Drink Talk Roll Extended #11: A Beautiful Mindwitness

Session Recap

The party entered the cave that Tonlifter seemed to be drawn towards while under the control of the cursed headband. Talliyah was also there. She was just off-screen taking care of all the ninjas sneaking up on the party. The interior was dark with few if any sources of light putting Khorr the Halfling at a disadvantage.  

As Amra and Jedah scouted further in, they heard chanting in a strangely familiar language that neither of them could understand. Despite this, the chanting gave Amra a flashback to memories he had thought long forgotten: He was chained somewhere in a different dimly lit room. A figure cloaked in shifting shadows spoke that language to a white-haired human with a long sword across his back.  They had come to see him for some reason but now they were leaving.

Snap back to reality. Amra and Jedah moved further in and find cultists in a large room. They motion the party forward and prepare for an ambush. Thanks to some lucky crits, the fight is over pretty quickly. After taking everyone out, they decided to check the giant hole in the room and find a magic circle on the floor beneath them. The piece of magical lapis lazuli Ulrich took from the Masked Man all those sessions ago seems to react to the circle glowing brightly and pulling him towards it the closer he gets.

The party continues moving around the cave finding different rooms and even a little mud golem that posed no real threat to them on its own. Despite the size, the place doesn’t seem to have much interesting in the way of items. The only interesting they find is a set of communications noting that some higher up stationed them here to await a person who never showed up so plans are moving on without him. Judging by the dates, the party theorizes that it was the still unidentified Masked Man.  

Eventually, the party finds a set of stairs down and once they reach the bottom, they hear even more chanting in that strange language. Sadly, they lose the element of surprise after one of them steps on a very loud piece of wood that snaps beneath his feet. Despite this, no one seems to come out of the room with the chanting so the party has to take it upon themselves to open the door.  

After opening it, they find it now occupied by more cultists with a statue that Jedah recognizes as the one he saw in the cargo hold of the Emperor’s Breath where he found his guns. Their chanting seems to cause the circle to glow more intensely. The increased number make this fight harder for the party but they are still able to take them down until there is only one remaining. The last living cultist decides to stab himself spilling his blood across the circle to complete the ritual.  

The statue disappears from the circle and in its place, a creature with a round, purple body and multiple eyes: one in its chest area and multiple on stalks extended from its core. In other words, a mindwitness. It uses its various eye beams on the party but they are able to avoid it more often than not and slay it soon after.  Amra attempts to cut out its eyes and is successful at removing three of them without any damage.

It was about this time that Talliyah finished fighting all those invisible ninjas. More on that later. Ulrich was inspired by the intense glow of the crystal around his neck that he spoke the command words: Klaatu barada nikto. With that, every party member had their vision go black and it won’t be until next session that they figure out what happened.

The DM Kinda Forgot

So yeah, I kinda forgot about Talliyah this session and Pleiades forgot about the optional Rogue feature that allows for them to get advantage on ranged attacks if they don’t move that turn. Manuel blamed me for that second one but I think it’s the player’s responsibilities to remember their character’s features. I know they get progressively drunker as the stream goes on but I think it’s the least they could do when I have to play a dozen characters / monsters, remember what’s going on both in front of them and behind the scenes and tie that all together in a way that makes sense.

Moving on to the part that is my fault: Forgetting about plot points, characters, etc. I have this bad habit in both of my campaigns especially when it comes to tagalong characters like Talliyah and a character in my other campaign named Snake. There’s even a running gag that Snake is the ultimate sneak that even the gods can’t see and he’s the source of my “fighting ninjas off-screen” excuse which I use whenever a minor character who should have been there wasn’t. It occurs most often between sessions when I forget who’s there and focus on the players at the start that I forget the NPCs not needed for the setup. It’s doubly so if the plot of the session is a direct continuation of the last one but the NPC isn’t a direct quest giver.  

You might have also noted that in combat last session, Talliyah didn’t really do much beyond creating a wall and occasionally firing rocks that did a small amount of damage. DM Confession Time: I don’t have a character sheet for her or most NPCs that don’t use a stat block that’s either straight from a book or slightly modified. I just chose a small but still significant number for damage and anything else she does is more utility based around her earth powers like creating stone walls. I know there are rules for companions/sidekicks in both first- and third-party sources but it’s just the easiest way for me to run them.

Sometimes, I forget a plot point because I thought I’d remember it and didn’t jot it down. This happened with the location of plot important items in my other campaign and luckily, one of my players had written it down. Obviously, this has the easiest solution of just making sure you note things you’ll need to remember somewhere whether it’s on a piece of paper, a text file or even a voice note.  If that fails, I hope you have a player that takes good notes.  With a crew that gets drunk playing, I don’t have high ups for that happening in this campaign. If you’re in the same boat, then you’ll fall back on the next easiest solution: Change it and pretend it’s always been the new thing. If you or someone suddenly remembers what it was supposed to be, you can roll back to that or just have a character suggest it was the old thing and get told they’re experiencing the Mandela Effect.

That’s it for this week. We should be back next week with session twelve without Manuel. What happened to the party? Are they still in that cave? Will we finally make it through a session without someone thinking they’re going to die after taking all of 1 damage? Find out next time! Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.