We return to the Hunnerd Gold campaign, the 3d6 world, with Cruroar abruptly remembering why his stats were so horrible. Our heroes are at the end of the chasm they’d passed through, in search of Morden’thal the Unhallowed Creator, the Skull Lord who they might be able to effectively challenge. The group gets in a weird argument.

Cruroar: Did we kill Man-E-Faces yet?
DM: That’s the skull lord – he had three skulls? That’s the one you’re thinking of? That’s the one you’re going after.
Normilan: THE MAD GOD!
Cruroar: Oh, we haven’t killed him yet?
DM: You might also be thinking of the outsider who switched back and forth. He only had two.
Cruroar: That’s still more than one, that’s Man-E.
DM: And really, he had one eye and one mouth per, so… Did he really have Man-E Faces? Or did he have—
Cruroar: Man-E-Mouths.
DM: Face and a half.
Normilan: Well two by two is four, so he has four option for faces.
Brunt: Man-E-Faces had human, goblin, and robot.
DM: They were one per side.
Normilan: He can’t mix ‘em up?
DM: No he cannot.

Cruroar purchases a loot box. So does Giles. The DM properly reintroduces the campaign with flavor text as they rise from their morning rest, describing both the heroes and the desolation they face. Normilan oddly unleashes a fusillade of spells into himself.

Brunt: I could never forget about Babau Slime!
DM: ‘Let’s get him – oh.’ Off to the side, Quirion is practically quivering with eagerness.
Brunt: Quiverin.
Eilnys: “You better behave!”
DM: “Wha—I’m totally behaving! What am I --- why would you – why would you think I’m not behaving?! Have I gone off without you, no! I’m sitting here waiting for you. Very impatiently waiting for you, but nevertheless, I can’t wait to see what the fortress of the undead looks like.”
Tasha: “Absolutely.”
DM: “This is going to be an absolutely amazing firsthand experience, just the sort that have always wanted to have—“
Normilan: Jesus Christ, two and a half years and he hasn’t fucking lost it.
Eilnys: “Lad, if I end up having to cut your head off and stuff your mouth full of garlic I am not gonna be a happy woman.”
Normilan: Wow, she was like his benefactor for a while, now she’s like, “Fuck him!”
Eilnys: No, she’s threatening him for his own good.
DM: “You really think there’s going to be a vampire there?”
Brunt: I like how it all slides off of him, too.
DM: “I mean we’ve got a vampire back at the castle, I think he’s actually a bigger worry that he’ll actually bite me. Which he has not done yet, for the record, I am unbitten and unturned, since I know that was a concern…”
Cruroar: Oh that’s right, there WAS a vampire in my castle!
Tasha: “Qurion. Shut up.”
DM: “Yes, I will absolutely shut up, I am just absolutely going to shut up while I wait for you guys to prepare…”
Brunt: ‘Quirion, Quirion, I want to give you a hug.’
DM: ‘I didn’t think you were the huggy sort—‘ (strangled voice) ‘—you’re not the huggy sort, you’re not the huggy sort!’
Brunt: Just a little good night hug, a hug around your neck.
Normilan: I put Blockade right behind him…
DM: You guys LIKED Quirion.
Brunt: I’m not gonna dungeoncrash him! I don’t want the death of someone’s cohort on my hands.
Tasha: “Quirion, you’re absolutely right. What’s in that undead castle is very interesting. Why don’t you go ahead and find out?”
DM: “Yeah! I am! With you all. That was the deal, Tasha.”
Eilnys: “Good boy. Good lad.”
DM: “It’s not like this is just a vampire, this is an actual fortress, it’s probably gonna be chock FULL of undead.”
Tasha: “Hey, do you have any suggestions on how to get in?”
DM: “Ah-blew-let’s FIND the place, first!”
Tasha: “Well why don’t you use your Dark Mastery ability, your Dark Knowledge, and tell us what you know about this evil castle?”
DM: “I would super love to, but that only applies when we’re in combat and I’m identifying the foes we face. However, if you’d like me to make a religion roll…”
Brunt: Wait, did he just make a meta reference in character?!

Quirion, with a good roll, tells the group much about the stat block and special abilities of a skull lord, in his own inimitable fashion. They follow the map, on Quirion’s suggestion, as he questions why no one else is actually reading the map and why they’re making him do this. The DM bids them assemble their marching order, and they travel forward to see the citadel: a horrible construction of bone! Though a large chasm that used to be a moat surrounds the castle, a bone bridge crosses it. No one likes this, and so Cruroar sends his earth elemental familiar to scout. It comes back with a report of normalcy clear up to the bridge. As the group rogue, Giles scouts, but he can make out no observers in the confusing panoply of bones.

Tasha: Who has rope?
Normilan: Everybody should have rope.
DM: (bitter laughter)

Tasha proposes sending Cruroar across to tie the rope down, giving them a lifeline if the bridge collapses. Some debate erupts, and Tasha promptly gets fed up.

Tasha: All right guys, I’m just gonna go, I’m gonna try it. I’m gonna go across the bridge.
DM: Quirion hangs back. “You’ve got this, Lady Tasha!”
Tasha: “Shut up, Quirion.”
DM: “I don’t know how, Lady Tasha!”
Tasha: “All right, keep talking, Quirion.”
DM: “Yes ma’am!”
Tasha: God damn it!
Normilan: Don’t try reverse psychology on him.
DM: Quirion starts explaining to anyone who will listen his theory on how this bone is held together to form walls.
Normilan: What do I need to counter-argue him?
DM: I dunno, does Quirion actually have ranks in Knowledge(architecture and engineering)?
Normilan: The question is, do I?

Qurion roles dungeoneering and no one can stop him. Tasha returns to her rope-tying plan suddenly. Getting closer, they discover the eastern half of the castle is proper stone and mortar. They also discover cheesecake and argue over it. This takes a remarkably long time. Brunt complains about two-weapon fighting. Cruroar spots rusty portcullises above him in the gatehouse, and in front of him the split between bone and normal stone and wood continues on in. He ties off the rope, and Giles searches for traps but finds none.

DM: You advancing, Brunt?
Tasha: I’ll go if he won’t.
Normilan: He’s pushing people ahead of him.
Brunt: Just tell me what to roll…
DM: As Brunt steps foot on the bridge… he crosses.
Cruroar: He crosses in one step!
DM: Quirion and Tasha follow soon after. Who’s next?
Tasha: I’ll be so mad if we do all this and there’s nothing there.
Normilan: That’s because we always fucking do this, for some reason. We’re always far too cautious.
Brunt: Because when does he NOT take advantage of us for not being too cautious?
Cruroar: Y’all just remember the fucking hallway of fucking traps.
DM: The Test of Faith – I apologized for that on MANY occasions!

They at last all cross, absolutely impatient with the DM, who has rolled for every crossing.

Tasha: Out of curiosity, what were you rolling?
DM: I’m not telling.
Normilan: NOTHING!
Brunt: To see if we were spotted.
Normilan: Nothing. Flavor. We heard the dice and think that something happened! …or the monsters inside.

The DM heaps on the flavor text as they step into the castle proper. The players angrily knock over miniatures for petty reasons, and vision concerns are discussed. Normilan works on trimming a mini base.

Normilan: I’m gonna need you guys to put on some eye protection…
DM: You advance forward. You didn’t have far to go. At the end there are immense double doors.
Brunt: Is it one wood door and one bone door?
DM: No, in fact, give me a Spot check.
Brunt: 15.
DM: You’d describe this as stretched skin. There are a pair of great femurs, massively side, in fact you would say each of these femurs probably competes with you in height, crossed across the doors, sealing them. Where they meet is a slot, looks to be a many-pointed disc. A sun symbol.

They hail Hydra and make comparisons to Resident Evil doors which anger the DM. Brunt questions which door they should go through.

Tasha: Bone door. Bone door! Let’s kick in the bone door! There’s probably more enemies in there, let’s do that!
Brunt: …anyone else?
Tasha: My clericness demands that I vanquish undead!
Brunt: Oh, you’re a vengeance paladin now!
Cruroar: Do you have Detect Undead or Detect Life?
Tasha: I don’t think so. I don’t know what spells I have prepped.
Normilan: You’re a terrible priest. First a terrible ranger, now a terrible priest.
Cruroar: How have we lasted so long?

Quirion moves forward to look at the sun symbol slot, to which the group sort of shrugs and refuses to put a leash on him. They slowly move forward…

DM: No sooner does Eilnys step inside—
Normilan: Ah, all bodies inside, door closes.
DM: Ha ha! The portcullis that is on the inner side slams shut behind her, almost skimming her ankle, with an ominous clash. The noise reverberates through the room.
Brunt: They know we’re here, so there’s no point in sitting in the dark.
Normilan: Skulking about.
DM: You all go for your weapons, and a timely thing is that, for the bones of the wall shift and shudder, and from them emerge ominous figures.
Cruroar: Good think I went on the stone side.

Owlbear skeletons emerge! And a troll I think! Initiative is called for.

Tasha: Can I roll Religion to see…
DM: If you’d rather roll that than roll initiative, sure.
Normilan: …no!
Tasha: Ha! Quirion rolled a 1 on his initiative and he has a negative one to his initiative! Quirion does not act at all.
DM: Quirion does not even realize that danger has occurred.

Quirion gets attacked! It goes poorly for him, and the players angrily blame the DM for playing Quirion like he’s Quirion. Tasha comes under attack!

DM: Tasha! As if the gods of vengeance themselves had blessed my dice rolls, you take 29 points of damage as the owlbear claws and bites the SHIT out of you.
Tasha: Dude….. what?
Normilan: I need to remind you that we’re only 6th level, sir.
DM: The owlbear skeleton is only CR 2, man. Like I said, the gods of vengeance, as if smiling upon poor Kurain in his grave, bestowed me with a 15, a 19, and a 20 on my dice rolls, and then almost max on all my damage rolls.
Cruroar: Then why did you ask for the armor class?
DM: It was before I rolled.
Tasha: Again – ‘it hits!’ ‘You didn’t even roll!’ ‘It doesn’t matter! He crits!’

Tasha hacks with her ice axe, only to discover that undead take no damage from cold and her spell is useless! They have to look up the spell.

DM: It has several drawbacks. It doesn’t gain bonafis –bennis - bleh bleh bleh—
Cruroar: Benefits to strength.
DM: Bonuf – bow – (going silent in bitter frustration)
Brunt: TALK!

Eilnys is up, but she’s run off yet again, so Brunt refreshes himself on dungeoncrashing. He also reveals he has never seen Space Jam, offending… well, Cruroar and the DM, anyway. Eilnys bashes a skeleton, then Brunt Brunts it aggressively for 41 points of damage. Offensive jokes are made! Flavor text ensues! Bad wording ensues!

Brunt: We’re all slowly losing the ability to speak!
Normilan: Wow, no one can talk tonight.
DM: Damn you, cursed cheesecake!
Normilan: Cheesecake of Mumbling!

>Giles whacks the skeleton, and the troll bites Brunt in the face but fails to confirm the crit!

DM: “For Lady Tasha!” “We’ve got this!” Bimmy and Jimmy move into the fray!
Normilan: I can’t believe that’s their real names.
DM: Jesus CHRIST, you guys.
Brunt: They crit!
Normilan: 1 and 1!
Cruroar: They miss!
Brunt: They attack each other!
DM: Between the both of them, they do enough damage to put the owlbear skeleton down!

Normilan casts Bristle on Brunt, and Cruroar fires an Entangling Blast to tie up a skeleton. Quirion retreats and heals himself.

DM: “Things turned on me very quickly!”

Cruroar takes six points of damage, and then the DM starts ruffling through the critical failure deck looking for one that applies to the undead.

DM: No it’s not sneezing – oh Jesus, it does 11 damage to itself.

Another ice axe argument erupts, over whether or not Tasha can ditch the thing in order to pick things up voluntarily. The DM eventually permits it, and she fails to injure a skeleton with a sword. Eilnys slams the skeleton something fierce. The players argue with the DM over whether the miniatures are large or not , even as Brunt annihilates one with a crash.

DM: It looks like you Mortal Kombat Fatalitied it, the way it explodes.
Cruroar: One skull, one ribcage, and 27 shinbones.

A long and bizarre debate over the various Super Saiyan levels erupts, utterly and completely out of nowhere. To be fair, what the hell IS Ultra Super Saiyan anyway… The battle continues in the background, as painfully long-running habits of rolling damage numbers that sounds like to-hit numbers and vice versa begin.

DM: Despite Cruroar’s… Cruroarness, the owlbear manages to land no hits on him whatsoever. He ducks backwards as best he can and the owlbear seems so discomfited by the punishment placed on it that it’s unable to land a blow.
Cruroar: Perhaps maybe it was the entangling thing, restricting its movements…

Tasha puts the skeleton down despite its DR, and the field is theirs.

DM: A cold laugh echoes through the chamber.
Normilan: ‘Muh huh huh the mad god..’
Brunt: Where is it coming from?
Cruroar: The intercom.
DM: Give me a Listen check.
Cruroar: The bone intercom, looks like one of those things in high school…
Brunt: 21.
DM: It’s coming from the balcony above you.

Someone plays Golbez’s theme.

DM: Stop that.
Cruroar: Yes, it’s perfect!
Brunt: Who is there?
DM: You can’t see.
Cruroar: Can I see?
DM: Would you like to fly up?
Cruroar: Sure, why not. It’s not like I’ll get killed.
DM: I’ll assume that was sarcasm, you do not fly up. “Welcome to Castle Aquis, my friends. I assume you are not here for further parley?” You recognize the voice of Morden’thal, the Unhallowed Creator, from your parley with him and the other undead of the kingdom of the Mad God.
Brunt: He’s the Skull Lord. He’s one of the eight Master Robots.
DM: “Ah, you have come to divide and conquer, to slay me, thinking me weak apart from my allies?”
Brunt: That is the reason we chose this first, right? Because he was the weakest?
DM: He was the one Mer’dovich best though you could take.
Cruroar: “We flipped a coin.”
DM: “An eight-sided coin? Really? You could at least say you rolled a die. Or drew lots out of a hat.”
Brunt: ‘Very amusing. But enough talk! Have at you!’
DM: “Please stop yelling ‘have at you!’ from down there. You can’t even reach me.”
Brunt: …Enlarge me.
Normilan: Inuk-chuk!
Brunt: We were thinking the same thing. What are you thinking? Fly up there!
DM: Yes, fly up there, Mr. Walking Sack of Bones For Me to Feast On.
Cruror: He can like draw bones out of people.
Brunt: Ugh. He’s like Bone Magneto.
Normilan: Thankfully we have two very keen guys to sacrifice their bones.
Brunt: Bimmy, get up there.
DM: Boney and Joney…
Tasha: ‘No! Take Quirion, please!’
DM: ‘Lady Tasha! What the fuck, man…’
Tasha: But he was so interested in getting to meet you…
DM: ‘But not lose my bones, I’m USING them!’
Cruroar: “Will we have to defeat the challenge of your castle to meet you in combat?”
DM: “Ah, precisely! I’m glad you’re being such a good sport about this.”
Giles: “Can we skip the hoopla?”
DM: “NO! Not in the least!”

Cruroar baits the villain’s ego by asking about his castle and bone half, eagerly motioning the others to keep working while the skull lord talks. Brunt opens a door, while Quirion does some healing, and Cruroar and the skull lord banter about castle construction for a bit, till the skull lord retreats. The DM sets up the next room, while the group ramblingly quotes Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. Out of nowhere, he produces a neat giant chest, to the amazement and approbation of the group. Giles slinks in, and immediately three crystals light up and fire magic missiles into him.

Tasha: Quirion, any ways we can disengage those traps from over here?
Brunt: Threepio, get over here.
DM: “Let me roll Dungeoneering and maybe I can tell you!”
Brunt: I love how he’s good old Fourth Wall Quirion now.
DM: “Well that chest sure looks suspicious! Look, there’s a thing in there that looks like the thing over there!”
Cruroar: Thank you, Quirion. You’ve told us what we already knew.
Normilan: I look at the thing he was pointing at the door, what is he pointing at?
DM: You’re in terrible position to see.
Normilan: He said the thing over here, right? I can’t – what do you mean I can’t – oh, I’m all the way back.

They see an emblem in the crystalline chest, looking like the inset on the door! Giles scrambles out of the room. Brunt is inexplicably promoted to Froot Brute, as he uses his many feats and powers to roar in and dungeoncrash the shit out of that chest.

DM: You charge forward and just dive onto it, just slamming into it with your entire weight. The crystal chest bursts and the three emblems on the wall fade into darkness,
Normilan: Hey, well done.
DM: Though as you pick yourself up, you realize you’ve done a fair amount of damage to the emblem as well. It is cracked in half, dangling by just the slimmest amount of material. Whether or not it will work in this condition is anyone’s guess.
Eilnys: Anyone got a Mending spell?
Brunt: I’d think an artificer would have something to that effect.
DM: If only we had an artificer.
Brunt: Yeah.
Cruroar: A cleric has mending as a 0th level spell, if she took it.
Tasha: Probably not. I took Light, Create Water, Purify Food…
DM: Yeah, this has been the best adventure ever, Tasha hasn’t tried to Create Water on something for some stupidass purpose. Unlike every other single campaign.

Tasha plans to stick people’s heads in fishbowls and then create water, They try to get Quirion to help; he promptly snaps it in half the whole way.

Cruroar: Why do you keep bringing him in that--!?
Brunt: I did it.
DM: “It was already broken—“
Cruroar: I DON’T CARE!

Quirion begs someone to check for traps; Eilnys is the only one who will help. She detects no traps on the sigil, and so Quirion moves up and laboriously wedges the emblem with much prodding, levering with bone, and gesticulating. Then he pulls it back out, turns it around, and stuffs it back in. The bones rise from the door, and the door promptly attacks Quirion, who rolls away in panic.

Giles: Can I check the door?
Brunt: Yes. Come, thief.
Tasha: Wait a minute. He’s a thief and everyone loves him. I’m a thief and everyone says, ‘Die, motherfucker!’
Normilan: Giles is lovable.
Brunt: He does his job without trying to murder people.
Cruroar: Let me just reassure you. We don’t care what you play, we hate it no matter what it is.

Shunning the zombie door, they open the other side door in the hallway, and inside spot a great clattering, clanking pillar of bone, and Giles spots traps in strange patterns on the floor. A Knowledge(arcana) roll tells them that the Alarm spell is a good way to trigger magical traps, and with no good way to take down the bone pillar, Cruroar says the zombie door from range.

Tasha: I’m gonna cast Create Water in there. There are microorganisms that are living in the water—
Cruroar: NO! IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!
DM: Your god strips you of the power to cast that spell. “You haven’t earned this,” the god of the Pack says.

With the hour late and a fight ahead, the DM ends the game here, with the THRONE ROOM at their next battle!