Hello Friends,
My friend Dallas started to hold one-off D&D adventures at his home. 7 or so people would meet up, pick an already made character, and then take off into the adventure.
This week, it was a pre-built LV 3 character, and the adventure was geared at welcoming new players into the game.
This week, we were known as the “The boneless chickens at sea”. Why, well... backstory... (not played, but inferred)... our first quest was to find out what beast was eating chickens in a small town, to whit, we did find the beast and slayed it. This leads us to go to the sea and find fame. After sailing for a while, we returned to land and were known as “The boneless chickens at sea”.
The adventure started with the party of 7 camping in the woods.
The mile-high summary was that we played entirely on land…. Defeated Gnolls, lost their companion Clause, uncovered the mystery of FerryPort, and prevented a war between the moral realm and the Seelie Court of the Feywild
Odathwyrm Took the first watch as night set in. While playing a game of checkers with our trusty servant, "Clause (NPC)," there was a noise in the woods.
Odathwyrm, not wanting to risk himself, he cast light on Clause and sent him off like a walking torch into the woods to discover the source of the noise. Clause is such a loyal and helpful fellow.
Clause did not get far; he was plummeted by arrows and walked back dying!!! It seemed we were ambushed by a pack of Gnolls on a hunting raid!
Springing to action, the team made short work of the hunting pack while taking on some damage. Some of the highlights were when our Half-Orc, with their great ax, split one of the Gnolls in half or when the Tifling dropped a d20 roll and offed the leader in one swing.
We are faced with a question, do we try to drive all night to the closest town, "Fairy Port," to resurrect our friend (NPC) Clause, or do we sleep the night and rest up for tomorrow?
Clause, while a trusted servant, was... in many ways, replaceable. The Necromancer wanted to re-animate him, but he lacked the spells, and besides burning him, the moral dilemma was what to do.
Half the party opted to rest and recover, while the other half did the "right" thing and packed up camp to bring Clause to get brought back to the town and rezed.
We rode all night, then into the next day and night to get to "Fair Port". We did arrive at night.
When we got to town and after a bit of talking with the local guards, the Necro cancer demanded we have a drink first, as the temple would be closed, so as our friend was not getting dead, we went to the "Broken Dunkey" Pub for a few drinks.
It was there we noticed that there was a large number of "Old" people dancing, some of them missing body parts but still dancing happily.
The Sex Driven Bard, "Quil the Classless", seduced an old woman into bed, BanMi the Tifling stole a bunch of old people's clothing, and everyone drank a lot of beer and meed. At one point, a young boy runs up to us. He had a HUGE cut down his body, almost sliced in half. He wanted to join us on an adventure, but we had to say no.
The brad found out that the old woman was attacked by Gnolls in the woods a few days ago, then woke up in a box, where she started to ring a bell in the box, and then was soon found and was back. All very strange. She did not say any more, despite the bard's attempt at a second act with her.
That night we all got rooms and opted to first thing in the morning, take our "friend" Clause to get rezed... right after breakfast. And.. that is what we did. We woke up, had breakfast, then luged our dead friend across town to the temple. The little boy again ran up to us, swinging and ax this time. He was a lumberjack in training. It seemed the ax lined up with the giant cut he hand on him. After some talking, he told us about how he was chopping down a tree, the slipe onto his ax, then woke up in a box, rang a bell, and the box was again opened, and he was back, feeling great! Strange...
Outside the temple was an old grave digger... looking strange. We all ventured in and found a priest of the goddess Shanti dancing and worshiping. We mucked about until they noticed us.
We tried talking to them, but they asked for a large donation to help Rez, our friend Clause, so Mongolë the 1/2 orc had none of it, then did a mighty good time at intimidating them into resizing our friend.
For the "Merical" to happen, we would need to bury Clause in the graveyard overnight; then, he would magically be brought back alive the next day. We were all skeptical of this but agreed. We followed the gravedigger to the cemetery, their we noticed that this graveyard was strange.
The trees all had strange fruit like a banana mixed with an apple... the grass was rainbow colored. A very strange place indeed. Clause was buried... but now it was noon, and with time to kill till the magic happened, we opted to visit the Mayor of the town, one Elvira, who lived in a purple house.
Elvira meets us at the front door. E’munja the Wood Elf tricks her into letting us in with a ruse about her people living here a long time ago. We learn with some talking that "Fair Port" was a city founded by Fairy Folk a long time ago. Also we discover that Elvira was a Satyr of sorts... E’munja excused herself to use the restroom; it was then that E’munja met Elvira's daughter.
Elvira's daughter also expressed a story about waking up in a box...
In a slightly backfired conversation with the Daughter, however, the daughter yelled to the mom a question; Elvira came to see what was going on, leaving the rest of the party in the Libary. Taking advantage of this, the party searched the Libary and found a hidden lock box under the couch in the study.
We picked the lockbox lock and found a demonic book inside it. Shocked, we swapped out the book with a second one, then, in confusion in the hallways, slipped out and returned to the pub/hotel, where we got a room upstairs to inspect the book more privately.
Here we found the book was used in opening a portal to some place and using that porta to bring people back from death... We did not know more. The party decided to try and open the portal, but to do so, we had to sacrifice something we loved.
While debating what that would be, guards knocked on the door. It seemed that Elvira had misplaced a "critical book," and the guards were dispatched to find it.
Without talking too much time, Golbedor the Monk lost their cool and surprised attacked the guards, knocking one down at once. BanMi started to grapple with the other while the team proceeded to attack... a bit haphazardly with no attack landing. Lol
Odathwyrm hid under the bed and cast necro sickness on the standing guard. This caused a big mess of puking and more. Amid this Quil the Classless slipped out the door of the room and stood guard on the stairs...
On the guard's attack round, the guard that was on the ground shot poor Odathwyrm in the face with a crossbow bolt, killing him on the spot. :(
On our next round, the team ended up cutting the head off one of the guards, while Golbedor, the monk, rolled two d20 rolls and totally mushed the other guard into nothing... yuck.
We were able to cast healing on Odathwyrm, bringing him back from death, but with a bolt still in his face.. eek.
We were debating on what to do with the bodies when the bar downstairs erupted, more guards entered with the Mayor, Elvira, but they were not here for us; they needed help, and a strange thing was happening at the center; a Demon was attacking, rampaging according to Elvira and they needed heroes to help with a fight!
Pushing the... errr... dead guards under the bed to hide them, we went to see what was going on.
When we got to the cemetery, a giant "Ent" (*like a big tree person), was talking to the priest from before, very calm and not rampaging as Mayor Elvira suggested. Next to them was a giant open portal turning and swirling.
Through some subterfuge (A charm spell from Quil the Classless)... we found out that the Mayor was using the book to bring back the dead, but to take a life, they were taking lives from the Fay land, so each time they brought someone back, a Fairy in the other realm was killed. The Ent had come to find the one who opened the portal and take them to the Fay Realm to stand trial for what they did.
To us, it is evident that the Mayor was the guilty one, she had the book, and she was using it to save the townsfolk and her own daughter from death.
The party debated many outcomes, from helping the humans, as if we did, we too could have immortal life from the portal. Or helping the Ent, but in doing so, all the old people, little kid, and the mayor's daughter would die, as they were all brought back from the dead by the portal. Lastly, causing all of them to fight and then taking over the town and keeping it for ourselves... Choices...
In the end, we gave the book to the Ent who took the Mayor to the fairy realm, and BanMi tossed Quil the Classless into the portal... just because.
This is where our adventure ended... but what a fun time. A good adventure and a solid experience.
I look forward to more games with this group of fun and creative players. :D
I hope you enjoyed this story and the game. If you get the chance, play some D&D and enjoy the creativity that it brings with it.
Cheers
