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So this is our first “back to normal” session after the multi-session epic that was our journey into the Barrier Peaks and what was basically a summer hiatus. 

Do you know what that means?

It means we ran out of time and had an incomplete adventure. So sad. Remember that in the framework of the game we have a real world clock that we’re kind of racing against in order to have a fully successful adventure.

I’m in black and Jon is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them.

Return of the Ice King

Ahem. I mean “Glacius Rex”.

Sure.

The Ne’er-do-well Cads find themselves in the city of Luskin, which is a pirate trade city or something. I just know that my character, a pirate by trade, is having the time of his life. Yo-ho’s and puffy shirts all around please and thank you.

Glacius Rex, who hasn’t made a true appearance since the ordeal with the Warlock, arrives with his as Jon puts it  “slightly derpy” white dragon and wreaks havoc on the town.

It might be because I had been watching a lot of Adventure Time, but I just naturally kind of slipped into a mode of making fun of Glacius Rex. With quips like “More like Glacius Sex” and “When we’re done here, you won’t be having an ice day!” I think it really downplayed the whole part where there was a white dragon just wrecking a bunch of ships in the harbour. And freezing people to death.

Remember when we were setting this game up for the first time?  One of my goals was to get into humor in D&D a little more, and you turning on the Finn banter with Glacius Rex is more or less exactly perfect.  Any game that has a dumb ancient white dragon and an Ice King knockoff is going to be less than serious and that’s fine by me.

Glacius calls us “naughty pirates” and we have a good laugh. He then promises to return in 3 days and wants the City of Luskin to shower him with praise and riches.

In the midst of hilarious banter with our nemesis, Jaxxo the Lizard-Monk catches sight of a familiar foe and tails him. When he returns to the crew, he is shaken by what he has seen.

Man-Coldfish-Forever-Ender

Or as he is also known: Jajakun.

This Jajakun fellow is actually Jaxxo’s nemesis. As mentioned, Jono made us create nemeses for our characters, and occasionally he will drop them into our stories. Since this one expressly had “nemesis” in the pitch, it more or less made that inevitable.

Yeah I let that slide because this particular bid had gone long and honestly I’ve been feeling bad about not putting enough nemesi into the games, but when you’re writing these things real quick it’s hard to always find a way.  People want a nemesis focused session let’s give it to them.

Jaxxo’s nemesis is a guy named Jajakun. Jaxxo really lays it on how powerful and evil this guy is. Though, by all accounts it just seems like this is maybe a bad guy who did some bad things. But our Lizardman? He is afraid of this guy.

Jaxxo really emphasizes that the real threat is this Jajakun guy, and not Glacius Rex. In fact, he is so serious about this threat that he doesn’t even seem to want us to tell the pirate council or whatever about this threat.

Now, the city of Luskin seemed very thoroughly developed. Jon had drawn a map, he described the economy of the town, the leaders and how they interacted, their relationship with the mages of the city and everything. None of this seemed that important. What seemed important was that there was an abandoned monastery and we knew the premise of the adventure.

This felt a little “gamey” to me. As players, we knew we had to go to the monastery, but as characters we didn’t. As players, we knew that everything that wasn’t leading us to the monastery was a red herring, but as characters we didn’t. I get it’s a tough balance, but I do have to wonder about why you put so much effort into describing the setting if you knew we would just wind up at the old dangerous monastery.

Because I plan to use Luskan again.  The map is still on the wall. Something I identified going through seasons 1 and 2 was that setting the scene properly takes a lot of work, and in Adventure Time they actually go back to Fire Kingdom or wherever once every few episodes.  Luskan is pirate-town, so we’ll be back.

Also, Glacius Rex was standing in the ruins of the monastery at the beginning, and I was trying to link him and the Jojokun.  

Obviously a riff on Babadook and obviously just a metaphor for how much Jaxxo misses his dad.

Obviously?

Mandatory Dick-Arounds

Jon threw all kinds of distractions our way in the form of buxom ladies, scheming pirate lords and mysterious wizards. But in the end, it was a dead Lizardman who got us hot on Jajakun’s trail.

In the midst of all the distractions the crew was alerted to an assassination! A Lizardman, freshly dead in streets.

Now, Jaxxo has told us that this Jajakun fellow loves killing of Lizardfolk, so this is as strong of a lead as we have. Jim Clocks does some investigating and manages to find some tracks in the snow that indicate the killer’s trail.

This really felt like the DM deciding “man, these guys are not putting this together, anyways, here’s the killer.”

Every trail led to the killer, you guys just took your time.  Sometimes you gotta hurry it along. If you’d picked a direction and followed it to the conclusion there would have been one scene and then the same lead.

Jim Clocks targets the dude with Hunter’s Mark and it just gets counter-spelled away. Thanks magic users!

Nemesis Showdown At The OK Monastery

Magical tracking nullified, we give chase using the old fashioned “he went that way!” method. We tail the hooded figure right to the edge of the cliff, right near the monastery. How convenient.

Jim Clocks knows the likely location for a hidden smuggling entrance when he sees one, so he follows his hunch and climbs down the cliffside and sure enough? Bingo-bongo. Hidden entrance.

The party heads into the darkened tunnels beneath the monastery and follows the sounds of what sounds like whispering voices. Guess what? GIBBERING MOUTHERS.

Man, Jon loves throwing Gibbering Mouthers at us. I seriously think across the last few games we’ve fought these dudes like 3 or 4 times.

They’re kind of the mid level generic magical experimentation gone awry type monster, but yeah, I overuse ‘em a little.

I don’t know where to put this part of the story, but the Warlock has learned a powerful new spell where he points his wand and yells “Martini!”. It makes as little sense to my non-magical character as it does to my non-magical actual self.

In the middle of the battle, Jaxxo’s nemesis finally shows up and turns into a terrifying infernal beast.

And then…

The bartender kicks the old adventurers out of the bar and we don’t get a resolution.

So sad.

We started a little late and we were all a little rusty, but it stung to have the first session back on track be a time-out failure all the same.

You guys were real close.  Real close only counts with hand grenades.

Tune in in two weeks (hopefully) with the finale of this round of stories: “The Time Giddeon Messed Up Real Bad.”

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.

Jon is a Master of Dungeons of the highest caliber. He podcasts with me over on 9to5 Entertainment System and occasionally blogs here in Jon’s Junk.

Ice King by Chrono King on DeviantArt
Pirate Town by jamga on DeviantArt
Gibbering Mouther by Anja-Aries on DeviantArt