This time on A-d-n-wanna-be.
The Concept
A customized 5e ruleset with the intention of making all of the player decisions when it came to combat carry a heavy weight and a set of characters that are living breathing members of the world.
Brought together by a common love of poker and friendship go on a trip to help out a nearby mining community.
Concept: A custom world where there's no monsters or glaring evil is being stirred up by a bunch of strange events. Between the brutal ruleset and brutal encounters I expect my players to stress over every little decision. To enforce this I have the players come to really be attached to their characters by making them share bonds with each other and play by these bonds. All combat is dangerous, every conversation has consequences and the end of the world is coming.
-The Dungeon MasterThe Party
Tug(Hey that's me), the Dwarf Barbarian, Guin, the Human Gunslinger, Alarric, the Human Rogue, and Glar, the Half-Elf Cleric.
The Session
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| His name was Rodney D. Onkey |
After arriving back in town and reuniting once more, the party says their hellos and gets ready for bed. During this night, Tug(That's me) the Barbarian had an unusual dream. In the dream, there was a clearing at night. And in the clearing there was an altar. Upon walking up to the altar, Tug and his stone-wisdom was able to determine this was a stone unlike any he's ever seen before. It was smooth to the touch, like glass, but it was definitely stone.
In the reflection of the stone, Tug could see black figures all around him, but when he turned to look, they were gone. Tug, doing the only thing he knew to do, picked up his greataxe and smashed the stone and after a few hits managed to cleave it in two. Then, a dark wispy smoke seeps out from the cracked stone and forms into a man of some kind. A man completely dark and featureless. He reached his fist out and touched Tug right in the center of his chest. Tug awoke from his dream to the early morning sun, and inspecting his chest he saw a red mark right where the man laid his fist, indicating there might be more to this dream than Tug knew.
After waking up from their sleep, the party decided to help out more in the mine of Rosemountain, continuing to help the town with their recent cave in and missing miner problem. Upon cleverly using magic to analyze the scene, the party Cleric, Glar, was able to detect that there were tools mysteriously located far from where they should have been. Such as inside the walls and deep below the mine.
It was very unusual, the party thought. Could the recent cave in troubles have opened up some sort of cave hidden below the mine? Might the miners still be alive somehow, right below the people still searching for them? The party worked on the mine and decided to turn in for the night, hoping to get a good rest so they could begin searching the next day and hopefully resolve the trouble in the mine.
As they settled in for bed, Guin began studying his tome of gunfighter to learn anything he could possibly learn about utilizing and enriching his firearm knowledge. Tug then explained to the party what happened in his dream. Glar again cleverly using magic, was able to detect that Tug indeed had some sort of magical glow to him, and more specifically, that it was an enchantment of some kind. Glar also noticed that Guin's book, the book he has had in his possession for a very, very long time, was also glowing.
Inspecting the book, Glar discovered that the book actually had some sort of illusion magic attached to it, hiding 5 pages from the back of the book from discovery. He relayed this information to Guin and then discovered the same, which was as strange for him as it was exciting as he has been over this book many times in his life and was still able to obtain new information. Furthermore, as the party each had taken a notice to the conversation, they all came to the conclusion that it was written in some sort of magical language where each person who looked at it saw it in a different language. Tug saw it in Dwarvish. Glar saw it in Celestial. Alaric saw it in Common. Guin saw it in Elvish.
But Tug was enchanted, as much literally as he was metaphorically. He felt like he knew where this clearing was. Although he had never been there, he felt like he could get there if he tried. He had this magical compass attached to him, pointing in a direction. And so with the party laying down to sleep for the night, Tug left for what he had imagined was his destiny.
Joining his adventure was the donkey Alaric rented, dubbed Rodney D. Onkey. And with Rodney in tow, Tug set out. His journey lasted roughly an entire day, leading to some form of exhaustion. But what Tug realized was, the night never faded. It was night the entire journey. As well as the forest was calm, still. No wildlife, no signs of any life. It was quiet and unnaturally dark. Tug took this as a sign that he was on the right track.
Many hours later, the party awoke to find Tug gone. They remembered the direction he mentioned to them last night, and about his strange dream. So they set out together to follow his tracks in hopes that he was still alive.
From Tug's perspective, he wanders into the same clearing from his dream. There stands the alter, cut right down the middle. As he approached, he saw a familiar form move from the surrounding darkness. The wispy smoke man, featureless in his dream, yet now clearly a man. Covered completely in animal tattoo's, he transformed himself into a tiger and the battle had begun. After several blows, the man was brought out of his tiger transformation, and he began speaking incomprehensibly. Tug tried to reason with the man, hoping he hadn't just walked into some poor man's forest home and attempted to murder him. But there was no comprehensible response from the man.
This strange man then transformed into a bear, and Tug had an idea. From his new Barbarian path, the path of the totem warrior, he began to cast a spell. Ritually. Somehow the Druid allowed him to cast this 10 minute ritual, lasting 100 rounds of combat without any action on either side. Tug had hoped to commune with the man's bear form if his human form was seemingly screaming madness. Unfortunately the bear spoke no sensible language either, just growling.
At this time, the party caught up to Tug. From their perspective, it was a bright day, and Tug was laying in the middle of this clearing, seemingly unconscious and bleeding profusely from a wound he received complements of the tiger form. The Cleric, being the beacon of kindness he is, went in for the heal. But upon touching Tug, he was knocked unconscious and brought into this strange shadow realm as well. The other two, Alaric and Guin, were quite concerned, wanting to help yet not wanting to befall the same unknown fate as Tug and Glar.
Inside the shadow realm, Tug asked Glar not to interfere, still hoping to commune with the man. But battle began once more. This time Glar stepped in and used his magic to severely injuring the man, turning the tides of battle quite a bit. Tug, still not sure if he was just outright murdering someone, even if it had been a battle of back-and-forth attacks, finally gave in and started hitting him a lot more, eventually killing the man with Glar's help. Upon this Druid's death, Tug and Glar were immediately transported back to the real world with their party members Alaric and Guin.
The rejoicing didn't last long however, as another thread had appeared immediately. This strange, wispy shadow monster wearing a crown on his head had appeared directly in front of the entire group and battle once again commenced. No time for rest, Tug wasn't doing so great. Suffering a level of exhaustion from his travels, fell unconscious after a devastating attack. Glar thinking quickly managed to use Turn Undead and quite literally sent this evil creature running for the hills. It did not last long however as a lucky shot from Guin managed to put it down for good.
Tending to Tug's wounds, which is turning into a recurring theme at this point, and also bringing him back to the land of the conscious, they managed to find a portal in the clearing leading to the shadow realm version, complete with broken altar. The corpse of the druid was nowhere to be found, which was unfortunate because Tug definitely wanted that bomb ass bear belt he was wearing. But they did retrieve the split altar, hoping to sell it for money. Upon removing it from the shadow realm, the portal closed entirely.
After recurring moment of hostilities between the group, Alaric and Guin said that they were now heading to Sweetfields, a nearby city, to see what they can learn from the altar and perhaps sell it. Tug, being very annoyed at the party's consistent "my way or the highway" mentality, wanted to go back to Rosemountain and solve the problem that they had promised to solve. Glar on the other hand wanted to mend the two halves of the altar, fixing it back to its former glory. Much to the parties behest, even though Tug didn't understand why they even wanted to take an altar of evil evilness in the first place if they were just going to wig out when someone wanted to do anything with it.
But after a swift swindling from Glar, he managed to cast Mending on the sly, joining the two halves together. And with a resounding pop, the altar disappeared completely. Testing to make sure it wasn't just invisible, they had thought to go back to the clearing and check and see if the portal had opened back up. After going back again, they saw that the portal was still closed. And the party, once again, set out for Rosemountain.
And oh boy did they arrive in the nick of time. The Mountain was abuzz with, well, something. The townspeople had been running around in a mad panic for the entire day, seemingly. And so the party set out to discover the source of this commotion. Upon entering they saw the bodies of several workers, but galvanized. Bits and pieces, spread all over. They weren't so much bodies as they were gore piles.
They proceeded further inside and upon reaching a room that had been cleared from the rubble, one they hadn't yet seen. The party readied themselves, as the sound of this buzzing, or rumbling of some kind continued. Tug proceeded a little bit further from the party, hoping to see what was happening. As he made his way forward, a monster of some kind burst from the ceiling above Guin, collapsing the stonework itself onto him as well as this heavyset monster of some kind. With a single hit, Guin was unconscious.
The party leaped into action to fight this heavily armored thing of which they had never even seen. After several attacks, the creature stood standing. It seemed to launch itself at whoever made the most noise, which was not good for the gunslinger of the party, who was now revived and capacitated by Glar.
Eventually the beast was felled as it launched itself towards Alaric, the rogue. The reaction attacks by Glar made the killing blow and Alaric was knocked down by the creature's heavy mass, but was able to roll it off of him and get up. Finally being able to explore the room at the end of this long hallway.
Entering, and with some light thanks to Glar, the entire party was able to see what looked like a couple of unconscious people laying about, the two workers that helped Guin during the party separation, the mine foreman, and some other guy I don't know.
With this they were able to pretty accurately conclude that the mine will, at least for the foreseeable future, not have any further issues with missing miners. As for the still missing miners, well, let's hope they died quickly.
If there's a will, there's a way, or so the saying goes.
To be continued...
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