Drink Talk Roll Extended #20: Half-Elf on Fire

Session Recap

After destroying the mechanical dragon at the end of last session, the party moved through the streets of Meridan avoiding too much attention from guards and civilians as they took the unconscious Calvyn Silvergard with them to their room at the Green Tavern. Over the course of the next few hours, Amra began repenting for his actions and restoring his bond with Favel. Amra and Jedah kept watch of him in their room and when he woke in the morning, a few well timed Intimidation attempts got him to start spilling as many secrets as he could.

He confessed to all the experiments that Amra had accused him of and noted.  He also noted that he and Professor Skye were originally contacted about the idea of people having psionic abilities by someone they knew only as Ace. He noted that, as far as he knew, they had never spoken to Ace directly. They met with a different person each time but they all used the same passphrase. I couldn’t come up with one off the top of my head during the session but afterwards, I told them it was “The Third Eye sees all.”  He also informed them that there was correspondence in his desk in his office at the School of Continued Progress.

The party returned to the campus where Khorr and Jedah, now with a level in rogue, tried to sneak into his office. Thanks to a combination of lucky and unlucky rolls, Jedah was able to make it in undetected but Khorr snuck through the window just as another worker was turning a corner. He was quickly escorted out by a security official and talking his ear off until he was escorted to the edge of campus. Jedah was able to follow the instructions Calvyn had given them and get the papers from a secret compartment in one of his drawers before sneaking out still unnoticed.  

As the party regrouped on the campus grounds, both the Robin they had brought with them and another one they had seen on campus both started cowering as if they sensed something dangerous coming. Then, the party looked up and saw a giant ship in the sky. From that ship, four masked figured descended wearing similar masked to the masked man that attacked Erezel in the first session. Two of them picked up the Robins and attempted to carry them off. Amra decided to tie down Calvyn which ended up taking him two rounds while the rest of the party tried to deal with the attackers.  

This ended up being the hardest fight the party had experienced up to this point with multiple party members nearly dying and Ulrich being floored by the lead attacker. He had to make multiple Death Saves succeeding on his first and failing his second.  

By that point, the lead attacker already on the brink of death himself, decided he was going to take out one of the party members with him. He ran across the fountain and with the last of his strength, brought down his golden scythe in Ulrich’s chest killing him. Seeing this coming, Ulrich seized upon the last of his strength and magical power to cast hellish rebuke igniting himself and killing the masked man along with him.  

The combat continued for a few more rounds with the party just finishing off the rest of the attackers. When the assault around them had ended, Khorr rushed to Ulrich’s corpse trying every method he could think of including using all the leeches he had bought back in To’anata. Amra joined in trying to use his divine gifts granted by Favel to heal him but by that point, Ulrich was too far gone. And that’s where our session ended.

A Death in the Family

Well, that was certainly a session.  

Note to self: It’s not the mechanical dragon that kills players. It’s the combat in the following session that does it. In the corresponding session when I last ran this campaign, we lost Ton-Lifter to another enemy leader so I guess this session is just cursed. 

I always find it difficult to kill a player character but in both of these situations, it felt like the proper thing for the enemies to do at that time and I apologized to both of the players after it happened. I think both of them understood that it’s a danger of being an adventurer in D&D. I also outlined the possibilities for their next characters (Basically, the same setup as character creation but leveled up to match the party) and for their dead characters as well should the party choose to pursue that path.

For Hao, I laid out who might be in and around Meridan. That was mostly pointing out that the Crane Monastery where fire monks train is located in the Valley of the Mist to the south so if he wanted to play a monk, especially an elemental one, that would be his likely origin. The Valley is also a crossover point with the Feywild and may even have been where Ulrich first made contact with the Spring Court so that was also a possibility.  

If instead, the party decided to try to resurrect Ulrich, they would need to find the rare mage capable of doing that. High level magic on Arretin is fairly rare and most mages who can do it are dedicated to different gods or royal houses so their powers may already be on retainer to someone else.  It will be very expensive and that might not be payable in gold. Even then, Ulrich is probably going to be changed by his time on the other side since he has multiple factions all vying for his soul but that’s a story for a different time. There are other methods available that they’ d be able to find if they look in the right places but I’ll leave that until after they’ve decided what to do.

So, yeah. I think death in my D&D games shouldn’t come too easy but also not something that should never come at all. The exact line is probably up to the group and the campaign so as always, make sure this is something you’re all on the same page about before the campaign begins.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week on September 27, 2024. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.