want to just hit the back button now (you heartless, heartless person you). Now, for those of you still reading, I shall begin with some introductions to our characters.

We started out a with a trio; an axe-crazy tiefling warlord by the name of Larrsinan, a goody two-shoes half-elf ranger by the name of Carric (and his imaginatively named fox companion Swiftpaw) and an antisocial, heavy drinking half-elf warlock by the name of Illyria (that would be my character).

Things started off in a pretty standard way. The three were sent off to investigate a supposed death cult by an apparently rather absentminded cleric. On the way, they were attacked by a band of eight kobolds (little lizard/dragon men for those not well-versed in D&D monsterology). Being big manly men, Larrsinan and Carric went charging into the fray and Larrsinan proceeded to get the shit repeatedly kicked out of him. Carric was marginally more successful, if only because the kobolds surrounding him proved to be utterly incompetant with the spears they were wielding. There was, however, the awkward moment when he tried to do a dual attack with Swiftpaw, only for the fox to miss horribly and presumably land on Carric's head.

Illyria, on the other hand, being the lazy bitch she was created to be, proceeded to simply stand back and be the long-range heavy artillery. After cursing three or four kobolds and blasting two of them to smithereens, she moved exactly one step forward (this was literally the only movement she made the entire time) and ended the battle by using her handy Vampiric Embrace move, which killed the final kobold and landed her with more hit-points than she started with, thus giving her a nice buzz for the rest of the afternoon.

After looting the bodies (and the smouldering patches of grass where a couple of bodies used to be) and picking up more useless weaponry than anyone outside of an RPG could carry, as well as a couple of handy dragon scales and some money that Illyria was not allowed to keep hold of, our heroes moved on reached the village of Winterhaven, where they observed a couple of houses outside the walls that weren't so much houses as they were charred piles of bricks. The guards at the village gates were not terribly helpful when asked about that, although they did give the three directions to the local blacksmith and also to the inn.

After offloading the weapons onto the dwarf blacksmith, and being told to try showing the dragon scale to the local sage, the three headed for the inn, where they proceeded to book rooms. Well, Larrsinan and Carric proceeded to book rooms. Illyria proceeded to get blind drunk. Larrsinan and Illyria also attempted to flirt with every waitress in the place, but both were unsuccessful.

After talking with a strange old man about the kobold infestation so near to the village, the two sober ones in the party (the fox was also drunk by this point; her and Illyria spent most of the night sitting in a corner making attempts at singing. Both failed. Horribly) met the local sage, who agreed to give them some information, or at least directions to find information, about the death cult if they did him a favour first. Apparently a friend of his had gone off to investigate an alleged dragon graveyard and hadn't returned, and the sage wanted either proof that he had perished or fallen into trouble there or on the way, or that he'd simply visited it and then kept going. Agreeing to meet the sage at his tower the next morning to get directions and some more information before setting out, the party dragged Illyria upstairs and got some sleep.

It was also during our night out at the pub that the band met the dragon-born paladin, Bob. Bob was a simple soul who agreed to got along with them on their quest. Except that Bob thought they were going on a pub crawl. Bob was sorely disappointed.

The next morning, after dousing Illyria in the water-trough outside, the party picked up a map and a hangover cure (that didn't really work) from the sage before setting off. The journey there was uneventful, although the minute they reached the dragon graveyard they were confronted with a couple of guardian drakes and a mob of bandits led by a gnome. The sage's friend was there too, all tied up, but the party was more concerned with the fact that there were two lesser dragons present that seemed rather keen to eat them.

Conscious of the fact that he had nearly died several times in the last battle, Larrsinan proceeded to proclaim Bob the primary meat-shield of the party. He attempted to soften this by granting the party some extra hit points, which really didn't do that much to make Bob feel any better. Illyria returned to her now standard tactic of stand back, curse and make dudes explode. Of course, this was after she tried her nifty Dire Radiance attack, which worked once. The failure of her second attempt was presumably due to her hangover, since the whole 'painfully bright light' thing probably hurt like hell to cast in that state and she forgot to close her eyes the second time.

Anyway, the battle went ahead fairly standardly. Bob spent most of time soaking up damage, although there was the exciting moment when he set three men on fire and subsequently killed them all. Carric, however, did a stupid thing and taunted the bandits' slinger to try and hit Swiftpaw who was hiding in a huge tangle of roots at the time. Despite the fact that the slinger couldn't actually see her, he still managed to hit her full in the face and almost kill her. Carric felt a little bit silly after that one.

Eventually, after much effort on the part of our heroes (the frigging gnome could go invisible), Illyria ended the fight with Vampiric Embrace again, thus coming through another battle unscathed and on a huge buzz from the two huge doses of extra health she'd gained (now there was a working hangover cure). Bodies were looted and the hostage was rescued, Bob glared at everyone for a while and more money was kept far away from Illyria. All in all, quite a successful trip.

And that is where this installment ends. We are as yet uncertain if Bob will remain with the group, as Bob was very upset at the lack of ale on the outing. As such, he may bugger off on the return to Winterhaven, although I'm sure he will get replaced.

So, that's all for this post folks.
*Mint uses Teleport*