/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal

I was trapped underground again in what I was sure would be my death. How does this keep happening to me? We couldn't go back with the burrowroot in the way, and we couldn't go into the shrine because it covered in a meat grinder of vines and thorns. Theoretically I could disarm it, but I had a feeling my luck was starting to run out. Any other day I'd have gladly given my life to try and save everyone else, but now I had other things to think about. Well, there was one other path we hadn't taken, and that would be going to the tree. so we went towards the tree. Squeezing through the overgrown branches and vines we could hear the sounds of fighting up ahead.

Crawling to investigate we found a large group of gnomes and spriggans and animals fighting against a smaller group of elves and twig blights. Leading the gnomish side was a group of three spriggans, each of them seemed immensely powerful. They weren't really fighting, they were showing off. We were no match for them in our current shape.

I decided to try asking one of the elves how to disable the thorny meat grinder using message, but she didn't seem very trusting of us. For a second Yusdrayl seemed angry that I could cast message, like she thought she owned the spell or something, then she decided to cast it herself to help me in pursuading the elf. To help prove that we weren't helping the gnomes, I gladly cast gnome blight into the group of spriggans and Kisara, following my lead, shot a few lightning spells, missing them completely and instead only hitting a few twig blights. This attracted their attention. We retreated a bit and hid behind some cover.

Then, what looked like a cross between a spriggan and a golem burrowed up from underground, and brought what looked like 30 gnomes with it. A moment later we were all It hit with a very powerful fire spell. It almost killed us and we ran back into the cover of vines and branches. I used the last of my useful healing spells to keep everyone alive, but we were all still half dead.

Yusdrayl and I spent a few moments trying to get one of the surviving elves to help us, and eventually one did. Well, at least I think it was an elf, or a shadow of one. Whatever it was, it was terrifying to be around. Sometimes, for a moment, the elf would turn into... something else. Sometimes bark covered flesh, sometimes something with far too many eyes seemingly staring into my soul. Regardless to say it was creepy. The elf led us back to it's study and offered us, or more specifically me, some tea. With some help, I managed to convince it that we were in a hurry. It seemed to accept this and led us through the dungeon to shrine room.

We were ambushed by skeletons, and one rebuke undead later I was in control of them. They helped when we were attacked by a group of gem scarabs, with one of them being much larger than the rest. They weren't really that hard even with us being heavily wounded. However, during the fighting I noticed something. Something that I ignored to make sure Yusdrayl was alright. But then it started laughing at us. We traded insults for a bit, but I eventually convinced it to leave us alone temporarily so we might actually survive this. While this is all going on the elf was staring off into nothingness in a room off to the side. The only thing in the room is a large tree, so I approached the elf and the tree smacked me. Hard enough to kill me, but thankfully I still had a single spell I could use to just barely keep me alive.

The elf finally snapped out of it and led us to a room to the south. It was filled with charred and broken myconid corpses, with only one survivor. It was a tiny thing trapped under a much larger corpse. Akara and I try to free it, and for our trouble we're attacked by rot grubs. We retreat and I use one of my last spells and to sicken all of us, including the rot grubs. It was too late, and Akara was infested. He would die, but using a bit more luck than I had I managed to rip out the grub burrowing underneath his scales, pull it out, and smash it underneath my foot.

After killing the swarm the elf finally pulls it's head out of it's ass and leads us to where we needed to go in the first place. The elf just walks towards the door and the vines surrounding it disappear. We enter and are expected to make a sacrifice. A crimson fruit and 'blood' of a goat. We didn't think we had any of those. Turns out 'blood' part is really just a bit of a difference in dialect, and actually meant 'essence' and someone has been eating strawberries in cream this entire time. Yusdrayl. I feel like something is watching me and causing a lot of these coincidences to happen.

Anyway, I did the ritual written in stone around the altar and walked into a stone. Very soon after I was violently kicked out of it with a large wooden seed in my arms. I ignored how it was pulsating and seemingly speaking to me inside my mind and shoved it in my pack. The elf was gone, and Kisara had taken possession of the myconid. We left the way we came in, through the front door. The shadow dragon thing that had been blocking it had left and we quickly scurried out of there. Kisara used a patch from her cloak to get us a ladder to climb the collapsed stairs and Akara climbed the cliff with a troll gut rope and tied it down so the rest of us could climb up and out of that damned place.

We were on guard the rest of the way back to camp. Thankfully nothing tried to kill us as we walked back. We had been gone for four days even though we only spent a few hours there. It wasn't entirely unexpected as the whole place was a temple dedicated to Chronepsis sometime in the past. I was glad to be back and immediately grabbed Yusdrayl for some nose to nose cuddling. I also told her she's pregnant. I fell asleep soon after.

>>166118
That's a Dune's worm.

>>166120
It's my sad attempt at drawing a rotgrub leaping at the viewer.

>>166119
>I feel like something is watching me and causing a lot of these coincidences to happen.
Unironically yes, but also because I had initially intended to require you guys to perform a series of quests to discover the sacrifice components, but as I spotted that you'd entirely forgotten it early on, I figured it would be unfun to reveal it later.
Oakhurst was one of three locations where the sacrificial ingredients could be gathered. Optionally, you could have raided a nearby farm, or gathered the fruit from where it grew on a mountain. Offering an incorrect sacrifice could have been ironic and frightening with the right set-up, but only if you knew about it in the first place.

Highlights from this week's session:

>>166119

I needed more information on this "seed" I was given. It was magical and evil, I knew that much, but beyond that nobody had any idea what it was. I grabbed Kisara and temporarily rescued Akara from being bullied and set off to go ask my best friend in the whole world that's also an oread, Silitdiwerverthicha, about this seed.

We were ambushed by a couple of demons and a spriggan who had evidently summoned them. It was an easy fight, and we even came across a caravan of gnomes that had been ambushed too. We quickly killed any survivors and got to looting the remains. Unfortunately the sound of fighting had attracted a group of gnome illusionists and their force golem escort.

After a short scuffle with the gnomes Kisara cast Mass Invisibility and we all ran off, but they somehow followed us. I hit the gnomes with gnome blight while Kisara and Akara waited in ambush. As the golem approached me and I created a simulacrum of myself to confuse it. I cast Spiritual Weapon and had it attack the golem while Kisara pelted it with magic missiles. It was the only casualty of this battle as the gnomes took this opportunity to run away.

We had finally made it to Silitdiwerverthicha's stone. She didn't seem like she wanted to be disturbed, but after some convincing she finally came out to see us. Not that I needed a reason to come see my best friend, but we did have one. After a bit of explaining and she helpfully informed us that the seed could start growing at any time, and that we should take it as far away from her as possible. As an afterthought I asked her what I can do to free her from her stone in the forest and get her back to a mountain that would truly compare to her beauty.

But then there was the bitch, the fucking Dryad bitch that laughed at MY best friend. After some choice comments about how she's not guarding the forest she threw a spriggan head at me and disappeared. She even chased Silitdiwerverthicha back into her rock. What a cunt.

While I would've loved to spend all day speaking to my best friend, she didn't want to be bothered anymore so we left and headed back to the tribe. Thankfully, nothing decided to try attacking us on our way back. Kisara took Akara off to talk about something weird while I went to the meditation circle.

Yusdrayl was there, but I knew better than to interrupt someone while they're meditating. Apparently she didn't, as soon after I sat down she started bothering me about what I was doing that morning and what I was planning to do later and whatever else came to her mind. After being subtle didn't work, I told her to leave me alone for a bit and well, at least she stopped talking. Not that it really helped as I could still faintly hear Akara screaming for help. He'll get over it.

After that we came up with some plans on what to do now. We heard of three other kobold tribes in the area, one led by a madman, one near a big geode, and one much further away in the Emerald Forest. We decided that we should take the our now homeless tribe and try our luck at the geode.

>>166114
>Where we last left off, we had just made it home from the temple and were getting preparations ready to pack up camp and head out again for the next tribe to integrate

>This time, we have some last business to get to before we completely leave the area
>In particular, we need to ask our oread friend about the seed and I need to see how best to keep a myconid happy and healthy
>Vyth and Kisara both meet up and discuss this and then decide that Akara would be useful in translating again, so we go try to find him
>When we do so, we find him in the middle of a crowd of warriors as he's raped by the chief torturer for the umpteenth time
>Sadly, we're having a harder time getting him some respect (unlike meepo, who's gotten notably higher on the totem pole thanks to his summoned shotgun being a kickass weapon)
>Probably because he still acts like a dwarf when he thinks nobody's looking
>Anyway, we drag him out of the raping and start the walk out to the oread's rock after Kisara leaves Mini Shroombro in the hands of the biggest warrior she could still beat 1v1 for protection
>While we're out, we end up finding a pair of red orcs that cause my neurons to activate
>Unfortunately, they're demons and I have now learned the hard way that demons are immune to lightning
>The spriggans on said demons' backs aren't though
>Lmao
>The martials kill the demons soon enough though, and we're able to continue on and find out where they came from, given they came from the direction we're heading
>A caravan of gnomes, dead and or dying, lay strewn about before us
>Vyth grabs one of the dying and tries to interrogate them about the oread's rock, not knowing that we're still a ways off
>Kisara corrects this issue by killing said gnome while Akara stands around until a certain presence arrives
>Said presence being some more gnomes and a force golem
>One of those gnomes happens to be a mage, and an illusionist at that
>He traps us in a ring of spectral assholes, but we all escape out after dealing some chip damage to him and the golem under the cover of mass invisibility
>This lets us get closer to the rock, but unfortunately we're tracked down and we have to lay an ambush for them or risk getting our asses kicked again
>Kisara hides behind a tree, Vyth creates a double with incredible efficiency and accuracy, leaving himself completely free to do whatever he wants as the golem tries to kill the fake kobold
>He makes a spiritual weapon, and Kisara sits behind the tree and launches volley after volley of magic missiles into the golem and the illusionist
>Even after the illusionist blinds and reveals Kisara with a glitterbomb, she continues pelting them both thanks to the missiles having perfect accuracy
>Anyway, Vyth hacks apart the golem while Kisara blows up the pieces and pesters the wizard until the golem's dead and the wizard decides to cut his losses
>Yay, we're now free to do what we need to here!
>The three of us together pester the oread into appearing, with Vyth casting tongues to allow himself to talk in her native languages, Akara speaks in their shared dwarven, and Kisara just talks normally because apparently the oread picked up draconic in anticipation of dealing with more kobolds or something
>Vyth leads off by showing her the seed, upon which she tactically shits herself before telling us that she doesn't actually know anything about it but still wants it the hell away from her
>Kisara then asks about how to raise a myconid, and she tells me what I anticipated: keep it dark, and keep it moist
>Duly noted, hopefully a sack with some dampened leaflitter will suffice for our travel, because otherwise I got nothing
>Akara doesn't ask anything this time, but oh well
>Also, some pissbaby dryad shows up and bullies the oread for a while with Vyth berating it while Kisara threatens to make Smoky the Bear cry by holding a charge of scorching ray in the middle of a forest for intimidation
>Unfortunately, this doesn't work
>The dryad eventually fucks off though, so for one last question, Vyth asks if there's a way for us to free the oread from her rock and allow her to claim another mountain
>She's caught offguard by the question, but is nonetheless receptive to it and tells us that she'll think about it
>With that though, we return to camp and Vyth fucks off to a meditation circle while Kisara decides now would be the right time to play a sick nasty epic prank on the chief torturer, of course using Akara as her delivery device
>He's initially adamant that he doesn't want Kisara casting any spells on him, but after she explains that the spell is just a small shock trap that won't hurt him, he remains adamant about wanting no part of this
>Aw, really?
>Well, suit yourself!
>Kisara then leaves Akara to his fate, his screaming and dwarven cursing echoing through the camp with the only response that wasn't laughing or jeering being "You could've accepted my help!"
>Kisara then meets back up with Vyth after he finishes meditating and she finishes reclaiming Shroombro (with a little violence, just to keep the fear of Kurtulmak in those she decides to have help her), and they discuss ways to get Akara to stop being the butt of every raping, and our OOC conclusion is that we should try to bring him into the clergy for a bit of deprogramming and maybe even some mental toughening
>That would require us to get the permission of the chief warrior though, who happens to be the chief torturer...
>Well, maybe we can petition Ukri for Akara's transfer and use some fancy wording to get him to endorse it?
>Idk, that's just my idea

Anyway, the session officially ended with Akara getting raped again, so the rest of it was just ooc discussion that I turned into some minor fluff. Anyway, the next session is in a few hours, and I'm only hurting myself by staying up this late! See you all then, and I'm going to resist the urge to shoot myself or something, life is pain

Highlights from today's session:

>>166146
>Where we last left off, we had just gotten back to camp from asking the oread some questions and getting some answers

>Now, we're doing some last preparations before we leave the area
>Vyth takes care of some politics determining the actual when/where/how we're going with Ukri and the other local big shots, and the answers are tomorrow, to the madbold's tribe, and by plains
>After that, we go to check on mini shroombro again to make sure that that one warrior is keeping up his end of the bargain
>As it turns out, mini shroombro isn't so mini anymore!
>He grew considerably, now being equal in size to Kisara!
>I'm a little sad that my mushroom buddy only stayed with us for around 2 sessions, but he's got his own little mushroom garden going now and he's got some parting words for us
>He thanks us for saving him and gives us some mushrooms, three each for general wellness and one more each in case we need help
>We ask where he's going now that we're parting ways again so soon, but all he says is that he's going to meet the (chief myconid, I forgot the exact term used) now that he's on his own
>Kisara then ends this goodbye with a hug to her favorite mushroom, leaving the growing puffball to his journey
>With that, the session cuts ahead to our own journey to the next tribe!
>Our first day traveling the plains was rather uneventful, with us taking the point for scouting purposes with the rest of the tribe following behind, all the way through camping when the time for rest came
>The second day is also rather uneventful, but when resting time comes we are rudely interrupted by a bunch of angry blue fuckers
>I briefly have flashbacks to the gambols in RHoD, anticipating an incredibly hard fight ahead
>I wasn't too far off the mark about the hard fight, but instead of lion monkeys spamming fear auras it's a bunch of cronenberg centaurs that hate anything arcane!
>They surround the tribe and we roll initiative, those big fuckers proving to be quite the challenge even for well over 100 kobolds working together
>Fighting in the open sucks
>They start up autistic screeching for some reason, and it somehow knocks down most of the low-level kobolds, giving me a free shot at one of the bastards charging me down
>Kisara throws an unavoidable 26-damage lightning bolt at it, but the fucker doesn't even slow down!
>Yusdrayl also does what she can to hurt it, but it just keeps coming until it finally catches us, picks us both up, and screams at us about being mages in broken common
>Also, there's a magical storm going on right now, so that's important soon
>Starting now actually, as the storm strikes the bastard currently holding Kisara and Yusdrayl, causing us both to take damage as well as him
>He's unfazed, but I'm running on fumes
>At least he only deals more than my entire health pool in nonlethal damage, meaning I'm just choked out instead of choked to death
>It's at about this point that the DM's hidden timer runs out and the encounter ends, with all the remaining unkilled blue guys dropping what they're doing (or holding, luckily for me) and get the fuck out of dodge as an enormous aurora dragon appears out of the storm in the sky above us!
>Well, not technically a dragon, which we learn after Vyth finishes picking up Kisara to get her to try to make heads or tails of it
>Turns out it's an incredibly powerful entity known as the Serpent, an arcane being with unfathomable knowledge of magic and incredible power to share
>Kisara immediately sees a handy means to her ends, and calls out to it while Vyth continues helping out the downed kobolds and bringing all those not turned to chunky salsa back from the brink of death
>The Serpent's eye shifts, alighting on Kisara as she immediately fails a will save to get sent on a Dr. Strange-esque trip across the cosmos from inside her own mind, but makes another will save to understand that this is something born of her dragon heritage and not just her gaining the Serpent's attention
>Said trip ends with her floating adrift in the deep cosmos, looking onward as an immense dragon forms itself from the stars themselves before imprinting one statement onto the infinitely smaller kobold's mind
>Kisara then snaps out of the vision and the apparent seizure she'd been having, looking up at the fading form of the Serpent as it disappears to its next destination and cries out in desperation "But how do I find the stone circle!? Please, tell me!"
>The Serpent remains silent, its words continuing to echo through Kisara's head as she wracks her mind to find a solution to this puzzle with only one piece
>She asks around to the other kobolds who were given visions and finds nothing, but Vyth has more luck from checking his schizo book!
>As it turns out, there's a myth about Kurtulmak stealing sorcery from the Serpent for koboldkind, but nothing directly mentioned about the stone circle or where it is/how to get to it
>With that, Vyth makes the executive decision to have us doubletime it through the plains to get to our next stop on the trip, a forest
>We then rest in a cave on the border between the two, and that's it for the session

All in all, a good time! I like that Kisara's finding new ways to potentially expand her power, and I like that I'm getting close to level 6! The session itself was also fun, and I enjoyed the RP that came with it and also learning about this new force to keep in mind ||and I may have also seeded an idea in the DM's mind about how to handle Kisara being apprenticed to The Serpent, given how its last apprentice was Vecna (yes, that Vecna) and it still hasn't been able to collect on that necromantic nerd's soul yet after millennia...|| But, that's for time to tell! I'll see you all next week, and I hope to find more knowledge about my quest to obtain more and more power soon enough! Until next time!

>>166148
>fail spoiler
>missing name
I'm an idiot. A tired idiot, but an idiot nonetheless

Me, researching every ape-like monster in 3.5e, so that I can further traumatize Kisara's player

>>166148
>It's at about this point that the DM's hidden timer runs out and the encounter ends, with all the remaining unkilled blue guys dropping what they're doing (or holding, luckily for me) and get the fuck out of dodge as an enormous aurora dragon appears out of the storm in the sky above us!
Only partly true. The Quaraphons Bullmaster wasn't dodging anything, but galloping away in utter terror. Although he was strong enough to lay waste to the entire tribe by himself, he was scared shitless by the appearance of The Serpent. Although dimwitted and primitive creatures, the quaraphons called The Serpent by it's ancient Ur'Flan name as they fled.

>>166152
>The Quaraphons Bullmaster wasn't dodging anything
I didn't say he was dodging anything, I said he was getting the fuck out of dodge (AKA running away as if his life depended on it)

>>166144

Off we went to find a new home. Before we left, we had to choose which path to take. After some divination magic and a vision of blue horses and a giant serpent, I determined we should go through the plains. This may not have been the safest decision, but it was one of the faster paths, taking a week rather than spending a month or two traveling.

We left after a few days. Kisara, Zags, Akara and I were scouting ahead of the main group. Everything was good for the first few days, but then we came across a series of gashes in the earth, as if something had tunneled out, killed something, then tunneled back into it. Some divination later and I'm certain that going forward would lead to our deaths and changing course would only be dangerous, so we change course to the east and continue on.

When darkness fell, we could tell something was wrong. I cast clairvoyance directly behind us just outside the range of my darkvision and saw... something. It was a blue four legged two armed... something. I couldn't get a good look at it, but I knew we were being hunted. Together we moved back to the main group. Thankfully we weren't attacked when outside the protection of the circle of spears.

Not that we had much chance to rest. There was a magic storm above when they attacked. I got a better look at them and they sure were some ugly fuckers. It seemed as if their eyes were placed randomly on their faces and they had a few too many mouths. We took a few casualties but we managed to fight them off, with only one of them roaring and putting 30 kobolds to sleep. The storm was getting worse. Yusdrayl saved us by dispelling the the strikes of the storm. We managed to kill 3 of those things when the largest among them leaped into the center of our circle. It was much more powerful than any of us. It could've killed us all, and put several kobolds to sleep with a roar, but soon after it arrived it ran away because the serpent appeared.

It appeared from the storm. While I was tending to the wounded, some koboldss tried speaking to it and immediately fell unconscious and started convulsing. Thankfully they all regained their senses within a few minutes. They all claimed to have a shared hallucination of being welcomed to a stone circle. Then as quickly as it appeared the serpent disappeared.

Many kobolds didn't survive the trip. It's my fault, as I saw the vision and decided we should go on this path anyway. I was able to save some of the more injured kobolds, but that's a small consolation for the lives I ended.

Fearing another attack from the blue things I encouraged the tribe to march without rest until we reached the end of the plains. We probably wouldn't be lucky enough to have another giant magic serpent appear from the sky to scare them away.

After another day or two of travel we finally reached the end of the plains. We found a small cave hidden away, barely big enough for all of us. We'd stay here while everyone rests. Yusdrayl seemed to be suffering from internal hemorrhaging and kobold hypothermia as a direct result. I used many spells to keep her alive. No kobold would lie about needing medical attention, would they?

>>166180
>putting 30 kobolds to sleep
Correction: it didn't put them to sleep, it knocked them out with sonic damage.

Highlights from today's session:
(don't worry; they survived, barely)

Okay, so it's been a fat while since I've posted here. In that time, we've almost died after wandering into a dwarven nuclear dumping site, we snuck into a bar and got hammered while learning of some quest hooks, and then we rescued some halflings from our weasels after the little shits broke free and decided to do their own thing while we were getting hammered. Meanwhile, IRL I have no real excuse for forgetting to do this shit, I just legitimately forgot for a while. Anyway...

>>166148
>Where we last left off, all that shit above!

>This time, we've gotten back to camp and Kisara's still a little smashed from her time at the bar, one of the weasels is still snacking on a halfling corpse, and the rest of us are fine
>Anyway, we go to report on our findings to Ukri and how there's a kobold tribe nearby that we can talk to and potentially integrate, as well as getting free booze from the bar we visited and a bunch of money from a silver skeleton we can potentially trade in for stuff
>All of this is interrupted though when a holy Aztec turducken pops in out of nowhere, presumably from one of the halflings that we let so mercifully live after all that!
>Looks like we won't make that same mistake again...
>Anyway, all of us get together to face this thing down and Vyth tries to be charitable and negotiate with it, but it chooses violence and attacks Kisara for making a comment and trying to explain our side of things better (but she was still drunk, and it came out more rude than she expected lol)
>The bird then picks her up and ragdolls her through a grapple attack while everyone else similarly acknowledges that violence is the only answer here
>The turducken puts up a good fight through its first stage, even swallowing Kisara and causing her to have to accept her fate again, except Akara ends up coming to her rescue yet again (he was the one responsible for saving us from the TPK in the nuclear dump), imprinting him even more onto her mind than he already was
>This totally won't become a thing, will it?
>Time will tell
>Anyway, the turkey is eviscerated and the duck is up next, with the wounded Kisara fleeing to the safety of the warrior line while everyone else continues the fight
>The duck doesn't like this though and chases down the fleeing kobold until it's once again struck down by Akara, leaving only the chicken to be butchered
>With the mandatory holiday bossfight over, we get in a rest and Yusdrayl finally lays the eggs she's been carrying
>With those matters settled, we head out to go find that new tribe with the advance party of Vyth, Yusdrayl, Kisara, Meepo, Akara, and Snogla (the chief torturer of the tribe)!
>Kisara also levels up, and I handle all the numbers of that before working out the actual matters of new spells and whatnot
>We start climbing the mountain nearby that houses these kobolds, and we eventually come across some giant planar rock crabs that try to bury us under mudslides
>We don't let them, and I make the embarrassing discovery that scintillating sphere is a much higher level spell than I thought it was...
>The crabs do go down though, thanks to our efforts as well as Vyth summoning an ogre zombie to block rocks and drag us through the mud
>Akara gets swept away in the mud though, which has everybody panicking and also gives me an opportunity to choose a new spell exactly for this situation!
>The spell lets me search a 30ft. cube for things, including people, and with its help and the help of Yusdrayl blowing some levitate spells, we're able to find Akara and save him from a muddy fate!
>Anyway, we continue up the mountain and eventually come across a promising area
>Unfortunately, before we can investigate further, we're ambushed by a pair of mountain drakes (I think?)
>Anyway, one of them chunks Vyth and the other chunks Akara, and Yusdrayl and Meepo go to Vyth's rescue while Kisara and Snogla go to Akara's
>It turns out that these things are intelligent and can be reasoned with though, so Vyth trades away the corpse of the rock crab for safe passage
>They accept, and they take the crab and feed it to their young waiting nearby while we advance forward
>Of course, after heals were applied to make sure we're equipped for what may lie ahead
>And that's where the session ended

Quite a fun session, if a bit worrying because Kisara almost died again despite my best efforts... Although it is opening up new avenues of potential RP for her due to Akara being the one to save her ass twice now, but I'm still not entirely sure what direction I'd want to take that (either some form of romance or a possessive dependence, I'm not sure which would be better and/or more fun). Either way though, it seems that this ambitious mage is now at odds with the tribe's head martial for the attention of a kobold that thinks himself a dwarf ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>166216
>Where we left off, we were just a short distance from the place we needed to be and the session ended with us somewhere near the bar

>Now, we're at the bar and we see a group of adventurers chilling near the door
>Simple enough to avoid, just move quietly and stay hidden
>...Except some of us decided that it would be a good idea to dig through the local trash, and we had to hold back a certain toad-shaped kobold from going and giving us away in the dumbest way possible
>Said stupid decision still manages to alert someone to our presence, but those who are alerted are a pair of kobolds already occupying the trash pile
>These kobolds are scrawny and emaciated but otherwise healthy, contrary to us being stout and strong despite being covered in mud/blood
>We get a dialogue going, and it turns out that these guys are from the tribe in the well and after Vyth shares some of our rations with them, we're allowed to follow them in
>When we get in, there's a severely drained lake at the bottom of this well and a few kobolds on the far shore trying to fish from it
>Also, the only way further in from the well is to go across on a tiny boat that only fits its driver and one passenger
>This is stupid slow, so I start brainstorming faster ways across and settle on making my newest level 2 spell the levitate spell
>Said ingenuity is then punished when, as Kisara tries to cross the lake, she gets grabbed by two chokers that were hiding in the water
>She gets dragged under and nearly dies again through a combat encounter that was mostly just struggling to escape on my end, and Akara comes to her rescue yet again
>While down there, we also get told that the bottom of the lake is littered with bones, many of which look like kobold bones
>This fight ends without Kisara actually dying, which is good
>We then take a hot second to regroup and heal up the two kobolds who entered the water, with Kisara then attempting her journey across the lake again
>It was 35 feet across, one set of two humanoid monsters should be plenty of fight to put in a place like this, especially when it's very easy for said monsters to abuse one of 3.5's most busted mechanics to kill us quickly, right?
>Wrong, round fucking 2!
>Two more grab both Kisara and Akara, and it's up to Vyth to help drag us out of the water with the NPCs providing limited help
>Kisara actually starts making death saves at this point, and I start brainstorming how to make the most overpowered character I can to make sure nothing like this happens again, but luckily this isn't the time for that to happen yet
>The monsters are killed and we swim to the far shore without incurring the wrath of the third (third!) set of these fucking things, and we then start talking with the kobolds there (after everybody's given the bare minimum of healing as Vyth's already out of healing spells, fucking hell)
>Turns out that this lake is their only food source and the chokers in there are the brilliant idea of some trapmaker, someone who undoubtedly isn't nearly as brilliant as everyone seems to think
>We also find another schizo journal with a small detour, this one belonging to this tribe's leader, that does all sorts of shit to sing praise towards aberrations and whatnot
>This must be the tribe of the mad kobold listed in Wivai's journal
>Fun, now we're adopted into some lovecraft-esque plot revolving around a kobold fishing town and their leader gone mad!
>That's not even a sarcastic fun, I'm looking forward to learning more about this all
>Anyway, some other information is gleaned from Akara talking to some dwarven statues nearby (as this place used to be a dwarven reservoir), and learning that the silver skeleton, one of our objectives here, is actually nearby
>Some of the kobolds also tell us that they think it's responsible for the drought and food shortage, but I put forth the idea that the well's use by the inn alongside the kobolds' exploitation may be responsible for the drained water level while the chokers within were responsible for the waning number of fish within the lake
>My idea is swept under the rug though, probably to maintain intrigue for the actual plot the DM has in mind
>After this, the actual session ends with us deciding to go talk to the chieftain here before doing anything else
>However, there's some text-based RP afterwards involving some more information harvesting from the kobolds with us, Yusdrayl being a spoiled brat and begging Vyth to carry her since Akara was forced to carry Snogla after Kisara decided to lean on him for support and the self-appointed princess getting pissy that she wasn't getting attention
>The Kisara-Akara-Snogla subplot evolves into an argument, and said argument results in Kisara being knocked out by Snogla to nobody's surprise or enjoyment

Now, onto my thoughts on the session in general: I'm not happy about the large pile of chokers, one set was enough, the second was excessive and even the potential for a third was entirely unnecessary IMO. Grappling is very strong, and I've already made my thoughts on anything that limits the players' ability to effectively fight back known in a prior post regarding a certain dragon fight, so I won't go back into my ramblings again. That's my only real grievance though, the rest was all fun and cool and I'm looking forward to settling this newfound rivalry between the tribe's best warrior and the tribe's best mage, and I know for a fact that Kisara is absolutely going to find a way to get back at Snogla for this newest wound to her pride. Maybe if a certain persistent ghost is still around somewhere and wasn't just a one-and-done like was implied, that could be helpful? What I'm suggesting is the return of Chucklefuck at some point, he seemed like he would've been a fun NPC to interact with. Anyway, next session is when things unfold further, and I look forward to seeing it! Until then!

>>166232

>We do what we can to defuse the traps, but a few of them are set off and cause immobility and/or paralysis for those who are hit by them
>A pair of oozes also choose now to show up and start trying to kill us, so that's cool?
>Oh well, the oozes are definitely challenging but don't manage to kill any of us before we finish dealing with them
>We then are left alone with the silver skeleton, which starts to regenerate for some reason
>Yeah, fuck that
>Kisara grabs Akara and drags him back to the door to start getting it open again, but we stop when we hear some civilized discussion coming from where Vyth is with everyone else to go investigate
>Turns out the skeleton regenerated into Eludecia, another one of those WotC-sanctioned waifu characters that the writers try to get you hot and bothered over
>Anyway, she's a risen devil of a succubus turned paladin and was trapped in here by her last boss who had her imprisoned with those two oozes to keep her dissolved down to a skeleton but never fully kill her
>She's also very surprised that her rescue party happened to be a group of kobolds, but she's not disappointed about it
>And the session ends there!

Another fun one, though demons being immune to lightning still kind of confuses me and it really trips me up whenever something is also part demonic, though I guess that's what template stacking is for. Anyway, our plan for the next session is to take Eludecia back to the tavern nearby so that we can sweeten our end of the deal for negotiations regarding the kobolds' food situation, and we also plan on getting her help with killing Yin and freeing the tribe from his abhorrent influence. Whether or not that'll happen is another question entirely, but I do hope that she realizes we're trying to do the right thing and looks past our species' negative stereotypes to help us with this problem. Either way though, we'll only find out next session, so I'll see you there!

>>166219
>>166232
>>166233
Thank you for sharing!
>sushi with rotten fish and maggots
Every Japanese kobold out there will want to Pearl Harbor you now
>clockwork tarrasque
The DnD equivalent of Metal Gear to the uninitiated

>>166233
>though demons being immune to lightning still kind of confuses me and it really trips me up whenever something is also part demonic, though I guess that's what template stacking is for
Gelatinous Cubes are just normally immune to electricity.

>>166238
I called them gelatinous cubes by accident, I was corrected into calling them oozes. They also dealt vile damage to us, so it was literally oozes with the demon template applied. I don't know what else to say.

Highlights from some previous sessions

>>166233
>Where we last left off, we had just revived a paladin succubus named Eludecia and we were going out to hand her over to the inn nearby

>So, our first order of business for the session was using Eludecia as a bargaining chip to improve the standings of the kobold tribe we met here
>Eludecia polymorphs into a kobold herself to better blend in as we head to the surface
>We climb back out of the well shortly after, getting no trouble from the chokers this time
>When we get there, we hear some adventurers shouting about how the kobolds are back and that they're going to shoo us off or something
>Little do they know, we're too stupid to be shooed!
>Also we have a purpose here, but whatever
>Anyway, the adventurers show up and they're mad at us for whatever reason, but Eludecia drops the polymorph and their tune very quickly changes
>They then escort us inside, simultaneously ecstatic that Eludecia's back and flabbergasted that it was kobolds that did it
>Either way though, we're welcomed back to a hero's welcome and the entire inn is brought into a celebratory mood as adventurers line up to get her autograph and whatnot
>Meanwhile, we ask around about a few things and learn nothing too interesting before we get back to the innkeeper
>He's not too happy to have to negotiate with us about giving the kobolds food instead of beer, but we're insistent
>We do come to a deal though, with us having to go get back a pair of gauntlets for Eludecia that let her safely wield holy weapons, but to do so we need to get past Yin the mummy
>That's probably gonna kill us, so we're putting it on the back burner for now (or until we get a way to deal with Yin, which seems to be not too easy)
>We decide that it would probably be a good idea to hire one of the adventurers, specifically a cleric or paladin, to help us out, but we have no real funds to work with, sadly...
>But hey, that cloaked stranger is calling us over again!
>10,000 GP to bring back the gloves? Why, that's enough to cover the mercenary's pay and also get a pretty penny of our own!
>But this seems a bit fishy still, so we decide to question the figure on her relation to Eludecia
>The figure says she's a friend of her boyfriend, but that's still kinda sketchy since she tried to pass off a goosefeather as an angel feather when Vyth is wearing three of those alone on his helmet...
>Yeah, this is definitely suspicious, so we call over Eludecia from her mountain of simps to validate this stranger's claims
>This turns out to not have been a good idea though, as the two immediately recognize each other and the cloak comes off, revealing an enormous 6-armed lamia demon!
>The entire inn goes from business as usual to a barfight turned Armageddon as the demon summons a few piles of other demons while all the adventurers collectively roll initiative, and we're left in a situation where we're heavily outnumbered and outgunned
>So, we do what any sensible kobold would do, and get the fuck out of there!
>A few demons pursue us out, but we kill them easy enough and run all the way back to the well
>We get in and manage to pay off the chokers since we're in a hurry, and as thanks(?) they tear apart the first demon to fall into the well behind us while we run back to the tribe here
>We need to evacuate this place, Ragnarok is happening above us and even the damn mountain we're inside is shaking!
>We make it back to the tribe's living area and head inside, but the instant we do we're caught in another fear aura
>Yin's here
>Yin's here and he's got every kobold in the tribe either groveling in fear in front of him or mind-controlled to take up arms against any who aren't
>Fuck
>Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK
>We're now being surrounded by Yin's mind-controlled servants, and he wants us to stay here and wait for someone outside the area
>He's waiting for the snake bitch, isn't he?
>Well, we know that if she gets here we're dead for selling her out, but we also can't fight our way back out through the entire tribe of kobolds plus whatever nasties Yin has left for us
>Our only way out is to somehow bullshit him into letting us go
>We attempt to bribe Yin with the prospects of us all going back to the tribe we're from to bring them here too, and Kisara and Yusdrayl both get down in the most grovel-y position they can think of, and I pop my Io medallion to get an extra +4 to my already high bluff of +17 to get +21
>Even with this, the DM informs me that there's only a 5% chance that he'll actually let all of us go to do this instead of keeping one of us for collateral
>Oh well, it's do or die time!
>Specifically die time, as it's time to roll the die and see what happens
>Natural twenty for a grand total of 41 on the bluff check
>YES
>YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS
>I, the person typing this, actually screamed when I saw the result
>Kisara, however, was as silent as possible when she grabbed everyone and started pushing them back out of the room as soon as Yin said "yeah, sure, I don't really care about you all anyway, just go."
>Now, all that's left to do is decide where the hell we want to leave from since this tribe's obviously beyond our help
>In fact, they may have been better off had we not actually bothered with them...
>That's not our problem anymore though, our problem is surviving this shitstorm long enough to get back to the Neo Spawncampers and leave for good
>And we decide to do so by heading through the dwarven temple nearby!

Next session, we explore the monastery and temple for a way out, and if we find it, go back to our tribe the long way to make sure there aren't any more demons on our asses! I hope we aren't as fucked as my gut says, because if we are then that'll be one hell of a shitty way to go out! Anyway, see you all on Sunday for the next installment of Kaverns and Kobolds!

>>166346

>We then wade back to the well entrance, deciding it's finally time to bid this hole and every godforsaken creature in it good riddance
>Except one choker of the eight managed to survive on one HP and it leaps out of the water to try to revenge kill the mage who just slaughtered the rest of its misbegotten kind
>Said mage happens to be me...
>We got into this hole with Kisara almost dying to a choker, time to leave this hole either dead or almost dead!
>It drags her underwater and goes for blood, immediately getting rid of half my health in that surprise round plus the round that it got at the top of initiative
>Next up is Snogla, who decides to not get in and kill the barely still living choker for some reason
>Understandable all things considered, but still not cool
>Luckily, she's still saddled with doing something to be useful as she's forced to keep the still immobile Yusdrayl from drowning while Vyth and Akara go down to deal with the problem
>I also try to help deal with the problem first so all they have to do is pull me out of the water, but unfortunately I'm not able to secure the kill despite my best efforts and wasted action points
>The monster is killed though after reducing me to below 0HP and forcing multiple fortitude saves from me and also trying to choke out Vyth, but he grabs the killing blow through all that and he makes it back up to the surface with Akara once again rescuing our little white and blue psychopath
>And now, with that over, the new priority is getting some help to reverse the aboleth slime effect so Kisara doesn't get stuck with its debilitating side effects for the rest of her life
>Luckily, of the remaining adventurers that survived, one was a winged unicorn paladin (read: DnD-sanctioned Celestia) dishing out whatever healing she could to everyone still alive, and she was able to spare a charge of remove disease to save a kobold from a horrible life and maybe even death
>From there, I found the owner of the inn and gave him my 1000gp diamond which I had planned to bribe Yusdrayl with earlier to put towards rebuilding, but turns out he was planning to leave the area anyway
>Understandable, witnessing a holy war happen within one's place of employment is a few levels over next-level fucked up
>Oh well, it's still something to make up for whatever part we may have played in the damages caused
>After that, we basically set up camp for the night and end the session there!

Another fun session! Well, in between the choker shenanigans and failed pranks turned unsuccessful attempts at murder, at least. I'm not sure what direction the rivalry between Kisara and Snogla will go in now, but I know that murder's probably not off the table now, so I should probably find a way to act before the dice decide that Kisara's no longer fit for this world... However, there's time between then and now, so I'll use this week's holiday hiatus to plan my next course of action! See you all in two weeks!

>>162916
This sounds awesome, are you still playing? I'd love to join, but the discord links are dead. The Horseplay Westmarches sounsd awesome!

>>162916
This sounds awesome, are you still playing? I'd love to join, but the discord links are dead. The Horseplay Westmarches sounsd awesome!

>>166420
>>166421
Yeh, we're still playing. We just haven't in a while because holidays.
The westmarches project has been delayed due to life issues, but the more people we get actually working on it, the faster it will manifest.
New link:
https://discord.gg/QBJqaM64H5

>>166347
>Where we last left off, we were camped out next to the smoldering wreckage of the inn

>In between sessions, RP happened that resulted in the area being attacked by ogres and Kisara was kind of the cause, so we had enough advance warning to cheese it back to the tribe
>When we get back, we find that they actually had held position for us and we gladly re-integrate ourselves while telling Ukri that the entire tribe we just came from is a no-go-zone until further notice
>He accepts this, and the tribe gets moving again while the distant sounds of battle echo across the forrested hills and we progress forwards towards the great geode
>Along the way, we make it a decent distance when we find a large pile of gnomish footprints
>The rest of the tribe holds position while we lead an advance party out to ambush these fuckers further up the road, and we set up a very large pit trap to catch them offguard
>The trap is constructed and we lay in wait on both sides of the road, hoping to catch these bastards unaware
>Soon enough, the gnomes trundle on by as we expected and a bunch of them fall into the pit trap, upon which we push a big fucking rock we found in on top of them!
>That's a bunch more gnomes added to the killcount!
>Now, the rest of them start to organize an actual fighting force to try to repel our surprise attack while we pick them off rapidly
>Kisara in particular fries 16 of the squishier ones with a single lightning bolt, but they weren't actual warriors so it wasn't that helpful in the grand scheme
>It did hit three actual soldiers though, so that was cool!
>Also, one of the gnomes is a cleric and he summons a gold-eating 8-legged badger to start defending the rest of the gnomes and terrorizing our weasel riders
>it proves to be incredibly stubborn, but it doesn't really threaten us
>No, what threatens us is the lieutenant scout that impales Kisara with an arrow before charging into melee with Vyth
>She puts up a fight, but eventually her and the rest of the fighting gnomes are downed
>...Except the cleric, who has vanished
>All of the gnomes in a radius suddenly get up and start trying to flee though, so we know the cleric's somewhere
>I try to nail down exactly where through a scintillating sphere, but turns out he's got a spell up that prevents people from targeting him with attacks
>Dang, that's real soft
>So Kisara calls him a pussy and demands that he show himself, upon which the dumbass yells out a stupid but useful "fuck you" and tells us exactly where he is
>He then just decides to double down and throw an attack at Vyth since he's already blown his cover, and then gets on the gold badger and fucks off with the rest of the escaped gnomes
>However, before one can escape, Vyth hold-persons him and we take him prisoner!
>All the corpses are looted and investigated, and it turns out that a bunch of them were actually wax golems
>Damn, that means that we only killed about half the gnomes we thought we did
>Oh well
>We drag the gnome back to the tribe and start torturing him, and we eventually get a lot out of him
>They were heading to the great geode themselves, hoping to drive out a population of gnolls and set up a mining outpost there, which is what the golems were for
>He was also nice enough to point out the location of where the escapees would retreat to, so we have the locations of a few nearby cities on the map and a newly added gnomish city as well!
>As a reward for being so helpful, he's sacrificed in the name of Kurtulmak since it was that time of the month
>And that's where the session ended

Another fun one, if a bit short. Next session we should be close to the Great Geode so we can take it over with our superior numbers and superior draconic blood, but in the event that there's more along the road to see, then I'll bring news of that as well! Also, the session may be postponed for Little Trouble in Big Absalom, a PF2e oneshot designed around a bunch of level 1 kobolds having fun in the city if anyone wants to join. Either you can make a character yourself, or you can use one of the premade characters to live out the same kinds of wacky shenanigans we get up to here, just hit up the invite link in >>166423 !

>>166507
>Where we left off, we had just sacrificed a gnome that we captured and prepared to enter the gnolls' territory to purge them from it

>Now, we gather our party of Akara, Meepo, Zags, Vyth and Kisara to go out into the territory and scout it out
>We grab some weasels and head down the road, eventually stopping when we hear a bunch of yipping in draconic
>Said yipping is what appears to be a bunch of kobolds calling for help, but it's obvious that this is a trap
>However, we're not going to get rid of all the gnolls without springing this trap, so we get ready and move in
>Turns out all the kobolds were actually reanimated corpses and the actual calling was coming from a bunch of gnolls with weird mounts that look like night stalkers from Fallout New Vegas, which then charge down the cliff this was all happening near to start a fight with us
>We fight as hard as we can, but there were too many enemies that were probably too much for us to handle even with perfect rolls, so we get forcible bad-ended
>Joy
>We're then thrown into the gnolls' encampment within the geode, where we're then summarily whipped by another asshole capable of dealing negative levels
>J o y
>We're whipped back down to level 1 equivalent, and sent to work in the mines with some other kobolds who were from the OG Spawncampers
>Turns out they've been broken pretty hard from this, and even those who were previously some of the best soldiers the tribe had to offer are little more than level 1 fodder
>It's at this point that I've mentally given up
>Anyway, the session ends shortly after or something, I spent my time in the rest of the session debating whether or not I wanted to continue playing

This was definitely one of the DnD sessions of all time. After the session, we were informed OOC that the save would be easy to beat as we would only have to roll above an 8, however with the negative levels applied, I have a fortitude modifier of -1. I have as much chance to make the save as I do to fail it, and I have to do this 5 times in a row. I'm absolutely losing at least one level from this, and given how I haven't yet recovered from my last lost level 7 MONTHS AGO despite supposedly getting more XP than everyone else for being a lower level, so I know for a fact that I'm not going to be able to recover from this in a meaningful way. In other news, Vyth's player was brainstorming some potential ways to get us out of this, but I didn't really add much since I had other thoughts on my mind. Anyway, next session's tomorrow, so we'll see what happens...

>>166644
this made my balls hurt

>>166644
>Where we left off 3 weeks ago, we were up shit creek with a paddle nowhere in sight with Vyth's player trying to find a way out while I contemplated finding something else to do with my sundays

>So we're still stuck in the gnolls' prison where we're forced to labor in a mine
>Nothing really happens for the first hour-ish of the session that I remember, but eventually we're given the opportunity to mess with the dragon that the gnolls have
>I volunteer to help entertain it, and in the process start putting a seed in its mind to betray its current master for a better deal while Vyth pays attention to a gnoll fucking around with his pit of holding that has all of his stuff in it
>From here, the session meanders through RP through most of it with the one notable thing being that despite taking a -5 to everything, Kisara still has a mindbending +12 to her bluff that lets us navigate these social encounters well enough
>We're eventually shoved back into gay baby jail by the gnolls though, where we're left to our own devices and Vyth gets ready to execute his own plan
>Before that though, some gnolls leave the cave and get into a scuffle outside
>After some more buildup, we find that the party advancing on the gnolls is Yusdrayl and a rescue party!
>Good, we have a way out, now we just need to know if at least Vyth keeps all of his levels
>After some negotiations, the DM lets us roll our saves early, and after some action point usage and reroll spending we both manage to make them all!

And that's where things ended for that session, we're going into the next one right now so I'll get back to you on that one in a hit minute, but so far my urge to commit disconnect have been pushed back into submission. Let's hope that doesn't change this session!

>>166766
>Where we last left off, Yusdrayl just arrived with the cavalry to break us out!

>A fight breaks out, with a mob of kobolds swamping the gnolls guarding the room
>Kisara throws her mushroom and it starts growing rapidly before she casts mage armor on herself, Vyth crafts a makeshift holy symbol out of a rock, some cloth, and his own blood, and Akara snaps his manacles immediately
>The gnolls finally organize and start pushing back, but Yusdrayl stuns them again and, after gettign Akara's help to break the manacles, Kisara throws a lightning ball into the back of the gnolls for big money, Vyth summons an ogre zombie, and my mushroom finishes growing into a huge beef monster and begins inflicting looney tunes levels of ultraviolence upon any gnolls in its vicinity
>And this is how it goes, the kobolds and gnolls crash into each other while Kisara hammers them from behind with big DPS, Vyth directs his ogre to harrass valuable targets, and the mushroom and akara hammer anything close to them for big damage
>This gets interrupted when a bunch of gnolls decide they want to kill us, so Kisara shoots off a lightning bolt while the kobolds in gay baby jail distract it for a hot second
>The fight then evolves into the gnolls chasing the kobolds aorund the room, with Kisara firing off her last level 3 spell into the crowd of gnolls to bring them down to the size of the kobold mob, while the mushroom forms a one-myconid mosh pit in the pool in the middle of the room with anything stupid enough to get close to it
>The gnolls decide that enough is enough though, and group up on the far side of the room in preparation for a charge which gives us one turn to do something
>I ask what happens when you get to a second point of exhaustion, and it turns out that in Kisara's case, she gets immobilized from going to 0 strength
>Duly noted, good thing Akara's here with the strength necessary to carry a kobold!
>So Kisara digs deep, braces herself against Akara both physically and mentally, and fires off one final sphere into the pool as the gnolls push forward
>The entire charge is neutralized as all but the strongest gnolls are instantly killed, with the remaining gnolls fleeing the scene shortly after
>We celebrate and Kisara slumps over, Akara catching her as he was instructed to do, and the kobolds start to celebrate
>However, the celebration is short lived as the pool of ash and gore begins to clear as all the detritus clumps together and re-amalgamates into something that we learn is a half-troll, half golem monster!
>And that's the cliffhanger we're left on

Back to some action for this session, and I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel finally! We were also given enough XP to level up for this upcoming superboss, which will give us some notable buffs where we need them, and even some new spells to play around with and see the effects of in action! Anyway, I'll see you all then!

>>166767
Just realized I've been posting "anonymously" again, whoops! Anyway...
>Where we last left off, all the gnoll corpses that we had just finished pulverizing alongside some trolls that were unlucky enough to get caught in a spell get amalgamated together into one half-crystal troll and half-glass golem that appears partially demonic

>So everyone starts freaking out except Vyth and Kisara, who have players who are instead rolling every dice they can think of to learn as much about this thing as we can
>We learn a lot, but the one thing we learn that's the most important is that A: it counts as having armor from all the armor chunks that got amalgamated into it, and B: it's only damaged by sonic damage
>Good to know, who here can deal sonic damage?
>...
>Anyone?
>.....
>Just me then, hoo boy...
>So yeah, everyone else is relegated to support as Kisara, with all of her returned spell slots and no longer being exhausted, is forced to hard-carry the fight
>Well, now that all of the planning's out of the way, the troll begins marching its way towards the gnolls' nursery section
>Wait what?
>Why?
>Because it opens its meatgrinder of a mouth and eats the last remaining gnoll who was protecting the pups before starting to eat the pups
>It also starts growing with each thing it consumes, so Kisara scintillating spheres the remaining gnolls to make this thing stop absorbing their power
>Unfortunately, this makes it turn towards us and it's pissed
>And some gnomes are here too, it's more of those urdlen fuckers
>Joy
>Vyth directs his ogre zombie to obliterate one of the gnomes, but the others still manage to get away with buffing the giga troll
>By now it's damn near the size of a house and is coming at us with malicious intent, but luckily Saitama the mushroom comes over and starts dueling this thing in melee, grappling it to stop it from actually doing anything and beating it as hard as his fungus bulk will let him
>This helps us greatly, but one of the gnomes then throws down darkness, meaning we have to retreat back to see anywhere
>Since Kisara's stunned from the effect of Born of Three Thunders at this time, Akara drags her out of the area and back to a more defensible position
>The next turn rolls around and we still hear Saitama and the troll duking it out, but we no longer hear the shitting and giggling of the gnomes, so that's good
>Anyway, I have a level 4 spell that I want to use to help stun this big fucker, so I launch off another 3-thunders spell, this time a full-blown electric orb that'll keep him entangled for a turn
>The DM makes me roll a d100 to see if I hit through the darkness, if it's <50 I hit
>It's a 1
>He counts that as a crit, so my subsequent nat 1 (modified 10) on my roll to hit is ignored and my 35 damage is doubled to 70 as blue lightning gives us a flash of the troll's silhouette being beat on by Saitama's silhouette
>Very cool, and meanwhile Vyth has now picked up Yusdrayl so she dispels the darkness for us!
>Right on time for the troll to push out into the main room again, but Akara carries Kisara back again and Saitama manages to reign in the troll again in the pond in the middle
>Saitama then forces the troll's head underwater, upon which the DM tells us that it's possible to drown a troll after some prompting
>A nice backup plan now that we know only Kisara can actually hurt this thing
>Vyth also takes this opportunity to conk it with a rock which helps Saitama keep it pinned, iirc
>Kisara hits it again, Saitama keeps it pinned in the water, and Vyth grows stalagmites around it to lock it into a cage, but the troll can bite through the stone easily so it's still very dangerous
>Akara, the little badass he is though, ignores this and manages to duck and weave around the troll enough to enter the thunderdome himself
>I should also mention by now that we learned that this thing has an effective self-destruct button we can push as we can activate its death throes ability early, this comes in handy in a minute
>This next turn is more of the same as Kisara recovers from another 3 Thunders daze, with Saitama and Akara terrorizing the troll as it tries to bite through its prison
>And now, the fateful moment!
>I call for a clearing of the area and fire off another three thunders spell, and roll a touch attack according to the DM's instructions
>With bated breath, the DM describes something in the troll's head as emitting a click before it begins shrieking, the pitch growing until it explodes and sending shrapnel everywhere
>Encounter over, boss defeated!
>We get an absolute assload of XP from this, so much that I'm only 15 away from leveling up!
>After some convincing, the DM says that something else will happen this session to get that last little bit
>We get healed somewhat, and the exploded bits of the troll regenerate enough to run away, but it shouldn't be a problem for us as they pay us no mind despite them running right past a few kobolds, and Kisara goes to start exploring some of our new home!
>Remember that gnome killed by the ogre earlier?
>Yeah, turns out he was only playing dead and immediately gets up in a surprise round, stabbing Kisara from behind and taking a charge of Scintillating Sphere from her
>This gnome is very quickly dealt with though, and I get 20 XP despite being KOd for the entire fight lmao

There was some in-text RP today where Kisara and Vyth got in an argument and Kurtulmak (the DM) told Kisara to stop talking trash when she's at 0 HP and go rest instead through an errant magpie, but beyond that nothing much happened. The next session's on sunday as usual, so I'll see you all then and we'll get to see how the gnoll warband reacts to having their home swiped right out from under them by kobolds! Also, will the howling dragon become our draconic patron, or will it continue to serve the gnolls? Find out in two days!

>>166792
Oh boy, some shit happened this session! Lemme fill you all in, because some major changes both in-game and out of it have happened!
>Where we last left off, we had finished up clearing the Great Geode of its gnoll presence and also beating the half-troll/half-golem that showed up as a superboss, so this session was really just cooldown

>Which is where we get to the first major change, a new PC by the name of Keppa arrives on the scene from Humanville, an escapee of the Silver Empire who happened to notice the large pile of kobolds moving into the Great Geode and decided to blend in for interest's sake!
>The first part of the session is thusly spent with light RP in getting Keppa's player acquainted with the tribe and doing some more light exploration of the area, including finding a scroll of disintegration among the queen gnoll's belongings
>Around this time is when the gnolls come back from their raid, and they're a bit surprised to find the entrance to the geode closed off and now filled with kobolds
>However, they seem to not really care
>The howling dragon, however, does
>It screams the cave open enough to climb inside before plopping down in the water, all the while everyone's freaking out except for those of us who have dealt with this dragon before
>We try to talk it down from doing anything bad, and it agrees and is content to just take one last bath here before leaving again, but only if it gets to keep 27 kobolds
>That's around a 1 in 5 chance for it to take one of the PCs or one of the important NPCs, so we're not letting that happen
>Keppa's player brings up the idea of fighting the dragon, but it's quickly vetoed because most of us are on single-digit HP, but we do decide that it's a good idea to try to get rid of the dragon at the very least
>How we plan to do so is through one of Vyth's spells, pretty sure it was called dismiss or something
>Anyway, we need to stall this thing for 15 minutes so he can actually prepare it, so Kisara does her best to at first talk down the dragon's desired number of kobolds to hopefully 0, which only partially works
>The dragon's talked down, but only to 11
>That's better, but still not good
>1 in 15's better than 1 in 5, but it's still far from optimal
>Also, it's worth noting that Kisara of course takes this opportunity to try to get rid of her biggest rival right now, which almost worked
>Unfortunately, while the dragon was convinced to take Snogla, she managed to substitute another unfortunate kobold for herself before the dragon was able to take her
>She lives another day... Guess I'll just have to do it myself!
>But anyway, the dragon's not being stalled forever since the gnolls it's beholden to are getting impatient, so the DM rolls a few dice at random and another 10 kobolds are taken by the dragon and carried off into oblivion
>Vyth and Kisara both breathe sighs of relief, but Keppa's not entirely satisfied with this end for the first session, so she takes it upon herself to make things more interesting by going outside and introducing herself to the gnolls
>She passes the charisma check to not get outright killed, and after some DM autopiloting manages to make it back to the cave safely
>This nets her a massive pile of XP for singlehandedly surviving an encounter meant for 8th level characters at least, meaning she's no longer level 3!
>Congratulations, we look forward to the next session where we may even get another new PC!
>And that's where things end for now, with the tribe's safety and future secured for the time being and no new world-ending events on the horizon (that we know of), so we're free to do whatever we want next!

Said next thing is likely going to be getting the growing tree out of the Enveloping Pit though, as it's started spitting out ethereal monsters and seems to be quite mad at being locked in gay baby jail for a long-ass time. Either we can negotiate with the tree like last time, or we try to kill it again. Either way, the next session's sure to have plenty of action for the newcomers and a continuation of a previous storyline for the veterans of this game. I'll see you all then and there though, Sunday morning at 11AM-12PM EST or 8AM-9AM PST!

>>166869
Well, some of the changes have been reverted. Keppa's player dipped at the end of this session since the game wasn't exactly his style (seemed to be something to do with the two other players being serious and wanting to know the lore behind things instead of combat and memes), so it's back down to Vyth's player and myself. Anyway...
>Where we last left off, Keppa had just managed to escape getting captured by gnolls and the howling dragon had only taken 11 kobolds, none of whom were terribly important

>Next on our order of business, fixing the problem with the enveloping pit having an angry wooden thing and apparently many undead within it as well
>We head outside a decent distance away after a long rest to replenish our HP and spells, far enough so that whatever's in here hopefully doesn't affect the geode but close enough so that we can have a short walk home afterwards
>We bring Akara and some orderlies with us, Akara for being the party's tank and the orderlies for being potential meatshields for the things that come out
>Except the only thing that comes out at first is an immense explosion!
>The cover saves us though, and instead of being evaporated by a magic nuke we only take fall damage
>However, the surrounding landscape almost out to the now invisible horizon is now covered in dense forest
>And, according to the DM, it's spreading still
>And the first wave of enemies is coming for us
>After about a round of prep, a bunch of pixie zombies swarm us and... bite us for one damage each?
>Lol, lmao
>Vyth immediately turns them all and orders them to hold off the third wave, more of those pixie zombies coming out of the open pit
>But what about the second wave, you ask?
>Good question! Anyway, a pissed off blighted treant comes stomping at us and awakens two of the other newly-grown trees!
>The real fun begins as we now try to fend off the treants, with Kisara throwing fire, Vyth commanding his zombies, and Keppa doing her thing as a swordsage while Akara faces off against a treant one-on-one and gets...
>Crit, and for very big damage
>Oh no
>Kisara attacks that treant out of rage on the next turn, burning it to a crisp, and luckily Vyth casted lesser vigor a while back to make sure the pixie bites didn't bother us, so he's not going to die after making his fortitude save easily
>The real problem is that there are still two treants and the forest is still growing rapidly
>The two of them have now placed themselves on either side of Kisara, so with some DM assistance I put a big-brain play into effect by blasting them both with a scintillating sphere and dealing some good damage, killing the second!
>(note, these events are probably out of order to an extent)
>But anyway, at some point we also notice some rattling and clacking coming from the pit and a very brightly glowing green object raising out of the pit
>We deal with the last treant somehow, and its body collapses backwards into the pit and crushes a very large amount of skellies to death, and they would've been wave 4
>Oh well, now we just have the primary problem
>The big glowing thing that we can now see was the root-rock thingy once
>Anyway, it gives Vyth the mental command to cut it out (as in cutting something out of the wood, not refraining from killing its minions) and he complies while Kisara tries to pull Akara from the foliage and Keppa stands around being unhelpful
>When all's said and done though, Vyth gets a big oblong green thing out of it!
>We bring it back to the geode and inspect it, trying to figure out what it is for a while before deciding that it's probably an egg and setting it up in a nest before going for another rest
>In the middle of said rest though, the egg begins to hatch and out comes a baby green dragon!
>Vyth and Kisara spend some time questioning it and learning about its kind and itself while Keppa mocks it, helping Kisara learn some of its emotional weakpoints for the future if it decides to get uppity with her
>Valuable information indeed, lest this thing fall to the same fate as the last dragon Kisara met
>Never mind that that last dragon was killed by someone else, she was still ready and willing to kill it!
>But anyway, that's where the session ends and it seems that we're all free to play the next one tomorrow! Today? Easter.

Anyway, see you all in a few hours when the Kool Kobold Koalition goes off on our next mission, whatever that may be!

>>166978
>Where we last left off, we hatched a weird green thing that turned out to be a green dragon's egg, and now we have a little green monster to look after in the tribe

>This time, we spend some time fortifying this geode and also end up learning that it's the enormous calcified skeleton of an amethyst dragon, and we're only inside its mouth right now!
>We decide to expand the base to encompass more of its body, but our first chosen stop would've been its head and, as it's a psionic creature, it's still probably immensely powerful even dead
>Yeah, not the best idea then
>So instead, we decide to go about doing something for the green wyrmling as it's getting shouty again
>It wants a sheep, and Kisara's the only one who knows what a sheep is, so her, Vyth, Zags (iirc) as an animal handler, and Akara as the usual meatshield venture out to a nearby halfling village to find one
>The trip through the new forest around us is difficult though, so we don't make it out on the first day of travel and have to stop and make camp
>However, while we're doing that we're interrupted by a briarvex and a shambling mound!
>Kisara is the one who takes the hit during the surprise round, getting immediately chunked for big damage before the fight starts in earnest
>Things quickly go our way though, and we're able to fend them off without any casualties
>From there, we take a rest and make it the rest of the way to the village without issues
>In order to infiltrate, Vyth disguises himself as a gnome and Kisara pulls Zags and Akara together to form a new Ultimate Lifeform, Kizagra!
>Kizagra the "human" and Vyth the "gnome" then proceed into the halfling village, playing the part of merchants looking to buy sheep to fix a deal gone wrong
>After a stop at a local pub, we head over to one of the nearby pastures where we find some more locals and negotiate with them for not one, but two sheep!
>From there, we head back home after making an important note of a certain circle of monoliths that looks suspicious nearby and warrants further investigation later
>Along the way the sheep are annoying to manage and we have to make a few animal handling rolls to make sure that they don't get caught out or get us found by the powerful monsters or wandering mages coming to the area after the magic surge that happened, but we make it back fine
>Before they're handed over to the dragon though, Kisara decides to test if she actually knows what a sheep is
>The dragon guesses right, so no bullying will happen yet
>From there, the session ends and we all go about the rest of our Easter separately

There was some extra RP at the end with Kisara getting dragged into a circle with Akara by the warrior caste, but the situation was defused before anything unsavory could happen and both kobolds kept their dignity intact for the day. Pretty much everyone was intoxicated though, which is probably why this went over without a second thought, but it did tell me the player that it was probably going to take a lot of in-game effort to get Akara actually adjusted to being in the tribe and accepting of what he really is. Oh well, if anyone's qualified for the job, it's the kobold who already saved his life once by suplexing him through the five stages of grief! However, we'll only find out that answer later on, so I'll see you all this sunday!

>>167028
Okay, the last two sessions have been some pretty major duds because the DM had nothing prepared for a while due to not having time, and then more recently his audio drivers gave out so that became a problem too. Anyway, I might as well give you all the highlights for what happened so if something happens in the next session y'all aren't left in the complete dark on it.

>Session after Easter session starts with us going to explore more of the amethyst dragon's skeleton and surrounding caves
>We bring Akara and a few orderlies, find new giant stronghold and hear about an enormous creature somewhere inside
>Go in and fight a few guys that turn the ground into quicksand and make us bleed, akara almost dies but we save him
>Go forward some more, find a big swarm of centipedes and nuke it in a few turns before nuking the parents of said swarm, giant centipedes, too
>The big monster shows up though, big blue dragon centipede
>Fucker tells us to get out of his territory and stay out after we convince him not to eat us

>Session last week (I think)
>Decide it's finally time to pick a direction for the next part of the campaign
>I still want to check out the desert, but Vyth's player overrules me with an adamantium mine nearby
>We get together a party to come with us and gather some supplies and the weasels
>We take like 20 steps out into the forest when we're ambushed by more monkey-esque trolls
>We fight our hardest, but we're TPK'd again...
>Get rescued though and brought back to the base afterwards and resolve not to step outside again until we can burn down the surrounding forest and clear out all the hostiles with the cleansing fire

Every time I fight something monkey-adjacent in DnD there's either an imminent TPK or a TPK that's avoided through pure RNG and they never give EXP worth the problems they cause. The next time we fight anything monkey-related I'm just going to get up and do something else until the fight is over. See you all tomorrow when hopefully things improve.

>>167367
>Last week there was an almost-TPK from more forest trolls, hopefully that's the last of them we see for a good few levels

>This week, we burn down the forest
>Well, Kisara enlists Yusdrayl's help in burning down the forest
>During this downtime, Vyth spends his time mining mainly
>However, something interesting happens about a week into the process when a few super-sentai-esque ogres come by while we're in the process of checking the burn progress
>They do happen to announce themselves with their loud magic, screaming, and the frantic trolls they're chasing though, so we have ample time to hide
>However, they happen to be corralling the trolls directly towards the kompound
>This isn't good, so I burn a level 2 spell to use major image to make it look like the entrance is still on fire, and this scares the trolls away from trying to find a way in and the ogres from chasing them
>However, one of the ogres stays behind for some reason and *almost* makes it past the illusion, only turning back after his perception check didn't yield a high enough score to see past my spell!
>Fantastic, that means things are safe again for now

And that's where last session ended, I have no idea what we're doing this session because all the immediate plans were thrown into jeopardy with the last almost-TPK and put on hold for Operation: Up In Flames, so I guess we'll see.

>>167471
>>However, one of the ogres stays behind for some reason and *almost* makes it past the illusion, only turning back after his perception check didn't yield a high enough score to see past my spell!
He succeeded on his perception check to notice something was amiss (tremorsense and earth mastery also played a role), but he failed his will save when he interacted with the illusion to recognize it as false.
Major image is a lvl 3 spell, btw.

The Elemental Mages in question

>>167473
>Major image is a level 3 spell
huh, must've accidentally hit the 2 by accident. I swear I'm not stupid

>>167471
So, it's been a hot minute since this and things happened in this session, let's get into it

>Where we last left off, we had narrowly avoided losing the tribe to a sudden ogre invasion after some quick thinking by Yours Truly
>This time, we're making plans and packing up to head for the Burning Bayou to scout it and see what new kobolds are out there for us to find
>We spend a few days getting set up with basic supplies and waiting for the weasels to return from a pre-existing scouting mission so we can take them on our own 2-month-round-trip
>They come back with the rest of the scouts, and with them comes a living gnome!
>Nice, a prisoner to torment!
>We get to work on this immediately, finding out that this guy's a potato farmer that wandered away from his home in the nearby village
>We also learn, after literally pressing him for it (with big rocks), that the village is downstream from us
>Cross-referencing this with the map markings from the other gnome a while back, we manage to pinpoint the location of the actual village and bring this info to Ukri
>After this, we go to grab the weasels, but they're too tired to go for now and thus we have to wait a few days
>Kisara decides to spend this time idly watching Ruv, a worker from the OG Spawncampers who she likes messing with on occasion, dig a hole
>However, as time goes on it becomes clear that something's not entirely right, even moreso when she drags Vyth down into the hole she's digging and pins him to the floor
>Kisara clears the dust from the hole to improve visibility with a wind spell before hopping down, upon which she barely manages to fend off some kind of psychic attack from Ruv
>Also weird, because Ruv's not a mage and thus shouldn't have any such powers
>Vyth then climbs out of the hole to detect magic and figure out more about this while Kisara uses her slippery nature to avoid Ruv's psychic attacks like the plague until this all gets figured out
>Eventually Vyth finishes narrowing it down to something, upon which Kisara takes this information and brings it to the relevant tribe authorities (Ukri and Yusdrayl)
>They show up and help to try to figure the situation out, with Yusdrayl trying to dispel magic and only ending up getting herself caught in Ruv's psychic attacks
>With this, she also starts trying to grapple Vyth and drag him into the hole Ruv was digging, so that's not good
>Ruv then latches onto one of Ukri's guards and tries to drag him in there, but he puts up a good fight and goes down swinging
>By this point we figure out that it's probably possession, and it's only happened so far to the female kobolds that are linked to Iada from the OG Spawncampers
>So that means that if we can restrain these two, then we can probably get this sorted out in a good way
>Following this revelation, Kisara runs off to find Snogla and Akara, two kobolds that aren't related to Iada, to help restrain Yusdrayl and Ruv
>This takes a while, upon which Vyth realizes that he probably won't be of much use trying to non-lethally dissuade Yusdrayl from grabbing at him, so he passes off his Wiivai-given tome to Ukri and tells him to look for a solution in there while he deals with this issue
>Ukri clears everybody out of this affected area, and after another hot second of running around, Kisara returns with Snogla and Akara
>Everyone present gets the quick rundown from Vyth, and at this point Kisara figures that the only way to really find out more without sitting around and guessing is to actually succumb to it and see what it's like from the inside
>Kisara grabs Yusdrayl's attention and I intentionally fail a will save, and Kisara's transported to a field of gray where all she hears and feel is a deep loneliness and feelings of inadequacy
>From here, she manages to push her way back out to lucidity to find herself in a tug-of-war over Akara between her and Snogla
>Nobody seems happy, but I ace a bluff check to distract Snogla long enough to try to progress things by dragging Akara around
>This, however, nets me no new insights, so I make another check to break out into lucidity again and notice a bunch of clay pots around the place
>Surprise, it's explosives!
>Kisara uses this break at lucidity to make a break, levitating Yusdrayl so Vyth can similarly run, only to find a spear line at the entrance to this tunnel to keep us all in
>Kisara uses her last few seconds in lucidity to again bluff to gain us more time, saying that she's figured out what's wrong and is trying to break us all free at this moment
>This buys us a turn from them lighting the explosives, as one of Yusdrayl's servants grabs the torch from the kobold who was about to put it to the fuse and tells him to wait
>However, if one betrayal wasn't bad enough, Snogla decides now is the time to actually try to kill us as she drags Akara beyond the spear line and shoots the explosives directly with a flaming arrow
>The tunnel collapses as supernatural phenomena fills the air, with the five of us falling into an unknown chasm somehow stuck underneath our tribe, our fates unknown to all but us because the DM told us we weren't dead

And that's the session! Vyth's player and I have already agreed that as soon as we're out of this hole, we're killing Ukri and Snogla for this. Not only is it unwise to bet against our success, but these two have actively tried to kill us now, so it's personal! Beyond that, Kisara's back floating in a field of stars inside her own head a la the encounter with the aurora dragon previously, so maybe this is connected somehow? Oh well, either way the next session is sure to be an interesting one as the plot has hit maximum thickness!

Me running stupid encounters I write while drunk almost a year ago knowing full well they're visibly garbage: