D&D West Marches 002 - Chickens race to victory using blood as fuel

Tragedy strikes as the idiotic bloodthirsty chickens begin pecking themselves apart
After turning in from a couple of days mining in the, uh, mine, Bridges Rhinestone Jr took his 5gp profit and went to sleep for the night. But it would not be a peaceful sleep, as not long into his rest darkened, black spirits pull HIS FUCKING SOUL OUT OF HIS BODY and take him and his friends(Of whom he has never met, aside from Finwin whom Bridges had given money to go mine in in the uh, mines) to a magical realm.

Upon accepting what has just happened, the party introduce themselves to each other.

The party is:

Bridges Rhinestone Jr, Lore Bard
Finwin Dimgar, Illusionist Wizard
Sister Violet, Vicious Child Rogue
Birdie, Swashbuckler Rogue
Stalhvel, Battlemaster Fighter
Willow, Divination Wizard
Artificer whose name I cannot remember

They meet and like true adventurers, avoid any meaningful conversation, instead immediately seek out the source of a strange but delightful aroma in the air. It turns out that they have been taken to a strange carnival, and are handed fliers that they use to inspect the area. There was an area to go and compete in challenges of sleight of hand, strength, combat, intelligence, dexterity, and so on. It was an event of unknown duration that had a whole host of games with many different rewards to earn.

But first, food. Some members of the party bought some food, which was apparently very magical and gave them various yet fairly small buffs. After munching down on some quite delightful and very fancy food, they wandered over to the area labeled Trinket Stalls. Bridges, Willow and Finwin ask around in search of curious magical items that could aid them on their journey. Willow acquired a device of something something Investigation, which gives a +1 to their investigation score, Bridges passed on buying anything due to his uncertainty of if anything he acquires here will come back with him.

The party converges and begins wandering around, eventually going to a tent to the south of the island, which they learn is actually in a demi plane. They make their way into the tent and observe a multitude of different activities to get involved with. Among the selection is tarot card reading, a quiz on magic spells that net you money for correct answers, and some other things but they didn't manage to get to those.

First up: Tarot card. The party sat down and paid for their reading. Bridges drew some sort of evil god of death, which actually wasn't as ominous as it sounded and ended up giving him a boon which could help him basically stave off dying. Other party members got a similar boon but to their AC, dexterity scores and so on. They were informed that if they didn't like their cards they could trade amongst themselves, but decided not to.

Next up they partook in a magical quiz where the quizer would ask the quizee questions pertaining to some magic spell, and if they were able to answer correctly, they would earn gold. First up, I don't remember who was first up, I think it was Willow. Willow, the divination wizard was up first and was able to successfully answer their spell, earning a decent amount of gold along the way. Being so cocksure that he could win some easy money, Bridges signed up for a toughy. The question was something along the lines of "How many days does it take for a cloned person to full develop", which he had no idea of, until one of the party members offered to give him the answer for an exchange of gold. Bridges immediately agreed because the amount you win is far more than the amount he was asking for, and the correct response was given: 120 days.

To much rejoicing, the next person came up to get their turn in the game and was given a quiz along the lines of "Which spell requires something snow something something", to which Bridges knew the answer, and he freely volunteered it to his friend. His friend trusted him and gave the quizer the answer, and was correct. Simulacrum needs snow as a material component.

Moving on to the Menagerie just across from this magic quiz tent, the options were: Tick-tac-toe, go to an exotic petting zoo, marksmanship challenges and magic marksmanship challenges. Everyone went off to their own thing, while Willow went to do some theatrical magic show competition(Like American Idol but there's another person there and you sorta fight with your magical creativity). There was quite the lengthy game of tic-tac-toe brewing between an actual child and Birdie, a bird. A dramatic back and forth that was almost as skillfully impressive as it was boring.

The unnamed Artificer because I don't know his name decided to visit the petting zoo. He walked in and looked around and was informed that not only was there a roc, he could ride it around the fucking island. So, of course, he paid the very small fee to Rent a Roc and went blazing around and having a good time, getting drunk and eating pie.

The others tried their luck at archery and magical archery and had a good time, earning slightly more gold along the way. Eventually they all gathered at the staging area to witness Finwin and another wizard compete in a magical show of magic. It started off a bit one sided against Finwin, but eventually the rest of the party showed up and tried to inspire him. It was quite the epic showing in fact, but unfortunately Finwin lost in the end.

Afterwards the party was informed of something called Chicken Racing to take place in the combat arena, and when asked if they were interested in that, they all pretty much in unison replied "fuck yeah". What followed was one of the most tedious, hilarious, ridiculous and vicious real-life-hour ever made.

All 7 players lined up, was given a chicken of differing colors, and given the option to "roll" a command for the chicken, to see which direction it would go, or what action it would take. This action includes "Peck" which is an attack that has a -3 to hit, and also a -3 to the damage. So most of the time, when the chickens did attack, it resulted in a failure. But sometimes it didn't. And that's how one of the chicken died.

They had one goal: Run east. First chicken to leave the field at the east side wins, everyone else loses. And fucking hell was it a challenge. When the chicken weren't trying to fucking kill themselves they were running forward, backwards, inside out, upside down, around in a circle, almost leaving the field at the wrong spots, coming close to eliminating themselves a few times, and by god the sheer number of times chicken attacked one another, almost killing or actually killing a competing chicken racer. The race actually started with Bridge's chicken immediately trying to assassinate a competitor's chicken, which he was able to thwart by clever usage of cutting words to reduce the damage. He had to reduce the damage instead of attempting to get the attack to miss because the fucking chicken crit on his peck.

The race went on for quite a long time with no real progress being made. So long in fact the DM had to actually cut the field in half to speed it up. And it still took another 20 minutes. A hilarious, mindnumbing back and forth between chicken that didn't care if they lived or died or even won the goddamn race.

But eventually it ended, a chicken crossed the finish line, and the race was over. The winner was given a special artifact Wishbone, which you can break once a day to immediately acquire a delicious chicken leg. Which was definitely worth the hour and 20 something minutes. I mean fuck yeah free chicken.

Anyway, after the race was over, the commentators sitting from a booth high above the arena called forth a battle and asked if the party were interested. They all said "fuck yeah" or something along those lines and told to assume their battle positions. They all lined up for some reason and then a red dragon wyrmling was summoned inside of the area. Battle commence!

It wasn't as challenging as expected, although Bridges had never fought a dragon before. However he had also never had his FUCKING SOUL PULLED FROM HIS BODY so this entire continent was filled with surprises. Aside from narrowly avoiding red hot dragon fire, the party was able to work through the wyrmling pretty easily. And then the commentators piped up again, asking if they would like a higher challenge. The party wanted more, and so they were given the choice: Black or red? They chose black, and then a adult black dragon was summoned in the area.

This dragon was considerably larger than the previous one, and it was quite terrifying to be in such close proximity to death. But what good is experience if you never get to use it? So the party leaped into action, taking defensive positions by LINING UP ALL THE FUCKING TIME SERIOUSLY MAN DRAGONS HAVE BREATH WEAPONS BACK THE FUCK UP BEFORE WE ALL DIE. And Bridges was hit by the breath weapon, which was interestingly a line and not a cone. He made a clever play of using Cutting Words on the damage for the breath weapon, which reduced it by 5, and also made the save. Number of HP remaining after taking the hit? 5HP. What luck.

The battle commenced. The actual child was constantly hiding behind her dog Patches and firing a Vicious Crossbow at the dragon before popping back behind it. The Rogue was weaving in and out of combat and making strange noises at the dragon, hoping to confuse it, which surprisingly worked with the addition of a Silent Image spell by the wizard, causing the dragon to waste its turn trying to defeat a illusionary dragon.

Bridges got in a clever usage of Dissonant Whispers, a personal favorite of his(Because it's the only fucking thing that ever works, fuck) to get the dragon to move away from his friends, prompting an opportunity attack by one of them. The real magic happened as the dragon reached the top of the arena, the battlemaster fighter shot it with an arrow and used one of his superiority dice to cause it to trip and tumble all of the way back down to the bottom for some extra damage. Unfortunately it was the dragon's turn after this so it did not stay prone long enough for anyone to do anything.

The dragon, after being pelted for the entire duration of the battle by what it could only see as a dog, because the actually-a-child was hiding behind it the entire time, decided that enough was enough and, using half of its movement to get up from prone, flew into the air somewhat, and blasted the dog, and subsequently the child as well, with a steaming hot line of acid. The dog was instantly emulsified, and the child almost was as well, but managed to hang on. Getting back around to Bridge's turn, he could do the only thing he knew how: Vicious Mockery'd the dragon which actually worked this time(3 WHOLE DAMAGE YOU GUYS) and inspired the young girl, by saying "UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HE'S JUST SLEEPING???". The girl called his bluff and saw straight through the deception(Fucking expertise amirite guys?) and very viciously shot at the dragon with the vicious crossbow.

Not too long after, the battle was over, the dragon was down. Everyone collectively tried to loot the dragon aside from Bridges who just wanted to go the fuck home, and the sincerely-a-little-8-year-old-child who attempted to stab the dragon forever and ever, before the ringleader himself appeared and surprised everyone by effectively saying that this battle wasn't quite as permanent as we may have thought, returning the dragon to life, the dog, Patches, to life, and healing everyone and restoring all of their abilities as if they had a long rest.

They were asked if they wanted another challenge, but Bridges and everyone else who had sufficient control of their mental faculties declined, though there were a few who were quite adamant about wanting more. Bridges was out of the arena, waiting by the gates, sobbing quietly to himself.

In the end, everyone got a neat magical item as a reward, some XP, platinum pieces, and most importantly, memories. Actually most importantly was reaching level 4, and gaining access to 18 Charisma.

This was the tale of the second game in the D&D West Marches series as told from the eyes of Bridges Rhinestone Jr. I glossed over some stuff because I, 1, couldn't be there to see it in person, and 2, this would be a billion words long and boring as shit. Ultimately while this session was incredibly fun to play in, it was mostly skill challenges so writing about them might not do them justice compared to actually playing them.

My name is Ryan. I like to play video games and Dungeons and Dragons and all kinds of other cool stuff. I also like to write. This is my website, it's nothing special, but I write about topics from time to time that probably make no sense. But if you think they do make sense, then hang around and check out some other articles. My friends call them "blogs" but goddamnit I've got a URL and everything, so they're "articles".

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