#caphay

Vasraen

Drow Cleric

Character by @caphay

The gang has a year to prepare before the local expansionist empire moves on their adoptive hometown

The gang gets really drunk and eats too much and engages in dubious storytelling contests and wacky tarot reading divination hijinks at the annual Midsummer festival 

Every year at the midsummer festival the friendly local Wood Elves show up and show off their blink dogs and tressym (flying cats). Except not this year.

The gang is deeply disappointed. So disappointed that they head into the Deep Dark Woods to find out why the friendly local Wood Elves haven’t brought their good good fluffy babies to visit this year.

The gang runs afoul of classic d&d monsters such as owlbears and ogres

The gang befriends an ogre, whom they dub Frogre (friend ogre), who explains that she has been kept in thrall to some fey potentate calling himself the Winter King and he is keeping her from thinking proper ogre thoughts

Thoughts like ‘wait a minute I don’t wanna work for the winter king I wanna smash him and eat him’

The gang dispels the enchantment upon Frogre and she can once again think proper ogrey thoughts

Despite this, she remains friendly with them and accompanies them to the wood elves. The blink dogs and tressym are all there and react about as one would expect- the dogs are friendly and excitable, the cats are generally standoffish at first but warm to the PCs as they hang out and are chill.

The PCs cast Reduce on Frogre so she can get into the elven tree village safely. She is awestruck by how they all got so big all of a sudden.

The wood elves turn out to have been besieged by monsters and hobgoblins sent by the aforementioned ‘Winter King’ and as such could not risk sending their people off to entertain a bunch of festival goers with teleporting dogs and flying cats

The gang befriends some elves and agrees to go look into this since things are definitely Amiss with this whole winter king business

For one thing Winter has a Queen (as in the Unseelie Queen of Air and Darkness) and no one should be fool enough to challenge that least of all another fae

The gang runs into some hobgoblins. Rather than fight the hobgoblins they sow doubt in their military leaders and move on unharmed.

The warlock gets the party so lost that they blunder into a whole other plane of existence

In this Feywild pocket they encounter the Winter King’s dreaded enforcer/assassin, a Troll wearing a cloak of elvenkind and therefore sneakier than he has any right to be

They kill the troll, talk to some harried pixies who are rushing hither and yon to bring on an unseasonable winter (it is late summer) due to the weather-warping effects of the winter king, then return to the normal world

They agree to go stop the winter king because he’s clearly bad news, and besides, then the elves will owe them a bit, and they could for sure use some elven archers when their adopted hometown is attacked by the local expansionist empire next year

They stop off at a hobgoblin town/military encampment and things are going reasonably well until they realize that the hobgoblins’ highest eschelons of leadership have been enchanted to follow the Winter King

And their leaders are apparently being mind-controlled by immature illithid tadpoles who consume their hindbrains and control their bodies like puppets, while still able to access their thoughts to better pass as normal folks

The PCs try to remove an illithid tadpole from a hobgoblin and it kills him. At least he’s not trapped in a living hell where he’s a passenger in his own body anymore?

The tadpole also dies shortly thereafter with no host to live in.

The PCs skedaddle from the hobgoblin town before they can be discovered since it looks like they just assassinated one of their highest ranking commanders.

The hobgoblins end up catching on an hour or so later and pursue the PCs halfway up the mountain where the Winter King lives

The PCs sneak into the Winter King’s lair via a little-used back tunnel

The Winter King turns out to have gone absolutely fucking insane recently and literally devoured all of his guards in his insatiable hunger

His body, in the normal world where a true fey lord can’t exist without a meat body, is basically an emaciated really tall oni 

They confront him and fight and in the process of the fight it comes out that he himself is controlled (at least partly) by an illithid tadpole that ate his brain and then completed the physical process of cereomorphosis such that his hideous fanged appearance is a glamour obscuring his horrible squidface

He’s an Onillithid

They manage to kill him after a huge battle, dispatching the body and releasing the Winter King’s fey spirit to return to the feywild and enventually re-corporate. 

The winter king had a lot of loot, most of it taken from the elves. The PCs now have a lot of loot, taken from the winter king. 

The PCs travel to the elven refuge of Paroneis, which is kind of like if Rivendell had a much more casual attitude and instead of being run by a grumpy ‘half’-high elf was run by a kindly old (very old, so old she even looks old) wood elven druid

The PCs greatly enjoy the company of said kindly old de-facto elf queen, who fills them all in on some lore and offers some good-natured advice and comfort to those who need it

Some dwarves show up from the nearby dwarven kingdom and ask the elves for help with their own problem- lately there have been weirdly coordinated attacks from below

shE COULD BE NICE, WE DON'T KNOW

who says she ever used it in the first place

ahhh I knowwww I’m right there with you...

The PCs all come separately to a surprisingly nice town in surprisingly shitty weather and end up stuck at the same Inn; in the common room because all the rooms are full, but for free because the innkeeper/mayor is a good sort who doesn’t want to turn people out into the icy deluge.

Zombie attack! Also skellingtons. The zombies want the sorcerer’s sweet, sweet blood. Also maybe the druid? Maybe not. They want it for Reasons.

The sorcerer doesn’t particularly want to part with her blood and offers burning hands Freezing Hands instead. The warlock throws his horrible inky black tendrils into the mix, the paladin smites them with his smithing hammer, the druid and the monk respectively offer These Claws/Hands, and the bard insults the skellingtons’1000+ years out of date fashion.

Devastated by the counter-offer, the zombies and skellingtons fall over without having obtained any of the Special Blood they were after. They accompany the mayor to the cathedral and ring the bell, alerting the townsfolk that hey, uh, there’s some shamblers in town and maybe you should wake up and fight them off.

Why zombies and skellingtons? The leading theory is that some Suspicious Sorts who came through recently asking about the giant burial mounds not far outside of town full of the bodies of ancient evil tieflings maybe did an oops and unleashed them by accident?

The PCs travel to the crypt of a long-dead tiefling aristocrat. He is also a pretty big jerk. His body is still resting peacefully in his sarcophagus.

His spirit sure isn’t though. 

He informs them that it was definitely not an ‘oops’, the ‘academic’ guy was a necromancer who Commanded him to spill the beans on some ancient ritual shenanigans and his (the spectral tiefling aristocrat’s) hated rival, then sicced the zombies and skellingtons on the town to get the blood he’d need for the ancient ritual in question.

The PCs bargain with the ghost to bring him the head of his ancient rival in exchange for all his sweet sweet tomb loot. And also not getting into a fight with a pissed-off ancient ghost and the ghosts of his consorts.

Meanwhile the PCs have found said ghost dude’s diary that spills absolutely ALL the beans on court intrigue from the evil tiefling empire 1000 years ago. 

The sorcerer wants it because it’s Tiefling stuff and it pertains to her heritage.

The warlock insists that it’s historically invaluable and belongs in the local university library

They proceed to argue about this for some time

The paladin would very much like them to continue this argument outside, rather than lingering in the ancient fucking crypt full of ghosts

The baddies are keeping hostages at the ruins of a nearby observatory. The PCs try to sneak up on them. It goes pretty well!

The bard tries to put the big goon baddie to sleep but he’s not really sleepy, especially now that someone’s trying to use magic on him.

The warlock tries to reason with the evil necromancer misunderstood professor of history to at least let the hostages go now that he’s gotten a bit of blood from each of them for his ritual

the evil necromancer monologues for a while. the gist is that he is fine with letting the hostages go but he really doesn’t want the PCs to get in his way while he Does What Must Be Done

the thing that said blood summoned, however, the hated rival of the earlier ghost, is less keen on letting the hostages go. It kind of wants to eat them. It kind of wants that a lot.

The PCs are Not Cool with letting the ancient corrupted wizard monstrosity eat the hostages.

The evil necromacer takes the opportunity to peace out with his trusty goon

The paladin smites the ancient monstrosity and somehow calls upon holy power to smite him harder. Which is what paladins do! But the paladin is still getting the hang of things and so is pleasantly surprised all the same.

The monk figures the others have this handled and moves to free the hostages rather than fight the ancient monstrosity.

The druid turns into a magma wolf and bites the shit out of the ancient monstrosity. He falls over and starts bleeding out (’bleeding’ being a relative term when your blood is abhorrent black ichor) but does not immediately die because he’s got to cough and gasp a whole lot of Exposition first.

The sorcerer gets that dude’s head for the angery ghost, so they can get his sweet sweet tomb loot.

The PCs get that sweet sweet tomb loot and the devil-worshipping ghost gets his eternal... reward? ...when he passes on to Hell.

The townsfolk are quite fond of the PCs given that they were instrumental in fighting off the initial undead attack and then went and rescued the hostages.

The paladin talks to a priest of the god who literally punched holy power into him to get a better idea about what he, uh, wants from the paladin.

“Go forth, be awesome.” The paladin is pretty chill with this commandment.

The sorcerer stands on the docks nearby and looks broodingly out to sea. Nearby, the monk and the druid go swimming in the ocean. *brood* *brood* *splish-splash*

The warlock befriends a wee diviner archaeologist

omg, ya make it sound bad but also,,, entirely true ahah

yeah the very first thing my wife and I did when the event started was buy those and try them out! (me as roadhog her as junkrat) Love it! ^^