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So, Natalia, Iema, Corin, and Sunshine are in the Underdark, part of their maybe not-so-smart plan to escape their lives as prisoners in Fasset.  Iema has just suffered his first death and reincarnation.  Luckily, he came back as an arcling, and just in the nick of time–our encounter has caught the attention of some more bad guys who are coming our way.  Not sure how we got here or what the hell we’re doing?  You can get caught up with the previous installment of “Homebrewed” here.

Sterror the 7^th (continued)

It’s still Sterror the 7th, although I’m not sure how any one of our characters can even keep track of time anymore, being that we are in the Underdark and never see the sun.  Luckily, Phil and I do keep track of it in our notes.  Unfortunately, we didn’t keep track of something very important.

Did we heal after our last encounter?

We debate.  We flip through our notebooks and try to remember.  Keep in mind that there was a three week gap since our last game, due to sickness.  Finally, Jim gets fed up with us and tells us that we’re going to assume we’ve healed up and are at full hit points.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Jim does not like to waste time when it comes to gaming.  Oh, sure, he’ll put up with some small chit-chat and the fact that I always take at least 10 minutes prior to make myself a pot of coffee and get all the snacks and soda ready for everyone, but when he’s ready to go, he’s ready to go. 

Needless to say, Phil and I are happy with the decision that Jim’s made because what we do remember is that our last encounter attracted another, so we’d like to be as full up on health as possible.

And it’s just in the nick of time.  We hear tapping.  That’s the most ominous sound, by the way, tapping.  And poor Iema.  Since he has been reincarnated back into an arcling, his drow transformation is gone, which means so is his darkvision.  Now, he’s totally blind and has no idea what’s going on.  Luckily, his magical sword casts light, but, as you can imagine, that kind of calls attention to ourselves.

Nonetheless, the man needs to see, so Iema draws his swords and it bursts into flames.  Now we can see the source of the tapping.  There are two creatures on either side of us that look a little like scorpions.  I tried to find a picture of them online to show you guys, but I was unable.  I wish like hell I could remember Jim’s descriptions, which are always detailed.  Needless to say, they’re called stonesingers.  (Not sure if that’s one word or two.)  Jim warned me that I probably wouldn’t be able to find a picture, as they’re not very popular monsters, and he’s right.  I keep pulling up S&M pictures instead, although I’m not sure why.  Dude, that’s not the kind of role-playing we’re doing.  So, at any rate, if you wanna know what they look like, you’re gonna have to get a D&D book and look ‘em up yourself, heh.

Anyway, Iema, as usual, is very polite.  I always think that Natalia could take a page from his book.  Maybe I’ll play my next character that way, but for now, I kinda like Natalia as anti-social and a bit on the grouchy side.  Iema says, “Can I help you?”

One of the stonesingers screeches and then goes back to tapping.  We start to shuffle back to get around them, and they move to block our way.

“Screw this,” I say, “Natalia’s going into dire bear form.” 

“And now we’re in combat,” Jim announces. 

Good.  Let’s kill these mofos and run. 

I was more brief in my notes regarding combat than I have been in past, namely because I feel like taking so many notes makes me lose place of what’s going on when it’s happening, but I do have here that Iema starts the battle with a trick I’m not sure I’ve seen him do before, which is Hold Monster.  Jim rolls will saves for the creature Iema his trying to hold.  It makes its save.  The other stonesinger makes a screechy noise that, surprisingly, sounds like it’s mimicking the sound that Iema is making.

Huh.  Now isn’t that interesting.

One of them also does 47 points of subdual damage to Iema.  Now, in hindsight, I should have been, like, Wait–why is it doing subdual damage to Iema?  That should have told me that they weren’t necessarily out to kill us.  But, hell, I didn’t think about it.  It’s the freakin’ Underdark.  I planned on having Natalia kill everything in sight down here.  Of course, I’m sure that will call attention to ourselves as well.  Whatever.  When it’s my turn, I have Natalia charge and claw at a stonesinger, only to do very little damage and to find out that–surprise!–it feels like I’m trying to tear up stone.

Keep in mind, though, that I had no idea what these things were when we started this, no less the names of them.  Jim likes to describe what we’re about to encounter, but he often does not like to tell us what they are.  I only find out after the fact, usually when I’m writing these posts.  But I digress.

Sunshine is up next and she fares better.  Luckily, after the last game when she accused Natalia of not loving her anymore because she never “magicked” Sunshine anymore, Natalia remembered to cast Greater Magic Fang on her this time around.  Which is exactly what she needed to do some damage to these things.  Note to self:  Remember to “magic” myself next time!

So, one by one we’re attacking, but when it comes to the stonesingers’ turns, one of them starts singing itself, and stone walls shoots up all around Natalia.  I’m disheartened when it comes to my turn.  I’m not very imaginative, after all.  Had I my spell to soften stone, that would work nicely, but I almost never list that spell.  “Is the wall all the way up to the ceiling?” I ask hopefully, thinking I can just Wild Shape into a bird or something and fly over it.

“You’re in the Underdark,” Jim points out.  “The ceiling is low.  Pretty much everything is going to go up to the ceiling.”

SIGH.  Well, Natalia is a dire bear.  Let’s see if she can’t just bash her way out of this.  And so Natalia starts bashing with her great dire bear paws.  I think I had to do a strength check on this, and I must have rolled well (kinda hard not to when your strength is massive) because Jim tells me that she’s managed to knock out a five-foot section of the wall–enough to learn that, thankfully, the wall isn’t very thick.

Meanwhile, Corin plunges his mace into one of the stonesingers.  It shatters, bursting into nothing but air and screeching sounds.  Iema jaunts on over to examine it, to see if perhaps he can do something interesting with its corpse, like, say, make a musical instrument out of it.  He’s disappointed to realize that he cannot.

“It seemed like they wanted something,” Corin muses.  “Maybe they wanted to hear a song or something.  I think Iema’s song is what attracted them.”

“If that’s true,” Iema says, “then I feel a little bad about killing them.”

“I don’t,” Natalia says.  “What happened to the other one?”

We look around, but we don’t see it anymore.  Iema plays an instrument, trying to lure it out, but it’s not stupid enough to fall for that trick.  We’ve lost it.

Or so we think.

And we go back to rolling the die 10 for encounters.  I don’t even remember how many we have to roll for a day.  Plenty though.  At any rate, we get an encounter on the third roll.

This time, we hear something that sounds like eep.  Iema brings out his sword to get enough light to see by again.  We don’t see anything around us.  We look up.  There, we see a column of light coming down towards us.  As it comes closer, we see that it’s some winged things that almost look like they’re on fire.

“A…phoenix?”  I guess.  But I already know I’m wrong.  Let’s face it, I do not know D&D monsters.  But a girl can hope.

One of them bites onto Natalia and latches on.  The druid immediately catches on fire.  Two more of them move on to Iema and bite, causing 11 points of damage.  Another breaks away to attack Corin and Sunshine.

“Icestorm!  Icestorm!”  Phil says.  And I can’t really think of anything better to do, so I agree.  Natalia casts Icestorm, but we didn’t think about how Iema had subdual damage from before.  He quickly keels over.  Luckily, he’s not dead.  He’s just…out.

Corin, Sunshine, and Natalia all take damage, too, but hell, it worked:  The fire bird things are gone.

One of the cool items that Natalia got from the dwarven thieves guild was the staff of healing.  She uses that to bring everyone back up to full health.  And we start rolling D10s for encounters again.

We get one on our tenth roll.  Jim says we see two things that look like roths.  (Assuming I spelled that right.  Like I said, I don’t know D&D monsters.)  Jim describes them to me as something that looks like a cross between a buffalo and a cow.  Natalia, however, being a druid and all, knows a little something about roths, and she knows that what we’re seeing is too loud.  She surmises that it’s an illusion.

“Well, since the others don’t know, I guess Natalia tells them,” I say.

Dumb idea.  “Do you say this aloud to them?”  Jim asks.

“Uh…’Corin and Iema, that’s not really a roth–’”

“We’re in combat.”

D’oh!

Now, when Jim said that Natalia knew it was an “illusion,” I thought he meant the see-through kind.  You know, like the will-o’-wisps we ran into in the last game.  So I decide not to waste spells like I did the last time around and announce that Natalia is going to chuck a rock at it first, just to see if it’s solid.  Jim looks at me like I’m completely stupid, but he agrees.  Natalia throws.  It hits it with a thunk.

Oh.  So Jim meant that it was an illusion as in a trick, not as in a mirage.  Well, hey, I didn’t know!

Sunshine zooms in to attack the roths.  Something very decidedly inside the roths yell.  AH.  THEY’RE DISGUISES.  I get it now.  The illusions fade, and we find different creatures standing before us.  Slimy ones.

Natalia casts Creeping Cold on one of them.  Jim says that some of its slime freezes over but it doesn’t seem to hurt him much.  DAMN.  Luckily, Iema and Corin step in and take care of business, quickly killing the creatures that Iema will later identify as bearded devils.

I grumble to myself that Natalia was completely useless in that fight, and we prepare to camp for the night.  We’re trying to decide how to do it now, though, since Iema, no longer having darkvision, is kind of pointless to use as watch.  We decide that Sunshine will take a watch.

Hoo boy.

So we roll for encounters during watches.  And we get one–on Sunshine’s watch.  Here’s how that went down:

Natalia, Iema, and Corin are sleeping, when they wake up in the middle of the night to hear Sunshine talking.  “And this one time,” she’s saying in her usual cheerful manner, “we fought some gnomes!  But they wouldn’t let me eat the fingers.”

We hear laughing as a response.  It sounds male.  “Too bad!” the stranger replies, catching his breath.  “I love fingers!”

The three of us get up and peer at Sunshine and her new friend.  Her friend, it turns out, is a bugbear, which sounds cute and cuddly.  I assure you, they are not.  Jim showed me a picture one time.  This particular bugbear is more ripped than other bugbears and is covered in tatoos. 

“Sunshine,” Natalia says, eyeing the thing warily, wondering if she would even have a chance in hell in taking him on.   ”Who’s your new friend?”

“He’s a bugbear!” she says.  “He’s fun to talk to!  He knows lots of stuff!  Mostly about hitting things.”

That little tidbit of information does not make Natalia feel any better.

We greet the bugbear, who introduces himself as Bastus Glastus, the Mage of Boom.  Secretly, I’m thinking Aren’t bugbears evil?  And then I kick myself for never reading Jim’s Monster Manual, but I’m pretty damn sure that bugbears are usually evil.  This guy, though, seems awfully happy for an evil guy.  Then again, who says evil people can’t be happy?  Hell, for all I know, they could be the most well-adjusted people on the planet.

“How are you doing?” Iema says politely to Bastus.

Bastus replies cheerfully, “I’m fine, although I haven’t gotten to hit anyone in a while.”

“If you don’t mind,” Iema continues, “I can’t see without my sword.  So I’m going to pull it out, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m not bringing it out for a fight or anything.”

Bastus Glastus brightens up.  “Are you sure?  I’ll even give ya a free one!”

We laugh nervously, and Iema declines.  He brings out his sword, and the area brightens around us.  “Tell us,” he says to the bugbear, “what brings you here?”

“Well,” Bastus says, “I was blowing things up, and I saw you guys.  I can tell you’re lost.”

Hm.  A friendly, helpful evil non-cuddly thing?  I frown, ready to have to put Natalia in action.  But I don’t need to.  Iema explains to him that we’re heading to the drow city of Fenzybyl because we want to locate the Master of Arms, who has Iema’s companion weapon.

“Ooooh, that guy!”  Bastus says knowingly.  He doesn’t look pleased.  “I fought him once.”

Natalia’s curiousity wins out.  “And?” she asks.

“We came to a standstill.”

We talk with him some more.  Sunshine is right–he is a pretty fun guy to talk to.  Jim will later tell me that we were lucky:  This was a character that we had to roll to see what his response to us would be like, and as it turns out, it was pretty friendly.  He might not be so friendly the next time we meet him, depending on how we roll.  But for now, he’s full of good information, such as the drow that we so easily killed our first night in the Underdark was part of an order that refuses to fight back.  We can recognize them because they usually wear all white.  Once again, Iema feels a little guilty, until Natalia reminds him that sympathy for drow is how we got here in the first place.  He gets over it.

And then we part.

Sterror the 8^th

We wake up and continue our now dreary existence of just walking in the dark all the time.  It reminds me of a book of poetry I read as an undergrad, written by someone who worked in some caves.  I wish I could remember the name of it.  I remember that it was good, but after a while, each poem sounded the same to me because the topic was the same thing, day after day, really.  Yup, just like the Underdark.

On the third roll, we get an encounter.  Jim says we hear a vzzzt!  There’s an arrow sticking out of Iema.

So we know somewhere, there is someone with a bow and arrow nearby.  I mean, duh, right?  We roll for initiative.  I got a stinkin’ 2.  (Natalia’s initiative bonus is 1, so guess what I rolled?)  Iema moves in closer to the source, while Sunshine swoops in.  After Natalia casts Greater Magic Fang on her, that is.  I’ve learned my lesson.

The archer ahead of us tries to summon another archer like himself and, luckily, fails.  Natalia gets close enough so she’ll be in range her next turn and then stops to start casting Summon Nature’s Ally.  What is she summoning?  A dire wolverine!  Why?  Well, why not?

Sunshines swoops in on the archer again, biting.  The archer, however, has his focus on Natalia and hits her three times for a total of 13 damage.  Luckily, a long time ago, when we first started this game, Jim recommended that I put a shit-ton of points in concentration, and I’m so thankful I took his advice.  (Let me pass that one to all spellcasters out there!  LOTS of points in concentration when you’re doing your skills!)  I succeed in my concentration check, and Natalia pulls off her summon, regardless of being shot by arrows, heh.

Wish I could concentrate like that.

So, we have a dire wolverine now, and Natalia Wild Shapes in to a dire bear.  My favorite form, if you couldn’t tell.  She gets a partial charge in; Wolvie attacks and misses.  Natalia also attacks the archer, but he suddenly disappears.  Unfortunately, Corin and Iema don’t know this and attack the area he was in to no avail.

Because Natalia and Sunshine can tell with their spidey-sense (haha) where the archer is, they immediately whirl around and attack where he know he’s at and hope that Iema and Corin will figure it out rather than think we just went crazy.  (Luckily, Iema and Corin have wicked-high intelligence; they always figure this stuff out.)  Natalia and Sunshine don’t get to have any fun, though, because the dire wolverine gets there first and rips the archer apart.

Fourth roll.  Another encounter.  Will the fun ever cease?

No sooner than we finish off our fight with the archer, we hear skittering.  Iema lights up a torch–or was it his sword again?–and we see needletooth lizards at our feet.  And I don’t mean a couple. I mean hundreds.  And finally Natalia gets to be handy, since she’s the animal expert here.  (Notice I said Natalia is the expert; I sure as hell am not.)  She whispers to Corin and Iema not to worry.  The lizards have just eaten, so they’re sleeping and won’t wake up.  Just move on through and don’t worry.

We do.  They don’t wake up.  Thank god, because although Natalia might not be afraid of needletooth lizards, Spring sure as hell is.  I wanted to get the hell out of there.

More rolls, another encounter on the 6th.  At some point, I announce that I’m going to find a New Age book and learn how to freakin’ BLESS my dice or something because I’m starting to think my dice are cursed.

And maybe they are because our next encounter isn’t as harmless as the needletooth lizards.  Natalia spots a group of 6 creatures coming towards us.  She’s not sure what to make of them at first, except that they’re humanoid.  Jim tells me that they’re not hurrying, they don’t seem particularly concerned about us, and they’re walking toward us very casually.

And, stupid me, I didn’t think to do anything about it.  I thought, Eh, maybe they’ll just walk on by.  DUMB ME.  Because, oh yeah, they were very casual and relaxed–they very casually sauntered up to us, split up, surrounded us, and started to attack.

“I can’t believe that worked!”  Jim says, howling with laughter.

If any of you guys ever have a chance to play with Jim (since I know that more than one person that reads this lives in Illinois, so who knows?  Maybe one day you will), here is my advice:  DON’T TRUST JIM.  Jim is a very good DM–and a super-sneaky one.

The first thing they do when they attack is trap Natalia in a globe of ice.  Again, no luck with being able to just shift and fly out.  Sunshine quickly flies off and away.  We don’t know where she’s gone or why.

Iema, surprised by all this because he couldn’t see them coming and because Natalia stupidly didn’t alert anyone, is even more surprised when he suddenly takes damage.  He looks down to see that both he and Corin have bony tails embedded in them.  He looks back up to identify our accosters as devils of some sort.

Natalia, on the other hand, is stuck in a block of ice and, at the moment, doesn’t really care who it is who has done it.  I secretly grumble to myself that whatever they are, they must be MEN because only MEN want to IMPRISON WOMEN LIKE THIS, just like the STONESINGERS, who probably were also MEN, and, rather than saying of this, because I doubt that Natalia is the closet-feminist that I am, I instead tell Jim that Natalia is (grumpily) casting Produce Flame to get through the freakin’ ice.  It seems to be working, though, so that cheers her up a little.

Suddenly, Sunshine, who had flown off, is back in the picture, flapping her wings furiously as she charges for the devils.  She swoops at them, all of them, right down the line, doing some nice damage.  Iema jumps into the attack.  Poor Corin tries, but Jim, when rolling for him, fails the tumble check, which means that Corin falls prone.

Uh oh.

Four of the devils see the boy on the floor and take the attacks of opportunity.  If that wasn’t bad enough, they decide to encase him in ice, too.  But here’s where Natalia gets really annoyed:  Natalia was just about to bust out of her ice cage, right?  Well, Corin happened to fall next to where she was stuck, so when the devils cast the ice wall thing again, they hit us both in a nice figure-8 ice cage, so it would catch both us, but each in our own cell so we couldn’t get to each other.

Which means, of course, Natalia can’t heal Corin up.

And, oh, yeah, Sunshine and Iema are outside alone.

Iema backs up against the ice cages.  He’s surrounded and starts getting hit.  Natalia, luckily, still has her Produce Flame still active and goes at her ice cage again.  It’s slow going, though.  So far, she’s managed to melt away a five foot section of ice.  She tries to hurry, not wanting to leave Iema alone–or to leave Corin dying in his own cage.

Sunshine is doing splendidly, thank you very much, and she continues to attack the devils.  And then Iema finally decides he’s had enough of getting picked on.  He opens his mouth.  Wail of Doom.

Natalia finally melts through her cage and stumbles out.  When she looks up, all the enemies are gone.  I have to admit, both Natalia and myself are disappointed.  “What happened?”  she asks Iema.

“Wail of Doom,” he replies.

Hmph.  This bard is proving damn useful.  We get Corin out and everyone up and running; Phil and I go back to rolling for encounters.

We get one on the 8th roll for the day.  Again, we hear ticking noises.  Familiar ones.  More stonesingers.  Two of them.  Natalia growls quietly.  Remember what I said about the Underdark?  Same shit, different day.

Iema, remembering our last encounter with stonesingers, decides to try a different approach.  He whips out a violin (or fiddle or something to that effect) and starts playing.  The tapping stops.  They listen.  We start to move forward to get past, but again, they get in our way.

Finally, Iema stops playing.  One of the stonesingers approaches him.  We hold our breath.  It doesn’t attack, though.  What it does do is simply take Iema’s fiddle–and walks away with it.

“Hey!”  Phil/Iema says.  “Wai–oh, well.” 

I look at Jim, incredulous.  “What?  It’s stealing Iema’s fiddle?  Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Phil shrugs.

“WHAT?  We’re just going to let him take our stuff?”  And then I declare a first-ever for me:  “THAT’S IT.  I’M INITIATING COMBAT.”

But, sadly, I roll a lousy 3 initiative.  I don’t even know why I have to roll initiative if I’m telling everyone that I’M STARTING THIS FREAKIN’ FIGHT.  But there you have it. 

Unfortunately, the fight doesn’t go so well.  Iema, figuring that Wail of Doom was so awesome in the last fight, decides to try it again.  So he opens with it.  And it works.  They run.  With his fiddle.  And they don’t come back.

After we realize that we’re never going to catch up to them, we decide to bunk down for the night.  Natalia is unhappy about the loss of Iema’s fiddle, but he reassures her, telling her it wasn’t one of the nicer instruments he has.  She feels a little better, but still, not much.

Right as we’re getting ready for camp, Iema, while adjusting his bedroll, looks up in time to spot a hovering, translucent rat.  “Um,” he says aloud, “I’m not used to rats being translucent.  Or hovering, for that matter.”

Really, Iema?  Wasn’t it fun to see one?  How about more?  Because lucky for you, this guy brought BUDDIES.  More heads pop out all around him.  Their eyes go red, and before we know it, we’re right back into combat. 

The rats swarm all over us, nipping and biting at our skin.  Their bites are cold, so we know we’re not dealing with ordinary rats here.  Jim says our characters take 2 points of strength damage.  We groan.  It’s gonna be one of those kinds of bad guys.  I’d rather just lose hit points.

We also have to roll fortitude saves.  Both Natalia and Corin fail theirs, so they both lose a turn.  This is getting more and more awful.

Iema, remembering that he has a fire necklace of some sort, takes it out of the bag of holding and yells to get ready for lots of stinging.  He yanks a jewel off the necklace and throws it on the ground.  However, it doesn’t do a damn thing to help our phantom rat infestation.

When Natalia finally does get a turn again, she does Flamestrike, knowing that she could hurt herself and her friends in the process.  Still, she’s out of ideas.  As it turns out, she’s the one who fails the reflex save, and she does 47 points of damage–to herself.  Quickly, she starts healing herself up, but she’s still at 6 points of strength damage.

Iema looks over in time to see a ghost rat jump through Natalia’s mouth as she’s trying–and failing–to cast a spell.  Before he can do anything, though, three drow appear.

Aw, shit.

Instead of attacking us, though, the drow swoop in and quickly kill off the rats.  I don’t know how, but we’re glad they did.  Once the rats are gone, we get a closer look at our “saviors.”

Jim tells us that there are three drow.  One is a very annoyed-looking priestess.  Another is a wizard.  The one heading them–and the one who saved us–wears his head in pigtails.  We instantly recognize him from the description we’ve heard.

The Master of Arms.

Jim describes the Master of Arms as striking.  “You mean for a drow, right?” I mutter.  Meanwhile, I was frantically looking for my index cards for my healing stuff.  “By the way, Natalia’s in the back, keeping an eye on them, trying to heal herself up as quickly as possible.”

Jim responds to the first part of my statement.  “No, this guy is striking for anyone.  Very handsome.”‘

Whatever.  I find it hard to take seriously any man that wears his hair in pigtails.  I frantically roll my dice to determine how much healing I’m doing to whom.  Meanwhile, in-character, the drow talk amongst themselves in Undercommon–unaware that Iema can understand everything they’re saying.

The priestess sighs in exasperation.  “Look, they’re healing themselves,” she says in almost a bored tone.  “Let’s just kill them and sacrifice them to Loth.”

The Master of Arms waves his hand at her dismissively.  “We already gave her a sacrifice.”

“Rats?”  The priestess looks at him, dismayed.

“Listen,” he says, rolling his eyes, “Loth can take that sacrifice and like it.”

Iema tries to keep quiet but can’t help but chuckle at the exchange.  Jim stops at this point in the game to remind me that the fact a male drow is talking to a female in this manner should be shocking to us, since females are considered superior in drow society.  (And Jim actually didn’t have to point that out to me.  I remember this from when I read Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt.)  Jim’s point, though?  This guy is very well-respected among drow to be able to talk to the priestess–and about Loth–that way.

Iema immediately starts chatting up the pigtailed Master of Arms.  “Thank you for taking care of those rats for us,” he says.  “Are you the Master of Arms of Fenzybyl?”

“I am,” the drow says proudly.  “My name is Hadrazain.”  He claps his hands together and looks around.  “You guys haven’t seen a bugbear around here by chance, have ya?”

“Bastus Glastus?”  Iema says, sounding surprised.  Natalia looks up, recognizing the name, frowning because her usual tactic is never to admit knowing anything or anyone.  Still, Bastus is probably evil anyway.  She goes back to what she’s doing:  heal, heal, heal, trying to get everyone back to full health, just in case we end up fighting drow.

“That’s the one!”  Hadrazain seems happy.  “Have you seen him?”

Iema admits that we have, points where he went.  Then Iema quickly addresses what he’s interested in from this exchange.  “I’ve been wanting to find you.  I believe you have the companion weapon to mine.”  He describes it.

Hadrazain frowns and tilts his head.  “It doesn’t sound familiar, but I have many weapons.  You can come back to my place and look to see if you can find it, if you want.” 

“Okay,” Iema agrees.  He and Hadrazain chatter about fighting and such, and they even agree that they should be twos partners for some kind of fighting game.  Meanwhile, out of character, I’m hissing at Phil, Dude, didn’t you read Homeland?  You know that drow turn on their partners, like, all the time, right?

And Phil is blowing me off because of course he knows this, he knows way more about drow than I ever will, so STFU, noob.

Finally, Hadrazain asks about the druid that is so frantically healing everyone and giving them dirty looks.  “Oh,” Iema says.  “That’s Natalia.”

The priestess returns Natalia’s scowl.  “What is that?”

Iema doesn’t understand her question at first.  “She’s a druid.”

“I know that she’s a druid.  But what is she?”

“Um…human.”

The priestess stares at Natalia.  Hadrazain turns to Natalia and, to her surprise, addresses her in druidic.  “Nice to meet you.”

Natalia pauses.  “You speak druidic?”

He nods.  “I picked up some, yes.”

When?  I think.  When you were ENSLAVING SOME DRUID?  Except I might have said that aloud because I remember Phil laughing at me and telling Jim that I was such a suspicious person.  DAMN STRAIGHT, BARD.  Er, Phil.

“I don’t wanna leave Natalia out of this,” Iema tells Hadrazain, and then he turns and translates everything for Natalia.  (Not before Corin makes a snarky remark that maybe Natalia should learn some other languages.  Sometimes, I think that boy needs a good dire bear paw-smack across the face.)  So Iema translates, then asks, “So!  Wanna go with them to Fenzybyl?”

“No,” I-as-Natalia say very decidedly.

But I’m out-numbered.  Both Corin and Iema point out that we’ve gotta go into the drow city, anyway.  At least nobody will mess with us when we’re with the Master of Arms; better to go with him than go in there alone.  My point that he’s going to stab us in the back as soon as he can–or lead us into a trap–is also dismissed.  They say they know.  But this is the best way.

So it’s decided.  Natalia doesn’t feel good about it, but they do bring up valid points.  Finally, after we’ve bickered a bit, Iema turns and says, “Well, we need to get some sleep.”  The drow agree they’ll camp with us.

“I am not sleeping,” Natalia says.  Iema shrugs.  I ask Jim if Natalia can do this.  Sure, Jim says, but he reminds me that Natalia won’t get new spells.  Whatever.  I don’t care.  I’m not sleeping.

So that’s where the game ends:  Iema, Corin, and Sunshine getting ready to bunk with some nasty, ol’ drow, and Natalia, sitting back, arms crossed, glaring at the newcomers, and vowing not to sleep for the night so she can watch them.

Yeah, like she’s not bitchy enough in the mornings already.

Tags: D&D, dork training, drow, first D&D game, gaming, Homebrewed, Valt

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