Amidus Drexel
2013-05-26, 02:12 PM
Greetings.
This is a small campaign that arose after a series of discussions with a friend (my current DM for the longer-running campaign that I’m playing in (see sig)) that involved getting the cleric’s player in the aforementioned campaign to DM a game for an all-cleric party. The idea was brought to this player (who shall be referred to as “DM” hereafter), who immediately declared the idea awesome and decreed that we should be evil. I made a slight attempt at warning him what that would entail (especially given the players in question...), but without much success. And so, we set to work.
Apologies in advance for confusing tense usage, adverb abuse, and excessive parentheses. (nested and otherwise). If you have a problem with commas, you should probably stop reading now.
The characters:
Vlad Durankov: a chaotic evil dwarven Cleric 5/Divine Oracle 7 who worships Erythnul. He speaks in a Russian accent, and generally serves as artillery for the party. Unlike me, he didn’t give up any casting levels in his build, so Vlad’s just a bit ahead (although my higher Wis score gives me roughly the same amount of spells) of Fletcher in that regard.
Fletcher Kingsley: a lawful evil human Cleric 6/Master of Shrouds 6 who worships devils. He speaks in whatever accent I feel like at the time (honestly, it’s been a pretty decent mix), and has specialized in summoning undead (normally shadows). I’m a bit behind on the spellcasting end of things, but I’m definitely harder to kill, mostly because I run around with spell resistance and greater vigor up all the time. DMM Persist rocks.
The setting:
Logner (pronounced Lowe-nare, as per the DM), a place basically thrown together on the spot with bits and pieces of it interjected from my backstory (as it was written independently of (and, I would add, before) the setting doc) Many, if not all, of the towns are ruled by giants. It has your standard fantasy kitchen sink of everything else, though; elves, dwarves, humans, undead, dragons, etc.
The story:
Disclaimer: Much of this campaign was planned on the fly or just straight improvised (pretty much the same thing) and if something doesn’t make sense, it’s likely an inconsistency due to that. I’ve tried to put in-character explanations for some of this, but I make no promises as to how much they make sense. We haven’t made the DM cry yet, but... it’s still a work in progress. :smallamused:
I'll gladly answer any questions that I know the answer to.
Session the First - Of two priests, a vase, some giants, and shadows. Lots of shadows.
So, the first session starts out with us being accosted by three guards to “give it back.” I declare a Wisdom check to remember what we took, and discover (to some surprise) that we are in possession of a vase/flowerpot of some significance. I (less than politely) decline the offer of returning the thing, and toss it to Vlad, who promptly turns invisible, leaving me to attack the guards by myself (at least it looked that way to start). Uninterested in wasting spells (and fairly confident in my armor class of 28, which they couldn’t reasonably hit), I walk over to one and attack him with my whopping Strength score (and, coincidentally, attack bonus) of 7. Vlad charges another guard and bashes him over the head with the vase (which somehow survives unscathed, due to a lucky roll per the DM), and does something in the order of 2 damage. Somewhere in here, I cast deeper darkness on a rock, partially blinding everyone except for me. (as I can see through magical and non-magical darkness, per the Baator domain). We’ve used that rock to great effect so far. At this point the guards call for backup.
Unconcerned (I mean, they’re guards, and have yet to successfully damage either of us), we continue to thoroughly thrash the guards, when a storm giant they refer to as Steven walks over and chain-lightnings us. Both Vlad and Fletcher promptly fail their reflex saves, and take 62 and 31 damage, respectively. I make an attempt to talk our way out of it (not expecting much, as we did just kill three guards), and Steven, much to my surprise, tells us that we should take the vase to Lord Tangram in Stonewatch (a city to the north). We hastily accept these terms, take the guards bodies (yay, bags of holding!) and leave the town to make camp.
I immediately began making plans of revenge that essentially amounted to “come back tomorrow, kill Steven, and take his stuff.” One guard was turned into a ghoul, and the other two into skeletons, and they guarded us for the night. We returned the next morning, armed with extra flame strikes (Vlad), and resist energy: electricity (Fletcher).
Vlad’s player had the bright (and I use “bright” lightly) idea of sticking me in the bag of holding, turning invisible (he’s got a ring of invisibility), and then carrying me around with just my head and arms sticking out. We questioned (and subsequently killed) a few townspeople as to where Steven lived, and then found a museum. Seeing the opportunity to grab some loot (or at the very least, cause some mayhem), we proceeded as follows: entered the museum, stole the little bell thing they use to let people know you’re at the desk and want to talk to someone, shoved the ghoul out of the bag of holding into the museum and commanded it to attack everything, ran out of the museum, and stone shaped the door shut, so the people inside couldn’t escape. This petty act of vandalism completed, we returned to searching for Steven.
We found his house, which was really more of a castle. I took out the little bell thingy we stole from the museum and rang it for a while, until a human appeared and asked us whom we were. I immediately cast dominate person (as per the Baator domain), and then Vlad casts geas on the guy (who we name Kat), and forces him to essentially be our personal slave. (if he ever disobeys us, he takes 3d6 damage and some ability damage. He’s got 2hp. If he disobeys us, he dies). We then rob Steven of everything we can reasonably fit in our bag of holding. The skeletons are removed, and per Fletcher’s instructions take one of Steven’s throwing rocks to use as a battering ram.
We then return to the museum to get my ghoul back. The skeletons break a window open with the rock (more like a boulder, really), and we climb inside, retrieve the ghoul (and laugh at all the dead bodies), then exit. Vlad takes the time to attempt to convert a commoner to Erythnul, and after being unsuccessful, Fletcher summons some shadows and kills the guy. I then rebuke the shadow that he turns into, and have it go kill someone else.
At this point the townspeople start screaming, and Steven shows up. I immediately summon more shadows, and the storm giant is Str-damaged to death before he can even attack us. Satisfied with our completed “mission”, we turn to leave, but are confronted with an adult bronze dragon that claims to be a friend of Steven’s. The dragon stone shapes a wall around me (presumably to keep me from attacking him), and Vlad casts a sudden-maximized blade barrier around the dragon, who is not maneuverable enough fly out of it (straight up). I summon more shadows from the relative safety of being walled off, and they fly over the barrier and Str-damage the dragon to death. (points to the dragon, though; it managed to kill one or two with its breath weapon).
We were then joined by a fire giant and a frost giant. Vlad, who was fairly close to the two, was attacked, and he sustained a not insignificant amount of damage (I can’t remember what it was) before my shadows dispatched them. I set my ensemble of worthless peons walled in with me (the ghoul, the two skeletons, and Kat the commoner) about breaking through the wall, and cast deathwatch so I could see what was going on. Our final opponent was a cloud giant, who was quickly brought to his knees via a fourth summoning of shadows. Somewhere in here, one of the skeletons was destroyed. I think the cloud giant did it, but I’m not sure. We took their stuff, and I dismissed my summoned shadows and directed the two “real” ones (that I controlled by rebuking) to kill the rest of the townspeople. (I ended up with 23 shadows at the end of this. It was a small town). A few speak with dead spells directed us to take an emerald we found on Steven’s person and use it to get into the town’s vault. (which was hidden under the museum). More looting occurs, and we begin to develop plans to turn the town into a fortress. Vlad animates the bronze dragon as a skeleton, which is christened “Bony”. We then animate the rest of the giants (save the cloud giant, as we don’t have the available HD to control it), and call it a night.
Session the Second – Of travel, a tortoise, an armorsmith, and a brief reminder of Fletcher’s past.
Note: between sessions, Vlad’s player and I decided that we were going to cause a big war between the giants by playing them against one another. With any luck, they’d mostly kill each other off, and we could take their stuff. A fair amount of the things in this session were done with this in mind. He even wrote up a speech for us to read for this purpose. (if I can find it, I'll post it).
The second session begins with Fletcher, Vlad, Bony, and the remaining human skeleton leaving the small town of Corpsewood (now far more appropriately named), leaving all the other undead and Kat behind to defend the fort. (the DM decreed that we took a month or two to fortify the town with stuff, said we could work out the details of it later, and got on with the “plot”). We headed north in a horse-drawn cart, shrouded in darkness from the stone. (I drove the cart, as I was the only one who could really see).
After a few hours, we were attacked by two basilisks, who could best be described as, well... lazy. They did manage to destroy my remaining skeleton before some summoned shadows and Bony the skeletal dragon cut them down. I animated one of the basilisks, and we put the other body in the cart and proceeded down the road to the crossroads-tent-city of Wyom.
Fletcher borrows 1,000 gold from Vlad and goes to search for a nightstick (a small black rod that gives its user 4 extra turn/rebuke attempts per day. Rather useful for me, as it put me up to 20) while Vlad sells some of our loot. The wizard I find, however, tries to con me out of a fair price, and the situation deteriorated from there. The negotiations went something like this:
Wizard: "Here, I can sell it to you for 8,000 gold."
Fletcher: "How about I offer you a discount? I buy it from you for 5,000 gold, and I don’t just take the thing from your lifeless corpse."
Wizard: "Hey, man, no need to get violent! Come back to my tent, and let’s talk there."
Upon arriving at his tent, however, he fireballs me. (his tent, his belongings, and himself all were warded against fire, as it happened. Presumably this happens often enough that he’s prepared for it. *shrug*). Fortunately, he fails to beat my spell resistance (I am saved again by DMM Persist), and I just flat ignore the fireball. He, however, does not fare as well against a harm spell. I procure the desired nightstick from his person, dispel (with a spectacularly good set of rolls) all of his buffs, and flame strike him to death for spite. I liberate a fireproof (but empty) chest from his tent, and return my newly acquired belongings to our cart, then go find Vlad.
Fletcher returns the borrowed gold to Vlad, who was busy arguing with an armorer over the sale of the magic weapons we took from the giants. (he had successfully sold all of the looted gemstones). The argument between the two progressed to threats (this seems to be a recurring thing...), and led to this exchange which had us laughing for quite a few minutes:
Vlad: "You see Bony here." *gestures to the skeletal dragon* "I will have him tear down wall."
Armorer: "Do it, I don’t care. This’ll be the third time that happened this week."
Vlad: "As you wish. Bony, make bigger door in front of store."
I honestly can’t remember whether or not we actually sold the damn things there or not. We finish up our business and leave Wyom, heading southwest to the desert city of Sundial. (pronounced Sunn-dee-ahl, as per the DM). We are briefly detained by a dire tortoise, who we kill, animate (abandoning control of one of the giants back in Corpsewood), and ditch the cart in favor of as a ride. This party is now basically operating from a skeletal tank that always gets a surprise round. :smallamused: We meet a small group of travelers at an oasis, and I put the darkness-stone to good use and completely hide the fact that we have a bunch of powerful(ish) undead with us.
Fletcher takes this opportunity to impart our (largely falsified) tale of how the four giants died in Corpsewood. We portray Steven (the storm giant) and the cloud giant as traitors, and the fire and frost giants as loyal and just. (and I impress upon the DM that Fletcher plays up how awesome the fire giants were). They actually buy our story, and we tell them to spread it around. Our primary objective in progress, we continue southward to Sundial.
Upon arriving at the city, we bury (sort of. It has a burrow speed) the undead tortoise a ways outside of the walls, and have Bony and the basilisk skeleton guard it. I put a greater glyph of warding on the tortoise to cast a geas (to serve the two of us for life) on anyone besides Vlad or me that touches it, and we enter the city. After talking to a few guards, we are directed to the fire giant’s palace steward, an elf. He’s eager to help us (especially upon hearing the “news” from Corpsewood); however, after learning that we are clerics, he asks us to cure his wife, who somehow got poisoned. Vlad and I quickly check our prepared spells, and while I have a remove curse prepared (one can never be too careful), I don’t have remove poison. Thankfully, the Heal skill is almost as useful, so I fix up the elven maid while Vlad (now invisible) looks around the palace for things to steal.
The “help my wife” thing sparked an OOC conversation that went something like this:
Me: Heh, I should just cast slay living.
DM: Really?
Me: Nah. We don’t have to be wantonly violent to everything we meet. It’ll be nice to have some friends.
DM: I mean, you could probably get away with it. It’s not like he’d be able to tell the difference. Just say she died from the poison and there was nothing you could do.
Me: As tempting as that sounds... I’ll pass. I might need slay living later today.
Anyway, I saved the steward’s wife, and he showed us to the throne room to meet King/Lord (the DM uses the two terms interchangeably.) Blaze. Blaze hears our story, and tells us to inform Lord Tangram in Stonewatch. (he’s probably a pretty important dude, we figure. I mean, that’s two giants now that told us to talk to this guy). I finagle a token from Blaze (a flawless ruby decorated with elaborate etchings) and we leave Sundial, departing straight north for the dwarven city of Hubris. More plans are made to protect Bony and the tortoise, and we decide to see an armorsmith to make a set of full-plate for each.
The armorsmith’s name was Mamek, and despite some difficulty getting him out of the city to see the undead and take measurements for the armor (he had apparently had some trouble with the town in the past, and tried to keep his head down. I teleported us out. Word of recall to the tortoise (yes, I had that prepared) managed to be useful somehow). While initially skeptical, a down payment of 3,000 gold quickly changes Mamek’s mind, and he tells us that he’d give us a discount if we could get him some iron from the Glimmer Caves, although he warns us that no one has successfully mined them due to “the dead.” We laugh this off (I mean, we’re evil clerics. I can straight-up command a great deal of undead, no save. We’re not particularly well-equipped to fight ones I can’t control, though), and head straight east to the caves (skirting around Stonewatch, as we don’t want to cause any trouble there (and the DM told us he forgot to prepare anything there...) before we talk to Lord Tangram) to get our iron.
Upon arriving in the cave, we were confronted by a cloaked skeletal figure wielding a scythe (one Fletcher identified as an entropic reaper) that claimed to be exacting justice on Fletcher for crimes committed against demons. This conversation provided a some funny exchanges:
Reaper: "I’m here to kill you for crimes against the demons!"
Fletcher: "I didn’t really kill many demons. Most of my work was corrupting people to do evil."
Vlad: "Hey, I can get behind that."
--
Reaper: "You’re a traitor, and you will pay for your treachery!"
Fletcher: "I think you’ve got me confused with someone else. I never broke any promises. I just neglected to promise not to kill some people. I assure you, I’m quite a trustworthy person."
This was said despite the rather obvious fact that Fletcher had been lying the entire session about the events of the last session to pretty much everyone. :smallamused:
Then the thing attacks us. It actually manages to hit me once, but I pass my save against its destabilizing (entropic something or other) scythe, and pretty much laugh off the 28 damage as I fast-heal it away (DMM Persist saves me once again) over the course of the next few rounds (where he fails to hit me again, at all. It was almost sad). Fletcher casts flame strike, (beating the thing’s spell resistance), and Vlad drops a sudden maximized blade barrier on the reaper. Although I’m forced to catch Bony with the pillar of divine fire, the skeletal dragon makes his save, and quickly is moved out of the way before Vlad attacks. I cast spiritual weapon, and back away as much as possible, and Vlad continues the barrage of flame strikes on the reaper while Bony and the Tortoise slowly wear him down through his damage reduction. Eventually, he plane shifts away with an SLA, and we heal up Bony (the only person besides me to take any damage) and call it a night. I make plans with Vlad’s player to ensure that we’re prepared for whenever the entropic reaper comes back.
Further Sessions:
Session the Third (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15352109&postcount=5) - Of dungeoncrawling (sort of), the making of a plan, and petty revenge. Utterly thorough petty revenge.
Session the Fourth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15571701&postcount=13) - Of lies, some more travel, a modicum of plot, and Vlad being repeatedly screwed over by random chance.
This is a small campaign that arose after a series of discussions with a friend (my current DM for the longer-running campaign that I’m playing in (see sig)) that involved getting the cleric’s player in the aforementioned campaign to DM a game for an all-cleric party. The idea was brought to this player (who shall be referred to as “DM” hereafter), who immediately declared the idea awesome and decreed that we should be evil. I made a slight attempt at warning him what that would entail (especially given the players in question...), but without much success. And so, we set to work.
Apologies in advance for confusing tense usage, adverb abuse, and excessive parentheses. (nested and otherwise). If you have a problem with commas, you should probably stop reading now.
The characters:
Vlad Durankov: a chaotic evil dwarven Cleric 5/Divine Oracle 7 who worships Erythnul. He speaks in a Russian accent, and generally serves as artillery for the party. Unlike me, he didn’t give up any casting levels in his build, so Vlad’s just a bit ahead (although my higher Wis score gives me roughly the same amount of spells) of Fletcher in that regard.
Fletcher Kingsley: a lawful evil human Cleric 6/Master of Shrouds 6 who worships devils. He speaks in whatever accent I feel like at the time (honestly, it’s been a pretty decent mix), and has specialized in summoning undead (normally shadows). I’m a bit behind on the spellcasting end of things, but I’m definitely harder to kill, mostly because I run around with spell resistance and greater vigor up all the time. DMM Persist rocks.
The setting:
Logner (pronounced Lowe-nare, as per the DM), a place basically thrown together on the spot with bits and pieces of it interjected from my backstory (as it was written independently of (and, I would add, before) the setting doc) Many, if not all, of the towns are ruled by giants. It has your standard fantasy kitchen sink of everything else, though; elves, dwarves, humans, undead, dragons, etc.
The story:
Disclaimer: Much of this campaign was planned on the fly or just straight improvised (pretty much the same thing) and if something doesn’t make sense, it’s likely an inconsistency due to that. I’ve tried to put in-character explanations for some of this, but I make no promises as to how much they make sense. We haven’t made the DM cry yet, but... it’s still a work in progress. :smallamused:
I'll gladly answer any questions that I know the answer to.
Session the First - Of two priests, a vase, some giants, and shadows. Lots of shadows.
So, the first session starts out with us being accosted by three guards to “give it back.” I declare a Wisdom check to remember what we took, and discover (to some surprise) that we are in possession of a vase/flowerpot of some significance. I (less than politely) decline the offer of returning the thing, and toss it to Vlad, who promptly turns invisible, leaving me to attack the guards by myself (at least it looked that way to start). Uninterested in wasting spells (and fairly confident in my armor class of 28, which they couldn’t reasonably hit), I walk over to one and attack him with my whopping Strength score (and, coincidentally, attack bonus) of 7. Vlad charges another guard and bashes him over the head with the vase (which somehow survives unscathed, due to a lucky roll per the DM), and does something in the order of 2 damage. Somewhere in here, I cast deeper darkness on a rock, partially blinding everyone except for me. (as I can see through magical and non-magical darkness, per the Baator domain). We’ve used that rock to great effect so far. At this point the guards call for backup.
Unconcerned (I mean, they’re guards, and have yet to successfully damage either of us), we continue to thoroughly thrash the guards, when a storm giant they refer to as Steven walks over and chain-lightnings us. Both Vlad and Fletcher promptly fail their reflex saves, and take 62 and 31 damage, respectively. I make an attempt to talk our way out of it (not expecting much, as we did just kill three guards), and Steven, much to my surprise, tells us that we should take the vase to Lord Tangram in Stonewatch (a city to the north). We hastily accept these terms, take the guards bodies (yay, bags of holding!) and leave the town to make camp.
I immediately began making plans of revenge that essentially amounted to “come back tomorrow, kill Steven, and take his stuff.” One guard was turned into a ghoul, and the other two into skeletons, and they guarded us for the night. We returned the next morning, armed with extra flame strikes (Vlad), and resist energy: electricity (Fletcher).
Vlad’s player had the bright (and I use “bright” lightly) idea of sticking me in the bag of holding, turning invisible (he’s got a ring of invisibility), and then carrying me around with just my head and arms sticking out. We questioned (and subsequently killed) a few townspeople as to where Steven lived, and then found a museum. Seeing the opportunity to grab some loot (or at the very least, cause some mayhem), we proceeded as follows: entered the museum, stole the little bell thing they use to let people know you’re at the desk and want to talk to someone, shoved the ghoul out of the bag of holding into the museum and commanded it to attack everything, ran out of the museum, and stone shaped the door shut, so the people inside couldn’t escape. This petty act of vandalism completed, we returned to searching for Steven.
We found his house, which was really more of a castle. I took out the little bell thingy we stole from the museum and rang it for a while, until a human appeared and asked us whom we were. I immediately cast dominate person (as per the Baator domain), and then Vlad casts geas on the guy (who we name Kat), and forces him to essentially be our personal slave. (if he ever disobeys us, he takes 3d6 damage and some ability damage. He’s got 2hp. If he disobeys us, he dies). We then rob Steven of everything we can reasonably fit in our bag of holding. The skeletons are removed, and per Fletcher’s instructions take one of Steven’s throwing rocks to use as a battering ram.
We then return to the museum to get my ghoul back. The skeletons break a window open with the rock (more like a boulder, really), and we climb inside, retrieve the ghoul (and laugh at all the dead bodies), then exit. Vlad takes the time to attempt to convert a commoner to Erythnul, and after being unsuccessful, Fletcher summons some shadows and kills the guy. I then rebuke the shadow that he turns into, and have it go kill someone else.
At this point the townspeople start screaming, and Steven shows up. I immediately summon more shadows, and the storm giant is Str-damaged to death before he can even attack us. Satisfied with our completed “mission”, we turn to leave, but are confronted with an adult bronze dragon that claims to be a friend of Steven’s. The dragon stone shapes a wall around me (presumably to keep me from attacking him), and Vlad casts a sudden-maximized blade barrier around the dragon, who is not maneuverable enough fly out of it (straight up). I summon more shadows from the relative safety of being walled off, and they fly over the barrier and Str-damage the dragon to death. (points to the dragon, though; it managed to kill one or two with its breath weapon).
We were then joined by a fire giant and a frost giant. Vlad, who was fairly close to the two, was attacked, and he sustained a not insignificant amount of damage (I can’t remember what it was) before my shadows dispatched them. I set my ensemble of worthless peons walled in with me (the ghoul, the two skeletons, and Kat the commoner) about breaking through the wall, and cast deathwatch so I could see what was going on. Our final opponent was a cloud giant, who was quickly brought to his knees via a fourth summoning of shadows. Somewhere in here, one of the skeletons was destroyed. I think the cloud giant did it, but I’m not sure. We took their stuff, and I dismissed my summoned shadows and directed the two “real” ones (that I controlled by rebuking) to kill the rest of the townspeople. (I ended up with 23 shadows at the end of this. It was a small town). A few speak with dead spells directed us to take an emerald we found on Steven’s person and use it to get into the town’s vault. (which was hidden under the museum). More looting occurs, and we begin to develop plans to turn the town into a fortress. Vlad animates the bronze dragon as a skeleton, which is christened “Bony”. We then animate the rest of the giants (save the cloud giant, as we don’t have the available HD to control it), and call it a night.
Session the Second – Of travel, a tortoise, an armorsmith, and a brief reminder of Fletcher’s past.
Note: between sessions, Vlad’s player and I decided that we were going to cause a big war between the giants by playing them against one another. With any luck, they’d mostly kill each other off, and we could take their stuff. A fair amount of the things in this session were done with this in mind. He even wrote up a speech for us to read for this purpose. (if I can find it, I'll post it).
The second session begins with Fletcher, Vlad, Bony, and the remaining human skeleton leaving the small town of Corpsewood (now far more appropriately named), leaving all the other undead and Kat behind to defend the fort. (the DM decreed that we took a month or two to fortify the town with stuff, said we could work out the details of it later, and got on with the “plot”). We headed north in a horse-drawn cart, shrouded in darkness from the stone. (I drove the cart, as I was the only one who could really see).
After a few hours, we were attacked by two basilisks, who could best be described as, well... lazy. They did manage to destroy my remaining skeleton before some summoned shadows and Bony the skeletal dragon cut them down. I animated one of the basilisks, and we put the other body in the cart and proceeded down the road to the crossroads-tent-city of Wyom.
Fletcher borrows 1,000 gold from Vlad and goes to search for a nightstick (a small black rod that gives its user 4 extra turn/rebuke attempts per day. Rather useful for me, as it put me up to 20) while Vlad sells some of our loot. The wizard I find, however, tries to con me out of a fair price, and the situation deteriorated from there. The negotiations went something like this:
Wizard: "Here, I can sell it to you for 8,000 gold."
Fletcher: "How about I offer you a discount? I buy it from you for 5,000 gold, and I don’t just take the thing from your lifeless corpse."
Wizard: "Hey, man, no need to get violent! Come back to my tent, and let’s talk there."
Upon arriving at his tent, however, he fireballs me. (his tent, his belongings, and himself all were warded against fire, as it happened. Presumably this happens often enough that he’s prepared for it. *shrug*). Fortunately, he fails to beat my spell resistance (I am saved again by DMM Persist), and I just flat ignore the fireball. He, however, does not fare as well against a harm spell. I procure the desired nightstick from his person, dispel (with a spectacularly good set of rolls) all of his buffs, and flame strike him to death for spite. I liberate a fireproof (but empty) chest from his tent, and return my newly acquired belongings to our cart, then go find Vlad.
Fletcher returns the borrowed gold to Vlad, who was busy arguing with an armorer over the sale of the magic weapons we took from the giants. (he had successfully sold all of the looted gemstones). The argument between the two progressed to threats (this seems to be a recurring thing...), and led to this exchange which had us laughing for quite a few minutes:
Vlad: "You see Bony here." *gestures to the skeletal dragon* "I will have him tear down wall."
Armorer: "Do it, I don’t care. This’ll be the third time that happened this week."
Vlad: "As you wish. Bony, make bigger door in front of store."
I honestly can’t remember whether or not we actually sold the damn things there or not. We finish up our business and leave Wyom, heading southwest to the desert city of Sundial. (pronounced Sunn-dee-ahl, as per the DM). We are briefly detained by a dire tortoise, who we kill, animate (abandoning control of one of the giants back in Corpsewood), and ditch the cart in favor of as a ride. This party is now basically operating from a skeletal tank that always gets a surprise round. :smallamused: We meet a small group of travelers at an oasis, and I put the darkness-stone to good use and completely hide the fact that we have a bunch of powerful(ish) undead with us.
Fletcher takes this opportunity to impart our (largely falsified) tale of how the four giants died in Corpsewood. We portray Steven (the storm giant) and the cloud giant as traitors, and the fire and frost giants as loyal and just. (and I impress upon the DM that Fletcher plays up how awesome the fire giants were). They actually buy our story, and we tell them to spread it around. Our primary objective in progress, we continue southward to Sundial.
Upon arriving at the city, we bury (sort of. It has a burrow speed) the undead tortoise a ways outside of the walls, and have Bony and the basilisk skeleton guard it. I put a greater glyph of warding on the tortoise to cast a geas (to serve the two of us for life) on anyone besides Vlad or me that touches it, and we enter the city. After talking to a few guards, we are directed to the fire giant’s palace steward, an elf. He’s eager to help us (especially upon hearing the “news” from Corpsewood); however, after learning that we are clerics, he asks us to cure his wife, who somehow got poisoned. Vlad and I quickly check our prepared spells, and while I have a remove curse prepared (one can never be too careful), I don’t have remove poison. Thankfully, the Heal skill is almost as useful, so I fix up the elven maid while Vlad (now invisible) looks around the palace for things to steal.
The “help my wife” thing sparked an OOC conversation that went something like this:
Me: Heh, I should just cast slay living.
DM: Really?
Me: Nah. We don’t have to be wantonly violent to everything we meet. It’ll be nice to have some friends.
DM: I mean, you could probably get away with it. It’s not like he’d be able to tell the difference. Just say she died from the poison and there was nothing you could do.
Me: As tempting as that sounds... I’ll pass. I might need slay living later today.
Anyway, I saved the steward’s wife, and he showed us to the throne room to meet King/Lord (the DM uses the two terms interchangeably.) Blaze. Blaze hears our story, and tells us to inform Lord Tangram in Stonewatch. (he’s probably a pretty important dude, we figure. I mean, that’s two giants now that told us to talk to this guy). I finagle a token from Blaze (a flawless ruby decorated with elaborate etchings) and we leave Sundial, departing straight north for the dwarven city of Hubris. More plans are made to protect Bony and the tortoise, and we decide to see an armorsmith to make a set of full-plate for each.
The armorsmith’s name was Mamek, and despite some difficulty getting him out of the city to see the undead and take measurements for the armor (he had apparently had some trouble with the town in the past, and tried to keep his head down. I teleported us out. Word of recall to the tortoise (yes, I had that prepared) managed to be useful somehow). While initially skeptical, a down payment of 3,000 gold quickly changes Mamek’s mind, and he tells us that he’d give us a discount if we could get him some iron from the Glimmer Caves, although he warns us that no one has successfully mined them due to “the dead.” We laugh this off (I mean, we’re evil clerics. I can straight-up command a great deal of undead, no save. We’re not particularly well-equipped to fight ones I can’t control, though), and head straight east to the caves (skirting around Stonewatch, as we don’t want to cause any trouble there (and the DM told us he forgot to prepare anything there...) before we talk to Lord Tangram) to get our iron.
Upon arriving in the cave, we were confronted by a cloaked skeletal figure wielding a scythe (one Fletcher identified as an entropic reaper) that claimed to be exacting justice on Fletcher for crimes committed against demons. This conversation provided a some funny exchanges:
Reaper: "I’m here to kill you for crimes against the demons!"
Fletcher: "I didn’t really kill many demons. Most of my work was corrupting people to do evil."
Vlad: "Hey, I can get behind that."
--
Reaper: "You’re a traitor, and you will pay for your treachery!"
Fletcher: "I think you’ve got me confused with someone else. I never broke any promises. I just neglected to promise not to kill some people. I assure you, I’m quite a trustworthy person."
This was said despite the rather obvious fact that Fletcher had been lying the entire session about the events of the last session to pretty much everyone. :smallamused:
Then the thing attacks us. It actually manages to hit me once, but I pass my save against its destabilizing (entropic something or other) scythe, and pretty much laugh off the 28 damage as I fast-heal it away (DMM Persist saves me once again) over the course of the next few rounds (where he fails to hit me again, at all. It was almost sad). Fletcher casts flame strike, (beating the thing’s spell resistance), and Vlad drops a sudden maximized blade barrier on the reaper. Although I’m forced to catch Bony with the pillar of divine fire, the skeletal dragon makes his save, and quickly is moved out of the way before Vlad attacks. I cast spiritual weapon, and back away as much as possible, and Vlad continues the barrage of flame strikes on the reaper while Bony and the Tortoise slowly wear him down through his damage reduction. Eventually, he plane shifts away with an SLA, and we heal up Bony (the only person besides me to take any damage) and call it a night. I make plans with Vlad’s player to ensure that we’re prepared for whenever the entropic reaper comes back.
Further Sessions:
Session the Third (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15352109&postcount=5) - Of dungeoncrawling (sort of), the making of a plan, and petty revenge. Utterly thorough petty revenge.
Session the Fourth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15571701&postcount=13) - Of lies, some more travel, a modicum of plot, and Vlad being repeatedly screwed over by random chance.