D&D West Marches 011 - I'ma Javid
This session takes our fresh boy Bridges Rhinestone Jr. on a trip across the open seas meeting new friends and challenges and dubious sexual assault all at once. Truly one for the ages.
Bridges Rhinestone Jr. Lore Bard.
Adina Liadon. Patron of the Raven Queen Warlock.
Gislea Fade. Impenetrable Eldritch Knight.
Bird Brain. Sexual Harassment Sorcerer.
The party was brought together quite quickly for an adventure that sprang up suddenly. A ship was in the docks of Farwater carrying a merchant who needed added protection since he was in possession of supposed magical artifacts. "Good enough for us" so the group thought, yet due to a series of random and completely unnecessary setbacks that actually took 45 minutes in real game time, the party somehow found their way to the ship where the shenanigans didn't quite end.
Upon arriving to the ship, the party was introduced to Javid. Son of one of the most powerful merchant family's in the world. He had set out to procure some very expensive and very powerful magic items, and now needed help shipping them back home. He was also Borat.
So, upon hearing of the concept of hunky pirate men, Bird Brain went in and cast a spell on them to turn them all gay, which resulted in slightly gay hysteria as the suddenly confused and sexually conflicted pirates both professed and ignored their new feelings. But Bird Brain is a sorcerer, and due to a wild magic surge or some shit became a goat or something.
Upon hearing the commotion onboard, Gisela penetrated the defenseless ship and stormed up only to find a series of sexually conflicted individuals and a goat. Doing what Gisela does, she suplexes the goat from the top deck to the deck below, and follows it up with an elbow drop. Why Javid didn't immediately order them off of his ship there, I don't know. Or, technically, I guess Bridges wasn't even on the ship at this point because he was busy identifying the ship and learning about the cool spell stored within.
Brain was told specifically not to do that again, which prompted him to feign ignorance like they don't know psh and was ordered to sleep in a cell, though he wasn't technically arrested or under arrest, because this quest was still totally happening after all of that. Gisela and Adina shared their quarters but since Brain was sleeping in a jail, Bridges got a room all to himself, which is nice.
Bridges was interested in having a talk with Javid after conferring with the others about the magic items on board, one of which had 1/3 of a Gate spell stored inside of it, the other could produce a Tome of Understanding if you stood by it long enough, which the party would determine in the next few days.
He talked with Javid about the items, his story and such, and through the course of such was able to identify Javid and find out that he's actually slightly cursed, which means that Borat is probably not his default setting. Bridges also recalled history of the Glenroy family name, knowing that yes, they are incredibly wealthy and successful in their businesses, though Javid is a bit of the darkhorse in the family in that he's a bit... touched in the head, and was given the opportunity to prove his success to his father by going on this adventure, which was mostly a success for him since he managed to acquire the items. It was just up to the party to deliver him and the items safely.
Bridges, being linked telepathically with the others, relayed the information to the rest of the party. They then hung out around the ship, waiting. Bridges headed up to watch the ocean for a while and also keep an eye out for trouble. Adina went up to the Crow's Nest to also keep an eye out for trouble. It's a good thing she did because she saw a ship heading directly for them, and also arming their cannons.
Bridges, being at the right place at the right time like always, was within range and launched a preemptive Lighting Bolt at their cannons, causing some shit to explode, but it wasn't quite enough to stop the immediate threat of teleporting genasi's showing up en masse. But unfortunately for them they made the mistake of pretty much all lining up, so at the start of the initiative, Bridges was able to do another Lightning Bolt, this time impacting around 8 or 9 individuals at once, which was pretty fucking awesome.
Adina throws dark as Eldritch Blast after Eldritch Blast shoot off into the distance while Gisela fade is getting surprisingly fucked up while making an attempt to not get fucked up. Bridges is about to feel the wrath of an enemy Lightning Bolt while they say something along the lines of "Oh so you think you're then only one who can do that?" but was efficiently counter spelled by Bridges, who responded with a simple "yes", and that was that.
He did get hurt a little bit, and with the few seconds he had to really take a good look around, decided that it was probably best to go behind a shipping crate which was large enough to cover him from any dubious counter spellers out there, and he polymorphed himself into a Giant Ape, because fuck yeah.
It was just in time for the boss man himself to appear, as another pirate made their dramatic entrance onto the ship, this one filled with piss and crossbows. Bird Brain had summoned a Water Elemental by this point and was wrecking shit near the Captain of the ship.
Oozaru Bridges took this opportunity to rush down the apparent leader of the pirates, doing quite a pretty bit of damage on the individual, but the pirate was holding strong, so he took this opportunity to shoot the ever loving fuck out of Bridges and force him to make roughly three million constitution saving throws in order to maintain concentration on the form, which he was able to do a majority of the time, but by the time he rolled a 9 which would break the form, Bird Brain used one of his fancy features to add a d4 to the roll, resulting in a success since all Bridges needed was a 10 to maintain the form.
With the pirate captain all but done for and now hanging by a thread off of the side of the ship, Oozaru Bridges used his strength to grab the pirate and squeeze him (non-lethally of course) so the man could be interrogated. By this point the battle was pretty much over. Gisela was fading due to the severe blood-loss of being actually hit for a change.
Oozaru Bridges placed down the pirate man and began throwing all of the dead pirates back at the ship across the way, scattering them across the hull and fucking their shit up real bad. The rest of the party interrogated the man who identified himself as Marcus DeCunt, pirate man.
He explained that he was very charming, which Bridges agreed with, and was interested in doing pirate things, which is why he attacked the ship. He didn't really know what was on the ship, only that it was a cool looking ship so he thought hey, I'm a pirate, why not.
So Bridges took him under his wing and polymorphed him into a Giant Ape the next day to let him see how cool it is to be a huge strength monster. He seemed to enjoy it very much. They had lots of fun playing on the deck and possibly terrifying the already quite harassed crew.
Meanwhile though the goal of the hour was to figure out what these magic items do. Since the party saved the ship they were given pretty much free reign to go wherever they wanted, so they used that opportunity to spend some time with the items Javid had found. The party figured out that one produces Tomes of Understanding, but has to be charged up by placing magic items inside of it. So they spend the next couple of hours putting magic items in that they didn't want, but found that while it does charge the item, it does so very little. So in the end they decided eh, fuck it, let's just let Javid sell them.
They arrived at their destination, decided to help Marcus break out of prison by casting Invisibility on him and then hoping he made it out okay, got paid for a job well done, got given some pretty nifty items as a reward, and set out to return home. Bridges ended the adventure one step closer to growing in power, and also has a pirate friend to call upon if the time ever comes that his services would be required.