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Lucian: Is this a villain or is this a good guy?
DM: That’s – that’s Keyvarin Lassarin.
Eilnys: He’s bad.
Normilan: He’s a bad guy.
DM: But he’s not bad guy.
Lucian: Okay, look, that’s Mer’dovich, right?
DM: WHAT?!
Normilan: No.
Lucian: Then who’s the flying—
Cruroar: That’s ME!
Normilan: Yeah, a warlock, who can fly. Where the hell have you BEEN these past how many sessions?!
Lucian: What I was at is there’s seven of us, and there’s only six characters.
DM: I count six of you.
Cruroar: There’s six of us.
Lucian: (going around the table) One, two, three, four, five—
DM: Please don’t count the DM.
Lucian: …all right.
DM: I am not on your side.
The DM indicates Quirion has run for cover, and with that, everyone is placed and everything is ready. He turns to Brunt.
DM: Okay, Brunt, how are you opening us up? You’ve decided to give Marlae the good Brunting. And you know, not the GOOD Brunting, but the good BRUNTING.
A huge argument erupts between the DM and Eilnys as to precise directions for a PHB. Brunt deals a crapton of damage thanks to a crit, and then initiative is rolled. Giles takes a five-foot shuffle as the DM bemoans Marlae’s Armor of Heavy Fortification failed its 75% chance to negate Brunt’s crit. Giles threatens but does not confirm a crit on Keyvarin Lassarin, Lucian scoots over and starts wailing on Lassarin, not too effectually. The group is already frustrated as can be over Keyvarin’s AC as he activates his three artifacts, which promptly vanish.
DM: A great shroud seems to surround you all, radiating from his position. Like countless tiny microfibers nipping at your skin.
Lucian: Nanomachines.
DM: You all take 8 points of negative energy damage,
Cruroar: There’s not a person here who’d miss me. If a person here misses me, they should instantly die and kill themselves.
DM: You also see these same abrasions begin to scrape across the skin of his allies as well, Brosk and Marlae, as they too take damage.
Normilan: What a cunt!
DM: He said he didn’t know how it worked!
Normilan: He’s still a cunt. My opinion has not changed.
Cruroar: I do love the idea of him acquiring the four items, and being like, “Immortality is mine!” And the items are like, “No no no, not immortality, you get to be the items forever,” and he gets absorbed.
The damage inflicted becomes healing for Keyvarin, and then Eilnys goes to hack at Marlae. She blurs into absurd motion and reappears, unsteady, some distance away. Brunt immediately starts failing saves by his own fiat. The DM rolls terribly on an attack power.
DM: Abruptly, microscopic portions of you are teleported into the void. You take take thirty-poor – thirty poor. You take thirty-poor – I said it again. THIRTY FOUR points of damage.
Normilan hastes the team and Gurk steps into the fray. Brosk, up next, runs the hell away while Gurk whacks Normilan. Another minotaur goes to whack Brunt but ain’t hitting nothing.
Brunt: Just finish me off this round, I can’t be surviving more than one round of combat.
Minotaurs continue to pile into the battle but are mostly ineffective. Brunt, having survived to a new round, attempts to restore the balance of power by suiciding, but instead strikes and dislocates a minotaur, then crits it, then kills it.
DM: And you chop him down.
Brunt: A minotaur?!
DM: Yes.
Brunt: Sorry, these minis them look so goddamn imposing!
DM: And you recall these guys gave you a lot of trouble… FIVE LEVELS AGO.
Brunt: The minis make it look like… five late-game Final Fantasy bosses.
3.5 warlocks are confused with 5E warlocks, to Cruroar’s anger. Giles tumbles around and buzzsaw-butchers a minotaur, followed by Lucian finishing it off and moving on to the next one. He stumbles straight into the rules for dual-wielding.
Brunt: Everything is weighted against the player.
DM: Keyvarin locks eyes with Normilan, looking sad. “I beg of you to surrender.”
Lucian: “Why, we’ve been hacking down your minotaurs…”
Brunt: They’re nothing to him. They’re Stormtroopers to him.
Lucian: Dual-wielding is pointless!
Normilan: I just look at him sadly and shake my head.
Brunt: (poorly singing One-Winged Angel) Lassarin!
DM: The moment he draws this sword it’s as if a pall has been cast on the battlefield. As if something sinister and dark has emerged. And yet strangely enough it looking nothing more than a fine, well-made sword. Keyvarin looks down at it, and then addresses it. “Do not kill.”
Brunt: ‘Return me to the Count of Seacrest!’ Have Lassarin make his Will save.
DM: ‘Sorry, gotta go!’ (miming the villain running off)
Normilan takes 19 unholy and 45 physical, which ought to kill him but instead takes him down precisely to 0.
Brunt: It’s fudging its own attack rolls somehow to not put you at -15 or whatever.
DM: The sword listens to its master.
Cruroar angrily demands that they handle the real threat: the well. They plan to knock Keyvarin into the well, triggering the Sonic drawing music. Terrible political jokes ensue. Eilnys lays into Muar.
Eilnys: Okay, since I critted Muar, I did 81 points of damage.
Cruroar: SWEET JESUS!
Brunt: 80 points are warded away.
DM: You cut through him…
Eilnys: This is a raging totem rager barbarian.
DM: You don’t know what happened. One moment Eilnys was there, the next she let out a roar, and the third there was nothing where Muar stood except a scattering of blood and a limb lying 20 feet away. You’re pretty certain your minds blanked out that moment because it was so traumatic and you can’t process it.
Brunt: When did Eilnys get VATS?
Normilan: If I polymorph and get the hit points back from a night’s rest, would that put my hit points up?
Marlae does something at Eilnys. She immediately vanishes.
DM: Gurk is up! (moving Gurk’s miniature right off the map)
Lucian: ‘Nope nope nope nope!’
DM: He got what he wanted out of this…
Brunt: He moonwalked in, didn’t even turn around.
Normilan rolls some Knowledge(arcana) and understands something of what is happening: the artifacts, as a part of a set, are bound intrinsically to the Negative Energy Plane. The cloak shrouds, the crown does the energy drain attack, and the sphere gives him SR. The fourth artifact will make the wielder an avatar of negative energy.
Brunt: Couldn’t he have just been a fucking lich?! Wouldn’t that be easier than all the fucking trouble he went to?!
DM: He’s not a spellcaster.
Brunt: Couldn’t he have just cross-classed?!
Cruroar: That sounds like the avatar of emo people. He’s gonna transform and come back out with black hair. ‘I don’t care about anything.’
Another minotaur flees. An old, old quest in their journal completes. Brunt attacks and dislocates Marlae. Lucian continues to willfully misinterpret the rules to attempt to get a free-action 60’ teleport. Cruroar attempts to dispel the artifacts and is shockingly unsuccessful, though he also rolls terribly at dispelling two other effects on Keyvarin.
DM: You were not going to dispel the artifacts, their caster level is much too high. But the other two effects you had a chance at, and I’m so glad you didn’t.
Brunt: Why are you glad?
Normilan: Because he’s the DM.
DM: Weird things would have happened.
Giles rolls a miss, and Lucian apparently finishes off Normilan? Arguments about Rapid Shot and Manyshot emerge. He finally puts many arrows into Marlae, whittling away at her temporary hit points.
DM: “I beg of you to surrender.”
Cruroar: Are you gonna surrender?
Lucian: …no…?
Cruroar: No one will think ill of you.
Lucian: Wait, wait, no, let me think.
He finally elects not to and takes 68 damage, dropping him to 0. Everyone is still wondering where Eilnys is, as she fails a Wisdom saving throw. Marlae deals 7 slashing and 12 Constitution damage to Brunt, putting him in a bad way. He’s still up, though, and lunges into a domino rush to topple people over. Marlae drops, Arkapatang doesn’t! He goes to town on Giles, dealing three hits.
Normilan: Arkapatang was the secret badass of this entire setting.
DM: You take… 5, 7, and 5 damage again, and you take 3 negative levels.
Cruroar: (choking)
Eilnys: Holy shit!
DM: He’s not a totem rager. He’s a totemist soul eater.
Eilnys: Oh god.
Lucian: He’s a vampire monk, is what he is. Just in a different form.
Cruroar dispels Vigor and Share Pain off of Marlae. The group keeps going to town on Arkapatang, who’d done nothing to them!
Brunt: I’m pretty much a noncombatant. Next time someone looks at me funny, I’m dead. Especially if he’s the one who goes, ‘Oh, what’s going on over there… Kill this time.’ He turns into fucking Yondu’s arrow.
Giles: Is there an escape route?
Normilan: It’s called a million flights of stairs.
Brunt: WHERE ARE THE FUCKING DWARVES?!
Normilan: It’s only been like 18 seconds.
DM: You actually haven’t done anything hugely pyrotechnic.
Brunt: Well Lassarin is making the air come alive with the flesh of downed enemies!
Eilnys: The only think that’s been relatively cinematic was ME!
DM: Yeah, maybe somewhere on the other side of the bridge a dwarf is looking up in horror at the minotaur leg impaled on the horn of his helmet and going, “WHAT THE--?!”
Giles contemplates retreat; Normilan contemplates sending a Message to a dwarf before realizing that would take him out. Lucian tries to argue that rolling away is not a strenuous action, but resorts to just lying there. The DM moves Keyvarin’s mini.
Cruroar: Oh no!
DM: “I beg of you to surrender.”
Brunt: “I beg of you to set aside your evil ways.”
DM: “WHAT EVIL WAYS?! You keep accusing me of this! I only wish immortality! I am TRYING not to kill you! And yet I am the evil one?!”
Brunt: That’s more than six seconds, he’s used up his action.
DM: Considering how much time you guys take to think about what you’re going to do.
Brunt: Hey, I was just trying to get a laugh, not prove a point. Don’t – hey! Stop rolling!
Keyvarin actually MISSES by virtue of rolling a 2 and spending too much on Power Attack. Normilan goes for the hydra polymorph! Eilnys reappears and Cruroar produces a wand to heal. Brunt goes for an attack but is foiled by Keyvarin’s concealment, then bounces him into Arkapatang.
DM: There’s a pile of people in this square! This is very unlikely.
Brunt: And Arkapatang too?!
DM: Yes, he’s down too.
Brunt: YES! I did something besides be taken out of combat!
Giles tries to get help from the dwarves, only to realize he’d gone the wrong way. Eilnys leaps into the fray, swinging madly, zinging an AOO off of Keyvarin’s concealment.
DM: Brunt, you’re down. He cracks the hilt of his sword against your temple, then turns to you. “I beg of you to surrender.”
Eilnys: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
Normilan unloads his hydra-head attacks into Marlae, forcing her Contingency to teleport her to safely, then bites Arkapatang with what’s left. Cruroar also lays into Arkapatang. Giles runs around and also stabs him.
Giles: 24 to hit?
DM: Yeah. That hits.
Cruroar: He sounds so disappointed!
Giles: I think this dude is gonna get a pretty big walloping. 34 damage.
DM: Yeah, you’re fucking up Arkapatang but good.
Brunt: How does he have all this hit—he’s a grimlock!
DM: With class levels!
Brunt: (muttering, in an extremely bitter and mocking tone) ‘Class levels.’
Cruroar: Stop being salty! This isn’t a Smash tournament!
Keyvarin drops Eilnys and Giles, and then Normilan and Cruroar rip Arkapatang into chunks. ¬The elf is horrified!
DM: “Consider which of us has killed more this day!”
Normilan: “I think it’s still you.”
Eilnys: Him!
Brunt: “You!” This day… no, it’s still you.
DM: “If you continue this fight, I’ll be forced to slay all of these dwarves as well! Please, just surrender, so we can get out of here!”
Keyvarin vows to not kill them, only send them away, while Cruroar stalls for time to try to get rescued by dwarves.
Lucian: See, if Quirion was here, he’d just drop Darkway on top of him.
DM: I considered having him do that in the middle of the battle just to spite you, honestly.
Eilnys: You forget, this is his “reward” for us. We’ve given him things he wants to further his end. If he killed us, he’d feel bad, because we helped him.
Brunt: He’d feel bad.
Eilnys: It’d hurt his feefees to kill us.
Obviously, Keyvarin does not back down and spare them all. Cruroar persists in defying him, so he steps forward and takes a swing.
Cruroar: “If you miss, if I somehow dodge you, you agree to give it up.”
DM: “Fair enough.”
Cruroar: If he rolled a 1, it would be great.
DM: 44 physical—
Cruroar: Don’t say the numbers!
Brunt: And you lose 10 levels.
Cruroar: What?
Cruroar starts a bonfire for the character sheets. THE END. Till next time.
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