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calciumsoda · 10 months

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OK OK OK OK OK I KNOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO WRITE THIS UP DAYS AGO BUT SHUT UP IM DOING IT NOW

As is hopefully obvious from my blog and just the way that i am

I am insane and also a massive D&D, Cosmere, and Wheel of Time nerd.

So of COURSE when you put me in a D&D west marches server I'm going to get way way way too into dming massive absurd plotlines that require 10-15 people to sort out.

This one is currently in the works and I'm so so so excited to run it SO you all get to hear about it because splattering my brain patterns on this hellsite is going to help me organize the plotline as it exists thus far.

Anyone from a discord west marches server with a red and black icon and a setting full of oceans and islands, stop reading now. Spoilers below cut. Also, extremely sorry for long post nobody cares about.

IT ALL BEGINS in a port city full of pirates. The world is mainly oceans, with countless small to medium to small continent sized islands in it, largely disconnected from each other. This is only relevant because the main city the game takes place in is a port city whose trade routes are 100% by ocean and nothing else.

In this lawless pirate city, there are a few noble families, one of which is named the Bearingtons. Several of them happen to be Werebears, and there are differing opinions on whether this happened before or after the name came about.

The Bearingtons have always been... power-hungry. Of course, noble families are rarely particularly well-off in pirate cities of all places, but they've managed inexplicably to maintain some sort of hold on their riches and power (mostly because the majority of the family lives in an isolated manor far away from the actual city). This is, aside from Count Bearington, an estranged cousin to the rest of the family who was cast out over some scandal or another years ago and lived alone (with servants, of course) for years in a slowly-deteriorating manor in the city. The Count was bitter about his disownment from the family, and wished to make things "right" by whatever means possible, beginning to research the means to summon and control devils to bring literal hell upon his family.

Elsewhere, a Triton wizard, having by various less-than-ethical means lived far past the 200 year limit on most tritons' lives by now, is busy making horrific amalgamations of elementals and fiends, creating fiends with the powers of lightning and frost out of those which had before been mere imps. They are also, out of desperation to extend their life a little longer to see their work complete, investigating means to become a Lich using elemental souls rather than human ones. However, for the time being, they have made the phylactery... and are unsure how to activate it, as they are too busy trying to stop their monstrosities from killing more travellers on the roads past their tower. Eventually, the city proper catches wind of these murders and foul experiments, and a party is dispatched to kill the wizard and their experiments.

The Wizard is killed, their body rapidly aging upon their death as the magic that had kept body and soul youthful drains... into the phylactery, inescapably dragging their soul into the trap they made themself. After several weeks, they manage to gain some small measure of control over the base elements surrounding their corpse, and successfully create a rudimentary, part-elemental part-undead body to make their way to the city and find a cleric to end their existence. The hells themselves would be better than this...

In the city, they hear tell of another who works to summon devils. The Lich goes to the place rumours speak of, and finds Count Bearington's manor, entering and desperately trying to convince him not to do this. The Lich does not realize that, by now, the Count has already met with several fiends and promised them his family's estate, hells, even the whole *city* if they will help him to get his revenge on his kin.

The Count convinces the Lich that, should they help with a ritual to summon a stronger devil, and bind it to his bidding, then he will aid the Lich in finding some way to destroy the phylactery. The Lich agrees, desperate to be free of this prison before their mind rots entirely, and pours immense magic into a circle in the basement of the Count's manor, succeeding in summoning stronger fiends than before. The Lich, however, does not realize just how much they've put into it, nor the effects that will have... and, shortly after the Lich is given directions to a cleric who owes the Count a favour and leaves, the circle begins to expand, transforming from a mere summoning circle to a planar gateway to the Hells, beginning to corrupt the earth around it and blur the line between the Material and the Hells...

Days later, the Count is found dead, disemboweled and impaled on the steel gates bordering his manor. Investigation inside the manor finds powerful fiends within, tearing the place apart and eating his few remaining servants, but does not locate the hidden trapdoor that hides the true measure of the disaster about to unfold. Devils are not mindless brutes, however... they have waited millenia for the opportunity to wage war through such a portal, but one small entryway in the middle of a city would be impossible to maintain a full scale assault through.

The devils, however, have other tricks in mind. The seas all around the city are home to thousands - tens, hundreds of thousands - of evil sea-dwelling lifeforms, largely Sahuagin and Merrow, who are eager for a chance to slaugher the pirates of the city who so often deny them the treasures carried on their ships. The devils approach these sahuagin, making deals with them - promising great power, the power to wipe this city from the surface and drag its treasures and residents below the waves for themselves. The sahuagin are more than happy to oblige to the devils' demands, and begin amassing an army...

The devils do not rely on sea creatures alone, of course. Others are sent to meet with humanoids both within the city and without; deals are struck between powerful fiends and the leaders of several of the most powerful bandit groups in the city and its surrounding isles, promising each that they would be granted their wildest desires, if they only carried out a few important missions... destroy a temple here, burn a small sacred clearing there, weaken the influence of the gods such that the fiends might meet no resistance when they arrive in force to raze the island in flames and turn it into a tenth Hell, as they were promised by the Count.

Other fiends - a shape-shifting Succubus, mainly - return to terrorize the Bearington estate, attempting to kill the Emperor of the nearby sea elves to weaken any support that might come from other ocean races against the Sahuagin. Word slips out that the other Bearingtons may be in trouble, however, and a group of adventurers manages to save the Emperor, if not the Lady Bearington who was killed and replaced by the succubus to get close enough to him.

Another party is summoned by the frantic messages of a minor deity of nature, pleading for their aid in preventing the destruction of her ancient, forgotten temple, and they find an "archaeological" group (read: bandits in disguise) preparing to destroy the religious symbols within and claim the building as their own, an operation which only their leaders know is ordered by a devil in exchange for magical weapons and control over any who come too close to this temple. The first group of bandits is cleared out by these adventurers, but more are quite possibly on the way, as the deity of the temple personally thanks them for their aid and asks that they call on her whenever they require hers in return. One party member begins worshipping this deity, becoming her one and only priest (in a setting where having temples + priests dedicated to you is how you become and remain a god, this is wildly important to the deity, who would have outright died if the temple were destroyed).

Elsewhere, dragons are stirred from the homes they have held for centuries, and begin claiming new territory, forcing younger, weaker dragons to migrate towards this island due to its lack of major draconic presence. A pair of injured Sapphire dragons are driven from home after home, eventually finding refuge with the deity in the woods, but they are nearly overrun by further bandits, not even able to spare the energy to send a message to those who had helped previously with clearing them out...

And this is where the quest begins. Sahuagin and worse are assaulting the ports and any ships that try to enter or leave the city; multiple instances of intelligent and dangerous fiends have been spotted in various parts of the city, and a portal to the hells themselves discovered in the manor's lower floors; and bandits swarm the roads and holy places outside of the city, defacing and destroying important locations, all while a lone, desperate Lich-thing tries to right the wrongs they caused by recruiting any aid they can, disguising however they can to avoid this body being killed and their soul abandoned to the Phylactery once more.

There will be 1 party of adventurers sent to handle each of these major issues, the final total of players being between 10 and 15, with all 3 storylines converging into one at the end, as the players must either convince each side being manipulated by the devils to turn against them, or face an army of unimaginable proportions with the aid of whatever pirates the city can provide.

Anyway im fucking vibrating in excitement for when i get to run this quest i wanna run it so so so so so bad but i have more encounters to do before it starts. And i need to nail down more details. But. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

#soda ramblings #very long post #d&d #d&d story

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yarnpenguin · 5 months

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Sometimes, the dice.

So two sessions ago, I put the party's vengeance paladin through emotional hell. He had to watch his BFF die horribly. Twice. On purpose.

I like to think I'm a fair DM, but I'm not necessarily a nice one.

Anyway, after that session was over, his player is like, "[character] needs to kill things."

I filed that away.

Got to playing again last night, and the session was set up specifically for there to be combat. That was it, that was the session. Threw a handful of CR 10+ (incl one CR 20) drow at the party. Relatively low AC on these folks to go up against a level 12 party, sure, but a fair whack of HP to go around.

So wouldn't you know that this damn vengeance paladin rolls NO LESS THAN 5 CRITS.

Well, that's not actually true. Vengeance Boy lands 5 crits, but actually rolled 6: the final time was against a prone Glabrezu that one of the drow summoned, and wouldn't you know his player rolled two 20s with that advantage.

Now, the thing is, I don't play D&D to "beat" my players. We're not in a competition. So by the second crit, I was literally cheering. By the end, I was cackling in delight.

It was pretty damn glorious.

The vengeance paladin needed that, I set it up, and the flipping dice DELIVERED.

#d&d #d&d 5e #d&d shenanigans #d&d story

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tony-dreams · 6 months

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There shall always be a vampire on this throne.

One amazing thing my DM does is letting us discover the fates of our old player characters from previous campaigns that had been set in the same world. Recently we met Gorrok, who seeked to end the rule of a lineage of vampires by taking the vampire curse onto himself and guarding the throne, starving but not capable to die. Our party decided to free him from his suffering, not knowing what the consequences of killing the last vampire would be….. (guess we might have released Strahd oops, not completely sure yet though?)

[ Following flavor text is an extract from my DM blue‘s writing]

Toni lifts a hand and points an outstretched finger over the dilapidated banquet table and into the obscuring darkness. There, she whispers. All of them knew who she was pointing at. The guardian of this once cursed duchy. The, in ages past, man of brawn, muscle and above all determination. The figure that did not say a word when it had entered the cursed village far below the hill of this castle. The village plagued by the horrors bestowed upon it by the rulers of this place. Many came and went. Some dark figures from the beginning, other poised to do good, but then fallen to malevolent excesses, worse than the first.

All of it ending with this man. The man that had entered the town and made quick work of all the Lord‘s lackeys with a force and swiftness not seen before. The story of the townsfolk tells that the great guardian then swiftly strode on, through the swamp and up the hill towards the castle. And the work of the devil was no more.

But this is where the tale is wrong. This is why the last elder in the town begged them to come here, before he himself was able to leave. This work of the devil, the curse is not over. It still lingers. It sits here in this throne. Contained in the frail man. Resisting the hunger, suffering the hunger, for centuries. Starving to death, yet not dying. Reduced to an agonizing husk with no emotion on its face. But she knew this was a facade. Not for the hunger. For something else, she thought, but could not possibly know what.

Yet all of this should come to an end now, she thought to herself, as she opened the satchel on her side. The others nodded in silent encouragement, when she reached for the wooden stake inside.

The curse shall end now.

#d&d #d&d story #curse of strahd #oc art #dnd #vampire #dungeons and dragons #dnd character #fantasy art #myart

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taleweaver-ramblings · 7 months

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D&D Story: So it's been a Day

So, last time I posted about the D&D campaign I play in, Rise of the Shadowmaster, my party had just killed one of our long-time nemeses, Ralak Shas, a rakshasa who'd decided he had it out for our group after we messed with his plans one too many times.

That was a month ago, real time. In that time, we have managed to progress exactly one and one-half days, and storms has this been a wild two days for my character.

Obviously it started with a victory (Ralak Shas is dead!). Then, after a quick chat with my character's dad, we used our last teleport to shift to the magic college where my character's brother had asked her to meet him. There, we were met not by my character's brother but by one of her stepsisters, who was very clearly trying to separate me from the rest of my party and sending me off to a cafe in town.

(Cue concern.jpg)

Because it's my sister, we went along with it. I headed to the cafe, where I met with my character's brother (in disguise), who informed me that, yes, Ralak-Shas is dead . . . but he'd been lining up a hit on at least some of my family members, possibly all of them. (This is no small undertaking; my character has a HUGE blended family — four full siblings, three stepsiblings, and five half-siblings, plus two living parents.) The one hit he was certain of was targeting two of my stepsisters (twins) who were attending this college, and he'd called me and my party in for backup. After informing me of everything he knew and warning me of the need to be subtle (as an obvious counter-move in one location could set off attacks elsewhere), we went our separate ways. And in my party's defense, we did a reasonably good job of being subtle . . .

Until our rogue got caught sneaking into the probable assassins' apartments, stabbed a guy in defense, stuffed the guy in a bag of holding, and got seen leaving the premises in a hurry.

(Cue panic.jpg)

While my character's brother went to run damage control with the local law enforcement, our party jumped into action to find and guard my stepsisters (and also to warn the rest of my family, via Sending, that an attack might be imminent). We found one without a problem (thanks to the magic of sending stones), but finding the other was more difficult. Eventually, we (with the help of local law enforcement) realized she was probably at the theater — and, sure enough, when we arrived we found the assassins in place on the theater catwalks and lining up their shots. One swift and effective battle later, most of them were dead, except for the annoying pirate-adjacent tabaxi who once again managed to save on a death throw and run away while we weren't looking (after I pushed him off a catwalk). We cleaned up those that escaped in an ambush later when they tried to skip town, having found out that the tabaxi was in a soul-contract with Ralak-Shas to try to kill my stepsisters.

(For some reason, our sorcerer thought I was going to panic about this. I was not particularly panicked. I already knew he needed to die, and that if it came to it, I could kill him with a clean conscience, and that is, in fact, exactly what I did.)

So. That was one day. Next morning: I receive a message from my character's oldest brother that the pass that he and his wife are currently helping to guard was attacked by a dragon and a goblin army, and that there were casualties but he and his wife weren't among them. This is a relief; they're probably my character's favorite siblings. We're also reasonably certain that my character's dad and sister at the military outpost are ok — they've capable adventures, they've been warned there might still be a threat, and they're surrounded by warriors and paladins and clerics.

We only have one teleport at this point, but our cleric suggests we try a shortcut through the Shadowfell, the residence of his deity — with whom he has a much closer relationship than the average cleric does, seeing as he's technically dead and only came back to the material plane to help us out. (Long story.) One brief bit of negotiation and an offer to put in a good word for this deity with some of the others later and we found ourselves zapped across the Shadowfell to the location of a shadow-portal into my character's home.

(In the process, we also learned that this deity is, in fact, married to the goddess my character serves. This was of much interest to both me and my character, but also very disappointing to our ranger, who kiiiiiinda had a crush on him, not that she'd ever admit it. Out of character, I'm also absolutely DELIGHTED to have seen how a particular bit of lore I gave my DM actually worked out — background, when he was setting up the world, he gave me permission to make up the deity or deities my character served, so I knew my character's goddess was married before she ascended, but I didn't know what had happened after she ascended.)

Anyway, we found the main part of my family still safe and unattacked, and we actually had a pretty uneventful day of keeping an eye on them and checking on things in town . . . until dinnertime came, and my character's mom said "Let's not discuss any of what's been going on and just enjoy each other's company."

(Cue trouble.jpg)

There's a knock on the door. One of my character's sister's adventurer-friends (who's been helping watch out for my character's family) walks in with an official messenger. The messenger asks my character's stepmother to come receive an important, sensitive message. My character, her stepmother, and her sister, come with the messenger. At this point, in and out of character, I have a suspicion of what's coming, and I'm mentally rolling the dice; either this messenger is an assassin, or my character's dad is dead or captured, or my character's sister is dead or captured.

It's my character's dad.

He's dead.

And just as we get that news, we hear the door shatter downstairs, just like I feared, because Ralak Shas's final attack has come.

~~~~~

So, yeah. Next session is going to be wild. And I do not know how my character is going to take this once the battle is over. A lot of it will depend on whether or not any of her younger siblings get hurt. Losing any of her younger siblings — the youngest of which is barely out of toddler-hood — would wreck her. Losing multiple might actually break her.

Losing her dad . . .

On one hand, her relationship with her father has always been a little rocky. He had an idea of who he wanted her to be — an adventurer, a hero, just like he had been — that didn't match what she wanted. They'd fought about many a time. Even once they reached a compromise, she still harbored some bad feelings towards him.

But he's her father. And family is everything to my character. It doesn't matter if she likes them; she loves them just the same. She would die for any of them.

She didn't even have the chance to try.

So, yeah. I don't know if this is going to motivate her to keep adventuring even more — to carry out her father's wishes to a point where she feels he would have been undoubtedly happy with her — or if she'll stop because she no longer needs to please him or if she'll feel unmoored now that she no longer has the steadying tension of their relationship. I don't know if she'll feel she needs to stay home to care for her family, or if she'll feel that there's nothing she can do but keep on with her original mission (and at least saving the world means she doesn't have to deal with her grief for a while). I don't know if she'll be sad or relieved or both at once.

She might not even believe he's dead at first. Who can say if the messenger was telling the truth? With the timing of the message, it might have been a trick.

I do know that if her dad is the only one who dies, and if he is dead in truth, her first thought isn't going to be grief. Her first thought is going to be can I bring him back? She knows there are clerics who can Raise Dead, and she has the money and diamonds to afford it. She'll gladly pay it if it means her younger siblings don't have to grow up without a father.

If the answer is no, though . . . well. I guess we'll see what happens.

#rise of the shadowmaster #d&d #d&d story #taleweaver speaks #dea norlya #lightbringers #d&d 5e

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