9to5 (dot cc)

Where our heroes resolve, to the best of their ability: “The Time that L’Eau Dur Messed Up Real Bad”.

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. As always, I’m in black and Jon (the Dungeon Master) is in blue. Our last adventure was “The Time that L’Eau Dur Messed Up Real Bad: Part 1”. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page.

I’m going to try to keep this light and breezy, still working out the kinks of the format to ensure maximum meaty gaming enjoyment for the reader. Story highlights, DM choices and laughs to the front. Point by point recaps can stand outside in the cold waiting for their friends.

And Now, A Recap

The climax of our last sessions had our heroes sailing back from a coastal island towards Baldur’s Gate, having just unwittingly summoned a Gelugon. Said Gelugon is now screaming about wanting to eat L’Eau Dur’s bones and slowly transforming the water between it and us into ice so that it can walk across. The moon is an electric blue and everyone on shore is in a state of panic.

By way of fairy shenanigans, we find out that our Genasi friend L’Eau Dur is mixed up in fairy court politics. Fairies being tricksy and perplexing, it is still unclear to any of us (least of all him) what’s going on. The take away seems to be that our goal should be to “trick her back.” Her being the elf named Failure from Part 1.

One of my favorite things is whenever Marc (L’Eau Dur) has in-character interactions he is constantly mining everything you say for clues like a video game. He reads into every little detail a character says, looking for hints or double meanings, and often misses the broad strokes. It is delightful.

This is one of the things you always have to balance out as a DM.  When to reward digging and when not.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the format of this game: every time you dig you know that you’re spending time.

Case and point: when presented with the choice to a) join the Unseelie fairy court, b) offer up his tears to the Unseelie fairy court or c) die, he chooses B. Which is fine. Then, for reasons I can only barely fathom, he demands that we induce tears by cutting off his foot. Pirate Rogue Jim Clocks is all too eager to chop of this guy’s foot, but the party talks him down.

Therefore, he gets his toe chopped off instead!

Look, the dude thought he was so hardcore that someone would have to cut off his foot to get him to cry that’s normal.

Ropes, Magical and Otherwise

A severed toe, a few tears and a few fairy arguments later the party finds themselves in the bowels of Baldur’s Gate, trekking through rancid muck for the second time in a few hours. Thanks L’Eau Dur!

We get to a chasm, some 40 feet across, with no clear method of getting across. Everyone has their own ideas. Jaxxo the Lizardman can teleport across, but how does that help the rest of us? Can we throw him a rope? Can we jump it?

Jim Clocks remembers he has a magical rope and just shoots it across. It ties itself to something solid and we zipline across like so many tourists in South America (picture of ziplining tourists.jpg).

On the other side, we realize that we’re on the roof of a building that must have sunk into the ground hundreds of years ago. Giddeon peers over the edge and realizes that we can swing over the ledge and into a window to get inside.

But how?

The whole party begins to concoct a method of tying mundane ropes to themselves and trying to swing around using their body weight as anchors while the Rogue is just standing there still holding the magic rope that got them across in the first place.

It took them 30 seconds of real and in-game time to forget about the magic rope.

Either that or they hate the smug Rogue so much they would rather make their lives difficult over dealing with his nonsense.

They were checking out the scene and expecting to be ambushed.  Which they later were.

L’Eau Dur Is Into Some Freaky Business

The party deals with invisible spiders, exploding pots and banshees with some degree of success. I say some degree because the banshees nearly wipe us all out. I think the Triton Cleric gets to launch off the first in-campaign use of the old reliable “Turn Undead” spell and we descend even deeper into the dungeon

At the bottom of the dungeon we find a huge, elaborate, magically crafted mechanical torture rack. L’Eau Dur has really embraced the burden of having messed up real bad and without any hesitation volunteers to just strap himself up into this thing. Just like the time he wanted us to chop off his leg, the party talks him out of it.

How bad would it have been if we had powered up the machine with a player strapped in?

That was my anticipated route through.  I actually assumed that l’Eau Dur would do it himself right away, which you can recall he was super eager to.  I had a couple of different rods ready as rewards depending how he got through the machine.  This was the good one.

Instead, Pirate Rogue Jim Clocks climbs inside the mechanism and manages to spring the mechanism, opening a little concealed door with a little chest inside. Inside of that chest? A magic rod that is a solid item for L’Eau Dur with a very special one-time only power:

The rod will allow the bearer to create a full clone of themselves. The effects are identical to the 8th Level Spell “Clone”: At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return. The clone is physically identical to the original and has the same personality, memories, and abilities, but none of the original’s equipment. The original creature’s physical remains, if they still exist, become inert and can’t thereafter be restored to life, since the creature’s soul is elsewhere.

Remember that flashback from Part 1? Where a Gelugon was eating L’Eau Dur’s body? It looks like we have a way to re-enact that flashback without actually killing off a party member.

It’s time to dabble in necromancy y’all!

With almost all of our casters tapped out for the day, we head back up to the surface to put our plan into motion. The Triton Cleric asks the Human Bard if he has any healing spells left. He does not.

In fact, he’s only got 1 spell left: Heat Metal.

Everyone yells at him. We woke up this morning, and for some reason the Bard was like “Maybe I will need to heat up some metal today.” What a dumb Bard.

The Time ‘Heat Metal’ Saved the Day

We hop on a ship and sail away from the docks (to put distance between the Gelugon and the civilians), cook up a clone and brace for battle. We leave the original L’Eau Dur out in a little dinghy between us and the Gelugon and put all his gear on his currently lifeless, inert clone. He’s going to get eaten, then this creepy flesh bag will come to life.

Perfect plan.

If you remember from the “Fancy Party” adventure, the Big Bad of this campaign is Glacius Rex (an ode to Adventure Time’s Ice King) (I use the actual Ice King fig, it’s not so much an ode so much as it is straight ripped off, I know what I am and I’m ok with it). He’s got several Lieutenants that Jon has previously established in an adventure that we didn’t share in the blog (apologies).

Glacius Rex and all of his Lieutenants show up to mix it up with us. He is drawn towards us because he hates us and also the Gelugon is tossing about some tasty ice powers and Rexy wants in.

The Lieutenants are (help me out here Jon):

1.       The Doom Twins. A pair of spooky twins who ride around on a magic carpet.
2.       Graknar. An Orc smasher type who rides around on a giant worm.
3.       The Goblin King. Who is actually a respawing group of goblins, one of which wears a crown and declares himself King (if the King dies, another puts on the crown). The Goblin King rides around in… a solid iron flying carriage.

Can you guess what happens next?

If you guessed “the Bard uses the spell we all mercilessly mocked him for preparing to heat up the carriage and burn all the Goblins inside alive” you can have a cookie.

The piping hot iron carriage crashes down onto the deck of our boat and Glacius Rex and the surviving Lieutenants bail.

Bail is correct.  Victory condition: one of the lieutenants is defeated.  Convenient that it was late but was cinematic enough to win the night.

Add “Magical Flying Carriage” to Inventory!

We did it!

To celebrate, Jon informs us that in the midst of the battle we were secretly boarded by Duerger (I think) pirates and we’re heading to the Underdark!

Tune in next time to read about “The Time Tidus Seduced a Drow Matriarch”.

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.