Hostile Territory

Geno's soul is being held hostage till the Sheildless can obtain the last item for the weird chaos thing that popped out of his sword a couple weeks ago. That item is in a place of 'untold' danger; the bahazaine crater. Where our dragon borne friend Kragon is from, where he can't go back to but took us to anyways to help out our friend.
Without event we hiked up and down mountains, Kragon holding a burning stick that would keep all the baddies off of us the entire way.
At long last we found ourselves in front of the BloodTalon clan's fortress thing. Kragon goes up and knocks on the door, gets knocked out, and dragged into the fortress while a whole legion of dragons and draco hounds (like rancor dogs) come pouring out. The rest of the team stared wide eyed and warred with themselves and each other over going in to the fray and saving Kragon or running. The incense stops burning and there's a bone chilling howl right before a hawk sized wyvern find us and starts spewing fire into the air to alert the dragons of our position.

Yeah we ran.

Ran straight into a herd of wild boar. Ran straight into the thick sticky mud of a river filled with crocodiles. Ran towards the more familiar parts of the jungle and maybe back to White Cliff to get the help of Tacit's aunt.

Then Verdant heard some women calling for help and had to run off and be hero. Idiot. Zii told him not to go, Kragon was their first priority after staying alive, but Mr. Knight-in-dented-armor had to go and save the day.
Turns out Zii was right. They were evil man eating dryads. The party got wrapped up in thorny vines and nearly killed till Eratar (who was the Sheriff from Dead's End in our campaign with Shawn and Missy) shows up and does his minotaurly awesome head bashing.
With a little persuasion, and Tacit's cute 16 year old puppy eyes, Eratar is going to help us find and rescue Kragon. Sweet.

Now we just have to come up with a plan.

Nerdkingdom Ho! Not Hoe... ho.... er... I mean...

So another jewel in the crown of the Nerdkingdom is that of sexist comments. It could be anything from Synova calling the fire breathing Bueno Dragon his Bizach, or one of the girl characters asking what size skirt to by the paladin as he worries about his fantasmical hair.

The jewel shone brightly at our last get together this passed Sunday evening.

I can't even remember how it started; but I can assume it was innocent enough with a few jabs here and there at femininity (<-- who invented that word?! It's stupid hard to spell!). Ha! I got it! The girls (3 out of 13 of the characters) ended up getting teamed up in the labyrinth. We killed the bad guys faster; My Ranger slicing, Celestia the Warlock blasting, and Arael doing some buffs and blasts with her divine powers. Well we got cocky and started a verbal spar against the guys who weren't hitting their bad guys very hard or very well. When we got to the end and this HUGE ASS fat red dragon roars at us after a bolder sealed us into the underground aztec looking temple it got out of hand.

Arael: We have to team up against this guy!

Jex: Yeah, why don't you girls team up and make me a Sandwich.

DadaM: *fist bump Jex*

Matt: *Nodding and laughing* Awe yeah.

Will and Brandon: *Laughing discretely*

Sara (arael's player), Carrie (celestia's player), and Me: *mouths agape gasping in horror and a hint of indignation*

Sara: Rem you need to get him under control. *pokes Matt in the face* He's a bad example.

Me: *thinks: Ha! like I have any control over my husband*

And the men chuckled while the women sputtered for longer than was really necessary.
Yay D&D, yay.

Oh Chapter my Chapter

I'm going to be DMing soon. A single chapter in Jex's tail of yarny epicness. I have one thing I have to work in and an item he has to choose to throw in the mix. Easy enough. I'm really excited for my NPC's though I'm not sure how it'll turn out so I'm going to have to actually build them as characters in case Verdant or Kragen decides to try and kill them.

But it's going to be fun at the very least. I feel really sorry for Lelia (Laelie, the frozen receptionist from Will's chapter we just finished) I'm going to have to make her life just a little more difficult.

I'm working on a few props, the next comic for the main campaign is almost finished (found out I have a hard time drawing dwarves of revenant persuasion), and have run into writer's block! Yay! lol

Anywho, that's about all I can tell you guys without giving too much away to Will.
Roll a D6 everybody. XD!

We should have known from the start!!!

Hmmmm Well this'll do till I can get the bugs worked out. Click on the image to see it enlarged.

A new road

Since I'm figuring out I'm waaaay better a story telling than I will ever be at Journalism this Noob Tale is going to take a different path than when I first started out.
I'm going to draw.
No, don't run away. I promise it won't suck that badly, especially if Sir Matt is kind enough to let me use his photoshop program from time to time to help me color (because I'm not very good at it if I can't use crayons. XD!

So as I was saying, I'm going to draw memorable things from the campaigns that I'm in right now. I should have the first one up in a few days. Maybe It can be a weekly thing provided I have a scanner available for my use.

Hoping not so much to change things as to overturn them~ Remerly

And Tacit Strikes Again!

I have a striker, her name is Tacit, she's 16 and girly and odd. Even when she's saying things like "let's cut off their heads and throw them in a bag to take with us, as evidence." she's still super cute and innocent.

Well our adventurous adventurers found themselves in an Oasis, surrounded by baddies. Not only did my Sorceress not take any damage, she also ran up to both the enemy casters and dealt them something in the neighborhood of 19 damage with her morning star (and she's a level 2). She's a striker in every way, she just can't take a bloody hit!

Anyways I get a little too into playing Tacit sometimes (not crazily or anything, but like anyone really into drama would tell you I 'become' the character for a little bit). So when she got a double critical I got excited and played her as I imagined her. Dropping her dainty umbrella to pull out her huge mace and run screaming around a sand dune to smash the enemy party's healer in the face! As Matt would say: "She was a vicious ball of screaming hate holding a mace."

Oh I haven't told you nonexistant readers about Matt's campaign yet. Let me just say that the way Matt does things holds my attention and excitement way better than the way Adam does. Maybe we just roll in the same general direction, but I digress.

Jex and I are probably going to be playing every day because, well, going from being very busy to having ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do is hard on him. I have the internet and am very good at busying myself (hooray for bookworm artists and their antisocial tendencies) so I could care less. But I have to keep the man occupied or suffer his despondency.

Random Encounter: From Dungeon Magazine

In all my minute experience with D&D I've never played a prefabricated dungeon. We've played in Adam's version of Faerune (or however it's spelled). Jesse has a world of his own. I made up an island. So, far we've all thought out the encounters and story line ourselves. We made up the badguys and good guys, the NPC's that you run into are guests from our imagination to guide or distract the players from what the 'grand scheme' is.

Jex pulled out a level 1 prefabricated dungeon today. Mostly because there's not much to do at Leon's. And let me tell you... it's different.
In some ways it's a little freeing. Jex can play with me at the same time even though there's not really a "DM" it makes it more of a two player game than the traditional set up.
The different mostly comes in the form of the monsters you fight and how the DM reacts to it. Jex didn't sit down and memorize the prefab, so there's lots of cheezy dialog that get's thrown in, a few flash backs and fast forwards. A lot of things like rolls to avoid encounters and such that aren't as obvious when the DM has laid everything out themselves (yay facial expressions!).

Today, our adventuresome little group comprised of a 15 year old human sorceress, a deva psion, a dragon-born warlord, and a gith (can't remember if it's yanki or zerai) sword mage nearly got slaughtered in the desert by a swarm of beetles. Ew.
It was fun. For the most part. Till everyone dropped but the girls who only had an AC of 13 & 14. lol But we survived!

Oh beloved DM.... I don't want your job!

Yes, I have decided that I absolutely, positively, HATE being the DM. Not only is my husband going around messing up my plot line, my line of thought, and how I set up my encounters so that I have to have everything eight sessions in advance, plus alternate and sub sessions, if I want to even have hope that his party won't decide to do something I'm unprepared for.

A lot of detail went into my world (without overwhelming me). And that's not enough.

Jex: I climb into the junk.
Rem: You see more broken bits of building.
Jex: I know but what is it?
Rem: *rolls eyes and thinks "I just told you!!!") Roll a streetwise check.
Jex: 25! *smug smile*
Rem: *Damn!* Okay there's a table that once had pottery on it you can tell by the fragments, the rotted out cross beam is like so (draws on the board)there's some scrapes of clothes, decimated chairs and what looks to have been a set up similar to the other side of the room. You can tell from here that the collapse here is what caused the floor to sink in outside the door.
Jex: What kind of pottery is it?
Rem: GAH!!!!!!! The regular kind!!!!!

I had clothing styles for the corpses they found. I had hidden keys that are going to go in little places scattered throughout the island. NOW he's going to every door handle in the area they've already stripped bare trying out ALL THE KEYS ON EVERYTHING. In a fit of Godmodding I declared that the keys are obviously too small for any key holes you find. He still tried. So I erased the keyholes all together.

Jex: I check this door.
Rem: No keyhole.
Jex: And this one?
Rem: None of the other doors seem to have their handles.

We haven't played again in like... a week or so... and I still don't want to. I don't care anymore. He can never find out why all those god statues were smashed now. I quit!

((not really, I'm probably going to have to finish the campaign now, but it's most likely going to be really really half assed now.))

Stop... Hammer Time!

DMing is easier and harder than I thought it would be.

No really. There are a lot more things that I was able to just 'pull out my butt' that I didn't think I'd be able to.

I love adventure tools.

Like when I was describing the ship wreck and Jesse asked: "So there are life boats."

Rem: "Well yeah there are life boats. Their filled with unsavory sorts that were the people that took you captive in the first place."

Jesse: *thoughtful look, moves his defender's piece* "Crushank grabs hold of the boat."

Rem: "Athletics check." ... he passes. "OK, you now have a hold of the boat and three angry pirates are now going to attack you." *quickly looks up a level one pirate that is a fair amount of nasty*

Jesse then proceeded to get very frustrated very quickly. There was a storm raging, I wasn't about to let him forget that. The waves got choppy, people fighting on the boat got tossed off the boat before they could attack. Rain increased, making it harder to see; luckily he didn't have much in the way of ranged characters or else he would've been pissed I gave the baddies partial cover.

They get to the island shrouded in mist. Make camp. End first session.

Second session wasn't much better. Jesse gave me some guidelines to use while picking bad guys. Maybe he wasn't serious but I wanted to make this campaign a little more of a desperate type. It's a hostile island, with hostile people, you have to fight to survive, and if you can find and put the clues together that I scattered around the Island Ruins and the one safe place I set up you could be the first to come face to face with the gods in a hundred years! Exciting right? Well maybe a little too exciting.

The characters found the ruins of an old port on the beach and found the used basement doors. They were like: Hey! Lets check it out!

I threw a few minions and a fairly annoying Kobold at them. They made quick work of the minion giant rats. I made Jesse laugh when I described the rat master's attack as him picking up one of the larger rats that were at his feet and throwing it at his Defender as one would throw a cat at some one. It all went down hill from there.

I guess a level 4 soldier type bad guy is a little much for four level ones. I don't know where I got this weird idea that if you add everyone's level together they could fight a monster of that level. On further inspection of this though I found it to be ludicrous and not based on anything factual. Four level 2's would have had a better go. With a +9 to every attack that hit fortitude and a +11 to anything melee I didn't have to roll very high to hit them. They managed to kill him tho' barely. Mostly because in trying to keep track of everything I'd forgotten about the aura around the rat master until the last few rounds.

I'm the DM... it's my job to try and kill them... lol Within reason.

Now I'm working on a more detailed maps of the areas. I've rethought the 'hostile people' aspect and am currently building 2 more safe places on the island to give Jesse a break. Maybe next time it'll be a better balance of challenge and fun.

Salty Dogs: Vol III The Final Chapter

In preparation of moving Jex has tried to get our DD4e campaign to a good stopping point. So we've had two really good, long, sessions with Missy and Shaun recently. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow we'll get to play World of Darkness... but I won't get my hopes up.

Here's the ending to our little story.

The dice were against us! They were! Rolling everything under a four during an entire encounter is proof enough for me. I started counting on failing and only using my one invigorating fighter power (crushing surge) so that I could get what we've dubbed "bubble points" (they're temporary life points/hit points).

The story though is actually pretty sweet.

While Mara is dragging the NPC Zeni across the dirt road of Dead's End the Bard Aard (Shaun) is freaking out, the Halfling we met in town (Missy) isn't quite sure what to do, so she starts locking the doors on Zeni's side of the town so that maybe she'll have to go to the Sheriff's office. Well then Aard tells Mara telepathically to 'trust him' and attacks her, pushing her 5 spaces away and breaking her hold on Zeni. He tries to play good cop bad cop but it doesn't work. Mara's pissed but she decides to try the whole diplomacy thing. Mara and Zeni have the same personality according to Aard the Shard Bard so when Mara almost talked Zeni to their side (mara has a -1 to diplomacy btw) everyone was really surprised. But that fell through. We kept going back and forth between trying to be diplomatic and trying to knock the crap out of the NPC. Zeni was so bent on beating Mara even once the encounter was kind of over and she found the door was locked she chased her and stabbed her in the back.

In response Mara stomps across the street the flings open the door to the armor shop, which connects to the general store who's door was locked. There on the other side stood Casey in all her 3 foot tall glory. Heavily armored Mara was more than enough to conceal the little Rogue. Mara told Casey to run before turning and flinging her arm at the open portal. "There! Go through and unlock your freaking door, it's not like there's people clamoring to buy your shiz. Leave me the hell alone!"

Zeni stomps passed her and says: "If I see anything amiss I'm coming after you."

"Whatever." Mara huffs and starts to walk away.

Well, the Bard had used his 'shard swarm' teleporting power to get into the general store (and Shaun's so good at NOT metagaming that he kept his knowledge that the fight was over between Mara and Zeni out of his character's head) and in an attempt at drawing attention away from Mara he breaks the window. Upon hearing the window break Mara face palms and Zeni comes after her.

Luckily, Casey and another NPC who looks like he could be Mara's brother, Telecor, are able to get Zeni off of Mara, who at this point is literally at 1Hit Point. After everyone decided to beat the crap out of Zeni she went down fairly easily. They brought her into the Sheriff's office and were like, BLEH!

Clide, the deputy that's been keeping the towns people from dying of the plague, asks the group if they'd be trusted with a secret. My character is like "no." Hooray for Shaun's Bard being all persuasive and stuff. In the end they all go down and the Sheriff is all chained up in a cell. He asks the group to be deputies and they're like "sure, why not." Except for Mara, who does NOT want to stay there and is like "Meh, let me sleep on it." They get locked in the cells and talk it over a little and then decide that it'd be a good thing to do. Hearing a noise Casey unlocks the cells and they all go searching for the noise, but don't find it.

The next morning they wake to the Sheriff (who's a big minotaur) all chained up with an apparatus in front of him that has 4 ropes, a frame, all attached to a sword. Clide tells us that all we have to do to be Deputies is kill the Sheriff. Everyone's like "Okay." Except Mara, who doesn't like it because the Sheriff is asleep. She tells everyone that she'll kill him if his eyes are open, but she's not an assassin. Clide won't wake him up. Mara won't kill the Sheriff if he's out like a light. So, she says. "Fine, the rest of you kill him, Clide lock me up down here till this stupid plague finishes me off. Whatever. But I won't kill a sleeping man!"

This is not good enough for Clide. Who then locks us all up and leaves. Then Shaden shows up and is all like "you guys are stupid. You should've killed the Sheriff. blah blah, i'm a dick, blah."

Aard 'victim of the faewild's Casey and Mara so that we surround Shaden and we try to kill him. But he goes all shadowy on us and gets away. Another smoke bomb gets dropped in and Mara can't get the trap door open even though she cracks the wood.

When they awake with an even nastier headache than before, a progressed plague, yay -4 to all rolls; no one is happy and all the locks are jammed so Casey can't work her magic. Out of nowhere the armless asian man from the infirmary shows up and gives us hall packages of nasty bread and water while saying: "I'm sorry my friends to see you so down, perhaps what I have to give you will lift you out of your sorrows. I'm sorry the only silverware I could find was a butter knife." When he leaves and everyone opens their pouches Mara's like "Yes! yes Yeeeesss! * Maniacal laughter*" Inside there's a crude, thick, kind of metal bar/flat head screw driver. And Mara knows exactly what to do with it. She excitedly tells the Bard (who was expecting magic levitation bread or something) to use it to get the pins out of the jail door so they can escape.

The Sheriff wakes up and asks what's going on. The Bard, who loves a melodrama, tells him. The Sheriff, with the aid of his creepy spirit falcon, gets us out then we all go searching for Clide. We find one of the missing guys in the rubble of the lower end of town. Keep searching, then find Clide fighting with the nasty tempered bar keep. Aard just loves his 'victim of the faewild' ability and teleports Casey and Mara to either side of him. But Clide gets away, not before Jex can throw in 'I shot the Sheriff, but I didn't shoot the deputy' to call Shaden to the fray out of nowhere.

We pummel Shaden, take a quick breather because in the process of pummelling him we used up most of our special powers and lost one of our party. After taking Telecor to the infirmary Jex called 'the low beds' we take off after Clide in a surprisingly tactical manner, considering our group's history of 'let's kill it!'

Casey is being all sneaky sneaky in the dark. Mara is trying to be. Everyone gets to an upper room above the stalls and Mara uncovers her Sun Rod. THERE! Right next to her is Clide he starts to say something like "finally you fools have~" and Mara is like "Gah!" and hits him in the face with the Sun Rod. Being as how Sun Rod's turn on and off via tapping the light goes out and everyone's confused. The Sheriff throws his Sun Rod in a corner, yay, now we can see.

Then we fight Clide, who not only likes to hit Mara and only Mara, but also has a whirlwind vortex of fail around him that keeps us from doing much damage.

He's near his end and says something like: "This isn't over." And jumps out the window only to be knocked flat by the creepy spirit bird.

Mara runs out to see if he's dead or not. She can't really tell until he says her name. She leans down to give him a few choice words before smashing his head in but he tells her about the cure for the plague and that he was really the one behind everything and gives her a message to tell the Sheriff. She says she'll fix everything for him. Suddenly he asks about a Scepter, if she's had any visions about one. When she says no he tells her not to touch it that he has a feeling it's... and the Sheriff's boot crushes his face and kills him.

Mara bolts up and is all indignant. "What the hell was that for, he was telling me stuff."

"We have no more need for his lies." The Sheriff replies.

Mara gets in his face and stabs him in the center of his chest with a finger. "You could use a little more mercy, and a lot more tact."

They all go to the Sheriff's office and Mara tells them about the cure. After a few misconceptions and a lot of character interaction Mara finally finishes the brew and drinks some.

It tastes like mint, then butt, then rancid butt, then back to a nice mint. Mara then takes some to Telecor, because her companions don't trust her alchemical skillz. The Sheriff is all like "meh, you're wasting your time." and Mara's all like "I didn't ask you!"

Everyone gets better, the bad tempered bar tender is suspicious, and now our little group can go one of twenty differing ways. Damn.

Mara goes back to the Sheriff and tells him what Clide said: "About acting on Faith despite all opposition." and it gets all emotional. Mara then leaves and proudly announces to the Bard that he should be proud of her because she made it through something emotional without making fart noises. All is well in Dead's End, and now, we have the world before us.

Sweet.

Salty Dogs: Vol II

Something actually happened last time we played!

Clide, one of the deputies asks us to get some of the plant life he uses to make medicine that slows the effects of the oozy black doom. The Bard got hit in the face with a Mushroom Bomb thing. The other deputy, Shaden, took us to the cave. We went in, we searched, we gathered, we fought an energy monster and got the crap blasted out of us by a cave in that smashed the crystal that spawned the hologramesque being. Then we got out and were shoved into a jail cart and smoke bombed till we passed out.

Yay us... thanks to everything we have migraines from hell and -2 to every roll.

So, we find out that the plague has only been around for a month. It started just after some adventurers left. No one seems to have given them much mind because no one really remembers them. Shaden is missing, but the horses and cart are still present. The Sheriff is sick now.

All this being said, it falls to us to go and ask a very uncooperative Tiefling woman to come talk to Clide.

She wasn't being very cooperative.

My character isn't a happy character on the best of days. Mara+Migraine= Death to all who cross her. Zeni, the Tiefling crossed her.

Now my Character is dragging an NPC across the town by her Horns, literally. I think she might die.