Okay, this time you’ll be getting a summary early, because holy shit I can’t risk forgetting how last night went.
Cast for the session:
Wolo: Male human fighter
Kees: Female halfling rogue
Tivonah: Female human ranger
Nektari: Male fox hengeyokai necromancer (wizard)
Aska: Male pygmy falcon hengeyokai sorcerer
Therrin: Male dwarf barbarian
ONWARDS!
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So it turned out after all that we were indeed proceeding when we had last left off, because Therrin had managed to salvage enough worm plates from the fallen Thoqquas to create some sort of sled/wheel replacement to make up for the lost wheel. Anyhow the party continued going throughout the night, which made for a slightly uncomfortable but acceptable night’s rest, enough so that we got to recover some hp and spells.
Well, the sun rises and everything looks pretty chill… well, as chill as you can get in a desert but you get the point. However, as time passes the party eventually spots some odd little whirlpools in the sand, and our more perceptive members managed to make out that there was some sort of odd little creatures in them, creatures with pretty big mouths. These whirlpools of sand were clustered together sort of, and the party wasn’t really feeling all too confident in their ability to safely navigate through this cluster, especially given that their wagon wasn’t in top condition as it were, so they decided to give it a wide berth and just go around them altogether instead.
This worked out pretty good… until one of the little sandwhirls disappeared from the group, but didn’t stay anonymous for long because suddenly there was movement in the sand heading for the party, and I believe only Therrin and Kees saw this.
Not that they chose to warn us before the damn monster decided to spring up and tackle the wagon from below… And by then pretty much everyone had figured out that there was some kind of unfriendly shit around. Oh well, at least they were able to confirm this.
Actually, that unfriendly shit deserves some special mentioning here because as it dolphined its way through the sand we were able to get a good look at it, and according to our DM, this was what we saw: http://filesmelt.com/dl/wormy.png
That picture sent a collective stream of “Oh fuck!” statements from those of us who recognized the critter. You see, that’s not a being that belongs in the D&D universe, but rather is a monster from “Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” and apparently someone has homebrewed up stats for it. Doesn’t look too bad though, does it? No, and honestly it’s not very strong in the game it is from either, but our worries stemmed from the fact that those are the spawn/minions of fucking MOLGERA, which is a pretty damn big boss in its native game and that possesses an awesome battle theme. Really, go look up a video with it on youtube now and you’ll realize its coolness/size, then also realize that we are now fully expecting to have to battle that fucker before we reach the capitol. Honest to god I’m not sure if we’re anticipating it with dread or hope for the sheer epic.
But I’m getting sidetracked, at the time we only had to deal with that single minion, which by now the party can see is still some distance off but doubling back on them for some collateral damage and maybe a meal. Now, since we have a couple of close range fighters in our group, it was decided that the best course of action would be to stop the wagon and face the disturbance head on, getting some time in to ready their weapons before the opponent arrived.
Roll for initiative!
It wasn’t all too spectacular to be honest, what with the enemy being so outnumbered, some hacking and slashing and grappling was attempted and nothing much noteworthy happened until Kees stabbed the worm with her dagger/shortsword, which with a spray revealed that the creature had highly acidic blood… or whatever liquid it contained, extended exposure to skin not recommended in any case. Nektari got some damage in with his crossbow and Aska, who by now had noticed the acrid nature of their foe, went on to attack from a safe distance with magic missile, with decent enough results.
… And then Therrin saunters up to the worm and does what Therrin does best and chops down on the damn worm with his axe, effectively splitting it into two halves, which turned out to be significantly less effective than one might think. See, the hind part of the worm decided to up the whole wriggling ante with its death throes, combine this with the fact that it is now effectively spewing acid like a fountain and you’ve got a recipe for trouble or at least some serious pain. Meanwhile the front part just decides to nope, not this time, bitches, and burrow back into the sand where we cannot effectively reach it.
Of course, being close to the sundered worm, Therrin and Wolo take some acid damage, all while Kees aces her reflex save, does a matrix dodge in between the droplets and somersaults through the air, beautifully avoiding the acid while managing a 10.0 landing on Therrin’s face.
Turns out this didn’t take her completely out of harm’s way though, which became apparent as the party started to get ready for departure once again. See, the front half of the worm might’ve disappeared from sight and was thus out of our minds at that moment, but that didn’t mean that it was gone, oh no, and this really came back to bite Kees in the ass.
Literally.
The worm suddenly exploded out of the sand, startling the whole party and Kees in particular as it buried its teeth firmly in her butt. This became extra hilarious as our DM told us that yes he’d meant for it to come back, but he hadn’t meant for it to get a critical hit in. Some sounds of rolling dice later and he announced that the worm had bitten Kees for ten glorious butt damage; and to further put this into context, Kees’s max hp is thirteen.
I’m just gonna go out on an arm here and say that the worm, satisfied with this deed, was able to pass on peacefully, because I cannot for the life of me remember if we had to kill the thing. I do however remember that Kees announced that she’d twerk it loose, much to the amusement of us players.
Of course, even with the humor of the whole situation, we still faced the issue of Kees being reduced to 3 hp, and as it turned out, the worm had in its dying throes let out a shriek that was heard by the little whirlpools that we had previously passed, because now we could in the distance see six more of these worms dolphining their way across the sand towards us. Not exactly the best arrangement possible.
It was at this point, however, that I remembered that I’d decided to buy that healing belt back in town in a previous session, and it got to see its first use now as Aska quite literally got to save Kees’s ass. Some good rolls later, Kees was back to full hp and her radiant behind restored to its previous beauty (she’s still glowing, so I’m going to be describing her as radiant every chance I get). But yeah, there were more of those ass-sundering creatures approaching so everyone packed into the wagon and ordered the horse to go full speed ahead… except Aska I suppose, he opted for flying, since he’d seen what those worms were capable of.
However, despite the best efforts of both party and mechanical horse, those worms were catching up, though not quickly enough for us to be able to effectively reach them right away. Not that this stopped Kees from wrecking revenge on the accursed creatures. Driven by rage and a need for revenge, the halfling let another of her daggers fly through the air and towards one of the worms, where it was promptly embedded in its head. The worm appeared pained and was somewhat slowed by this attack, but continued onwards, now a little behind its fellow worm-mates.
After this, the turn went to Nektari, and this is where shit gets both surreal and ridiculously awesome.
Now, Nektari is a wizard, so he is pretty squishy, doesn’t have all that many skill points and a strength modifier of -1. However, he does have spells at his disposal and a reliable crossbow, so you’d expect him to hang back and blast away at the enemy from a safe distance, right?
Fuck no!
The party could only watch in abject confusion mixed with horror as Nektari got up to the wagon’s railing and fucking leapt right off the speeding vehicle and towards the six pursuing enemies like a badass, subsequently acing his tumble check to safely land in the sand, make a somersault due to the speed adjustment and came up straight just in time to bitchslap one of the worms with a chill touch spell.
Cheers erupted from players and presumably party alike, but Nektari wasn’t finished by a long shot. See, the enemies didn’t really care for the lone wizard who was now standing there all alone and relatively vulnerable, or they figured they could double back later since he wouldn’t have much chance to outrun them. Anyhow, the worms speed past the lone necromancer, chasing after the wagon and leaving him in the dust. This was of course a bit of a problem because Nektari couldn’t really catch up with wagon nor worms with his current land speed, so what does our dear wizard do?
Why, he turns towards the sound of shifting sand behind him, only to see a straggler worm with a dagger half buried in its head quickly approaching. Without hesitating for even a second, Nektari leaps at the worm just as it comes up alongside him, completely disregards his horrible strength score as the dice gods smile in approval at his actions and the proceeds to ace all the checks needed to successfully tackle the worm, wrangle it into submission and then force it under his control as the two speeds across the desert towards the wagon, somehow glistening in the rising morning sun despite the wizard’s complete lack of armor, because he just doesn’t give a fuck; all while skype buckles under the weight of the cheers coming from the players.
Meanwhile, the party had been forced to deal with the rest of the worms, which had by now started to catch up with the group. Aska attempts a magic missile which didn’t do nearly enough damage to be satisfying, Kees had been throwing daggers aplenty towards the rest of the worms, Therrin had for the first time I believe turned to using his bow and Wolo had uh… well, on the first turn he rolled a natural 1 while attempting to slash at a worm that was well out of reach with his scythe, resulting in him not only missing but also dropping his weapon, much to his dismay. His bad luck continued for several rounds as he continued to miss and probably inflicted more damage to the wagon than to the worms. Tivonah’s player had by now caught up to us and was attempting to support her teammates with some swordly damage, although the worms proved a bit too evasive for this.
Nonetheless, the party did manage to eventually dwindle the number down, with Aska abandoning both caution and magic to charge one of the worms from the air with his spear. Now, this could have gone pretty badly, but in a beautiful fit of irony and befitting vengeance, he did impale and pin one of the worms to the sand through the back end of its body. Obviously the worms should not have messed with Kees’s butt, it would’ve saved them quite some pain if they had refrained from doing so.
Anyhow, Aska continues to pin the damn thing down, incurring gradual damage on it because these things are ridiculously resilient. At this point there are two worms left to the general knowledge of the party, the one that Aska’s pinning and one speeding alongside the cart, when the DM asks for spot checks.
Pretty much all succeed, except for Aska who I assume had his hands full narrowly passing strength checks.
So what does the party see after having made this spot check?
Why, there by the horizon they see Nektari surfing towards them, perched upon a sandworm with a dagger embedded in its skull. As he approaches, he flawlessly bends down and picks up the scythe that Wolo had previously dropped and holds it aloft high above his head where it catches on to the rays of the rising sun. Not once does his balance falter and although he never looks back to see it, the sheer epic that he radiates prompts an explosion somewhere back in the far distance, which only serves to frame his dark form even better as he, in the words of our DM “comes riding towards the party like one of the four horsemen of the wormpocalypse”. And it is fucking beautiful
Now, Aska was the only one who’d failed the spot check, but it didn’t matter. Somehow he knew what was going on in his surroundings, perhaps in his heart he did so as the finishing blow was dealt to the worm that he’d pinned, for as Nektari came racing by, the two magicians reached out and gave each other a highfive, presumable without even needing to look at one another.
And as he finally catches up to the wagon, Nektari leans down, digs his hands into the scales of his makeshift mount and urges it to jump. It does so and both worm and necromancer lands flawlessly on the wagon, Nektari not even flinching from the impact as he steps forward to greet his friends with an air to him so casual that one might believe that he does this every day; which honestly it wouldn’t surprise me at this point if he does.
“Greetings my dear friends”
That he failed his balance check when the worm started thrashing around after that doesn’t even matter. His heroics had already been chronicled in granite in our minds and tales shall be told, songs shall be sung and books shall be written about the day that Nektari the wizard bested the desert.
The session however, wasn’t quite over, and there was still the issue of the one remaining worm beside the wagon and the one now wriggling around on top of it. It wasn’t too difficult to do so though now that the party was almost reunited, and when Aska caught up, he put an end to it by putting his spear through the one on the cart, at that point the only one remaining.
And that is how we beat the spawn of Molgera.
It was relatively smooth sailing after that, no more encounters blocked our way, though another obstacle did arise around mid-day in the form of increased winds which, given our surroundings, soon turned into a fullblown (pun intended) sandstorm. Via some stupid twist of fate, this was the first time that Aska actually rolled well on a spot check, so he alongside with Kees and… I think one more? Oh well, managed to spot a sort of opening in a mountainside some distance away and informed the party of this, at which point they all decided to seek this location out for shelter against the elements.
The party arrived safely at the cave and decided to stick around until the sandstorm subsided, because as dysfunctional as our parties tend to be, there is a limit to the stupid things they will do, and trying to cross a desert in a sandstorm is not one of them.
Anyhow, Nektari, being on the hunt for crystals of some sort, decided to spend his downtime digging around a bit, and soon found some sort of opening in the back of the relatively shallow cave. After Therrin had widened it up a bit, the party decided that it was unlikely that anyone would try to steal their goods in the middle of an ongoing sandstorm, and thus opted to venture deeper in, with Kees going first as their makeshift torch.
Cue the typical cartoon cave slide.
After having dropped I’m not sure how far, the party found themselves in what seemed to be a much bigger room than they had previously been in and as they stepped forward to take a look around, there came a crunching sound from beneath their feet. Now, of course anyone could figure out what would come next. The party would look down and find themselves standing on top of human bones or something of the sort.
Turns out, it wasn’t bones.
Turns out it was the only thing worse than bones to find yourself standing around in.
Turns out we were surrounded by eggs.
And it also turns out that our DM is a sadist because that’s where he chose to end the session.
So next time on MMPR, just how fucked are we?!
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BONUS CONTENT:
http://i.imgur.com/ZqNP9kD.png - Marina illustrates how not finishing our enemy off properly came back to bite Kees in the ass. Literally.
Also, for the fate point this session we were supposed to either 1. make seuss rhymes, which honestly I have no fucking clue what that is. Or 2. Write haikus about the in-game events.
Turns out Marina is the god of haikus, she got the fate point both from haiku writing and because Nektari was such a badass, but anyhow here are her contributions:
“deadly earth creature
slithering towards us hissing
goddamn this wagon
summoning the dead
arise the lord of darkness
horrible mistakes
little halfling girl
summersaults through violent blasts
dwarven face pillow
it’s teeth barred, goal set
unknown danger to round cheeks
delicious butt chomps
don’t you understand
i just wanted to say hi
booty bite sadness
booty worm descends
teeth in her buns, twerked it out
birdie friend saves behind
unleashing the kees
a new hot halfling singer babe
oh hot damn she good
his blade grazes air
the young swordsmen huffs angrily
his god rolled a one
“i’ll take charge one day”
the swordsman whispers, fists clinched
keesma just cackles
special delivery!
a giant worm flops on deck
“greetings my dear friends”
opening up ahead
proceeding down the tunnel
scrambbled eggs tonight”
And one bonus bonus haiku:
“radiant behind
beckoning slimy creatures
certain doom impending”
