(no subject)
Played D&D again last night and we're finally getting to the end of the campaign I wrote after six or seven months. In total there's Nine of us that play but only five of us that play every week. Sadly it's the most ridiculous characters that are the mainstays:
Billy. A Gnome who isn't sure if he's a Lawful Evil cleric, a chaotic good sorceror or a Neutral fighter. Oh, and in times of greats stress he becomes possessed by an ancient mud god. Called Bob.
Tenebrious. Chaotic Neutral Half-Elf Barbarian. Bitter and obssessed after years of persecution due to his half breed heritage. Desperate to prove he can earn his way using his skill with arms rather than his rakishly handsome looks. While he's naturally well spoken and intelligent he usually 'talk like dis' to appear appropriately Barbaric.
Jerome/Tsorte. A halfling thief and Human Sorceror respectively. Both Neutral. Jerome has a penchant for cutting throats from behind and Tsorte only knows one spell, fireball, which he casts a LOT
And I saved the bast for last...
Mr Famous. Neutral Good Gladiator. Super tough and incredibly spawny in everything he does. His only weakness is his ineptitude with battlecries. Past gems include "Mr Famous is my name, Mr Famous is my game", "Behold my enormous weapon!" and the genius "I'm scared of you!"
The party mid encounter
Same pic with subtitles and a bit smaller. Don't ask me why.
It's been incredibly frustrating that my weaving plot of intrigue and mystery has been completely lost on this bunch of cretins.
They bumble through everything, paying no attention to vital clues and just wanting to kill stuff.
The plot, if you're interested, goes like this....
The party woke up in cells with no idea where they were or how they got there. Once out of the cells they discoverd it to be the home of some horrific creatures from the Far Realm called Kaorti. They were vaguely humanoid and reptilian but twisted and malformed. On the wy to find the exit they discovered a chamber where kaorti were secreting some form of resin into live ogres and hobgoblins tranforming them into Kaorti. Once they busted out and ran away they found themselves on a lump of rock floating in the Astral Plane. Luckily also on the rock was a hideout of some Githyanki pirates who the party killed and then nicked their boat. Hurrah!.
They gadded about astrally for a while, sometimes nipping through portals and onto various other planes of existence including, Celestia, Gehenna, The Abyss, The ethereal plane. encountering, Demons, devils, ghosts, psychic vampires, a skybleeder, interplaner merchants, more githyanki and an ancient silver dragon. At several points during said gadding they were attacked by Swordwraiths (undead knights) who demanded they returned the crown. Obviously the party didn't know what they were on about and killed them. Obviously.
Eventually they reached The Plane Of Shadows. Once there, after fighting a load of Shadows, they met a bloke called Perrakis who, it turned out, had been sending the Swordwraiths after them. I say bloke, he was more of an 7 foot tall mean looking warrior in full plate mail armour. The party decided, for once, not to attack. Mainly because he was surrounded by 30 of the Swordwraiths not from any desire for a chat.
Perrakis then filled in the details of what had happened previous to them arrving at his camp. It went sort of like this.
He had originally hired the party on the material plane to acquire The Crown of Chareos, a mysterious artifact. They had tracked it down to a ruined temple (where else?) and had just found it when they were ambushed by a large group of Githyanki. One of the Sorcerors had a some kind of amnesia causing device with which he blasted the party rendering them inconcious and, uh, amnesia'd. The Githyanki then bundled up the party and carried tham off for some nefarious purpose. Once they returned to the astral plane they were set upon by Kaorti who killed most of them and had off with both the party and the crown.
Not long after that the Kaorti were set upon themselves by a large demon who also stealed the crown. A couple of hours later the party woke up in their cells.
There we go, everyone is all up to speed. Now what though?
The party rested a but, did some shopping (I dunno where, there's surprisingly little in the way of shops of the Plane Of Shadow) and went up a level.
In the morning they chatted a bit more to Perrakis and wanted to know more about the crown. Thus began more elongated history...
Hundreds of years ago there was a small but flourishing realm called Liljeroth which was ruled by a good and wise king. Unsurprisingly his name was Perrakis. King Perrakis, like all good kings, had a trusted advisor who was actually a bit of a shifty bugger. This particular shifty buggers name was Chareos. See how things are fitting now?
Chareos was a powerful wizard but didn't feel he was yet powerful enough to defeat Perrakis who was fairly handy with a sword. Soooo. He decided he'd have a go at summoning a demon to force into servitude. He managed to snag a powerful Balor (the winged one) called Velok who agreed, under duress, to aid Chareos in the overthrow. Together they attacked and fought Perrakis and lo! The fight was brutal. It ended with the souls of Perrakis and his faithful banished to the plane of shadow where they eventually became the swordwraiths and he became a shadowlord.
That wasn't the end of it for Chareos though fpr Velok reckoned he'd quite like Liljeroth for his own. partly out of greed and mainly out of revenge for the indignity of serving such a shit. So mighty was their battle, so powerful the magics unleashed that Liljeroth itself was warped and twisted. the land blackened, the skies turned red and all life was twisted into vile undead things. Velok tore Chareos apart and thought he'd one. Which he had kinda. However. Unbeknownst to Velok Chareos had created a magical crown that, if he should die, would store his soul, personality, awareness, whatever in it until he could either heal his body or pinch a new one. Unfortunatly the huge power surge caused as they fought warped the magic of the crown and he became trapped inside. Able to to use some of his powers, communicate and temporarily possess but essentially just a talking crown. Bugger. He escaped by possessing one of the undead hanging about and fleeing into the Ethereal Plane. What happened after that, nobody knows.
The party are now gonna travel to see some dude who might know how to get to Liljeroth and go have a shufty about there to see whats going on. It's gonna mean fighting a load of undead and some demons mainly Vrocks (the birdy one) & Hezrou (the huge toad thing) but the odd Glabrezu (not the birdy one) too. They'll find Velok on the throne with the crown and probably fight him. Only by destroying both can they begin to bring order back to Liljeroth and also allow Perrakis and his knights to come home.
Something along those lines anyway. It's incredibly hard to write plots for D&D stuff that arent complete cheese. So I figure why bother. if it's fun it's fun doesn't matter if it's cliche'd or not. Besides, all the subtleties are lost on this lot. They just wanna fight stuff and get treasure. Philistines.
