The First Session - Part 2: Starting a Holy War

Okay, my title on this post might be a little extreme. Then again, depending on how things go in the future, it may be appropriate before the campaign is over. I have a feeling I will repeat this phrase many times before I stop posting here: Only time will tell.

Picking up where we left off, the party eventually proceeded to find their way to the temple of an evil god in the slums - a God of Famine. The temple guards demanded a payment of tribute of food to gain entry to the temple and so the party handed over some of the few rations they had on them to be sacrificed to the temple's god. I make note of this now because we will be coming back to it later. Once inside they manage to avoid causing any real trouble and, with the help of their dice, collect some useful information to help them find the evil priest they've been following. It so happens that he is a major player in the temple for the God of Evil (yes, with the big G and big E - the top man in the realm of unholy evil deities here) and with his recent return to the city there has been a bustle of activity at their temple across the city. The PCs decide they'll need to get over there tomorrow as its already very late into the night and they need a rest. Thanking their unholy hosts for the information they head back out into the slums and try to find a cheap inn for the night.

Do you see where this is headed?

Finding an inn proves to be of little difficulty, even if the only one willing to accept customers so late into the night is in what is essentially the worst part of town. Being too late to even get a meal, the party simply heads up to their room to sleep. They do make a token effort to set a watch rotation after a healthy dose of paranoia is issued from Mayu about not trusting the innkeeper. Unfortunately, some poor dice rolls end up with the person on watch (Haruka I think) actually falling asleep on the job. However this wasn't unfortunate for the PCs but rather for the innkeeper who decided to use a removable panel in the wall of the room to sneak in and try to rob the party. Haruka does wake up in the midst of this and doesn't ask any questions. He draws his knives and just lays into the innkeeper, tallying up yet another murder. (No, I don't count this one as self-defense if only because no attempt at anything other than murderous violence was employed.) With the sounds of battle, Dorian and Mayu wake up, but only in time to see the assassin finishing his job.

After a brief discussion, the group decides that actually staying the rest of the night wouldn't be the best idea if anyone came looking for the innkeeper come morning. But do they just up and flee? Oh, no no no. There is still opportunity to be had! With seemingly no more potential resistance in the building, they give the place a once over. They decide the only other patrons are too poor to rob but that doesn't stop them from searching around a bit to find the innkeeper's lockbox. That's right. After killing the man because he appeared to be trying to rob them, they turn around and rob him. Ingenious, isn't it? Remember folks - when opportunity knocks, answer the door, invite it inside, slit it's throat and then loot it's corpse. By this time it was nearly morning. The PCs decide to head across the city as far as they can and end up in the higher class section of the city. They find significantly more expensive lodging (paid for by their so-generous previous host, of course) and take a day to stage the next step in their plan.

For when time is of the essence. Or any other time if you feel like it.

Locating the temple of the God of Evil is fairly easy for the PCs but they decided they needed to know as much information as possible before trying to head inside to do something about the evil priest they've been after. Logical course of action: Ask around, maybe pass some bribes to loosen tongues, result to divination magic if necessary. The party's course of action: Find an acolyte of the temple, get him alone, knock him out, take him to a secluded location and proceed to torture him for any and all information he may have. I'm not going to go through the details of said torture here, but let's say that it also included psychological elements in addition to physical ones. I say that because throughout the whole process they continue to reassure him that he will be set free when he's answered all their questions. No, it did not surprise me in the tiniest bit when they killed him at the end of it. Murder count: 3. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against violence in D&D as a viable problem solving option, but there is such a thing as overkill. Here is where we get the first real memorable quote for the session.

DM: So what're you going to do with the body?
Haruka: We could take it down and donate it to the Temple of Famine!

That's right. Remember how I said to remember the bit about donations to the Famine temple? That is exactly what they did with the dead acolyte. This is where our title comes into play. These people from out of town have arrived, gone directly to the God of Famine's temple on their arrival, then gone to the God of Evil's temple and murdered one of their followers, leaving the broken and abused body on the Famine temple's steps. It may not exactly be a declaration of jihad, but its a start.

So, now armed with information about a high unholy ceremony at the end of the week where the evil priest will be directing the rites, along with some information about the lower levels of the temple that lead to the priest's personal chambers, the party decides on how to strike. They spend the next few days in-game collecting magic scrolls and wands to use for their assault on the temple. While their information isn't perfect it is still quite good and they have a significant advantage now. When the end of the week arrives they join the crowd of worshippers in the temple and get a good look at the priest, confirming him as their mark. After the main service has ended and one Wand of Invisibility later, they've gained access to the lower levels of the temple in pursuit of the priest.

They know that there will be a group of ogre bodyguards in a room outside of a locked corridor leading to the priest's chambers. To counter this, they brought a scroll of Black Tentacles to help defuse the situation as well as some Greater Invisibility for the assassin so he can finish whatever ogres the tentacles leave alive. There is something to be said about having the right spell for the right job. What should have been a devastating battle against a greater number of opponents turned into a joke of an encounter with the application of one spell. By the time the tentacles faded away there was one lone ogre still breathing and he didn't remain that way for much longer. (Since the ogres were just doing their job here, I'm raising the murder count to 7, because ogres are people, too. Dumb people and frequently violent and evil, but people nonetheless.) Beyond a locked door they pretty much kicked down was a short corridor full of ghouls. This bit came as a surprise to the party and an early lucky strike left the necromancer paralyzed for most of the battle unfortunately. Mayu and Haruka did manage to tear their way through the undead with a bit of brute force. Now at the final door to the priest's chamber, the players use their Wand of Invisibility again as its their best buff spell going for them at this point. The sounds of combat also gave the priest some time to cast his own buff spells and summon up some undead to help defend himself but it would sadly be in vain. Once inside, the party just absolutely went to town on him and his minions. The necromancer definitely provided some solid crowd control while the assassin just wailed on the priest who apparently forgot to prepare Invisibility Purge that day. Our bard kept the music flowing and the bonuses going and altogether it made my big, climactic battle almost as big of a joke as the ogres were. (No murder count here. Remember, this was revenge for the killing of Haruka's family.) While no one saw them come and go except the people they killed this time around, I still think this merits a glance at the title of this post one more time.

A quick once over of his personal chambers revealed a small hidden cache of gear including a magic sword (Crystal Echoblade) that the Bard took possession of after later having it identified in a less violent manner than was attempted in Part 1. They also find information about more of the murderers of Haruka's family and about a powerful necromancer out to the West that the priest was intending to recruit. Dorian proclaims that finding this necromancer in hopes of learning some new dark magic for himself will be the party's next goal, and so ends the first session.

That was supposed to be the end of the whole game but since they were just having so much fun I was asked to continue on with more for the same characters, and I have. Tune in next time as we see just how much effort can be put into casting a single spell, why the DM should just keep their fool mouth shut when the newbie player starts making rhetorical comments, and some undead ponies.

Though to be fair, we tend to bring it down on ourselves.

The First Session - Part 1: Seeking Knowledge in the Blood of Innocents

So as you many have discerned from the previous post, the party isn't your average group of do-gooders and heroes but rather a ragtag bunch of troublemakers at best. If only they showed their best more than their worst...

The worst part about this is recognizing the truth in "Evil Feels Good."

To get things started I decided to hand-wave out a big, involved meeting up of the characters and instead let the players work out their own reasons for traveling together. After looking at their resources they decided that they were a traveling performance group since between the three of them, two had instruments and they decided that since Haruka was both agile and pretty, he could just dance while the others played. Considering some reasons I've been handed by parties with evil characters in them, this was more than acceptable for me.

I feel I should touch on something quickly here. As a DM I tend not to allow the Evil alignment in my games if only because when I'm designing a campaign the intent of the adventures I string together are all in the vein of "Do good, prosper, maybe save the world before you retire." Understandably this doesn't always mesh well with evil characters. (I'm not saying it can't, simply that in my experience, it doesn't.) Now this first session was intended as a standalone one-shot so I opened to the door to anything since it was going to be a one time thing. Let this serve as a warning for aspiring DMs: Never underestimate anything about what your players may do. Not even before the game starts.

If you think this is bad then you must be new to tabletop gaming. Welcome to the show.

So our "heroes" find themselves following a dwindling lead into a rather unsavory city. They've been on the trail of an evil priest who was involved with the murder of Haruka's family but any sign of a man by the name he was using has come to a stop near the city. Thinking that he may have another local identity, they forge on ahead.
Not knowing more than his name and that he was an evil priest, they try to find some of the temples to the evil gods in the city's slums which results in me breaking out the random city encounter charts. We get to start off the game with a bang as they literally bump into a drunken barbarian who is offended enough by this to draw his sword and start attacking, and thus the party learns its first lesson about combat in the narrow passageways that are alleyways: Bring reach weapons. The battle was rather comical as the party desperately tried, and ultimately failed, to maneuver themselves into a position where they could face off with the barbarian more than one at a time. Despite this they manage to emerge victorious and have committed their first act of murd....uhm...self-defense.
Having looted the corpse of anything of value (and using more random charts for treasure distribution) they collect a small magic crystal that can be used to enhance a weapon. Unfortunately this is all they can discern of the crystal. Haruka, being the most combat capable claims the crystal as his own but is rather desperate to know what it does. Logical idea: Take it to someone that can identify its unique properties. Sounds good, right? Or maybe I should say that it sounds Good. We have no goody two-shoes in our party though and this idea never even comes up. No, the first and of course best idea is to apply it to a weapon and then test the weapon for a new effect! So I call for some rolls to see just how lucky Haruka is at finding, as I think he put it, "someone weak nearby that nobody would miss." Unfortunately for him the dice are not on his side. I let him know the only person that seems to have hung around despite the sounds of battle is a man some distance off just watching the party. I tried to give the impression that this guy was a bit of a "bad-ass" and "should not be fucked with" without outright saying so. Let's just say that the players failed their Sense Motive checks on what I was hinting at.

It is also the Path to Enlightenment, which we'll be sure to get to later.

So while Dorian and Mayu continue to paw over the dead body of the barbarian, Haruka slips out of sight and attempts to stealthily circle around behind the watcher. I find some data for an even higher level solo encounter and roll up the necessary numbers for another battle. When I roll for the watcher's Spot and Listen checks against Haruka though, he fails dismally and Haruka gets the jump on him. While this surprise strike did allow Haruka to attempt her Assassination skill, that failed. However, as a bit of a bonus, he still deals his Sneak Attack damage on the attack and nearly cripples the watcher. So I have everyone roll initiative and by the grace of Lady Luck, Haruka is at the top of the order. This merits another Sneak Attack. After the first very damaging strike this one deals more than enough damage to completely kill the watcher with no resistance. We've been playing for less than a half an hour and the party has already committed their first blatant murder, in a major city no less. We're off to a rousing start, folks. In the excitement of ending an encounter ere it began I nearly forgot to let him know what effect the crystal had. (For those curious, it heals Haruka when he kills things.)

Let's break for a short intermission while I try to remember the details about this game I ran so many months ago.

Meet the Crew!

So let's start this off with a quick warning. There will be jargon. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but for those of you that don't actually play D&D you may want to consult a wiki if you run across a word or two that doesn't make any sense.

Now for a rundown of the game at hand. Our group consists of myself as the current DM and three players of varying experience. I've been DMing for more than a decade with different groups each with their own quirks and backgrounds. There was a point in time where I naively believed I had "seen it all". I know now that this is an impossible feat. To those wondering about my game style, I run D&D 3.5 and I'm pretty lenient with my players. I don't punish them for not following the intended plot nor do I go out of my way to try and kill off their characters. That said, I also rarely pull punches. If you want to walk into the red dragon's mouth on a dare then don't be surprised when it chomps down on you and you die.

 I wish I were this good.

I will introduce the players with their characters to save me the trouble of carrying this thing along with two names for everyone. Also, not everyone is playing a character whose gender matches that of the player. I'll try to stick to character genders but if I slip up somewhere along the way, just ignore it.

Name: Mayu
Character: Female Human Bard
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Bordering on Chaotic Stupid)
Motivation: None that I can discern
Party Roles: Healing, Support, Face

Of my current group, Mayu has been gaming with me the longest, clocking in at over 5 years now I think. She has gone through more characters in more games than possibly anyone I have played with. Her character for the current game doesn't appear to have any reason for adventuring other than the sheer joy of it. Maybe she's a high-fantasy thrill seeker. Maybe she's just looking for inspiration for a good song. Maybe she's just insane. Only time will tell.

Music: The best way to make your friends into unstoppable killing machines.

Name: Dorian
Character: Male Human Necromancer
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Motivation: Power
Party Roles: Magic, Information

Dorian the player is our middle-of-the-road player as far as experience goes but is completely new to gaming with Mayu and I. Dorian the character is all about becoming the strongest and the best at what he does. Sadly, he has a long way to go yet. Having been branded a 'cursed child', his mother died when he was still young. Apprenticing under his father as a gravedigger, Dorian only humored his father's wishes as an excuse to be closer to the dead. Having gotten his hands on a book of dark magic at some point, his father's discovery of the book led to Dorian being forced to kill his own father to keep it secret, then fleeing his hometown. He travels with his companions out of opportunity more than necessity.

"Even if it means murdering my parents to learn how to create an undead squirrel that obeys me."

Name: Haruka
Character: Male Human Assassin
Alignment: True Neutral
Motivation: Revenge
Party Roles: Doorkicker, Tank

Haruka is our newest player to the game. He has the least experience with D&D and has no predictable habits. He is also totally fearless when it comes to suggesting plans of actions which has provided for more than a few moments of hilarity. There may be nothing more dangerous than a player that has no idea of what can't be done because they'll try anything. Haruka's character is the tragic one of the group. Born the second son to a minor noble house, he had an awkward upbringing as the culture he hails from has laws stating that there only may be one son per noble family. His mother being appropriately compassionate could not bear to have her child killed, so she implemented some serious deception and raised him as a daughter instead. Adding to that, his family was murdered while he was young by a group with plans to usurp the power of his noble house. Having escaped the slaughter by sheer luck, he has spent years training for the day when he will finally face his family's killers and exact his revenge. As one last note, I expect to mix up pronouns for Haruka more than the others.

So that's the party. If you noticed a lack of skill-focused or trap-disabling character, that's because there isn't one. This will certainly make for some very interesting encounters along the way. Also, Mayu is only in charge of healing because she's the only one that can activate the magic wand the players went in together to purchase.

This game started as a one-shot adventure but has evolved into a sandbox campaign. We only rarely meet to play because of the awkward schedules we all keep so after these first few posts I make to catch up to the current game session I have no idea how often I'll be updating this. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

[Obligatory First Post Explaining What This Mess Is]

Welcome one, welcome all. This blog is coming into existence because after the first couple of sessions of a Dungeons and Dragons game had come and gone, the players and myself decided we wanted to keep a running chronicle of the DM's (read: my) pain and the preferable laughter that results from it. So sit down (assuming you aren't already), strap in (what kind of weird chairs do you HAVE at your house, anyway?), and hang on. It only gets weirder from here.

Every game begins this way.