(no subject)

[dragonoflife]

Twenty years later! After investigating the mysterious ham, and maybe some other some random crap, the PCs have returned to the Mage’s College to report. Bex, however, had split from the party to go to the black market.

Bex: And I failed.
DM: Not yet, you haven’t even gone there.
Bex: Oh. The last time I did…
Ellerian: You’re thinking of when you went in and tried to fool the guy in the prison cell. Which failed.
DM: But as we sit here, Bex peels off from the group. The rest of you stand there.
Ellerian: One of my specialties.
C: Standing there awkward—wait a minute. No it’s not!
DM: Regally.
C: Yes.
Ellerian: What, are you guys gonna give me some credit for once? That seems unlikely.
DM: The disembodied voice in the air gives you credit.
C: C uncharacteristically bows respectively for NO REASON to Ellerian,
DM: You make small talk in the streets.
C: ‘Bex is one Small creature.’

Silence.

C: ‘This concludes the small talk.’

They make crude short jokes as they wander into the halfling quarters and are slain by hurled rocks. Then they are approached by a Skelrdicite!.

DM: This one is not so recognizable. Looks like just an acolyte of Skeldric.
C: Oh, it’s not…
DM: It’s nobody.
Ellerian: We ignore him and continue on.
DM: ‘Come on, guys…’
Ellerian: ‘Fuck you, dude!’
DM: He comes up, heavy with breath. (panting) “I’m glad I found you. The Lord Commander wishes to see you as soon as possible.”
Nobix: “Who sent you?”

The group cracks up.

DM: He’s been running hard and fast in full plate, give him a break.
Erik: After handing him a Kit-Kat bar, we head over immediately.
Sable: ‘Quick, recite the multiplication table!’

Meanwhile, Bex makes his way to the black market, briefly running afoul of Solomon Grundy. The market is ominously still, with people deliberately not looking at Bex. The DM calls for a Perception check.

Nobix: 14!
DM: You’re not there! Your keen ears – earholes? I’unno. Pick up the ever so slightest sound behind you.
Ellerian: ‘I feel a vibration in my cloaca.’
Morzan: God damn it, Ellerian.
Bex: Okay. Um. I could do an Acrobat away…
DM: It’s behind you. You can flip forward if you like.
Ellerian: Throw down a smoke bomb! You’re a ninja! Ninja vanish! Do that thing like people do with dogs, where you hold up a blanket and run away from behind it and the dog doesn’t know what you’re doing…
Bex: I’m gonna…

A long pause.

Ellerian: Think too long about it and get killed?
Bex: Yeah!

Bex flips away, whipping out his sickle. Several cloaked and hooded individuals are filling the alleyway. More Perception checks!

Erik: Mistakenly walked into the market during Master Race Day.

A pause.

Sable: During what day?!
DM: Master Race Day.
Bex: Masturbation Day.
Sable: Oh no…
Ellerian: Master Racertion day.
DM: Silence prevails in the market. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice some of the vendors have taken a kneeling position.
Bex: I guess I should do the same?
Ellerian: When in Rome…
C: Go to Neiman-Marcus.
DM: A voice directly behind you says, ‘Now, now. There’s no need for that.’
Bex: “My apologies.” I stand up.
DM: You stand up and turn around. Ahead of you, especially with your small stature, is a very tall man, garbed in very rich, finely embossed leathers, the edges of which are capped with steel. His leather cowl is plain, a stark contrast to the rest of his outfit. But most odd it is his face. No matter how hard you try to remember features, you see them, but every time you try to recall them your mind comes up blank.
Ellerian: Your Intelligence is too low.

M.B. starts out by demonstrating how much he knows about Bex, naming his clan and all, and noting this is the second time he’s come to the black market. He offers to share information!

DM: “Even though my people are not… up and up with the law, it is still our city. I want to see it flourish. So any problems I can help solve will be most… fortuitous for both of us.”

M.B. promptly exposits: the assassins are freelance, less skilled than traditional assassins and relying on poison to make up for the lack of skill. This means there is either one very rich person or several patrons backing them. Also, they have doppelgangers!

DM: “Skinflint. Skinflint may be a problem. He’s come to town a few months back, after being ejected from the city years ago. He relocated to a smaller province, somehow gained power and came back north. Now he sits at the king’s side. It’s very troubling. He might be, not the key source of this but definitely a part of it. An important part, I think, as well. But if he’s at the king’s side caution must be taken. Is there anything you wish to know from me that I listed?”
Ellerian: ‘Where do you keep your valuables?’
Bex: Um, out of character it’s been three months, I don’t remember anything,

Bex drops the Orsovo name into M.B.’s ear, who confirms that troubles do seem to be coming from that province. Ellerian insists they investigate Faldoun.

Ellerian: The strangeness that seems to be surrounding him could become relevant to the story.
DM: What strangeness??
Ellerian: His mysterious leaving the house!
DM: This is old news!
Ellerian: Then why did it come up?! There’s got to be a reason!

M.B. dismisses any suspicions of Faldoun, which seems to fuel Ellerian’s suspicions even more. Brunt dubs him ‘Inspector LeStrahd von Zarovich.’ With that, M.B. leaves and the alley returns to some scrap of normalcy.

Bex: I feel like I should try to trust him a little bit…
C: Out of character, M.B.’s intentions are… net positive.
Ellerian: Either that or he’s playing the real long game, and he’s gonna be the villain of Forty Years After.
C: His business interests hinge on there being a city and a civilization for him to grift off of, so he’s not gonna do anything against that.
Bex: I don’t feel the need to follow him or anything.
Ellerian: Good.
C: That’s very good.
Ellerian: ‘We have a doppelganger to replace you with,’ he says.
Bex: They’re missing, he says.
Ellerian: That’s exactly what a doppelganger would say.
Bex: It’s true.
C: Quick, ask him something only Bex would know.

A very long pause.

C: ‘What is your last name?’
Ellerian: ‘List the stupid things you have licked.’
Bex: I guess I’ll leave the alley.
DM: Ha! Sucker! Ambush!

They disabuse Erik of the idea that they’re in the dwarven kingdom. Now on target, Erik proposes they go talk to what’s-his-name.

DM: Faldoun! And I will say, just as a freebie, don’t worry about him.
Ellerian: Yeah, he’s already a lost cause.
Erik: All you do is just make it worse for him! He’s like, ‘He’s trying to convince me! I’m so close!’
DM: I’m just saying, there’s lots of plot points, I don’t want you getting that one mixed up. That was just background.
Erik: There’s going to be a scene where Ellerian just kills Faldoun, somehow pulls it off. ‘I do 322 points of damage to Faldoun’s back, is he still alive?’
Ellerian: ‘I’ve saved us all.’

They head back to the barracks, and thus Faldoun’s office. Morzan is moved forward to knock. They pull the pins out of the door and blow on it.

DM: Towering above his small desk—
C: Ha! He’s got kids’ furniture!
DM: He’s just a very big man!
Ellerian: It’s like when a parent goes in for parent-teacher night in preschool, they’re crammed in the desk…

Extremely long silence. They roll initiative. Then they tell Faldoun about the ham, and other less-important details. Again, they find themselves puzzled over what the enemy wants with the plans – to build their own? To explode the existing one? But Faldoun fixes on Skinflint.

Ellerian: All of our villains have nouns for names.
C: ‘Meat’ is not a villain.
Ellerian: He was so!
C: Oh yes he was! I was thinking a wall of meat. But we did have a Meat villains.
DM: “He counsels the king himself.”
C: Meat counsels the kingdom?
Ellerian: No, Skinflint!
C: (not sorry) Sorry…
Ellerian: A real great kingdom there. ‘Oh, your name is Skinflint, that’s sure a trustworthy name.’
DM: Roll Knowledge(nobility).
Ellerian: Ha, no—oh, I do have that. Natural 1, I don’t know SHIT. Go and meet my treasurer, Flintheart Glomgold, to discuss your payment. Lousy human nobles, who gives a shit.
Erik: 27.
DM: Skinflint’s an old, old name from the Orsovan province. Kinda fallen from grace, but the province is one known for mining and stonework. So one that had flint for skin means that they are bristly, almost jagged, which makes them good diplomats. Or barkers. It’s actually a positive term.
Ellerian: The Orsovans, again. So what is Faldoun’s relationship with this Skinflint…
DM: “I don’t have a relationship with him.”
C: Skinflint Goldglom.
Erik: I swear to god, I keep thinking he’s saying ‘skin flute’ and it’s disgusting.
Ellerian: No! Oh God no. Just – no.

The king’s health has also been failing, but this began before Skinflint showed up. Faldoun offers them the chance to handle some things and hands them a scroll case. It exploded in glitter. Inside are security details to be taken to the temporary temple of Kalroth.

Ellerian: Maybe I’ve been going about this the whole wrong way. Maybe this Faldoun is the doppelganger, ‘cuz we know there’s some out there.
Erik: I’m ready for the next werewolf. As we know, werewolves are deathly afraid of crocodiles.
Ellerian: At the end of the combat, the alligator had been banished back to its own world and the crocodile was caught in a Time Stop.
Morzan: See you later, alligator.
Ellerian: After while, crocodile.
Erik: I need numbers to put up. ‘1’.
Ellerian: You only have a 1, you don’t need other numbers.

One of the cultists has also started talking, and they can also go check that out in turn. But they elect to deliver the plans first, which is easy because the city is perfectly oriented on a north-south axis, and vampire monks will never die. They head out of the barracks and immediately stumble over Bex, who the DM has now remembered exists.

Bex: I’m trying to read my handwriting… this is harder than I thought it would be. Um. I’m just gonna say I know everything and I told them.
DM: Okay. Bex shares the information he gathered.
Ellerian: He knows EVERYTHING.
C: What does the Night King want?

Ellerian plans to knock everyone they meet out to determine if they’re doppelgangers, and masters the Elven Nerve Pinch for that reason. Off they head to the temporary temple of Kalroth, to meet with Daegon Siameseovitch.

Ellerian: Ah, the father, who so long ago left the ovens on.
DM: How was that your adventure?! Shut up. Out of character, it was…

Surprisingly, he’s now the head of the Kalrothian Order. This is kind of weird.

DM: I don’t know why I’m telling you this, you guys wouldn’t know this. He used to be a clerk, a number-cruncher.
C: Oh, a bean-counting Banglasharan, was it?
Sable: Sable can probably fill them in.
DM: I forgot there was a family member here.
Ellerian: After you specifically put in this relationship to said family member.
Sable: Mom likes to talk about her old tourism time. She mentioned this Skinflint character once or twice, he was some jerk who my dad used to work for, and when the king found out what a jerk he was, he kicked him out of the city.
C: ‘Go away, jerk.’
DM: ‘Begone…. Jerk.’
C: ‘I name thee jerk.’
DM: ‘I strip thee of Skinflint, and name thee JERK!’
Ellerian: ‘Please forgive me?’ ‘All right. Now to drink the celebratory poison.’
DM: ‘Oh no.’ King Faldric’s an idiot.
Ellerian: He’s putting on his years, isn’t he?
DM: Yeah, but those numbers go up!
Ellerian: That’s why, as you get older, you can see and hear better.
DM: Maybe dementia’s settling in.
Ellerian: He dealt with too many zany hijinx and mentally checked out.
Erik: ‘Hey guys, a letter just came back, there’s a lot of lead in the city’s water…’
Ellerian: It extra-fortifies the bones, come on.
DM: And flavor, don’t forget the flavor.

They knocked down the temple door, which was weight-bearing, and thus cause the temple to collapse. Then they knock. Apparently by saying ‘bang bang’.

Ellerian: All right, I’m getting pissed off. This site’s getting Notre Damed.

Only the DM laughs.

Ellerian: What? Too soon?

The DM laughs all the harder. Who are the bad people here? At last the door is unlocked and opened, and an acolyte peers out at them.

Morzan: “We’re here to see… the elder Siameseovich.”
Ellerian: Duncan.
DM: Stop it!
Ellerian: We hear his donuts are great. That’s why he worked at a bakery.
C: We’ve come to confront Daegon Siameseovich.
DM: Stop calling him Daegon.
C: Duergar Siamesovich.
Morzan: Dingleberry Siamesovich.
Ellerian: Deacon Siamesovich. Maybe that’s his rank.
DM: Deacon Dagon? Man. That’d be a mouthful.
Ellerian: We can call him Double-D.
C: Dodgeball Siamesovich.

In they head, greeted by a statue of Kalroth holding a sun, a moon, and no baby. They then find Buddy Kalroth and Raptor Kalroth. C nearly asphyxiates. Erik cuts a pie poorly.

DM: I think you cut everything BUT the graham cracker crust.
Erik: Pretty much!
Ellerian: For all our discussion about Jesus, it turns out Erik was the anti-crust.
Nobix: Damn it!
DM: Oh wow. You got NOBIX. That’s impressive.

Dagon finally shows up, leading to a long discussion about what, precisely, Banglasharans look like. Sable is apparently in shock as she gets a hug! C finds a picture of a whip on his phone.

Ellerian: You should now know the exact mass of your phone.
C: The mass?
Ellerian: Yeah.
C: No. Yeah. I guess I do. I do. No further explanation is required.
DM: He’s gonna say it anyway. That’s not going to deter him. Just let it happen.
Ellerian: Where there’s a whip, there’s a weigh.

C’s reaction makes Ellerian break down into giggles.

Morzan: “I have the plans for the church of Skeldric.”
DM: “Ah yes. Faldoun said he was going to come by with them, but I guess the poor man is busy.”
Morzan: “Yes, sir. I hope I’ll serve in his stead.”
DM: “Absolutely, no doubt. I like Faldoun. A man of very few words. None of this stuffy, diplomatic talk like a lot of church heads have to talk with. Anyway, come. Come to the back room.”
Ellerian: I should learn to speak Banglasharan at some point.
Morzan: Meow meow, meow.
DM: There’s a rumor that they’re distantly related to elves.
Ellerian: Yeah, well, everybody hears some some slander in their time.

The rest of the group casts EXTREMELY judgmental looks at Ellerian for quite a long time.

Ellerian: I only got two settings: roleplay and tell puns! Which one do you want?!
Nobix: Both at the same time.
C: No. No!
Ellerian: I’m playing the wrong character for that.

They make some small talk as they get settled. The plans are very boring, in fact, though this brings to light that the cannon demonstration has been canceled. Ellerian makes so many bad puns they attempt to force him to eat more pie as punishment.

DM: Eat it like the duck you are!

A private demonstration is planned instead, and player logic leads them to contemplate the presence of ham in a wall near the fired cannon.

Ellerian: Is its ammunition pigs?
DM: You saw the steel ball.
Ellerian: Is its wadding pigs?

The entire group gets a fit of giggles over this, none worse than Ellerian.

Ellerian: I know I shouldn’t laugh at my own joke, but ‘wadding’ is a funny word…
Nobix: Stupid question. We saw ham, we saw cannon, I don’t know if there’s any relation between the two.
DM: Maybe not directly, no.
Nobix: Did we ever find what it shot?
DM: It shot the wall, as far as you can tell.
Nobix: I’m talking about the cannonball itself.
DM: Yeah, you saw the cannonballs laying around.
Bex: Is it worth a Perception check?
DM: You’re just recalling what you’ve seen.
Ellerian: Well, if nothing particularly egregious stands out about these plans… you know, like the part where Skinflint passes behind the king with a knife…
DM: No, no. Faldoun did not put that in there.
Ellerian: So he’s working with Skinflint, is what I’m hearing.
DM: Why are you like this?
Morzan: Why are you this way?!

Bex, for some reason, emphasizes that he’s Chaotic Neutral. This doesn’t worry anyone. A weird diversion on if Banglasharans have pads on their hands occurs, or if it’s all fur, or what. This lasts shockingly long, even for this group. Dagon asks them to look after his granddaughter, then bids Sable a fond farewell. They head to the Healing Church of Denerim. It gets weird.

C: This temple brought to you by Squarespace!
Ellerian: We’ve developed bunions? That’s a-paul-ing!
Erik: Just reduce his experience, he’ll stop.
DM: No he won’t. He’ll intensify it so I give him the experience back. Then he won’t scale it back, he’ll lie. Filthy liar.
Ellerian: I told you, I can’t help it. Once they come into my head, I have to get them out. And they come into my head a lot.

All are welcome in the Healing Church of Denerim except the fatties, so they enter. On the way end, they see a shrine to the outline of a hand.

DM: “Here was the Healing Church of Denerim christened by Aiden Weith.”
C: Oh no.
Erik: It’s a hand! Not a GROPING hand.
Ellerian: He came up with a new motto: ‘Give me BOOBY!’

They inexplicably sign up for a group marriage, then nudge Morzan forward to lend themselves an air of credibility and get them access to the cultist who’s talking. Only one of them is speaking, it seems.

DM: You pass by several rooms, people moaning in pain inside, but nothing out of the ordinary.
C: Uh, okay. You had me picturing this hospital taking a dark turn.
Ellerian: They’re not good at their jobs.
DM: ‘We can’t heal ANYBODY!’
C: They don’t have prolonged stays in a magic temple, do they?
Ellerian: ‘’Inflict’ means heal, right? Inflict Light Wounds!’
C: Well, that means I can come here for services, but anyone else…
Ellerian: That’s where they got the idea, you set a bad example.
DM: The stays are not long, but they have to wait before it can be administered.
C: Spell slots.
Ellerian: They don’t have anesthesia, that’s the problem. Can’t flush someone through with morphine while they’re waiting for their spell slot to open up. There’s a niche market here…
C: Even in D&D hospitals are a business.
Ellerian: (much too innocently) I’ll catch up with you guys.
DM: Alignment shift! Now!
Erik: Easy there, Dr. Kevorkian. He’s there passing out pamphlets. ‘Have I told you about suicide?’
C: I’m the vampire here, damn it.
DM: Far into the back you are led, to an area simply labeled as ‘Sanitarium’.
C: Leave me be.

In they go, apparently smothering people because there are no attendants?

DM: As you go in, of course there are orderlies, as well as—
C: Oily Pringles Orderlies. Or Orderly Pringles Men. God no!
Ellerian: They’re putting medical aprons over their oiled chest, it immediately soaks though…

C and Ellerian laugh themselves to tears and the DM specifically describes the orderlies as normal. Steeling themselves, they go through the door to the cultists’ room. Most of them are blanked-face, but one is standing and verbal and muttering to himself. As soon as they file in, he rises and points to them.

DM: “He comes! He comes! Oh, the prophet, he comes! That which was dead is a fool. He saw the flaw, he hid away! Now he returns. The lord of voices leads the way. Gaping maws of darkness open. A gateway into purity. He comes to usher it this way! The dark lord’s prison will shatter! He will return stronger than ever before. Rejoice! Rejoice! The prophet shall lead the way. All we can do, all we can do… is… obey!” His eyes roll up into the back of his head, and he falls.
C: Wait. I was gonna ask him to write that all down. See if the written one is the same.
DM: As one, all the other ones rise to their feet, and as one, they simply stand there and say, “We obey. We obey. We obey.” Over and over.

The players immediately correlate this speech to Moresh and Drek’thelar. Bex, who missed most of the previous campaign, needs to be caught up.

Bex: What is he the god of?
Ellerian: Evil. Just evil in general.
Erik: He ensures your popcorn is burned! God of petty evil.
C: God of petty evil and taxidermy.
Ellerian: Damn you, Drek’thelar! You stole my runabout!
C: But you knew!

Realizing they didn’t know what Kalroth did with Drek’thelar, they similar conclude they don’t know exactly what he’s escaping from. Ellerian rambles on about connections to the Positive and Negative Plane. It gets weird.

Sable: What was that about the dwarven airplanes?
Nobix: ‘Plane – errrr, we don’t have dwarven airplanes, what are you talking about?’
Ellerian: Please tell me you’re speaking Common.

Acquiring a copy of the speech from the DM, Ellerian settles down to work on some project or another. Nobix questions what the whole ‘obey’ thing is, and what its limits are.

Sable: What are the signs of the prophet? Prophets have signs that foretell their coming. Somehow you have to know that it’s a prophet. Like riding on a mule or something.
C: Heh heh, mule.
Erik: (to Ellerian) What are you trying?
Ellerian: Something I’m sure the DM didn’t actually do.
DM: No. Sorry. I just wanted to give you the speech, so you know what he said.

Purely speculating, the PCs ponder what exactly this all means, and whether the other gods would intervene.

C: They didn’t last time.
Erik: They’re the ones who put him in prison this time.
DM: According to the story, only Kalroth.
C: And that only after his pieces were assembled by those grand heroes. And Aliarra.

They don’t have Kalroth on speed-dial, so they contemplate inquiring of the wizards instead to figure out how they can stop the prophet. Also, as for signs, chanting cultists seem pretty indicative.

DM: What are you doing?
Ellerian: I’m trying to find linguistic clues…
DM: Did I accidentally put some in there?
Ellerian: I’ll find out!
C: The blue door symbolizes that it’s a blue door.
DM: You gotta blow on it!

C believes if they find out the nature of Drek’thelar’s prison, they can figure out how he can be freed. Sable tries to talk to the other cultists; it works poorly, and the cultist’s name is determined to be ‘We Obey’. Sable tickles him.

Ellerian: All right. I’ve figured it out. I’ve figured out where Drek’thelar was imprisoned, through the message they’ve given us. It’s a simple matter, you take the first letter of each sentence. Ignore ‘the’, that’s kind of filler, and then go to the next word if it’s ‘the’. Now first I thought this was a linguistic puzzle where it would spell something, I tried filling it in matrices and so forth, didn’t work like that. So then I treated it as an anagram. And I came up with the sign that Drek’thelar is suffering in a city somewhere, because it anagrams out to, “AGHHHHH, PORTLAND”.
Bex: Oh my god.
DM: Well done.
C: Perceptor, get in the other shuttle with the Dinobots.
DM: I did use a lot of H’s, didn’t I.

They go to Portland. One of the orderlies names the talky cultist as ‘Grisby’, a former bum by trade.

Erik: “You know the names of ‘We Obey’s over there?”
C: “What about the rest?”
DM: “Well, they’re chanting now. That sucks.”

Erik and the DM get in a weird argument about which temple of Denerim has histories on the old events. It turns out the wizards have them.

C: Why is Erik beating everybody with a hockey stick?
Erik: Cross-counter.
Ellerian: Portland’s going to shit with Drek’thelar there.

Will they go to Portland? (No.) What will they do next? Stay tuned!