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…