FOE3 Log 19

The Adventures of The Federation of Explorers, Generation 3 continue with...

Althar Ovinson the yuan-ti cleric-divination wizard;
Ludo the firbolg barbarian;
Zeraf the tiefling rogue-ranger;
Koh the human monk; and
Tali'Anya the drow druid!

Session 19
Tali'Anya gave back the staff of healing before heading out to bring the rescued dryad to its home. The rest of the team continued going through the corrupted temple. At the earth elemental ring test/trap Ludo died from suffocation when it pulled him underground; the rest of the team had to kill the corpse flower and earth elemental that came forth in order to get the ring and Ludo's dead body.

The team went to rest outside the temple and give Ludo a proper funeral by burning his body. After about an hour, 3 lycans showed up and attacked the group (a wereboar, a weretiger, and a werebear). Koh, Zeraf, and Althar killed them.

The next morning the wandering tiefling bard A'Bezeel joined the group. Varis let him wear Ludo's red dragonscale armor. Althar started using Ludo's +1 battleaxe. The team went back into the temple and killed 4 black puddings that ambushed them from the ceiling of one of the rooms.

SAGA Logs 2000-2011

The RPG SAGA continues...
I have to admit I wasn't sure what numbers to use at this point for my main game logs. For the last campaign, I relabeled it as 4U since it took place in the "4th Universe" so to speak. But I also played a lot of FOE sessions and a ton of Adventurers League. Thus I am just going to guesstimate the number at 2000. And it's starting with a 0 number, not a 1 because we had a true "Session Zero" to start the campaign...

For the beginning of this campaign, I took the adventure concepts and used NPCs from both Waterdeep Dragon Heist and Ghosts of Saltmarsh and weaved them together while also relocating the campaign to the former pirate town of Purl (in a location of the Forgotten Realms that doesn't have much lore - "The Shining South" nation of Dambrath - and thus my players had something fresh to explore).

Session 0/2000: The players established expectations and created the main characters. I told them about the setting. The characters created were: Mylitta "Litta" Erenaeth the high elf wizard/anthropologist, her brother Tharivol Erenaeth the winter eladrin hunter ranger/folk hero, and Varis "Starflower" Anastacia the wood elf sun monk/guild artisan. They made a party of all elves. I made a note because that would definitely have an influence on the campaign going forward.

Varis was married to a halfling woman named Cora, a local ranger who retired to be a part of the leatherworker business. They already had children, who would be established NPCs in the village. Litta and Tharivol had a mystery concerning their parents and origin story. Tharivol and Varis decided they would know each other as hunting buddies who were just returning to the village to meet up with Tharivol's sister. The village of Purl was basically Saltmarsh with some Waterdeep Dragon Heist elements added in.

2001: The story began with Varis and Tharivol having befriended one of the two human princes of Dambrath, Philipe, during their hunting excursion. Litta met up with the others and they got to know the politics of the village. Prince Philipe hired them to help him find the lost treasure, starting with a special rock.

2002: The trio dealt with the missing prince and body double issue, the warehouse with the kenku, and the circus people who had arrived in town (included Zord, the colorful dark elf).

2003: There was a fireball explosion in the town; the team investigated and dealt with guard politics. Varis spent some more time with his family. Litta and Tharivol investigated a noble family's mansion. Tharivol freed the kenku prisoner.

2004: The team went to deal with the haunted house on the hill since they heard some other adventurers were trying to beat them to it. They dealt with the animals, monsters, and pirates there; Ned betrayed them. Back in the town, the cleric also betrayed them, but they managed to capture a pirate ship and free a tritan slave named Sunaeco.

2005: The trio took ownership of the "haunted" mansion and spoke with the political leaders about the potential threat of the lizardfolk stocking up weapons sold to them by pirates. They also continued their quest of finding the missing 500,000 gp worth of treasure that the prince wanted. Zord tried to get them to betray the prince and work with him instead. When they found the vault and dealt with the dangers inside, the prince let them keep 10% of the treasure. They used that money to fix up their new home and hire a crew for their new merchant ship.

2006: They sailed out on their ship to return the prince and treasure to the capital city of Dambrath. Along the way, they stopped at a sea elf island for trade and they were followed by the circus pirates. In Dambrath, they received special treatment as Royal Rapiers [an appointment similar to the Musketeers of France]. Varis adopted a street orphan named Victor. The team killed a giant crocodile and presented it to the king, who worshipped Malar (like Tharivol).

2007: Sunaeco bought the ship and made a business arrangement with the trio. The royal wizard "Stang" was jealous of the group, as were many of the other Royal Rapiers. Stang teleported the team back to Purl, where they helped the captain of the guard deal with the lizardfolk threat. Philipe's brother had been assassinated and the halflings from the nearby nation were blamed. Tensions were mounting to what looked like it would escalate to war!

2008: While discussing what to do about the Sahuagin threat, the trio of heroes were [for a special Friday the 13th adventure] captured by two rogue agents of AO (Vim & Vigor) and ended up fighting some undead spirits at a camp ground and lake. The Agents of AO were concerned about Litta and Tharivol being in the wrong time period (because of the mystery of their parents/origin).

2009: Vim & Vigor's ship exploded when they tried time-traveling with the group; the team was confused about whether they were in the future or the past, but it turned out they were in the present time that they had been living in. The team used the lizardfolk to trick the pirates and arrest them. They also dealt with an island with an abandoned temple.

2010: The trio had decided the only way to stop the humans from wrongly slaughtering the halfling nation was to assassinate the king and have the prince rise up in power. Meanwhile, Veran the elf from Litta's adopted family arrived and said they had inherited an estate in Evermeet. The sea elf ambassador seemed interested in Litta. Varis' wife was upset with the team. They had helped arrest Zord, but now Zord was pretending to be his "twin brother" Dorz. They continued dealing with court politics.

2011: Keylam, one of the Royal Rapiers, befriended the trio. They worked with Prince Philipe and decided to sacrifice the king on the Malar centaur alter in the woods. The plan worked and they killed the king. Philipe gave a speech to his servants and they celebrated the coronation of him as the new king. He cancelled the war with the halfling nation. The trio were going to go visit the border monasteries and then the halfling nation, but a mysterious island appeared at sea so they investigated it instead. Ryali's son "The Merry-Maker" was on the island and took them to Mystara, where they learned that Litt and Tharivol were the children of Malath and Shalendra Floshin (from 4U). At the end, they visited the magical marketplace.

FOE3 Logs 1-18

The 3rd FOE Campaign (FOE3, or F3 for even shorter) has been a blast thus far! I am a player in this game, which started with the core trio of players and same DM from the FOE2/CoMT campaign. We were joined by 2 more players and they add even more fun to the sessions. We also had a special guest player for one of the games, though at that point we were out of seats at the table. LOL.

One of the players wanted to play a firbolg, but it's not easy to find miniatures for firbolg characters so I suggested we get a bugbear and the DM painted him to look like a firbolg. I think it turned out great (see below):

F3 Log 1: I play Althar Ovinson, the yuan-ti cleric-wizard who was born a tiefling (the son of Ovin and the succubus that killed him during the FOE2/CoMT adventures - but went through yuan-ti rituals to convert). I am the only "legacy character" from the bloodlines of previous characters (thus far). My character is joined by the tiefling rogue Zeraf Drake and the firbolg barbarian Ludo. We were sent through a portal to another continent to establish a settlement, along with a bunch of NPCs [similar to the idea of Australia, I suppose]. We sent a lot of the first game session learning about the NPCs and finding a safe place in the woods near a lake to have a hidden forest village.

2: We have been gathering animals and crops and busy farming/ranching it up, as well as assigning all the NPCs important jobs/duties in the village that we named Deepwater (since we originally were sent here from Waterdeep). We also spent time securing the nearby mines, which meant defeating kobolds and a young red dragon.

3: We explored in the nearby mountains and were abushed by goblins. We ended up having to kill a bunch of goblins and their wolf. We found a cave with drow and spiders that came up to fight us. We had to kill them too.

4: We took supplies back to our village and then went back to the cave to explore the "drow hole" as we called it. We found an ancient dwarf temple. The dark elves attacked us and we barely escaped alive. We managed to get the books and such from the dwarf temple. We also went to a ruined settlement and fought off a strange lich spirit. After more resting, we ended up exploring out to a bear cave and taking on a mutant werebear.

5: A 4th player joined us as Koh the human monk. He showed up with some failed settlers that we had come join our community. We spent a bunch of time coordinating the breeding of animals and growing of crops, along with building more log cabins in the woods. The monk then joined the main trio with some backup NPCs to go on one last mission into the dwarf temple to retrieve relics and more books before blowing up the tunnel.

6: Our 5th player joined in as a drow druid (though, unlike all the other dark elves, she was on our side) named Tali'Anya. We quested for more interesting crops, like carrots and cabbage, to add to our farms. In the wilderness, while exploring, we fought 2 owl bears and slept in the mountains, where we were abushed by a party of drow. We defeated them.

7: We continued exploring in the mountains. We battled 4 air elementals and dealt with weird traps. We went through mountain caves with dark elves and duergar. We ambushed the enemies and took their equipment.

8: We rescued slaves from the caves and brought them back to your nice forest village community. We worked on our cabins/farms for a bit and then continued exploring. The core team went to explore a mountain river path and we found an unnatural wasteland. A magic voice in the sky announced it was taking back energy and souls. We witnessed the wild magic from the area go north, into the wasteland and past it. We went to a giant dead tree and killed the corpse flower monster there.

9: The team entered the dead tree lair and dealt with all of the traps and monsters inside. We won over a sphinx via a riddle competition. The main battle was against a wizard and a druid. They almost killed us, but we managed to get out alive.

10: We brought the sphinx back to the village with us. Our guards had seen lizardfolk nearby so we decided to go deal with them. In the swamp, we had to destroy a party of undead (a wight and 4 will'o'wisps). We made a deal with the local lizardfolk to be allies. They took us to their village and introduced us to their leaders - a half-dragon and an ancient obsidian dragon. The obsidian dragon tasked us with killing his rival, a gold dragon. Who were we to say no?

11: As we traveled, we found cows that belonged to orcs. We had to kill a bunch of orcs and Althar became the new orc chief. As their chief, I convinced them to share the cows with our community and to have 4 young orcs continue with the adventure party to go deal with the yuan-ti and such. We found a yuan-ti village and fought some of them. The NPC orcs died in battle.

12: We battled more yuan-ti and then, in the city, there was a weird astral plane projection thing that happened to some of us. We had to defeat a yuan-ti spirit. In the end we won and ended back in our bodies.

13: The normal campaign paused for this week as we played a special session. Instead of our normal characters, we got to play as creatures from the Monster Manual. I was Patyr the Satyr; we picked randomly. We also had an orog, a lizardfolk shaman, a dire wolf, and a giant spider. We were helping a Dragonborn ranger to stop some summonings. We fought a bunch of kruthiks and cultists and then had to knock a glabrezu into a portal (the dire wolf sacrificed himself). In the end, we woke up and it was a vision our main characters had of some sort of potential future.

14: Back to the normal campaign: Althar, Ludo, and Zeraf dragged along the unconscious monk and druid. As Althar, I returned the stolen yuan-ti eggs and tried to throw them off so they wouldn't follow us anymore. We went into the mountains and befriended some kobolds who took us to the community of the gold dragon (where they lied and said there was an ancient gold dragon, but his spirit had been split into different people). We befriended them.

15: As another diversion from the main campaign (since we were missing 2 of our 5 players again), 3 of us played as characters in a gladiator type arena. I was Jerek Feyblood the half-elf barbarian, joined by Terrence the tortle tempest cleric and Beelza the tiefling bard. We had been captured by the evil wizards/druids and forced to fight in their arena. We escaped after some fun battles and then rested in the sewers.

16: In the normal campaign the gang was all reunited in the secret gold dragon cave HQ. We told them the truth about the obsidian dragon and decided to all work together to go put an end to its reign. We took the army of dragonborn and kobolds through the forest and swamp; along the way, we recruited the orcs to join us (though we sent the kids away to Deepwater with the cows and the old folks). We had a huge battle at the lizardfolk city in the swamp, with our side winning! Belthoth, the ancient gold dragon reunited its spritual self back together to help with the victory.

17: The gold dragon rewarded us and we decided to let the remaining lizardfolk live in peace there. The dragon's people mostly returned to their secret cave. We also decided to start up a new village at the abandoned orc fort. The cows had been slaughtered by dark elves, but the children survived. We figured out the politics and farming and spent a year of downtime. Unknown to the rest of us, Koh was being manipulated by the evil dragon spirit trapped in the ring of spell storing (ROSS) that I had given him (that I had gotten from the battle).

18: On the way to the temple that Koh told us he had a vision about being corrupted, we were waylaid by a froghemoth that almost killed Koh. We made it inside and had to deal with a bunch of elemental-based traps and puzzles. We freed a dryad prisoner and ended the session half-way through the dungeon.

AL PC: Jermanthor

AL PC: Jermanthor

My first Season 9 character is Jermanthor of Cormanthor (the name works on so many levels, as references to me as Jer, to Thor the god of lightning, and to the elven forest of Cormanthor), the half-elf tempest cleric. I had the character take a level of wizard since there were so many great spellbooks rewarded in the beginning of the Season 9 hardcover Descent into Avernus and the party had no wizard. 

This is my current Saturday character in the Daddywarbux campaign (about to level up to level 7). In a lot of ways, I feel like I am simply treading familiar ground by playing a multiclass cleric-wizard (since that is my main type of character these days), but I spiced things up by making him worship Umberlee. I had no idea that would get such a negative reaction from the other player characters. LOL.

As a sidenote, Season 9 for AL is written to give advantages to playing either an aasimar or a tiefling, but I really wanted to play a half-elf again so I went with my gut rather than with the mechanically-advantageous option. Now that two-thirds of the party is flying around with wings, I will admit I am a little bit envious but I love this character so I'm not that worried about it. Surely, before Season 9 ends, I will make an aasimar name Jer-something (Jerangelus - no, no, that's a little too on the nose)...

AL PC: Jern Bogwalker

AL PC: Jern Bogwalker

In Season 8, for an AL LMOP campaign, I created a kobold druid named Jern Bogwalker (to honor the old Bogwalker campaign that I had DM’d years ago). He made it all the way through a long campaign of LMOP and White Plume Mountain. I also gave him some DM Rewards and, for Season 9, converted him up so that he is now level 14. 

He has benefited from me being able to trade items down from my other druid (Thokson). I love playing druids. The creativity that comes from the wildshapes is always fun to play out. He is another character that I haven't played in a while that I would like to revisit in Season 9.

AL PC: Jerisimo

AL PC: Jerisimo

For a Waterdeep Dragon Heist AL campaign, I was able to play the Jer-est character of all: Jerisimo the human arcana cleric. I played him through an entire campaign for that hardcover. While the rest of the party was concerned with the actual objectives of the game, Jerisimo focused on a romance with Yagra Stonefist (the half-orc from the tavern). We had a great time with the campaign and Jerisimo ended up marrying Yagra, taking her last name, and having a son (Jerisimo Junior – a character that I will surely play at some point in the future). Jerisimo ended up at level 7 and I haven’t played him since, but he got a full story with owning Trollskull Manor and settling down in retirement (thus far).

AL PC: Jerizzt Do’Urden

AL PC: Jerizzt Do’Urden

In Season 8, I created a drow eldritch knight who believed himself to be the bastard son of Drizzt Do’Urden, named Jerizzt (because I love to name my characters things that start with Jer). I started him out with the Season 8 modules, but he also saw some action on the Black Road, with some CCC fun, and some DM Rewards. 

Thanks to the Season 9 conversion, he ended up at level 11 and maxing out the allowed number of magic items. To make the character even more fun, I made his familiar a black cat similar to the panther in the Drizzt novels. What’s funny to me though is that not a single person that I played with commented on the Jerizzt/Drizzt connection or the cat/panther connection. Maybe they haven’t read the novels and don’t know the lore?

AL Season 9

Adventurers League Season 9 began, not with a bang, but with a whimper (at least from my point of view). As usual, when the AL Admin team sets up the beginning of a new season of organized play, they change a bunch of the rules and that tends to upset the community. Having endured the Season 8 changes, I wasn’t that bothered by Season 9. I was actually looking forward to some of the “fixes” for the system. What was nice was that the admins placated the community by giving a free “level up” and potential free items from character unlocks during the conversion process.

I spent hours just converting my characters and then I was afraid to play them for a while, in case I had gotten something wrong. Also, it took the admins a while to get the updated content catalog document (the ALCC) out. As predicted, the ALCC changed some more variables. The biggest change from the ALCC was a retroactive reward system for White Plume Mountain. I actually still need to go back and check my characters to make sure I don’t have any fixes for that. And the White Plume Mountain changes should be considered a positive since they give us players access to the epic items from the adventure, but it meant people had to go back and remove previously rewarded items if they weren’t from a narrow list.

I was playing at home or on 2 main Discord servers (the TAL server and Daddywarbux’s server), but there are SO MANY freaking players on the servers now that it’s tough to get into games. Luckily, I am in the regular Saturday “morning” game DM’d by Daddywarbux (twitch.tv/daddywarrbux) so I do have that going on. But most game postings now fill up within 2-3 minutes. It’s crazy how popular the system is right now. I suppose that means Season 9 is working, despite the lack of a proper DM Quest system like before.

The saddest part for me though is that some of the fine people I played AL games with back in Season 7 and some of Season 8 have dropped from organized play and I either lost touch with them or I can’t convince them to come back. In the meantime though, I will continue gaming…

End of 2019: State of the Blog

Oh yeah, I have a blog... LOL

(Those poor maps have been through a lot over the years.)

I forgot to update the blog for the 2nd half of the year. I hope you'll forgive me. That means I need to type up the updates for (1) DMing my home game, (2) playing in the FOE game, and (3) Adventurers League. No problem. Let me get right on that...

Meanwhile, I will say that sometimes I suffer from RPG burn out and it helps to turn to some other hobbies. I will read books, play computer games (like Minecraft), or build something out of Lego. I should probably blog some about the books I've been reading and include some more inspiration posts like I used to do.

Luckily my friends and fellow players keep me interested in the RPGs. We have great times together and there are always fun stories to tell. I hope you will enjoy them as I try to breath life back into this blog. Peace!

AL PC Update: Thox(ina)

Post-Season 7 Play
Thox is no longer Thoxina, thus for AL purposes Thox(ina) Darkvale. Before playing level 5, I decided to go with a thief rogue build with a future multiclass into barbarian. That way she could wield a rapier, but use strength and guarantee getting advantage (for sneak attack) via recklessly attacking each round.

Adventures
After Season 7 play (DDAL05-2 The Black Road, DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead, and DDAL05-12 Bad Business in Parnast), she enjoyed Season 8 with...

DDEX1-10 Tyranny in Phlan
During this adventure, she was staying at an inn when a dragon's army attacked. She helped the people of the city fight back, organize, and get the commoners to safety. Her Harpers contact came in handy and she fought off an evil wizard on a wyvern.

DDHC TYP: White Plume Mountain
By far one of the best modules ever, White Plume Mountain is always a fun adventure. Normally I make sure I bring a character who can fly and cast spells to get around the traps, but not this time. Thoxina had to rely on her team and quick thinking to get through all of the puzzles. She was also there for the combat!

DDAL08-13 The Vampire of Skullport
She joined a team in Waterdeep fighting off vampires. Again, she mostly focused on the combat in this one.

DDHC TYP: Tomb of Horrors
Everything changed as a result of the Tomb of Horrors. When Thoxina went in with the others (including Kilrath), she never expected the magic of the place would turn her into a man and change her alignment to evil. Once she went evil, she started hanging at the back of the group and letting the other party members risk getting killed by the traps. In the end, it took barely any effort on her part and she got access to lots of great treasure as a reward (including a belt of fire giant strength).

As a man, the character is now going by the name of Thox (and looks remarkably similar to her/his twin brother).

4U Reflection

Thoughts of a DM...
Oh what a tangled web of plot I weaved for this campaign! The campaign ended up going through phases:
Phase 1: Small town Tholme with nearby elemental evil
Phase 2: (modified Emerald Spire) Obsidian Fang missions
Phase 3: figuring out the Ryali/Kennara/Shar mysteries/plots

The phases sort of fit into the “heroic tier” concept of play, going from small town to larger region to world/universe problems. I feel that, at times, I had made the antagonists' plans too subtle or too hidden for the players to be sure where to go to track them down. Other than the forced Obsidian Fang levels/quests, I ran this campaign as very player-centric with lots of player agency. I wonder if, sometimes, I gave them too much leeway with deciding where to go and what to do because we ended up with some hours spent just kind of roaming around shopping and talking with NPCs without, from my point of view as DM, much focus (for where I thought they should be in the campaign) but the players were happy and having fun and that’s what really matters.

And oh what fun we had! Some of the highlights to me, were:
*Playing with the word “murder” representing a group of ravens;
*mimicking Hommlet and TOEE with Tholme and its problems;
*stealing ideas from the Emerald Spire mega-dungeon, especially the deadly magma dragons;
*making silly NPC shamans/clerics as sub-bosses/antagonists;
*reusing familiar locations from the previous universe, but refreshing them (I'm looking at you, Floshin Family);
*the “Barbarians at the Gate” adventure;
*having 2 Puffs without the players realizing there were 2 of him;
*playing Kennara as one of those evil people who thinks they are doing good;
*letting lose super powerful enemies such as Klauth and the tarrasque;
*being pleasantly surprised when the players finished off the plots before I thought they would.

This will go down in history as our first big campaign that didn’t go all the way to level 20. We finished at level 17, but we were done. The big plots were dealt with and there wasn’t a point in making up some more things for them to do after that. I’m glad that, over a year and a half ago, I realized I could have some fun with some word play of “For You” and “4U” to get this thing started as a transition from our universe that we had been playing in for FOREVER, to get us to something new. To my players, this campaign was 4U.

4U 28-35: Ryali v Shar

The RPG Saga continues in the 4th Universe with the Dream Team of:
Kori the aasimar fighter-cleric,
Aegle the winged elf kensai monk,
Page in a Book the tabaxi rogue, and
The Flake Bros (Wally the Wizard and Cham the cleric) -
with appearances by Puff the gnome/dragonborn druid and Malath the half-elf bard.

4U 28: Aegle returned to Waterdeep with Wally’s body. The team got him resurrected and were going to head into Skullport when the Phoenix rose from its egg and the team had to defeat it at the port. Page bought the sailing ship “The Bull Frog” with a mostly elf and half-elf crew. They sold the Phoenix egg to the Xanathar and then the team (Kori, Aegle, Page, Cham, Wally, and the barbarian King Slayer) planeshifted to the Shadowfell, to the palace of Orcus…

29: The team joined the assault on the palace of Orcus, defeating an army of undead that included minotaur skeletons, bodaks, a lich, a vampire lord, shadows, and a zombie beholder (in addition to the swarms of zombies and skeles). The Skull Lord joined the fight, but S’dothian (Malath’s shadow dragon patron) came and helped the team. The group ended with just Kori, Aegle, Page, and the shadow dragon alive. Cham’s body was destroyed/sent to the Astral Plane along with the destruction of his bag of holding and Aegle’s portable hole!

30: Kori, Aegle, and Page had S’dothian take them to a cave where they were able to get a safe rest. S’dothian told them about Malath, back at home, having impregnated Shalendra Floshin being faced with the decision to marry her. Malath also told S’dothian that the green wizard had been captured by Klauth. With the Raven Queen’s forces now controlling the palace, Kennara was there in charge wearing the Paradox Pendant and guarded by two shaman sisters. The team allied with a hag who helped them defeat the shamans. Kennara teleported out to safety. The team arranged for Malath and Shalendra to have a proper wedding with Lady Faenya presiding in her Feywild palace; the archfey blessed the couple so that they could have an eladrin child. Puff showed up at the wedding reception.

31: Kori, Aegle, Page, and their hag ally teleported into one of Klauth’s treasure caves, where they battled: kobolds, dragonborn, half-dragons, and vetern lizardfolk. They rescued the Green Wizard (GW), though they accidentally spread a bunch of Klauth’s treasure across the Astral Plane (with a bag of holding/portable hole accident). The hag left the team because she was an enemy of GW. GW revealed that Klauth took his TREEdis to Mystara, where it was trapped behind a powerful magical barrier. Klauth’s mistress gave the team some grief before finally letting them have some cursed magic items.

32: The team was assaulted by a tarrasque (from another world), a powerful fire giant lord, and some weird canoloths; Aegle died in the battle. When Kori and Page teleported out to save themselves, they went to Waterdeep to hire an elven cleric, the tarrasque and fire giant also ended up in Waterdeep pursuing them. The team hired Mortimer the monk, a bounty hunter, to join them. The griffon-rider guards finished off the tarrasque, but the fire giant escaped. Meanwhile, the team went to the elven Temple of Elemental Evil, where they fought off some dragons and elementals that had been attacking Puff’s gnome girlfriend. She revealed the truth about Puff – that there were 2 of him because of a simulacrum spell.

33: Kori was teleported away from the others (Page and Mortimer) to participate in a game hosted by the ancient power known as the Quiz Master; he also brought Aegle from the afterlife (who had been in a primordial realm because Lady Faenya is actually the primordial god-being Akadi), the Green Wizard, both Puff and his simulacrum, and Kennara. They were put on 3 teams (Kori & Kennara, GW & Puff, Puff & Aegle) and forced to play a version of Jeopardy. GW sacrificed himself and the Puff simulacrum since one of the teams was going to have their souls devoured. Kori and Kennara won, getting all of the magic items from Puff and Aegle. Aegle had a chance to tell Kori what he had learned from the primordials before getting the Quiz Master to send him to Corellon’s realm in the afterlife. Kennara went back to Waterdeep, where Puff persued her. Kori returned to Page and Mortimer, who had been defeating the remaining elementals coming out of the ruins of the elven TOEE. Kori used her new knowledge to seal the elemental nodes there.

34: Kori, Page, and Morty discussed everything, realizing that Kennara was behind much of what had happened in her plot to ascend as the new Raven Queen; also, Shar was trying to destroy Mystara which was why it was behind a barrier – with the elemental lords actually protecting it, not “imprisoning” it for nefarious purposes. They walked to Tholme and got Brexi to tree-port them to Waterdeep, where they found out Puff’s cult forces had taken the Shaman Supreme after raiding the church of the Raven Queen. After resting, they paid a wizard to teleport them near Elvenport, where the elemental cults were.

While infiltrating the cults of the Steam Lord and Storm Lord, the team found out Puff was going before a tribunal; when they went into the palace of the elemental lrods, it brought forth a repressed memory from Kori’s childhood and she realized being here was her destiny so that she could return to her own universe and help save her own Mystara with this same plan of having the elemental lords (which Ryali has power over) seal the world away from Shar. The team saved Puff, who suggested they go steal the TREEdis and take it home.

Their plan worked. They got the TREEdis, saved Prince Mursalin, put in the dial from the universal tree, and used the TREEdis to return to Kori and Puff’s original universe. There, they met with the church of Ryali and gave them the info needed to save Mystara from Shar.

35: Kori, Prince Mursalin, Puff, Page, Morty, and the team’s hired fighter had saved Mystara and had to decide what to do with themselves; they didn’t want Kennara to get away with things so they made one more trip into the 4th Universe, this time with a Semuanya cleric and a gold dragonborn paladin of Ryalia (named Malia) with them. They gave the orb of transference to Kennara and tricked her into thinking they were on her side; they got her into the ancient frog temple from the Mere of Dead Men and took it to Shar’s domain. They got Shar and Kennara both trapped in the temple, along with Shar’s lover Cyric.

After trapping the god-beings in the temple, they shrunk it down and took it back to Waterdeep and – eventually – Semuanya’s realm, where they gave the sealed temple to the goddess of survival; the cleric they brought with them chose to stay there. They communicated with the elemental princes so they could free Mystara in 4U. They had also spoken to Klauth and his dragon council, making sure they wouldn’t go on a rampage; Kori gave the silver dragon there the book of elemental power that she had been carrying around. In the end, the team returned to Kori and Puff’s original universe.

Epilogue
For retirement:
*Puff went back to his Old Gnawbone, after removing the dial (destroying it) from the TREEDIS;
*Page was living a new life on Toril, in a universe that was new to him (but similar to where he came from);
*Mortimer, like Page, was also living a new life on this version of Toril;
*Kori & Prince Murselan finally got a chance to settle down and have a family, on her Mystara;
*Malia stayed on Mystara as well; and
*Malith was the only one from the core group who stayed in 4U, raising his family with his wife Shalendra Floshin.

FOE2/COMT Reflection

Thoughts from a Player...
I had so much fun playing the FOE 2 (a.k.a. CoMT) campaign. The DM had a really interesting concept for us, clearing out an entire city from monsters, with a link to a cursed Deck of Many Things that summoned the magic to change the city in the first place. When we finished the main mission, the DM modified the Curse of Strahd campaign for us to play it at high level.

Throughout the campaign, as usual with this group, I ended up with the high kill count. I ended up playing:
*Narg “Fox” Stormleaf the half-orc cleric/wizard, who died fighting the monsters in the city streets;
*Derv “Dewey” Dewstone the human fighter, who died helping Seiken escape from the orc fort;
*Mory Brewbeard the dwarf cleric/pirate, who had his brain eaten by an intellect devourer and his soul taken by Shothragot;
*Ovin Snakestaff the water genasi fighter/cleric, who had ended up magically trapped in a room where he got his soul eaten by a succubus after impregnating her;
*Keravel Ual the elf cleric, who retired as the leader of a city; and
*the returning Raylin Sunsoaker the human sun cleric and Director of FOE, who successfully saved his own soul and then went off to spread the Federation of Explorers to other worlds.

That means, over about 45 gaming sessions, I played 6 really interesting characters with fun personalities. There were a lot of memorable moments, from fighting back the “green tide” to plotting to get the druid to fall in love with the necromancer (which didn’t happen), to pretending to be Gith, to surviving a huge airship battle/assault, to secretly setting up the Criminals of Many Things as a subset of FOE, to saving Raylin’s soul. Especially after Mory’s soul was taken, it meant a lot to be able to go back and save Raylin like that. It's bittersweet to end a campaign, but that just frees up time to start a new one...

COMT 31-35: Curse of Strahd

The Federation of Explorers (Part 2) a.k.a. The City of Many Things (a.k.a. The Criminals of Many Things) continued with The Curse of Strahd...

CoMT 31: Seiken the elf monk, Elyrin the human necromancer, and Keravel elf cleric were finished with their mission saving the city from the monsters that threatened it. The elves from the High Forest sent an eladrin ambassador (Daevala) from an ancient elven city that hid from the Netherese; they had elven magic forging abilities and druids that would help with farms. The CoMT setup an elven embassy for them. Keravel went to become the new leader of Naeb, to rebuild that city.

Raylin Sunsoaker, the human sun cleric and Director of FOE, returned to the city, having done a ton of research about Strahd and the Dark Powers – along with a plan to go into the Domains of Dread to try to free his tainted soul. Elyrin and Seiken agreed to go with him. Seiken, Elyrin, and Raylin went shopping with the ancient elves before going to the Twilight Forest and entering the mists of Ravenloft/visiting with the Vistani and Madame Eva. They ended up in the village of Krezk, and a strange Abby…

32: Strahd taunted the team by ordering the peole at the Krezk to attack the team of Seiken, Elyrin, and Keravel before disappearing. After the team defeated the enemies there, they went down the road toward the village of Barovia – stopping at a lake. They took a boat across the lake, looked for a wolf cave, and found an elk that turned out to be the insane Mordenkainen! The team dispelled his mind blank and went into Mordy’s mansion. After resting and sharing info with Mordy, the team left.

33: The team (Seiken, Elyrin, and Raylin) fought off a dozen werewolves and then spent more days heading toward Barovia. They ended up in a “ghost town” where they found off an army of undead with zombie, spirit skeles, and a skull lord caster.

34: After some keepy dreams/visions/illusions, the team finally ended up in Barovia. They dealt with the local church with the priest whose son was a vampire. The team got the info on where to find the crypt of Strahd’s brother, where there was a weapon they could use to defeat Strahd. They went through a creepy graveyard and battled some demons and amges. Strahd tried taunting the team again when they got the sunsword.

Days later, the team went into Strahd’s castle to fight him. They fought off Strahd’s army of undead and defeated the Dark Lord Strahd! They then found themselves planeshifted to a “Dark Powers Council Chamber” with 3 death gods (Bhaal, Talona, Loviatar). Seiken used the scale the gem dragon (Seradeth) gave the team, thus summoning him to join in the battle…

35: Seiken, Elyrin (with his undead minions), Raylin fought Loviatar while Seradeth took on Bhaal and Talona. After finishing off their opponent, the team joined Seradeth. Together, they defeated the death gods and freed Raylin’s soul from the Dark Powers. Seradeth thanked them and gave them each an open invitation to his resting pool.

Epilogue: Elyrin decided to continue life as an adventurer for hire. Seiken started his own monastery. Raylin headed to other worlds to setup chapters of FOE as an interplanar adventuring company. Meanwhile, Keravel had setup a proper, non-evil government, in Naeb and had renamed the city back to Loudwater. He also convinced more elves to move there.

AL Secret Character: JJ

I think it's time to admit that I have a secret D&D Adventurers League character. I've never played him in a game, but I needed to use up all of my extra Season 7 DM Rewards before they expired so I put them into him. For Season 8 I have dumped even more DM Rewards into him. He's doing a great job leveling up. LOL. He is...

Jermond Jeddington!

No, not Raymond Reddington from THE BLACKLIST.

Jermond Jeddington (aka JJ), the gnome eldritch knight. I used some treasure points and a Gather Information video unlock to get him a Wand of Conducting that can be used to distract people. His eldritch knight powers allow him to summon his bonded weapons to him so he doesn't have to always carry them around. I think it's a great concept that will be a lot of fun to play - if I ever do actually play him as a character.

Perhaps he should take a note from Raymond Reddington, the Concierge of Crime, and facilitate trades and such for Adventurers League characters. If I ever do play him, I have a good miniature that could work. It's this one (which I found a picture of on the internet):

I should probably give him a mysterious backstory.... maybe something about a secret daughter and a fake identity...

AL PC: Jereed

Jereed the Tortle Monk

This will be a short entry because I never got to play this character. I saw an online posting from a DM looking for players to join an Out of the Abyss campaign. That sounded like fun to me so I responded. As one of the first people to reply, I got a spot in the game. I then imagined that it would be the perfect opportunity for me to finally play a tortle monk like I have been wanting to do.

Unfortunately, when the day game for the game, I messaged the DM and he said I “didn’t make the cut” for the game. That didn’t make any sense. That phrase implied that there was some sort of competition or something to get a spot in the campaign, but that never happened. He had never messaged me back about anything other than answering my questions about the lengths of the sessions and such.

I messaged the DM back to try to figure out what happened, but I just got no response. Oh well. Eventually, I will play this character. I just need to find the right time to introduce him.

AL Season 8

The changes in the rules from AL Season 7 to Season 8, and events surrounding them, caused me to take five months off from playing in Adventurers League. By coincidence, that was also the beginning of the school year and thus I got busy again. But wow – I remember being angry and confused. At first, I was also in denial that the rules would stay the way they were; I, like many other people, believed the AL Admin Team would listen to the community feedback and make the changes less extreme. Thus, part of my wait was originally hoping that they would still change back at least some of the rules.

The funny thing was that I had already paid to go to a couple of conventions and play some D&D in person, but I ended up not playing in the sessions because I was afraid the rules were “in flux” and about to be amended. They weren’t. The AL Admin Team stuck to their guns and kept all of the changes, despite so many of us thinking them too extreme. Bottom line, I didn’t think it would feel like D&D without any treasure or loot from the adventures. But, looking back, I also hadn’t given it a chance yet. I didn’t fully understand the ACP/TCP system and the content catalog was full of strange-speak. I wish I would have just kept playing though. For my pre-season 8 characters the TCP system is working out fine (because they already have some magic items). It’s just my new characters that don’t have anything of value. The levels at Tier 1 are hard to get through, waiting to have enough treasure points to buy a magic item.

In the end, I missed the community and decided to go back to playing AL in February. Now that it’s been over a month back, I realized that even though it’s different – it’s still fun to play AL D&D. What does bother me are the players and DMs who call the treasure in the adventures “chocolate coins” and ruin my immersion (even more than it already has been). Technically the DMs are just supposed to not mention the treasure or explain away why we adventurers can’t keep it (such as it going back to our guilds or being donated or returned to whomever it was originally stolen from).

The main sadness for Season 8 is the less-incentivizing DM Rewards system. With DMs seeing less rewards for their time, less people are DMing. That means less sessions are available. To compensate for that, I have joined more online Discord communities to find more games. Unfortunately, most game postings fill up within ten minutes of the posting. That means, if I really want to play a lot of D&D, I have to watch all of the Discord groups like a shark. With a job during the day, that’s just not possible.

For now I am going to just remember the old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” and keep on rolling my dice. I also keep checking the official AL Facebook group, which was not something I really worried about in Season 7. But the Admins post official rulings there without updating the actual rules documents. In an age with such great technology, I don't understand that. A simple Google Drive shared file or something similar could have constantly updated documentation. But whatever. I'll do what I have to, to try to be in compliance with the needlessly complicated Season 8 rules system.

CoMT Update 16-30

The team: Seiken the elf kensei monk, Elyrin the human necromancer, and Ovin Snakestaff the eldritch knight-tempest cleric.

CoMT 16: Bleaksin was left behind when the team ended up in the Astral Plane, in a gith city, hiding in the shop of a gith tailor named Glacia; she gave the team headbands that made them magically look like githyanki – with Ovin’s making him look like a woman. She was actually a spy and recruited the team to help slay an illithid. Days later, the team was meeting the lich queen of the city and off on the adventure. The team killed a young red shadow dragon, slime creatures, and 3 mindflayers. Then they went to fight an elder brain…

17: The team fought the elder brain in the cave, but it teleported out. They brought the monster heads back to the gith and the lich queen at the cathedral. A week later, the team (still parading around as gith) became members on a planar ship to “engage in a raid” on the prime material plane – but really, they just wanted to escape and get back home. The raid took them to a dwarf city in the Sword Mountains, near Waterdeep. Elyrin had an epic airship battle while Seiken and Ovin took out the ground troops trying to kill the dwarf king. The invading gith were defeated and the dwarf king declared the team heroes.

18: The dwarves teleported the team back to the pillar city for their mission. Bleaksin was gone, but the team took out 2 mindflayers. They then used the rooftops to avoid the army of undead to get to the pyramid in the center of the city. They locked themselves inside, where they found Netherese murals.

19: Inside the magical ancient Netherese pyramid, the team fought off devils and golems. A team of 4 succibi tried to trap them in rooms; Ovin sacrificed himself to get Seiken out of a trap-room. Ovin ended up charmed once he was alone with a succubus (and he impregnated her – but it was assumed that she either killed him or left him to starve to death, where the team couldn’t rescue him). Elyrin and Seiken continued in the pyramid…

Note: That means Ovin only survived 5 sessions, after Mory who lasted 12 sessions, after Derv who lasted 2, after Fox who lasted 6 sessions. But don’t worry, my next character makes it to the end…

Backstory: Long ago the elf war cleric Keravel Ual (which means “Holy Spellsword”), had visions about the Netherese wizards bringing about an apocalyptic event that would destroy his home elf village. The people there kicked him out. While on his own, he was captured by the Netherese and put into a temporal stasis…

20: Seiken and Elyrin found Keravel and took him out of stasis, explaining that a long time had passed and his visions had been true – his elf village was destroyed along with most of the ancient Netherese. They also updated him on the mission, but Keravel warned that they might need to destroy the pillar when they found it (because it was evil ancient Netherese magic). They battled and destroyed a bunch of devils and golems.

21: After resting, the team took out a bunch of slaads, mummies, spectres, zombies, flame skulls, and a mummy lord. The team destroyed the ancient Netherese mummy heart and blew up the base with all of its chaos energy. The succubus that had taken Ovin taunted the team before they left.

22: With the ancient Netherese pyramid temple destroyed, the undead army was no longer attracted to the area. The team destroyed the straglers. Elyrin explained how the team was in the “reclamation business” (with what Mory told Elyrin about being the “Criminals of Many Things”). Keravel explained ancient history with the gem dragon that competed with Tiamat and Bahamut for godhood amongst the dragons – since it connected to the team’s story and the City of Many Things. Once they were back at the city, they were treated as heroes. They found out Parker was dead and Oozy had fled. The City Council that had formed had Bruth, Braylinn, and the leader of the Roaming Gold Caravan (in charge of the Merchant’s Guild). The team also fought a team of gnolls and fiends.

23: The team fought and killed more demons and gnolls. Elyrin hired an apprentice to help with his wizard tower. Keravel recruited an elf clerk of Corellon for his temple tower. Ten days were spent on town and maintenance stuff. Then the team took out all of the enemies in the Marilith’s district!

24: The team coordinated with two dragons to engage in a huge assault and take over the central gnoll area with the central building in the City of Many Things. The main team, along with Braylinn, took the Bell Tower while the dragons led the others in taking over the area with the churches. The team won the battle and the remaining gnolls retreated.

25: The city’s resources were depleted from the big fight last time. The central tower has a lich in it. The gem dragon “demi-god” had an underground tunnel that the team could use to get into the huge tower to try to defeat the monsters on the inside. Seiken, Elyrin, Keravel, and Braylinn took gifts to the gem dragon, who also gave them items to help in the coming battles. Raylin Sunsoaker even made an appearance to get an update from Seiken and encourage the team to finish the last push to clear out the city. The team used the underground tunnel and infiltrated the central tower, where some nymphs and fairies tried to seduce them (and failed).

26: Still in the tower, the team fought and destroyed a bunch of demons. In a magical library in the tower, an aracanloth recruited the team to deal with necromancers competing to be the main apprentice to the master lich Wulgreth. The team had to fight brain dogs, spirits, grell, and a lich. After the team won, they reported back to the arcanaloth, who congratulated them.

27: Bleaksin arrived at the team’s dungeon rest spot, to trade places on the team with Braylinn, who was needed back in the city. The arcanaloth then took the team to Wulgreth the demi-lich and introduced them. Wulgreth gave them the tour and explained his evil plan – he had captured hundreds of souls in a giant phylactery and would use it to free himself from this place; coincidentally, the gem dragon could replace Wulgreth and use it to escape – along with the heart of the balor demon on the top level of the tower. The team went up one level and killed some redcaps and yeth hounds, along with a purple worm and some wood woads.

Then the team made a touch decision – they recruited two of the necromancers and tried to use them against Wulgreth, but the plan went sideways after Keravel killed the arcanaloth. Wulgreth killed Bleaskin and Keravel. Elyrin used their Ring of Spell Storing revivify plan and brought Keravel back, but Wulgreth captured the souls of Seiken and Keravel. One-on-one, Elyrin finally destroyed Wulgreth and destroyed the gems – thus he released Keravel and Seiken. They, in turn, freed the other trapped adventurers in Wulgreth’s skull gems. Unforunately, there were still 5 angry necromancers outside the room casting spells…

28: The team and the rescued adventurers defeated the 5 necromancers and then destroyed the phylactery, freeing all of the trapped souls. The team went back to FOE Manor. Despite being brought back to life, Bleaksin was done and left the party. The team took 2 weeks downtime. Keravel paid the local bard to make contact with the local elves. Seiken, Elyrin, and Keravel each donated 5,000 gp for the fort at the mines (in hopes of getting 15% of the mine’s profits). When they went back to the tower, they defeated a bunch more demons and rescued a solar. They then spent a couple of days re-consecrating the ground.

29: The leader of the Roaming Gold caravan asked the team to help the people in Naeb, where he said there was unrest and people were in danger. One of the rescued adventurers encouraged the team to go back and clear out more of the tower demons since they couldn’t leave for Naeb until the next day. They went in and defeated a bunch of quasits, 3 nebasu, a goristro, and a marilith. A sibriex demon then feebleminded and transformed the NPC adventurers. Seiken was feebleminded, Keravel and Elyrin got him to safety and used greater restoration to save him.

30: Seiken, Elyrin, and Keravel defeated the sibriex with the rest of his minions; Seiken was killed, but then revivified. The team rested. The gem dragon offered rewards, to turn the team into half-dragons; Seiken and Elyrin accepted, but Keravel negotiated to instead get the gem dragon to help free the people of Naeb. The team made the final push up to the king’s level of the tower and up to the roof, where the Orcus-empowered balor demon waited with a bunch of cultists doing a ritual around a circle. The team was able to delay the balor demon long enough for the gem dragon to gain power and come join the fight – pushing the balor demon back to the realm of Orcus and closing the portal.

It worked! The gem dragon also sent his chosen dragons to Naeb and took out the evil leaders there, helping the people in their rebellion. Seiken and Elyrin became half-dragons, but representatives from Bahamut and Tiamat showed up saying they had made a mistake by bringing the gem dragon to power. The team argued that they were simply on the side of neutrality and balance, not trying to be enemies of Bahamut or Tiamat. The City of Many Things mission had been accomplished, as the team had successfully gained control of the city and driven out the monsters.