FOE3 Log 21-23

I just looked through my notes and realized I needed to post the last three adventure session logs from before the PANDEMIC began...

The Federation of Explorers Generation 3 (FOE3) continues with...
Althar Ovinson the yuan-ti cleric-wizard;
Zeraf the tiefling rogue-ranger; and
A'Beezel the tiefling bard!

Session 21
In the mountains:Althar, Zeraf, A'Bezeel, and Dax went down into a "drow hole" and found a cavern full of evil mushrooms. They had a huge battle with the mushrooms; A'Beezel and Dax were infected with spores, but Dax cured them. After resting, the team went deeper underground. A roper surprise attacked the group and almost killed them, but they defeated it in battle.

After finding paths with a purple haze, the team turned around and found an alternate route down. This led them to fighting a neolithid that killed Althar's familiar and Dax with its acid breath. The group rested after the battle, with the dead Dax and his automaton in the group portable hole.

Session 22
In the mountain caverns:Althar, Zeraf, and A'Bezeel traveled another 10 days before finally finding a dark elf city: Dinzarn. They paid Velgarn the drow merchant to sneak them into a safe house and help them plan how to rescue the captured slaves (A'Bezeel's villager friends who had been captured, including the barmaid Rosy). The drow fighter Qalore (pronounced "Kaylor") also helped the team.

Drow insurrectionists put magical illusions on the team so they would look like drow. The team infiltrated the slave prison and rescued the slave with minimal conflict/combat until fleeing out of the city; the team used diguises, distractions, and explosives to get the slaves out to safety.

The group eventually made it back to Deepwood Fort with the rescued slaves. They gave the gnome tinkerer the automaton and scraps. One of the rescued villagers was a wizard's apprentice; they were mostly humans. Rosy was very happy with A'Bezeel.

Session 23
At Deepwood Fort:Althar, Zeraf, and A'Bezeel had to deal with Steve's shenanigans; Steve threw a fit and exiled himself; the team had the local bard magically message Bagi in Deepwater and warn her Steve was coming. She said she would kill him if he went there.

The team spent 4 months of downtime setting up expansions in Deepwood, including farms and new buildings - along with a set political structure with a council to rule when the adventuring party is out of town or unavailable.

They found out the dark elves killed Steve (though it's possible he gave them valuable intel about the villages and such before dying). The party went to help Deepwater fend off a drow assault, leaving the council in charge of Deepwood.

Deepwater had expanded as well, with large statues honoring Ludo, Zeraf, and Althar; they replaced the town hall with a market (apparently abandoning the commune style of living for some form of capitalism?) and built a "war council" (Bagi, cleric of Mask, and the wizard) two-story town hall.

A drow army led by a wizard and priestess invaded Deepwater...

[Battle next time - though unsure when next time will be?]

PLOG 1: Pandemic

Personal Log (PLOG)
Summer Vacation: Day 1
Pandemic Emergency Day: 71 (Counting from March 13)

My summer vacation starts today. I live in Texas and have been staying at home, for the most part, for more than 2 months. It's crazy to think about. Technically in the US, President Trump declared a national health emergency back on Jan. 31; but most people didn't notice. It was the March 13 invocation of emergency powers that I think marked the beginning of this nightmare for most people so that's the day I'm going to count from for my pandemic emergency days. That was also around the time of spring break for many schools.

I had been paying attention to the news coming out of China and Europe so I already had extra groceries and such, but a lot of people quickly panicked and bought out toilet paper. I wasn't expecting that. Luckily I keep lots of toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning wipes at home. Many people had spring break vacation plans and refused to cancel them. I went into lock down mode. With a virus out there that could ruin my health, hospitalize me, or even kill me - I didn't want to take any risks.

I'm so lucky that I have my teaching salary. We went into "at home learning" mode and I was able to keep my job, but millions of people are now unemployed. There are people out there struggling just to have money to eat, let alone pay their bills. It's going to get worse as this situation continues because people will run out of savings. I also think the housing market is going to have huge issues.

Looking at the positives of this situation: I no longer eat fast food or delivery food like pizza. I cook all of my meals, which should be healthier (but there's also stress eating from the anxiety of the pandemic). The more experience I've gotten cooking, the more confident I feel as a chef. BTW, I love all of the Zatarain's products. Easy to follow instructions, just add meat, and you have a meal in about 30 minutes that is absolutely delicious; I've cooked a lot of jambalaya, red beans & rice, gumbo, and dirty rice during the pandemic.

I also have more time to read and, now that the school year is over, to write. I spent some time playing Minecraft and playing The Sims 3 (with a legacy challenge in the works). My 2 cats have gotten spoiled that I'm home all the time. They are getting plenty of attention now.

On the downside, I use my school laptop and iPad for everything and they are now blocking Discord. That means I can't play D&D online with all of the people in the Discord communities. I do have a few friends who play over Skype, but it's not the same without roll20 and Discord. It's still fun, but it's just 1 game about every 2-4 weeks. And I'm certainly not going to have people over to play in person like in pre-pandemic existence. Even with facial masks, it's just not safe to sit in an enclosed area with people for hours.

Well that's all I've got for the blog today. Hopefully there will be more good news in future personal logs. Peace!

AL Updated Jerp

Jerp got a haircut (again)...

Updated AL Character Art

I've been updating my HeroForge-generated graphics for some of my characters and decided to post them. When I have more time, I will make some posts updating the stories of the adventures of the characters. For each one, I'll put the graphic and then the name below it:

FOEberron Log 1

With the new year comes a new campaign - set in Eberron 5E with some Federation of Explorers legacy characters...

The FOEberron Campaign begins with the 4 sons (half-brothers) of Raylin Sunsoaker:

Port the human druid;
Ath the half-orc fighter;
Dartag the half-elf rogue; and
Aram the tiefling warlock.

Session 1
Background: When Raylin Sunsoaker traveled to other planes to start divisions of the Federation of Explorers, he ended up spending some time in Eberron on the continent of Khorvaire (in the Q'Barra region, where he established a guild hall); he had affairs with 4 different women and each one had a son, but by the time they knew they were pregnant Raylin was already gone (off to another world to recruit more FOE adventurers and start more guild halls).

Twenty-five years later Port, Ath, Dartag, and Aram were surprised when they were called into the FOE guild hall and found out they were all brothers. Port had been working with the Greensinger druids, Ath had been a scout in the orc army, Dartag was a Q'Barra outlander, and Aram was a sage researcher looking for ancient knowledge about nature and the fey.

The Adderport FOE guild hall leader Galden asked the guys to work together to investigate a missing shipment of dragon shards (concerned about House Tharashk gaining power in Q'Barra from the Eberron crystals and the rumored [El Dorado] city Haka'Torvahk guarded by a dragon). The team hired Jharn the lizard folk ambassador to help guide them into the wilderness, where they found evidence of an ambush. The combined tracks of humans and lizardfolk took them to a cave in the swamp, where they killed 5 brigands; Dartag died in the battle.

The team couldn't find the lizardfolk and only recovered about 25% of the dragon shards, but they reported back to Adderport after fighting a large crocodile. To replace Dartag, they hired Kira the elf scout mercenary. Jharn told them where the Blackscale lizardfolk clan could be found, but they went to the capital Newthrone. They inquired about events at House Tharashk and had to make an appointment to come back the next day. They spent the night at a nice inn.

FOE3 Log 20

The Federation of Explorers Generation 3 continues with...

Althar Ovinson the yuan-ti cleric-wizard;
Zeraf the tiefling rogue-ranger; and
A'Beezel the tiefling bard!

Session 20
When Althar, Zeraf, and A'Bezeel woke up from resting Koh was gone with the rings from the temple; the tracks indicated he had gone back in there alone. The team chased after him; Althar banished an air elemental that was in the way. In a room near the stairs going down it looked like someone (maybe Koh?) put the rings together gathering elemental energy from fire, air, water, and earth. There was a nearby treasure chest, but the team ignored it in hopes of running down and catching up with Koh.

Down the stairs, they saw a huge vampiric tree that Koh (transforming draconic) seemed to sacrifice himself to; Koh's body and the tree were replaced with a young black dragon possessed by the spirit of the ancient obsidian dragon. The dragon claimed that if the team killed him, they would be killing Koh. In a close battle, the team (thanks to Zeraf's amazing sharpshooter crossbow expert abilities) was able to slay the dragon; Althar's familiar Fowl perished in the battle.

Left behind from the dead dragon body was the ROSS-necklace; Zeraf destroyed it too. The team claimed the gold and the breastplate +3 armor in the lair before it started caving in around them. On the way out, Zeraf was also able to get the treasure chest from upstairs.

Once safe back outside the temple ruins, A'Bezeel told the others about the villagers he used to live with being taken by the drow into the mountains; he asked the team to try to help rescue them. But first they headed south to the ruins of a druid settlement where they found a goldscale kobold artificer named Dax Ulathor of the Cog Clan (who was the last of his clan).

Althar used find familiar to get a new familiar named Fowler; the team sent Fowler with one of Dax's sending stones so Zeraf could talk to his wife back in the village of Deepwood, but the gnome there intercepted it. The team reported that Ludo was dead and that Althar missed Steve (24 hours).

They were then ready to go explore in the mountains...

State of the Blog 2020

Happy New Year!

(From left to right, some of my AL PCs: 

Jerp, Jarenian, Jermond, Jerizzt, Jermin, & Thokson)

After casting resurrection on the blog, I'm happy to say I'm back and ready to write up more for you to read. I hope you like my new title graphic (seen above) with the character images generated from HeroForge.com (the miniature-making website).

My resolutions for this year include trying to keep the RPG session logs updated more frequently, posting more blogs with my thoughts and inspirations, and just trying to communicate more in general. There's so much I have to say about things like Star Wars and Doctor Who and how being a fan of them can help us better think about how we engage in our RPG sessions. I also hope to discuss more products (like dice towers and t-shirts).

Keep coming back and checking with the blog on a regular basis. I promise you'll get more content in 2020. Peace!