So a lot of stuff happened between blog posts that you shouldn't ignore. But Harvey is big. Here is a list of places where you can donate. What can you do on that other stuff? Lots, actually. But on to D&D.
Unfortunately Kiana failed to make it again. She was an awesome player, but life is life. Just hoping she can come back again.
Since AL allows it, I restated Lydia into the Warlock class with the Great Old One as her patron. This actually facilitated a change in her backstory that I think would be more interesting. Want more details? That'll be a Patreon donors only thing from now on. Tell me you'll sign up for a Patreon for this blog in the comments, I'll set it up, and add that backstory to the available rewards.
I'd also like to take a moment to point out that Shannon is an awesome artist. She painted some tokens and crafted and painted some custom minis for the game. She even painted minis for Auryx, Phox, and Lydia. Wanna see? Again, I think that's another good thing for Patreon donors.
We took the goblin chieftain's head back to Yusdrayl, and she let us have more of the treasure.
After that, we took a long rest and went back to exploring. We found another locked door. Phox, being Phox, tried to bash it open with her sword. And damaged her sword. Vrinn came up and picked the lock. We found an empty pit trap and nothing else.
So we went back to the well. We lowered Phox on a rope, like a worm, into the deep well where we fought the chieftain. She found a bit filled with bio-luminescent fungus and other plants being tended by some skeletons. The skeletons moved to attack her. I supported her from the top of the well with some eldritch blasts. One even cause a skelesplosion, getting some bone dust in Phox's hair. Poor baby complained about getting bone dust in her hair. She's got so many worse things in there. Once the skeletons were dead, a bunch of twig blights. The other melee characters joined her by climbing down some convenient Legend of Zelda vines on the walls of the well.
We explored further down one corridor and found some well fed, well-groomed, and strangely behaved rats. It turns out they were pets for a bugbear with a thing for antlered head wear. The thing (of course) went for Phox, and nearly killer. Poor Kyla and bugbears, ever since one dropped her first character on her first session on a critical hit. DM tip: That should have killed her character, and she was a good sport about it. But don't let dice kill a first time players character. That's just bullshit.
Hiro burned a psychic blast to kill a rat. Apparently Mystics take on quirks, and one of Hiro is needing to know the name, or name his kills. We learned he killed the rat named Grip. And Auryx was the one that ultimately dropped the bugbear.
Phox did get a consolation prize: she found the bugbear's treasure in his bed. Plus we found a weapon rack where Phox found a new sword, and Squiz found a bunch more random weapons to haul around. We found a long tunnel into the Underdark but left well enough alone.
So we took the other corridor and found an ancient rift, remnant of the cataclysm that sunk the citadel. The floor was filled with small holes. When someone suggested I look in one, I pointed out that this is how people die. Instead I chucked a pebble down one. It went down the hole, and we didn't hear a landing sound.
Further up the rift we found an alcove containing a resting fire snake. Although thanks to the likes of Squiz and Bruennor, we failed to sneak up on it. But we did swarm it. Its nest contained a pair of sapphires.
We continued on the other side of the cleft corridor. It ended at a stuck door. Squiz shoved it open. It was room covered in mosaic tile with a dragon statue holding an empty tray. We pulled out some archaeological excavator picks and searched that thing up and down. We put the sapphires in the tray. We dumped in a bunch of gold. We put some magic items in. We even put some oil in it and lit it on fire. Nothing happened.
We continued exploring along the rift, finding another corridor lined with doors. Me, the player, got up to use the bathroom at this point. While I was in there, the rest of the group decided to line up in front of the doors and have Bruennor use Thaumaturgy to slam them all open at once. We should have thought that through a bit further. I did raise an objection when I sat back down, but the character on auto-follow doesn't get a say.
The rooms had goblins in them.
First of all, one of our tanks, Phox, found an empty room. Then some of our softer characters, like Auryx and Hiro, stood in front of doors containing three goblins, while tougher characters, like Squiz, only stood in front of a room with two. Yes. It sucked.
First, Squiz got dropped by not one, but two sequential critical hits. Not since the era of DJ have we seen the dice this furiously against the players. I did get to use a cool, creepy spell called arms of hadar, but then got swarmed by the goblins I was hoping to kill and got dropped. Auryx also got dropped by a swarm of goblins. Later, so did Hiro. And towards the end, they even got Phox. In keeping everybody up, Bruennor and Auryx managed to burn through our healing, including a potion. Afterwards Bruennor got dropped. I kept myself on my feet by ducking in and out of an empty room while firing eldritch blast. Fortunately, what was left of myself, Squiz, Auryx, and Vrinn managed to finish off the goblins, including the last one that we pinned in a corner, and we got everybody stabilized.
Alec had taken into account we were a big party, and had buffed the goblins hit points, accounting for how hard they were to kill. And they rolled way too high while we rolled way too low. FATE points, people!
In the mean time, we retreated to that fire snake's alcove for a long rest, and Alec told us we hit level 3. I took Pact of the Tome, so they found me perusing a book with cover seemed to be made of moldy rose petals stitched together with rotting, thorny vines, a green sigil on the cover resembling an open hand, palm out, with a mouth in the center. Poor, curious Phox asked to look. I clutched it closer, warning the foolish human that the book's contents would break her mind.
As I close out: I set this up. It is my contribution to Walmart's annual Children's Miracle Network drive. I do not yet know how to tie it back to the company and my store in particular. Even if I can only tie it to Walmart, we'll see if we can't get the donated totals distributed to stores from participating and contributing associates. Gaming for the kids, internetland!
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