The Mythical Combat Free Session

Now that we're all caught up, time to post recent sessions. The most recent happened last night.

After leaving the site of our battle with the kobolds, we decided to stop for a short rest. About half an hour into it, the cultist guards we had left behind showed up. We had a brief chat, they gave us the leftovers of their chicken, and warned us about some other guards waiting in ambush up ahead.

We continued on and came upon a group of amazonian women and a small boy on the road with a cart in the ditch. The cart had broken a wheel and the donkey pulling it had injured its leg. Being noble(-ish) heroes, we stopped and helped them. Tapping into my character's mercenary background, I asked for gold, which it turns out they didn't have. (The young boy did kindly offer some grimy copper pieces, though.) Instead, they bartered some fresh antelope from the pile in their cart. Sandi, the half-elf ranger, managed to calm the donkey, and I managed to splint its injured leg. Meanwhile, Erevan, the elf sorcerer, Corrin, the halfling rogue, and Lokeo the human fighter, managed to fix the wheel. Being a shrewd (read: greedy) player, when offered our pick of the antelope, I counted the points and picked the one with the most. However, one of the huntresses was not happy with my choice, the antelope being their livelihood and all, so I opted for the next biggest one instead. (Note: any real hunters or other nature enthusiasts reading this are free to tell me antelopes don't work that way. The DM and I played it that way, so that's how they worked in the game.)

We traveled the rest of the way with the huntresses. As we approached the raiders' camp, around sundown, those guards waiting in ambush rolled some boulders onto us. We made Dex saves, and I was one of the few who succeeded. Bear in mind that Dex is my lowest stat. After the boulders, nine guards emerged from the shadows and challenged us. After some role-playing, they were willing to let the huntresses in, but not us. We ended up offering a bribe that cost the party 10 gp, but left our spell stores and already depleted hit points intact.

As we made our way into the camp, we passed through the squalid kobold section first. There, we overheard the name of the dragon that we had chased away earlier: Lennithon. At one point, Sandi, who has dragons as a favored enemy, got riled up by the kobolds' boasting. Fortunately, Sandi realized we were grossly outnumbered, gritted his teeth, and placated the kobolds before things got ugly. We weren't out of the woods yet, when the kobolds who had fled earlier called us out. I opened with the old standby: to human kobolds all look alike, so the reverse ought to be true. Through some clever role-playing and decent rolls involving Persuasion, Intimidation, and Deception, we managed to get those kobolds to back down. It did help that we mentioned they were holding up the cart holding their food.

As we made our way into the nicer human part of the camp, we stopped to hide our antelope carcass in a cave. Passing through the human camp to drop the antelope off at the command tent, we overheard that the cultist were keeping Lennithon's eggs hostage. As we left the huntresses, they let Sandi know they also worked for his faction: the Emerald Enclave.

We found Leosin Erlanthar being tortured, and learned that the cult had eight other prisoners that they were planning to execute. They also decided that the new guys (us) would be the executioners. After cleaning out animal pens, I used my sergeant rank (my Soldier background feature) to commandeer a tent for the party.

From there Erevan used the message cantrip to let Leosin know we had arrived and to plan an escape.  From Leosin, we learned that Rezmir answered to an individual named Severin Silrojen; that a cave in the canyon contained a dragon hatchery. It took some convincing, but we managed to convince Leosin not to martyr himself for the cause. We decided the hatchery would be our next target after we rescued Leosin and the other prisoners.

We waited until all but one of the guards were asleep, and Sandi and Corrin crept up on him and killed him in one turn. After that, we rounded up the prisoners and took them to the cave where we had stashed our antelope. That was where we ended our session as we prepared to hole-up for a long rest.

So there you have it. Some people, particularly fans of other systems, will say it never happens, but we played D&D without any combat. Well, there was the boulders and Sandi and Corrin curb-stomping the guard. But without the true back and forth of battle, it doesn't count.

I leveled up, but so much other stuff happened, I felt obliged to include that first. I'll post a little about leveling up next time.