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D&D Week 46: You will get wet, you may get soaked.

Gooood morning! Time for another episode of Death for Dummies!

While we wait for Torkal to arrive, we talk about being on a pirate ship and going to Davy Jones’ locker, which naturally leads to a discussion of the Monkees. This leads us to a realization:

Veracity: I dunno, our adventuring group IS sort of like a DnD Monkees. Remember in their show how there were always those 60s rapid motion scurrying back and forth bits, usually being chased by something?
Veracity: ….that’s so us.
Palin: So you’re saying we’re not so much getting our asses kicked as we are playing out a montage.
GM Vaschon: This is more how I viewed your party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtD4mn9CeH4&feature=related
Veracity: There you go. That’s the optimistic way to look at our proceedings.
Palin: Veracity does have kind of a witchiepoo vibe.
Torkal has joined this chat.
Palin: Hey, there’s H.R.!

Now that H.R. Pufnstuf… I mean, Torkal has joined us, we’re off!

GM Vaschon: If memory serves, when last we left our intrepid adventurers… You managed to kill the Captain, Bosun, Firstmate, and a few crew. Val managed to get 5 of the first 2 groups of prisoners dead.
Val: Val…picks up the captain’s left arm, shakes it in the air and says, “Alright. You can surrender to me and my men, or you can join your captain here Arm in Arm”
Aleanghi: …Val has officially stepped off the deep end.

GM Vaschon: We pick up in round 8, where we have… Owlbear, Water Elemental, Torkal, Ale, Val, Veracity, Palin, Bentein, Joquil, Crew, Crew, Kobold cook, Kobold lookout
GM Vaschon: The first batch of 5 saw, 3 human males (2 of which are dead), 1 elven female (dead), 1 dwarf male (dead).
Val: Tasword is still alive though
Torkal: The prisoners joining the fight was an awesomely (bad) idea. lolz
Veracity: I just thought of them as decoys and cannon fodder.
Aleanghi: Hey, who knows but that the attacks they took kept us alive.
Val: again, i maintain that we would be in worse shape if we were the only targets at this point
Torkal: Yeah. The people back home will appreciate hearing, “We needed your unarmed husband’s backup. He died taking hits.”
GM Vaschon: The third group is coming up the ramp and consists of: 1 late teen human female, 2 half-elf males and 1 elf female.
Val: hear that, Torkal?Late-teen!
Torkal: JESUS CHRIST IT’S THE BARON’S DAUGHTER RIGHT THERE
Palin: okay! We found the baron’s daughter! Mission accomplished!
Torkal: PROTIP DON’T LET THAT THIRD GROUP FIGHT

It’s time to fight! The owlbear is up.
Veracity: Veracity points and yells at the owlbear “Loook out! Behind you!” then ducks back down behind the table.

It doesn’t work. The owlbear attacks Palin for 15 points.
Palin: Not cool, owlbear. Not cool.
Torkal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3C4cSb80CU represents the overall impact of this fight on Torkal.

The water elemental slams into Val, seriously wounding him.
Val: i dunno, maybe eliminating the owlbear is priority
Palin: I think we just need to figure out what attracts water elementals and spread it on the owlbear.
GM Vaschon: Try dousing yourself with fire, Palin, maybe it will extinguish you
Torkal: Alrighty. Torkal is attacking DAT OWLBEAR.
(he hits spectacularly)
GM Vaschon: Torkal ragewagons the Owlbear, killing it dead. You can choose to cleave the elemental if you wish.
Torkal: I’D LIKE TO DO THAT
Torkal rolls a 19, but misses. This is not good. Then Val attacks with rolls totaling 20 and also misses. This is even worse, as it means we need insanely high rolls in order to even touch the water elemental which is currently kicking our butts.

Veracity: We are in deep crap.
Veracity: I mean, I suppose throwing the crispy blankie over it and trying to…..uh…..sop it up or something is Not Allowed?
GM Vaschon: You could try that, and I might be inclined to offer you 100 xp for the attempt, however, you would most likely just be stared at by the elemental then drowned.
Veracity: And “most likely” isn’t ABSOLUTELY telling me it’s hopeless….I only have ordinary sponges, alas 🙁 I don’t suppose Summon Monster might summon a massive great Celestial Sponge from the depths?
GM Vaschon: Unfortunately… no
Torkal: Celestial sponge?
Torkal: That right there is f****** amazing and I love you, (Veracity).

Veracity: Veracity hauls out the much abused crispy blankie and heaves it at the water elemental, aiming for the head and shoulders or whatever the equivalent area on a column of water might be.

Veracity: rolled 1 20-sided die: 20

Val:
Aleanghi: WAHOO!
Torkal:
Val: it’s nothing if it’s not confirmed
Veracity: o plz o plz

Veracity: rolled 1 20-sided die: 7

Torkal: FAIL
Veracity: sob
Palin: But she deserves so much credit for even trying that. Talk about thinking outside the box.
GM Vaschon: Even if it was confirmed… Veracity throws a blanket on the water elemental. The blanket falls to the ground… soaking wet. The elemental looks uninterested. The Kobolds pause a moment, looking at one another. The crew pause a moment, look at one another.

What’s going on there, you may ask? Well, the DM rolls to see whether the crew gains confidence from the realization that we’re a bunch of idiots who don’t know what we’re doing. Fortunately, they do not. Luck is with us – the pirates are stupider than we are.
GM Vaschon: Veracity is bonused 100 xp for ingenuity and learning that blankets don’t soak up water elementals.
GM Vaschon: Palin!
Palin: I’m poppin’ that big ol’ blister.
Palin does 11 damage, in fact!
Veracity: Go Palin and the Short Sharp Shock!
Then a crewman fires a crossbow into the room. He hits a Dwarf.
GM Vaschon: *plink!* between the eyes. The dwarf male falls over dead.
Palin: That was one of our hostages? I mean, one of the rescuees?
GM Vaschon: Yes
Veracity: Veracity motions furiously at the ditzy blond teenage girl to Get Down Out Of Line Of Fire.
GM Vaschon: The kobold cook casts a spell at Ale and strikes her!
Palin: How the hell is the cook such a good magic user?
Veracity: That must be how he fries up the bacon without setting the ship on fire.
The next group of hostages arrives. Almost immediately the water elemental drowns one of them.
Val: all I’m saying is without those prisoners we’d all be dead now
Torkal: I’m going to yell for them to leave. Because we’re going to lose them all and then this mission will be pointless.
Torkal: “Hi, we rescued… two of the twenty.”
GM Vaschon: Torkal
Torkal: Torkal does two things.
Torkal:
He yells for any remaining prisoners to fall to the hold!
GM Vaschon: The prisoners return back to the hold save 1 human who remains at Bentein’s side and Joquil the ranger who holds his position.
Torkal: Good enough by me. I’m going to attack me some crewmembers. F*** that water thing. Who’s in range?
Torkal Rage Explosion
Torkal goes twenty kinds of crazy on the crewmember. Sample actual typed out audio clips:
Torkal: HUNNNNNNGH
Torkal: YNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH
Torkal: FCUCK

You know by now how it is. It’s the Torkal rage explosion. Which I’m pretty sure was a metal band in the 80’s.

GM Vaschon: Torkal savagely lops the head of a human crewman off. It soars through the air and gets stuck in a nearby porthole!
Veracity: oooo splat
Palin: NICE!
Torkal: http://fuck-you-im-an-anteater.com/img/another_anteater.png

Emboldened by Torkal’s success, Aleanghi aims her crossbow at the kobold cook with great authority. She rolls a critical miss.
GM Vaschon: Ale takes aim at a kobold cook and *plink* the bolt pops out of the crossbow. She scurries to pick it up.
Torkal: Scream DICKCHICKEN! before your next attack. I guarantee a 20.

Val hits the cook with a sneak attack. Veracity polishes it off. And so, we turn our attention to the nigh-invulnerable water elemental.

Some thoughts we have:

Veracity: All right. Mage Hand. What are the chances of reaching inside that column of water and squeezing it’s wet, cold, squishy heart into a coronary?
GM Vaschon: Put it this way, the elemental has a greater chance of doing that to YOU than you to it 🙂
Torkal: I’ll give you a coke if you try and drink the elemental.

Okay, maybe the wardog?
Torkal: I don’t even know where the wardog is.
GM Vaschon: Wardog is in the longboat
Torkal: Shit. I was going to throw it.

Palin: Hey, do we still have that ring? Maybe we can throw it at the elemental. It would stick in it, wouldn’t it?
GM Vaschon: The Water Elemental is not Velcro.
Torkal: Nor is it stupid.

Bentein: Attempting to flail the elemental.
Bentein: rolled 1 20-sided die: 1
Torkal: You might say that his roll ended in… flailure.

Wait, wait. That’s missing something. What is it…

Torkal Sunglasses
There we go.

This battle has gone on forever and we’re running out of hit points and ideas. Meanwhile, both party members and unnamed hostages are taking hits. At this point, we’re getting tired of calling the cannon fodd… um, former prisoners just “human” and “dwarf male.”

Aleanghi: We need some name tags for these folks.
Val: Tasword!
Palin: Palin shouts to the human, “Hey, friend, you have a name?”
GM Vaschon: The human says back, “Geofford.”

Palin gets hit by the elemental (of course. Palin always gets hit.) so we cast about for help.

Veracity: “Hey Geofford. Any healing abilities, by chance?”
GM Vaschon: Geofford replies he’s been a prisoner for a while and has no spells ready.
Palin: Hey, but that implies he has the ability to. Good to know.

Of course then a pirate shoots him. Because just like in a Joss Whedon show, if you get to know and like someone, they’re doomed.

Palin: Nooo! He just got a name!
Veracity: noooooo
Torkal: lolz
Aleanghi: He’s not just some redshirt!
GM Vaschon: Geofford takes 4 points of damage and looks severely injured.
Veracity: Don’t Die, Geofford!
GM Vaschon: Torkal is up
Torkal: He goes after the weakened remaning human crewman.
Torkal: rolled 1 20-sided die: 1
GM Vaschon: Torkal stumbles forward suffering a -2 penalty to his next defense.
Palin: Torkal, you didn’t yell dickchicken.
GM Vaschon: Veracity
Veracity: I so want to try the elemental, but even a confirmed crit I wouldn’t get enough to hit it, dammit, so…..shooting at the seriously injured crewman instead.

Aleanghi: Dickchicken.
Veracity: +1 crossbow, point blank, rapid shot, etc. Dickchicken, yes.
Palin: dick to the chicken.
Aleanghi: dick^chicken?

Veracity: rolled 1 20-sided die: 4

Veracity: +3 = whooooooosh
Torkal: Guys, I really feel this session has gone places. Despite Veracity’s failure as a human being.
GM Vaschon: Veracity nonchalantly says ‘Dickchicken’ but without her enthusiasm misses the shot.
Palin: You gotta say it like you mean it.
Torkal: Yeah. Seriously.
Palin: Kind of a “this is sparta” vibe.
Veracity: DIIIIIIIIICKCHIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKEN!!!!!!!!!!!
(Veracity hits with her second shot)
Veracity: oh!
Aleanghi: See?
Veracity: grin
Palin: That’s going in the writeup.

But the power of Dickchicken is a double-edged sword.

GM Vaschon: Elemental chooses.
GM Vaschon: He chooses Joquil.
Veracity: Don’t Die Joquil!
Torkal: DEATH COMES TO US ALL
GM Vaschon: The Elemental gurgles, “DickChicken!”
GM Vaschon: rolled 1 20-sided die: 15
Veracity: Not the cute ones! Noooooo!
Palin: NOOOO!!!!
GM Vaschon: rolled 3 6-sided dice: 6 2 5
Veracity: oh my god.
Aleanghi: Damn. It was nice knowing him.
Palin: This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
GM Vaschon: Poor Joquil, drowned by the dreaded dickchicken.
Veracity: So long, Joquil. Poor old Joquil.
Veracity: Veracity sobs upon Joquil’s handsome, drenched, dead chest, vowing revenge.

All that remains is us and the water elemental.

Palin: There’s not anything else in here, right? Like a bookcase we can pull down on it, or a convenient chandelier to drop on it?
GM Vaschon: No chandelier. There is a crossbeam you could swing from if you really wanted.
Palin: Then all I can say is DIIIIIIIICKCHICKEN!
(Palin rolls well)
GM Vaschon: A water elemental looks heavily injured.
Palin: “Give up! Also, can you pilot a ship?”

GM Vaschon: Geofford shoots the elemental. He misses.
Palin: We need to tell him about the dickchicken thing.

GM Vaschon: Elemental chooses! Oops, poor Geofford.
GM Vaschon: Geofford is drowned.
Veracity: Nooooooo!
Palin: Asshole elemental!
Aleanghi: Elemental asshole.
Aleanghi: I don’t think I wanna know what images those would conjure.
GM Vaschon: That’s a shame, those were 2 npcs that coulda helped along the way, heh

Way to rub it in, DM! Anyway, finally, finally, FINALLY, at about 1:00 in the morning, we kill the water elemental.

GM Vaschon: As Veracity shoots the water elemental, it dissipates and rains down to the deck.
Veracity: Veracity jumps up and down and pumps the air with her fist.

Then we take some time to honor our fallen comrades, figure out how to haul their lifeless corpses back to town, and also to scoop up some treasure. We get a lot of loot. Keys, magical weapons and armor, a ring of water breathing, potions, a cloak of fire resistance…

Palin: Wait, wait… I looked up. There’s a cloak of FIRE RESISTANCE?
Palin: Palin yells “DICKCHICKEN” and snatches the cloak from Val.
Val, meanwhile, claims an utterly ridiculous captain’s hat and places it jauntily upon his head. Typical. Unfortunately, the fantastic picture link that the DM came up with is no longer online, so I’m substituting the hat at right.

Bentein: “If we can, we need to bring the bodies of the main crew like the Captain, so we can find out where this island is if we raise him.”
Palin: Oh, hey! Good idea!
GM Vaschon: Ale is down in the hold, there are 8 captives staring at her. One female human, 2 male dwarves, 2 half-elven males, 1 half-elf female 1 elf male and 1 elf female
Palin: Just 8? Yikes.
Aleanghi: “The fight is done – it’s safe to come back up.
GM Vaschon: The captives look hesitant and inquire as to your identity.
Aleanghi: ‘Aleangi. I’m with Val – he was down here earlier. ‘If you’d like, I can bring him back down.
Palin: You might mention that the baron sent us.
Aleanghi: (well, I would have hoped that Val might have filled in some of that already)
Palin: This is Val we’re talking about. More likely he said he came single-handedly to save them, swinging in on a rope.
GM Vaschon: The captives hesitantly follow you up the ramp
Veracity: Veracity does a quick tally of the corpses and then a second, slower count. She says in a deceptively casual tone, “The sailor in the skiff said there were HOW many crew on this ship? Before we slit his throat and dumped him?”
Val: 24?
Torkal: Torkal says blandly, “There’s a group we didn’t kill. It isn’t safe to bring the captives, that’s what she means.”
Veracity: Veracity says, “I think we might want to – yes. Clean house a little, first.”

It’s late, so we decide to hash out any remaining details in e-mail, but first,

GM Vaschon: The human female asks, “So what is to become of us?”
Aleanghi: ‘We’re getting you out of here.
GM Vaschon: The human female glances down at the corpses and looks up, nodding slightly at Ale. “Alive, right?”
Val: “That is the hope. It got a little hairy, here, as you can see. But now we have all but secured the ship in our control.”
GM Vaschon: The human female says, “Wonderful, I’m sure you’ll be rewarded.”
Palin: I think she’s being sarcastic.
Palin: “The Baron was concerned about all his subjects, but of course had a special hope that his daughter would be here. Do you know of her?
Torkal: HI I’M A HIGH-VALUE TARGET THAT WON’T LIKELY SELF-IDENTIFY
Palin: Quiet, you.
GM Vaschon: The human female does not respond to Palin.
Palin: Well, I am a hideous dwarf with no charisma.
Palin: WHO JUST SAVED HER LIFE.
Bentein: “I am just glad that at least some have been rescued from slavery. These others, I hope, can be saved by the grace of the Church.”
GM Vaschon: The collective captives agree with Bentein and thank him for his efforts.
Palin: Everybody loves Bentein.

And that’s where we break. Next time: we have to get back OUT of the ship, hopefully without killing any more captives.

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  1. May 22nd, 2011 at 22:18 | #1

    At about the time you hit the Torkal Rage Explosion, I was laughing too hard to breathe.

    You have a special kind of power. 😀

  2. May 23rd, 2011 at 03:02 | #2

    I am intensely curious about the hat.

  3. May 23rd, 2011 at 12:01 | #3

    <3 <3 <3 Oh my. I just... I just love these so much!

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