DuskyWraith

This is a written up tale of a friend’s recent DnD Experience. (Campaign Note: Due to a large amount of players, their party has split up to split the players amongst separate sessions – Currently a “stealth” group and a “non-stealth” group.)

Friend: ...yeah also last week was insane.

 Me: Oh yeah?

 F: Yeah, so, we have to get to the Drow city.

Our team is team stealth we've been split in two groups, and our only healers, technically, are me and a Drow cleric. We’re about half-way through our journey and we come across a 300ft cave with a lake inside… and an aboleth swimming inside it. It begins to talk to us telepathically and tells us we either capture the leader of the gnomes down the path to the right or we sacrifice one of us for freedom to pass, so, after much deliberation…

 M: You...considered the sacrifice? 😂😂

 F: …We choose to get the gnome's leader much to the disgruntlement of the gnome and past gnome in the party, we turn around to leave and get confronted by 14 intellect devourers. So, we kill them, but our cleric got beaten and we had to put the helm of intellect on her because she got  d  u  m  b. We take a rest, and off we go. We're ready, we're sorta preparing a plan, the Cleric casts pass without trace on the group and we begin our way into the deep gnome mining village.

 M: Sounds pretty solid so far

I can’t imagine anything going wrong here

 F: Our stealth isn’t the best in general you know with a hulking barbarian in the party, so the pass without trace defo helped. We make it through without quarrel and we hear:

“Mithril! Go take it to Krazak??”(not sure about the name can’t remember).

So, we follow the gnome into a large cavern and we are confronted by a large pile of gold and ores and shiny things huuuge in the cavern of this mountain, and upon it, a fucking black dragon!

 M: Oooooh no 😂 doesnt bode well

F: Realising that this is the leader we supposedly need to capture we're like:

“o   f   u   c”

You know how I mentioned stealth?

 M: For sure, for sure

 F: Yeah, we we're all perfectly hidden and fine… apart from the fucking gnome, who walks straight in and the dragon is like: “huh… a gnome from above ground, whomst this?”

The gnome’s like: “o god o fuck”

So, this big fat fucking dragon gets right up in the face of the gnome and is like: “What are you doing here?!”

Gnome: “We're just trying to pass through, we got lost”

Deception check…

Failed.

Dragon: “Don’t humour me, I’m not stupid. Tell me why you’re here or I’ll straight up eat you!”

So, the gnome tells the dragon about the aboleth in the pond and how it wanted the leader of the gnomes.

Wisdom check

Result: 4 of us are now scared simply because of the aura of his dragon

and he’s like “Ah there’s more…”

 M: 😂😂 Go oooon

 F: The dragon then tells us: “Well see, I was brought here as a young dragon with my mother, to be protected, but the entrance was collapsed in… As I grew, I simply couldn’t get back out.”

Gnome suddenly says: “We can get you out of here!”

We're all like “Oh no”

Dragon is instantly interested, he hasn’t seen the sky in hundreds of years.

Dragon essentially says: “If you can get me out of here I won’t eat you”

It turns out the cleric can cast polymorph, so she says: “I can polymorph you into something smaller but we ask one thing of you…you kill the aboleth for us.”

The dragon really wants out of here so he’s like: “fine I’ll do it”

So she polymorphs him into a spider, puts him on his shoulder and the gnome the we followed guides us out.

We head back to the aboleths chamber, and we tell it: “We have brought you the leader of the gnomes”. The Cleric lets the spider walk forward enough and ends the polymorph.

Boom. Fat black dragon.

The aboleth is suddenly like trying to mind control this dragon (which it is way too smart for).

The dragon just laughs. It picks the aboleth up by the tail and essentially whacks it against every conceivable surface in the cavern before tossing it aside.

 M: Power moves in this house 😂😂

 F: the aboleth flops dead, obv

 M: obvs

 F: The dragon is like: “Take me above ground, NOW!”

We're like: “oh god oh fuck how we doing this?”

The gnome can teleport… but the child sorcerer decides to tell the dragon that the quickest way above ground is through the territory of the mind flayers… which is the way we are going… to a Drow city......

u n d e r g r o u n d .

The dragon believes her and starts stomping through the mind flayer territory killing them left right and centre. We just stop and realise what she’s done and we're thinking: “We need to stop that dragon because we are going in the same fucking direction… to not over ground”

 M: Why tf would they even try fuck the dragon around? 😂😂

 F: The gnome explains that if we can convince the dragon to come back, we can teleport it above ground if we have an item and a description of a place it has been, so she instantly runs after the dragon to convince it, leaving us 1 irl minute to decide what and where it’s going. One party member suggests my bow because we got it from a volcano in a timey wimey temple but I’m like “no thats fucking stupid the teleporter goes with the dragon” so I say “my boot was on the ship right?, the ship I met the group on?”

DM says yes

Meanwhile, while all this was happening, one of the mind flayers had come over and asked us why we had released a dragon in their territory. We explain, so they ask if we can get rid of it, offering safe passage through their territory in return (More incentive to do what we were already doing)

 M: 😂 Oddly civil of them

 F: So, she starts walking back with this dragon and I had over my boot the dragon says the girl is coming too. At this point the gnome, the sorcerer and the dragon are planning to go to the ship that I forgot got blown up and ripped apart. They take the boot and then *poof*.

 M: oh god 😂

 F: The DM starts to describe the trio poofing to the dock of Ashelok (which is the city that is still rebuilding from the red dragon we defeated there and the literal meteors that the green man bombed it with because he wanted these shards we we're collecting off us).

It was at this point that I realised…

I’ve just helped re-enslave an entire city to a black dragon. A city that we helped liberate from it’s previous Red Dragon ruler… that *we* saved them from.

Big heckin’ mistake

 M: Maybe.....maybe he was a nicer dragon 😂😂

 F: Well…

The black dragon instantly demands the towns wealth be transferred to him and announces himself leader of the town. The gnome and the sorcerer with him get put up in the best rooms in the tavern per the dragon's request.

The mind flayer that greeted us offers us some tea, which obviously I try and so does the barbarian. It's delicious! That is until I later find out its brain juice and I stop drinking it.

 M: 😂😂😂 Fucking hell, what a night

  F: The mind flayer shows us their city and their big brain, we learn a  little about their culture and how they’re actually quite civilised. They put us up for the night in a minimalist inn where we use a strange tube we acquired earlier to send notes and small things to the other group. I write the following note to them (Irl so the DM can hand them it):

‘We fucked up. I’m sorry, we may have caused a problem that we may have to fix later!

                                                                                             – love, team stealth '

 M: Lovely message, very foreboding.

I'm....very surprised the Mind Flayer didn’t kill you given that you were the cause of the whole dragon issue 😂

 F: only because we stopped more of them from being killed

 M: You still got a tonne killed in the first place though 😂😂

 F: As the morn comes and they’re able to teleport back to us again, the Mind Flayers give us a timer to leave before our truce ends. We say “Fair enough, we shall leave, thank you for having us, goodbye”

Then we end the session back at the meeting place and to the other two teleporting back with my boot.

Worst thing is we can’t tell the other group… they’re gonna receive the note when their part of the campaign commences

 M: 😂😂 When you meet back up, they'll have about 80 theories as to what you've done

 F: Yepp XD

 M: Damn… All that just because a grumpy fish wouldn’t let you pass

 F:  A big grumpy fish with telepathic powers

 M: This is the kinda shit you gotta put on tumblr, so I can later pin it to my DnD Pinterest boards *(Then I did it anyway because I’m impatient lul)*