Why do we start new games? Missing players. Same as always. Our cast of characters gets a shorter introduction today: it consists of Roskgild, Nadani, Quinn, Cade, Soveliss, and Traenas.

Soveliss: Oh, I would have spelled it like ‘train’.
DM: CHOO CHOO!
Soveliss: Damn straight. Because we’re all aboard the Justice Train when we’re around.
Traenus: Soveliss pays NO respect to my characters’ names.
DM: I know.
Soveliss: That’s because I –
DM: It’s because you’re a dick!

The group bitches about names. And picks on Soveliss.

Nadina: What are you?
DM: An asshole.
Soveliss: Got me there.
Nadina: What’s your character?
Soveliss: Wood elf monk.
DM: Wood elf monkey.

Poop jokes occur. The DM, broken, attempts to quit, but returns to the game when Soveliss points out the group should go up a level in the first session according to the DMG and by that logic they would level based solely on three minutes of poop jokes.

DM: Soveliss, you know how you got here. Paladin Lord von Riote said you were going to go up to Pickett and help the new Baroness and then the slate would be clean. You wouldn’t have to do anything else and they would protect you from your old allies.
Soveliss: Say they say.
Traenus: Cade… Cade… start the reactor, Cade…
DM: Quinn, you have been released from your imprisonment. You go to the last place you knew your people were, and they are no longer there. Not only that, the cold and the change of seasons have prevented any signs they may have left for you to tell you where they’re going. So basically what you’re left with is going to the nearest settlement and trying to figure out a job there or… something, so you don’t die or starve.
Quinn: (crude gestures)
DM: God damn it, Quinn. But if that’s what you want to do, okay.
Cade: He whoring himself out already?
DM: Yep.
Nadani: How? He’s gender-neutral.
Quinn: I’m a man.
DM: He decided she was a very effeminate man.
Quinn: It’s too complicated for you guys, so I’m a man.
Soveliss: Less whoring, more exploring!
DM: You, Cade, have grown up near Pickett. You were sent to the county seat to learn to be an archer and learn the skills of rangering, but you were visiting home when the Uthmuri attacked. You were not present when the monsters come over the wall.
Roskgild: Those are demons?
DM: They’re like tarrasques.
Roskgild: They’re LIKE tarrasques?!
DM: They’re a mix between a juggernaut, a behemoth, and a shoggoth.
Soveliss: And they REALLY screw up magic.
Nadani: Wait a minute, magic doesn’t work against them?
DM: Not well, no.
Nadani: So why… would I make a caster.
DM: You’re not actually fighting them, you’re coming in after they’re retreated.
Roskgild: Why did they need to retreat?
Nadani: They got bored.
Cade: The asphalt demons pushed them back.
Nadani: This isn’t my game, dude, demons don’t rise up out of the asphalt.
Roskgild: The Sixth Army was sent in.
DM: You are quietly fighting against the regent because you know he’s bad news, and the Baroness just lost her father, so you are shoring her up where you can.

Traenus, a wandering priest and inquisitor, explains a bit of a background of his character – works out that he’s up there because he’s needed. It gets weird.

Soveliss: Criminal clowns!
DM: In their criminal clown car!
Soveliss: Clowns! They’re a swarm.

No one can remember the clown from Twisted Metal! The group heads up to Pickett as their various backstories and introductions demand, and on arrival, are sent to a barracks by one Pierron Maravaldi, the baroness’s retainer and regent. For some reason, they all insult Soveliss, who is doing nothing but looking on.

Nadani: That’s a face only you could love.
DM: And who knows what the hell is wrong with me?
Soveliss: Don’t worry, guys, she doesn’t love me all that much.
Traenus: Don’t worry, I got the rest.
Soveliss: Thank you for taking up the slack, Traenus.
Traenus: There was so much of it.
DM: The barracks, for barracks, are actually pretty swanky. There are six or seven beds to a room, and they’re actually relatively comfortable.
Traenus: (briefly looking very confused)
Soveliss: Not six or seven beds to a BUNK, Traenus.
Cade: What kind of weird bunk is this?
Soveliss: The guy on top has it worst.
Traenus: “Waaaah!” Dead from fall damage.

The regent assigns them to this room, then informs them the baroness will greet them at dinner. He inquires if they have any questions for him… and gets silence in response.

Roskgild: We’re all there?
DM: Yeah.
Roskgild: Oh, I thought it was just you.
Soveliss: No, we’re all there, I was just the only one doing anything resembling the slightest scrap of roleplaying.
Traenus: We were just ushered over here, not much time to react—
Soveliss: I’m reacting! Look at this, look at this. (resuming his contemplative stare)
Traenus: That’s not much of a reaction, Soveliss.
Soveliss: I’m not much of a reactor, in-character!
Cade: I thought you were over there trying to fart, so. I just assume that every game we play, defeating Soveliss is the secret objective.
DM: I actually like Soveliss, that’s the problem, so it’s not every game we have to…
Soveliss: It just kind of happens that way.

The group continues to harass Quinn about his desire to play a gender-neutral character, which they all laughed at and mocked vigorously to Quinn’s incredible irritation.

Cade: Does anyone have a noble background?
Soveliss: Why, you gonna rob them?
Traenus: “It does seem odd for so many of us to appear at the same time. What brings you all here?”
Roskgild: Meta.Uh…. do I know you from somewhere?

Soveliss has adopted a very quiet and subdued voice for his character, which the group vows to deliberately talk over and ignore. Then they complain that they hadn’t heard a damn thing he was saying, because they were talking over and ignoring him. Soveliss angrily adopts a Goofy voice in retaliation.

Soveliss: “I said, we are undoubtedly here to preserve law and order after what has happened up here.”
Cade: “I’d imagine so.”
Roskgild: “Can’t preserve anything, waiting on the baroness’s convenience.”
Soveliss: “We must proceed in accordance with the local authorities.”
Cade: If they’re gonna make Metroid Prime without Samus, they might as well make Batman: Gotham PD, where you play an ordinary cop on the beat. The only option is to call Batman, and if you don’t call Batman he gets angry at you. “What are you doing?!”
Roskgild: Don’t lift a finger, because he’ll hit Y and brutally maim you in ways you never wanted.
Traenus: KNOCK YOU UNCONSCIOUS.
Cade: Every time you go out to do something you just get captured, and Batman has to save you.
Nadina: I still think they should do CSI: Gotham City. Every scene they go to, it’s like, “Batman was here.” There’s teeth everywhere…
Soveliss: Blood spatters, batarangs lying around by the hundreds, explosive gel has wrecked the floor in seven different places…
Nadina: And nine bad guys all tied up by the ankles in the middle.
Traenus: Perfectly good apartment building and Batman screws it up again! Now they gotta condemn the bitch.

They wait for about half an hour, complaining about how they’re going to starve to death the entire time, when they hear a knock on the door and switch to complaining about why they have to answer the door.

DM: When the door opens, after Cade yells ‘come in’, you can see why. It’s a young half-elven girl. She couldn’t be more than 16 years old in human years. She’s not reached age of majority. She has auburn hair put up in a bun, she’s rather pretty, but instead of court gear she’s actually dressed in armor. It seems more ornamental than protective, it has chasing and all sorts of stuff like that… “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I take it you’re the new guard who’ve just come to my county?”
Roskgild: I don’t know, are we?
DM: “I don’t know, are you?”
Traenus: “I came up here to use my skills. I hunt those who escape justice.”
DM: “I’m not sure that we have many of them up here yet…”
Traenus: “Then my services are not needed yet.”
DM: “I would take whatever you have to offer!”
Soveliss: “No doubt they’re here. We simply need to find them.”
Traenus: “They will make themselves present eventually.”
DM: “My name is Rowan, I am baroness of this county… eventually.”

The baroness speculates on how her father died, and speculates that her regent, her father’s half-brother and a bastard, may be planning to gain her title through forced marriage.

DM: “I need someone to help?”
Cade: “I definitely plan to help! Such things should allowed!”
Roskgild: Damn it, Cade.
Traenus: “’Scuse me while I whip this out.”
Nadina: “They call me ‘Tripod’.”
Cade: I wasn’t even making this character close to that. You brought that to him!
Traenus: You brought the swagger.

The baroness asks all of them to her protect her, though Nadina is skeptical of the offer.

Nadina: I am blatantly disrespecting her, that’s just my character.

Remember that statement in a moment…

Nadina: “This seems like a waste of my time.”
Cade: “Right now you’re just sitting in a room waiting for a baroness to do stuff. How’s this any different?”
DM: “I AM the baroness…”
Cade: “What are you gonna do now, just move on?”
Nadina: “Maybe. What’s the pay?”

Soveliss and Roskgild both hand Nadina a character sheet.
Nadina: What’s this?
Roskgild and Soveliss: Your new character.
DM: “Well… at the moment… my keep has been mostly destroyed. I can’t offer you much from my personal coffers, but I’m sure – I’m sure Pierron won’t offer you anything…”
Nadina: “So you offer me—“
DM: “I’m not saying I’m offering you nothing. But… if your only reason to come here was money, fine. The door is there.”
Nadina: I’m out! You have not interested my character in any way to be here.
DM: “Considering where we are, I don’t – we don’t have a lot of money—“
Cade: We gave you a new character sheet, make a new character.
Nadina: I’m gone, dude!
DM: “We are the last bastion against the mountains, against the Uthmuri. We just suffered an attack…”
Soveliss: Inexplicably, another wild mage pokes their head in. “I’m slightly less selfish!”
DM: “I am sure, in helping protect my land and me, you will find reward. And if our situation gets better, of course I will reimburse you. I just can’t promise you that yes, I will open coffers of jewels and gold and precious items for you.”
Soveliss: “We’re still here. You don’t need to sell us on this, we have agreed to stay. “
Traenus: “A roof over out head and provisions.”
Soveliss: “There is much for us to do up here, besides simply this.”

The baroness has other bodyguards, but the PCs worry that they will be corruptible or pressured out. Cade angrily stomps over to Soveliss (OOC).

Cade: I don’t see anything on this character sheet that says ‘low-talking douchebag’ so why you talking softly again? I don’t understand.
Traenus: He’s gonna write it in.
Cade: Did you have an accident as a child or something?
Soveliss: (Inferian voice) I inhaled a lot of smoke when I was young.
Traenus: Uh-oh. I really wish you spoke with a pirate accent.
Soveliss: “Yarr, I be the monk.”
Traenus: “Waarr, Fist of Fury…”
Soveliss: “Me martial arts will finish ye off, ye scurvy dog.”
Traenus: That’d be amazing! You messed up this opportunity.
Soveliss: …I don’t think I did, to be honest with you.
Cade: “What should we do first?”
Traenus: Oh my God, are you really gonna talk in that voice?

The Beer Baron makes an appearance for some reason. Nadina complains that no one stopped her from walking out, but the PCs shrug and ask what were they supposed to do. The baroness returns to her duties.

DM: There’s a bell, a very loud bell. She doesn’t ring it, it rings from somewhere on the site of Pickett. DONG. “That would be—“
Soveliss: Mortal Kombat has begun!

The group goes to dinner, though Traenus refuses to sit, the better to guard the baroness – even when she asks.

Soveliss: I’m eyeing the evil uncle with a 20 on Insight to judge his move.
Roskgild: He’s so sorry!
Cade: You have the feeling he has to poop, but he has to save face, so he can’t leave to poop.
Soveliss: Quivering Palm!
DM: Oh, there’s a quivering pile beneath him now!
Cade: Did you punch the poop out of him?!
DM: Yes, you did!
Soveliss: I set up resonance within his body that eventually caused his sphincter to give out.

The conversation gets weird , so Traenus demands Soveliss eat eggs.

DM: Pierron does leave the dinner table early.
Soveliss: Jerk!
DM: “Yeah, well, he isn’t very fond of me. Obvious reasons. He’s full human, and he didn’t appreciate my father’s dallying with an elven woman, and when she disappeared, or I assume she went back to the elven homeland, well…”
Quinn: I roll an 18 to see which hall he goes down.
Traenus: I don’t think you need to roll for that.

He has just gone off to his room, so it isn’t really ominous. Soveliss and Traenus RP a bit about half-breeds – a very little bit, to be sure, but it’s something.

Quinn: So what happens after dinner?
Soveliss: Dessert.
DM: Yup!
Quinn: So we’re not doing anything…?
DM: We ARE doing something, can I have logical progression?! Go to bed. Goddamn.
Cade: Sleep now!
Roskgild: Is the soup poison?

The group debates protecting the baroness all night, though Soveliss heads over to the uncle’s chamber to keep a watch at him.

DM: If you’re listening at his door, you hear loud snores from within.
Soveliss: He retired early…
DM: (loud snoring)
Soveliss: This is downright comical! I bet it’s a recording!
DM: Are you going to pick the door…?
Soveliss: If only I could.
Traenus: Snuff out his life. You know you want to!
Soveliss: Aren’t you on the side of good?
Traenus: That’s not me.
Soveliss: I see you right there!
Traenus: It’s your conscience.
Soveliss: Leaning over my shoulder and whispering into my ear does not make you my conscience!

Soveliss, in his very quiet way, proposes to trance for four hours and then keep watch on the uncle’s room to see if he gets up to early-morning shenanigans. Nadina refuses to repurpose her sorcerer and goes off to make a whole new character. Soon into the middle watch, they hear a ruckus on the walls and most of them hurry to respond!

Soveliss: Can I peer out a nearby window or arrow slit?
DM: You’d have to open it.
Cade: Awesome arrow slits that open up into windows! They call them arrow slit windows. A new invention.
Soveliss: What see I?
DM: Guards shouting and shooting arrows at a small band who seem to be taking away things that were pilfered.
Traenus: A small band? They’re just playing their music, leave them alone!

Kobolds! Soveliss jumps out the window, inspiring arguments over whether he’s an Exalted character not. Cade races after them, firing his bow at the bandits, while Soveliss just keeps dashing.

DM: Are you still going after them?
Soveliss: Yeah?
DM: By yourself!
Cade: When I seem him still running, I’m following.
Soveliss: I didn’t think we were just going to let them get away.
DM: …your comrades have still not returned.

The baroness comes running out just in time for a cook to report that the kobolds have stolen the supplies!

Roskgild: “What supplies?”
DM: “Our foodstuffs! The cheeses, the wine, the beer.”
Cade: “Those kobolds are living it large.”
DM: “They went running out the postern gate!”
Roskgild: Then I go running out the postern gate.

Traenus stubbornly refuses to move on from the baroness until her retinue shows up, while the rest of the group furiously attempts to catch up with the kobolds to the tune of Chariots of Fire. The retinue shows up and Traenus is free!

Roskgild: You must bring them to justice?
Traenus: Yeeeeees!
Roskgild: Whatever that is. I have a feeling your idea of justice is a gibbet.
Traenus: Or twisting the neck until it snaps, one or the other. The county’s justice or mine, whichever comes first.
Roskgild: You’re an evil man.
Traenus: No, no, that’s not how I roll. Though obviously if they keep fighting, I’m gonna break the shit out of them…

Soveliss’s chase music transitions from Chariots of Fire, to double-speed Chariots of Fire, to Yakety Sax.

Cade: What, are we chasing goblins behind trees?!
Soveliss: Arbitrarily a woman is there, all her clothes fall off, she starts chasing too…

They chase the kobolds to what amounts to an ice crack in the frozen ground, where the kobolds have gone to ground. Soveliss makes a show of spinning his staff.

Traenus: Are you flipping a kobold?
Cade: No, he’s flipping his spear and taking off.
Soveliss: Yeah, I’m taking off. I’m going to the other side to cut them off. I can do that. Who says I can’t?
Traenus: Uh, physics.
Cade: Neil deGrasse Tyson says you can’t.
Soveliss: Stick to the macrocosmic scale, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

The crevasse has handholds in the side, so the PCs begin making their way down, lampshading Nadina’s absence the entire time.

Soveliss: Hope there’s a paladin down here who can help us out
Nadina: There will be soon!
Roskgild: Hiding in the crack in the earth. Inside a white dragon.
Cade: Is he a kobold traitor?
Soveliss: “No, I told you not to steal, you bastards! That’s it, I’m joining these guys! So what do we see at the bottom?
DM: A blood trail! There’s something of a warren of tunnels down here but there’s a blood trail specifically going down one of them.

They attempt to move forward stealthily, though Traenus especially is loud as can be. Cade is also loud, but only out of character, as he ponders what animal companion to get.

DM: You can ride your magnificent giant weasel.
Cade: I’m not riding my own dick, that would be kind of weird.

The stealthier characters move on up, finding the kobolds tucked away in a cavern and examining their ill-gotten gains. As the kobolds hear the less-stealthy party members approach, Soveliss slaughters a winged kobold from surprise, and then they lapse into actual initiative. The slaughter is handy at first…

DM: One of the icicles in the room falls. Halfway. And wings spread from it. It’s this ugly winged little ice thing.
Roskgild: What’re they called?
Cade: Ugly winged little ice things.
Soveliss: It was a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater—
DM: No, it’s blue.
Soveliss: --one-eyed one-horned flying --
DM: It’s got two eyes. No horn. Just a really long nose.
Soveliss: It was a fuck the DM for her uncharacteristic description of the one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater—
Traenus: This new thing approaches us on the battlefield! I call out, “You dare obstruct Justice?! GROVEL!” I cast Command, it needs to make a Wisdom saving throw.
Cade: You so need to be Judge Dredd.
DM: Oh damn, it saved.
Soveliss: How far is it?
DM: It’s not a very huge room, so say 10 feet up.
Soveliss: Oh, that’s still not particularly convenient…
DM: Myeeeeh, I’m not doing this for your convenience, bitch.

Soveliss attempts to grapple the flying creature, but the DM’s good rolls defeat him. The monsters and PCs trade blows, with the PCs mostly coming out on top, and Cade scores a wicked crit on the icicle creature, then cuts it down with his offhand attack.

DM: Who was within melee range of this thing? I need Soveliss, Roskgild, and Cade to give me a Dexterity saving throw… you’re all fine, but the thing explodes when it’s struck. And you hear a vague hissing, and another icicle falls from the ceiling!
Cade: Was this the thing that killed my character in the other game?
Soveliss: I don’t think it did enough damage for that.
Traenus: No, that was a big worm.

The icicle creature blasts a cone of cold into the melee, dealing 5 to Roskgild and 2 to Soveliss.

Soveliss: Uh oh.
DM: Are you down on one knee?
Soveliss: No.
DM: You’re down on your face.
Soveliss: No, I will be in trouble when it blows. Dexterity saving throw, don’t fail me now!

Cade blows it up, and both meleers save mightily, but somehow they still hear a hissing! A small white snout pokes out.

Roskgild: A white dragon!
DM: Yes, as a matter of fact.
Soveliss: THIS is over our Challenge Rating…
Roskgild: I don’t care. Popping rage!
Soveliss: “It seems I will find my freedom in death.”

Traenus, as is always the case, got skipped last round, but he’s up next! He heals Soveliss, who then attacks. Roskgild deals a mighty 12 damage, cursing the wyrm for failing to die as he does.

DM: Does a 19 hit you, Roskgild?
Roskgild: A 19….?! Absolutely!

Since he’s raging, a couple points of damage get resisted, and then Quinn annihilates it with a crit. They hear a weak cry from where the dragon came from!

Traenus: There’s mama, let’s get out of here!

The DM is trying to introduce Nadina’s new character; Nadina fights this every step of the way, as his character gets healed and talked to while she refuses to acknowledge any of this going-on.

Soveliss: “Are you all right?”
Nadina: (in a quiet and raspy voice) “Yes. Thank you, friends. I owe you my life.”
Soveliss: COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!
Roskgild: Here, have a mint.
Nadina: (happy voice) “Thank you! That’s much better!”

The DM admits they have beaten everything on their plate, and so with loot to gather at the night at a close, they end the adventure here.