Siren’s Circle Game Night

February 10th 2024

Message in the Fire starring:
Delwynn Amarylle, Tiefling Paladin (Peyton)
Orothyia, Half Orc Barbarian (Bridgette)
Thia, Drow Sorceror (Sammy)
Nephvira, Tiefling Warlock (Shelby)
Evendure Greycastle, Human Warlock (Chance)

Our adventure opens up at a campsite where the characters have been staying for the past few days and exploring the ruins of an ancient keep in the process. They are trying to see if they can uncover “relics” and “artifacts” but finding nothing in the process.

Orothyia stumbles out of the woodwork, battered and bruised, so doesn’t know what happened since she’s been in a drunken stupor for the for a couple of days.

While everyone is settling in for the night, they begin to notice the flames of the campfire is changing colour to a darker red and blue tinge. From the fire a voice calls to Nephvira.

A messenger from her patron has arrived stating that the time has come to pay a due. The messenger in the flames tells her that she has to go to the City of Osgoode a retrieve an item that is stored in a Wizard’s Keep and to be brought back to her patron.

She agrees to do so.

The flaming campfire and the strong smell of sulfur has caught the attention of a Fire Giant who happens to stroll in and see what is going on. The giant sees the party which is made up of Tieflings, Half-orc, Drow, and one human in a theatre mask figures he has stumbled into easy pickings and proceeds to toss a rock into the foray.

The rock hits Nephvira and knocks her over and also bowls over Thia.

Orthyia charges at the Fire Giant as well as Delwynn while Evendure tries to toy with the creatures mind. Though, the battle is short and swift and Delwynn takes the creatures Greatsword.

The party decides to relocate the camp due to the giants body might attract other predators throughout the night. The find a nice Glenn in the forest to settle in, thus once settled they can hear a woman humming a haunting tune which attracts the attention of Evendure.

He seems to be caught under a spell and follows the voice. The others try to stop him but to no avail, as he reaches a tree a Dryad steps out and declares that she will keep him for 12 hours, and if the party will wait that long they will be safe in the area.

The camp out for the night, though Thia, senses that other drow are in the area and are giving the glen a wide berth for some reason. The dryad explains that they are surrounded by thorny thickets; she has kept her word that the party will be safe for the evening.

Dawn of another day, the party leaves the Glenn and head to the closest settlement. The Village of One Pine (population: 38). They are greeted by the constable and sees they are not brigands or raiders that occasionally raid the village.

The party heads to the only inn in town “One Pine’s Finest Inn” owned and operated by Grunt, a half-orc, with two serving maids, Gertrude (Grunt’s daughter) and Melody Rivermaiden (human). Grunt is happy to have guest’s in, since it’s been few and far between that he has had any company at all.

As the party settles in for the night, Bonebreaker (Orothyia’s sentient weapon) alerts her that a very evil being is near by. She warns the others and just as she does a young red-haired lady enters the inn.

Here Be Spiders (And Thensome)

A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure.

Cast of Characters:
Thorne, a half-elf cleric (Mark)
Aufk, a half-orc barbarain (Jack)
Aslain the Badger, forest gnome ranger (Brad)
Kulee, a gnome monk (Finn)
Travok, a dwarven monk (Chance)
Togra, a dwarven rogue (Mikayla)

What had happened prior to this session:
Thorne, Aslain, Kulee and Travok have been in the hamlet of Wizard’s Rest for the past few days. Having uncovered a plot where Orc raiders were trying to besiege the town itself, only to find out that a couple of Drow shape-changers have infiltrated the town populace.

The majority of Wizard’s Rest population had gone over to the town of Properdale to take part in the Celebration of the Harvest festival that goes on each and every year.

Which seemed like a good opportunity for the Orcs to raid the town since there was only a handful of townsfolk to defend it. If it wasn’t for the untimely arrival of our heroes it would of probably succeeded.

Vielle, the wizard residing in this town had turned out to be dead, having been replaced by a Drow shape-changer. Uncovering one of the reasons why the dark elves are topside is that they are looking for Lolth’s tiara which is rumored to be lost on the surface.

When the townsfolk arrive after the celebration, the group discover another drow shapechanger. A constable with the town’s wardens.

They also learn that a local farm girl, Talay Whistledale, had seen someone riding a huge spider a few years back. And, oddly enough, The Whistedale family hadn’t been seen in a while. So, they prepare to head out the next day.

Something Sinister Is Going On At Whistledale Farm
The following morning as Thorne, Aslain, Kulee and Travok prepare for the trip to the Whistledale farm, a stage coach arrives and on this is a half-orc barbarian, Aufk, he has come to investigate dark elves sightings in the area. With his is Togra, a dwarf rogue, who just so happens to be looking for Travok. They are from the same clan.

The band travels across the grassy plain and see the farm in the distance, and from the sight of it, looks like it’s been abandoned and unkempt. The rogue decides to sneak up and scout about and discover activity happening in the barn.

She sees a few drow, a couple of giant spiders, and a drider. She sees several humanoid cocoons hanging from the rafters. Thus before she can report back to the group she is discovered and a Drider comes trouncing down from above catching her off guard.

Battle!

Our heroes jump into the foray, battling it out with a handful of Drow, An elite Drow warrior, 2 Driders, and a couple of Giant Spiders. But, in the end they managed to survive the onslaught.

The Best Laid Plans…

With my Saturday Game Night back up and running once again, I had six players around the game table and we started off on a new campaign. I had prepped a new world and new adventures and starting it off with an old fashioned dungeon crawl in the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons RPG.

A mysterious benefactor who gives the players a map showing the locations of ruins where ancient artifacts might be found. The benefactor states that since he is too old to adventure, he might as well pass on his map to a new group who might be able to clear it.

The map showed some geographical locations such as a huge crater, a pair of mountains, some monolith design near the mountains. It also showed a coach house that served the best damn ale in the area as well. The old adventurer had also showed a route to take to get to the ruins.

I had mapped out the ruins and the 4 level dungeon below, I figured that would be enough for the players to focus on first and it would give me plenty of time between sessions to flesh out the rest of the area. Especially, the monolith area where I had two or three sentence fragments of what to expect there once the party made it back to the surface.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

The first thing the party decided to explore first was the monolith spot, they followed the river up towards the Two Mountains, they ignored and bypass a couple of planned encounters to. Since I figured it would slow them down and eat away at the time during that session.

Though the session was a wing and a prayer on my part it still managed to be entertaining evening.

An AD&D Tale: Epic Level Horror

I remember the first time I played Tomb of Horrors.

The DM had read through the module and figured that our characters would be dead the moment they set foot in the place. He knew it was a one-shot game and wanted to run it as a break from our regular campaign sessions.

It was an evening when a couple regular players couldn’t make the session, so the DM had brought out Tomb of Horrors telling us that he wanted to run it either with our own characters or with ones from the roster which he had set out on the table.

We discussed it for a few minutes and decided to choose from the roster. Since there were four of us playing, he told us to take two characters.

From the roster I picked as my first character the 13th level human ranger, who had a +2 splint mail, +2 shield, a magic bow, 10 +1 magic arrows, and a +1 sword. I called him Ringo River. The second character I picked the 11th level halfling thief, who had the +1 leather armour, +1 ring of protection, +1 dagger, and the boots of speed. I made this one a female and named her Daranna the Daring.

So with eight characters we were ready to go exploring in the sinister Tomb of Horrors.

Our DM told us about the legend of the tomb and then plopped down the first picture from the book. A short tunnel with a door, our first action was to have the thief go and check the floor for traps, and then check the door for traps. Daranna the Daring was the first to step into the hallway and venture forth checking the floors with a ten foot pool until she made it to the door. It was unlocked and opened outward, she checked for traps and did not find any. She called out to the others that the way was clear, and the rest of the party began to enter.

Daranna opened the door and then wham! The whole roof of the tunnel collapsed and she got squashed really good. The DM rolled the damage dice in front of us, it was 5 ten sided dice worth. And, wouldn’t you believe it he rolled: 9, 10, 10, 8, and finally another 9. That was 46 points of damage to us all. This was exactly the number of hit points Daranna had and she was down and out for the count.

Boy did we start off on the wrong foot.

With Daranna down and a couple of the characters severely injured we dug ourselves back out dragging everyone out to be healed and rested. Keeping an eye on the entrances of the crypt making sure nothing was coming out to add salt to our wounds.

I won’t go into detail about the adventure because it might spoil the fun for some of you kids who haven’t been through it yet. But, let me tell you our first foray into the Tomb didn’t last two long because we lost several characters just entering the place, due to curiosity.

It was our first foray into the crypt and we didn’t even make it past the entrances.

A D&D Tale: Snake In The Grass

All the snakes crawl at night that’s what they say,

When the sun goes down then the snakes will play.

Charlie Pride, The Snakes Crawl At Night

Sometimes random encounters don’t make any sense at all but they are indeed fun to roll and see what nasty surprise awaits our heroes. I remember one time, while playing an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure, I rolled a random encounter; it was a giant constrictor snake.

The party was camping for the night, setting up watches and proceeded to bed down for rest after a hearty meal.

The encounter just after the second watch begins, a fighter is on guard and patrolling around the campfire. There was a surprise check and he was caught off guard. The snake was nestled in a tree and did a first attack; the rule was a natural 20. The fighter didn’t know what hit him, there was a chance for the others to wake due to the sound of the noise. The thief sprang up and looked around, calling out to the fighter. She reached over and awoke the cleric.

The thief told the cleric she’s going to look around the place for the fighter, and off she went. The thief was following the fighter’s tracks on the ground until they disappeared. On a hunch she decided to look up; another surprise roll and the snake had one.

I rolled a d20 for the surprise attack. Another natural 20.

The thief tried to tumble away but alas the roll wasn’t in her favour.

That was two out of the three characters that were “gone”.

The cleric heard the commotion and got up to see if he could assist the thief, he grabbed his mace, and went charging into the area and when he did he saw the giant constrictor snake in a tree.

Initiatives were rolled and the cleric managed to get the first swing in, the player rolled a d20 and rolled a “fumble”. At the time I was using a fumble chart that I found in a Best of Dragon issue. I had the player roll percentile dice and he rolled a natural 100.

This wasn’t the good news any of us wanted to see, since it meant the death of the cleric and the end of the adventuring party. The campaign was over before it even started.

Good times, good times.

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A D&D Tale: Gnoll Your Role

It was shortly after I moved to this town back in ’92 that I tried to round up a gaming group. I had left North Bay, ON where I had two gaming groups going; one group had 5-6 people and the other group 7-9 at times.

My first players in the region where a brother and sister who had just gotten into the hobby, they had seen my ad at The Hobby Shop downtown and gave me a call. We set up a time to meet and play.

They arrived on a Saturday afternoon and we sat in the shed, they rolled up their characters and we proceed to play. At that time I only had the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition books, since I wasn’t interested in upgrading).

We played for several hours, the adventure I was running was something I had ran other groups through. The premise was a small town was experiencing trouble with wild dogs in the area and that a small reward was offered to anyone who can get rid of these dogs.

From my notes, the brother created a fighter/cleric half elf named Jenol Millegion, and his sister rolled up a magic-user human named, Taxinna Spellslinger. They arrived at the small town of Templeton Creek to see what they can do. It wasn’t a matter of time before they discovered that the dogs were not dogs but actually Gnolls.

They went to an abandoned farmhouse and discovered that there were indeed a group of humanoid beings staying in the barn. It was a pretty nice battle and ended up in a cliff hanger since the sister had received a call. She was on stand-by and we had to wrap it up pretty quick.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that we continued the adventure. Due to scheduling, life events, and what not. The session ended with the characters gaining a level and the players enjoyed the adventure.

We basically met once a month to play, and that lasted a few months until they moved out of town to seek their fame and fortune elsewhere.

A D&D Tale: What’s In A Name?

A few years ago, I was running an Dungeons & Dragons campaign, with six players at the table. They had all there characters created and during the course of the introductory adventure the characters were summoned to a hamlet.

The characters had decided to tend to the task and eventually solved the problem that was plaguing the small hamlet. During the celebration ceremony the hamlet was having in honour of hour heroes, the burgomaster asked what the name of the party was.

There was a huge pause as players looked around at each other. The players hadn’t thought of anything to call their party at the time, since they just started the campaign.

One of the players jokingly muttered “The Lollipop Guild”, and I as a GM went with that name to the dismay of all the other players around the table. He said that it just popped into his head and he blurted it out.

Hence for the duration of the campaign they party was known throughout the land as “The Lollipop Guild”.

The Only Edition I Didn’t Run

The Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is one game I never got the chance to run or play, the one reason is that a couple of my players actually refused to play this edition without giving it a chance. We continued to play the 3.5 edition because we were in the middle of a huge campaign.

This edition gets a lot of backlash on the intrawebz, though I am willing to give it a shot and see for myself. Hopefully, players will enjoy the session (or two).

D&D: The Guilted Pig & Other Tales

Cast of Characters:
Ixik Everfeld, a half-elf sorcerer (Darryl)
Gwaithroed Evenwood, a human warrior (Nathan)
Finnian Goodbarrell, a half-elf bard (Chance) away.

GM Note: Adventure took place November 30th 2019

Our heroes return to the caravan campsite with Gwendolyn and she thanks them again for saving her and she thinks her father, Markim, will reward them for that once they get to Tassle Helm. They also inform caravan leader, Molte Nimberson, of whats been going on in the area.

Finnian finds a place to sack out, he had befriended a mangy mutt, and the dog has grown attached to him. Ixik and Gwaithroed throw bedrolls next to a campfire and settle in for the night as well.

Dawn approaches and after a good breakfast, they break camp and make their way through the mountain pass. It’s late in the afternoon when they break through the other side and see Tassle Helm off in the distance. They arrive by late evening and the gates to the city have been closed for the evening.

The caravan begins to set up camp outside the gates, while Ixik, Gwaithroed, Finnian and Gwendolyn decide to find a bed to rest in. They see a roadside inn called the Guilted Pig and proceed to see if it has any vacancy. There happens to be a small suite available, Finnian decides to put on a show to help pay for the room. Ixik steps outside to survey the surroundings. He notices that the road warden office is shut for the evening and heres a local villager say that they are looking into an incident west of here.

Ixik is about to step inside when he hears someone shouting, a child’s voice calling for help from the east. He sees a youthful boy staggering through the grass towards the light of the building. He calls for help from inside the building and Gwaithroed hears him and goes out.

The child collapses in Ixik’s arms and says that there’s something evil happening at his farm. The child has lost a lot of blood from a serious wound and dies. Ixik goes to the walled city and calls up to a watchman, alerting him what happened. The watchman calls down stating that once the gate has been closed there is nothing more that can be done till morning.

Ixik swears to himself and shouts up to the watchman that the body of the boy will be left infant of the road warden’s building. Though, curiosity has taken hold of him and he wants to see what is happening at the farm. Gwaithroed agrees to go with him.

Finnian is drunker than a skunk is in no condition to go anywhere. Gwendolyn tells them to go ahead and investigate and she’ll tend to Finnian.

Photo by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels.com

They follow a blood trail through the grass and over a hill, there they see a farm. There is movement about and as they get closer they see hooded figures dismembering the farmer. Ixik seems to think they are a group of cultist with the robes and the strange ritual they are performing with liver, heart and other organs.

Ixik and Gwaithroed go stealthy about the farm area and take out the cultist one at a time, until there is only one being left in the barn. This cultist, Arlic, is the leader and he says to them that “this is only the beginning, the end of days are upon us!” before he sinks a dagger deep into his chest.

Ixik and Gwaithroed search the farm and barn for anyone else, but everyone has been slain. They head back to the Guilted Pig Inn and plan on informing the road wardens once they return.

D&D: Mountain Pass Respite

Cast of Characters:
Gawithroed Evenwood, a human fighter (Nathan)
Ixik Everfeld, a half-elf sorcerer (Darryl)
Finnian Goodbarrell, a half-elf Bard (Chance)

GM Note: Adventure took place November 9th 2019

After setting up camp, Gawithroed Evenwood spots an old friend amongst the caravan members and goes over and chats with him. Finnian Goodbarrell, is a bard, so he’s entertaining the wagon train with song and dance and a little magic to earn his keep on this passage through the mountain pass.

Ixik sees a comely lady just outside the campsite, she looks lost and Ixik approaches her do see if she is okay. She tells him she is looking for a spot to mediate away from the crowd, so they decide to drink and maybe find a more quiet place to settle for the night.

Caravan leader, Monte Nimbleson, approaches Gawithroed to inquire if he is willing to take watch, he says he’ll check with Ixik. When he looks for Ixik he cannot find him. Gwaithroed and Finnian search the surrounding area and find Ixik unconscious and with a strange marking on his face. It looks like someone had drawn circles on his face.

They also discover skeletal remains of others as well in an alcove. Ixik awakes and wants to know where the lady is. Finnian tells him that there is no one like that he has described that is part of the caravan. So they figure the women is a lure, for those traveling the mountain pass and draws them away from the path and into a trap.

After searching the area and discover a cavern after discovering some goblin tracks in the soil leading up a steep incline. Ixik, Finnian, and Gwaithroed learn that it’s part of a goblin warren in the mountain side. They set to explore it and deal with the goblins, while encountering a small group of goblins Gwaithroed befriends one of them. The goblin says his name is Anakasor Breakbones. That they are lead by a powerful witch named, Axilla, and are bossed around by her right hand bodyguard, Broot!

They go through the warrens dealing with tricks and traps and other critters that the witch has unleashed in this small warren. Finnian proceeds ahead in one cavern and sees a very beautiful woman, she is standing in a room in front of a mirror and she is swaying to a music box chime.

Finnian thinks something is amiss, he sees that the woman is drugged due to her eyes glazed over and secondly that she is chained to a post. And Broot is no where to be seen.

The witch and her henchman appear from the shadows and prepared to do battle, Finnian unleashes his spells catching them off guard. Though, Ankasor, is hit by Broot and is slain by the henchman.

And Gwaithroed who had double backed to check on something manages to approach them from behind. The battle is short and sweet and our heroes save the day.

Freeing the captive slave, Gwendolyn Northwind, who is the eldest daughter of a merchant in Tassle Helm and she thanks them for doing so.