Morality in D&D 3
In our last story, found here( /channel/dungeons-n-drags/Morality+in+d+d+2/uXycLhK/ ) we began escorting a senator to the capital with a dangerous mage-assassin on the loose.
Franziska: On the road again...
Roland: Before you start singing, remember two things- you really can't sing, and I know where you live.
F: Wow, jeez, everyone's a critic.
Thermin: That's enough. I'm guessing same logic on cities, we should be safer from this guy where there's a large concentration of people?
R: Yeah, that was my thought. Still, to get there, it looks like there's a big-ass desert in the way. That won't be much fun to cross.
Sovexis: Ok, but at least we should have good line of sight on all possible points of contact. Let's have the rest of the caravan guards range out to give us better knowledge of our surroundings.
G: That's half of a good plan, but the other half is that it's not a good plan. This guy's a teleporter, right? I saw him disappear back in that town whose name I forgot.
Me: That is correct.
G: HA! My other theory was that he just turned invisible, thanks for disproving that one for me.
I spent the next minute or two cursing him out while he had this annoying *********** grin on his stupid face, which slowly spread to the rest of the team. When I had recovered, we continued.
R: Impressive. I didn't think you had it in you. Good job.
G: Okay, teleporting is still a big way to screw us, but at least now we know how it's happening.
S: Of course, our lord and savior DM may decide to give this asshole invisibility now just to spite us.
Me: No, I'm a good sport about it. More importantly, you're still very screwed either way.
T: That inspires confidence.
F: He's getting cocky, don't worry. We'll do fine.
S: Thing is, though, I remember something about how people create portals in this world to travel between major regional capitals because personal teleportation is limited range, to a mile at most for extremely high level characters. Seeing as we haven't even gotten our paragon path class yet, I don't think it would be fair for it to be that long. In the desert, we can probably see well enough around us to keep him from coming out of the blue.
I had learned my lesson about talking during their discussion, so I shut up. Being overly talkative hasn't ruined that many of my plans(mostly because I learned how to stop running my mouth pretty quickly) but this one was rather annoying. Pricks.
T: Well, he loses some threat when he can't just pull off the horror movie stalker act without us understanding the mechanics. Still, he could probably just bury himself in sand and wait for us to pass by on the road and teleport into the middle anyway.
S: So the remaining option is to not go on road.
Me: That's not an option. Can't take carriages through sand, and if you have a schedule to keep. Gotta arrive in the capital before the parliament meets to get the senator there in time.
S: Well, **** me then.
F: Choo choo! All aboard the railroad train! Next stop: ******** encounter!
R: Hey, come on, now. This, while it is the most blatantly he's(referring to me, of course) ever done it, is nowhere near as bad as most DMs.
Some background. Roland was a serious D&D player and has been since he had the patience to roll dice and write instead of playing some contact sport, which was like, since he was thirteen. Unfortunately, before me, he said he'd only had one or two DMs that weren't using their players to drive a plot or serve as background characters to his mary sue DMPC waifu, or just inviting every edgelord in the neighborhood to ruin the plot, or some other ****** thing. Because of those bad experiences he made one condition of his playing with us that we don't have any relationships between PC's, if not the players themselves, because they always got real edgy real quick, in his experience. He also showed vocal displeasure whenever PCs(usually galeas) tried to romance NPCs. This was mildly grating for me, because those can be part of a good plot, but he was so much fun to have around that nobody really minded. I would, eventually, change his mind. That's for a later story, however.
T: Doesn't matter either way. How about this- we follow Sovexis's suggestion, but the five of us stay with the senator. That way we can still follow the cardinal rule-
F: DON'T YOU KNOW YOU NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY? CLERICS IN THE BACK TO KEEP THOSE FIGHTERS HALE-
R: Remember what I said about singing?
F: Kiss my-
T: As I was saying, we can still follow the cardinal rule, never splitting the party, while keeping good sight on everything else.
S: Sounds good. Feel like we're screwed anyway, but whatever. Let's go.
Me: Travel time, then. I'm saying that it's roughly one week to cross the desert, but depending on the rolls it could be better or worse than that.
S: Christ almighty, a week?
Me: Or better, or worse.
I rolled D20 behind a screen for their first day.
Franziska: On the road again...
Roland: Before you start singing, remember two things- you really can't sing, and I know where you live.
F: Wow, jeez, everyone's a critic.
Thermin: That's enough. I'm guessing same logic on cities, we should be safer from this guy where there's a large concentration of people?
R: Yeah, that was my thought. Still, to get there, it looks like there's a big-ass desert in the way. That won't be much fun to cross.
Sovexis: Ok, but at least we should have good line of sight on all possible points of contact. Let's have the rest of the caravan guards range out to give us better knowledge of our surroundings.
G: That's half of a good plan, but the other half is that it's not a good plan. This guy's a teleporter, right? I saw him disappear back in that town whose name I forgot.
Me: That is correct.
G: HA! My other theory was that he just turned invisible, thanks for disproving that one for me.
I spent the next minute or two cursing him out while he had this annoying *********** grin on his stupid face, which slowly spread to the rest of the team. When I had recovered, we continued.
R: Impressive. I didn't think you had it in you. Good job.
G: Okay, teleporting is still a big way to screw us, but at least now we know how it's happening.
S: Of course, our lord and savior DM may decide to give this asshole invisibility now just to spite us.
Me: No, I'm a good sport about it. More importantly, you're still very screwed either way.
T: That inspires confidence.
F: He's getting cocky, don't worry. We'll do fine.
S: Thing is, though, I remember something about how people create portals in this world to travel between major regional capitals because personal teleportation is limited range, to a mile at most for extremely high level characters. Seeing as we haven't even gotten our paragon path class yet, I don't think it would be fair for it to be that long. In the desert, we can probably see well enough around us to keep him from coming out of the blue.
I had learned my lesson about talking during their discussion, so I shut up. Being overly talkative hasn't ruined that many of my plans(mostly because I learned how to stop running my mouth pretty quickly) but this one was rather annoying. Pricks.
T: Well, he loses some threat when he can't just pull off the horror movie stalker act without us understanding the mechanics. Still, he could probably just bury himself in sand and wait for us to pass by on the road and teleport into the middle anyway.
S: So the remaining option is to not go on road.
Me: That's not an option. Can't take carriages through sand, and if you have a schedule to keep. Gotta arrive in the capital before the parliament meets to get the senator there in time.
S: Well, **** me then.
F: Choo choo! All aboard the railroad train! Next stop: ******** encounter!
R: Hey, come on, now. This, while it is the most blatantly he's(referring to me, of course) ever done it, is nowhere near as bad as most DMs.
Some background. Roland was a serious D&D player and has been since he had the patience to roll dice and write instead of playing some contact sport, which was like, since he was thirteen. Unfortunately, before me, he said he'd only had one or two DMs that weren't using their players to drive a plot or serve as background characters to his mary sue DMPC waifu, or just inviting every edgelord in the neighborhood to ruin the plot, or some other ****** thing. Because of those bad experiences he made one condition of his playing with us that we don't have any relationships between PC's, if not the players themselves, because they always got real edgy real quick, in his experience. He also showed vocal displeasure whenever PCs(usually galeas) tried to romance NPCs. This was mildly grating for me, because those can be part of a good plot, but he was so much fun to have around that nobody really minded. I would, eventually, change his mind. That's for a later story, however.
T: Doesn't matter either way. How about this- we follow Sovexis's suggestion, but the five of us stay with the senator. That way we can still follow the cardinal rule-
F: DON'T YOU KNOW YOU NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY? CLERICS IN THE BACK TO KEEP THOSE FIGHTERS HALE-
R: Remember what I said about singing?
F: Kiss my-
T: As I was saying, we can still follow the cardinal rule, never splitting the party, while keeping good sight on everything else.
S: Sounds good. Feel like we're screwed anyway, but whatever. Let's go.
Me: Travel time, then. I'm saying that it's roughly one week to cross the desert, but depending on the rolls it could be better or worse than that.
S: Christ almighty, a week?
Me: Or better, or worse.
I rolled D20 behind a screen for their first day.
Me: You make excellent time, beginning before dawn and keeping a fast pace until after nightfall. Another day like that will shorten your expected travel time from 7 to 6 days.
S: Sweet. We make camp, then. Anything to do in camp?
Me: That's for you to decide, not me.
S: So no, then. Make the guards keep watch, we can sleep.
Me: So you all do that, then? Okay.
I rolled for any chance encounters that might happen. Every day of travel I roll 1d20 and if a one is rolled they get a random encounter. Of course, rolling behind my screen, some of my more melodramatic players got worked up.
G: Oh HELL no, come on! We were doing so well!
The party told him to chill, and the day went without incident. They continued to make excellent time, shortening their trip to six and then five days total. It was the fourth day, and it was time to strike.
Me: Your caravan rolls along the stone desert rode, when suddenly an explosion shatters the calm of the afternoon. It sounds like it came from the very head of the column. What do?
S: Oh, god dammit. Can we fire these guards and replace them with training dummies? They'd probably be more attentive.
G: Unless he teleported through them...
S: You asshole, how did we not see that?
Me: Had you spoken with your client, the honorable senator, about the region's history, he may have told you that there was once a colony of drow that lived extremely close to the surface in tunnels beneath the sand, hoping to escape the chaos further underground. Azuratiel purged them long ago. You're usually really on the ball about that lore stuff, dude. Anyway, another wagon just blew up. It was the second one in lead, sounds like they're being blown up in order, what do you do?
I'd managed to inflict a small fraction of the frustration Galeas inflicted upon me with his mindgames earlier that session. This made me happy, but unfortunately, Franziska was a plotting prick.
F: Hey, I still have some of that Flamerot Potion stuff, maybe I can use that.
The party gave her dubious looks, aside from Thermin, who added a "are you ******* joking?" to her reaction as well. Sensible reactions. This flamerot potion was something that an annoying bad guy alchemist was using to commit arson on a massive scale- magical fires that can be put out like normal fires, but spread extremely quickly and can burn almost anything, including things that shouldn't burn- sand, fire-retardant things, basically anything but water. Anyone familiar with a chemical compound F2O2, or FOOF, might recognize this as being similar.
T: So... you want to give the mad bomber even better munitions? Oh, I get it, this is like sacrificing virgins to the volcano gods to have them direct their wrath elsewhere. Clever.
F: No, really, hear me out. I think he won't be expecting these wagons to cook off so violently, so if we put this stuff a few carriages ahead of His Grace, we can probably take this asshole by surprise. This is a big group, some 20 wagons? If only two have gone and they're going in order, we can throw my six or seven waterskins of this stuff three wagons ahead of the senator and wait to watch the fireworks.
S: I'm surprised you saved this flashy stuff for such a critical moment. It's like you're becoming a real girl, instead of a violent sociopath.
F: I try my best. Alright, boss, there's our plan. Tell us how it goes.
Me: Of course. Not bad, by the way. More and more wagons explode, most of them carrying supplies for the journey rather than people, and guards begin returning to the caravan from their scouting positions to defend the senator. Eventually, one bomb goes off far louder and more sustained then normal, with a colossal fireball that eats away at the sand around it. In the middle of it all, you hear a primal scream as someone is caught in the blaze.
F: Haha! Eat it! Another boss ruined!
R: Oh, did you have to taunt him?
Me: He's right, not over yet. A figure in a badly burned cloak, still on fire, appears in front of you and casts a fireball directly at the party.
S: **** , I suppose that would be reflex defence? It usually is. Hold on, is the senator's thingy caught in the fireball?
Me: No, it was not aimed to hit him with the blast.
S: Guess that means he has a hate-on for us, not the senator, though we already knew that. Let's ******* do this.
Surprisingly for all of us, the rest of the battle was almost boring by my boss standards. He took ongoing fire damage for the whole fight, dishing out a lot of punishment but nothing we couldn't take. A good damage roll put Roland in the negatives, but Sovexis promptly inspired him back on his feet and the sorcerer retaliated with a crit Pinning Bolt on his next turn. Getting knocked prone turned the tide, and within a few rounds later saw the assassin locked in chains. That's where I leave you for now, because I'm tired and it's past midnight, but rest assured, this saga hasn't even begun.
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