Dungeons & Dragons - The Hall of Final Fate

Kyrin, Cleric of the Raven Queen

I commissioned artwork of the heroes in this group. I'm waiting on Val to be finished and then we'll have a complete set.
Val couldn't make it today, so I got Jesse to jump in. Jessie plays Bidam in my Planescape campaign.

Crossovers: One of the things I enjoy most in D&D is when I have two separate D&D groups, and one player "crosses over" to the other for one session. For me, it's like having Batman show up in an Avengers movie.

This is one of the things I am looking forward to doing once the youtube shows start. I can spend time and establish the two groups, and then down the road have them meet in some way. I think it will be awesome.

On Saturday, we finished the Chained Coffin. Once it was done, we jumped material from Tales From the Yawning Portal. I got it the other day, and one of the adventures in it is Dead in Thay. I ran that a few years ago and I really liked it. I wasn't able to use all of the rooms I wanted to. Tonight, I got to grab some rooms from the Ooze Gtrotto, and it was pretty awesome.

The Party

Kyrin - Human Cleric of the Raven Queen
Mistletoe - Human Druid
Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter

So there Bidam was, sailing on the River Styx. In one old Dragon Magazine it says that the Styx has fog that might teleport you to a random plane. So.. there you go. They sail through the fog, Bidam disappears from the ship and appears in the Luhsaal Wheel.

Bidam is 12th level and this group is level 3. I thought about it, and I figured that the best way to balance things was to have Bidam appear without his equipment. All he on had on him was pants. No sword of sharpness, no armor of invulnerability.

The Luhsaal Wheel

Ramrod, Goliath Barbarian

We left off last time with a giant-sized champion of Demogorgon about to attack the group. The spirit in the chained coffin had entered Kyrin's body and grew him so he was 20 feet tall!

There were also minor demons here as well: dretches and a maw demon.

The first thing Kyrin did was to kick Ramrod, because Ramrod had been teasing the chained coffin a lot the last two sessions.

Mistletoe tossed Bidam a dagger and cast spike growth on the demons, decimating them. Ramrod climbed up Kyrin and jumped at Boak, the champion of Demogorgon. He tried to grab the fur on Boak's face, but failed his check! He was able to grab onto Boak's crotch area to stop his fall. He proceeded to pull out his javelin and stab Boak repeatedly in the groin.

Kyrin summoned a gigantic magic scythe and sliced into Boak. The heroes beat down the bad guys pretty badly.

When it was over, ravens came down from the sky. The ravens swarmed the group, teleporting them to the Shadowfell.

The Hall of Final Fate

Vorkhesis, Master of Fate

They found themselves in the Hall of Final Fate, home of Vorkhesis, Master of Fate. The hovering souls of Boak and Zugun were here, too. No sign of Val, who had vanished during the battle.

I love Vorkhesis and I've waited a long time to use him. I plan on making him a big thing in this campaign.

Vorkhesis handles rogue souls for his mother, the Raven Queen. He transformed the soul of Boak into a raven statue, as punishment for his betrayal. He sent Zugun, the spirit who had been trapped in the chained coffin, off to be judged by the Raven Queen.

Once the souls had been dealt with, Vorkhesis examined the heroes with his empty eye sockets. He clearly had a problem with Kyrin, who had been specially blessed by the Raven Queen. She had placed tattoos on his body of people she wanted him to kill.

Vorkhesis demanded to see the tattoos and Kyrin obliged him. The biggest tattoo on Kyrin’s whole body was of Vorkhesis himself. Vorkhesis turned and quaked with rage. His own mother wanted him dead!

He decided to test Kyrin to see if he was really worthy of this honor. Vorkhesis indicated that if Kyrin failed, he would be the new resident of the Chained Coffin.

Vorkhesis explained that villains on a far flung world had abducted priests of the Raven Queen. There was one cleric in particular that needed saving - she was a Grim Censer-Bearer That comes from a 4th edition article that describes different types of agents of the Raven Queen. I LOVE saying "Grim Censer-Bearer" so I plan on using these guys whenever possible.

Vorkhesis raven-teleported the group to a dungeon. Someone lit a torch, and Bidam introduced himself to the heroes. Jessie and I bring out the raunchy humor in each other and I was a little worried that we might offend somebody, but we kept it pretty tame and the group seemed fine with it.

The Ooze Grotto

Mistletoe, Human Druid

The group was in the ooze grotto, a series of ooze-themed dungeon rooms. A massive white pillar of slime was in the center of the room. It issued forth maddening telepathic whispers. The group didn't know that three priests of the Raven Queen had been forced to merge with this thing.

This pillar, known as the White Maw, actually encompasses the whole room. It blocked off the only exit and advanced on the heroes.

They hacked into it and saw that its acidic nature damaged their weapons and armor.

There was a point in this battle where the White Maw engulfed everyone but Kyrin. Bidam and Ramrod’s clothes sizzled off. Mistletoe asked if his did, too. I decided to roll for it.

In general, I go by the Gary Gygax rule - when I don't have an answer for a non-essential question, I roll a die. High is good, low is bad. I rolled to see if Mistletoe's crown of Mistletoe was destroyed. Natural 20! Not only was it intact, it had grown an extra berry!

What about his kilt? I rolled again. NATURAL 20! Misteltoe's kilt was actually cleaned by the White Maw. It would seem that his patron Gwyharwyf herself has blessed his clothing.

Ramrod and Bidam emerged from the pillar butt-naked. Jesse pointed out that Bidam's mighty dong was swinging around.

The White Maw was defeated. The heroes entered the next room, which contained a red ooze pillar. Embedded in it was a guy called the OOZE MASTER. He was behind this whole merge-with-oozes scheme.

The Ooze Master believed that oozes lived forever, and that if he merged with one, he would live forever as well. I think he's right, but he's crazy and evil. He closed in on the adventurers and they kicked the crap out of him. He was heading right for the wall. The group worried that he was going to merge into the wall and get away. They finished him off before that could happen.

The Cat Cube: The next room is actually a combination of two rooms from Dead in Thay. Apprentices were in here, throwing cats into an arch of blades which chopped up the poor cats. The bad guys had been using the cats to perfect the ooze-merging process. Now that they had perfected it, the cats were no longer needed.

The group burst into the room. They noticed giant mirrors on the walls. The acolytes were terrified of the heroes and tried to lie their way out of it. One of them tried to trick the group into getting close to a mirror.

It backfired. The group forced an acolyte to approach a mirror. He reluctantly did so, and a specter reached out of the mirror and killed him.

During all of this, Misteltoe used his ability to talk to animals on the cats. These poor creatures were traumatized. They'd seen terrible things. They told Mistletoe that one cat had actually merged with a gelatinous cube. I call it: The Cat Cube.

The group decided that the cats should get to have street justice on the acolytes. The cats killed the acolytes, but they found that revenge was hollow. It couldn't undo what had been done. But at least they were free!

The heroes moved on, and found the object of their quest - The GRIM CENSER BEARER! She was covered in plate mail and.. engulfed in a big Gelatinous cube.

Nearby was a tiny cube. It turned and looked at the heroes, then at the cube. Mistletoe used shis druidic ability to speak with animals and told the Cat Cube that everything was OK. The cat cube slid over to him and did that cat thing where it rubbed against his legs. The group was worried that he would take acid damage, but it just stung a little. The cat cube is quite weak.

One of the heroes ran up and pulled the grim censer-bearer out of the big cube. The heroes mauled this cube, as it had already been injured by the censer-bearer.

Once it had been destroyed, the Grim Censer-Bearer took off her helmet. She was a beautiful goliath with long, flowing green hair. She looked at Ramrod and Kyrin, smiled, and was about to speak... then the ravens swarmed and drew the heroes back to the Hall Of Final Fate.

Ramrod was really annoyed about that. With a wave of his hand, Vorkhesis sent Bidam back from whence he came.

Vorkhesis prepared to address the adventurers a second time... that's where we stopped.

It was a lot of fun! These groups make me laugh. It makes the games easy to run.

I like how Chris Perkins works character stories into his sessions, something that I've been really bad at historically. I've definitely worked in Kyrin’s story, and I think can handle the others in a similar fashion.