Horror Campaign (prev. Army of Commoners)

[Solo]

Good aligned party suggesting demonic pacts to save a homestead? Say it ain't so.

With the same token, though, say it ain't so that a Good aligned party would duck out in the middle of the night to leave these poor bastards alone, let alone the Paladin in the group doing the same.

The general comments on "urban" (it's a village, afterall) warfare are pretty good. I also know little about Kythons, so I won't be too much help in that area.

I just hope I won't be hearing much more about demonic pacts or fleeing in the night .

As I said, you don't have to make an evil pact.

[SleepingOrange]

Also, Nowhere Girl, within the very PARAMETERS of this debate– er, forum– was the caveat that

"there's[sic] a few stubborn villages who simply refuse to give up their ancestral lands/homes."

You're not going to get any to leave, so that rebutts your first plan of gathering those who will leave and taking them with you away. As to the plan of just abandoning them all as 'stupid stubborn peasants', they (as we've demonstrated through our planning) DO have a chance; IF AND ONLY IF the PCs stay and train/help prepare the villagers. Thus, leaving would be condemning the villagers to death; staying might not only save the lives of an entire friggin' village, but could destroy an army of evil that has been and would continue to ravage the land and its people. So:

Good: Destroy army of evil or die trying

Evil: Kill villagers through negligence; allow army of evil to kill entire village AND other villages on their rampage

In a world where a 6th-level character is a rawkstar, you can't let an army of high-CR mosters destroy all civilization on an isolated (read as: long time before other, higher-level characters come to aid) island.

Plus,

"They're moving across the island in a wave of carnage."

what makes you think that once they destroy this village, they won't just move on to the next, and next, and next, until they finally catch up and kill all of you and the people you 'saved' just because you wouldn't prepare for a siege?

[psychoticbarber]

As I said, you don't have to make an evil pact.

I believe it was mentioned, but I don't think it was given much thought until after I posted. Could be wrong, but I was just reacting to the general tone of the thread. Sorry if you felt I ignored your post, not my intention!

[Gralamin]

Hopefully there is still time for this, but I never saw something mentioned.
Turn the school teacher into a warblade. Focus on Diamond Mind.

Either then that, You've gotten good advice so far.

[SilverClawShift]

Wall of text alert. This is a big post, split into spoilers for your conveiniance.

So, wow. That went, uh... well?

It went, in any event.

Actually it went much better than expected, and simultaneously much much worse.

Our defenses, physical, and strategical, worked like a charm.
The Total Score (at the end of the day as given to us by the DM?)

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44 dead Broodlings
27 dead juveniles
18 dead adults(!)
1 dead slaymaster
Dozens and Dozens of dead zombies of all makes and models.

Approx (no exact count) 100 dead celestial badgers (seriously... wands being passed around and total summon spammage)
2 dead villager wizards
7 dead villager marshals
3 dead villager barbarians
2 dead villager dragon shamans
1 dead villager cleric

1 dead PC rogue ( :( )
1 dead PC Cleric
1 dead PC wizard
1 paladin with a near death experience

1 partirdge
1 pear tree
5 golden rings (not really)

And a lot of updates for our group. I think, in the end, we can consider the whole battle to be one darn immpressive success. But there were loses.

Onto the meat... The DM did not coddle us. No screens were used or rolls were fudged. The DM swore prior to the main event that the kython forces had the raw numbers (in AC, attack and damage) to kill all of us 4 or 5 times over, and he wasn't kidding. They were played intelligently, savagely, and beautifully in a macabre way. Tricks stopped working on them, I don't think any trap worked on the kythons more than twice. Luckily we had quite a few traps.

How It Went Down

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It was night, but a bright moon and a few continual flames gave us enough illumination that we weren't hindered by the darkness.
We heard them long before we saw them. That was the worst part. The DM would describe what was going on.... it was cold, we could see our breath and the eerie pale lights and unnatural arcane glows making weird ripples on the disturbed snow, our own trenches fading into the distance. We could HEAR chirping, crawing, chattering... the archivist informed us it was only the young and less adept broodlings and juveniles we were hearing. the adults... we wouldn't hear them. We might not even see them before they closed the gap between us.
Then the bastard started giving us turns. We would pace, ready actions, stare into the distance... making us describe what we did around the table a few times waiting for the slaughter to come to us. I've never felt so darn HELPLESS in a game before, being given a turn and trying to think of something else I could do to help our fight, though there was nothing.

Then we saw the first of them. The warlocks opened fire, and rolled well. The boosts they had and the eldritch spears started nailing broodlings to the ground, and every few times you'd see a juvenile fall too. There were no adults.

The wizard and archivist took to the skies. The glyphs of warding we'd set up started dropping sonic bursts on the battle field, stunning kythons and killing/softening them in small groups. The webs slowed them down. Most of them broke away and started swarming in a wider path at that. When they got close enough, the ones with weapons started peppering us with venomous bone shards and acid splashes. We took hits. The dragon shaman threw up his acid resistance, but we considered the early damage to be a poor indicator of our success.
The first wizard "died". The DM rolled it true, right in front of us. 90% cover on a target from 80 feet away... bone shard to the face. 1 damage, 6 CON damage on a guy who only had 6 hitpoints. The healing auras actually picked him back up, and he fought for another minute before the secondary CON damage took him down to zilch.

Still no adults.

We started swinging at the juveniles. I managed to sneak-attack a few with acid orbs and literally just "POP" them. that felt good. Then I got bit on the arm and slashed to the nine hells by a kython adult. We hadn't even seen them, but the DM said they hid until they got past the last trench, fair and true. We started seeing more in the incoming wave after that. I survived it though, and downed a potion.

The paladin shone like a bright star, truth be told. Lucky lucky rolls. Critical hits left and right, high damage, blocked almost everything that tried to hit him. Shruggde off lots of the stuff that did with damage reduction from the marshals.
There's lots going on that I'm not explicitly saying. The wizard popped sucker-targets with sonic orbs, the villagers kept peppering the enemies with 1d6s, the first of the adult kythons fell, ect. We were taking damage, but we were SURVIVING it, and taking tons of those bastards down in the process. I'll stop describing the generic warfare here. Monsters died, we got hurt and healed, monsters started coming BACK to life, to get killed again and complicate matters. Kythons fought zombies, zombie kythons bit kythons before being torn into 6 seperate peices, celestial badgers got stepped on as living roadblocks....

Everything above was generic warfare. The stuff below is specific stuff that happened.

The Traps

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We saw a lineup. 5 adults and 3 juveniles ended their turns on a clean row.... in one of our traps. It wasn't something blatant, it was just that sooner or later, a bunch of swarming enemies were going to wind up giving us a good swing. We hand-axed the ropes holding up one of our trap poles, and BOOM, kython-kabob under a heavy wooden pillar covered in jagged metal and wooden spikes. some of them survived, but pinned, and the paladin cut their heads off (no roll, he had to use actions to do it, but our DM likes to let the numbers slide when you're running a 3 foot steel blade into a pinned monsters face).
We managed to get another bunch of them under another poll, but after that, they started staggering their waves, tore down two of the polls themselves, and got a circumstance bonus to their reflex save to avoid it when we tried it again.

The paladin bullrushed a few adults into the spiked trench. 5d6 peircing damage and a pinned kython each time. One tried to bullrush HIM into it, but he cut the suckers head off with a critical hit instead.

The Tragedy

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Two incorporeal kythons, one adult and one juvenile. They split up and ran THROUGH us, through the walls of the buildings on either side, and started chomping. We heard the screams. The buildings were fortified enough that we had trouble getting into them.
The 50% miss chance made them ridiculous. The juvenile fell, but not before taking a few people with him.
The adult, however, decimated the building he was in before we could do much. Took some heavy licks for his trouble (including from me, firing through a window with sonic orbs and a few sneak attacks... some of which missed entirely do to the incorporeal nature).

Then he ran through the walls again and out into the open battlefield.

The paladin got in two hits that avoided the miss chance. Heavy ones. Like I said, he rolled well tonight.
The cleric sent a spiritual sword after him. It dropped the monster, but not before it slashed through the wall and tore a wizards face off.

It fell near the doorway. Miss Beverly stabbed it in the throat for good measure.

Broken Wings

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The wizard got slaughtered. The archivist took heavy hits, but managed to stay in one peice. The wizard just got hammered with bone shards and acid splashes. Even after using a scroll of energy resistance, he just couldn't keep in one peice. he finally fell to yet another bone shard (which only deal 1 damage :-\ ) and came tumbling out of the sky onto the cold hard frozen ground. Died on impact, no chance of healing. The DM starts passing him secret notes.

A few rounds later, he gets up.

Now, it turns out, whatever's causing the undead to rise has a nasty streak. Most things that come back to life are mindless carnivores. Mook zombies and 'ceramic' skeletons (easily killed, that is :-p).
Powerful people? People who are more noteable than your average blacksmith or wild wolf? People with a large number of class levels? Yeah, they come back to life as something bigger. Something SENTIENT. And something downright sadistic.

The wizard spoke to us while it aided our enemies, and fought us. It said...awful things. The afterlife, the cause of the undeath, it's big. And bad. And more than some horrible plauge or negative energy pulse... It's not some necromancer with a new trick. We don't know exactly what it is, but "Eil Ei" (aisle-eye), as it called itself, has us convinced that this is not a happy time to... uh...exist.

We managed to hurt it enough to scare it off. But it's got the wizards gear, it knows how to cast the wizards spells, it remembers everything about US, and it DOES NOT LIKE US.
Or anyone. Anyone still breathing that is.

So, to quote our paladin, "Wow, that sucks".

The Slaymaster

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Oh boy.

We didn't see him coming either. He managed to dodge the alarms, came at us from a side (over the top of one of the buildings) and went right into the freaking fight.
The cleric and archivist WERE both successful at cursing him, in between his turns no less, so by the time his turn came, any magical defenses were too late. 50% chance of doing absolutely nothing each time he came up to bat, and -4 to attacks and saves and pretty much everything.
His next at bat? Do nothing. I managed to get in a sneak attack sonic-orb, the cleric managed to hit him with an inflict-wounds spell, and the archivist flew off screaming at us to get the hell away from it. The townspeople peppered it, and we were amazed at how effective our tactic was.

The problem is, a slaymaster who's half as effective can still F***ING kill you and F***ING eat you as an afterthought. One turn he's doing nothing, the next turn he beats the cleric into the DIRT and kicks him across the street into a wall. The cleric hit negatives, but the dragon shaman aura brought him back to conciousness, and he healed himself.
The paladin charged and gave a good smite evil. I debate turning tail and running, but instead hit it for another sneak attack.

Then the slaymaster turns to me. Hits me, grapples me, and rolls for damage. It rolls...max. No kidding. 35 damage, right there. I was allready a little roughed up, and didn't have THAT many hitpoints to begin. He brought me to -12, just like that.
The DM described it as "One quick jerking squeeze" and I'm a ragdoll. The slaymaster pitches me across the street too and starts fighting the paladin. He rolls well, manages to seriously mess the thing up and dodge a lot of its hits and took light damage. But in the end, the paladin falls into negatives and the slaymaster starts battering the front door to the school (the dragon shaman ran in, pulled in Miss Beverly (who was trying to charge it) and slammed and baricaded the door... none of us blame him in the slightest). The slaymaster is still taking blast damage from the snipers, but we're screwed right? dead wizard, dead rogue, cleric with 2 hitpoints getting torn apart by kythons, paladin in the negatives (looks dead, but is actually CLIMBING in health thanks to the surviving dragon shamans) and a dragon shaman who's drawing blanks on battle strategy.

Oh. The archivist :) And our last good trap. THE HAMMER.

As a final-day last-thought trap, the cleric made the hammer. It's a big dumb-bell shaped stone something. The heavier end is braced with wooden pillars, and it's resting in the rubble on a pivot point. The archivist, despite being down to squat hitpoints, swoops through the carnage, grabs the ropes out of the rubble, and flies hard, pulling, tearing out the wooden supports.
The heavy end immediately falls to the ground hard (killing an adult kython that chased the archivist). The momentum sends the thing up, up, JUUUUUUUST OVER the peak where it looks like it might stand proud.....and CRASHING DOWN onto the slaymaster.
That was our suicide switch, intended to hit flush with the front of the school and seal it in stone. We would send one brave (and dead) person charging for the ropes, hoping we could survive a few days in the stoney tomb and then dimension door out, to try to rescue the survivors. We would also be praying the kythons wouldn't decide to just start tearing away... we honestly didn't know. If they decided to start hitting the weak spots in the rocky shell with acid, we would be screwed. They'd get in and slaughter us.
Like I said, that was our "what do we do now?" suicide plan.

But we didn't count on a slaymaster paying all his attention to beating in the front wall while our flying lunatic of dark knowledge sent a huge stone face onto the area.

Splat splat goes the big angry bug.

Our DM was actually a little shocked. Not SURPRISED, he knew about the hammer switch, he just thought the chance of us going for it then was non-existant.

But the fight wasn't over.

Some of the kythons broke ranks at that, scattering, no slaymaster rallying them. Some adults, and a decent sized swarm of littler ones stuck around. The place was in shambles. The schoolhouse was almost immpossible to get in our out of, but the chokepoint turned to work in the kythons favor instead :-\. With only 5 foot cracks in our out of the front wall (the slaymasters huge form kept the stone from sitting as flsuh as we had plannde), the snipers became less useful. The cleric got shredded, and the kythons were trying to pour into the schoolhouse by tearing at the barricaded windows on the second floor. The snipers could only get one at a time now from each spot. It actually looked like we were totally toast, despite our good fight.

But as all this was going on, so was something else. Something our archivist was watching with some magical vision, confused and amazed.

Living Dead Girl

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As the fight was going on, the DM started on me. (we didn't need secret notes past a certain point, I'll mention where).

"Roll a will save".

I was now in the realm of ghosts and spirits. The ethereal. But not THE ethereal, a twisted and injured one, whatever was going on WAS big. ALTERED PLANES OF EXISTANCE kind of big.
As a ghost walking around, I could see some rough forms of the real plane, and a bunch of dead bodies... and I could see other spirits. Kythons included. None of the spirits, allied or not, could hurt each other. Everything passed through everything else harmlessly. The DM noted that my +1 dagger was the only thing that felt like it had any weight whatsoever...
I saw spirits being dragged back into their bodies kicking and screaming. The bodies then winked out of this plane....couldn't see the undead. For whatever reason.

My will save was just high enough to resist coming BACK to life (I rolled a 4, one higher than I needed the DM said). The DM described it as sliding backwards towards it, as if I were on ice. I felt an evil presence trying to erase and dominate my thoughts, all I felt was the urge to maim, hate, hurt, and more importantly, KILL, and leave corpses in my wake.

I managed to stop it just before I hit my corpse. I wandered, confused as to what to do here. Making will saves to stay dead, knowing it was a matter of time before I rolled a 3 or lower.
I saw the dead kython with the phase organ. He was trying to go corporeal, but only could for a few seconds at a time. No one noticed another kython in the 'wave' blinking in existance for a few seconds...
I took a potshot stab at him with my dagger....
And it worked! my magic dagger was officially the most powerful thing here, everything else was just mist.

Note: To TRY to compress this allready huge post down, I'll go into speed-description here rather than posting another 3 pages of it.

I cut the phase organ off the kython, and tried to use it, but was even worse at it than him (apparently non-kythons can't actually really use that stuff). The archivist noticed a confused rogue blinking into existance for half-seconds though. We went out of secret notes, as the archivist knew what was going on and could relay it to the survivors later anyway.

I saw the slaymaster come climbing out of his battered body. He charged me, and realized it did nothing. Then he started fading back into HIS body...
...and I jammed the dagger in and twisted. His physical body shook, twisted, threw the stone block off of him with a terrible roar, went silent, twitched, ect... He couldn't come all the way back with me riding him with a magic dagger in his 'spine'.
The survivors watched in horrified confusion as the body convulsed, before I finally dealt it enough damage that the spirit winked out of existance alltogether. No more slaymaster.
Seeing their slaymaster leader threatening to come back to life? The remaining kythons scattered in terror.

But then what of me? I was still making will saves. And I finally failed one.

What happened next was sheer awesome on my DMs part. He swears up and down that he didn't plan this, that it just made sense when he saw what was going on.
The DM gave me a REFLEX save. Something a rogue could be expected to make. A reflex save for the purpose of activating the kython phase orgasn as I was sucked back into my body.
My temporarily physical form couldn't be pushed back into my real body. The 'essence' trying to dominate me faltered, broke, and was ejected as the return to unlife temporarily failed. My spirit was pushed back into my dead frame, but the evil evil thing trying to hitch a ride was forced back into the nothing.

I heard it, cursing me, promising me unspeakable horrors, telling me it 'wasn't done with me'.

***********************

So that's that. I'm undead, the paladin is battered, the archivist and dragon shaman pulled through. The villagers are greatful, though still mourning their losses. The FREAKING HUGE kython force was actually scattered. They're still dangerous, but so are the zombies.

The villagers are....waryingly accepting of me being there with my allies, just as they're warily accepting of me. My friends suspected a trick, the archivist interrogated me in a dark knowledge-esque way, the paladin pinged me for evil/good and found I was still good, and I'm not spitting curses at everyone and promising them a world full of the walking dead.
So they're letting me stay with them. The paladin promised me that if he started thinking I was less than good, he wouldn't hesitate to smite me fast.
The villagers are too greatful for everything we did to not thank me, but they are certainly keeping their distance.
We went up a level. The archivist was actually kind enough to learn Gentle Repose to keep me from rotting, though I did have to physically stitch my wounds shut. He also knows some inflict spells, and is going to make me a few scrolls for healing.

The wizard character is now an NPC, and no doubt we'll be running into him again. The force that was supposed to take me over is looking for revenge too, the DM informed us. And the kythons have not forgotten our existance, even if they ran scared.

The wizard PLAYER is going to take over Miss Beverly the duskblade :D. He (she, whatever) gets a "Hey I'm now a PC!" XP boost up to 6th level, and the DM promises he'll close the gap between party members as fast as possible.
The cleric player is going to have to roll up a new character, and is thinking of going factotum. If I know my DM, that means we'll run into him in the kython caves... Not a bad way to weave a new character into an established group, I say.

*****************************

Rewards

Aside from the level jump, we also got some other stuff. Not a lot of gear, but it's worth mentioning.

We've got 14 doses of adult kython venom extracted from dead bodies.

We scavenged a bone-shard hand crossbow which will turn bone fitted into it into tiny little peircing darts. 1 peircing damage only, but it can also hold poison naturally and automatically coast each dart with the poison/venom loaded into it. The archivist is holding onto it for the time being. Figures it might come in handy, despite the low BAB.

The archivist suggested ("dark knowledge" as fluff, really the DMs direction) that he could reinforce the paladins armor with kython carapace. The paladins shield now has a mundane boost of +2 AC with no noticeable weight increase. Kython shell is good stuff. His full plate also has a mundane boost of +1, and his outfit is now dark and spooky (no shining armor here folks).

One of the zombies that came shambling into town was some kind of arcanist in life. The paladin was squeemish about looting a random corpse, but agreed that being wasteful of supplies in such hard times would do no one any good.
The zombie didn't have MUCH, but some good stuff. A spellbook - The archivist is going through it looking for stuff he can learn. It's mostly arcane stuff, but some the spells are also on divine spell lists, so he's going to copy those. Then we can sell the spellbook for some good cash if we ever find a place that would want it.
A ring - Bonus arcane spell slots for spell levels 0, 1, and 2. Straight to Miss Beverly.
A necklace - dull tarnished chain with a strange circular pendant. Turned out to give the wearer and anyone in a radius +1 to will saves. We figured the dragon shaman should get it, since we're all trying to stay in his radius anyway.
Turns out, the DM wasn't going to tell us outright what the pendant really did unless we were smart enough to do that. The pendant ALSO gives the dragon shaman +1 to his auras, above whatever his class would make him project. I like it, a lot, personally. It's a clever little item.

Miss Beverly also turned out to have a decent nestegg saved up, but not a lot of real gear, so the duskblade player is really running lean until we get to a place that actually has stuff for sale.

I'm generically undead with no LA or adjustments. That's pretty darn good as it is, though not without its troubles.
The phase organ? it's still attached to my spirit. Once per encounter, i can go incorporeal for one round. The DM said I might be able to get better at it with feats/levels/time.
The phase organ also has some secondary effects. I've got kythonish spirit residue on me. Once per day, I can make a dose of adult kython venom fit for coating a weapon or arrow or something. I can also SPEAK with kythons, but I've allready checked, they understand me and I understand them, but they will have absolutel-jack-crap to actually do with me. No profound sense of kinship in the slightest.
That may sound like a lot, but remember I'm a rogue in an undead heavy campaign, heh.

Looking back, you could get the impression that our DM tries to give us all something cool every time he gives us stuff. Not true, but I think he was inclined to give us all SOMETHING after what we just went through.

**********************

Anyway, what a nerve wracking game. It kept looking like a TPK.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to post/suggest/or encourage here :). We're still discussing what to do next, but all signs point to the kython caves.

[0oo0]

That was an amazingly awesome story. I would LOVE to be a part of a game that glorious That is an example of DnD at its best. I really like how the balance of tragedy verse heroism, and loss compared to gain (er not complete loss). Once again, great story

[Danin]

That is made of awesome and win. Congratulations on your victory, I can see it was well earned.

I also have to say that your DM seems very good, I'm impressed be a lot of what he did, as am I with the actions you and your fellow players took. I suppose now you venture into the caves. Good luck with that and happy gaming.

[XiaoTie]

Damn that was some trully epic battle, reaaally cool indeed. Oh, and congratulations for "surviving"

[SurlySeraph]

Epic. Very, very epic. I'm a bit amused to notice that you lost about 1/3 of the villagers AND about 1/3 of the PCs - that's a bit fairer a ratio than I usually see when NPCs are around to act as meatshields. Good luck clearing out the caves. You can't make something like sonic napalm or nerve gas, can you? After that, I'd want to have some kind of seriously unbalanced anti-Kython weapon.

[Machete]

WOOOOOO!
YEAH!
This is the epic stuff of bard songs!

[SleepingOrange]

That was satisfying in the extreme. With a bit of cinematography, and a relationship between the wizard and Miss Beverly, that'd make a great movie.

Heheh, just kidding. I wouldn't sully it like that. All in all, extremely impressive. You WILL use this thread to keep us posted on the rest of the campaign.

I want to meet your DM.

[Nowhere Girl]

If the Paladins hold the children hostage so as to force the adults to go with, well, that's not very nice, and is actually pretty evil.

It actually isn't, as it's making sacrifices to save others (from themselves, in this case -- not unlike how we save mental patients from themselves against their will sometimes ... and I think the direct comparison between some of these villagers and mental patients is apt in this case). It is dishonorable (unlawful), however.

Also, the OP pointed out that a forced march would condemn the old and young to death, pretty much. I doubt that the Paladins' gods smile on that sort of thing.

Because they'd be so much safer and better off staying in this deathtrap and getting torn apart, spending their last brief moments in unrivaled agony, right?

I'm sure if everyone put their heads together, they could work out ways to have stronger people assist weaker people on the march (supporting, carrying, etc.). There are ways to make that kind of thing work.

Also, Nowhere Girl, within the very PARAMETERS of this debate– er, forum– was the caveat that

"there's[sic] a few stubborn villages who simply refuse to give up their ancestral lands/homes."

You're not going to get any to leave, so that rebutts your first plan of gathering those who will leave and taking them with you away.

No, we only can't get "a few" to leave, so that rebuts nothing. And somehow, I doubt that each village is a single hive mind without any dissenting individuals in it.

In any case, how are those other, non-stubborn villages doing while you muck about with the crazies? Will they have anyone to help them try to escape safely?

Or do they just not matter?

Although I even wonder about those few hold-outs -- how much effort was actually invested in trying to get them to come around? Did anyone even try something like, "We honestly can't win this here and now, but if you'll come with us, I swear to you, we will return to reclaim these lands in time"?

I somehow doubt it.

Plus,
what makes you think that once they destroy this village, they won't just move on to the next, and next, and next, until they finally catch up and kill all of you and the people you 'saved' just because you wouldn't prepare for a siege?

That's why you get as many people as you possibly can completely the hell off of that island until you can gather better resources and return to launch a competent counteroffensive, coincidentally no longer sacrificing the lives of innocent villagers (other than just the ones who really want to and are able to come back with you and fight) in your quest for glory.

At least in my opinion, good is putting people's lives first, not putting dreams of glorious victory over impossible odds (I'm looking at you, Col. Travis) first.

Edit: But I also think this argument has been done to death, and we're just disagreeing and that's that now. So I'm dropping it here.

[SleepingOrange]

Good idea. Any opportunity to be the bigger 'man' that also makes your opponent look like an [unspecified insult] for continuing after you nobly agree to disagree should be pounced upon.

[Dullyanna]

And we get yet another awesome story from you. As far as I can tell, your DM is one of the best I've ever heard of. If you ever have the time and inclination, please tell us how the rest of this story turns out.

[Alex12]

...
...
...
Wow.
That was awesome. Awesome is a word that's overused these days, but that's the only word I can use to describe it.

[GoC]

Wow.
You have an awesome DM!
Very well told on your part too.

But the villagers are choosing to make a stand against evil. If the paladins leave, then they are fleeing, and letting all those people die.
If the Paladins hold the children hostage so as to force the adults to go with, well, that's not very nice, and is actually pretty evil.

Seems nice enough to me...
And it saves more people.

Also, the OP pointed out that a forced march would condemn the old and young to death, pretty much. I doubt that the Paladins' gods smile on that sort of thing.

I'm actualy curious about a few things...
If there are two choices:
A. This kills 30% of your villagers and gives each other villager a 30% chance of dieing. It is also an unlawful act.
B. There is a 50% chance you'll lose all your villagers and a 5% chance each you'll lose 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent of them.

Which option should the Lawful Good Paladin choose?

Option A averages about 49% surviving.
Opton B averages about 27.5% but gives a chance that none die.

Note: This is only loosely related to the real situation.

[BRC]

...That was awsome incarnate.

[Zeful]

I have to agree with others, that was epic. It does seem like a moive or something. I hope you get undeadified sometime in the future, but you might lose the phasing, which will come in handy in the Kython caves.

All in all good luck!

[hewhosaysfish]

The wizard spoke to us while it aided our enemies, and fought us. It said...awful things. The afterlife, the cause of the undeath, it's big. And bad. And more than some horrible plauge or negative energy pulse... It's not some necromancer with a new trick. We don't know exactly what it is, but "Eil Ei" (aisle-eye), as it called itself, has us convinced that this is not a happy time to... uh...exist.

It's called "I lie"? May not want to take it at face value then.

[Telonius]

This one deserves its place on the Best Gaming Stories of All Time. The Badgers of Celestia will be talking about this one for centuries to come.

[SilverClawShift]

Although I even wonder about those few hold-outs -- how much effort was actually invested in trying to get them to come around? Did anyone even try something like, "We honestly can't win this here and now, but if you'll come with us, I swear to you, we will return to reclaim these lands in time"?

I somehow doubt it.

Well, I'm glad to know we're not alone at our table at least. There's an 8th person with us keeping tabs on things

Really, I don't know how this turned into a debate on what paladins can, cannot, should, or should not do in the first place. The paladin didn't tell us we couldn't leave, the paladin didn't really have much to say about it beyond "There's evil everywhere. We'll try to stop it here, or we'll try to stop it elsewhere". He tries to live his life righteously and serve as an example that goodness can be strength, nothing more, nothing less.

Some villagers wouldn't go. Some realistically couldn't. They stayed together as a community in the only home they knew. They wouldn't leave, and we wouldn't leave THEM. That's really all there is to say about it.

As far as I can tell, your DM is one of the best I've ever heard of.

And everyone else talking about how good/awesome he is.

I've come to realize that's very true. He's the only DM I had, I thought that this was just how D&D was (and wondered how anyone could think it wasn't fun). Then I started to discover that a lot of people say we're playing wrong because the paladin doesn't lose his abilities if he tells the evil guards that he doesn't know where the rest of his party is hiding, or because the DM sometimes lets things happen without rolling to see the numbers first, or ect.

It seems, and I mean absolutely no offense when I say this (really), that a lot of DMs are more concerned with the numbers, or the world, or telling a story, than with the other players and the GAME.
Our DM is more of a mindset of sort of MAKING a story with us. Really, we're trying to have fun, right? I mean, that's why people play games, cause they're fun times. Our DM could have sent a single incorporeal kython into town to slit everyones throats with no rolls on our part while we slept before the battle, if he wanted to. He's the DM, he can do anything he wants. That doesn't mean it would have been a very good story, or a fun game

But a lot of people we meet/talk/try to play with tell us we're doing it wrong and that we should be more concerned with how our characters dietary habits affect our energy levels, or how we should never cast fireball if we have <X> splatbook with <X> spell in it and we're stupid for thinking otherwise.

It's called "I lie"? May not want to take it at face value then.

Beleive me, that occured to us. It even taunted us with it, giving the whole "or do you not even know what's true and false?" deal.

But some of the things he said were obviously true. This is more than an animate dead spell or something. He knew EVERYTHING the wizard knew. He hitched a ride in his body, and whatever's going on is affecting EVERYTHING alive. Even vermin and abberations...

Ah well, we've got another session tonight. Time to figure out what to do now.

[SilverClawShift]

This one deserves its place on the Best Gaming Stories of All Time.

It's not all THAT good, but yeah, I'm fully enjoying this campaign

*edit*

Er, that is to say, the STORY isn't that good. The campaign rocks. I ramble incoherently too much.

[dyslexicfaser]

So...

rocks fall, kython dies?

Hardcore.

[Saph]

That sounded absolutely brilliant. Well done. :)

- Saph

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Wow. Just... wow.

[Nowhere Girl]

Really, I don't know how this turned into a debate on what paladins can, cannot, should, or should not do in the first place. The paladin didn't tell us we couldn't leave, the paladin didn't really have much to say about it beyond "There's evil everywhere. We'll try to stop it here, or we'll try to stop it elsewhere". He tries to live his life righteously and serve as an example that goodness can be strength, nothing more, nothing less.

Some villagers wouldn't go. Some realistically couldn't. They stayed together as a community in the only home they knew. They wouldn't leave, and we wouldn't leave THEM. That's really all there is to say about it.

I'm sorry if I came off as snarky. My bone to pick had a lot more to do with certain attitudes people have about what good people "should" do and with the casually suicidal (metagaming: "the GM will never kill us anyway!") and casually callous ("they're just NPCs; it doesn't really matter if they all die in a hopeless slaughter while we chase glory") attitudes people sometimes have in these kinds of games than with you specifically. If I was projecting something onto you and your group that doesn't really apply, then I apologize.

[Cocky]

I came out of lurking and registered just to compliment your story.

Kudos man, seriously.

[shaddy_24]

You know what, I would love to be able to play a session that is that much fun and is so well done as that one. That was absolute and sheer brilliance. Your DM deserves huge amounts of praise for that. I've only started though, so I have yet to see how I'll turn out. Hopefully I'm as good at the gameplay aspect as your DM is. I think my story creation is fine where it is, but I would love to be that good at individual sessions.

[Neon Knight]

That was... incredible.

I wish I was that awesome of a DM.

[SilverClawShift]

I'm sorry if I came off as snarky.

It's okay, it just seems like anything connected to D&D also has a lot of people telling you you're wrong no matter what decision you make. Especially concerning paladins. There's usually 4 or 5 discussions about paladins falling going on simultaneously. It gets tiring.