Campaign Logs/D&D/General/The Deadliest Link

The Deadliest Link – Season Premiere (Season 1, Episode 1)

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Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Deadliest Link!

As you know, the Deadliest Link is Faerun’s most exciting entertainment where we link you with individuals, our Daredelvers, exploring and surviving (or trying to) in Undermountain. Let’s get right to the show and introduce our Daredelvers.

Daredelver #1 is a Piper, a shadowy figure who has walked many alleyways to avoid the long arm of the law.

Daredelver #2 is Rurik and this half-orc hunter comes to us from the deep wilderness, far from civilization.

Daredelver #3 is the gnome Nilbas and this short wizard knows death in a manner that most of us would shudder to even think about.

Daredelver #4 is Isaac, a priest of an unknown god from far off, unknown lands.

Daredelver #5 is the half-orc Igmut and he combines his orcish savagery with the finesse and stealth of the city’s streets.

While I may be known as the Queen of Mean, I am not heartless. Our Daredelvers could use a little aid this episode and so I have gifts for them! For Piper, a Potion of Healing. For Rurik, a Ring of Thunder Resistance. For Nilbas, [I forgot.] For Igmut, a Cloak of the Bat!

[Random magic items can be so much fun.]

With all our housekeeping out of the way, audience, are you ready to play…the Deadliest Link?!?

{The linked audience cheers with unbridled enthusiasm.}

Daredelvers…prepare to be…The Deadliest Link!

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Campaign Logs/General/The Deadliest Link

The Deadliest Link – Season Premiere (Season 1, Pre-Show)

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Since we have some scheduling issues with players missing and a holiday coming up, we aren’t going to start a new (regular) campaign for a few weeks. So tonight, instead, we’re going to go with our evolving The Deadliest Link alternative. I asked everyone to provide a favorite saying, theme, trope, what have you from game shows and I’ve tried to incorporate them to one degree or another into The Deadliest Link. Below the break is the introduction to the season premiere that I’ve shared with the players. I’ll be using another random dungeon tonight and pretty much winging it again so we’ll see how things go. 😉

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Campaign Logs/D&D/General/The Lonely Coast Campaign

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Wherever It Is Going Part 3 (Session 17)

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When we ended our last session, things were looking rather grim for the party. Pounder had been arrested for the brutal murder of the child, Kettilwig, and was locked up in the Warden’s stockade, waiting for his execution the following morning. Bay and Thalimor had headed off to the Temple of Velen but had been beaten there by two of the Warden’s soldiers. Worried about their presence, the two had decided to camp in the woods near the temple despite the potential threat of goblins or worse coming across their camp. The remaining three party members (Isenthorne, Magnus, and Osric) had received a rather cold welcome in Swallowfeld but had gone to investigate the site of Kettilwig’s murder. Isenthorne had just started climbing a tree to investigate the thick and rather numerous spider webs in the trees of the area. While it was already evening for Bay and Thalimor, it was still afternoon for the trio of characters, and Pounder was still unconscious. So we had some time differences that needed to be rectified early on in the session.

We had a full table with everyone present this session. As you’ll see, this did turn out to be our “last” session with the Lonely Coast campaign. I say last in quotes because I hope that at some point we’ll come back to this setting and play in it again. It won’t be the same characters because…well, I’ll save the because for after the break. 😉

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Campaign Logs/D&D/The Deadliest Link

The Deadliest Link – Pilot Episode

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This past session we did something a little different. Muse was already going to be missing and Thomas had to cancel more or less at the last minute. Unfortunately, I was out watching the Champions’ League final at a bar when I found out and I didn’t get home until almost right before we were going to start the session. I am cruel and heartless enough to have run might be the last session of our Lonely Coast campaign without one player (sorry Muse
nothing personal) but, apparently, I’m not cruel and heartless enough to do it if two players are missing. Or at least not enough to actually make that decision myself
so I left it up to the players in attendance. The majority didn’t want to continue (end?) the LC campaign without the others present. So now what?!?

Rachel suggested that we could just play a board game, like Descent, but as the conversation continued, we settled on still playing D&D. So everyone created a character and everyone (with one exception) used the Fifth Edition Character Sheet app which made certainly sped things up and my brain continued to be muddled and not settling on anything (it was because I was tired and hungry
honest
I only had two beers watching the game). By the time everyone had a character ready and I had had some dinner, my brain was working again
more or less.

During the earlier conversation, murders, the television show CSI, and Orc & Pie had come up and that all somehow seeped through my brain as murder and television shows. Once it got through to the other side of my head and actually made its way out, the Deadliest Link pilot show was born (rather rough around the edges).

Four contestants awoke in a darkened room and, as they opened their eyes, bright lights flashed and a disembodied voice enthusiastically shouted out, “Welcome to the Deadliest Link!” The last thing each contestant [i.e., the player characters] could remember was signing some waiver or contract. The voice explained, directing itself towards some unseen audience, that the rules of the game were quite simple. One of the contestants had murdered the baker [a body in baker’s clothing was lying, facedown, on the floor nearby with a knife in its back with a pie sitting on a pedestal just behind the body]. It was the contestants’ task to not only determine which of them had committed the murder but to also survive the Dungeon of Doom. By the end, only one of the contestants would leave alive as the Deadliest Link!

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Campaign Logs/D&D/The Lonely Coast Campaign

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Wherever It Is Going Part 2 (Session 16)

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When we last left the party, they had, well, they had pretty much become rather alienated from the authorities and townsfolk of Swallowfeld. Possibly with hopes of at least doing some good and to save the Warden’s nephews that had been taken by the goblins, they set out to follow the tracks. They had found the goblin compound and had begun their exploration/raid of it and that’s where we’ll pick up after the break.

This is probably going to be a bit more abbreviated than many of the session write-ups. Not because little happened but because the last session was almost three weeks ago, I’ve put off writing this until now, and it is getting late on a Friday night. We had a full table with all players in attendance and a bit of a twist near the end of the session that I think kind of threw the players…mwah ha ha!

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General

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Wherever It Is Going Part 1 (Session 15)

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When we last left the party, the village of Swallowfeld had been attacked by a force of goblins. The PCs had, with the Warden’s blessing, gone out to fight the goblins. After the battle, in which the forces of “good” had prevailed, the Warden and Bay had spoken. Bay had suggested that the Warden, who was still a bit concerned about the party, could trust to Pounder’s sense of honor and duty and that the paladin would make sure that the adventurers would not bring additional danger to the peoples of the Lonely Coast. Pounder then discussed this with the Warden and agreed. He and Feng had gone off to find Thalimor–for whom the Warden had reserved the vast majority of his concern–to inform the bard of the situation.

This is where we pick up after the break. We had a full table this session with non one missing. By the end of this session, the status of the PCs on the Lonely Coast will have significantly changed and the Warden’s concerns shown to be quite well-founded.

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Campaign Logs/D&D/General/The Side Quest

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Seeking Cynric’s Folly Part 7 (Session 14)

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When we last left the party, Thalimor had gotten himself arrested by the Warden of the Lonely Coast while the rest of the party had blatantly disregarded a direct “request” from the man appointed by the Baron to see to the safety of the Lonely Coast. Rather than return to the Wolf’s Head Inn and remain there, they followed the goblin tracks in the hopes of finding the abducted children. This group remained just a bit ahead of the troops led by the Warden and the manacled (and gagged) Thalimor. When the heroes arrived back at the ruins, they found the children in the “temple” area along with Aerlium, a badly tortured Malvenos, and four of the wrath creatures. They were unable to rescue the children at this time and, after fighting a large number of goblins in the woods, were hustling towards the sounds of a combat…presumably between the goblins and the Warden’s force.

That is where we pick up after the break. Rachel and Muse were missing this session and, unfortunately, Thomas had to cancel at the last minute due to illness. So we were missing half of the players and so everyone played two characters. In addition to their normal characters, RJ played Isenthorne, Miles played Osric, and Todd played Thalimor. Rachel’s absence, unfortunately, also means that the group’s note taker was missing. I rely pretty heavily on her notes when writing the recaps. Because I make up so much of this on the fly, I can’t always keep track of what happened in what order. So it is quite likely that this recap might have more mistakes and less detail than those when she does take her five or six pages of notes.

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Campaign Logs/D&D/General/The Lonely Coast Campaign

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Seeking Cynric’s Folly Part 6 (Session 13)

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No, really, the heroes really are seeking Cynric’s Folly…they just keep getting caught up in other things.

In our last session, the heroes returned back to Swallowfeld to deliver Berangar to the authorities and to make various preparations for seeking out Cynric’s Folly after having gained some additional clues as to its location from the elderly priest, Godric. However, nothing is ever quite that simple. Instead, various hijinks ensued that ultimately resulted in Thalimor engaging in some cross-dressing and expressing a strong interest in an alternate sexuality to avoid, well, an engagement. After all that hilarity, Pounder was woken early the following morning by a pounding on his door and someone shouting, “The children are gone!”

And that is where we pick up after the break.

I’m going to add a little something that I haven’t done before with the session recap. I’m going to add the days that the action takes place. Things are now getting to the point that I need to keep track of the calendar or it will get a bit too confusing for me. So, I had to come up with a calendar for the setting. It is a 13-month lunar based calendar with four weeks per month and seven days per week. Each month starts on the full moon. The campaign is currently in the month of Plognath or Plow Moon in the old language (Elderspraech or Reorde) of the Thioda, the Thaeden cultural ancestors. The days of the month are notated not by a number like we do nowadays but as the first, second, third, or fourth Haelfdag (or whichever day it is) of Plognath (or whichever month it is).

So with that all out of the way…

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Campaign Logs/D&D/General/The Lonely Coast Campaign

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Seeking Cynric’s Folly Part 5 (Session 12)

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When we last left our heroes, they had been investigating a purported suicide at the Temple of VĂ©len when additional bodies started to be found dead. The priest, Aethelric, who was reported to have committed suicide had come back from the dead for vengeance against those who had wronged him. The heroes had just “killed” the creature with repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated attacks (i.e., it took a LOT of damage to drop). Fortunately for them, the thing had been solely focused on slowly squeezing the life out of one of the other priests rather than attacking them. When we pick up after the break, we start to learn about what had actually happened to Aethelric and a bit of other things about the temple.

The Southern Shakespeare Festival (with a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream) also returned to Tallahassee this past weekend after a 15+ year hiatus. There must have been something in the air as we had elements of secret identities, cross-dressing, arranged romances, cross-dressing to avoid arranged romances, and the like. I made a comment the next day to one of the players about how I kind of felt like some of the session was inspired by some Shakespearean elements and she had been thinking the same thing. It wasn’t really intentional but it was pretty fun. I had actually prepped something for this session but we never even got close to it.

RJ was missing this week and so Todd played Bay. Spoiler Alert: This session is partially based on and largely inspired by the old Dungeon Magazine adventure, Unhallowed Ground, from Issue #54.

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Campaign Logs/D&D/The Lonely Coast Campaign

The Lonely Coast Campaign – Seeking Cynric’s Folly Part 4 (Session 11)

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In our last session, our heroes had made their way to the Temple of VĂ©len to both deliver the package given to them by Galden Hearthtop in Wolverton and to seek more information about Cynric’s Folly. Their arrival was marked by spotting a relatively fresh grave outside of the temple complex and with significant suspicion…bordering on hostility…from the gate’s guard, Malvenos. Once inside, they completed their delivery, learned that little of the famed library and, more importantly to them, no writings on Cynric’s Folly remained, and met the largely dysfunctional “family” of priests who still resided in the complex. They also learned that the fresh grave was that of a young priest and promising scribe who had recently committed suicide and, as a result, was not interred in the temple’s catacombs.

When we ended the prior session, the party had retired for the night in some of the many vacant cells in the temple’s dormitory and were awakened by the sound of the temple’s bell ringing…though somewhat muffled. And that’s where we pick up after the break.

Miles missed this session and so RJ played Magnus. Spoiler Alert: This session is partially based on and largely inspired by the old Dungeon Magazine adventure, Unhallowed Ground, from Issue #54.

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