Geek Related

Seventh Session – It’s death or glory in the tentacle pit as we face off against the lead cultist and his pet tentacles. The body count is significant.

The woman we rescued is a hunter. Hemp is thrilled to have a hot bald archer in the group! Of course she is killed shortly thereafter. And then used as an undead as Mordecai. Also, Mordecai finally decides to murder the Lawful priest when no one is watching. Hemp is not thrilled by all of this.

Ned Wimbley also gets downed but we manage to save him.

We finally kill off the rest of the cultists, who are trying to sacrifice yet another woman (ok, like, one’s fine, but this is pushing it). Back to the village, with one survivor to show for it. And a bunch of “potions of tentacle control” that we pull out anytime subsequently in the campaign there is anything that looks like a tentacle – which isn’t that uncommon really!

Sixth Session – We murder and/or rescue people from the tentacle cultists’ lair, and Mordecai learns the “control tentacle” spell. Then we descend through the tentacle hole. Hey man, I didn’t write this adventure!!!

There’s a lot of 3D clambering and killing solo cultists involved and tentacled owlbears and demonic toads. It’s a long session of good old fashioned dungeon crawling.

We rescue a Lawful cleric, Berrenon, a bad fit with the rest of the party as the mages are psychotic murderhobos and the rest of us except for Podrick are of a Chaotic bent.

Finally, we get to rescue a comely maiden chained to the wall for cultists to sacrifice for a ritual, a standard feature of all 1970s dungeons. Nostalgia +1!

Fifth Session – The group is messed up after their first run at the tentacle pit and needs to rest outside the dungeon. And naturally we are beset by gorilla bears and hydras and decide to bail back to town.

My character (Hemp) gets ambushed and hugged by a “gorilla bear” which could well have been fatal, but I maange to break free and decapitate it in a single blow!

Then, a wounded hydra cursed so it can’t regenerate bullies Ned into helping him get healed in the village. We reenter the nameless village from the Christmas adventure. It suddenly has a name, Cartwell, and more info on their fire deity Aphiel. Hemp takes an interest in it, especially when he hears a magic bow artifact may be in a cave across the Great Rift aka Tentacle Pit.

The group decides there’s no real opportunity to help the hydra so we should try to dupe and kill it. Even a non-regenerated hydra is going to be a problem for our level 1 asses. I register my objection and then go help; as the archer I reckon I’ll at least be the last to die.

And last to die I am – Podrick and Ned get wasted round one and then it chases down Old Man Fish and wastes him. I finish shooting its heads dead and we manage to save our downed party members at the cost of permanent STA loss and hideous scarring. We retreat back to Cartwell to lick our wounds (or, in Hemp’s case, a local trader lady).

While we had spent several sessions making fun of this village for not having a name, Hemp starts getting philosophical. A village worshipping a fire god, that’s a pretty Epicurean and transitory thing, he kinda ended up liking it. And while Aphiel is Chaotic, they’re not a bunch of serial killers, they just are the Live Free Or Die types.

We head back to the tentacle pit after recovering to find that the Knights of Lushnia have been killed by skeletons on its lip. We kill the skeletons and recover intel. Podrick starts jonesing to become one of the order.

Then we work our way back into the tentacle pit dungeon, whacking one cultist at a time and finding some secret passages to get us deeper into the complex. We do find some water that drips up to a puddle on the ceiling like that one John Carpenter movie.

More next time!

Fourth Session – We hang out with some super stuck up Lawful knights of Lushnia, who are looking to gather up magical artifacts, most notably the Helm of Chistu. After we shake them we go into a tentacle pit full of tentacle cultists, and tentacles. It’s as fun as it sounds. Retreat!!!

Tentacle cultists, when killed, emit little tentacle blobs that come and look for your orifices. That’s not great. But Gallfred Weasel finds a really magical shortsword, Shadeslayer! He will attempt in vain to find goblins to use it against for most of the rest of the campaign.

Apparently tentacle cultists come in color coded danger levels: grey, yellow, and red. Giant tentacles brutalize our heroes (but luckily not me, I was on a work trip) and they withdraw after freeing some peasants who are set up on a big wheel grinding tentacles into goo.