January Talk Meme #1: D&D shenanigans!

[dreamerinsilico]

enemytosleep asked for D&D anecdotes, and boy howdy do I have a lot of those! I'll be focusing on Fatal Frontier, the campaign my brother's been running for over a year now, because it has managed to produce some truly A+ absurdity in addition to Drama despite the actual premise and tone of the campaign being Serious Business.

(I am still taking questions/topics here, if you want to prompt me!)

So anyway, because one of our players actually commissioned a party portrait a while back:



(art by @Boo_Rad13y on Twitter)

From the left, Clokah Skallatrol (lizardfolk cleric of Corellon, although he's since transitioned to a homebrew class), Mellie Clearbrook (human wild magic sorceress), Happinotut ("Happy," the sentient and very talkative walking stick Mellie's carrying), Calytrix "Caly" Evendir (tiefling Oath of Redemption paladin of Erathis), and Veira Brightscale (dragonborn bard/warlock of the Raven Queen).  (Not pictured: the rogue and then the wizard of the guy Clokah's player replaced, and our recent addition, Claws In Rain, tabaxi monk)

Mellie is the Mom Friend, and is literally a mom - a while back we rescued her adult son from an ill-advised adventuring foray, and now he helps lead the little hamlet that was the focus of our very first quest in the campaign.

Clokah is... the weird friend.  Usually the Leeroy Jenkins friend, although Veira's done that a few times, too.  Highly temperamental and impulsive but generally well-intentioned.

Veira is Creepy-Intense Traumatized Younger Cousin-ish Friend.  She has zero chill about destroying undead, or proselytizing for her patron (the goddess of death).

Rain is a cat.  An inquisitive, friendly cat who can teleport through shadows and then claw your face off.

Caly is mine, and she is my first foray into playing a paladin, or indeed any heavyweight melee character.  While I have very occasionally regretted explicitly being a paladin of "Everyone needs to hug it out and get along, damnit" (that's Oath of Redemption in general, and then Erathis is the goddess of civilization, so...), it's made her a really fun and interesting character to play, as she's actually very pragmatic in terms of harm reduction in various scenarios.  She's got all the idealism one would expect from an old school paladin, but none of the Lawful Stupid.  Voted team Vodka Aunt, and also is starting to pick up the moniker "Silver Tongue" because while she can't make a Concentration saving throw to save her or anyone else's life, her Persuasion checks tend to be well and truly epic.

Original campaign premise: The western quarter of the continent has fairly recently been freed from the dominion of a powerful lich, but the land remains plagued by the lingering presence of the undead as the living attempt to resettle it.

Stuff we just found out (we started at level 3, and just hit 14): Oh shit, there's an Elder Evil coming our way cosmologically, gradually empowering and uniting the undead, while its influence sows dissent and distrust among the living (gee, explains the upward-ratcheting international tensions since we started the campaign...).  Drastic action imminently required.

How we just found this out (or, that time we fed our horses to a demon): While chasing down the group of marauders responsible for killing Rain's former clan, we found ourselves in the husk of a village, still stalked by a nightmarish kelpie that had been empowered and re-shaped by some demonic influence, and its similarly perverted minions (most of which were made from the band of marauders we were chasing).  We got stuck in the demon-kelpie-thing's creepy fae-ish demiplane, and in finding our way out, found the sibriex imprisoned in a tomb beneath the village.  It had been stuck there for a couple of centuries, having been summoned by some past wannabe-warlord who then failed in his intended conquest.  The alteration of the kelpie had been an opportunistic remedy for boredom on its part.  To my brother's exasperated joy, just this once, we actually let the Evil Thing talk (we have a habit of alpha-striking his baddies before they can monologue xP), and for the low price of a few snacks, it was more than happy to tell us all about the horrific doom headed our way!  And then since we didn't want it to stay on our plane any more than it wanted to be there, we banished it.

"If you guys want to talk to him, you can do it after he's dead" (or, that time outofcontextdnd actually posted my submission): We had been sent to a foreign nation's capital in order to try to counter covert influence of sentient undead, in a leadership transition for the nation, because we now have a solidly international reputation for being the people you have on speed-dial for your undead problems.  As usual, the situation was complicated, and thanks to Veira passing her Charm Person saving throw but going home with the smarmy asshole she met in a tavern anyway, we found out there was also an aboleth mucking around locally.  (There was a whole Benny Hill theme-worthy sequence where she had to escape from being magically enthralled by the aboleth's main servant, who was the aforementioned smarmy asshole, not long after that).  

Later, we got intel indicating that the aboleth's main minion planned to enthrall a high judge (important to the broader political situation), so we went to do our best to rescue the judge and kill smarmy asshole if possible.  After a protracted and rather frustrating fight, we beat him (he was a spellcaster who could redirect things coming at him at his much more physically robust mooks), and I was all geared up to try to do due diligence and interrogate the guy first, but Mellie had had enough and simplified the situation by just stabbing him.  And honestly, that was good enough.  The aboleth didn't actually care enough to hang around and continue trying to cause problems, or at least not to our knowledge, anyway.

That part of the campaign also included a battle of the bands with a bunch of pirates.  And an Intrigue Gala, with covert poisonings, because those are always fun.  And even further back, there was when we met Happy (who would like everyone to kindly remember that they are a walking stick, not a weapon!) and Caly wound up bonding to a demonic-cursed axe because we needed a magic weapon RIGHT NOW.  But this is already a very long post.  xP

Comments

[walgesang]

Thanks for sharing this and I love the art!

[dreamerinsilico]

I was gobsmacked when our almost-brand-new-at-the-time player commissioned it! I am delighted to get to share it here :D

[harpers_child]

Those sound like some excellent D&D shenanigans. And awesome art!

[enemytosleep]

The lizardfolk cleric is so, so adorable in that art. The piece is lovely!

I love your character concept. I have a paladin in our game who has a love/hate relationship with my rogue hahaha. So I guess I hold a special place in my heart for paladins in general as a result of that.

D&D horses are almost always fjucked hahaha. We’ve lost many here as well. I love that your DM got to have an evil monologue for once! I have yet to have one myself: one game they refuse to engage actual plot (murderhobos 4 lyfe) and the other one they are only a few months into the game and have only scratched the surface. They do think a Bad Guy is dead and are plotting ways to exonerate themselves. Little do they know that he actually rolled a Nat 20 on his second Death Save, but no one checked on him and the highest passive perception in this group is an 11. :D:D:D

I’m loving the political plot with these undead! I love the outsider and undead flavor mixed with political intrigue. Level 14 you guys are definitely Big Names now. I stopped leveling the murderhobos at 4 because they are having fun murdering and I don’t need to complicate my life further. I may bump to 5 eventually, but we’ll see. XD The fey campaign started a 3 and is now at 5, and they are ankle deep in both political and fey doodoo. It will only get deeper soon hahaha.