(no subject)
Inferian: We’ve changed the face of American politics. And after today, when we read the game report, we won’t remember how the fuck we did that.
Calinai: I remember Hitler and dead babies. I have no idea how we got to Hitler and dead babies and how we left the topic, but I remember this event.
What color is President Obama’s Magic: the Gathering deck? Oh, a black deck, it was too obvious.
Yeah, it’s one of THOSE games.
DM: We left off with stumbling upon the-
Falgrim: Did you give experience last game?
DM: (dirty look) No I did not… nor will I.
Inferian: No experience ever.
Falgrim: I’m only kidding, I was kidding!
Inferian: It’s the only way he can stop us from getting more powerful.
Calinai: Not even MILK can stop me now!
Last time, they had found the entrance to the underground, but had been assailed by bugbears! The group begins rolling initiative; the DM is shocked to find that someone actually goes at a single-digit number. Inferian calls the armored bugbear, as his lightning gets a bonus to hit metal armor.
Inferian: STORMLORD! I intend for electricity to become my primary power.
Calinai: The rest of the game we’re like in rain, underwater..
DM: All the creatures are wearing rubber armor. They’re all grounded.
Inferian: I should point out that it costs me exactly the same to use any other manifestation.
DM: They’re wearing rubber, fireproof…
Inferian: Sonic-proof…
DM: Flame-retardant…
Inferian: They’re just in giant foam balls.
Calinai: They can no longer move or attack, but…
DM: It’ll be nothing but beholders the entire rest of the game.
Inferian: In-character statement now. “I shall strike at the one wearing armor! Let your seorx… axe… whatever it is you use, I dunno…”
Falgrim: Sword.
Inferian: “Let your sword find the weakness in those who garb themselves only in the hide of others.”
Falgrim: “You’re goin’ down, lads!”
DM: Lads, or… lads? (pointing at the group)
Inferian: Why are you threatening us?
Calinai: He jumps out, he joins the bugbears. “Ha ha, I’ve been waiting for this moment the whole time!” He’s a bugbear!
Inferian: He rips off his beard… to reveal another beard. “What was the point of that?!” “Well ya see, this beard is braided in the fashion of me TRUE clan. The other one was obviously an imposter clan.”
DM: The bugbear in the chain shirt uses a free action to spit enormously in your direction. Probably doesn’t understand what you said, but understands the tone.
Falgrim charges the bugbear for 24 points of damage, cleaving it from shoulder to hipbone and slaying it.
DM: You now have stinky bugbear blood soaked into your beard.
Valiha: Stinky bloodbear… bug… blood… bugbear goo, aaaah!
DM: The other one nearest you, the one not wearing a chain shirt, looks over at you in horror.
Valiha channels Ray of Frost through her sword, striking another bugbear for seven plus three. The bubear retaliates for six. The chain-shirted charges Inferian, having seen the challenge in his eyes.
Inferian: What has he got?
DM: Apparently, he choked on his own rage. Or his own foot or SOMEthing. Swings his axe, whiffs mightily. Spits something in goblinoid that could only be a curse of the most vile nature… Brings it to Calinai. (vindictively rolling behind the screen) THERE’s a 20!
Calinai uses Fiery Burst on the wounded one for 11 damage, finishing it off.
DM: After having his gut frozen by her longsword, he then bursts into flames. Ah ha ha, he howls in agony, dropping his Morningstar, curling up into a fetal position as the life leaves him.
Calinai: Finally, a kill for me!
Inferian fires off an energy ray for 14 damage.
Inferian: To his skull! Not specifically to his skull, I just like to imagine that I pointed my finger and a lightning bolt shot towards his skull…
The bugbear is still up, but initiative cycles back around.
Falgrim: “I’ll spit him from balls to brains!”
Falgrim does a full power attack charge, and begins totaling up his damage. The DM doesn’t even bother making his roll. The bugbear is gibbed by the blow, appendages flying everywhere. Inferian and Falgrim exchange a fistbump.
DM: Even in the middle of fist-bumping, Inferian promptly has a bugbear torso shoved into him, as your charge carried you so far you bowl him over as well.
Calinai: (looking at the familiar list) Why is the raven the only one that can talk?
Inferian: …because they’re fucking animals!
DM: You can teach ravens to speak.
Calinai: I know, but I chose a snake.
DM …Well, you can learn Parseltongue to talk to it too. You play a lizardman, you’ve already got the “sssss!” down!
Inferian: The raven can talk but it only talks Celestial for some reason.
DM: “You! You are a mere thrush, and yet so much more! What, what’s that? Bilbo Baggins?”
Inferian: Every time the raven caws, there’s the sound of church bells.
DM: “Caw!”
Inferian: BONG!
DM: Wings for angels!
The PCs loot the corpses, claiming they’re seeking clues as to why the bugbeard sought to keep them from descending. The group searches the areas, finding a spot of churned up earth, and so start seeking a digging tool! They find a blackened stick, woohoo, and juryrig a digging tool with it and a javelin. 15 minutes of work finally leads them to hit something.
DM: It’s not a clank or any such thing, but you’re like, “that’s not dirt.”
Calinai: “Ooh, I hear something. I hit something.”
Inferian: It’s another bugbear! What?
Calinai: “THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME.”
Inferian: “I KILL YOU NOW.”
Calinai: “I’m a talking bugbear! I learned English just for this speech before I attack you!”
They pull out a cloth sack, which gives them coins and scrolls. There is also a suit of armor!
Inferian: “We’re going to attack, so let’s bury our good armor and go in our crappy armor.”
A long search for the spells on the scrolls ensues as they count their coins and search the corpses. There’s a wand of light…
DM: Lumos!
Calinai: Wingardium leviosa!
Inferian: Leviosa.
DM: Sectum sempura… whatever. “You dare use my own spell against me…”
Calinai: “I’m the Half-Blood Prince.”
Falgrim: (stupider) “I’m the Half-Blood Prince.”
Calinai: Snape was only a little bit angry, when he faintly heard “Fifty points to Gryffindor!”… as Gandalf -- no, wait, wait, not Gandalf -
Inferian: Hee, Gandalf.
Calinai: As he falls off the building dead. “Fifty points to Gryffindor!”
Falgrim: “Gryffindor wins the House Cup, YEAAAH!”
Inferian: “A wizard is never late, Master Potter, he always appears exactly when he intends to.”
DM: (raspy verge-of-death points) “I have some last-minute points…”
Calinai: “From the grave!”
Inferian: Dumbledore is falling off the tower… falling, falling, catches up with Gandalf and the Balrog…
DM: That’s what he leaves him in his will, instead of the individual items off each one.
Calinai: “Fifty points to Gryffindor!”
DM: “For Ronald Weasley… Ronald Bilius Weasley… fifty points… for being the least-loved Weasley… May it provide him some comfort.”
Inferian: Aaaanyway, there’s a dungeon.
DM: Oh yeah.
Since it is late in the day, the group argues over a watch schedule as they move away from the entrance to set up camp in a comfortable location. Only an hour later, more worgs begin howling to the moon in anticipation of an attack. Inferian wakes up the others.
Inferian: “Rise!”
Falgrim: Riiiiiiiiiiiise.
The group begins to buff and plan for the battle, mainly by pop-culture references (as usual). Inferian suggests retreating to the dungeon, but Calinai proposes funneling them through a choke point.
Inferian: “We’d be wise to find more defensive terrain.”
Falgrim: “Aye, that’s true.”
Inferian: “Up the trees. Shit they’re building fires! Who saw this coming?!”
DM: “Four little birds in… four… stone trees!”
Inferian: “I have a psicrystal!”
Calinai: “Who are you telling that to?”
Inferian: “The worgs! They’re only singing about four! Also you have a snake! Let’s fuck up their rhyme! ‘Four little birds and one crystal and one… aww never mind.’”
DM: “FIIIIVE GOOOOOLDEN RIIIINGS!”
The group retreats into the ruins, Inferian cursing all the way because a worg has immediately started worrying at his tent. The DM briefly confuses the duration for Mage Armor -- one hour per level - with the casting time. Inferian and Calinai burst into RAGE about a werewolf movie they saw!
Inferian: The wolf-man has attacked you! “Oh, it only attacked us when we were in the tour bus!”
Calinai: The wolf just goes to town on the people inside the tour bus! There’s other people there, he’s just killing the tour bus!
Inferian: He’s standing in the middle of the crowd doing NOTHING, and then the tour bus-
Calinai: Falls over.
Inferian: “Tour bus makes me ANGRY!” Leaps in, starts… what a godawful great movie. Also there were like twenty minutes of kinky torture, I don’t understand that at all. That’s what we walked in on. Twenty minutes of kinky torture.
DM: Terry Goodkind must have written the script. Heh heh heh… Zedd.
Calinai: This werewolf was just sitting around, tour buses would go by and make fun of him.
Inferian: (having foolishly looked up the movie, voice going up two octaves and forty decibels) HOW DID IT WIN AN ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST MAKEUP!? THERE IS NO GOD! THEY LOOKED LIKE WOOKIES! Oh! According to this it was a box office disappointment and received mostly unfavorable reviews!
Falgrim: Wow. You went off the deep end.
Inferian: THEY. LOOKED. LIKE. WOOKIES!
Calinai: It was a horrible outfit -
Inferian: WOOKIES!
Calinai: There was a scene like at the end, we were watching, there was like two werewolves going at it and I think the director was like, “You know, people won’t be able to tell which is which,” so one of the werewolves just pointlessly rips his shirt off.
Inferian: Shirts versus skins!
Calinai: Just for the sole purpose so people could tell the difference!
Inferian: (whimpering)
Calinai: And Anthony Hopkins was in this piece of crap.
Inferian: (still whimpering) Hugo Weaving.. and Danny Elfman did the music! They needed money!
Calinai: Is the economy so bad even Anthony Hopkins does this shit? (to Inferian) Step back, Inferian.
Inferian: (deep breaths) Okay. Think I got it under control now.
Valiha: Close the wiki page! He’s going to scroll down and then bitch some more because somebody else he knows is in that movie. “WHY THE HELL IS SHE IN HERE!”
Calinai: “I have some other buffs prepared-“
Inferian: You’re right. Frank Welker is attached to this disgrace. FRANK….. WELKER. He did the roars and growls for the werewolves.
DM: He and Hugo Weaving are probably good buddies now. He’s on speed-dial.
Initiative is rolled! Falgrim and Calinai go first. Falgrim of course charges, Power Attacks, drops a worg in one hit, but misses on his Cleave. Calinai unleashes a Fiery Burst. A worg damages Falgrim to the tune of 5, then tries to trip as per his ability; Falgrim laughs it off by rolling 27 on his trip check. The other worgs burst into the casters; one bites Inferian, whose temporary hit points absorb it. The wolf ties him on the trip. The other one fails to bite Calinai. Valiha steps forward and hits a wolf with an Acid Splash sword blow. Inferian deals 28 points of cold damage to the worg that attacked him.
Calinai: No need for me to use Burning Hands any more, you done exploded the one.
DM: While seriously wounded, the soul still burns.
Calinai: Well in this case…
DM: It still shivers a little.
Calinai casts in melee combat, meaning everyone has to pause and look up the Concentration rules for defensive casting. Inferian hurls oatmeal raisin pies at people, because they don’t hurt.
Calinai: Hey, those are delicious! Those don’t deserve to be thrown. Use these. (passing over Star Crunch)
Inferian: Those hurt! These don’t.
Valiha: Actually, that hurt.
Inferian: How does that hurt, it’s only a pie! (hurls one at his own face) Nothing! (does it again) Nothing! (does it again) Nothing!
DM: We’ve secretly switched out the oatmeal raisin pie with an iron hockey puck! “Nothing! This one too!” Bong!
Valiha: I’ve got a MARK here!
Inferian: That’s a tattoo, Valiha.
Falgrim hews a worg for 22. Calinai unloads a Burning Hands for fourteen; one bursts into flames, though another saves for half. A worg bites Inferian, but his vigor/share pain combo with his psicrystal leaves him with no meaningful harm. He is tripped!
Falgrim: The worg tromps off, seeing a job well-done.
DM: It now casts Expeditious Retreat, having done what it came to do!
Calinai: The worgs all leave. “We tripped him, guys! Our mission was successful!”
Inferian: “The Stormlord shall HAVE HIS VENGEANCE!”
Falgrim comes under attack from a worg. Inferian drops a large steel d20 onto a oatmeal raisin pie repeatedly.
Calinai: Oh my god, he’s ruining that delicious cream pie!
Inferian: It’s not ruined if it’s still delicious!
Falgrim: Take a bite: “Awwwwww.”
Inferian: That’s odd.
Calinai: There’s a warning label on the cream pie, “Don’t drop solid metal dies into the center of the cream pie repeatedly.”
Inferian: That’s oddly specific.
Valiha crits the wolf with another acid splash strike for 19, slaying it.
DM: I take it Inferian would wish to attempt to… rise this turn?
Falgrim: Riiise!
Inferian: Riiiiiiiiiise.
Inferian does so, suffering a rather meaningless AOO. He returns 13 fire damage.
Falgrim: If they had built-in thermometers it would have popped!
Inferian: Well not necessarily, I froze it last round, remember.
DM: One of the worg’s eyes has begun to jelly in its socket.
Calinai: Aww, I was about to cast Boiling Blood on him.
Inferian: I shouldn’t have softballed it.
Valiha: It’s a WOLF, Inferian. you have to punish it for the severity of the Wolfman.
DM: The World Worg Organization did issue a statement claiming no ties or affiliation with anything like that.
Calinai bursts the final worg, leaving only its tail behind as the rest of its body incinerates. Falgrim attempts to slay a worg, only to discover there are no worgs left to slay to his immense disappointment. This barely lasts, as more worgs burst into the fray to assault the heroes. Falgrim and a worg tie a trip roll again. Inferian wild surges but gets enervated from it and loses his action. Calinai unleashes another Fiery Burst.
Calinai: Nine points of fire damage to that wolf!
Inferian: You exploded him good. And he says, “What a horrible night to have a burst.”
DM: (groaning) No. Thou shalt not pun on Castlevania. That’s one of the commandments of this table.
Inferian: You’re right, I’ll go make my apologies to the graveyard duck.
The game derails into watching videos of lyrics put to the Castlevania theme. Falgrim hews the worg attacking him for 24. The DM grumbles as a worg bites Valiha for only 5 points of damage. She dodges the trip, then shocking grasp sword-attacks the worg for 19, slaying it. The field is theirs.
Calinai: “We just can’t get a break. I think we should maybe head back to camp, maybe try to sleep the rest of the night, y’know?”
DM: You can still hear howls.
The characters quickly heal their minor injuries. The DM pretty much tells them to find shelter or keep getting attacked. Inferian sends his psicrystal back to camp to see if there are worgs there.
Calinai: To his horror, there’s three of them just pissing on his tent.
Inferian: Only mine, too. Come on!
Calinai: “Ladies are in these tents, we gotta leave ‘em alone.”
DM: Your tent does appear to be disturbed but your psicrystal sees no worgs immediately within your campsite.
The characters attempt to find sanctuary in the ruins, but nothing is salvageable. Reluctantly they head to the staircase into the underground ruins. Inferian sends his psicrystal down. The crystal keeps going down, far enough that the characters can retreat into the staircase and shut the door behind them - but not with their mounts. The psicrystal finds the bottom about 250 feet down at last; there is a little area where they could comfortably camp.
Falgrim: Is there like a door down there - oh. “Is there a door down there?”
DM: You’re asking his psicrystal?
Falgrim: I’m asking him to ask his psicrystal, I don’t know how he does it!
Inferian: It hasn’t actually gone anywhere. It’s just outside of our field of vision, talking to the DM.
The group wearily begins trudging down the stairs, wishing for easier ways down. Calinai complains (justifiably).
DM: You secured the doors behind you?
Inferian: No, we leave them open. Wolves come and feast on our asses.
Falgrim: Sign with a finger pointing down.
DM: Wary of traps or opposition, the wolves send in TAD-209, who upon seeing the stairs timidly tests one…
Falgrim: And then it’s just us running away from it.
DM: You don’t even move your bedrolls, you just see it flailing around all night.
Falgrim: “It’s like a lullaby.”
The group cautiously investigates the door at the bottom, finding that it opens into a 40’ enclosure which hints at being plundered long ago, but is otherwise empty. They set up camp in the light of Calinai’s Dancing Lights. The group reminisces fondly over their vinyl mat and the many good times that came with it
Falgrim: Quick, put filler in the audio!
Inferian: (singing)The game takes a brief break. Once they reassemble, they begin the by-now trite arguments overminatures.
Calinai: Aaah, I’ll take the caster chick for a change.
Inferian: Valiha, what do you want?
Valiha: My usual. The chick with the staff.
Inferian: Too late, already called by an actual caster chick this game.
The DM goes meta and lets them sleep the night without worry. Revitalized and refreshed the group prepares to enter the ruin proper!
Calinai: We wake up to see two wolf-men fighting.
Inferian: One rips off its shirt.
They step into the next room, which clearly was once a foyer. Several doors lead out - to the left, to the right, and larger ones to the center. Again the group uses Dancing Lights to illuminate the complex as they travel. They investigate the right-hand door, listening but hearing nothing, then the next right-hand door beyond it. They find very dim illumination in the room beyond, as well as some waist-high foliage of some unusual sort. Inferian sends his psicrystal in; the plants do not react.
Calinai: “Well, we know it’s not attacking.”
Inferian: “Perhaps we should clear them out.”
DM: You’re going to burn the plants?
Calinai: The Fiery Burst should set plants and life on fire.
Inferian: I’m sure we’ll regret this later. They turn out to be medicinal anti-poison plants.
Calinai: We’ll need them later for some super-poisonous snake.
No one knows how to take a sample, so they shrug and ignite it. As the plants burn, something shrieks.
Calinai: Ohhh nooooo.
Falgrim: Well, let’s hope it was evil.
Calinai: My happy-time burn always seems to not lead to good things.
DM: (holding out a hand) Box.
Inferian: (offers a box of Magic cards)
DM: Of minions.
Inferian: Magic cards. An angry nerd challenges us to a duel.
Falgrim: “Set me on fire, will yaaaa?!”
DM: For lack of an immediate solution… (setting out figures)
Inferian: Innocent children.
DM: A pair of very large and very smoldering preying mantises are visible amongst the ashes of the plants that you’ve burned.
Inferian: Of all the things we could have found down here, I think that was probably pretty low on my list of likely suspects.
Calinai: (who has been rambling about a Deck of Many Things in the background for a while, while drawing Magic cards) You are transported to mountain on a distant land.
Inferian: I… conquer it.
Calinai: (draws) Another mountain.
Inferian: I conquer that.
Calinai: (draws) You’ve been approached by barbarians.
DM: You’ve been poached! You’re gonna be served with eggs!
Inferian: I use my mountain kingdoms to repel their attacks.
Calinai: You get nothing overall. The barbarians and the mountains cancel each other out.
Inferian: Somehow I got a tattoo. Oh wait, that was from the oatmeal cream pie.
Valiha: Go to hell, Inferian.
The mantids are still alive so initiative is rolled! Valiha steps forward and for some reason everyone threatens to take their AOOs as she moves out of their threatened spaces. She hews a mantis as Calinai unloads a Fiery Burst.
Calinai: “You’re the one who set us on fire!” (pausing) How do they speak Common?
Inferian: “I mean… chitter! Chitter chitter!”
Valiha: “Meow, meow meow!”
Inferian delivers a vicious longspearing. A mantid attacks her and misses, but the other one squeezes her in its grip for 14.
Valiha: Holy fuck, ouch! I have 6 hit points left!
Falgrim hacks with his sword, threatening but not confirming a crit; nevertheless, he delivers 25 points of damage, slaying the mantis, then cleaves the other mantis in turn. With the battlefield theirs, they investigate the rest of this greenhouse, only to find it comes to an abrupt end some distance back.
Calinai: “I kinda feel bad we burned down these poor guys’ greenhouse, but I’m not sure how this would work without… any sort of sunlight.”
Inferian: “There are clearly things down here that they feed upon.”
Calinai: “Well, they don’t need them any more.”
Inferian: “We’ve disturbed the ecosystem. If we were druids or rangers, we’d be spanking ourselves right now.”
Calinai: “Well that’s okay, ‘cuz I’m not.”
Inferian: “Neither am I.” (a pause) HIGH FIVE!
Calinai: WOO!
Valiha: We are not friends of Captain Planet.
Calinai: “I’m a personal friend of Captain Pollution!”
Falgrim: “I got this goo all over me sword, eeewaaaaeeegh.”
Inferian: “That’s what she said.”
The room is otherwise empty. Inferian searches for secret doors but finds nothing. They move back to the hall and go one room down. It has numerous boxes within it, none of them locked.
DM: Throwing open the lids on the boxes you find… dust of centuries and that sort of thing. In the corners of the room at the bottom of some of the boxes, you find, not in relation to the map but in relation to my hand, small spiders scurrying around because you disturbed them.
Inferian: We follow the spiders.
DM: They’re not running from a basilisk!
Calinai sets her viper on the spiders. The boxes are too old to contain anything useful. Falgrim oddly begins checking his list of languages.
Falgrim: Olde Tongue! I speak it! I think we all speak it.
Inferian: “Dost thou speakest the Olde Tongue, yon friende dwarf?”
Falgrim: “Aye.”
Calinai: He’s like, “Olde hello.”
Inferian: “I beest speaking to thou in thine Olde Tongue.”
Calinai: No you’re not, you’re speaking like a retard.
Inferian: “Little dost thou know that the progenitors of thine olde tongue were in fact retarded.”
The game is headed for a relatively early wrap-up, though, so the players send light sources on down the hall and call it a day.