Tabletop Fun

[Kit-Ginevra]

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet

That's what she said

[Ceir]

Decided I needed some anti-summer vibes, and picked up a new Final Girl module - North Pole Nightmare, the Christmas movie from season 2! This one's the North Pole Village map, Krampus as the killer, Mrs. Claus or 'Cindy' as the PCs, a bevy of Christmas puns, and gimmicks of annoying elves and (possibly literally) explosive gifts.

My first run at it, with Mrs. Claus, was bluntly a redux of Christmas At Ground Zero. Mrs. C being a healing/health tank of all things helped for a while, but Krampus as a killer ramps up real quick. It started well enough, I was able to throw enough elves out the exits to get a whack of extra HP early; and the elves actually managed to put a little damage on Krampus, but...well. After that it kind of all went to hell. I started fluffing rolls, elves fell under the Krampus's broom and hooves or died to booby-trapped presents, Santa was ripped to shreds on the runway, and the Workshop exploded in a fireball (incinerating several useful items and barbecueing Comet). The game ended with Mrs. C going at Krampus with a hammer, during a blizzard event, in front of the flaming workshop, and finally running out of HP to fall under the monster's horns.

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet. She's a reference, of course, to a certain Who despite not being blonde, and is a speedster - maybe that'll help get some bonus victim saves out of the gate.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Camilla, one of our players who portrays our group's kender, was out sick this week. She lamented in our Discord that fate keeps conspiring to keep her away from the game. But there wasn't too much combat this week that needed another hand in, but she missed out on some roleplay, which I imagine DM Bob will address next time.

After routing the Red Dragon Army, our ragtag bunch of Misfits had some choices to make regarding our next move. We still needed to rescue the metallic dragons' eggs from the imperial capital of Neraka, but we suspected the place would be crawling with dragons, and powerful ones at that. Ember had made it clear just how outclassed we were. We figured we'd need dragonlances to stand a chance, but even if we crossed the world to get back to the region with the dragonmetal ore that we'd need, it would take months to forge enough to equip an army, and even then, they're meant to be used from dragonback, so we'd still need to rescue the eggs first. A real catch-22 situation. Can't get friendly dragons on side without the eggs, can't get the eggs without the lances, can't use the lances without friendly dragons to ride.

So we figured we should keep building the coalition to fight back against the Chromatic Dragon Armies. We were on good terms with the Solamnic Knights, the Ergothian Empire, and now the Dwarves of Thorbardin, so the next logical step should be getting the Elves on side. The nearest elven kingdom was Silvanesti-- a notoriously insular and almost xenophobic bunch-- and the rumors we'd been hearing were that the Green Dragon Army was besieging it.

So we headed that way, passing through the charred ruins of the town of Solace, but along the way Runa the Barbarian started experiencing nightmares. Seeing a pulsing red light, hearing chanting in old languages, and hearing the cracking of eggs and the shrieking of lizard-like creatures. We were able to figure out that the dreams were coming about because she'd had red dragon teeth implanted into her swords' hilts, and that the dreams were visions related to a ritual being performed to corrupt the dragon eggs. There was nothing for it but to continue onward.

The forest around Silvanesti, however, was becoming twisted, drained of hope and emanating despair. We ran across some zombified elven warriors, but Gavin the Cleric (me) was able to destroy them all with a single use of his Turn Undead ability. Some trees attacked later, but they weren't too much of a problem. But when we approached the city of Silvanost, we were confronted by a spectral army of elven warriors and banshees. (We all made the requisite LOTR references. "The way is shut...") We were able to parley with them, however, and the ghosts explained that there was no Green Dragon Army here, but that the same rumors had reached them, and so their King Lorac had evacuated the city of its civilians, claiming he had some power that would protect the city. Only, something went wrong and now there's an unending scream coming from the royal tower.

So we entered the city, and everyone failed a WIS save. We all found ourselves separated, trapped in our own personal nightmares.

• Gavin found himself in a burning city, surrounded by slain silver dragons that he knew-- including the bodies of his children-- and then saw his wife Gwyneth killed by a red dragon before getting incinerated himself.
• Sir Evrouin saw his family's castle sacked by the enemy, with his parents' bodies hanging from gibbets, and confronted the notorious Death Knight, Lord Soth, before getting struck down.
• Runa found herself back in the midst of her tribe's doomed battle against the Red Dragon Army, including seeing her mother getting slaughtered by Ember. When she tried to fight Ember, the dragon disintegrated her.

Justinius the Wizard was the only one who didn't find himself in a complete nightmare, just an empty city. But he rode on to the royal tower, where King Lorac was screaming, clutching a Dragon Orb (a powerful artifact that can control dragons, if one has a strong enough will and the intellect to do so), while a huge Green Dragon, Sayen Bloodbane, laughed at his misfortune. Justinius tried to bluff his way into convincing Sayen to leave, and even tried using some of his magic to banish him, but Sayen just shrugged all of it off. We could tell that Jesse (Justinius' player) was getting a bit frustrated at not finding a non-violent solution-- Sayen was explicitly said to be on Ember's level in terms of power-- until the rest of us suggested he try using the Dragon Orb.

Justinius did so, and had to make a WIS and an INT save. He evidently rolled well enough that it came down to a straight roll-vs-roll between him and the DM. DM Bob rolled a 17... but Jesse rolled a Natural 20.

Justinius ordered Sayen to leave, "and don't come back until you're ready to die." The dragon did so, freeing everyone from their nightmares and ending the plague of despair over the region. King Lorac was able to whisper to Justinius to find his daughter before passing away, and now we've got a new task ahead of us, to go find her.

[Nunavut Pants]

Actually, I was both. It was a three-player game.

We had a replay, though a different board setup and such. I pulled off a victory in that one! 90 to 85 to 83. I had a small lead in mid-game which disappeared pretty quickly, leaving things pretty close until near the end. One player started pulling away just a tiny bit, and he's the one who had the 57-point turn a couple of games ago, so I was very worried. But his progress ebbed a bit right at the end, and I was able to make several plays that put me over his total. I also was able to stall in that last generation so that I took a number of actions after everyone else had passed, which kind of let me do what I wanted to, unopposed.

[dalesys]

... NOT LAST.

I finished second. They were next to last.

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that reason! Good on you for preserving it!!

Several more games of Terraforming Mars, no victories. Two games ago, one player had a 57-point final generation! That was more than half of his final score! Sadly, I was never in contention for that one.

In the immediately-previous game, I was able to claw to a lead through the second half of the game. However, in the final generation, that same player put in enough points to put me into second place. At least I was NOT LAST.

[Ceir]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

Readability, and it's a folded-up poster that unfolding and refolding is just gonna destroy - it's not in great shape already. Still, enjoying the project!

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

We're still technically in the endgame portion of this Adventurers League campaign, at Level 11, attempting to recover a magical codicil for an allied mage, and in the midst of the fortress of the titular evil winter goddess, Auril the Frostmaiden. However, the codicil is in the fortress vault, and in order to open it, one must pass four trials to show that one understands and embodies the "virtues" of Auril: Preservation, Endurance, Isolation, and Cruelty. The DM advised us that some of the tests would take days to complete (correctly guessing that Endurance and Isolation would be the ones in question) so we opted to start with the shorter ones and went for Cruelty first.

We were transported to a remote tribal village, which was having to deal with the fact that they were starving. The party were all designated as "emissaries" of the Frostmaiden, and were asked to help. The tribe had decided that, in order to ensure the majority of the tribe could live, they would effectively sacrifice four willing elders to serve as food for the rest. Their traditions forbade killing one another, and they asked us to help them. This prompted some debate among the party and players. Boron the ranger had access to a spell called Goodberry that could provide nourishment for everyone, but that wouldn't help long term unless we stayed there. Axe the monk wanted to give the elders an honorable death by challenging them to combat before killing them. But the rest of us realized that the cruel thing to do, would be to just walk away without killing them. None of us were happy with the choice, but that's what we ended up doing.

When we were transported back to the fortress, however, we were confronted by Auril herself, and so began the combat encounter that took up most of the session. She could summon ice mephits (elemental creatures) and also brought back the Abominable Yeti (albeit in a weakened undead state) at one point, could remove herself from the battlefield (probably some kind of plane-shift spell or similar) so she couldn't be targeted, and otherwise could deal some nasty damage. But we were putting up big numbers too. Rhoric, my sorcerer, hit her with a 5th-level Blight spell to inflict some damage, but later, when she had been reduced to a smaller, crystal-like owl shape, she summoned up a blizzard in her vicinity, making her heavily obscured and thus harder to directly target. I had an option, though, and hesitated because two party members were right next to Auril. Their players told me to go ahead and do it, so I cast a 4th-level Fireball.

We eventually managed to put her down, destroying her avatar, but as she was banished, she declared, "This changes nothing." She would recover and return, more powerful than before, so long as any of her worshippers remained. But it gave the Icewind Dale at least a little reprieve.

Very little. The DM rolled to see how long until she returned, and came up with just 23 days.

We looted the fortress, and then decided to continue the trials to unlock the vault. The Preservation trial involved making sure the last survivor of a massacred tribe could survive until help came. This survivor was a "child of midsummer" who wasn't affected by the winter cold, and after taking out a rival tribe's hunter that was coming to finish him off, we soon left the child with an awakened wolf (a wolf that could talk - we'd encountered it a few times already) that would care for him.

The Endurance trial involved guiding another tribe from one place to another, traversing through a blizzard, and having to pass increasingly difficult CON saves to avoid exhaustion. Our rogue almost died, as he took 5 levels of exhaustion from repeated failures.

The Isolation trial involved protecting a tribe's village while the majority of the tribe set out to go hunting for game. As we remained over several days, one by one members of our party disappeared-- finding themselves alone in a flat blizzard-swept plain-- despite all precautions to prevent it. By sheer happenstance (the DM was rolling to determine who vanished), it ended up with Rhoric left alone with Boron. The table was quite amused by this, and I leaned into it by having Rhoric muttering, "This is hell. I'm in hell." and then, "I could just slit his throat. No one would know. 'I dunno what happened, I just woke up and found him like this.'" The tribe's hunters returned, and brought our missing party members with, but the DM had them roll on the Indefinite Madness table to determine what sort of madness afflicted them after their isolation.

For the lulz, the DM decided that the cleric, who had rolled a 99 on his d100 Indefinite Madness roll-- rather than take the madness from the table-- now believed that everything that Boron said was 100% true and accurate. The cleric's player leaned into it, professing his newfound truths, and the whole table burst out laughing when I sighed and cast Greater Restoration on him to clear the madness from him. (By contrast, two of the other party members each got the same madness, believing that they (singularly) were the strongest, fastest, toughest, smartest, wisest, and most attractive member of the party.)

Talking of Boron, the DM continued the running gag of having Boron's player roll an Insight check, and regardless of the result, declaring that Boron-- after much thought and deliberation-- had realized the truth about Rhoric and what class he was. To remind you, Boron initially believed (this was the player's initial joke) that Rhoric was a warlock. Then the DM had an NPC "correct" him by saying he's a bard. Then a different NPC corrected him again-- he's a zealot barbarian. This time, it was that Rhoric was clearly a druid. Only to then, later in the session, issue another new correction-- Rhoric was clearly a wizard.

The DM is running out of classes to use, and I fully expect by the end of the entire campaign, we'll probably end up having him finally learn the actual truth.

Everyone is enjoying the banter and antics that Boron ends up causing, and Rhoric's increasing exasperation at Boron's stupidity. Though as a player, I had some fun before the session started, as we were quipping around the table about Boron's gullibility. Someone put forth the idea that nothing was real, that everyone and everything was just imaginary. Then I slipped in later with the line, "Boron, listen to me: You're just a figment of your imagination." His player took a moment to parse what I'd said before a look of existential confusion, bewilderment, and terror came across his face.

Next time, we're probably gonna have to deal with a pissed-off winter goddess coming to clap our ass.

[Nunavut Pants]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

[Ceir]

Still working on cleaning up my copy of Richthofen's War. I'm about halfway done transcribing the rule sheet, and it's been an interesting way to read the rules for the first time. I-go-you-go actions; just fixed scenarios with no 'casual' point values in sight; a blend that feels weird where everything except altitude is measured in hexes, altitude/climbing/diving is measured in meters (where other WW1 plane games I own just have abstract 'levels'); outline-format rules...it's a bit of a trip. 'Old school' all the way, down to a font that I surprisingly have a facsimile of. And it's not like I'm unused to old and weird game mechanics either, I've been playing tabletop games for decades. After I finish up with the other side of the rules, it's just a matter of sorting out the plethora of counters and frobbing a couple d6 from my bag, and it'll be 'restored' to playable.

[Nunavut Pants]

More Terraforming Mars games, more losses. The last one was close--I was in the lead for the first half of the final "generation", but both the others passed me by the end of the turn.

Hosted a boardgame afternoon today. One table played American Mahjong, and one played Mexican Train Dominoes. The table I was at played TransAmerica, which I won. Then we moved on to Splendor, which I also won. Not that surprising, since one or both of the other players had never played before.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

The bulk of our most recent session was a battle against the Red Dragon Army, after fleeing from them and luring them into a fight with the Dwarven Army of Thorbardin. So there was a big mass of enemy tokens on our battle-map, representing all the "fodder" (goblins and orcs), the ogres, war-wagons, and most importantly, Emberekanashli, aka "Red Dragon Mama" who had just recently been torturing most of the party. Ember (in her 8-foot-tall amazonian "dommy mommy" human form) was leading her army while riding on the back of a giant bull.

We naturally try targeting her for some big moves to start the fight, and we get some decent hits in. We thought. Until Bob the DM casually commented, "So she's still just in quadruple hit points."

Quadruple. Hit points. For reference, on paper, the tarrasque-- an enormous kaiju of a monster that destroys cities without even trying-- averages just under 700 HP, and only goes quadruple digits if the DM happens to roll for its HP, even if they then max out and roll all 20s, only gets to about 1020. DM Bob shortly after making that remark, mentions that Ember is an "ancient wyrm red dragon." Again for reference, the largest and oldest red dragons in the D&D Monster Manual are "ancient red dragons" and even those top out on paper under 800 HP.

We were already nervous fighting her. This just made everyone at the table downright scared of her.

Fortunately, as the Dwarven Army scythed its way through the RDA, and as the ogres were getting mopped up too, Ember seemed to recognize the tide was turning. So, after KO'ing our barbarian and promising her "I'll be seeing you again," Ember casts a Plane Shift spell and leaves.

This week's session is likely going to cover a debate both above the table and in-universe about where to go next. Rescuing the abducted metallic dragon eggs, to free the metallics from their oaths to not interfere, so we can get our own dragons on-side to counter the RDA and the other Chromatic Dragon Armies. Or tracking down a magical ore that we need in order to forge new dragonlances to battle the chromatic dragons. Ideally, we'll need both to take down Ember, but which to tackle first is going to be the question.

I know what my cleric Gavin is going to say. Something on the lines of, "There is a big part of me that wants to rescue the eggs, if only so I can see my wife again." (For a reminder, his wife is a silver dragon, and he's spent the past 1200+ years living on the moon with her and their children.)

[Ceir]

Nice score at the used shop today - a copy of Richthofen's War, in pretty decent shape for something from 1972! Very carefully making photocopies of a few things, and definitely need to retype some charts, but it's definitely playable.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

We're still in the endgame portion of our campaign in Adventurers' League, Level 11 adventurers trekking out to a frozen island in the heart of a blizzard to confront the insane winter goddess responsible for plunging the entire Icewind Dale into an eternal winter...

As noted previously, Brian's character Boron is an idiotic, conceited, casually racist (toward non-elves) elven Ranger, who started a running gag over mistaking Rhoric, my half-elf Sorcerer, for a Warlock, and then getting convinced by NPCs that he's actually a Bard, then a Paladin. And so Boron started calling my character "Sir Roderick," only to have me correct him, no "sir" "and my name's Rhoric." Brian kept it up, but then today, it took a new turn.

Turns out that "Roderick" part was a legitimate mistake on Brian's part, and he'd thought my character's name was Roderick, not Rhoric. He was honestly sorry about it, and it just got me laughing, because it was 100% in character for Boron to get the name wrong as well. Brian, also, is a notorious pun-dealer, rarely letting an opportunity to make an atrocious pun go by, for which I'll usually give him a tired look or a glare.

The DM kept up the fun of feeding Boron incorrect information about Rhoric's class, this week having an NPC tell him that Rhoric is "clearly a Zealot Barbarian." While Brian gleefully leaned into it, and the rest of the table was giggling at the continued joke, I half-jokingly sighed, "I would like to rage..." which just set off fresh giggles.

Encounters this week included venturing briefly out to a frozen shipwreck just off the island shore, mostly to see if we could find any loot. And we found that someone had constructed a decent-sized shelter on what was a wrecked frost giant longboat. Dave the DM rolled on his encounter table to see what we'd find, and looked very pleased with himself, which made me wary. We snnuck close to the shelter and heard someone inside chanting in Primordial, a language none of us spoke, but the DM told us that the voice still sounded familiar. I had a suspicion at that point, and when we went inside the hut, we found that it was home to a coven of hags-- one of whom turned to see the party and grinned, "Oh hello again, you little shits!"

This was Granny, a Hag we'd encountered earlier in the campaign, very distinctive with the characterization that Dave had given her, especially with her verbal tic of calling everyone "you little shit." We turned her into a sort of running gag, joking about how she'd turn up again in every remote part of the Icewind Dale we ventured to. And now Dave had indeed had her turn up again.

However, Granny Hag wasn't immediately hostile, and her sisters weren't either, and we all kind of wanted to take a short rest to recover some health, but Granny wouldn't let us rest in their shelter without some sort of trade. She was asking for a single hair from each person that wanted to stay in the shelter, but none of us wanted a coven of Hags having anything of our bodies, so some other trades were made. Lit, the drunken monk, gave her a bottle of his "Litclear" moonshine, our Cleric gave her a magic item he didn't need, and off the Cleric's idea, I had Rhoric trade her a Gray Bag of Tricks that I hadn't used and didn't really foresee much use for with Rhoric (and I wouldn't be able to trade it to a different character until after the campaign anyway), and so people did the same thing. We got a short rest and some in the party (determined by random d20 rolls) got some uncomfortable feeling up by Granny's sisters, but so it went.

We later got ambushed by a group of yeti, one of which was a rather larger one that had a pretty nasty breath attack that seriously messed up the party. Furthermore, all the yeti showed a capacity to regenerate some health every round, at which point I started throwing fire spells around, which negated the regeneration ability. I did manage to tag one of the lesser yeti with a Sorcerous Burst spell, a cantrip which-- as a Level 11 character-- does 3d8 damage of an element of my choosing (naturally I chose fire). But the spell also states that if you roll an 8 on a d8 while rolling damage, you can roll another d8 to add more damage. I rolled 8+8+3 -- so I rolled two of those d8s again-- and ended up dealing 28 points of fire damage, which took that yeti from close to full health to single digits.

However, the yeti fight did leave a number of our characters messed up, so the NPC wizard with us cast Leomund's Tiny Hut to give us some shelter to take a long rest. The DM warned us that Auril the Frostmaiden (the winter goddess) may take certain actions while we do so, but we reckoned that the benefits of the rest (full health, recovered spell slots, negated exhaustion) outweighed the risks. Even so, the sheer cold of the island did still keep sapping at people's constitutions, risking exhaustion again anyway.

We got into the skull-shaped frost giant fortress at the center of the island, Grimskalle (and yes, we did make the "by the power of Grimskalle" joke one might expect), where we did run into one last surviving frost giant-- an old, blind, mostly deaf and on-death's-door warrior. All he wanted was an honorable death, which one of our monks was happy to give him, even helped the giant stand, let the giant get a hit in, before finishing him off. We recovered some loot and searched the first level of the fortress, and had been told by the giant that there was a "vault" in the basement, guarded by some giant creature with two great sharp teeth. This was backed up by a pack of ice mephits we ran into by the basement stairs, who encouraged us to kill the creature below because it was rude.

Turns out that creature was a giant awakened walrus, who honestly didn't really care about guard duty and just wanted to hang out. The DM gave him a real "ya, man" almost surfer bro kind of voice. We commiserated and were friendly enough back as he answered some questions, and after a while, I had Rhoric comment, "You know what, you're a really chill guy." ("Thanks, man!") and this understated pun just set off Brian laughing. When he managed to stop, I just grinned and reminded him I go for quality in my puns, not sheer quantity like him.

The walrus did tell us that getting into the vault would require passing a variety of tests in order to unlock it, and that's where we'll pick up next time.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Camilla, one of our players, currently has a hard deadline of 10 PM on our game nights, so she can get home and get to bed before work the next day. We have adjusted our sessions to write her out early, earmark any interactions we need to come back to her for, and in my recaps on our Discord server, I always tag her at the point where she left, so she can catch up on what she missed. Three weeks ago, she missed a session because she'd lost track of the day and so we ended early without running the session, because her presence was fairly mandatory at that point. There were two significant interactions we needed to backdate, and it was likely we'd be walking into a combat encounter, so we needed her present. She was apologetic for missing it, and not twigging sooner to our calls and texts, and it's not a super big deal.

So two weeks ago, we did those interactions. First, a conversation between her character Catt and our knight Sir Evrouin, where they had a serious discussion about the genocide they'd just witnessed, and our wizard Justinius' part in it, and how their trust in him was wavering because of it. Two people being supportive to one another emotionally, kind of thing. Second, rewinding back to the City of Dragons, Catt visiting the ward of the brass dragons, who patterned themselves off the kender, Catt's people. Whole lot of parkour stuff going on, some amusing interactions, and Catt having another serious talk with one of the brass-kender, as she vented about the troubles she'd seen and all that, but getting encouragement and support from the brass-kender too.

From there, our party (minus Justinius - this was during Jesse's two-week absence due to his job) had a choice of where to go next. Option One: look into finding the material called "dragonmetal" so we could forge new dragonlances, but the only place we knew of to find dragonmetal was clear on the other side of the world. Option Two: investigate the city of Neraka, where the abducted metallic dragon eggs were held, but Neraka was also the capital of the evil Empire of Ansalon the baddies were all part of, and we were only four people. Option Three: track down the remnants of the Red Dragon Army and see what's become of them after their Highlord was killed. We chose option three.

This involved tracking them across the plains and into the foothills of some mountains, and we tried to shadow a patrol to see if we could learn more, but some bad stealth rolls meant we ended up fighting them. The fight that followed did allow me a brief moment of smugness on Mike, who plays our knight, when Bob the DM rolled an attack on my cleric, Gavin.

Bob: That's a 22 to hit?
Me: That misses.
Mike: Wait. 22 misses?!
Me: My Armor Class is 23.
Mike: That's higher than me! How?!

Answer was Gavin wasn't just wearing plate (heavy armor), but +1 armor, in addition to a +1 shield, and a Cloak of Protection. Bob justified Gavin's having more magic items than anybody else as being that he's a veteran of the Third Dragon War, and had been living among very powerful 20th-level crafters and magic-users for the past 1200 years.

Mike sulked for a minute, but we all had other things to concern us shortly thereafter. Because Bob the DM kept rolling crits throughout the fight. Just in case you've forgotten, critical hits double the damage dealt. Even with my high AC, a crit is a crit and it will hit, and hit hard. People were going down, getting brought back up, getting downed again, and getting back up, only to get downed again. It was hard for Gavin and Evrouin to heal everybody up, in addition to keeping ourselves up, even as Catt and Runa were trying to take out all the baddies. In the end, only Runa was still standing (and then only just) against one last enemy. Runa goes, using her Reckless Attack feature to roll with advantage and go crit-fishing, and does some significant damage, but the baddie still had 7 HP left when it was his go. Because of the Reckless Attack, the baddie got to roll with advantage (roll 2d20 and take the higher number)--

Bob: (rolls)
Bob: (looks up at me, points to his dice tray)
Me: (looks)
Bob: (has rolled two Nat-20's)
Me: I TOLD YOU TO STOP ROLLING CRITS!

Runa didn't have enough HP left to tank the damage, so she went down. We were staring at a Total Party Kill. Bob, however, offered clemency, saying that the party would wake up as prisoners. We all accepted, so we found ourselves stripped of all our equipment (with the exception of Gavin and Evro's amulets of faith, which can't be removed by anyone else), bound and gagged in a cage. We'd been captured by the Red Dragon Army, and soon were brought before its current leader, the red dragon Emberekanashli, mother to the young red dragon we'd killed earlier. She wasn't happy with us, and was going to make us pay for the death of her son.

This past week, Jesse (and therefore Justinius) was back, and Bob explained the timeline breakdown enough that it had taken us roughly a week to find the RDA and get captured, and that we'd spent a week in captivity, fed and watered enough to keep us alive, but tortured by Ember during that time. We'd gotten long rests, but the torments had given us all a level of exhaustion. Justinius, after completing his two-week service to the Thorbardin dwarves to help outfit their army with magical weapons, used some new spells of his to scry on the party and found out they were captives. Some judicious use of the Sending spell (essentially a 25-word-limit telepathic instant message) allowed him to make contact, get information, and then use said information to pinpoint a rough area to look for them. He got the dwarves ready to ride out, and made plans to help lure the RDA into a fight with the dwarves, before riding out to try to find us.

Meanwhile, Ember the dragon decided to let the rest of her army enjoy our suffering and had the army construct the Tower of Death, a six-level Most Extreme Elimination Challenge-esque obstacle course designed to make us repeatedly get hit or fall to the ground. We were explicitly told, "If you win, you get tossed back in your cage. If you lose, we eat well tonight." So while Justinius was Metal Gear Solid sneaking around their camp, trying to find our equipment (his bag of holding was among it), we were forced to traverse the Tower of Death, gradually losing HP and getting humiliated by getting scorecards for each attempt. (Bob described the last judge as being the "East German judge" and consistently scoring us low. I jokingly referred to that one as "the last Theiwar dwarf" and thus the "Theiwar judge" despite Bob's reminder there were no Theiwar left.)

Evro was the first eliminated from the Tower when he dropped to 0 HP, but he was just tied up and chucked back in the cage for later. This allowed Justinius to get close, touch him and use Dimension Door to teleport them out of the camp, where he fed him a healing potion and untied him. He gave Evro his gear, then hurried back into camp to check on the others. Gavin went down next, and so he got rescued next, and while the two healers got some of their armor back on, Justinius then started setting the camp on fire. Thankfully, Bob's dice kept failing him on all the perception checks, so none of the RDA noticed. Runa and then Catt went down fairly high up in the Tower (they made it to Level 6) and then the RDA just fell to celebrating and still didn't notice, while Justinius rescued Runa and Catt and got everyone out of the camp, and then we ran off as quickly as we could, finally making shelter back in the foothills to get in the long rest we needed to clear the exhaustion.

But now we've got an angry army chasing after us, and we'll need to ride out into the plains to bring them into combat with the dwarven army, but that'll still leave us to deal with Emberekanashli, who is most likely an adult red dragon, and thus a very, very deadly threat...