Orchard Episode 10: Erelhei-Cinlu

I've been playing in a game on the Greyhawk Channel called Orchard. It is run by Prorestarter.

I've written before about how I hate being a player, but lately I've felt that it is important for me to play as I tend to lose perspective as a DM and come off as too harsh or callous.

Here's the group:

• (Tommy) Ciaran: He's a barbarian, a pretty dark character. So far in the campaign, he turned into a wendigo and lost an eye.
• (Bree) Caeli: A rogue who is linked to the Suel empire. She grew up as a slave and is also a pretty dark character.
• (Heavenleigh) Seraphina: A cleric who is sort of the "mom" of the group.

We are all members of a mercenary company called the Gilded Glaive. Each member gets a special fanny pack to hold our stuff. You have to earn these fanny packs!

My character is Neil Zarkanen, a friendly paladin of Boccob (god of magic). Right after he was born, his mom left him in a garbage pile outside the city of greyhawk when he was a baby. Clerics of Boccob took him in and raised him.

Playing a Good Guy: My character is a nice guy. I like playing nice guys or good guys. He tries to keep the group together and gets bothered when the heroes do something evil.

Both Ciaran and Caeli thought that Bael, one of the roaming dukes of hell, was cool. Bael traveled with us for a short time. Bael is not cool - he's raw evil. He's scum.

We have this weird sort of tension where my dorky-but-kind character tries to keep the heroes on the path toward goodness. It is an avenue ripe with dad joke possibilities.

DM Style: I really enjoy the way that the DM runs the game. Usually, due to my abominable attention span, I get bored pretty quick. Usually in D&D, there's a lot of sitting and waiting your turn in D&D. I get lost in my own brain and lose track of where we are and what we're doing.

The DM is able to keep everything moving really well, to the point that the time flies by more often than not. I think part of it is his use of background music. There's something about it that really helps a lot.

He also does something that fascinates me. He legit runs it like a TV show, even describing a camera panning over a scene. He's locked in to that take - we're in a movie or a TV show. He even one time described a scene where time slowed down and reversed, detailing arrows stopping in mid-flight.

What's the downside to that? None, as far as I can see. It doesn't hurt at all. It's weird that more DMs don't do it, now that I think about it.

Erelhei-Cinlu: In this session, we arrived in the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu. This was very cool for me, as I ran a few sessions in this city with my Planescape group. I did a ridiculous amount of preparation for that game. Basically, I made a guide with a pencil and paper. I wrote about pifwafwis, crawl chariots, you name it.

We're dealing with a few issues:

1. The Feywild is being corrupted by twisted evil.
2. We need to destroy a number of temples to Tharizdun.

We needed to meet a women in a brothel. I got quite amused at the idea of my character in a brothel.

The other heroes kept the employees of the brothel from sinking their hooks into me, while Ciaran started drinking heavily. The rest of us hit the town and picked up some potions and gear.

This was essentially a "shopping" episode, which is something I used to hate. In this campaign, it was good because the entire group is good. I think we could do just about anything and it would be fun.

I bought some noble clothes and lolth-themed pajamas.

Slaves: Guess what came up again? Slaves!! Jessie used to have a thing for buying slaves in D&D, and here we are once again in a city full of them.

I thought that my character should try to buy as many slaves as he could and free them. Wandering around with a horde of 5 hit point slaves is obviously a recipe for disaster, but hey, I have to try, right?

Interestingly, Seraphina, the other good character in the party, was against it. She said we should try to foment revolution.

Here?? Now? How? As far as I could tell, we were just making a pit stop. How the heck are we going to create a successful slave revolt down in this thoroughly evil realm?

the goal was noble, but I just didn't see how it was possible.

The group further pointed out to me that these slaves likely were all messed up psychologically, and that they might not be able to survive on their own.

Ultimately I thought the best solution was to buy one "test" slave. At the very least, I can save one person, right? I'll have to keep them safe until we get somewhere that they can build a new life. That will be very tricky, but a fun challenge, in my opinion.

Mom: We ended with Ciaran rolling over in bed to see that the lady in bed with him suddenly looked like his mother. His screams echoed throughout the building.

You can watch this episode here:

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Watch Orchard episode 11 Erelhei-Cinlu from thegreyhawkchannel on www.twitch.tv