The Story So Far -1

We play D&D one Saturday almost every month. Once upon a time we met and played every week, but we don't anymore mostly because of life. We play with almost the same group as when we started playing together in 2000. We've had some people come and go. Most of our friends now live in different parts of our state, so meeting more often now just isn't practical. 

We go by the name of Team Sidequest. I don't remember when we started applying that name to our group. It is a fairly accurate description. Our very first campaign, our goal was to travel to the dwarven lands to do something--I don't remember what. We played for 2.5 years every week, and we never made it to the dwarven lands, and, in fact, spent half the time going in the exact opposite direction. 

Right now, we are running through a series of adventures that Shaun and I are writing together. I personally think it's going to be epic, should they ever manage to get through it. This has been an interesting challenge, learning to work together to run the game together. Our party, should everyone show up, consists of a teifling warlock, half-elf bard, elf paladin, human cleric, fire genasi eldrich knight (I think), rogue/bard (I don't remember the race), gnome cleric, and barbarian (also don't remember the race--I know, I'm a bad DM). That sounds like a lot, but usually a couple people aren't able to come each time we meet (because adulting sucks). We are playing in the same homebrew world the original campaign from 2000 was run in. It takes place 200 years after the end of that campaign. It's a high fantasy world with some steampunk level technology. The technology is fairly new to the world. We had the early framework of it in the original game, but it was only a few neat gadgets here and there. Things have grown and developed over the years. This seemed logical to us. A lot of the new technology is highly steeped in magic because it makes sense to us and because it seems like that could be a lot of fun. This world was originally created in second edition, which means that both teiflings and fire genasi were not playable races. We generally didn't allow gnomes for no reason other than we did not like gnomes, and we felt they did not add much to the world. Occasional gnome oddities have shown up (including our current gnome). The current gnome is both a student and a specimen in the university in the main city of the area our group is in. The fire genesi's story and existence is going to be worked into the campaign, so I will not say much about that at this time, other than he was raised as an orphan, and does not know if there are any others of his race--whether he is the result of genetic manipulation and magical experimentation or if he is part of a race of people that is very seclusive, or whatever. The teifling has decided to be an indirect descendant of the human knight from the original story. The knight's neice/great-neice (I can't remember) married Rhom Corsith, a demon villain from the original campaign, and  the teifling is their offspring. He is on a quest to destroy the knight from the original story (who is alive still because he is Sulis' whipping boy--Sulis is the goddess of life in our world--as established in the original campaign). Interestingly enough, we'd already written a role for the old knight into our current campaign, so that should make for some fun roleplaying.

That was a lot... And now for a recap of the story so far, which will also take a bit because we've played several sessions. Our group started on an airship travelling to Whitestone (the urban center of the country they are in)--we told our players they would start there, and they would need to come up with a reason to travel to Whitestone. The goal of this session was to introduce the world as it would be for this campaign. There were airships, with electric lighting. They had a radio box on the ship for music that ran off a mix of magic and technology. And so on. It was a murder mystery. Someone on the ship was trying to steal some of the cargo by redirecting the ship to another location. In the end, the party caught the pawn, but not the true culprit. She escaped, but they did prevent the ship from diverting and saved the cargo. They arrive in Whitestone. Whitestone is a city run by the most lawful of lawful paladins. They have rules for everything. They have systems and organizations for everything. You have to be there for a reason. Tourists and travelers are allowed to register and stay for short periods of time, and have very limited access to the city. You can register as a researcher at the library (this is what the fire genasi did). You can join an adventuring guild. You could register with any number of crafting guilds or merchant groups. The point is: they track everything in this city. Our party joined a guild called the Wild Cards. For fans of The Slayers, this guild is run by retired adventurers Rina Universe and Gary. There was also another guild called The Devoted, led by Marigold, the daughter of Martina and Xangulus. Not major plot points, but fun. They spent the next session running side quests. Obvious side quests. As in on the bulletin board in their guild obvious side quest, which even included the cliche "rats in the basement" quest. 

The last 2 sessions have picked up the main plot. They got a preview of the cargo from the airship during a public demonstration in the Whitestone amphitheater. The cargo was what the wizards' guild is calling a Dragon Heartstone and it connects to a functionally crude mechanical dragon, which is about the size of a backyard storage shed, is clunky, but can still fly. They also find that a small team of adventurers sent by the wizards' guild to bring back historical artifacts (non-magical) from an ancient ruins related to a legend that inspired the creation of the mechanical dragon and the heartstone power source has not returned after several weeks. Conveniently the team is from The Wild Cards. So, our party gears up and travels to the Everclear Swamp. In the swamp is an ancient city overgrown by the swamp/jungle (think Cambodian style ruins). This dungeon was a maze (literally) of traps and impassible terrain because of flooding and the age of the buildings. 

I created the map for this dungeon by designing the ancient town and placing it over a maze. The maze indicated the passable terrain. They could cross the other areas where flooded, but risked random encounters with native creatures. These ruins had been taken over by Histherians, lizardmen (the dragonborn of our world as dragonborn were not things when we created this world in 2000, inspired by the draconians of the Dragonlance world). The Histherians were running a cult worshiping the green dragon, Acida. Acida was young and vain, and also lazy, since the Histherians were pretty much providing her with food through their collection of captives. The ruins came up to cliffs on one side and beach and ocean on another. On the ocean side, the Histherians had a boat that they used to engage in piracy to collect money to fund their community and their dragon, as well as collect captives to feed their dragon. Our players wandered haphazardly through the dungeon. We finished the first session with our players overwhelmed and captured. We started last weekend's session with our party in prison (minus the rogue that had been captured at an earlier time, but had managed to free himself and two members of the group they had come to rescue). 

Our human cleric joined our rogue to come to the group's rescue. The cleric had been absent for several sessions reference holidays. We wrote him back in by telling him he has to go to this temple in the ruins in the Everclear Swamp and obtain a green amulet. They meet up with the rest of the group, right after they finish breaking out of the caves. The party now has a better idea of what they're up against. They also know there is someone or something the Histherians are working for, and that whatever it is likes sacrifices--one of our players was only pretending to be unconscious when they were captured at the end of last session and also conveniently spoke draconic. They clear the temple, where the prison was. They discover that there is a tunnel in the cliffs behind the city that leads to the "Master." They've also deduced that the Master is probably a dragon. They go to the dragon's layer and defeat the dragon, which was not played to the most ruthless it could have been because we'd determined that she had grown lazy and complacent. She was used to being provided with food. She hadn't had to hunt or take care of herself in years. We played her as if her combat skills were rusty. This is because the base dragon stats in the Monster Manual were meant for a slightly high leveled party. Now scattered around the ruins, along with mosaics of dragons in several different colors standing with people (although maybe a few with just green dragons), the party found several pendants with a particular symbol on it. They found an indentation that matched the pendant in the ground next to the dragon's hoard. Inside they find a tunnel and a glowing green portal. Inside the portal is a circular room with no visible floor except a narrow walkway. Green mist comes up from the pits on either side of the walkway. The walkway extends to the center of the room where suspended over a pedestal is a gold amulet with a green gemstone set in it. The gemstone has the same symbol that's on the pendants inscribed inside the gem. 

Clearly this amulet is going to be a powerful magical object (and it is), but they have only been able to determine that it provides protection against and resistance to poison. It has other abilities, that should come out as we go through this campaign.

That's the game so far in as much of a nutshell as my rambling self could put it in. Future episodes will only cover events from one session and not need the introductory stuff. 

Second Best Way to Spend the Weekend

Clearly, as far as my opinion goes, the best way to spend a weekend would be at an anime convention hanging out with friends, cosplay, and play geeky games. Since that wasn't an option for this past weekend, I did the next best thing, hung out with friends and played geeky games all weekend. This past weekend was supposed to be our last (probably) D&D game at this house, except almost everyone was sick; we'd already downgraded the D&D game to hang out and play cards or board games since my husband was recovering from a plague-like cold and didn't have the voice to run the D&D game. It turns out 80% of our group had the same plague-like cold, and so the turnout for this weekend's fun was small, but we made the most of it. =)

We played a scenario for both the Ravenloft board game and Wrath of Ashardalon, the more standard D&D board game. It was amazingly epic. For the first (and probably last) time ever we managed to go through both games without anyone dying. I was especially shocked with the Ravenloft scenario; you think Ravenloft and the first thing that comes to mind is player death. The board game does a great job of capturing that feeling from the table-top game setting. It wasn't like we were necessarily going after one of the easier scenarios either. My husband picked out the biggest monster mini in the box, and said "Hey, let's go after this thing." If anything though, those two games back-to-back made the last (probably) game get-together here memorable.

After playing the D&D board games, we moved onto Munchkin. We played Zombie Cthulu Munchkin and Super Munchkin Bites. I especially liked the Zombie Munchkin and Munchkin Cthulu combination. It seemed an oddly appropriate set to mix, and the sets played well together. Super Munchkin is, I think, by far the most over-powered over the Munchkin games. We joked that by pairing it with the vampire Munchkin game, we were creating Vampire Mary-Sue characters... *cough*Twilight*cough*

We topped the evening off with pizza. It's not what we'd planned on preparing for dinner. However since we had such a small turnout, and it was such a relaxing evening of playing, it just felt like a pizza night. We finished the evening off with pizza eating, chatting, and watching an episode and a half of Tiger and Bunny on Anime Season--my computer decided it wasn't interested in cooperating after the half way point on the 2nd episode. All things considered, it was a fun weekend. I did get a little bit of drawing done, although it wasn't nearly as much as I should have. On the other hand, it was nice to get a break from working on things for Anime USA and just relax for a bit.

Adventures of Team Sidequest, Vol. 1

Since I spent most of my weekend enjoying the antics of my awesome D&D group, Team Sidequest, I thought I'd spend today's blog retelling some of Saturday's adventure which happened to involve chasing a rather long sidequest that didn't have much to do with the main plot. I'm going to try writing this as a journal-style narrative from my character's point of view, so we'll see how that goes. My character is a Buddhist Monk elf runt (4'2" tall, about even with the halfling and gnome) who is always hungry. She carries a small arsenal of dual wielded weapons. I think they're hidden in the sleeves of her monk robes, and since this is an anime-themed game, I think that's more than reasonable. =P Basic synopsis up till now: We are in Ravenloft chasing a kidnapped little girl with weird blue tattoos on her back and facing down a series of Egyptian-themed mini-gods who are part of the kidnapping scheme. Added into the mix is a horde of modified zombies that come out only in the day time. We've defeated the pig god and the bat god, and there are supposedly 10 more. Anyways, hope you enjoy this. =)

Tuesday
We are in a small trade town just on the other side of the gorge where we defeated the bat-god. It's kind of dull, and the food's not all that great. Sinedentas [dragonborn avenger, basically Toothless] just got an orange kitten. Jim [half orc samurai] got word that a group of priests were seen with a little girl heading toward some port town. I hope the food there is better.

We waited till dusk to leave town since the zombies here don't come out at night. We're crossing a desert right now. It's very dull, and there's no food. I'm so hungry.

Wednesday
I got the best meal ever last night! Near the edge of the desert we encountered a dwarf and his daughter, who happens to be an elf--she was amazing; she could eat without even removing her ninja mask. =O When we found the dwarf he was just off the road hollering. Although that wasn't too unusual, since dwarfs yell a lot normally, Jim and Treviac [blind teifling wizard, with Tyresius, an owl familiar] wanted to investigate. Whatever. I'm glad they did because it turned out that the dwarf, whose name was Gregor, I think, was being attacked by what he called a bullette. It was this giant thing that would bury itself in the sand and jump out and try and eat people. =D We dispatched it, and the best part: Gregor was a great chef. With some help pulling apart the bullette's crunchy exterior we carved it up and cooked it in malt liquor. As a bonus we found a not-yet-digested lamb in the bulette's stomach and Gregor made it into a tasty stew. There's nothing like a full stomach; I find it very enlightening.

The town we are in today is more interesting than the last town, but the people here are not so nice. I sat in the town square famished for 2 hours, and no one was willing to offer food to the poor starving elf girl. T_T It looks like we're going to be here a few days while we wait for the next ferry to come in. On the plus side, Ralph [half-orc martial artist] got a temporary job hunting for river crocodiles. That was fun, and I got some croc stew out of it. =D It was an easy job too; he just had to get in the water and thrash about for a bit, and then poof, a crocodile would pop up and the fishermen with us would spear it.

Later in the evening, the rest of our traveling group came by and said that Sinedentas had gotten word of a temple not far from here that they were going to check out. I was full of croc stew, so I saw no reason to stick around. Ralph and I joined up with everyone else.

Thursday
It's almost dawn, but we're finally here. I'm hungry again. As usual, no one brought any food. Meh. Guess we'll go look around the place.

Friday
So the temple ended up being more interesting than it looked. There were four sections branching off from the central chamber, each with an elemental theme. First we went down the water side. It was really cold down there and we got into a battle with a ton of weird fish people. I passed out half way through the battle; I was so hungry, I couldn't really focus on the things. Kira (gnome cleric) said I almost drowned. That's possible since the room was pretty much a giant cavern lake. I don't really remember much of anything, although I dreamed that I'd visited the Eternal Emperor and he gave me a great banquet. It was sad waking up from that dream, but on the plus side, when I woke up, all the fishy people were dead, and since they were more fish than people, I saw no reason why I couldn't cook a couple of them up for a snack.

We took the fire section next. It was guarded by a great fire elemental, but Ralph booted it in the head. The elemental made a o.O face, like it had never received such a powerful boot to the head before, which it probably hadn't. I don't think most people try kicking fire elementals in the face, if that's what you could really call it. The earth section had a gorgon. I really wanted to climb up on it's back and use this pressure point power I have to immobilize something--kind of like acupuncture, only more useful. It would have looked really cool, but the gorgon wouldn't stay still long enough. It was dead before I could catch up to it. Sadly, neither the fire elemental nor the gorgon were edible. I was starting to get hungry again. In the air section, Treviac found an air archon and negotiated a way to send it back to its plain of existence. That was easy, and I don't think I could have eaten the archon anyways.

Each section had a key. In the water section, the key was held by a man encased in ice floating in the middle of the lake. We melted the ice to get to it, but unfortunately we melted the key too. Using a ritual Kira determined that if we could collect the water from the ice key, it'd still work. We had plenty of empty waterskins so that wasn't a problem. The fire and earth keys were pretty simple. The air key was interesting; it was essentially incorporeal, so we couldn't pick it up. Treviac sucked it into his mouth and spit it into a bottle. I wonder what it tasted like?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when we got to the temple Sinedentas's kitten couldn't come in the temple. She said she was leaving it near the entrance so it'd be safe, but it turned out that it really could not enter because the temple was warded against it. It also turned out that the kitten could talk and had told Sinedentas that it was really a 20,000 year old gold dragon and was cursed to look like a kitten. So, this was really why Sinedentas had told us to come to this temple. The kitten told us that we needed to use the keys to access an artifact that would change her back into a dragon. Although most everyone was a little grumpy at not being told the real reason we'd run through the temple, the kitten was so adorable that it was hard to stay angry at it for long--except for Kuroshi [human goth/emo/creepy magic girl] who claimed it was a horrific abomination and needed to die.

When we went to use the keys, a ghost of a pretty young lady appeared--the same one that had appeared a week or so ago while we were camped out. Interestingly enough, there were statues and frescos in the temple that looked like her. She kept waving her hands around--telling us that this was something we shouldn't do. The kitten said that she was the King's wife in life and that she was the one responsible for trapping her in a kitten form, so of course she wouldn't want us to get the artifact. Since pretty much every temple we've been to since arriving in this world has been evil, and one even tried to sacrifice us, really, why would we trust the ghost lady? So, we recovered the artifact, which was an ornate dagger. Kira said it was evil, and I guess she'd know, but that made sense since the temple was evil, so we gave it to the cat, except she wasn't really a cat, but she wasn't a gold dragon either; she was Bastet, one of the twelve (now ten) mini-gods here. We tried attacking her, but that didn't go over so well. She was a lot stronger and faster than the other two gods we'd faced before. We settled for snatching the dagger from her and returning it to the temple, which she conveniently still couldn't enter. Boy was she pissed at us. She summoned a swarm of cats to come into the temple after us, and by swarm I mean thousands upon thousands of cats. We retreated to the giant lake. The cats wouldn't follow us into the lake--good thing because I think they would have eaten us. We did eventually find an alternative exit via an outlet where the water from the lake washed into another cave. Long story short, we pissed off a nasty god--although we at least kept her from keeping the artifact--and discovered that the ghost lady was possibly on our side (the enemy of our enemy is our friend), but otherwise didn't accomplish anything useful. I'm still hungry, and we haven't gotten any closer to finding the kidnapped girl.

Wednesday WIP - Edition 2

The last week or so has been a bit slow for getting stuff done on my projects thanks to being sick for most of that time. However, it's not been completely useless.

I finished the blanket from the last WIP post. The finished blanket has been posted to my DeviantArt account.

Anime Tarot: Howl has moved beyond the concept phase. He's been drawn, and the lineart is finished. I need to clean it up... a lot. XD I also need to color it. =P Still, I'm really excited about the last part of the Wands suit. Starting with Howl here, most of the characters left are some of my favorites. I loved Howl's Moving Castle. It is my favorite Miyazaki movie, replacing Princess Mononoke. Some of the favorites that are coming include characters from Slayers, Trigun, and Code Geass.

Plushies: I still haven't finished that Moogle plushie. Lame, I know, especially all that's left is the wings... still. XD I've been a little distracted. I finished one custom plushie since then though. Plus, I'm working on a plushie submission for the Mom's Basement April craft contest. The theme is Dungeons and Dragons. From the start, I wanted to make a plushie something... I think the original plan had been along the lines of crochet dice (which I still might do) or something like that, but my husband gave me the idea of doing a Beholder--one of the archetypal monsters in the D&D system. It seemed like a fun challenge: make a hideous monster into a cute chibi plushie. =D I've got the base body and the central eye finished (not attached yet though). I'm working on the eye stalks and smaller eyes now--I sketched them into the photo to give a rough idea of what they might look like finished.

Hopefully by this time next week, both of these projects will be finished.