Traps Suck!

While I was drafting this, a gathering of Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, VA turned violent, leaving at least 3 dead. Remember, these are the people who voted POTUS 45 into office. So he couldn't very well be seen condemning them. So he didn't. He tweeted something non-committal about "many sides" and how we should "come together."

There are not many sides. There are two sides, the right one and the wrong. The wrong one carried Confederate, KKK, and Neo-Nazi flags. They also carried torches. The right one was attacked by a terrorist in a motor vehicle, leading to a death.

I normally like to save the political bits for my other blog, but this has my blood boiling. You done messed up bad POTUS 45. When Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch, and Lindsey Fucking Graham tell you that this is evil, terrorism, two-sided, and you need to distance yourself from one side, maybe you should listen.

Know this, everyone at my table condemns the actions of the Neo-Nazi Terrorists in Charlottesville. This makes us all, in their eyes, snowflake SJW libtards. They'll also call the guys in the group virtue-signaling beta-cucks. Thanks for letting us know we're good people and trying to turn it into insults, Neo-Nazi Terrorists!

On to D&D!

Seems Blake and Hillary have found a D&D group of kids their own age. More power to you, kids! Wish I could have done it when I was your age. Have fun.

So we played adult D&D, where the adventurers get day jobs, pay bills, live lives of quiet desperation as their childhood dreams die on the vine, and try to contribute the best they can to society.

Ha! No. We got our murder hobo on. As in we were hobos that wandered into a murder basement.

Meepo led us to the backdoor into goblin territory: another empty room. We checked for traps on the door and found none.

The room beyond was empty except for a dry, ruined fountain carved in the form of a diving dragon. Opposite that was a door carved in the form of skeletal dragons. Auryx examined the fountain more closely and poured some water in. It caused a reddish liquid to pour out of the dragon's mouth. We left that alone and examined the door. Runes in Draconic said "Rebuke the dead, open the way." Bruenor couldn't do it yet; in 5e Clerics can't turn undead until 2nd level.

Further down was a corridor lined with partially open, musty-smelling doors. Bruenor used the cantrip thaumaturgy to slam those doors closed. An unsubtle way to substitute for mage hand. We went through the corridor and found another dry fountain and a pair of jammed-open pit traps. The whole thing exuded a smell of rot.

Before going forward, we opened those slammed doors one on one. They were jail cells, and few had giant rats in them. We easily slaughtered them.

In the meantime, I continued examining the fountain, spotting some faint lettering in Draconic: "Let there be death." Don't say words aloud, apparently. It caused a cloud of poison gas to emerge from the mouth of the dragon. Vrinn examined the mouth and found some canisters containing more of the poison. Then he examined the other fountain, finding faintly carved letters in Draconic: "Let there be fire." We decided to leave that alone. While we were doing that, Auryx tried to open the cold, bony door and got hit by a scything blade trap.

Then we reset one of the pit traps, and opened a door passed the poison fountain. We found more rats, including an extra-large, apparently diseased rat. They charged at us, then Bruenor used another casting of thaumaturgy to slam the door behind a rat, knocking it across the pit trap. Then Squiz decided to shove the poor thing into the pit trap. With that, we were able to handily slaughtered the other rats, then leveled up!

Once we were done with all the paperwork, we explored the rat room further, finding some corpses. One of them was human equipped as a ranger. He wore a gold ring on his finger bearing the name "Karakus," one of the adventurers that went missing. We took his ring, and (of course) his stuff. We cleared out some kobold and goblin corpses, and found their stuff in a stinky rat's nest.

We decided to open one more door before trying the scary, scary bone door. We found a field of caltrops in front of a ramshackle crenelated wall. There were some goblins behind the wall. The shot bows at us, hitting Squiz with a critical and dropping him. I got the door closed. Auryx froze the locking mechanism, and we took a short rest. We peeked in afterwards, finding the goblins still on guard.

So we decided to go back to the scary, scary door. Vrinn tried to disarm the trap and got a scythe-blade to the face for his trouble. Bruenor finally just used turn undead on the damn thing, and it opened. It was a small, cold room. The walls were lined with stone sarcophagai with an altar on the far wall. Bruenor called for another short rest to recharge his turn undead.

Then we started messing around in the room that just so obviously contained undead monsters, somewhere. Squiz looked for secret doors. Meanwhile, the rest of us examined stuff on the altar: a candle with a blue continual flame spell cast on it. A crystal whistle shaped like a dragon with the name "Nightcaller on it." There was also a crystal flask containing a red liquid similar to the one from the fountain. We thought it might be a potion of fire resistance. Bruenor picked it up, causing the sarcophagai to open, with more angry skeletons. Bruenor turned some of them, making it a little easier to fight them. Afterwards, Auryx and Phox started wailing on the altar, revealing a secret compartment with more rich stuff inside.

Bruenor cast identify on the whistle, learning it could cast animate dead. The idea of animating the ranger or one of the goblin corpses was floated, and Phox was clearly not on board with this idea. Honestly, neither should Bruenor, and Lydia wouldn't have been on board either. Eventually, Phox was convinced the whistle didn't do anything, and we pressed on.

We went back to kill us some goblins. Auryx used thunderwave to push the caltrops back against the wall. Phox finally used the barbarian signature ability to get mad and raged. During the charge up, at one point both Squiz and I were standing on the wall, Wuxia style, killing goblins. We found another, abandoned guard post past that one, this one set up with archery targets. We found an empty corridor, and, finally, a little prison.

There were a bunch of kobolds there along with a gnome named Erky Timbers, an acolyte. Erky told us about a human named Belak, who apparently lived in the deeper levels of the fortress and tended something called a Gulthias tree, the source of the fruit the goblins sold. He confirmed that the adventuring group including the Hucreles, had been captured by the goblins. Eventually Belak had taken Sharwyn and Sir Braford into the keep depths for some unknown purpose.

On that note, we packed for the night. Next time: dragons, trolls, and goblins, oh my!