OAWYM: When Treasure Attacks

Game Date: 7/29/2017
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 35
Module: Scourge of the Slave Lords, Queen of the Spiders

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Fighter
Meece (Daniel) - Goblin Arcane Archer
Ulmack (Gary) - Halfling Monk
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Orc Paladin

The Session:
After being asked to retrieve a book from a monastery, we fought several zombie monks and took a short rest.  Once we felt ready to continue, we explored more of the monastery.  We looked into a couple of empty rooms, finding a dorm and a kitchen, before reaching a much larger throne room.

The room had a river of lava separating us from a throne and two chests.  (This world's architects are crazy.)  But before we could think of going that direction, there were nine more zombie monks facing us.  Ulmack and Halbeard managed to kill one before the monks got a turn.  On Val's turn she used Turn the Unholy, causing four of the remaining eight to flee.  Then Val took more damage, lowering her maximum HP, down even more from last session.

Once we finished off the four, we went after the other four that had fled, and killed them one by one.  It was like shooting fish in a barrel.  We took another short rest in the dorm area, and headed back to the throne room.  We used our various flying items to get over the lava, and examined the new area.  Val checked out one chest while Ulmack looked at the other.  Val's chest was locked, and Ulmack's was a mimic.

Ulmack thwacked the mimic, and Val ran over to finish it off.  Val used her Detect Undead and felt a strange presence coming from the throne.  A red mist coalesced on the throne, and became a robed Elf vampire.  Meece used his winged boots to fly to the other side of the lava, attacking from range.  The vampire used Charm on Halfbeard, so we now faced two opponents.  The vamp tried to charm Val as well, but she was immune.

Halfbeard attacked Val, and brought her down to 1 very quickly.  Only her Half-Orc Relentless Endurance kept her on her feet.  We hit the vampire a few more times, attacking Halfbeard whenever the vampire was out of range.  We finally did enough damage to the vampire that it dissipated, turning back into a mist and escaping through holes in the throne.

Defeating the vamp didn't end Halfbeard's charm, so we had to take him down to 0.  Then we tied him up and healed him.  He was angry, but we managed to talk him into a truce.  (The Charm finally wore off 24 hours later.)  Then Val smashed open the remaining chest and found the book we'd been sent to find.  Back to town.

Once we gave our questgiver back his MacGuffin, he arranged passage for us on a merchant ship.  We hid aboard the ship until we were out of Iron Circle territory, and eventually made it back to Sarthel.  We managed to claim part of an old Iron Circle barracks to call our home base while we waited on more opportunities.  We have been given the title "The Knights of Sarthel."

A few weeks later Dame Gold requested our presence.  A barbarian prince had come to plead for help. His homeland was being invaded by giants.  The barbarians suspected that a greater force was behind the giants' actions.  He wanted assistance in defeating the giants, and to find out what was behind the attacks.  We agreed to travel to his homeland and assist their efforts.  And thus begins the next module.  We ended the session there, traveling to the prince's country.

OAWYM: Monky Business

Game Date: 7/15/2017
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 34
Module: Scourge of the Slave Lords
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Fighter
Meece (Daniel) - Goblin Arcane Archer
Ulmack (Gary) - Halfling Monk
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Orc Paladin

The Session:
After winning last week's epic battle, we took an extended rest.  During Val's watch, she became aware of a goblin trying to get into her backpack.  A few threats followed, but the goblin promised to help us get into the city, so we let him live.  And so Meece joined the party.

During the trek towards town, we saw some stone giants mining rocks, but we gave them a wide berth and avoided the fight. The next day we reached the city.  We entered through a sewer grate, and Meece led us though the tunnels.  Eventually we exited through a manhole cover.  We paid a beggar for info on places to hide out, and he directed us to the Thieves Quarter.  He also gave us a small ivory carving of a horse head. 

We wandered around town for a while, went into a few taverns, and finally found an inn with a sign that looked similar to our horse carving.  We asked the manager a lot of questions, and we were told to "seek out the knowledge that never dies."  We stayed overnight and bought some clothing.  The next morning we checked out the docks, but there was too much military activity for us to book a private ship.

We kept looking around town, and got spotted by some slavers.  They tried to give us some orders, but we bluffed our way out.  We kept exploring and wound up at a mapmaker's shop.  We told the mapmaker we wanted to get on a boat out of town.  He offered to arrange it in exchange for a side quest.  We need to head to an old monastery, and find a history book.

We left Dame Gold and the rest of the rescued slaves in a safe house, and we traveled to the monastery.  We had to walk up thousands of steps up a mountain until we reached the giant front doors of the building.  We pulled open the doors and entered the front room.  There were four giant pillars in the room, and we soon saw movement coming from them.

We faced several monk wights, and one wraith.  Meece took to the air using his flying boots, and started firing magical arrows from a distance.  Halfbeard used his invisibility to get a good first hit in.  Ulmack did an especially good job of punching multiple targets.  But these undead monks hit hard, and each hit lowered our maximum hit points. 

Val managed to kill the wraith by critting with an OA and adding Divine Smite.  Then she used her Turn the Unholy power to make two of the wights flee out a side door.  Then we kept hacking away, until we finally finished off the remaining wights.  Once the battle was over, Val did some healing while we waited to see if the two fleeing wights were going to return.  They did not.

We ended the session there, trying to decide whether to chase down the wights, explore more rooms, or take a short rest.  Most of us are currently at full health, but our max hp won't be restored until the next long rest.

OAWYM: Desert Strike

Game Date: 7/1/2017
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 33
Module: Scourge of the Slave Lords
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Fighter
Karzen (Daniel) - Eladrin Artificer
Ulmack (Gary) - Halfling Monk
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Orc Paladin
Velris (Graham) - Half-Elf Warlock

The Session:
We've defeated most of the slave lords, and now we're backtracking through the tunnels to make our way back home. After fighting our way through a large gate, we entered a tunnel that split into two directions.  The smaller tunnel was occupied by seven slavers, who Velris took out with a fireball (his fireball-spewing staff turned out to be the savior of the session).  There were three doors in the hallway, leading to some empty barracks. 

On the other end of the hall was a door leading back to the larger hallway.  Velris peeked through the door and killed another group of slavers with a fireball, and the remaining slavers fled in a panic.  We chased them and picked them off one by one.  Halfbeard tried to take the long way around and attack them from the other side, but sadly we'd finished them off before he got there.

We picked up a wagon and some horses, and led the rescued slaves out of the dungeon.  At this point we had ten former slaves as followers, plus Dame Gold.  We needed to travel through the desert to head back to the dockside town.  On the second day of our trek, we saw a large hobgoblin raiding party, with slaves of their own in tow.

We attempted to set up an ambush.  We placed ourselves in strategic locations and prepared for a fight.  We faced at least fifty hobgoblins, though most of them were low level.  Val failed a stealth check, causing the hobgoblins to investigate.  Then Velris fired off a fireball, and the battle was on.

It was a long, difficult fight, and we almost didn't make it.  Velris had the most kills, by taking out the weaker hobgoblins with fireballs.  But the hobgoblin captains were heavy hitters.  Ulmack went down several times, with Val healing him each time.  Then Halfbeard and Karzen went down as well.  The rescued slaves helped out, but they were too weak to do much.  It took them the entire battle to take out two enemies. 

It finally came down to Velris and Val.  Val kept some of the strongest Hobgoblins occupied, since they had trouble getting through her Cloak of Displacement.  Meanwhile Velris worked on crowd control.  When Velris finished off his opponents, he went to help Dame Gold, who was making death saves by this time.  Val finished off the final Hobgoblin with a Divine Smite.

After the battle, we healed our wounded and counted survivors.  Unfortunately Karzen didn't make it, having failed three death saves.  Dame Gold is still alive, along with four of the rescued slaves.  We looked for a safe place to take a long rest, and ended the session.