The Descent: Day Two

On this day, fans at the live event were able to play in an epic event centered around a massive war machine battle.


The power went out in the building for a short time during the Chris Perkins game.

The Descent: Game Session 3

DM: Marisha Ray    
           
(Krystina Arielle) Ariza - Aasimar Cleric/Bard                
(Matthew Lillard) Gark - Tiefling Wizard                
(Satine Phoenix) Vadia - Bard/Wizard Band manager of the sirens                
(Patrick Rothfuss) Viari - Rogue                 
(Kate Welch) Rosie Beestinger - Halfling Monk                
(Deborah Ann Woll) Twiggy - Gnome Arcane Trickster

Gark awakens, barely remembering what happened last session. All he knows is that he wants to get out of this place. He sees a hole in the sky and spots the remains of a city in the distance. It seems to have chains connected to it.

Nearby there is a small canoe half-buried in the sand. A river is nearby.

Gark finds the other heroes lying unconscious in the sand nearby. There’s also a corpse of a barbed devil. Introductions are made. Rosie spots a war machine in the distance and says that it could be a useful shelter.

The group approaches, carefully avoiding the many puddles of black ichor that dot the area.. Vadia spots a creature skittering about. It looks a bit like a rat.

Viari gets some gunk on him and his ear begins to mutate. He panics and runs toward Rosie. He trips and falls into a puddle of black ichor. His ear becomes deformed and he grows twisted wings.

Gark realizes that this stuff is demon ichor, the remains of rotting demon corpses that have liquified and congealed over time.

The group meets a creature called Rusty, who explains that the war machine needs to be powered. The vehicle is like a heavy metal dune buggy with blades welded on at random.There are 4 seats and a cabin.

Viari sneezes and realizes he suddenly has the ability to fly.

The group checks out one warmachine half-submerged in a pool. Twiggy picks open a lockbox and finds inside it is a shimmering coin. When she touches the coin, a voice whispers to her, asking for help. Twiggy immediately says she will, and offers to tell it a joke.

Also in the lockbox is a fingerbone.

Twiggy bites the coin and it screams.

Ariza examines Viari’s weird infection and sees that it could be healed with restorative magic. She casts lesser restoration on his ear. Viari is healed, the swelling on his face goes down, and his wings diminish.

Viari studies the coin, and has heard rumors of souls being bound to coins. He’s not sure if there is any way to free the soul.

The group gets in the vehicle with Rusty, and Twiggy puts the coin in the coin slot in the war machine. The vehicle begins to rumble. Black and green smoke shoots out of smokestacks. A high-pitched whistle screams in seemingly endless cycles.

Take an action to steer, full speed, stop/halt. If you don’t steer, it will go straight until you take another action.

Ariza tries to drive it, but rolls a one. The vehicle clips a pole. Viari is on the back of the vehicle and is able to avoid colliding with it.

The vehicle drives out of the ruins into salt flats - fields of glass and white salt. Heat rises up from the service.

They spot a floating island tethered to the ground by huge chains. They spot a flying war machine. Pointing to the big hole in the sky, Rusty points out that chunks of land spew out it every once in a while.

Up ahead, they spot a massive dust cloud. The vehicle rides into it, and the group feels cold and alone. They can’t see each other. They feel trapped and stuck in the white haze. Viari sings.

Other vehicles give chase. There is a dune buggy and a motorcycle, apparently driven by barbed devils. Gark mans the acid sprayer and his the motorcycle with it.

A lithe elven figure on a motorcycle jumps the bike over a dune. The elf teleports onto the dune buggy, kills the driver with a blade. The group takes out the devils and come to a stop. The elf removes a bag from the dune buggy. The bag is full of soul coins.

Gark attacks the elf and rolls a critical, doing 48 points of damage with a witchbolt. The elf’s cheek tears open.  The elf says that teamwork is over-rated, more or less. He snaps his fingers, and all of Gark’s allies save for Twiggy vanish.

The elf reveals that this was all a ruse so that he could get his hands on the soul coins.

He grabs Gark and Twiggy tries to stop him...

The Descent: Game Session 4

 DM: Chris Perkins    
           
(Mica Burton) Remyria - Tiefling Sorcerer                
(Matthew Mercer) Boo - Miniature Giant Space Hamster                
(Anna Prosser) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander               
(B. Dave Walters) Nosia - Human Bard                
(Deborah Ann Woll) Twiggy - Gnome                
(Jim Zub) Minsc - Human Ranger

Chris makes the group start by rolling a d20. The result is how many hit points they currently have. Here is what they rolled:

• Evelyn 14
• Nosia 1
• Twiggy 11
• Minsc 20
• Boo 1
• Ramyria 16

Chris hands each player a soul coin. The player can cash it in to get the DM to show them mercy.

Adventurers from all over the multiverse have been drawn to Avernus. They found a way to get home - a war machine with the power of flight. This group of heroes is trying to do just that. They’ve been jumping from war machine to war machine.

Twiggy lost track of her previous crew. She made friends with a guy named Manfrensengen. His head was chopped off. She felt the sting of regret for having even known him. As her vehicle crossed the expanse, she found herself in a dust storm. Her vehicle fell into a crack in the earth and burst into flames.

They find themselves hanging from the vehicle above a crevasse full of jagged obsidian teeth. The rest of the group is in the wreckage. They can see each other through the flames and smoke.

Evelyn has a beam impaled through her thigh. Minsc tries to pull himself out of the wreckage. He pulls himself out and sees a raging dust storm.

As the group struggles to get free, Evelyn and Twiggy become friends. Twiggy tries to introduce her squirrel to Evelyn, but Chris points out that the squirrel is not there. The live crowd is outraged!

Evelyn falls into the crevasse, taking 70 points of damage. She is about to start making death saves. Most of the group makes their way down to help her.

Up at the top, Nosia sees through the dust storm. He spots creatures tearing into each other. In the distance, he sees Twiggy’s squirrel. It is not moving, terrified that it might attract the attention of a fiend.

Twiggy is able to stabilize Evelyn.

Nosia uses minor illusion to imitate Twiggy’s voice to call the squirrel over. The squirrel happily begins to dart toward Nosia. The squirrel avoids the attention of a vrock and makes it to Nosia.

Minsc tries an incredible feat of strength, climbing up out while pulling the other heroes along with him. Chris gives him “double disadvantage”, and makes him roll twice, and he still succeeds!

The entire group exits the crevasse. Remyria is wearing Evelyn’s winged boots. She attunes to them (because time is strange here).

A vrock swoops down and snatches Twiggy.

Minsc throws Boo, who lands on the vrock’s beak. Boo bites one of the vrock’s eye, but it is supernaturally hard. Boo jumps off and activates a parachute. Remyria flies up and catches him.

Twiggy gives Evelyn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and she wakes up. Evelyn “melts” into the kiss. Remyria comes over and puts Evelyn’s boots back on.

The group spots something in the distance. They approach it and see that is a batlike war machine that is damaged but mostly intact. They don’t see any creatures around.

The heroes realize that there is some kind of humanoid creature inside. A mace falls from the sky and hits Remyria, which allows her to remember her spells. The group calls it the “Mace of Spell Granting.”

The Power went out in the building so there is a long break.

Remyria made a bargain with the DM. Mercy and sunshine for the rest of the session.

The interior of the bat is full of crawling severed hands. Evelyn uses divine sense and determines that the hands are evil. The group starts destroying the hands.
There is a woman inside. She tears open her chest to reveal a skeletal snake. Evelyn cuts the snake in half. She tries to cast a spell, but Nosia counterspells it.

She begs for her life, but the group cuts her head off. She’s still alive.They question her and she reveals how to drive the war machine. It turns out that Boo can fly it.

Boo takes the seat, activates the ship, and they take off through space tunnels that only a miniature space hamster can navigate. Suddenly, they emerge from the tunnel and a planet is below them.

They rocket toward a city. Matt uses his soul coin to save the group, crashing the ship into Baldur’s Gate, destroying the statue of Minsc in the process. All of the heroes survive.