Dungeons and Dragons Revival

I said that, for the grand re-re-opening of my blog (back up to acceptable updating standards), I would make a new post about our DnD campaign, as we recently played a session after a century long, unplanned haitus.

There is only one problem...

pff, figures

No no, don't worry, I still plan on writing about DnD, but I went back to see when the last time I had updated about our campaign was, and, well, I remembered that was another thing I had dropped the ball on.

We had several short play sessions since my last post, prior to the most recent one, and a decently important chunk of things happened. I cannot in good conscience simply omit all of that information.

But wait, it gets worse!

of course it does

I can't exactly remember all of the details, but... I don't want to just list off key points that I remember unentertainingly.

This will be a challenge, so, get ready for...

Chapter 5 - in More or Less Hopefully Entertaining Detail!

The last chapter, I left us off with Miranna exclaiming, "It said the book is in another castle, what if it means the castle?"

We had just finished traipsing through a crazy dungeon, failing our mission, and being rewarded anyway cuz we baller. We decided that we would sneak into the castle and investigate to see if there was some kind of evil afoot. We couldn't tell Thayne, our lawful good paladin, because he would either tell the royal family on us who, if corrupt, would just be like "naw fam," or if they were evil, attack them, or any other number of things that did not involve just coming with us while we illegally snuck through the castle, because that was not a lawful good action.

ugh, paladins, amirite

The DM orchestrated an event where the castle town was hosting some arena games, and of course as an unnecessarily strong paladin who wanted to prove his might and valor in the glory of battle against evil foes (and gain experience), Thayne was about that life. He participated in matches and we went back and forth between our stories, like the A and B plots of a tv show. Just as a footnote, this was super suspenseful in the most annoying way. Like, taking turns in a video game, but you're both playing a different game.

Now, my character Pascal and our assassin Tristan both actually worked for the castle family before going on our previous adventure, which was how we got roped into the adventure in the first place. This allowed us to know some stuff about the castle layout and whatever before we started, which was cool. It's a challenge to play out your characters as if they don't know something when you, as a person, do - but it's an entirely unique situation when your character is supposed to know something, and you don't. It's hard to role play confidently when you have to ask the DM, "do I know things about this or like what?"

Now I know this seems like I remembered everything quite well, but I didn't. Here is where it gets fuzzy.

bwap

I kinda don't know what happened first. I know we more or less were able to walk about the main parts of the castle without worrying about hiding, since, like, we worked there. It wasn't abnormal, and Miranna the ranger is part of the elven royal family and was a guest in the castle, so it's not like we had to find a way to sneak into the place.

We more or less just waited for people to not be around before doing things we weren't supposed to. I will now list off important things in the order I remember them until I get to a part where I know more details.

• We found a love note to the queen in a broom closet. It was sealed, as in, it had not been read by its recipient.
• We went up the stairs I guess.
• I think we tried to break into some rooms but failed.
• We tricked some guards out of their posts, allowing us to get into what I'm pretty sure was the king's bedroom but the DM is telling me it was the queen's bedroom. But wouldn't they share a room? I don't know stop asking me.
• In said dubiously owned bedroom, we found a secret tunnel down. I think it was in the fireplace.

there were no bards in our party though

• The room was also booby trapped. Which was weird. Who booby traps their bedroom?
• We ended up in a, like, secret (maybe?) holding cell (kinda?) for like crazy magical animals.

During these events, Thayne was killing monsters in the arena. I actually had adopted Kirin earlier that day and while Thayne was fighting, I was cuddling with Kirin and giving him treats and stuff. So I literally don't know much about his thing. In fact, I missed relatively important information that was relevant to our part of the campaign because of kitten cuddling.

how can you resist that face?!

So, basically the cut to Thayne's story before we descended down the secret tunnel was that he was fighting Umberhulks. Umberhulks are rather intelligent monsters that can communicate and teleport or something.

umberhulk or whatever

(I asked the DM "they can communicate and teleport or something right?" and he said yes. Edit: he has since informed me that they cannot teleport. I'm not changing it.)

So, while he was fighting the Umberhulks, they went crazy or something.

(I'm literally asking the DM what happened right now. This blog post is coming to you live, unedited!)

but wednesday afternoon

(ok it is edited but I am keeping the general feeling intact.)

Before we had descended, the Umberhulks, which are subterranean creatures, dug like a hole in the arena wall. Thayne had of course ventured into it to murder the Umberhulks because he's a paladin and they're evil creatures.

mermaid man is actually literally a paladin

Now here's where I don't remember details again.

• Our descent into the secret tunnel led us into a cage occupied by a monster. Not sure who designed that.
• We killed/incapacitated/snuck by the monster.
• The tunnel led up with us and Thayne showed up.
• I think the Umberhulks disappeared?
• I think we fought some monsters?
• A guy came out.

So this guy introduced himself to us, or the DM told us or something, that he was the beastmaster. He approached us relatively politely, but Thayne, our paladin, did the paladin thing, and he said "is he evil?"

The DM replied, "Is the beastmaster evil?"

"Yes, is he evil."

"...Yes, you detect evil from him."

"I attack him."

"...You sure?"

"Yes, he's evil. I attack him."

"...Okay, roll to hit."

The DM shook his head, and the paladin basically obliterated the beastmaster, as far as my memory serves. Smash first ask questions later, apparently.

Details, schmetails.

• Some guards showed up?
• Or not I don't know.
• We found a giant eagle and a unicorn.
• The assassin found an evil talking whip on the beastmaster.
• We started worrying if it was just the whip that was evil and the beastmaster wasn't.
• I think we left of our own accord.
• The eagle had a mental link with Thayne.
• Miranna tamed the unicorn.
• We told the king about the evil beastmaster.
• We did not tell him that we infiltrated his castle.

the eagle was actually purposefully the paladin's level 4 mount
the whole thing was a quest for his class mount
the unicorn was kind of happenstance

So, basically, the king kind of didn't believe us that there was probably a problem, what with the evil beastmaster and the Umberhulks and, oh, a lot of the creatures in the dungeon were there basically illegally and stuff. But the king was all, "naw fam," so we were pretty sure something was wrong.

We asked the king if the beastmaster had a room in the castle. We were open with him about how he should let us check out the room, and he said that his guards would take care of it. We insisted and he was all, "no, no, it's fine, I've already sent the guards." We found this suspicious and of course decided to check it out without his permission, again without telling our paladin. I forget what we told him to do or whatever I don't know.

he went clubbing or something

We recalled, and I am now recalling right now, that when we had tried to sneak into one of the rooms upstairs earlier, we had literally knocked on the door to see if anyone was in there. Someone had replied, so we said like "Oh, uh, sorry! Wrong room!" or something. We assumed, now, that may have been the beastmaster's room. We nonchalantly went upstairs - again, two of us work in the castle so it's not like it was suspicious - and then started trying to figure out the situation with the room.

...I don't remember exactly how it went down. We got into the room one way or another, and there were dogs chained up in the room. I think there was like a desk and a bed. It was dirty. I'm pretty sure I asked so many questions about the look and feel of the room that the DM started saying "you find poop."

We detected that the dogs were hooked up to a trap, and I think we disarmed it and released the dogs. Or maybe not. Either way I think we had to cut the campaign short and that was the last time we played until our most recent session a few days ago.

there, all caught up

So there's no confusion, these details at the end, here, never played out. Since we hadn't played in so long, we sorta just did an approximate guess and did a newish thing suddenly. We may never know what was up the dogs in the room, or why the king seemingly lied, or who wrote the love note to the queen that they never delivered.

If I had done this correctly, this would have been several chapters instead of one hurried, disorganized clump of bad story telling. I didn't want to stretch it out any further, though, because now I can appropriately update as we play, again, without leaving large chunks of time in between, where I could forget important or hilarious details.

With that in mind, my next post may very well be the most recent play session. However, I still have other posts that I've had in mind for awhile, so we'll see what happens.

- D&D Series -

Intro.    Ch. 1    Ch. 2    Ch. 3    Ch. 4    Ch. 5