Nerdaissance

Hey anybody out there,

It just seems to be one of those facts of my blogging life that I am not the best with posting. Well, more appropriately, I don’t post unless something is going on. Fortunately for now, and hopefully consistently in the near future, I will be DMing not one, but two different DnD sessions.

I will be differentiating the two parties by large party (the one that has appeared up until this point) and the small party (the one that is starting with this post tonight.) I will also think of names for the campaigns as a whole.

But enough of that stuff, let’s get on to the first session of this small party.

Human samurai Naga no Minowara arrives at New Lazenfurth on a ceremonious day. The city’s emperor Glanan Milvnuk announces to a large crown that the work on the new city walls will be finished that day. As the crowds dispersed, Naga hears music coming from a cello in the distance. Sounding nice, he walks towards it, but as he gets closer it stops. He sees a street performer being harassed by 4 street thugs. As he doesn’t want to give them their money back, they decide to take it by force. A fight ensues, with the samurai coming in to help. The bard is knocked unconscious, but the thugs are defeated.  The police come and bring everyone back to full health and bring the thugs to prison, where they will work on the next government construction project.

The bard, Archet, thanks the samurai and, as they are both fairly new to the city, decide to tag along with each other. They are also introduced to Emat Erk, a bright emerald-eyed human who just wants to know more about them after witnessing that spectacular fight.  He offers to buy them a drink, so they all head to the Red Dragon Pub & Inn. As they get closer, they see a man thrown out the window of the Inn. A black-haired man yells to the unconscious man about not coming to his pub before he walked off into the shadows. Archet and Naga ask around about what happened (meeting drunkard Eldon), but the man remains a mystery.

After their investigation, the team decided to investigate the slums for any sign of the mysterious man. While walking around the poor houses, they come across Felix Lah, a man with very long hair wearing only pants. They ask him questions about the abandoned warehouses, but he seemed hesitant to answer anything. After continued interrogation, they realize he is homeless and doesn’t want to be turned in to the cops (and subsequently put to work for the government.) He eventually tells them that he has heard people having meetings in the warehouse he sleeps in.

After a long stakeout, the team tries to listen in on a large secret meeting. A group of fifty or so well-dressed citizens secretly enter the warehouse. They can gather is that one of the men is very clearly the leader, and that they have a plan to take back the streets. They decide to try to talk to the leader about their recent struggles with street violence (with Naga posing as Archet’s bodyguard), and how they would like to help out the cause. The leader is a man named Taish Narvo, the wealthiest man in the city (outside of possibly the emperor.) He tells them that he is sorry for their plight, gives them his business card and tells them to come by his mansion if they ever want to play at a gala at his mansion.

With this information, they take leave back to the Red Dragon Inn to meet up with Emat to see if he has garnered any additional information. He tells them that the mysterious man was set off by the one man talking about politics and that Taish Narvo is the head contractor for all of the emperor’s construction projects. They sleep at the Inn.

The next day, they go to the old townhall to look up Taish Narvo. His family was one of the founding families of New Lazenfurth, and everything about him being a contractor jived with what they had heard. They were eventually asked out, as there was going to be a ceremony for the next commencement project, a fort in New Lazenfurth’s harbor.

Archet and Naga decided to see what they can find out by sneaking on one of the ships. They actually find Eldon, who can only find a job willingly working with the prisoners. Not finding much, they get off the boat.

***

At that point, we had to end the session. Hopefully, we will be able to play in the next two weeks again.

Until then,

bye

The party woke up from their first day of rest to see Lloynis praying in front of the fire.

Now that everyone is up, we should really get going. With how serious the illness is, it is important that we get to Gavin as quickly as possible.

The party makes it uneventfully to Woodglen by mid-day. Lloynis takes leave of them to go take care of Gavin, asking them to meet him at the inn at sunset. The party wanders about town, eventually entering a local blacksmith’s shop. Xangul is interested in buying a grappling hook, and does so, not realizing that rope doesn’t come with the hook. Tabris buys an oak quarterstaff, and Yurram fiddles over whether or not to buy several items, eventually getting nothing.

Talking to Joe the merchant, the party learns of  Dalia Cowherd, she was a jewelry hawker. She showed up a little over a week ago, and became terribly sick. That missionary happened to show up a few days later and insisted that he could cure her. Alas, he couldn’t, and now even worse, he is just as sick.

At sunset, the party heads to the inn to see Lloynis fraught with grief, drinking green tea from a mead glass. I’m afraid this is a horrible case of illness. Gavin’s such a lively character, but he is as frail as me right now. In order to cure him, I will need to figure out what has poisoned him. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If I can get a sample of what has poisoned him, I should be able to make an antidote magically, but only if I have the sample as a reference. Will you help me get the sample?

The party agreed to go get the sample, but first they asked to go see Gavin. In the temple, Gavin is looking feverish in his bed. He tells them te story of the gypsy. “There was a one time where the wheel on her wagon got off the road, so she had to stop to get his wagon back on track. She never saw anything, but she felt the greatest sense of dread. She knew he had to hurry or something might happen. It was where the stream runs right next to the road, maybe a half hour North of town.”

Similarly, Gavin never ate anything unusual or ran into any monsters as he was coming to Woodglen. Rather,  Gavin woke up from a horrible dream when he was taking a nap before entering Woodglen. He always likes to take a rest before entering a town and spending all of his energy helping people. He took a underneath a tree by a stream, and woke up from the worst nightmare. There wasn’t anything happening in the dream, but he just felt a horrible sense of unease.

The party agrees to try to find the stream that seems to be in both stories. When they get to the stream, Lloynis tries to find any source of evil or dread. There is nothing there that could have caused the illness, but there are four  Troglodytes ready to fight. The party makes good work of them, but it does take a toll on them. They leave one Troglodyte alive to try to beat information out of him. He is mum about much everything except that he has failed the Great one. The party agrees to let the Troglodyte go and use Yurram’s owl to find the lair. The owl indeed is able to find the hideout, and the party decides to storm the lair, as Gavin slips closer to death.

As they peer into the lair, they see their escaped Troglodyte, two Troglodytes wearing steel medallions and a grotesque bigger Troglodyte. He is the great one, the corrupted one. The normally slick troglodyte skin has become scaly, and it looks like he is almost demonic with horns almost growing from his head. His hands are large and scaly, with longer claws than any normal beast.

The party came to fight, but unfortunately they were overmatched. Despite the efforts of Yurram and Lloynis, everyone is dropped by the four Troglodytes, except for the mighty monk Tabris, Yurram’s owl, and Lloynis. They flee the scene, for discretion is the better part of valor. They rest up, so Lloynis can restore his spells, and they sneak back into the cave. The three Troglodytes, for the escaped one did die in the last battle,  worshipping the source of the black stream and the Corrupted One.

Tabris is able to sneak up on them while Lloynis revives Yurram. Soon, everyone is up and fighting again, and eventually even the Corrupted one falls. Lloynis sees that he can indeed make an antidote from some of the black stream water, and they head off back to Woodglen, hopefully in time to save Gavin’s life.

The next session proves to be the end of the party’s first quest, and hopefully it will happen soon!

As promised, the Nerdaissance is going to keep filling up your RSS feed. This time, I’m going to start my dungeon master’s log for a new adventuring party. I figure this will be a good outlet for keeping track of exactly what happens, will be another medium for the nerdaissance to get out there, and hopefully, it will be a good story.

The session started off with the four party members in a room at the Temple of St. Cuthbert in the large town of Pinedale. The members are Yurram, the wood elf Druid, Tabris, the snow elf monk, a human ranger who doesn’t know his name yet, and an aquatic elf wizard who didn’t say his name. I’m sure these names will get set in stone soon.

As much of life happens in the world, all of these characters happened to be at Pinedale and happened to run into Loynis Uland as they went through the town. Loynis was in dire need of some adventurers, and he asked each person individually to meet him in the temple. Loynis explained to them that one of his fellow clerics was sick in a local hamlet, Woodglen, and he needed some accompaniment traveling to go cure him of his ills.

The party seemed to be a bit perplexed as to why the cleric was in another hamlet (he was doing charity missionary work being a healer for neighboring towns), why Loynis needed to be escorted (he is actually a fairly sickly man, and there are a lot of rogue gangs  who are of much danger to any lone travelers), and how they would be recompensed (100 gp upon Loynis‘ return to Pinedale and any treasure they find on the way.) The party agreed, and after a short trip for supplies, the party set out.

The journey should take a little over a day, and they set out in the afternoon. A couple hours into the trip, a tiny lizard-like creature confronted them on the road and yipped at them like a dog. Luckily, the druid and wizard both understood this creature’s draconic tongue, and understood that it asked for 50gp for their safe travel on the road. Tabris asked the wizard to relate that the road and these lands were under no kingdom’s command, and as such, they have the right to freely use the roads.

The Kobold didn’t agree, and a fight ensued. Quickly, three more Kobolds jumped out from behind trees and started pelting the party with their slings. They had horrible accuracy and they weren’t very strong either. Yurram and her owl swiftly dispensed with 1 very quickly, and this didn’t seem to be a fight the Kobolds should have started. As the ranger advanced towards the main Kobold, he fell into a camoflaged pit trap. It was dark in the hole, but he could hear something in there with him.

The fight continued with the Kobolds falling quickly, but the ranger was having a hard time climbing out of the hole. As his mates rushed to his aide, they saw with their low-light vision that there were two monstrous centipedes in the whole with him. Eventually, he was able to get out, but the centipedes followed him. Eventually, one was able to poison Loynis, but he was able to use his Patience domain ability to slow the poison. The last Kobold was found by Yurram’s owl and destroyed. The wizard summoned a celestial fire beetle which snapped one centipede in half, and Tabris punched through the centipede’s head to destroy it.

This was unfortunately all that was able to happen this session, because there was some teaching going on with how to do the battle system, and we only had about 90 minutes to do everything. Next session promises to be an interesting one, so in the meantime, have fun being nerdy and tell us what you think.