With the current 5E game DM feeling a bit out of sorts with his own game, he has elected to pick up the Princes of Apocalypse module, to better get a feel for the system, encounter design, and general nuance. To that end, the players have quickly banged out a new run of characters, though they need to get some starting XP before they can really get into the main module…

DM: Your journey begins after long weeks of travel from the harbor you came in on, on your boats, and you arrive to the Deserin Valley. It’s a largely uninhabited area, lightly settled region of caravan towns, isolated homesteads, and the relatively unexplored wilderness. So it’s where adventure waits, as it were. As you go down what’s referred to as the “Long Road”, the first town you come across is the town of Red Larch, named for a tree from the local area. As you approach town – for a small town it’s quite active, a lot of activity going on, the voices of the townspeople sparked up.

In they head, with a lot of description of the town, and they certainly aren’t subtle about their entrance given their party makeup.

DM: Your appearance – minotaurs are something of a rarity in these parts.
Zurgas: Not to mention playing the bagpipes.

It turns out a surprising number of the party, possibly all of them, play instruments, so they shrug, roll with it, and rumble into town playing an awesome ensemble piece. The rolls are excellent, and they gather a crowd (and a pittance of 45 copper and 5 silver). As soon as they stop, the townspeople immediately go about their business. Shrugging, the PCs decide to go get ale with this money.

DM: As you enter town, the first thing you notice… is a quarry pit, begins just behind the house. It’s the first sign you see.
Trench: Asleep at the quarry!
Zurgas: “Hm. Wouldn’t have expected a town named after trees to have a quarry.”
DM: Actually, it’s a pretty large quarry, right there.
Zurgas: “Wonder if there’s a story there.”
Trench: This is almost like having Lurch from the other module in the party. ‘This doesn’t seem right…’
DM: When you first came there, even amongst your loud music, you may have heard something about some goings-on there in the quarry. You hear the sound of many devices.
Zurgas: “I smash them.”

They pause to berate Renee for paying more attention to her phone than the game. The DM unsubtly hints they should talk to some villagers, so Zurgas immediately does just that.

Zurgas: “Hello there, little one.”
DM: (child voice) “Hey! Whatcha doin’ here, big one?”
Trench: ‘Come to lick your father’s boots.’
Zurgas: “Looking for a place to drink.”
DM: “Drink, huh? There’s only one tavern to go to! Just down the street! Can’t miss it! Helm at High Sun! My mom doesn’t let me go there, though. Doesn’t let me drink.”
Zurgas: (muttering in disbelief) “Why did I actually talk to a child? I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Turbis: “You, little one.”
Trench: You got an honest answer.
Zurgas: I did at that…

The DM calls for a Perception check for the group to pick out points of interests, and with good rolls they see a few! The group torments the transcriber because they can, and then turn to questioning if they should check out that blatant quest at the quarry.

Trench: Hmmm. “Young one!”
Zurgas: (singing) “Young one! What is at the quarry? I said young one, what is there we could see? I said young one, we’re looking for XP, hey what’s that! Going! On! Down! There!”

The kid knows nothing, so they decide to combine their missions and go shake a barkeep down for rumors so they can vanquish this trouble. (Zurgas hints that his people will conquer the land with the maximum of subtly.)

DM: The tavern is a ramshackle two-story building.
Turbis: Ramshackle?
Trench: Ramshackle?
Zurgas: Ramshackle?
DM: It says ramshackle…
Zurgas: You’re questioning your choice of words, we’re questioning our choice of drinking facilities.
Trench: Well, it’s the only one.

The place is kind of a dump! Zurgas tells a pun, and his delivery is roundly criticized. The group ponders how to enter this given their makeup – Selis, the changeling, is volunteered as the one most likely to soften the blow by entering first. They enter to find a woman already drunk, since it’s midday. Apparently she recently quit a caravan after brawling with guards from a missing delegation!

Zurgas: “You’ll pardon me a detour.” Walk over to her table, slap down a meaty hand. “What’s this I hear about a missing delegation?”
DM: That’s exactly what the thing in the manual warned me about. The moment the PCs hear about the missing delegation they’re just gonna fucking run for it.
Trench: A caravan escorted by Bimmy and Jimmy Lee has been kidnapped, along with the president and his cheeseburger. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the caravan?
Zurgas: All right, you minotaurs-by-fiat, have you been doing your practice moos lately?
Trench: Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
DM: “I told you I don’t know nothin’ about those missing delegates!”
Trench: But you’re the one who brought it up! “I told you I don’t know nothing about that thing I just brought up!”
DM: “They keep blaming me for it.”
Zurgas: “And if you know nothing about it, why are you associated with blame?”
DM: “The other ones who went on without me, they went on south. I only heard rumors later.”
Trench: “What. Rumors.”
Zurgas: “What… roooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomers?”
Trench: Why didn’t you name your character Angus? We find a cut of beef…

The delegation includes a shield dwarf historian of some note, with precious books the Harpers don’t want to fall into the wrong hands. The half-orc declaims all association between delegates and bandits.

Trench: Missing person can’t have anything to do with bandits!
DM: “Down Karren Road there’s a bandit hideout.”
Trench: And if we were level 13 or 14 it would be VAMPIRES in the hideout! But since we’re level 1 it’s just mudcrabs. Imps.

The NPC directs them to the constable, who is the butcher and the sheriff, while discussing with the five blurred visions of Zurgas she sees. They get ale and some rumors from the barkeep.

DM: “Oh, I never gave you my name.”
Turbis: “We don’t care.”
DM: This has NPC names and everything…

The DM struggles with a ‘Tethyrian’ as a type of creature. The NPC introduces himself as Garland, worrying everyone that he will knock them all down. They drink and Zurgas promptly blows his Constitution save, becoming inexplicably ultra-drunk. The DM encourages him to ‘discuss’ things with the half-orc, who may have been insulting his family.

Zurgas: “I don’t get mad… I get… bagpipey.”
Trench: Welp.
Selis: Oh god.
DM: The bagpipes come out—
Turbis: “I’ll have a double, please.”

Off they head to the butcher-slash-constulabary, patiently waiting for Zurgas to stop his playing. The sheriff is slacking off, half-awake in front of his business. They nudge him awake and explain themselves, offering their help. The DM consults the map, then gets furious.

DM: Why is that 18? The numbers don’t make sense. Did you make this map, Zurgas? Look, the very first thing in town is 18. The inn is 1, it’s in the middle. And then 19 is at the other side of town! Zurgas proposes they take out the bandits!

Zurgas: “What say you all?”
Turbis: (making an extremely strange noise by growling and flapping his jowls)
Zurgas: “I’m never certain if that’s a yes or a no. Use your words, not your jowls, friend!”

The conversation gets weird.

Trench: Where’s the mini with the curvy butt?
Hospitum: Oh my god, the perfect booty!
Trench: Oh, we’ll call this mini the pronouncement mini. Pronouncement orc.
Zurgas: (moving the mini so it’s pointing at a chimera) “It has three heads! What the hell is that? THREE heads!”
Turbis: Flaming spheres. And a mug-scrubber.
Trench: AN ACTUAL MUG-SC—this would have been handy a few weeks ago!
Zurgas: (positioning the pointing orc mini agai) “THAT IS YOUR CROOOOOTCH!”
DM: Do you head on your way down the road, or do you wish to speak some more?
Trench: NO. No more locals and their names.
Zurgas: “We’ll have more luck shaking the rumor mill this evening when the tavern is full.”

On they head down the road, which proves poorly maintained and inexplicably leads to a Mumford and Sons joke. Turbis, being the rangery sort, tracks the most recent caravan to where its broken remains and the corpses of its defenders lie.

Zurgas: “A keen eye and a swift mind, Turbis. Even our minotaur trackers couldn’t have done a better job.”

A very long silence, followed by Trench bursting into laughter.

Turbis: Turbis gives you a Look. Turbis is gonna be the strong silent type.
Trench: You’re like Marvin, every time he says something you just look at him.
Zurgas: “This makes me very angry!”
Turbis: He’s still a little bitter about their fight. It’s a bregrudging respect.
Zurgas: Here’s your stupid help with a brush on it!
Trench: I roll… eyeball.
Zurgas: “Weapons at the ready, and an eager eye—“
Turbis: (miming cocking a shotgun, complete with sound effect)
Zurgas: “…the fuck was that?”
Turbis: “Oh, shit sorry.”
Zurgas: (shotgun cock effect) ‘Turbis, that was your sword…’
Turbis: ‘Joke’s on you, I don’t have a sword. Then where the hell did this come from?!’
DM: You see one of the caravans – you see tracks of one of these caravan wagons have been pulled away.
Zurgas: “Can you follow this?”
Turbis: “I can do my best.”
Zurgas: (stage-whispering) “I have to ask because he’s not a minotaur.”
Trench: Those empire comments are eventually going to grate.
Zurgas: But I mean so well!

They spot a trickle of smoke in the distance, and realize they’ll soon be upon the bandits. Hospitum attempts to cast Invisibility, which leads to a long argument over why she doesn’t have access to Invisibility yet. She casts False Life instead, vigorously attempting to roll a d6 instead of a d4 for the hit points, while the game devolves into a long discussion of wild magic to the sound of vigorous scrubbing in the background.

DM: (looking for markers, and finding every color but the one he wants) I like the idea of actually using red for fire.
Trench: Fire! “Hang on April!” (humming the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme)
DM: Also… do we have a bear?
Turbis: (looking at the map) Man, this fire’s pretty big, guys…
DM: Better to cook the food with!

The discussion gets into the various shapes of minis and the degree of androgyny, or lack thereof, each possesses. They spy on the bandit camp, finding a caged bear off to one side that appears to have been abused and tormented by the bandits – one of them is prodding it with a spear. The remains of a boar sit nearby. Their immediate idea is to use Mage Hand to open the lock on the cage, freeing the bear for revenge – but the range is about half of what they’d need it to be to do that and still stay in hiding.

Trench: Don’t we have a druid?
Zurgas: Yes!
Trench: Is the druid ENRAGED to see this creature of the woodlands tortured so?
Turbis: I think it was more flavor text.
Trench: Is this druid SLIGHTLY PEEVED by the treatment of this poor brute?
Selis: (flatly) Yes. I’m cranky.

Zurgas fails to stealth with a vigorous ‘moo’, but the bandits are flush with arrogance and dismiss the noise. Trench tries to interpret his war priest power to get an extra attack in an old-school retadin style, where he unloads all of them at once and one-shots raid bosses. The bandits catch on to their presence!

DM: “We got trouble!” “Whaddya mean, trouble, ain’t no one here?” “Either a bull has decided to stand up and look at us, or that’s a minotaur out there!” “Oh! Yeah…”
Trench: That’s what you need to play on your bagpipes. The Ewok horns, before we go into battle.

Initiative ensues, as do minotaur puns that result in Zurgas getting stripped of so much experience he goes into the negative, is killed, and it sent away to go play video games. Hospitum is first.

DM: I like “hospitium”. You are now a metal forged from hospitals.
Trench: I’ve got these hospitium claws here…

Hospitum zips forward to open the cage with Mage Hand. This succeeds, though the raging bear is a bit slower in initiative. Selis casts Shillelagh, while Zurgas charges into the fray and uses his free minotaur horn attack for 4 damage. (He rolled a 1 on 1d10.) Turbis and Selis Dash into the fray.

Trench: Pack tactics! They’re actually kobolds. We’re wiped.
Turbis: Kobolds in disguise.
Trench: The minotaur falls.
Zurgas: Hey, good luck getting a shot on… Turbis. Throw your sword, that always works!
Turbis: I don’t use swords, why do you keep saying this?
Zurgas: What are you using?
Turbis: Handaxes.
Zurgas: Throw your axes – hey, that’s actually plausible.

Checking the rules, they discover you can totally dual-throw handaxes, which is awesome. Zurgas attempts to intercept a crossbow bolt, all the while hoping no one asks him if its possible. (Trench does.) Hospitum gets his temporary HP knocked off by some attack, while the bear lunges out to maul his tormenter. Zurgas obstinately honks a squeaky toy to simulate the bear’s attacks.

Selis: God, stop.
Zurgas: Oh, you’ve got a lot of right to talk, Ms. Screaming Goat.
DM: The slash tears him apart! The three claw wounds go straight through his chest but he’s still standing. The bear goes for the bite, trying to crunch down on his head for the finish. But he misses! The guard is able to duck out of the way. He’s barely holding himself together. And the bandits begin to swarm!

The bandits attack! Turbis parries one but gets hit by a second for 4.

DM: Sensing vulnerability in the weak female, because these bandits are also sexist for some reason… ‘cuz that’s what bandits are, they’re never normal people, they’re always sexist, racist, evil…

Selis takes a blow, while Zurgas laughs off an attacker and mocks him. Trench inadvertently forces a save against their strongest stat, meaning nothing results from his spell. Hospitum fires a Firebolt into the fray, while Zurgas and Turbis flail into melee violently. The DM decides to vary the hitpoints of his mobs within their HD, rather than go for the average. Selis gets into melee as well, beating down the wounded bandit wih her enchanted belaying pin.

DM: Your bludgeon him hard into the shoulder, knocking him down a peg. Looked like he was about to fall but he gets up again.
Turbis: He got knocked down! But he got up again!
Zurgas and Trench: We ain’t ever gonna keep him down.
Trench: But he drinks the whiskey drink. He drinks the vodka drink.
Zurgas: He drinks the lager drink. And the cider drink.
DM: “They can’t beat us, guys!”
Trench: They did beat – wait, they didn’t beat anyone. Wait, someone got cut in half!
DM: “I’ll keep these casters busy! Just kill those—“ Another arrow flies out… at Hospitium, doing NOT a d20 worth of damage. Oh no, seven points of damage!

Hospitum is hurting, and Selis gets dropped by a mighty blow. Zurgas tanks up front, his superior armor deflecting all blows, while the bear continues to maul bandits furiously.

DM: Wow, this bear hits hard as fuck, I should have made HIM the bad guy.
Trench: If this was a Zurgas campaign that bear would have been the deadliest threat in this encounter.
DM: Let’s see if he doesn’t do enough to kill the bandit. You watch as the bear steals your kill!
Zurgas: Oh shit, he stole the kill of a minotaur, that means he IS a minotaur.
DM: What?!
Zurgas: No.
DM: This small child has managed to trip and finish off the guy with one hit point, that means he’s a minotaur.
Trench: Well, there’s a druid, we can just get her up and she can make the bear her companion. Wait a minute, you’re a ranger, you can have an animal companion.
Turbis: No, I’m not going down that tree.
Trench: We’ll just adopt this one as a mascot.
Zurgas: Look for the –
Zurgas and Trench: (singing)Bear necessities!
Zurgas: (singing) The simple bear necessities, don’t worry about bandits, they are dead.

Trench hits Selis with Healing Word to bring her back up as a bonus action, then Hospitum misses the archer with a Firebolt. Zurgas brutalizes the one fighting Turbis, then uses his bonus Shove action to knock a dude into the fire. Turbis lops off a guy’s arms by flinging both his axes.

Trench: Another Richter! “See you at the party, Richter!”

Some healing is dispensed, including Lay on Horns, leading to some confusion about what comes back with a short vs. long rest.

DM: So what does a paladin recover on a short rest?
Zurgas: Nothin’.
DM: Really? Huh. Oh, it was my breath weapon that I recovered on a short rest.
Zurgas: Which is sort of like laying on hands, but very different in practice.
Turbis: So is the pig done?
DM: The pig has been well-tended to and magnificently cooked.

Loot occurs, in the form of copper and gold and sundries, some of which may need to be returned to the town. The players actually fret about this, in a very resigned ‘roleplaying our alignments’ sort of way.

Zurgas: “He may choose to reward us or not at his discretion…”
Trench: I just want to make sure I’m not pocketing something we’re not…
Zurgas: Eh, I’m Neutral Good.
Trench: (a pause) And once the empire gets here…
Trench and Zurgas: It’s all going into their coffers anyway.

Entering into the bandits’ cave, they find a weapons cache which they elect to return to town – repairing a wagon in the process, since the DM suggests that would be the most expedient way to transport the goods.

Trench: But there’s no boar to pull it! Quick! Find the bear!
Zurgas: Luckily I have a draft horse.
Trench… where?!
Zurgas: Horsespace.
Trench: Oh.
DM: “Why did they put me in here…”
Zurgas: It’s not intentional, it’s just, whenever a horse disappears in-game, that’s where it goes.
DM: I’m gonna have to make an adventure for you guys, going to space… You approach the town, midafternoon. An onlooking populace! The dumbstruck crowd managed to put up cheers. The bandits are dead! Cries go out. Word spreads.
Trench: But we didn’t bring bodies.
Zurgas: “We’re not animals.”

Silence.

Trench: So we brought bodies?
Zurgas: NO!
DM: Interdimensional Sargassas ate the bodies.

The conversation abruptly veers from roleplaying games to Hitman to Slim Shady to Mom’s Spaghetti in no more words than it takes to describe. The bailiff-slash-butcher greets them and Zurgas thunders out a pompous speech that ends up going down a strange tangent.

DM: Between the two of you, you swing the entire caravan in front of yourselves. Badoom!
Zurgas: “And the bandits have thoughtfully provisioned your town with weapons! Weapons for everyone! Here you go, little one.”
Trench: Can’t drink, but he can carry a spear.
DM: And the town was happy. A few minor injuries did occur when the kids got the weapons, though.
Zurgas: It’s their own fault for being stupid.

They attempt to divvy up the treasure, but the entire campaign is brought to a screeching halt by Mom’s Spaghetti. The math doesn’t work out easily, so there’s a leftover coin.

Zurgas: We’ll spend it on drinks.
Trench: Yes, that’ll be our party fund.
DM: “Heroes don’t spend on drinks in MY tavern!”
Trench: Whoops!
Turbis: TAKE THE GODDAMN GOLD!
Zurgas: Thank you, Turbis…
Trench: Well, we split that up into copper pieces!

Zurgas mentions the quarry, which by shocking coincidence leads to someone walking in, which… I don’t know why, but that leads to Tex Avery-level wild-takes on the PCs’ behalf. (And Mom’s Spaghetti.)

DM: The lady who comes in, the constable had mentioned her name as Amalie. A human, quite the strong one at that. Stonework has chiseled her into quite the physique.
Zurgas: What work?
DM: (a pause, then the weariest of sighs)
Turbis: I think he thinks a pun’s coming.
DM: Stonework.
Zurgas: Stone Dragon.
Trench: Awwwwwwwwwwww.
DM: I trusted you, Turbis! I TRUSTED YOU! “Where are these adventurers I’ve heard so much about?”
Zurgas: The large minotaur simply looks up from his ale.
Trench: Mmmmmmmooooo!
DM: “It would be you, I hope.”
Zurgas: “I’m one of them, yes.”
DM: “I’m looking for some help.”
Zurgas: “Then you’ve come to the right place. Unless it’s with burning and pillaging, we’re not that sort of adventuring party.”
Trench: ‘But the empire, when it gets here—‘
Zurgas: ‘No, no, we intend to maintain a solid tax base!’
DM: “I should cut back on work. I’m trying to do double shifts. But at night, my workers are getting scared off by dark, robed figures wearing stone masks!”
Trench: Death Eaters!
Zurgas: What masks?
Turbis: Stop it.

Trench immediately accuses the sheriff of Scooby Doo-level shenanigans, then attempts to split up the group in the most sexually-charged way possible. It goes down horrible roads.

DM: Safe Search ON, come on! I wanted safety, Google, you’ve failed me again!

The DM calls for a Religion check, which Trench rolls terribly on but Zurgas fortunately aces. They suspect the Black Earth Cult, potentially coming from a passage in the quarry.

Trench: Hmm, we daren’t not the dark passage without first partaking of Mom’s Spaghetti.
Zurgas: “Perhaps let us intercept these waylayers in the night. Then in the morning, we can explore the passage, knowing they are not in it.”

A very long silence.

Zurgas: “Perhaps someone other than us will contribute to this conversation.”
DM: “Well, I hate to say it, but Mithra, the granddaughter of one of the people here, I may have seen her go into the passage a couple of times. She might know more. The passage is actually incredibly small.”

Seeing a plot thread, they elect to go investigate, with most of the players imitating (or mocking) Zurgas’s slow and deep speech the entire way. They find a bakery run by a nun with a dead head hidden underneath it.

DM: “Welcome – oh! What brings you to my bakery?”
Zurgas: “Well, first a struggle with your door, it is quite inadequate for my size. However, we seek the young one.”
Turbis: ‘When the empire comes, the doors will be resized.’
Zurgas: ‘Halflings will have dog doors.’

The way-too-excitable kid bursts in, furiously babbling at them and excited as can be that the heroes had beaten the bandits. The kid thinks they can take care of weird green things in the tunnel by the quarry!

Trench: Did one have a blue mask? And one had a purple mask?
Turbis: (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme)

Trench predicts Grimloks for no reason, while Zurgas puts his money on Snorks. A Survival roll tells Turbis that they’re oozes. No, gnolls. No, flinds. No, beholders. No, goblins and an ogre! (Really this time.)

Trench: ‘You had better come as well, little one.’
Turbis: ‘Here, have a hauberk. And a handaxe. Let’s go.’
Zurgas: ‘Here’s a hammer. CATCH.’ Is she REALLY a little girl?
Trench: Nope.
Turbis: She’s dead like a little girl.
Zurgas; Ah, she died like every other human. AT MY HANDS. Well, I didn’t mean to admit that out loud.

Zurgas anticipates fighting with an ogre, while Turbis maliciously wishes for his singlehanded bitchslapping. The kid mentions a tomb!

Zurgas: (through clenched teeth) ‘How many sidequests does this place have, jeez!’
Turbis: My fucking journal’s already full!

The game gets violently derailed by sound effects, but the PCs find themselves at last going to investigate some shenanigans at Trickle Rock Cave. They immediately fast-travel there. No, really.

Turbis: I wanted it to be Treacle Rock Cave…
DM: In a ravine, an exposed rock face by a vertical crest about three feet wide. Based on this town, distances aren’t that far. Actually, wow, it’s a lot further than I thought, this town is huge! Each hex is worth 2 miles. The journey is ten miles!
Zurgas: Around us, the town expands!
DM: She mentioned the journey is gonna take you about two hours.
Zurgas: This journey will take us longer than I thought! It’s as if we’re victims of a hex!
DM: Well you didn’t -- (stopping dead as the pun hits him)
Zurgas: Ha ha ha! YES! The damage was done but it took him a moment to realize it! Like he got cut and didn’t realize till he started bleeding…

A mighty YABBA DABBA DOO! abruptly reveals the quarry is using dinosaurs, and Zurgas and Turbis debate if they should interfere on charges of animal cruelty. Zurgas continues to reveal his prejudices as Trench casts Light to aid their cave adventure.

Zurgas: “Are we prepared for this? I will take the lead, for my armor has taken enough blows this day to fell any three of you. However, Turbis, I trust you to keep a close eye on the trails as we traveled, and spot tracks—“ (finally unable to ignore the extremely skeptical noises and gestures the other PCs are making) Okay, that actually happened! Come on! Give me some credit for that one!
Turbis: It was still an asshole way to say it!

They head into the cavern, which is full of trickling water, and promptly get attacked by winged things from the ceiling! Initiative is rolled! John Cena wins it and delivers an RKO to Zurgas, who decides not to take this lying down.

Zurgas: No wonder Turbis made his Perception check. He’s John SEENa.
Selis: I’m going upstairs, fuck this shit!

Poor singing leads into the combat’s opening, and it isn’t really damn interesting to start with…. But these are stirges, and they quickly start attaching to people to suck their blood! By the end of the first round, one is attached and three have failed in their efforts to do so. Hospitum beats a stirge to death, and then Turbis lops one down. Trench lowballs his damage, Selis autohits because she’s wandered off and is Selis, and then the last two attach! And are promptly beaten down.

DM: You do not find anything that she mentioned there. You gather the GM misread a couple things about her speech and is attempting to recover.
Zurgas: We see the great Overgod appear. “Sorry…”
DM: That’s why I’m over here going, “Fuck! I misread it!”
Zurgas: She’s a stupid little bitch.
Turbis: She’s a little girl.
DM: Not here, the quarry lady, I misread… everything. I read and I’m like okay, great, there’s all this stuff going on. Then immediately after there’s another paragraph…

With the sudden impression that they were led here for a reason, they begin searching. Zurgas promptly rolls a 1 and jams his horn in a crevice, but in reality they were sent here to be killed by the stirges! Wrenching his head free, Zurgas causes a cave-in, which does a dHandful damage that rolls oddly poorly. The DM awards XP to all! Not enough to level, but there’s more to come…