D&D Hoard of the Dragon Queen

[QueenBex]

So the cultists move off and one by one we get out of the pockets in the cliff face. Me and Kayleigh's Drow Lea head back to the tent we had been tied up in to retrieve our packs. We sneak in the cut at the back and come face to face with kobolds. Luckily these are the childish ones Maya's teifling Elizabeth managed to befriend before and they were just admiring the dagger she gave them, they saw us and backed away and left the tent.

So we grabbed our things and met up with the others in the next tent over. Where John's Axel was putting on a thingy I can't recall the name of...not armour, not coat... Urghen...
Anyway they found a diary and found out there are some dragon hatchlings nearby.

We decided to go to the huge tent near the back of the camp. Cora and Lea was about to sneak to the side and take out a guard. Axel, wearing this thingy with the emblem on it, walked right up to the front and tried to convince them to let him in. The main guard, we called Bob, started to walk away to check these supposed orders Axel had. Joe's Taran catches up to Bob and puts a hand round his shoulders and casts a spell to charm Bob, thoroughly charmed they convince Bob to take charge and initiative to not bother the boss and take charge and let them in the tent himself. Which he does. Leaving the other guards perplexed.

Cora and Lea go at the side guard. I sneak up but fall over a rock right before him, I flail my appropriated scimitar as I fall and manage to get the guy a bit, Lea hits him with a good eldritch blast and he goes down.
Meanwhile Elizabeth is in the shadows crossbows a couple of guards. Our new guy Matt, a hill dwarf cleric I can't recall the name of, is looking after the NPC guy, but joins in as we flail over rocks etc.
Inside the tent there is loads of golden goodies but they can't really see our weapons anywhere. There are some chests and a locked desk but they can't get it open due to bad rolls. The charm wares off Bob who comes charging in and gets blasted by Taran in an Indian Jones face melting moment.

Matt, the dwarf has run to the tent blasted a spell in a guards face punched him in the gut carried on running straight into the tent and falls over the dead body.

I manage to kill a guy finally by slicing into his groin. And the others kill some more guards too. Elizabeth is really good with a crossbow...

The guy Matt hit is still alive so I go over and decide to ask him where our weapons are. I know, me and interrogations don't really get on, but this time Cora punches him until he indicates that they are in the tent. Then she kills him, so he wouldn't warn the camp, obviously..... :p

We all get in the tent and that is where we ended it.

[QueenBex]

Last session before Christmas! Last session of the year!

Not much went on, we got a couple of the bodies inside the tent, Elizabeth picked the locks of the chests and found our weapons, Axel disappeared for a second to have a moment with Derek, thankfully he censored it. A city guard shouldn't have that much of an attachment to an axe.......

I managed to force open a chest and found some loot.

We left the tent to sounds of draconian shouting coming closer and closer.

We got to the edge of the cliff wall near the tent and that was when we saw that blue dragon swoop over again. Those who could understand him knew he was telling the camp to move out.

Axel took a rope and climbed the cliff face and hammered it in at the top for the rest of us to climb up. Elizabeth fell and bruised her tail, Taran got stuck half way up in fear but managed to get up.
It came to my turn and at a disadvantage for a dodgy rope that was seemingly about to break, I got 2 natural 1s. Which Joe said is a 1 in 400 chance of happening. Luckily I have Lucky that let's me re-roll natural 1s. Which gave me 11.

We had a rest at the top until the next day letting the camp move out. We decided to take the NPC back to Greenest and report to the governor and get some cash. We got back, I gave a city guard the personal effects I found which left 30 gold for me to keep. And we are now in between chapters.

And that's where we left it. Until the new year!

[Kareesh]

It came to my turn and at a disadvantage for a dodgy rope that was seemingly about to break, I got 2 natural 1s. Which Joe said is a 1 in 400 chance of happening. Luckily I have Lucky that let's me re-roll natural 1s. Which gave me 11.

Totally has happened to my Star Wars character...failed both her climb and acrobatics checks due to 1s. Ended up breaking her ankle, and then I managed to roll a 1 every time we had to jump far or climb something. *sighs* In our very last session, I ended up rolling a 1 for something, and this Sith-chick ended up chopping one of my hands off. My poor, poor Twi'lek.

[Kareesh]

Well, finally we had our first session, and one more person showed up this time, so we were able to actually run something.

It did not go well. Again, my character apparently has something against climbing. We were doing great, killing goblins in one hit. We even managed to sneak past a couple of goblins to sneak attack them (even with a chain mail clad dwarf!). Sadly, our luck didn't hold out as we defeated three chained up wolves. Took longer as they had more HP and we were rolling horribly. Thankfully, they didn't try to attack us, but just tried to break their chains. Never managed to do that so we killed them. Found a hole that was a chimney-type thing. Unlike the rest of the cave, which was pitch black, there was a light coming from it. We decided to check it out.

Me and the dwarf managed to make it up okay. Our elf wizard, however, kind of failed and fell to his death. So, I pop my head out. As a rogue, I thought I could be sneaky enough. Sadly, one of the goblins managed to see me. There was a bugbear, a wolf, and two goblins. I quickly start climbing down, aaaaaand failed my Athletics check. Thankfully I managed to do a great Acrobatics check which saved me from full on death. Sadly, I was knocked down to 4 HP.

I can't remember exactly what happened next, but somehow the dwarf died and two of the goblins followed me down. It was me against two of them. I managed to kill one of them in one hit. The other one hit me and brought me down to 1 HP. I tried to get him one more time, but missed. He hit me and killed me. TPK. Not really how I envisioned it going.

So...yeah...that was great...We're going to wait until our DM can get a few more people to commit to coming. We will have one guy more for sure, but he had some personal things going on and couldn't come tonight due to family reasons, but he definitely wants to join.

Looks like I might need to come up with another character....*sighs*

[QueenBex]

Ouch Kareesh! Sounds like everyone was unlucky.


First session of the year and it felt good to be back. We have a new player, Luke who plays a halfling chef guy I think he's called Burnoff Hotpot. And has a Scottish accent. He and his character are awesome and fingers crossed this guy comes again.

So we are in Greenest and Luke's character comes in as he sells a rapier to Kayleigh's Drow Lea which he had been using as a spit to cook meat on. Which led to him saying "d'you wanna kebab?" in a strong Scottish accent, pulling the meat off the rapier. Easily my best bit of the evening.
Instead of payment he asks to join our group of adventurers.

I use up a bit of my downtime fulfilling my role as a bounty hunter and get a job tracking down an escaped prisoner from the local jail. A human, possibly psychic attacked several people just before the dragon attack. No one knows who he is where he came from what he does or where he's gone.

Joe and John go and do some research on this dragon cult but don't find out much. John tries to find some weapon oil for Derek, Rae refused to let him get any.
(there was also some talk of him getting friendly with a spear, but we won't go into that)

Anyway we all get summoned to see governor knighthill and report on what we found out at the enemy camp. Rae challenged Maya's teifling Elizabeth to stay in the office, not get kicked out and actually participate in the conversation for the entire meeting and if so get extra experience points. Maya just managed to do it, Elizabeth pushed it several times though it was so close! It was brilliant!

We spent some more time in the town before seeing leosin or whatever the guys name is, we brought back from the camp and who has been researching and following the cult for a while.
From what we told him, he figured that the hatchlings of the dragons might still be in the cave back at the now abandoned enemy camp. But he had promised to meet someone in another town so asked us to go back to the camp for him to check the cave out. For money we agreed. Though our new guy asked for a little bit more money and only if he survives. The rest of us took our half now. To get half later.

We headed back to the camp, on the way seeing the tracks left by the enemy, only foot traffic went North, but both wagon tracks and foot traffic going west. We reached the camp at sunset and instead of going through the canyon again we crested the hill and walked along the top of the cliffs till we got to the camp.
We saw that some of the tents were still up and near the big cave at the back we saw some hunters cooking deer on a fire. We tied off a rope and climbed down. I made my way along the cliff wall towards the cave whilst the others headed over to the hunters (which they got extra experience for! Poo!) the hunters weren't bothered and weren't helpful.
I got into the mouth of the cave to find two Dragonclaws guarding it. They saw me and immediately went into attack mode. The others came towards me and saw I had my axe out but still took another turn to see what I saw. In the meantime I attack them and get hit myself. Our new halfling made a rock glow and rolled it into the fray so we could see what we were doing, then we all got to fighting. I sliced into one of them through his armour and into his side. The other guy managed to get behind me and hack at the back of my legs. The new guy actually healed me a bit! The others were hitting but mainly bouncing off the hard armour, but we all managed to kill the two guys.

And that is where we left it.

[BooChocoBoom]

Yay! I was waiting for the next installment! I really like reading these each week.

[QueenBex]

Matt the Dwarf Cleric was back this week and our new Scottish Halfling cook was not there, I missed how that worked in the story apart from the fact that Matt caught up with us by horse.

Into the dark and ominous caves we went. John's Axel picked up the still glowing rock to help light the way for me and him as everyone else had some kind of dark vision. Axel stepped forth deeper into the cave with the rest of us following.

We soon found two paths to take, a ledge in front of us marked where the floor dropped away, there were some steps leading down into the murky darkness. To the right a very thin passage led off the chamber and from it voices could be heard.
Elizabeth our teifling headed down the path, doing very good stealth checks as she went. Kayleigh's Drow Lea stood at the passages entrance to wait for her to return.
I go over to the ledge and using the glowing rock saw the room below was full of fungi and two paths winding through this strange fungi forest. I decide to head down the steps with the others looking over the edge. 6 steps down. Click. Thwamp. The steps folded down suddenly and became a steep ramp, I slid all the way down to the floor. The glowing rock fell from my hands but kept it's light. I was dazed but unhurt, I looked up to see...

Elizabeth had got to a fork in the passage. Dim light shone forth from the path on the left, noises of people murmured from within a room just beyond. Elizabeth snuck right to the opening of a room cut squarely from the natural rock. She decided to risk it and shoved her head in quickly to count the people there before backing up quickly. More then six Dragonclaws were within the room. One of them right next to the entrance, he did a double take as Elizabeth appeared and disappeared he stood squarely in the entranceway and peered into the dark passage, he got a really bad roll and saw nothing. Elizabeth proceeded to do a tiny little victory dance in the narrow space.

I looked up to see a giant purple slightly glowing fungi mushroom thing. Joe's Taran, watching from above, did an awesome nature check and recognised it as a nasty poisonous species. He called down to me not to touch it. In the meantime the stairs had returned and Axel had proceeded to go down them avoiding the sixth step. Matt's dwarf was selected to go and find the others.

Our dwarfen friend joins Kayleigh's Drow Lea at the entrance of the thin passage still waiting for Elizabeths return.
Elizabeth has no idea they are waiting for her and has now backed up to the fork in the path again and decides to check out the other path. A small room is found, dark and quiet apart from the snoring guard in the middle of it. Elizabeth wants a dragon so tries waking him up to see if there really are eggs or hatchlings in the caves. He doesn't wake up at first, she has to stab him in the leg to do so. He reveals that yes there is some hatchlings in the caves but nothing else useful. She knocks him out and steals his weapons she heads back to Lea and the dwarf.

We converge at the fungi forest and manage to get through without touching any of the purple ones.

The room beyond is vast and dotted with natural columns. There are shapes on the floor, Axel sees that they are large bats with great bites taken out of them. We pretty much all fail our stealth checks and make a lot of noise entering this room. A rustling twittering noise could be heard above us, we look up to see a lot of bats flying at us, we are swarmed by bats and can't see much around us. Joe's Taran gets bitten by something that isn't a bat. A bat like monster that i can't recall the name of. Soon we are all in tussles with these creatures. Kayleigh's Drow Lea steps forth into the middle of the room and blasts out her rainbow coloured magic taking out about 40 bats and several bat monsters. It becomes clearer and safer to move about.

We regroup at the far end of the room and find another drop in front of us, a passage to the right and a.passage to the left. The majority decide to go left. I decide to go right, I just had a feeling we should go right. Elizabeth goes with me and Lea changes her mind and joins us. (we are the three that want to capture a dragon by the way)

The others stick with going left and a soon come across a strange bit of floor in the passage, they decide to jump it but the dwarf nearly doesn't make it and Taran grabs him. The dwarfs foot has ripped through what seems to be a paper covering hiding holes a two/three foot drop on to poisoned spikes.
They make enough noise to disturb the shadowy shapes in the next room who turn to them and seem to draw weapons.


And that's where we left it.

[QueenBex]

Guys!! They're starting to talk about the next Encounters!!!

I am so gonna be a Gnome! Just reading through the book just now and gnomes are awesome!! Nature loving, fun loving, living life to the full, enthusiastic, creative, inventive!

I love this; "gnomes love names and most have half a dozen or so."

I'm still debating between male or female.

And I'm keen to have some spells so I'll have to have a look at the classes too.

I might create a new thread for the next adventure so I don't get confused. And I think I'll start my blog with the next adventure.

Anyone have any good Gnome names?

[Eliste]

Guys!! They're starting to talk about the next Encounters!!!

Uuu cool. Are they talking about finishing this campaign up or just setting up another game?

I am so gonna be a Gnome! Just reading through the book just now and gnomes are awesome!! Nature loving, fun loving, living life to the full, enthusiastic, creative, inventive!

I love this; "gnomes love names and most have half a dozen or so."
... Anyone have any good Gnome names?

Haha! I don't think I've ever played a gnome, but they've always been rather adorable. You like the shorter races don't you? I'm always too short to reach the top shelf and usually don't play anything shorter than a human in games if I can help it. I don't like asking for help ><

On the names, you might try some of these to get an idea what others think gnome names sound like:
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/dnd-gn ... LzkeidhVZE
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/gnome_ ... LzkfydhVZE
http://www.gnomenamegenerator.com/index.php

I'm still debating between male or female.

Playing as the opposite gender to yourself is one thing that I'd recommend. You'll find different things happen than you might otherwise expect. There's a guy in our play group who, given the chance, will always play female. Don't know why, but he likes it a lot. Then there's me who has settled into "I'd rather be female, thanks" regardless. Just one more way to explore!

And I'm keen to have some spells so I'll have to have a look at the classes too.

I might create a new thread for the next adventure so I don't get confused. And I think I'll start my blog with the next adventure.

Uuu yes! Blog the next one! Will it be on your normal blog or are you going to set one up specifically for the adventure? Will you write it in character or out of character? Oh the questions!!!

[QueenBex]

Uuu cool. Are they talking about finishing this campaign up or just setting up another game?

They are debating if we can continue with this one or not, they hold a lot of events. The new one will take over on Wednesday nights starting at Easter.

Haha! I don't think I've ever played a gnome, but they've always been rather adorable. You like the shorter races don't you? I'm always too short to reach the top shelf and usually don't play anything shorter than a human in games if I can help it. I don't like asking for help ><

On the names, you might try some of these to get an idea what others think gnome names sound like:
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/dnd-gn ... LzkeidhVZE
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/gnome_ ... LzkfydhVZE
http://www.gnomenamegenerator.com/index.php

Yep I seem to veer more towards the smaller races, though Dragonborn intrigues me too. Thanks for the websites!

Playing as the opposite gender to yourself is one thing that I'd recommend. You'll find different things happen than you might otherwise expect. There's a guy in our play group who, given the chance, will always play female. Don't know why, but he likes it a lot. Then there's me who has settled into "I'd rather be female, thanks" regardless. Just one more way to explore!

Hmm perhaps...

Uuu yes! Blog the next one! Will it be on your normal blog or are you going to set one up specifically for the adventure? Will you write it in character or out of character? Oh the questions!!!

I'm setting a blog up especially for d&d adventures. I'm toying with the idea of writing in character. Though would take a bit longer to do. Either that or in collaboration with my character like they've hired me to write their memoirs but keep butting in with phrases I have to put in etc.