Drink Talk Roll Extended #15: Khorr and the Giant Leech

Session Recap

After killing Captain Blacktooth and scaring off the remaining crew members at the end of the last session, Jedah becomes completely unresponsive. They try and shake him out of it but nothing they do works. Talliyah gets a doctor for them who diagnoses Jedah with what is essentially PTSD.  

Khorr goes into panic mode looking for any possible way to help Jedah’s condition including buying a jar of leeches and applying them to Jedah to no effect. He also goes looking for a magical potion to cure petrification but decides against it after the vendor proves untrustworthy. Amra tries praying to Favel and drawing holy symbols on Jedah also to no effect. Ulrich decides to listen to the doctor and just take care of Jedah hoping he will eventually recover.  

The party decides to continue on their trip across the Menagi Wastes looking for the mystic city of Khanya and makes some last-minute preparations. Amra buys potions for everyone to make sure they have quick access to healing.  

While Amra and Ulrich are out, Pleiades redeems our new Draw A Card redeem which means I draw a card from the Deck of Many Things and play out its effect immediately. This time, it was the Skull card which causes an Avatar of Death to appear in front of Khorr and fight him in single combat until one of them dies. Thinking this is Death coming for Jedah, Khorr steels his nerves and takes aim at the Avatar. They trade blows as the Avatar moves around the room.  With a few sneak attacks, Khorr is able to send the Avatar of Death back to where it came from.  He also decides it’s time to by new armor.

The next day, the party sets out across the Wastes. During their travels, they are beset by a freak rainstorm and manage to find a cave to take shelter. As they enter the cave, the party notices footsteps in the sand in front of the cave. They determine the footsteps to be humanoid but can’t find a source for them inside the cave. Inside the cave, they find a small pool of water and cave paintings depicting the Menagi holy city of Horaana showing the three gates future Menagi tribe leaders need to pass through to gain their positions.

The storm continues through the night and near the break of dawn, lightning strikes outside the cave causing the pillars outside to collapse. Talliyah spurs the party into leaving as soon as possible because she knows this will draw the attention of a sandworm. Khorr is able to quickly tie Jedah down onto one of the sand sleds and Talliyah uses her earth powers to propel them as far away from the worm as possible. The sandworm pursues them across the desert for hours. At some point, Khorr gets the idea to shoot at it but Talliyah warns him against that thinking that a hunting sandworm will only follow them until the edges of its hunting grounds while an aggravated one will pursue them even further.  

Talliyah proves to be right as the party finally escapes the sandworm.  As soon as they do, Talliyah collapses from exhausting from propelling the sand sleds. With two people to take care of now, the party rests for the day. During their rest, they notice strange lights of in the distance. Talliyah says that it could be Khanya but it could also be a mirage or hallucination caused by the Qolyta plant that grows in this area of the desert. After resting for a bit more, the party abandons the sand sleds and walks towards the lights.

As they approach, the party finds motes of lights floating around like fireflies. Ulrich begins to feel a connection to the lights and power flowing through him like the magic from his patron. He hears a voice whisper in his ear to channel this power and in doing so, causes all the lights to take the shape of a doorway. Opening the door, the party sees the other side is not the desert but instead a field.  

Crossing through the door into the Feywild, the party is greeted by a white-haired man named Darius. Amra has a feeling the two of them have met before but Darius never mentions it. The party asks about a way off the Feywild.  Darius notes that they would either have to wait for the planes to overlap again which could be minutes, days or years or they could see if one of the Fey Courts could help them.  He is very dismissive of the Spring Court to which Ulirch’s patron belongs. It seems Jedah (and to an extent Manuel) never realized this so his past with the Fey makes him nervous not that that’s a hard thing to do. With nothing left to say, Darius welcomes them to Khanya, the City of Lights and the session ends.

Redeeming Qualities

I mentioned in the previous section that Pleiades used one of our new Twitch redeems in this episode. These are part of our continual efforts to improve the stream. Currently we only have two available:

For 250 points, a viewer can give any character advantage or disadvantage on their next attack roll, saving throw or ability check. This is a small one designed to allow new viewers to interact with the stream almost immediately upon viewing. It’s also unlike to have a drastic effect on the campaign so it can be redeemed again after a short cooldown.

As shown in the episode, for 10,000 channel points, a viewer can redeem Draw a Card. I will draw a card from the Deck of Many things and play out its effect immediately. The targest is generally random but because Pleiades did it himself, it was Khorr this time.  It could mean a character gains a level, gets a magic item or gets to ask 1 question and get the absolute truth in reply. It could also mean that they have to fight an Avatar of Death, get their soul sealed away on one of the Lower Planes or lose all worldly possessions. This is designed to be a major redeem for longtime viewers looking to sway the campaign in bigger ways. Because of that potential, it is both expensive and only usable once per stream.  

We are still working on some other ways to improve the stream both with redeems and other ways. I hope you’ll be there to see it all. Until then, keep on rolling.

We’ll be off July 5th due to Anime Expo but we should be back with our next show on the 19th. Check out our streams on Twitch every other Friday at 7 PM Pacific. Watch our VODs on our YouTube channel and support all of A-to-J Connections on Patreon.

-J.D.