Jul 14, 2019
Vasraen
Drow Cleric
Character by @caphay
Art by Deathshead13
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Vasraen
Drow Cleric
Character by @caphay
Art by Deathshead13
Recently, in Starbound D&D
The gang has a year to prepare before the local expansionist empire moves on their adoptive hometown
The gang gets really drunk and eats too much and engages in dubious storytelling contests and wacky tarot reading divination hijinks at the annual Midsummer festival
Every year at the midsummer festival the friendly local Wood Elves show up and show off their blink dogs and tressym (flying cats). Except not this year.
The gang is deeply disappointed. So disappointed that they head into the Deep Dark Woods to find out why the friendly local Wood Elves haven’t brought their good good fluffy babies to visit this year.
The gang runs afoul of classic d&d monsters such as owlbears and ogres
The gang befriends an ogre, whom they dub Frogre (friend ogre), who explains that she has been kept in thrall to some fey potentate calling himself the Winter King and he is keeping her from thinking proper ogre thoughts
Thoughts like ‘wait a minute I don’t wanna work for the winter king I wanna smash him and eat him’
The gang dispels the enchantment upon Frogre and she can once again think proper ogrey thoughts
Despite this, she remains friendly with them and accompanies them to the wood elves. The blink dogs and tressym are all there and react about as one would expect- the dogs are friendly and excitable, the cats are generally standoffish at first but warm to the PCs as they hang out and are chill.
The PCs cast Reduce on Frogre so she can get into the elven tree village safely. She is awestruck by how they all got so big all of a sudden.
The wood elves turn out to have been besieged by monsters and hobgoblins sent by the aforementioned ‘Winter King’ and as such could not risk sending their people off to entertain a bunch of festival goers with teleporting dogs and flying cats
The gang befriends some elves and agrees to go look into this since things are definitely Amiss with this whole winter king business
For one thing Winter has a Queen (as in the Unseelie Queen of Air and Darkness) and no one should be fool enough to challenge that least of all another fae
The gang runs into some hobgoblins. Rather than fight the hobgoblins they sow doubt in their military leaders and move on unharmed.
The warlock gets the party so lost that they blunder into a whole other plane of existence
In this Feywild pocket they encounter the Winter King’s dreaded enforcer/assassin, a Troll wearing a cloak of elvenkind and therefore sneakier than he has any right to be
They kill the troll, talk to some harried pixies who are rushing hither and yon to bring on an unseasonable winter (it is late summer) due to the weather-warping effects of the winter king, then return to the normal world
They agree to go stop the winter king because he’s clearly bad news, and besides, then the elves will owe them a bit, and they could for sure use some elven archers when their adopted hometown is attacked by the local expansionist empire next year
They stop off at a hobgoblin town/military encampment and things are going reasonably well until they realize that the hobgoblins’ highest eschelons of leadership have been enchanted to follow the Winter King
And their leaders are apparently being mind-controlled by immature illithid tadpoles who consume their hindbrains and control their bodies like puppets, while still able to access their thoughts to better pass as normal folks
The PCs try to remove an illithid tadpole from a hobgoblin and it kills him. At least he’s not trapped in a living hell where he’s a passenger in his own body anymore?
The tadpole also dies shortly thereafter with no host to live in.
The PCs skedaddle from the hobgoblin town before they can be discovered since it looks like they just assassinated one of their highest ranking commanders.
The hobgoblins end up catching on an hour or so later and pursue the PCs halfway up the mountain where the Winter King lives
The PCs sneak into the Winter King’s lair via a little-used back tunnel
The Winter King turns out to have gone absolutely fucking insane recently and literally devoured all of his guards in his insatiable hunger
His body, in the normal world where a true fey lord can’t exist without a meat body, is basically an emaciated really tall oni
They confront him and fight and in the process of the fight it comes out that he himself is controlled (at least partly) by an illithid tadpole that ate his brain and then completed the physical process of cereomorphosis such that his hideous fanged appearance is a glamour obscuring his horrible squidface
He’s an Onillithid
They manage to kill him after a huge battle, dispatching the body and releasing the Winter King’s fey spirit to return to the feywild and enventually re-corporate.
The winter king had a lot of loot, most of it taken from the elves. The PCs now have a lot of loot, taken from the winter king.
The PCs travel to the elven refuge of Paroneis, which is kind of like if Rivendell had a much more casual attitude and instead of being run by a grumpy ‘half’-high elf was run by a kindly old (very old, so old she even looks old) wood elven druid
The PCs greatly enjoy the company of said kindly old de-facto elf queen, who fills them all in on some lore and offers some good-natured advice and comfort to those who need it
Some dwarves show up from the nearby dwarven kingdom and ask the elves for help with their own problem- lately there have been weirdly coordinated attacks from below
The PCs smell mind flayer shenanigans and decide to get involved. Especially since said dwarven kingdom is the Paladin’s hometown.
caphay replied to your post “motheatenscarf: caphay: vasraen at the increasingly minimal odds of...”
shE COULD BE NICE, WE DON'T KNOW
Yeah just go right on into the centre of the swamp, knock on her door and find out. So far everyone in the swamp has offered you tea so why should she be different?
caphay replied to your post: Hey how much does Anna miss shampoo?
who says she ever used it in the first place
now you’re thinking!
Hello!! I just watched the breakfast club for the first time and I am reelin, full of grungy rebellious energy and also emotional abt struggles and friendships and found families, and as you are like, the biggest found family advocate: do you have more recs, will 4th gate high have similar themes, and also, a reminder that, I love the sodas. (And! I hope you're havin a good day.)
ahhh I knowwww I’m right there with you...
No recs off the top of my head, but relationships (friendships/love/family both found and blood and the complications therein) are going to be the main focus of 4gh for sure. thank you! You have a great day too :D
Ran the first adventure for my d&d campaign over a couple of sessions; here’s the long-delayed recap:
The PCs all come separately to a surprisingly nice town in surprisingly shitty weather and end up stuck at the same Inn; in the common room because all the rooms are full, but for free because the innkeeper/mayor is a good sort who doesn’t want to turn people out into the icy deluge.
Zombie attack! Also skellingtons. The zombies want the sorcerer’s sweet, sweet blood. Also maybe the druid? Maybe not. They want it for Reasons.
The sorcerer doesn’t particularly want to part with her blood and offers burning hands Freezing Hands instead. The warlock throws his horrible inky black tendrils into the mix, the paladin smites them with his smithing hammer, the druid and the monk respectively offer These Claws/Hands, and the bard insults the skellingtons’1000+ years out of date fashion.
Devastated by the counter-offer, the zombies and skellingtons fall over without having obtained any of the Special Blood they were after. They accompany the mayor to the cathedral and ring the bell, alerting the townsfolk that hey, uh, there’s some shamblers in town and maybe you should wake up and fight them off.
Why zombies and skellingtons? The leading theory is that some Suspicious Sorts who came through recently asking about the giant burial mounds not far outside of town full of the bodies of ancient evil tieflings maybe did an oops and unleashed them by accident?
The PCs travel to the crypt of a long-dead tiefling aristocrat. He is also a pretty big jerk. His body is still resting peacefully in his sarcophagus.
His spirit sure isn’t though.
He informs them that it was definitely not an ‘oops’, the ‘academic’ guy was a necromancer who Commanded him to spill the beans on some ancient ritual shenanigans and his (the spectral tiefling aristocrat’s) hated rival, then sicced the zombies and skellingtons on the town to get the blood he’d need for the ancient ritual in question.
The PCs bargain with the ghost to bring him the head of his ancient rival in exchange for all his sweet sweet tomb loot. And also not getting into a fight with a pissed-off ancient ghost and the ghosts of his consorts.
Meanwhile the PCs have found said ghost dude’s diary that spills absolutely ALL the beans on court intrigue from the evil tiefling empire 1000 years ago.
The sorcerer wants it because it’s Tiefling stuff and it pertains to her heritage.
The warlock insists that it’s historically invaluable and belongs in the local university library
They proceed to argue about this for some time
The paladin would very much like them to continue this argument outside, rather than lingering in the ancient fucking crypt full of ghosts
The baddies are keeping hostages at the ruins of a nearby observatory. The PCs try to sneak up on them. It goes pretty well!
The bard tries to put the big goon baddie to sleep but he’s not really sleepy, especially now that someone’s trying to use magic on him.
The warlock tries to reason with the evil necromancer misunderstood professor of history to at least let the hostages go now that he’s gotten a bit of blood from each of them for his ritual
the evil necromancer monologues for a while. the gist is that he is fine with letting the hostages go but he really doesn’t want the PCs to get in his way while he Does What Must Be Done
the thing that said blood summoned, however, the hated rival of the earlier ghost, is less keen on letting the hostages go. It kind of wants to eat them. It kind of wants that a lot.
The PCs are Not Cool with letting the ancient corrupted wizard monstrosity eat the hostages.
The evil necromacer takes the opportunity to peace out with his trusty goon
The paladin smites the ancient monstrosity and somehow calls upon holy power to smite him harder. Which is what paladins do! But the paladin is still getting the hang of things and so is pleasantly surprised all the same.
The monk figures the others have this handled and moves to free the hostages rather than fight the ancient monstrosity.
The druid turns into a magma wolf and bites the shit out of the ancient monstrosity. He falls over and starts bleeding out (’bleeding’ being a relative term when your blood is abhorrent black ichor) but does not immediately die because he’s got to cough and gasp a whole lot of Exposition first.
The sorcerer gets that dude’s head for the angery ghost, so they can get his sweet sweet tomb loot.
The PCs get that sweet sweet tomb loot and the devil-worshipping ghost gets his eternal... reward? ...when he passes on to Hell.
The townsfolk are quite fond of the PCs given that they were instrumental in fighting off the initial undead attack and then went and rescued the hostages.
The paladin talks to a priest of the god who literally punched holy power into him to get a better idea about what he, uh, wants from the paladin.
“Go forth, be awesome.” The paladin is pretty chill with this commandment.
The sorcerer stands on the docks nearby and looks broodingly out to sea. Nearby, the monk and the druid go swimming in the ocean. *brood* *brood* *splish-splash*
The warlock befriends a wee diviner archaeologist
The third member of the baddies tomb-raiding party shows up- a halfling rogue who disarmed all the ancient traps. She was fine with robbing the dead. She is not fine with the resulting undead attack and wants to help maybe.
caphay replied to your post “Today in D&D: The cleric develops a crush on everyone The party,...”
omg, ya make it sound bad but also,,, entirely true ahah
Forgot to mention how he put on a helmet that was maybe? cursed?? Just jammed his head right in there without a care in the world.
Hello! Not sure if you've seen the new overwatch dance emotes but I thought you might like to know that if you play junkrat and roadhog's dances next to each other they high five during it :D (it's an easter egg thing) it's cute best husband friends
yeah the very first thing my wife and I did when the event started was buy those and try them out! (me as roadhog her as junkrat) Love it! ^^
They’re our mains so as often as we can we play together with them :P