TOPIC: [R2] D&D5e Harpers Game (Bane DM)

Dave the Crow had finished admonishing his underling Kevin about the perils of 'loosing' one of their charges...

"it says right here. Paragraph 18 next to the picture of that saucy dove, "the Spirit Guides shall, at all times keep their charges in visual and metaphysical contact, and what did you do whilst I was off trying to keep Lia from messing with her celestial parts and overusing that bloody firey stick... Well? WELL???"


No response came, but none was expected. So far, besides loosing Karnok, things were going ok. No one had been eaten, everyone was still breathing. No one had fallen out, the Bulgara were as slain as anything that big and ugly was going to get, but this terrain was just not good for anyone, not only that it seemed not to have any decent worms here at all. Pondering this strange fact a distant explosion and a small mushroom cloud gave Dave a pause for hope.

"Right, feathers up! You see that dust cloud on the horizon? That’s not a volcanic eruption, that’s a barbarian incoming!"

Karnok's Holliday excusion
While hs colleagues were playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with Ropers and eating raw bats like desperate goblins, Karnok took a slightly more... scenic route. The portal didn't just dump him in a different part of the Abyss; it blinked him into the Elemental Plane of Earth. Most people would panic. Karnok? He just saw it as a realm made entirely of things he could punch.

He has spent the last forty-eight hours wrestling a Xorn for a ‘shiny rock’ he thought was a snack and accidentally collapsing a Dao’s summer palace because he didn't like the architecture. Eventually, he got so annoyed by the lack of gravity and the abundance of pebbles that he found a rift, grabbed a passing Dust Mephit by the throat, and demanded to be taken to 'where the yelling is.' George (the helpless Dust Mephit) avoided the obvious answer as the Half Orc was definitely the most yelly creature it had ever encountered, and instead decided to acquiesce to the demands, and help transport the horrendous creature somewhere, ANYWHERE, else. George pointed at the portal, he was about to offer some advice, but the Half Orc was off, jumped straight through it carrying the helpless Mephit into the unknown...

Clearly you don't just walk through the Elemental Plane of Earth without picking up a bit of the local 'decor.' While Karnok was busy trying to find an exit (with George clasped firmly in his hand as a sort of elemental compass), he stumbled into a subterranean grotto filled with lightly glowing Lucent Cinnabar or Jinnmoss. Normally, this stuff is highly toxic and pulses with a soft, radioactive light common to some of the nastier parts of the Element Plane of Torpor, (the quasi elemental elemental plane of minerals). To say that Torpor is relaxed is an understatement. Most creatures in the plane, end up becoming the plane, but, by good fortune, Karnok picked the only safe place for his nap, and whilst most creatures wouldn't get within twenty feet of the moss to Karnock it looked like a 'comfy patch of grass' and decided to take a twenty-minute power nap right on top of it [short rest].

George noted, that when Karnok woke up, he was hungry. Fearing that the Half Orc would eat him George pointed to the moss. Karnok grabbed a handfulls of the softly glowing fungus, sniffed it, pulled a quick face, and then added it to some of his black flap beer, and stewed it all up into a thick nutritious organic smoothie. The glowing moss and the black beer merged into a thick bitter liquid with a slightly luminous cream coloured foam head. This Jinn-less drink helped revive Karnok but with an unfortunate side effect. The Jinn Moss caused Karnock's body to glow as the active ingredients in the Lucent Cinnabar concentrated in his body and begin to leak from it.

Whislt Karnok radiating a steady, pulsing amber hue from his pores (and we wont talk about any points of bodily egress) was 'unexpected', and definitely wasn't the sort a fashion statement needed, it was the eventual means to rejoin his colleagues. The radioactive moss provided an elemental surcharge of power to the glowing Half Orc, that, and a nasty case of the hiccups. It was these hiccups that eventually transported him to the Abyss with the unfortunate side effect that every time he breathes out, a little puff of golden spores hits the air, and he begins to glow when he exerts himself or gets angry. He’s basically a six-foot-five, muscle-bound lantern with an axe, and ironically just what the Spirit Guides need for their other wayward souls!

Dave reviewed Karnoks recent history with some amusement... and reported it to Kevin. "Right he's over there... go get him. He just stepped out of a fissure three miles back. He’s not going to be difficult to find, he is literally the only glowing pissed of giant with an axe present." As Kevin flew off in search of his errant charge, Dave shouted...

If you hustle he may well arrive just in time to see the rest of this lot covered in bat guts and singed hair. I'll try and suggest to this lot that they dont mention the Roper and Karnok might be disappointed that he missed the 'hentai-monster,' so dont mention that either. He’s likely to see that Barlgura corpse like it owes him money. The Legend is back Gentlemen, and my beak says the Abyss is about to get a lot louder."

Harpers Session 5

A sudden flurry of black feathers and Karnok the Legend re-appears, gripping a squirming mephit in one clenched fist. He is accompanied by a strong/silent human man wearing a cowboy hat and dusty poncho. This is Sundown Shane Anderson. He tips his hat to the party.
"Howdy."
"I found us a Ranger!" Karnok announces.
"We already have a Ranger!" Fapp protests (pause to register expressions of confusion across the party), "Me!"



Hoping the mephit will lead us to the next waypoint, Lia commands the elemental to "sniff [my] crystal!" Shane deftly ties a lease for the creature, then hands the rope to Fapp, like the world's shittest balloon animal.
"Hold that for me, would ya' champ?"
Fapp seethes. The mephit slips its collar and flies away. Fapp blames Shane's sloppy knot, but the rest of the party shake their heads and refuse to meet his eye.

Karnok detects the intoxicating scent of fermented grains drifting from the entrance to the Screaming Maw saloon. The door is unpleasantly slimy, and the entire building appears to be alive. Ignoring this, the party head inside. A winged cambion tends bar, whilst an assortment of abyssal denizens nurse strong drinks; two Barlgura demons, four Hezrou demons and a half dozen flayed wizards. A band of terrified musicians shackled to the stage play lively honky tonk beats like their lives depend on it.



Harper joins the band. Robin wolfs down a plate of Nalfeshnee bangers and is immediately sick. Projectile vomit everywhere. The bartender tells us to get out. Adhesive tentacles reach from the walls of the living tavern to grapple the two Rangers, pulling them both inexorably closer to a gaping maw that has opened in the floor of the taproom.

"Not again!" Fapp wails.

Shane just grunts in a cool and manly fashion, stoic in the face of imminent peril.

Robin hides inside a drum and rolls out through the open door. Lia casts Fireball, but is counter-spelled by the flayed wizards. Karnok grapples the bartender and pins him to the wall whilst gulping down a pint of Blackflap. Fapp breaks free of the grasping tentacles and briefly considers helping Shane, before deciding to leave the newcomer to his fate. This Abyss isn't big enough for the both of them. Shane hardly needs the help, he breaks free on his own one round later. The flayed wizards hit the party with a Fireball of their own, then Dimension Door 500ft away. Harper goes down. Shane takes aim at the retreating wizards, rolls to hit (nat 1 on the dice) and shoots Fapp in the kneecap. An explosion rocks the tavern. Lia emerges brandishing her smoking wand. The interior is ablaze.

Time to go. It's safe to assume we are all barred from the Screaming Maw for life.

TBC

And we all blame Lia for praying for a Saloon-e...
On such small misunderstandings are legends made!

We can't complain too much as next week the fates (and the fireballs) change for the heroes with the introduction of the new master of the Abyss - Bane Snr.

Be afraid... Be very afraid!

Great write up Mike... And fast!