springading.com

Back with another “Homebrewed,” which I’ll try not to ruin too much with my epic exhaustion.  In the last game, we left off with Natalia, Iema, and Corin in the middle of robbing a museum.  Hey, don’t look at me like that–you’re supposed to be rooting for us, remember?  Besides, we wouldn’t have to do this if they hadn’t stolen everything from us and enslaved us in the first place.  Unfortunately, the heist has had a couple of hiccups.  Natalia and Iema are in a world of hurt, and Corin…well, Corin’s dead.  Don’t remember that happening?  Well, go refresh your memory here.  Otherwise, read on.

Huskyr the 17^th

We pick up right where left off in the last game:  Corin lying dead on the ground, with Natalia, Iema, and Sunshine standing around him. 

“Hey, Natalia,” Iema says, “do you have Reincarnation prepared?”

“Yeah.”  She didn’t say what we were all thinking:  Wonder what he’ll come back as, though. 

Then we both notice Sunshine hopping closer to Corin, eyeing the boy’s fingers.  “No, Sunshine!”  we say.  “You cannot eat Corin’s fingers!”

“Why not?” she asks, confused.  “He’s not using them.  And he’s already missing some.”

Natalia decides not to address that question.  Instead, she focuses on Corin, casts Reincarnation, and Corin comes back.  And it’s not as bad as it could be.  Sure, he doesn’t come back as human, but he comes back as a Halfling.

At this point now, Natalia has only one healing spell left, only 80 hit points left while in bear form (keep in mind that being in bear form add somthing like 40+ to her hit points), and Iema’s down to a mere 17.  Since Iema is worse for wear than Natalia, she uses her last healing spell, Remedy Moderate Wounds, on Iema, and then we go snooping around the room we’re in.  We find a Deck of Many Things.  This is another one of those things where Jim has an actual “game prop” ready for us.  This one, though, I had known about ahead of time because Jim needed my Tarot cards to create the deck.  Since he explained what the deck was before the game, I already knew what it was and didn’t need to ask–and I had already known that there was no way Natalia was going to touch it.

“Ooooh, a Deck of Many Things,” Corin says.  He reaches out to touch it, yanks his hand back, reaches for it again…

Iema has already decided that he’s going to risk it, but we want to finish looking around for anything else that we can find to either use or sell.  Good thing we didn’t stop looking:  We find an ornate gun that we think we can sell for a lot of money, some keys (always good to have keys), and a wooden head in a box.

As it turns out, the head can talk.  It immediately starts yelling, “Thieves!  Thieves!”

Iema, ever suave, shuts the head up.  And, as usual, he gets the head talking, even gets the head’s name.  (Rintharios, if you were curious.)  And it doesn’t take long for Rintharios to start complaining.  He says that he’s been in the box for two and a half centuries and would like help getting the rest of his face back.  (I guess he’s missing some of it.)  Natalia says she’ll thinks she can help; between the skill points she has in woodworking along with her druidic spells, she’s got mad skillz.  So we chat with the head while continuing to loot the place, which also turns up a Hammer of Dwarven Kings. 

Impressed by the weapon, Iema tries to pick it up.  Immediately, he feels an overwhelming urge to drop it.  Neither Natalia nor Corin have any problems, though.  Natalia eyes Iema suspiciously.

And I’m not subtle about her suspicion, by the way.  In fact, I announce it:  “Natalia is SUSPICIOUS of Iema!”

“She should be,” Phil laughs.

I totally am, particularly because of what I know out of character.  In a nutshell:  Phil has told me and Jim that he’s not going to necessarily be so hellbent on keeping his character good.  I guess he’s played lots of straight and narrow characters in the past; now, he’s trying for a character that toes the line on occasion.  And the other night, when he came over just to hang out, I overheard him talking about lichdom with Jim.  Shocked?  YOU GUYS.  HE THREW ROCKS AT BIRDS IN THE LAST GAME.  OF COURSE HE’S GOING EVIL.

Actually, I don’t think he is going that way.   Not yet.  I just know he’s open to the idea, heh.

Okay, shut up, Spring.  Back to the game!

So, at this point, we’ve found all that can be found, and we’re debating whether or not to go into the next room or quit while we’re ahead.  We’re low on both health and spells.  And here is where Spring is not like Natalia:  Spring would play it safe, quit now, go home.  Natalia figures we’ve come this far and has confidence that she and her buddies can pull this off. 

Also, Corin and Iema really want to draw from the Deck of Many Things.  Understandably, though, they’re nervous.

“I can draw some cards for you,” Rintharios suggests.  We hand him the deck; he uses his mouth to select a card, although the cards seem to work with whomever’s drawing from the deck, as the cards he’s drawn float up in front of him on their own.  I can see that he’s drawn  The Magician and the 10 of Swords.  Those are the Tarot cards, of course; I’m not sure what they “translate” to in the Deck of Many Things.  But I do know that Jim says that the wooden head in the box now feels less lucky.  Nobody can figure how he can get any less lucky, but I digress.

Iema screws up his courage.  Phil-as-Iema draws The Sun.  Jim says that Phil gets 50,000 XP and a sable cloak..  Iema also feels luckier.  But his luck is short-lived when Phil draws 10 fo Swords and gets -1 to saving throws.  He also draws a 2 of Swords, which will automatically move him to the next level, provided that he can kill the next monster on his own.

We pause the game here to adjust Phil’s sheet.  Now, if we went based on the XP Iema was supposed to get, Iema would jump up something like four levels.  We were excited.  Then Jim did some research and found that the rule is you can’t go beyond one level.  I think you’re supposed to advance to the next level and be 1 point shy of the one after that.  I tried to argue the case that we overrule the book.  Natalia, I said, wouldn’t touch the cards; shouldn’t Iema gets rewarded by taking such a huge risk?  He could have keeled over flat if he had drawn the wrong card.

In the end, Jim laid down the law:  For game balance, he would go by what the book says.  We were disappointed, but we both knew Jim was right.  Still, it would have been cool.

Once Iema’s character sheet is updated and Phil has picked his new spells, Corin is next up to draw from the deck.  He draws the 4 of Cups, a card that allows him to reverse past events.  He then draws 10 of Swords (popular card, it seems) and he immediately uses the 4 of Cups card to reverse his drawing of the 10 of Swords.

“You sure you don’t want to draw from the deck, Natalia?” one of them asks.

I back away from the deck.  “Hell, no, Natalia’s not touching that.”  Jim and Phil look at me like a party-pooper.  “Well, SOMEONE here has to have common sense!  Natalia may not have high intelligence, but she’s got a ton of wisdom, remember?”

They shrug me off and we decide to move on to the next room.  Natalia leads the way.  Inside, there are many boxes scattered about.  We see a creature inside the room.  It has pointy teeth, pale white skin, and is wearing brown linen.  Phil groans as Jim describes it.

And because I have no imagination, I ask, “What?  What?”

“It’s a vampire,” Phil tells me.

Oh.  A vampire?  So what?

Yeah, I’m about to learn that D&D vampires are way more bad-ass than the glittery kind in Twilight.  (Although, admittedly, the Twilight vampires would make way better disco balls.  I’m just saying.)

The vampire lunges for Corin, sinking his claws into Corin’s new Halfling body.  Iema draw his sword.  Immediately, the sword tries to signal something to Iema.  Currently, there is a map of the Jade Islands on it, but Iema doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

And the fight is on:  Natalia in her bear form, Sunshine doing her whole fly-by attack thing, Iema with his sword.  And we’re failing miserably.  For one thing, the vampire is grappling Corin, which is making the boy take Con damage.  I didn’t realize how crappy that is until this little fight, when I got to see it in action.  That’s when I remembered Jim’s post that he had written not too long before this game called “No More Kid Gloves.”  Damn.  So this is what he was talking about.

I confirmed it when Natalia tries attacking the vampire and consequently 1) takes -2 to all checks and rolls, and 2) accidentally heals the vampire.  Aw, crap.

Corin can’t break from the vampire’s grasp.  Sunshine and Natalia keep clubbing away at the vampire, although Natalia’s learned that trying to grapple him isn’t a good idea.  Meanwhile, Iema’s sword is frantically trying to communicate him him, changing the pattern on its blade to a flames.  Still, Iema isn’t sure what the weapon is trying to signal to him and instead just attacks with it.

Eventually, the vampire drops Corin.  Corin is out again at -5 hit points.  Natalia tries her Produce Flame along with her regular claw and bite attacks.  The bite fails, but finally, her claws manage to get through the monster’s damage reduction.  Jim says that she leaves a flaming hand scar on him.  WOOT.

The battle continues; so does Iema’s sword.  It keeps flickering  from gold to silver to copper and back, faster and faster.  Iema realizes he needs to say a command word.  He struggles to think of what it could be.  Then, he comes up with it:  “RUGOS.”

It’s the Jade Island word for fire.  Unfortunately, Phil has a bad roll for his attack, so it doesn’t do him much good.

The vampire steps back during the fight.  Jim says Natalia, Iema, and Sunshine hear scratching through the walls.  Soon, dire rats are swarming around us.  We start hacking away at rats until it’s Iema’s turn again.  At his turn, he yells the command word again, but this time, with much better success:  He lops the vampire’s head off.

Still, we have the dire rats to deal with, although they don’t seem too bad.  We’re killing them off easily until only a couple are left.  Once outnumbered, the remaining dire rats run away.  Iema looks to Natalia to see if she wants to chase them and kill them; she shakes her head no.  They’re just rats being rats, after all.

Iema starts singing and I roll some heal checks on Natalia; together, the two of them manage to stabilize Corin.  Once they do, they look for anything in the room.  We find some wizard’s staff.  Neither Natalia nor Iema can hold this one, though–we immediately drop it.

Natalia comes up with the idea of using Corin to try to pick it up.  “Just use his hand to grab it,” she says.

We do so.  Suddenly, Corin wakes up gasping and sits up.  “It’s talking to me,” he says in an awed voice.

“It’s talking to you?” we ask.  Is that bad or good?

“It says you already have soul weapons,” he continues.

Oh.  So that’s why we couldn’t pick it up.

Looking around the room, we find some sort of necklace made out of teeth.  Natalia was going to take that, but when Corin read the card and found that it was a magical weapon made by giant owls, we realized it would be better suited for Sunshine.  We put the necklace on the hawk, clasping it to her feathers.  She grins (as much as a hawk can grin, anyway), and bounces up and down, making her new necklace make a satisfying cha-ching! sound.  She looks good and she knows it, heh.

We also find a spellbook.  There’s information nearby (remember, we are in a museum) that says this spellbook was carried by an enemy of the state.  If you look at it, though, it just looks like a fashion designer’s sketchbook.  The theory is that it’s a code, so you have  to break it to find out what it all really is.

Nearby, we also find some spell component pouches that had been used during the centuries.  Don’t mind if we do…we also snatch up scroll and wand organizers that we have found, along with potion belts.  How handy!

Our work here is done.  We slip out of the museum (much easier than getting in, let me tell you), and we head back to the dwarven thieves’ guild place.  Gurdren greets us; Iema gives him the run-down on the monsters.

“Oh, there was a vampire?  THAT explains the death of the flower girl and the dwarven brewer,” Gurdren says.  He sees the look on our faces and explains:  “You can use a rose to kill a vampire–”

“–and dwarves brew their beer with holy water,” Iema chimes in, getting it.

I did not get it.  I mean, I get the holy water, although I didn’t know dwarves brewed their beer with it.  But I had never heard of the rose thing before.

Once we’re done gossiping about the monsters, we show Gurdren what we’ve scored.  Gurdren shows a particular interest in the hammer and the gun.  He seems a little too interested.  Suddenly, Natalia’s trust in this short guy wavers.

Still, it’s late, and when he says we can stay for the night to rest up, we agree.  We plan on locking ourselves in, but Gurdren beats us to it.  He tells us goodnight, closes the door, and we hear locks click from the outside.

Huskyr the 18^th-Huskyr the 27^th

And on these days, we rested. Hey, if it’s good enough for God…

Huskyr the 28^th

Opposed to what the prior date entry might indicate, we weren’t captured or held against our will or anything; we really were resting up.  We might have done other stuff, but if we did, I apparently didn’t think it was important enough to make note of.

Moreover, the day before, on the 27th, Jim says that the dwarves give each of us, save Sunshine, a wooden box with cool gear in it.  At this point, Jim handed me and Phil index cards with all the gear information on it.  The gear is awesome and tailored to our characters.  Phil and I oooh and aaah over our new loot.  Sadly, I can’t tell you everything I got because Jim took the cards back after the game and I don’t know where he’s keeping them.

Of course, the dwarves aren’t giving us these things out of the goodness of their hearts.  In exchange, they want those items that we stole from the museum.  To sweeten the pot, they say that while we can probably get more information about the Underdark from Dirtgut of the ogre thieves guild, the dwarves will lead us to the entrance.  Sounds like a deal to us.  We hand over the hammer and the fancy gun.

So now today, on the 28th:  The ogre thieves guild.  We disguise ourselves and go.  However, once we get there, we find out that “password” is no longer the password.  Somehow, we manage to let the guy at the door to let us in.  Kind of crappy security, if you ask me.  Then again, it’s full of ogres inside, so who really needs security, anyway?

Inside, the usual ogre stuff is going on.  You know, things like a dolphin eating contest.  There’s also a table with ogres taking turns stabbing each other.  Finally, one makes a small noise.  The others throw their arms up in the air and yell “Awwwww!”

These are some strange games they enjoy here.

Eventually, we find Dirtgut.  We show him the club, offer it to him in exchange for information.  He’s skeptical of the club, though.

“Hey, Mushok,” he calls to another ogre.  “C’mere.”

Mushok strolls over.

“Hold up dat shield,” Dirtgut orders.  Mushok complies.  The shield he holds up is impressive, being made of adamantine.  Dirtgut swings the club over his head, then plunges down in a swift, sure  motion.  The sheild cracks.  Dirtgut looks satisfied.  “Dat good club.”

Damn straight, Dirtgut.

So Dirtgut agrees to tell us what we need to know about the Underdark.  He says what the humans have on line, the drow have underneath.  We need to keep in mind that everyone lies there.  Everyone.  While the drow city is dangerous, the Underdark wilderness is even more so.  He says there’s a waterfall down there; if we find that and follow the river from there, it will lead us to the drow city.  He also adds that disguising ourselves as drow will give us an air of arrogance.  Our biggest problem, though, will be the lack of food and water.  We should stock up while we can.

Luckily, Iema thinks ahead and asks if Dirtgut has a bag of holding we can purchase to put food in.  Of course Dirtgut has a bag of holding!  He’s part of a thieves guild, isn’t he?  He sells the bag to Iema for 5,000 gold.

We get ready to leave, to go to the “barber” to get transformed into drow.  Dirtgut, though, has a few things to say about that.

“To be drow, must have air of arrogance,” he reinstates.  He points to Iema.  “You, I think can fool them.”  Then he points at Natalia.  “Not sure ’bout you.”

Natalia gets huffy.  “Why not?”  (Secretly, though, out-of-character, I was thinking there is no way I could pull this off.)

Dirtgut explains.  “Drow females bossy–”

“Oh,” Natalia interrupts him, understanding.  Neither Natalia nor myself are very good at being bossy.  So we come up with another plan:  Iema and Corin will be the drow, and Natalia will pose as Iema’s slave.  Sunshine’s awesome eyesight as a hawk won’t do well in the Underdark, so we decide she should be transformed into a bat.  We go off to the Barber’s to do that, go back to the dwarves to tell them of our plan, get a fake prisoner neck coller to sell the Natalia-as-a-prisoner thing more convincingly.

During the night, we slip out with several of the dwarves from White Stone Masons.  We go with them through the east gate, through some wilderness and some mountains, and start crossing a bridge.  But suddenly, some guards step out from behind rocks in front of us.

“Well,” one of them calls to the other cheerfully.  “Looks like we got some smugglers!”

And he calls the guards.

To be continued in the next game…

Tags: D&D, dork training, first D&D game, gaming, homebrew D&D, Homebrewed

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Geekdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.