Homebrewed (for the D&D noob) – Part 9.
Welcome to the shortest installment of “Homebrewed.” Part 8 is here. Just to recap where we left off: We killed a dragon that attacked Stilldale. As much as I’d like to say my Natalia pulled her weight, it was Raelan that really shined. Natalia cut out from the celebration a little early only to come home and find Sorval, Raelan’s master’s former apprentice, waiting for her. Sorval cast a spell on Natalia to control her and commanded that she help Sorval kill Raelan. Oh, joy.
Our ninth D&D game was uncharacteristically short and uneventful, so this entry will be brief. This is in no way Jim’s fault. I was having one of those days where I was lethargic and couldn’t focus on anything, and no matter how good a DM Jim is, if your one and only player can’t pull herself together, there’s no salvaging the game.
So we scrapped it and watched TV instead. But, in keeping up the tradition of posting all the “Homebrewed” sessions, no matter how lame, I will document what happened.
Which, really, wasn’t much of anything.
Bluesky the 21st
Natalia wakes up in the morning to find that Sorval is still there. Before Natalia can say or do anything, Sorval says, “Don’t try anything stupid.”
Are you kidding? Sorval is a higher-level wizard than Raelan, and I–er, Natalia–just saw Raelan kick a dragon’s ass and is probably now using his hide for a hand puppet. Like I’m going to take on Sorval myself.
“I’m going to kill Raelan, and you’re going to help me, ” Sorval continues. “But we need to prepare our spells for the day. So make your list. But again, don’t even think about trying anything.”
Before we go on, I have to confirm with Jim a few things about this spell that Sorval has used on Natalia. Natalia is not like a zombie, unable to think her own thoughts. She feels compelled to kill Raelan while inflicted by the spell, but she can technically refuse–and suffer damage for it. I then ask if Sorval is going to watch Natalia set up her spells for the day. He says we would need to be alone to do this, as it requires concentration, so no–Sorval would not be watching. Of course, that means I will have no idea what spells she’s setting up either.
That’s all right. Natalia heads off alone, uses that scroll of Remedy Moderate Wounds to cast it on her spell list. Then she uses the blank paper from the scroll to scribble a note to Raelan, warning him that she was inflicted by this spell and to be prepared. Then she casts Animal Messenger and summons a bird to take the message to him.
Once the bird is out of sight, Natalia goes back to Sorval. Sorval is itching to go. It takes a good day to get over to Raelan’s on foot, but I’m glad. This will give Raelan time to get people together. Jim has me roll for encounters. We get nothing. Of course. Any other time, I would get one, but now that I actually want an encounter, everything just as calm and peaceful as I could ever want.
We finally get to Raelan’s. If you recall, Raelan has something set up to keep his tower from being seen by anyone else. Because druids helped him set it up, druids are the only ones who can find his tower. Don’t ask me how Raelan managed to get help from any druids in this set-up, since Natalia seems to be the only druid who doesn’t hate wizards.
Once Natalia brings Sorval onto the property, she can finally see it. “This is Raelan’s?” she demands.
“Yes.”
She seems annoyed. “I’ve come by here many times before. I command that if you have any kind of buffing spells, you do it now.”
Natalia casted Greater Magic Fang on both Beta and Tango. I hope they get a chance to use it to bite her in the ass. I also tell Jim that Natalia would have Call Lightning prepped as well. She tells Sorval she’s ready. Sorval orders her to knock on the door.
Natalia knocks.
“I’M NOT TAKING APPRENTICES RIGHT NOW…BUT WHAT I AM DOING IS KICKING YOUR ASS.”
“That’s different,” Natalia says.
And, as you can imagine, we enter combat.
The door flies open. Grugor rages and charges at Sorval. Sorval quickly summons a fire elemental and some frog-looking thing. She points at us–apparently, now Natalia is included in her minions–and orders us to kill Raelan and all his allies.
Gulp. Grugor? My favorite? Tear.
Luckily, I don’t have time to see what the effect the spell is going to have on me. Roan grabs Natalia’s head from behind–Jim says Natalia has no idea where she came from–and Natalia feels the mind control slipping away from her. Jim describes it as the spell isn’t quite gone, but Roan has cast some protection from evil spell on Natalia. Which helps a lot.
Oh, yeah. That bitch is going down.
The next thing we see is Raelan hovering midair. Show-off. He slams some copper tube into the ground, causing the ground to explode in a zig-zag fashion, in between us and going toward Sorval, the fire elemental, and Froggie.
(Froggie went a-courtin’ on a fine spring day, uh-huh…Sorry, good memories with that song.)
Okay. Back to game. Sorval and the elemental didn’t get any damage from Raelan’s Zig Zag from Hell, but Froggie…well, no courtin’ for froggie. No one’s marrying his messed-up ol’ ass now. Didn’t kill him, but it did make him cranky.
Now it’s Natalia. I tell Jim I want to do Call Lightning before Sorval figures out some way to get around Roan’s Protection from Evil. And, you know, Call Lightning has some drawbacks, such as you can’t do it very often, but man, when you can do it, you can do a lot of damage. I roll and do 41 points of damage. Sorval manages to do well on her reflex save and takes only half damage. Still, she’s a wizard, so I know even half damage has gotta hurt.
Julium yells out, demanding the Sorval turn herself in. Ah, always the protector of justice. And demanding. We look up and find Julium standing at a window. He then jumps down. It’s quite a jump, but Julium takes it in stride. We’re impressed. But that’s where it ends. Julium attacks Sorval, but it seems like there’s an invisible shield around her.
Grugor attacks again, doing his typical major damage. Sorval, sensing that maybe this wasn’t the best plan she ever came up with, decides it’s time to pull out the big guns. She casts a spell, throwing her arms in the air. Ribbons appear everywhere. But they’re not happy fun May Day ribbons. They ribbons that slow us down, burn our skin, and blur our vision. Natalia take much less damage than everyone else, though, because she has her traveler’s cloak, which has some sort of cold resistance.
Jim says that Froggie is pissed off now. Not just at us. At Sorval. The ribbon-thing is hurting her minions, too. He opens his mouth and bellows the loudest croak. Jim says it sounds like a fog horn went off next to our ears. Both Natalia and Beta fail their fortitude saves, so they are “stunned” by this for two rounds.
Really, if Natalia wasn’t stunned by the sheer volume, wouldn’t she be stunned just at the sheer ridiculousness of this scene? I mean, really–a fog of ribbons and a croaking frog?
Raelan runs into the fog blindly. Natalia can’t see anything, but she hears popping noises and screaming. Roan orders everyone to get out of the fog. Natalia and Beta, of course, can’t because they’re still stunned, so Grugor grabs Natalia and Julium grabs Beta and they run. After Natalia and Beta come to, everyone walks around the clouds, waits it out, and checks out the dead Sorval lying on the ground.
Turns out that Raelan, once again, has delivered the killing blow. What he did–what Natalia couldn’t see–is that he had run up to her blindly, but Jim had rolled a critical hit for Raelan, so Raelan’s Corrosive Grasp burned his hand right through her face. The popping noises we heard were her summoned minions disappearing.
And, because we’re disgusting, we loot Sorval’s corpse. To my surprise, she actually has a druidic spell on her, Infestation of Maggots–a spell Natalia doesn’t know. But she does now, bitches!
This is where the exciting part ends, by the way. Jim calls for down time. It’s much needed but not very exciting. And what did I do? Make scrolls. Hey, there’s no X-Box in this neck of the woods.
Natalia is so bored that she scribes scrolls for 10 days. True story. And that brings us to…
Scorici the 1st – Bracell the 1st
Grugor comes over to Natalia’s and helps her with her treehouse. We work like crazy. Jims tells me that during this time, the Solstice has passed, but since it is a time of work, Natalia doing what she should be, anyway.
On the first of Bracell, Grugor stops his work to tap Natalia on the shoulder. “Mushroom guy,” he says simply.
Grugor is a man of few words. More men should be like that. Okay, I’m full of shit–Jim talks a lot, and I actually enjoy that about him since I tend to be opposite. But I digress.
Natalia looks down. It’s one of the myconids she saved in the last game. Like the new king, this guy is also physically growing into his new role of the circle leader. She jumps down, allows him to spurt his telepathic spores on her (god, I hope nobody uses that line in a bar) and he “asks” her if she’ll let him and the rest of the circle build their home beneath her treehouse.
I find this confusing. “Why?” I ask.
He explains that the King wants to divide the circle up and spread them out to several circles, so what happened to them last time won’t happen again. This makes sense. I verify with Jim that myconids know what they’re doing when digging around underground, that they won’t make the tree cave in or something. Jim assures me that as a group of people who live primarily underground, they know their shit, and Natalia knows they know their shit. In that case, Natalia happily agrees. She’s rather keep them where she can watch out for them, anyway.
After getting her consent, 20 myconids show up and start working on their new digs. Four of them, though, come over and help Natalia and Grugor on her treehouse. They don’t talk much, but I’m assuming that’s their way of saying thanks.
Bracell the 8th
The day we’ve been waiting for! Well, I have. Tango has puppies. 6 of them: 5 girls and 1 boy. 
Bracell the 11th
While we’re working on the treehouse, Jim says that Natalia hears hooves. She sneaks off to check it out. There’s a hobgoblin standing next to his horse, looking at a map, then looking around. He’s clearly lost.
When Jim asks me what Natalia does, I’m at a loss. Hobgoblins are evil, aren’t they? Jim says usually, yes. Hm, usually. Makes me wonder. Also what makes me wonder: This hobgoblin is dressed differently, in bad ass looking black armor with red trim. I decide to give him a shot and have Natalia ask him what he’s doing. Turns out this hobgoblin speaks Common, and actually, someone in Stilldale directed him to her. He’s looking for Vaectorfinyairuxo. Apparently, Vector (as I’ve taken to calling him, along with Gudger the ranger) has some artifact that he lets the hobgoblins use every year for some ceremony. They’re part of a religious sect who worships a demi-god that returns to the world once a year. How do they celebrate? Killing undead.
Sounds okay to me. Apparently, Vector has moved since the hobgoblins last talked to him, so Natalia gives him directions to his new place.
After that talk, Natalia decides she needs a break from building the treehouse. Because she had all the downtime to make scrolls, she had made an extra scroll of Reincarnation that he had asked for, the one he is planning on using to create a spell to cast a fetus from one mother to another.
Gurgor needs a break, too, and decides to go with Natalia. The very first roll I do, I roll a 1. Roll for encounter: 36%. Jim tells me that we’re going along when we see a group of deer. Beta and Tango start getting all wolfy around them. They clearly want to attack the deer. Not because they’re evil or anything. Because, you know, Beta and Tango are wolves and are getting kind of hungy.
I’m about to let it all happen when Grugor nudges Natalia and points. It’s a Gray Render. I had no idea what one looked like, so I looked it up later. Here’s what I found:
Gray Render
Now, this Gray Render thing is something Natalia would know all about, being a druid. But Spring here works at an insurance company. All I know how to do is adjust your claims. And I’m probably not even doing a great job at that. So, Jim fills me in on the details: Gray Renders can become devoted to someone, including animals, and will go ballistic if anyone hurts them. This Gray Render is attached to one of the deer.
I call Beta and Tango back. We try to back off quietly, so as not to spook the deer and set this thing off. We roll checks on hide and move silently.
Grugor throws a rock at the Gray Render’s head.
My mouth drops. “What did you do that for?”
“I was trying to distract it,” says Grugor.
I must have given Jim a Look because Jim-the-DM explains to me that Grugor rolled a 1 on his check. Critical Failure. I have to admit, that’s pretty funny.
Grugor and the Gray Render go at it. This thing is strong. It picks Grugor up and tries to tear him into pieces. Natalia’s Flaming Sphere doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, and the wolves miss when their turn comes. Finally, Natalia summons a Dire Ape, but it’s unnecessary: Grugor crits and takes out the Gray Render. I find out the hard way animals don’t disappear right away after you summon them, so I’m left a little bit with a hungry Dire Ape. I feed him (magically summoned) food from my super awesome traveler’s cloak until he finally disappears.
We keep on to Raelan’s. We only have one other encounter, and that’s with more hobgoblins dressed like the one Natalia saw earlier. There’s a brief exchange, but Natalia leaves them alone. Natalia finally reaches Raelan’s. The grass where the fog of ribbon was is now all dead. I make a mental note to try to fix that with some sort of plant growth spell. Miracle-Gro can suck it.
And this is pretty much where we ended game: With Natalia giving Raelan the scroll and spilling the beans that Virbéné is the one who told Sorval about the secret to finding Raelan’s–which is how Sorval knew to use Natalia to get to him in the first place. What a bitch. Granted, Raelan is right: Virbéné doesn’t really like wizards to begin with, so she probably only told Sorval to get rid of her. But Natalia is already making plans for next week, and one of her plans is finding excuses to kill Virbéné and some of the other (asshole) druids of the Circle. Shouldn’t be too hard.
Hey, a girl’s gotta have goals in life.
Tags: D&D, dork training, first D&D game, homebrew D&D, Homebrewed, Jim
May 1st, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Oh my god, I love the picture of the gray render. That is so sweet.
To clarify something: the cloud of ribbons was actually an Acid Fog spell that was modified by the Spell Thematics feat. Most wizards in Valt take this feat at 10th level in order to make their spells fit with their title. And Sorval was the Wizard of Ribbons, thus the spell effect.
The ‘froggie’ by the by, was a red slaad. Slaads are one of those monsters that I love, who receive far too little play time. Tragically, Grugor made all of his saves against the slaad’s implant attack.
Also, for those who don’t love myconids like I do (like the slaad, they dont get enough love) I offer the following: Myconids form circles of twenty, and each tribe consists of several circles. In order to avoid the disaster that befell them, the new myconid king has decided to split the circles of his tribe up, and place several of them in places that will be harder for an enemy to attack: one of them is setting up shop on the little peninsula Raelan lives on, one of them under Natalia’s house, and according to Raelan, they cut a deal with Julium to set one of the circles up near Stilldale.
For those interested in some additional information, check out my blog.
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:17 am
I thought the picture was cool, too. If I ever decide to take up drawing at all again–doubtful, as I haven’t done it in over decade, really–but if I do, one day, I think it would be kinda fun to draw Natalia and the others.
I also think that the ribbon thing is cool for Sorval. If Raelan was the Wizard of Ribbons, though, Natalia would tease him mercilessly.
And thanks for mentioning the myconid circles now living over by Raelan’s and Julium’s. I almost forgot that. Hey, is Julium still in Stilldale or is he ever going to return to his cave?
May 20th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
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