Recounting RPG adventure stories

Last chapter

Hi there. So to cut a long story short, I won’t be writing here anymore. Let me tie up some loose ends.

If you’ve bought the Math Wizard from me, first of all, thanks! I will still be providing support for it (within the terms of your purchase), and it will be on my other website, Polymath Programmer. I hope you had fun with the character class, and possibly even learned some maths stuff.

I won’t be writing any more gameplay adventure stories here. The reason being that I’ve generally lost interest in playing Dungeons & Dragons. That’s not the only reason, but it’ll suffice.

Also, I will probably be shutting down this website. Timeframe: unknown. The reason being that I can do something more productive with the web hosting costs and my time. For example, building up my own business. Have I mentioned there are many reasons?

I write about maths and programming and business-y stuff (amongst other topics) on my main website, Polymath Programmer. If you like my writing here, you might find my articles on the main website interesting.

It’s been a fun ride, and I hope to see you around. You go and have a great day today.

And in case you’re wondering, the “D” in “D. Dallus” stands for Dei (see Lone Wolf adventure stories here. Well, while they’re still up). It’s a reference to Daedalus, the Greek who created The Labyrinth (with the Minotaur) and the wings of Icarus. “Dei” is Latin for “of God”, and I intended the character in my story to see himself with divine wisdom and power. He was meant to be the ultimate villain for my players. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be… so Dei Dallus died within the confines of my imagination rather than by the hands of players. Oh well.

Dwarven city seal – part 3

We’re continuing a D&D Essentials adventure. See part 1 and part 2. We have a sunpriest, stormpriest, thief, dwarven slayer, human slayer, knight and a wizard called Trake (me!).

Stop right here. If you don’t know what “manhood” means, you’re not old enough to continue reading. This game was played by adults, with adult actions and conversations. You’ve been warned.

Searching for Yeowin’s abode

Previously, we freed a goblin prisoner from the clutches of orcs. The knight gained a special item, Necklace of Dicks (abbreviated as NoD, see part 2), properties unknown as yet. So the goblin hexer gave some information on Yeowin, a druid who went renegade. Apparently, Yeowin didn’t follow standard druidic doctrines and worshipped Melora (a traveller and nature goddess I think). The trail for the dwarven seal led to this renegade druid…

The hexer led us to where Yeowin was supposed to live, but on the way, 6 grey wolves and a dire wolf attacked us. Taking his cue from the knight, the dwarven slayer intimidated a grey wolf and then tried to slam… something to the rear end of the wolf. Failed.

The knight did a backflip somersault, took off his NoD and flung it to the centre of the wolves to attract their attention. Failed. (“Smelly!” cried the DM) But he managed to whack at a wolf. I finally killed the dire wolf (which was in dire health by then) to smithereens with a Magic Missile.

After the fight, the knight took his NoD, took each of the penises (16 of them) and begun shoving them up the dire wolf’s rear end. He wanted to make it seem like the orcs tried to have an orgy with the dire wolf and got their orchoods lopped off.

Stunned, our DM had to make a quick adjustment. Yeowin suddenly appeared at the scene just before the knight could start his diabolical shoving scheme. “What are you doing?” asked Yeowin. “Uh, nothing.” said the knight, still holding an orc penis in each hand. The knight then strung back all the penises. After he was done, Yeowin said, “This way”, with an arched eyebrow at the knight. Before us was a swirling mass of light, sea green and deep blue, sparkling lines and dots revolving slowly. In the centre of the light display, was a stone fragment. The dwarven seal.

Skill challenge: We were to persuade Yeowin to let us have the seal.

I got us the first success (with the Lore skill. See part 1 for the houseruled skills). I got the image of familiarity, of memories of beach house and thunder and lightning. Oh boy, this is not good. Then I tried to cast Instant Friends on Yeowin. Unfortunately, I failed. Dang. My DM wanted to find out what would happen if Yeowin was “forced” to cooperate too.

Then came the second success. It turns out that the seal actually held a primordial. Then the DM turned to me and imitating a phenomenally ancient voice, said “I want to be one with you.” Wait, what? The primordial is talking to Trake? I think the primordial is Surusha, the Black Vortex, Lord of Undines. Apparently, in the Dawn Wars, Melora fought with 4 elemental princes. This Surusha appears to be one of those princes. (I’m pretty sure I got the spelling of the name wrong. But Surusha’s cool with that, right?)

Third success. Yeowin told us there were other wards on holding the primordial, but they’ve all weakened to the point of uselessness. The dwarven seal was all that held the primordial at bay.

Then Trake, on some inexplicably strong impulse (powered by the DM), strode forward and just grabbed the seal. It broke the trapping on the primordial, but Trake felt the presence of the primordial settling in his mind. Trake had become a living prison for the primordial.

[Trake gained Aspect: Prison of Primordial]

Well, at least we have the dwarven seal now. The stormpriest was joking that if all else failed in combat, just whack the wizard to release the primordial. We’d all die horribly, but the enemies would be dead too.

Till next adventure…

Dwarven city seal – part 2

We’re continuing the D&D Essentials adventure. See part 1. As far as possible, Modeus (our DM) wanted us to use only Essentials stuff. So powers, magic items, feats were all taken from the Essentials set. We have a sunpriest, stormpriest, thief, dwarven slayer, human slayer, knight and a wizard called Trake (me!).

Stop right here. If you don’t know what “manhood” means, you’re not old enough to continue reading. This game was played by adults, with adult actions and conversations. You’ve been warned.

Getting back to Fallcrest

So we just killed the black dragon. The 2 priests were tapped out on healing. The thief and 2 slayers were covered in blood (mostly theirs). The knight stood there catching his breath, still holding his sword, which was covered in faecal matter (you’ll have to read part 1 to know why). Trake was this close to dying, and was contemplating climbing a tree and shooting Magic Missiles from far, far away.

We managed to reach Fallcrest without further incidents. After a full day’s rest, we headed out into the town to find out more about the dwarven seal. Trake went to the local library to check (passed the History/Lore check. Read part 1 for our house-ruled skill challenges). The others asked locals for information. It turns out there’s a feud between orcs and goblins in the forest (Harken?) south of Fallcrest.

Well, the DM didn’t introduce that for nothing, so we went to investigate the forest. Just a little deeper into the forest, we found a war party of orcs, carrying a goblin prisoner. Before we could do anything, the stormpriest jumped into the fray and did his weird dance. Start of combat initiative. The stormpriest looked just a little sheepish.

The orc war party

There were 3 groups of orcs: archers, soldiers and minions. The archers went first, and man, they did tons of damage on us. “Are we really that clustered together?” asked the sunpriest. I don’t blame the sunpriest for asking, and Modeus for ruling it that way. When the players don’t say anything, the DM’s allowed to assume anything. I should’ve said Trake was trailing at the back of the party. Like far, far away at the back of the party.

The thief tumbled his way past orc soldiers and minions to reach the archers. The sunpriest followed suit, and moved towards the goblin prisoner, who was held by the archers. I didn’t even think to free the goblin prisoner. It’s rare that any character that’s not us, wasn’t an enemy. So I assumed the prisoner was either out of the battle, or going to attack us. Habit of playing with this group.

The knight somersaulted and did his “Dragonfly Dips Water” skill, flying through the air and landing right in the middle of the orc soldiers and minions. Keeping every orc’s attention on him, he chopped at one of the soldiers.

There was a total of 16 orcs. The wizard’s supposed to do something, right? Well, Trake’s useless at taking out mobs. But he did have something up his sleeve. Moving away from the main party, Trake hummed a short tune and released the sleep spell. Half the soldiers and minions went unconscious. Alright!

Spotting one of the still conscious orc soldiers, the dwarven slayer charged up to the soldier and shouted, “You want a piece of me, huh? YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?” Well, I forgot what the slayer did (too traumatising. To the orc and me). But you do not want my friend bearing down on you. So he intimidated the orc and bashed him on the head.

The sunpriest freed the goblin prisoner, and got ourselves a much needed ally. Trake hypnotised an archer to shoot a soldier. The stormpriest did his weird dance and smote a soldier orc. Modeus gave control of the goblin to the sunpriest player. Our goblin turned out to be a hexer, and could attack orcs from afar and reduce their attack hit rate. That turned out to be a blessing (ironic, a hexer “blessing” us…), since Trake ran out of options to control crowds.

The fight was over, and the stormpriest announced he would systematically go to each orc and loot it. The knight, on the other hand, announced he would systematically chop off each orc’s manhood. Or is it orchood? Then he strung all 16 phalli into a necklace. The knight called it his Necklace of Dicks (or NoD for short). My friend even drew me a picture (in the spirit of Gnarly the Pantless Dwarf).

“Vince, you have to put it on the blog!” he said. I sighed in resignation…

Up next, you’ll find out why the uh, penis of a Dire Wolf was there too…

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