The beginning of the end looms large for the Kalroth Reassembled campaign, with the characters in the final dungeon and close to their ultimate goal. The game opens with some laughter at Aiden’s failure to make an effective attack and losing a mace.

Aliarra: Now we need to figure out what the heck we’re doing here.
DM: Yes, there is a contraption at the back of the room.
Aliarra: What kind of contraption?
DM: One with a big lever on it.
Hanzo: Transform.
Aliarra: Shall I pull the lever?
Hanzo: His transformation is just putting his arms down…

The DM reminds them of the hole in the ceiling they could not get to, and so they conclude the lever is the answer. They pull it.

DM: Welp, game over. See you guys.
Aliarra: What killed us?!
DM: It’s a Sierra game, you’ll never know.
Aliarra: There was always something in the description about how stupid you were to do that!
Hanzo: Pull the lever, Black Riders appear.
DM: ‘Oh, Aliarra. You shouldn’t have pulled that lever. Now you’ve doomed everyone.’ That’s what it was.
Aliarra: I can’t argue with that…

They break the lever. They fail. Then they actually pull it, and prepare to go back up. The DM mercifully doesn’t hassle them to see how they get over the sludge gap. The game transcription dissolves into a discussion of Mario Maker right up until Aliarra gets mad enough to turn a background discussion into a foreground one.

Aliarra: Where did it come from!?
DM: Uh, the – the left! Yay! I’m BSing like a champ!
Cissy: Don’t worry, I’m using Tenser’s Floating Disc, because I don’t trust her to carry me across.

They head back and discover a staircase of light and ice rising up to the ceiling hole, much as they all expected. Up there, they discover themselves to be horribly cold, despite their protections against weather and environment, which leads to a discussion of the same.

Mrrshala: Don’t we all have cold-weather outfits?
Aliarra: No, most of us were relying on Endure Elements. You had the “I’m a snow cat” exemption.
Mrrshala: Yeah. ‘Cuz I am a snow cat. I’m a freakin’ snow leopard, I’m all poofy.

Aliarra asks Pan to supply a wizardly opinion. He does not. They test the floor, discovering it to be brutally slippery. Still, they have to continue on… They attempt to mitigate the damage with bodily fluids, apparently?

Aiden: It’s a good thing Boots of Skating is at its best on ice, because that’s what it’s meant to be on. Based on the way the rules are, I can now move at something between 60-70 feet.
Aliarra: DM, if this entire setup was so Aiden goes so fast he goes into the past and sets off this entire campaign, I am giving you all the credit.
Aiden: 88 feet per turn!
Aliarra: The real Emgrad Sulimir! We wondered why that handwriting looked familiar! And why he had so many sketches of catwomen.
Aiden: That’s what happened. I went back in time to make sure I went to jail.
DM: You’re your own grandfather…

Aliarra, who hasn’t broken the game for a while now and is clearly feeling the itch, sends out Ehlorra’s psicrystal to do some mapping. It spots two crystals made entirely of ice surrounding a corpse!

Pan: Oh that’s not ominous.
Aliarra: “Ice creatures and a corpse are in that direction.”
DM: The corpses ARE the ice creatures.
Aliarra: “The corpses ARE the ice creatures in that direction. Should we attack them or go the other way? We risk leaving them at our backside but they may be only incidental to our purpose here.”
Pan: “They might be guarding something important.”
Hanzo: Are they standing?
DM: Yeah, they’re kinda just standing. Motionless for the moment. But one kind of turns.
Aliarra: I – I wanted to call my psicrystal back.
DM: Okay. Well, as it was leaving.
Hanzo: Chances are this wouldn’t be challenging for us… I guess this is in and out of character, but the terrain is going to make it something of a nightmare. So if we have another option.
Aliarra: We go the other way.

They assume formation and go the other way. A sudden and long discussion erupts as to whether boots of skating in fact have literal skates on them, which leads to a consultation of multiple sourcebooks and the internet. The DM makes them all make Balance checks.

Pan: I got a 12.
DM: You slip and fall.
Pan: Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
DM: You crack your coccyx.
Aliarra: Oh jeez. He’s out.
DM: I’m sorry. You BRUISED your coccyx.
Aiden: Your dick receives 50 points of durability damage. Or D-Damage.

Cissy goes down too. They bemoan their lack of Ignir.

Aliarra: I’ll give…. PAN a hand up.
DM: I like how you had to think about it.
Pan: Aaah, thank you. What’d you give me exactly?
Aliarra: A hand up! I helped you stand!
Mrrshala: I’ll help Cissy stand up.
Cissy: “Thanks Mrrshala! When the shit hits the fan I’ll be sure to save YOUR life. Aliarra can burn.”

Shockingly undeterred by this threat, perhaps because she’s scouring the basement for the Expanded Psionics Handbook, Aliarra urges the group to move on. They make the attempt, with the casters getting a +5 to their rolls for the help.

Pan: With a plus five, I got a 9.
Mrrshala: Oh god, Pan.
Aliarra: I’m sorry. He has to be left behind.
Pan: Damn, I didn’t take Acrobatics skills while I was busy in the middle of books…

Resigned to carrying Pan, to the embarrassment of all concerned, they reform their ranks and hang pirates, apparently? Of course, they get underway with no further distractions or sidetracking.

Cissy: Is this ice that my tongue will stick to?
DM: Are you gonna try?
Cissy: No. Oh well.
Aliarra: A grapple check says she is.
Cissy: All right, familiar, go lick the wall.

They finally answer the question about boots of skating, to Aiden’s dismay. Down the hallways they head, trying to avoid encounters and rolling Spot checks.

Aliarra: (pointing dramatically) THERE is our enemy!
Hanzo: (leaning so as to be the one she is pointing at)
Aliarra: …I’ve been charmed!
DM: You notice, strangely enough, movement within the walls of ice.
Hanzo: Hidden movement.
Aiden: Looks like we’re not alone?

Racist jokes ensue. They bitterly anticipate an exploding ice wyrm, but recognize it’s probably elements.

Aliarra: “Keep your eyes out.”
Aiden: (miming ripping his eyeballs out) ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaah!’
Aliarra: ‘Regenerate that.’

A long debate ensues over just how far away from the walls they can stay. It isn’t entertaining.

DM: You tromp down the hall.
Aliarra: Down?! Oh no, it’s a slop!
DM: Ooh. Why didn’t I put a slope in here?
Aliarra: Because you wanted us to complete it someday.
DM: This would’ve been a fun slidey-funhouse. Have it circle around, see how long it takes you to figure it out.
Aliarra: If the bad guys were smart, it would just eject us.
DM: I gotta make a note of that for the next game….

The DM calls for more rolls, which are generally returned more poorly than the last.

DM: Unfortunately, though, with Hanzo’s keen eyesight—
Aliarra: Crits!
Hanzo: Yes!
Aliarra: That’s what keen does!
DM: He crits with his eyes!
Aliarra: Captures a fly between his eyelashes, Aeon Flux style.
Hanzo: Eugh. And then dies.
DM: Hanzo lets out a yelp!

Metal Gear alerts sound out, and they are informed by codec not to bother circumventing the fights next time. They do not get on with the ceremony, orders to the contrary.

Pan: How does casting will sitting on your tush work?
DM: You’re about to find out.

Maps and minis ensue, as well as bad Skype calls. Aiden pulls up his spell list, and ponders his option.

Aiden: Should I cast Fire Shield on you?
Aliarra: I’m concerned about what that might do to the environment..
Aiden: I don’t think that actually gives off heat. It protects you against cold, it doesn’t say anything about… Actually I guess it does deal fire damage…
Aliarra: We’re suddenly just flooding.

Pan finally rolls decently and is first! Aliarra is overthrown in the style of Megatron dealing with Starscream, Pan burns his spontaneous feat spell slot for Fly, in order to actually function. Aliarra uses White Raven Tactics on pan, uses her move action for a 30’ move for all from another maneuver, then whacks the visible monster with Divine Surge and shuts its AOOs down. Cissy comes up with an elaborate buff idea that falls down because she didn’t read the spell. Pan fires a Storm Bolt, as is his wont. Hanzo attacks!

Hanzo: They can’t be crit. I know they can’t be crit, because I rolled a 20…

The DM charitably allows Hanzo to expend a charge from his deathstrike bracers to land the crit, and Hanzo rolls a bucket-o’-d6es, at last coming to 61.

Aiden: Has any character come close to Wes’s damage calculations?
Hanzo: Considering I probably wasn’t doing any of them properly, none of them should count any more. If we ever revisit that campaign, the character needs to be completely rebuilt. Unless they’re going to be legacy characters that aren’t actual PCs…
Aliarra: Did he kill it
DM: No. You sink both your kamas into it –
Hanzo: I didn’t roll for both.
DM: Oh. You sink your kama into it.
Hanzo: All right, here we go again -- (rolls a 1, and starts laughing)
Aliarra: Nooooo. The dice giveth and the dice taketh away.
Hanzo: With one deft blow, I cleave my skull!
Aliarra: The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
Hanzo: Press Enter to play again.
DM: Take one point of Strength bleed damage.

Cissy crit-fails a spell attack herself, exhausting herself and becoming unable to cast spells for a round, then rolls a 2 on her next ray of the spell. Hanzo rolls another crit.

DM: You pull the kama from your bicep!
Hanzo: Ninja hardcore!
Cissy: You fling the blood in its eyes.
Hanzo: I bleed on the ice golem!
Aliarra: Warming it!
Hanzo: I’ll melt it with my blood!

Despite fears of an explosion, Hanzo’s damage simply drops the corpse-ice-golem thing, Half the group attempts to drop out of combat, despite the second or third one lurking in the ice wall around them. Aiden deploys some Medicine to determine the corpse has been dead for a very long time. The DM calls for a Smock check, and Mrrshala has warning as a second one emerges and gets an AOO against it.

DM: Cissy! Let’s grapple.
Cissy: Wait, I need percentile dice to I can roll my repelling gauntlets. 20% or better to send him away. I rolled a 27%...
Aliarra: Doesn’t it have to roll a Reflex save?
Aiden: Roll percentage – wait, what?
Aliarra: Yeah, I feel like you’re making something up here.
Cissy: Repelling gauntlets? You have a 20% chance—
Aliarra: Yeah, I think you’re making that up…

Cissy tells a story of the rest of the group making her roll percentile dice even though the item can activate any time someone comes near. The rest of the group is highly skeptical. They look up the rules and determine that the enemy gets a DC 17 Reflex save and the gauntlets work once per day. Cissy gets grappled.

Aliarra: ‘Wait! No one attack it! I want to see how this plays out.’
Hanzo: White Raven Tactics!
Aliarra: On the elemental!

The DM nonetheless allows Cissy to activate her gauntlets in the grapple. They fail, as the golem saves, and Cissy must make a Fortitude save. She shakes off the ominous cold. Aliarra rolls terribly on Ehlorra’s ranged touch attack, but it’s a ranged touch attack, so it hits anyway and entangles the monster.

Aliarra: I could have saved Krixxix by time-hopping it, but eh.
DM: Krixxix?!
Aliarra: Cissy, Krixxix, they’re all the same in my mind.

Someone brings a butter knife to cut a cake, and Aiden grows wroth. Mrrshala batters the monster with her ranseur. Aliarra swings away!

Aliarra: That should hit.
DM: She says, without telling me the AC.
Aliarra: Um… lots? 30? Yes, 30.
DM: That….. hits.

45 damage. Pan cheerfully talks over the DM’s description to reiterate what they already know, but also tries to not Cissy with the blast.

DM: Hmm. DO you get hit by it, Cissy?
Cissy: I don’t know if I get affected by it or not.
DM: How does Storm Bolt work again?
Aliarra: It’s like a lightning bolt.
Pan: It’s Storm Bolt.
Hanzo: It’s like a lightning bolt.
Pan: It’s a short-range lightning bolt that’s free to cast if you’ve prepared a lightning spell.
Hanzo: It’s like a lightning bolt.
Pan: Basically it’s so I can do more stuff than whack stuff with a stick.
Hanzo: It’s like a lightning bolt.

Hanzo somehow manages to do only 1 damage with a shuriken. Rules are hastily consulted, his damage increases, Brutal Throw is discussed, and everyone misses how 5E handled things just that much more. The group gets dramatically distracted by talk of their new characters for this DM’s next game – who is the party face, how stats compares, and so forth.

Hanzo: I’ll just be the statuesque…
DM: You’ll look the part.
Mrrshala: I’m six feet, 240 pounds.
Hanzo: If we have to model underwear to pay for our night at the inn, I can handle that..

Cissy continues to get grappled, as Aliarra hopes for a horrible engulfment. She suffers 6 points of Con damage.

DM: Ehlorra dies.
Aliarra: Damn. That sucks.

Alirra debates having Ehlorra rip Cissy out of the monster’s grip with telekinesis; the DM dubs psionics to be entirely overpowered, even as the monster saves handily against the effect.

Mrrshala: I am also using Elder Mountain Hammer.
DM: All of you are using your polearms as hammers. Weirdos. Strangely effective as it is.

Hanzo complains about receiving 9 texts about lime chips at 4 in the morning, because group texts are a capricious and arbitrary force. Mrrshala’s blow fails to slay the monster, so Aliarra steps up and drops it with a Revitalizing Strike.

Aliarra: I check and see if it’s still initiative.
DM: Strangely enough, no.
Aliarra: “That’s the last of them. Let’s move on.” And now Pan is flying, so he won’t be stumbling around.
Pan: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
DM: My ears are bleeding!
Pan: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
DM: Oh god, not again. Bleeding! I take critical damage. DM is dead.
Aliarra: I guess that’s our win then.
Aiden: It’s a pity we never got to see the end.
Aliarra: This is the ending. It’s just very disappointing.
DM: And everybody’s happy.

Victory is theirs, so on they head, Aiden restores Cissy’s lost Con. Hanzo mimes binding his arm, then pulling the knot tight with his teeth.

Aliarra: I could have tied that for you. Aiden could have done it even better.
Cissy: Hardcore ninja!
DM: And after you finish, you continue marching on. Cissy, give me a Balance check please. You have a +1 because you still have goop on your shoes.

Somehow their travels win up with Aliarra slipping, and a good laugh being had at her expense. Down hallways and around turns they go, till they arrive at an ice staircase! They head up it, at last getting out of the worst of the cold, and follow the path to a great archway. They pause and the DM calls for Listen checks!

Aliarra: Listen?! That’s no good.
DM: Why not?
Aliarra: Because we’re bad at it.
DM: Yay! On the edge of your hearing, Pan, you can hear what sounds like two voices. Bickering.

Intrigued, the party slows down and does their very best, despite everything, to creep closer to listen – then Ehlorra manifests Clairvoyant Sense on the other side of the archway, solving the stealth problem.

DM: Ehlorra sees herself in a very large room, nearly a hundred feet across. To either side of her as she stands in the middle, there are steps leading up. At the other end stands a wall, and a large cluster of crystals. These are kind of on the top of this wall… in this hall, it’s very long. Wall. Crystals on the wall, steps leading up to a shorter area, and where the wall is, steps go further up.

The DM reiterate this description a couple of different times and in different ways till the players finally get it.

DM: Below the crystals stands a man clad in nothing more than a jherkin and breeches. His blackened bone arms are crossed across his chest, as he stares up at the crystals.
Aliarra: Who could THAT be.
Cissy: Sulesdag?
Hanzo: Nooooo! Who was bickering?
Aliarra: There are two figures.
DM: No, there’s one. Moresh seems to be talking to the crystals.
Aliarra: Crystal saying anything back?
Cissy: They’re saying, ‘no, I won’t go out with you!’
DM: “The Dark Lord thinks we need a contingency plan. Things are not going our way. I think it is in our best interests… to obey.”
Aliarra: Ehlorra relates this to the others. Not getting the joke, because she wasn’t there for it.
DM: “I will not abandon the citadel, or our prize, Moresh.” “So be it. I go to lay other plans in motion.”
Cissy: Other plans is his girlfriend. He goes to lay her.
DM: Moresh without another world lies upon a marble slab in front of him, crosses his arms, and lays still.

Cissy concludes Moresh has left that body, so the group charges in to engage. They step in, seeing a shifting mass inside the largest crystal!

DM: You see two red pinpricks of red light swing forth. Their glare seems to intensify. All you hear is, “Yoooooooouuuuuuuuuuu!”
Aliarra: Is it Moresh’s voice or is it that jackass who dealt with Hanzo’s uncle?
Mrrshala: Drek’thelar!
DM: It’s not Drek’thelar, that’s the god. This is Turgoth, the Pure, as he is known.
Aliarra: Yeah! I was right! “Oh, both of you.”
DM: His ‘Yoooou’ rasps and fills the room, booming across it. Below the crystal itself, a huge set of armor pieces itself together in a moment, and raises a giant, shadowy sword.
Aliarra: “You tried this already, remember?”
Hanzo: Put up a pretty damn good fight before…
DM: To the sides on either end, six more pieces of armor begin to form. These are smaller.
Aliarra: “Look at that, he thinks he’s people.”
Cissy: Fucking Skeleton King!
DM: And this will be our next battle.
Aliarra: I take the heart!
DM: No.

The PCs finish the battle in one round and win. Oh. Wait. No. NEXT TIME…