#ladytyoc

Rhekine, having read many fictional books about wizards, fancies himself an expert and certainly knows that wizards are very secretive and will only talk to other Wizards about this kind of stuff.

So he dresses up as one, as seen above. For the entire campaign, I kept up a “mighty old man” voice and had Rhekine refer to himself as “Lord Rhukine the Sunless - wait what do you mean you haven’t heard of me??”

We were sent through Prysbytrs door portal as usual and arrived on a field near a small village. A sheep ran up to us, carrying a scroll in its mouth.

Our paladin used the scroll, which turned out to be a spell to talk to animals. The sheep was actually the wizard we were looking for, who had been polymorphed by his powerhungry and arrogant apprentice, after stealing his staff and kicking him out of his tower.

So we decided to help him out - Rhekine came up with a plan to challenge the apprentice to a contest of wizarding skills, with the final challenge being a wandless duel. Rhekine speculated that if he beat the apprentice in the other challenges and then mocked him accordingly, the apprentice would put down the main source of his power - the staff of true polymorph, that he stole from his master, to prove his “true” skills.

The first challenge: Precision

Rhekine and the apprentice took turns trying to hit a target with spells. The main rule: The spell must leave a mark on the target that could only be a certain size, so you couldn’t just blast away the whole target.

Rhekine is a Way of the Sun Soul Monk, so he used the hand that was holding the staff to punch a Radiant Sun Bolt at the target. Due to some unfortunate rolls on the DMs side, the apprentice suffered an emberassing loss, and also expended three of his spellslots.

The second challenge: Speed

The contestants were tasked to make their way around the tower as quickly as possible. Whoever reached the finishline first, would win. The rule: The whole way around the tower had to be made, teleportation was off-limits.

Our Paladin had the resources to make an improvised but powerful smokebomb, and when the race began and the apprentice cast haste and greese on himself, Rhekine threw the smoke bomb and walked over to the finish line.

The apprentice arrived moments later, not really believing his eyes, but having to admit defeat a second time. 

The third challenge: Summoning

The contestants needed to summon a familiar, and the summoning was to be judged by how intelligent, powerful and overall useful the familiar was. The rule: You couldn’t just transform something that was already alive.

Rhekine had a pipe that summoned a fey toad named “Hubbub” from a previous adventure.

Hubbub however might be able to talk and has his own will, but pretty much won’t / can’t do much more than that. This round went to the apprentice, who summoned his bed, polymorphed into a dragon.

Rhekine declared himself winner, but the apprentice was pissed, said that they obviously arrived at a draw, “since his summon was so much more impressive”, and demanded a final match to settle the score.

With a grin, Rhekine challenged him to a battle of wandless magic. The apprentice agreed, and put away his staff.

Our Paladin took the staff, and tried to use it on the wizard - but the staff promptly exploded, killing the wizard and transforming all the apprentice’s minions back into somewhat confused and angry humans. The apprentice ran away.