Evil DM is evil.
So my character broke just a little bit last night.
When last we'd left things, the party had figured out a plan to rescue the kidnapped prince and were just about to roll initiative. Well, apparently things didn't go so well, because this week we all woke up in prison, shortly before being herded into a fighting arena for the entertainment of the masses. As you do. (For reference, the country we're in has largely been conquered by Yuan-ti, a race of evil snake people who can pass for human if they feel like it.)
Okay, fine. We're a high level party, some of us epic. Bring it on. First monster is a purple worm, which promptly swallows two PCs whole and grabs my character in a bite attack (and starts flirting with our kobold ranger, creeping everyone out.) We gather ourselves together and manage to get it down to below half hit points, so we're feeling pretty accomplished.
Then we hear a grinding sound and the whole arena fills with water. Quickly. Like within one round there's sixty feet of water quickly. Those of us who can't fly start making swim checks, absolutely the last thing any PC ever wants to do, and the DM announces that we can see dark shapes under the water.
Those shapes turn out to be hydra heads. Hydra heads and gigantic crocodiles. Luckily the druid has a high initiative and casts a spell that creates a huge wave of water that smashes the crocs against the wall, stunning them, and lets my character (who had managed to make the worm drop her) roll a balance check to ride the wave into the stands. Once there, I resist the urge to start attacking the crowd (my girl is CG) and instead head for the royal booth. The vizier has already taken some damage thanks to the kobold ranger and is oozing tiny snakes instead of bleeding, so he's clearly some kind of snake monster. My girl makes a running jump, leaps over the side of the box, lands in the midst of the vizier and his guards. Then she executes a maneuver thank basically turns her into a whirling ball of death that neutralizes the guards.
Then my character sees The Lever. It's the only lever in the booth (I made sure) and obviously something made the water rise. With the rest of the party still either fighting the hydra or trying desperately not to drown, she decides to take a chance and pull the lever.
Sounds reasonable, right? And it does make the water level drop --- and unleashes a massive shockwave that murders everyone in the crowd. The DM took sadistic glee in describing piles of corpses the PCs had to climb over to get out of there.
My girl is a warblade, which at high levels basically means you're a human meat cleaver. She takes her murder machine powers very seriously. If you're facing her in combat, sure, it's probably not going to end well for you, but this is was a whole stadium full of civilians --- and she doesn't even know whether how much of the crowd was Yuan-ti or whether the humans were there under duress. She basically had a little breakdown and the kobold ranger (her best friend in the party) had to come and see if she was okay. She actually asked him, "We are the good guys, right?" (and "Why would they build it to do that?!")
*pets poor, traumatized warblade*
***
So I signed up for
kink_bingo, because I am a fool.:)
I didn't get anything that actively squicks me, luckily. And now I'm wondering if the shadowy tendril things the Void started manifesting towards the end would count for "tentacles":).
***
This quote about the upcoming Crow reboot fills me with horror:
That means it's going to talk, people. Ye gods.
When last we'd left things, the party had figured out a plan to rescue the kidnapped prince and were just about to roll initiative. Well, apparently things didn't go so well, because this week we all woke up in prison, shortly before being herded into a fighting arena for the entertainment of the masses. As you do. (For reference, the country we're in has largely been conquered by Yuan-ti, a race of evil snake people who can pass for human if they feel like it.)
Okay, fine. We're a high level party, some of us epic. Bring it on. First monster is a purple worm, which promptly swallows two PCs whole and grabs my character in a bite attack (and starts flirting with our kobold ranger, creeping everyone out.) We gather ourselves together and manage to get it down to below half hit points, so we're feeling pretty accomplished.
Then we hear a grinding sound and the whole arena fills with water. Quickly. Like within one round there's sixty feet of water quickly. Those of us who can't fly start making swim checks, absolutely the last thing any PC ever wants to do, and the DM announces that we can see dark shapes under the water.
Those shapes turn out to be hydra heads. Hydra heads and gigantic crocodiles. Luckily the druid has a high initiative and casts a spell that creates a huge wave of water that smashes the crocs against the wall, stunning them, and lets my character (who had managed to make the worm drop her) roll a balance check to ride the wave into the stands. Once there, I resist the urge to start attacking the crowd (my girl is CG) and instead head for the royal booth. The vizier has already taken some damage thanks to the kobold ranger and is oozing tiny snakes instead of bleeding, so he's clearly some kind of snake monster. My girl makes a running jump, leaps over the side of the box, lands in the midst of the vizier and his guards. Then she executes a maneuver thank basically turns her into a whirling ball of death that neutralizes the guards.
Then my character sees The Lever. It's the only lever in the booth (I made sure) and obviously something made the water rise. With the rest of the party still either fighting the hydra or trying desperately not to drown, she decides to take a chance and pull the lever.
Sounds reasonable, right? And it does make the water level drop --- and unleashes a massive shockwave that murders everyone in the crowd. The DM took sadistic glee in describing piles of corpses the PCs had to climb over to get out of there.
My girl is a warblade, which at high levels basically means you're a human meat cleaver. She takes her murder machine powers very seriously. If you're facing her in combat, sure, it's probably not going to end well for you, but this is was a whole stadium full of civilians --- and she doesn't even know whether how much of the crowd was Yuan-ti or whether the humans were there under duress. She basically had a little breakdown and the kobold ranger (her best friend in the party) had to come and see if she was okay. She actually asked him, "We are the good guys, right?" (and "Why would they build it to do that?!")
*pets poor, traumatized warblade*
***
So I signed up for
kink_bingo, because I am a fool.:)
I didn't get anything that actively squicks me, luckily. And now I'm wondering if the shadowy tendril things the Void started manifesting towards the end would count for "tentacles":).
***
This quote about the upcoming Crow reboot fills me with horror:
- Also different is Norrington’s approach to the production design, which diverges from the film’s original look as established by Alex Proyas, and his take on the “Crow mythology”: “"The Crow itself is a creature in this movie-it's not just a bird," Pressman said. "It's got a personality and a character. Not like Godzilla exactly, but it's very different [and has] a more active role in the story."
That means it's going to talk, people. Ye gods.