Riclahne's Tale

***Clan Banἂan and the Marilith***

Introduction

The great adventurers of castle banastle are preparing for war. They have learned of an army of tens of thousands moving up from the south of the continent. Not all are aware of this giant force, and not all are willing to fight. There are three major populations in the north of our continent, between which Castle Banastle is nested. The adventurers have taken up the mission of uniting the margraves which lead each major force. Even with all of the cities’ forces pulled together, it will take a tremendous effort to combat the outnumbering force below.

Currently, 2 of the 3 margraves have committed their forces to the coming war. The third is being persnickety. Our group has come to request help but have so far not been successful. A party member is from this city, and has contacts that know the behind the scenes events. We are set to conversate with a relatively secretive priest who is half-orc. He is hooded and not wanting attention. He directs us toward the docks, and offers to take us to another contact, but explains that we must be blind-folded before going to the secret location. Hesitant, we accept the condition.

We are brought before a high operator of a known underground criminal group, called the clasp. The woman explains to us that we have the same goal, for different reasons. She wants to supplant this margrave, and in turn, we will be able to have another nominee take her stead who will side with us to prepare for the war. We don’t exactly trust her, but we have few options, and are pressed for time. The condition of her assistance however, comes with a cost (of course criminals want something a little extra when it comes to helping the greater good). She gives us very, *very* ambiguous details, with only a singular defined outcome: the head of her competitor whom nobody knows the actual identity of. We only learn that there is a magical fog a few hours north of the city of Stilben, and that there is a group who is transporting a product in and out, which we can assume is illicit. We later learn that this group is part of the Myriad, who is an international criminal organization that deals in every sector of industry.

We have been in contact with a baron who leads a mercenary and has an air ship. He has been helping us recruit the aid of each Margrave. We request that he assist us by taking us to this mystical fog, rather than making the journey by foot. We tell him when we part to send henchmen our way with two canoes so that we can leave the marshes of the fog, the cost is no object currently. The thing about our departure, is that it may have been slightly improvised… skydiving in a world where parachutes are not present. The paladin of our group used the spell *feather fall* to slow our descent into the fall, and passing through the mystical mist, we find ourselves splashing into the marsh, which is actually quite deep and requires swimming.

Our characters

We comprise clan banaan, allow me to introduce us individually. We have a wood elf, who is a ranger. His skills generally involve being an outdoorsman, defending nature, consuming hallucinogens, and syncing up with the natural world. And by the way, he’s a lethal fighter, dual wielding magical seaxes. He’s quick on his feet, and adept in his physical prowess.

Next up is our goliath warlock. This guy has been through the ringer. He’s had his memory wiped seven times by an evil fiend who kept tightening his grasp around Aglath, deepening deals to gain power and acquire others to do his bidding. This behemoth casts flames from his patron’s power, but recently has been freed (not painlessly) from the servant of Hell. He is recovering from this spiritual cleansing, but is capable of devastating all in the immediate vicinity with one utterance.

That brings us to our next tank: Sir Teryk who actually is ancient. This paladin was turned to stone 700 years ago and freed when we gained the castle. He’s what you’d expect from a knight – dedicated, strong, immovable, and he hits hard. He has a strong spirit with righteous intentions, and he always looks out for his fellow comrades in the heat of battle either with healing magic or araus of protection, except he does it while multitasking and beheading evildoers.

The three heavyweights would not be complete without the juxtaposition of the terrifying halfling that could intimidate a lower deity. That would be Lydia the mastermind rogue, who you probably won’t hear come behind you. Not to mention, she typically wields a magical rapier that emits embers. This is the one who generally keeps the group in check and conscious of the forces against us, that we really ought not be over confident against. Lastly, she keeps track of our group items with the magical bag of holding – pro tip, don’t leave the valuables with the dudes of the group.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, we have our Myconid who is a humanoid mushroom in lay man’s terms. He comes from the under dark, and has an interesting way about doing things –he probably thinks the same about us. He is obsessed with buckets, but he dunks on big baddies. That’s right, he wears a bucket on his head, but is the biggest thorn in the side of any entity that opposes us. He has a magical way of making opponents miss, more often than not, confusing their forces, silencing their spell-casters, and that’s just the intro to his resume.

For reference, the ranger and goliath warlock have close to 75 HP total. The Paladin closer to 85. The rogue and bard mushroom are nearer 60.

Back to the Matter at Hand

We find ourselves swimming in an area where we can’t see more than 15 feet in any direction, and we already know that the mist stretches for a mile in any direction from the epicenter. Wouldn’t this be fitting for an ambush? It get’s better, the enemy is amphibious, and none of us is adept at swinging a weapon under water. The goliath opens a dimensional portal, grabs the mushroom, and gets to a place to stand, but it’s only a small piece of debris that allows for his footing and it’s not a point to cluster for building our position. The other three of us work together, swim, kick, swing a sword here and there. We learn that the Sahaugins are wielding tridents and spears, but they are minions and we outclass them in spite of the environmental factors.

After eliminating these nuisances, we find solid ground, and begin exploring the area. The ranger centers himself, and gets vibes from the surrounding areas. There is a group of humanoids northeast of us, another group northwest of us, and also there are more humanoids below the surface. Additionally, he is perceiving another presence that normally would be imperceptible, but there is just the slightest sound beyond the silence that is shifting – we are being watched. All we can infer is that whomever is the source of this magical fog is also aware of our presence. We continue north, slightly west, and come upon a roofless storage area. There are a lot of clay pots, and the goliath being quite familiar with arcana recognizes the scent of this alchemy – it’s basically Greek fire.

Cue the rolls for initiative. Right about the time we realize what we are looking at, masked humanoids appear on the tops of the walls and with crossbows at the arms. The mushroom magically sprays a color mist at one of the masked men, blind him, and he falls (somehow gracefully) into the room with us. We each take a couple of bolts, but for those who were dumb enough to engage in melee, they learn that we hit harder. These are assassins and have a unique ability to uncannily dodge attacks once per round. They take half the damage that would normally be received, but only in response to a single attack. They try to leverage their skills against us with sneak attacks, but we mostly stay together and take them down one at a time. Three of them try to escape. The mushroom tackles one. Our halfling rogue kills another and chucks a dagger at the last. So much for those guys. We are mostly around 50-70% of our max health after that encounter. We take some time to collect ourselves, patch the cuts and scratches, get up to full HP.

Here's where it gets weird. A clearing in the fog highlights a path for us. That clearing wasn’t there before. Spooky.

We follow the trail. We go northeast, over dirt, take a wooden bridge over a flowing water, move onward carefully to the East, over another wooden bridge, but we take a pause here because the goliath got distracted. There is a waterfall maybe 20’ north of this bridge, and something is calling him to it – not that any of us hear anything. Did I mention that he has a history of voices in his head? Well he managed to fight against this waterfall and current, rolls dice for strength and athletics, and he actually finds a small item that he pockets, without telling the rest of us. That worked out surprisingly well for him. So we continue, the path takes us south, more bridges, more waterways and marshy areas. We turn west, and come upon a small island with a very large boulder in it. I tell the group that I don’t like that boulder, idk why, but I think it’s fishy. The island is connected by a wooden bridge to another small island, and that’s when we see her. An elegant elven woman. She greets us. She’s not one for small talk though. She asks why we have come. Our paladin attempts to teleport behind her, hoping to use an entanglement ability. This is where we get a hint that she’s not one to tango with haphazardly. She used a high-level spell that prevented him from even the simple *misty step* spell he has used before.

B ehind her, farther back and up a stone stair set, is this strange shrub that is the size of a tree, but more shrub like. It has some flowers coming from it, but you get the implication that it’s not normal.

She says, “Okay, you want to kill me. Tell me why.”

We respond, “here’s the thing, we are in a tricky predicament and didn’t want to get involved in your underground operation, but we have to remove you before we can prepare the city for the coming war.”

Turns out that this cray cray wants the war to come. Not because she is invested in a side, but because she thinks it will be fun to watch. She makes an offer. She says, “You’ve killed a lot of my men. I will give you a vestige of diversion to leave. And I will let you live. And we can move on from this encounter.” A couple of our characters with proficiencies in religion, arcana, and history, roll dice to see if they recognize what that item might be. We get the idea that these vestiges are artifacts of lore that many believe to either be lost, or even fictional. But there is something in the air here, something about this woman that is unordinary. Our goliath, being all to familiar with fiends, has a feeling of something familiar.

About this time, our impulsive goliath casts a fireball that’s 30 feet in diameter at a lvl 4 spell (nothing to balk at) at the plant and at her. It’s about to get weird. The plant starts levitating, ten feet in the air, and it somehow is not burned the way that it should have been. And then you notice what happened to Iselda, who appeared to be an elf. She is suddenly larger than our goliath. Probably 12 feet tall, with a serpent’s tail, and she has 6 arms each with a pointy weapon in it. But wait there’s more. To her side are five rogue assassins, and on the other side, about 5 more sahaugins.

Let me mention where our characters are so you have a sense of the layout. All the creatures I just mentioned are on the top island. The goliath, mushroom, and paladin are at the edge of the bridge in front of Iselda, the Marilith which is a type of fiend. The ranger and halfling rogue are on the south island between the bridge and boulder. Riclahne the ranger rolled the highest initiative, and fired two arrows into the big floating bush, thinking that maybe they draw energy from it. Next up, fwoop, Iselda teleported behind riclahne and Lydia the halfling. After teleporting, we learn that she can only use half her attacks, and she whacks at us three times. She slithers over to the boulder, and wouldn’t you know it, there was something off about it. Under an illusory spell, there were three hags sitting up there. They unleash a huge lightning strike that goes 60’ in a 10’ diameter. It hits Lydia, the paladin, and the goliath. Each of them roll for dexterity, to see if they can mitigate some of the damage, making it a glancing hit instead of a direct shot. Unluckily, the paladin and goliath each take over 30 points of lightning damage. The halfling, nimble as ever, avoided it all together. Cycling through round 1, the plant moves closer to the goliath and company, the humanoids engulf them, and they all swing at each other as they can. The Bard mushroom cast *silence* on the hags so that they are unable to speak the words of power and are unable to do another blast. The Paladin cast *Moonbeam* and a radiant column burns down upon the hags.

Top of round 2. The ranger charges at the fiend, joining the company of the halfling. Might have gotten two hits in with 20-30dmg. The Marilith then unleashes her full strength and distributes 6 attacks with the weapons PLUS a tail attack! The Ranger activates his ring of shielding (he gets two uses of that in a day) that increase his armor class from a 17 to a 22, so he’s harder to hit. The Marilith misses with 3 swings at him, but gets a critical hit on the fourth. Ouch, it was a 26 point stab. Not to mention he got hit by the sauhaugins in round 1, so he’s down to 36hp. The halfling receives the Marilith’s other three attacks. The halfling has a clock that helps make her harder to hit. She imposes “disadvantage” on her opponent, and the attacker rolls two dice, and uses the lower number against her, effectively making it much less likely that the halfling will get hit. However, this fiend has a big bonus to her attacks for being so powerful. When Lydia takes damage, her cloak is no longer active for the rest of the round, so she is subject to more damage. Of course, she winds up taking some of those hits. Lydia returns the favor, and being a rogue, she receives a benefit from having a comrade attacking the same opponent when they are in close proximity. She gets a massive swing in at the Marilith. Next, the hags leave the area of moonbeam, and start to scurry down the rock to start slashing at us. The floating plant reaches the team up on the bridge, and wouldn’t you know it, as if there weren’t enough enemies before, it summons a zombie to start slapping at the goliath. Additionally, those within 10 feet of it have to roll dice to see if they have the constitution to stay upright around it, because it has a “stench of death.” We learn that the floating shrub was planted over the grave of a necromancer. The goliath and paladin dish out damage across the plant and minions, while the mystical mushroom plays tricks on the enemy to make them miss more attacks. He starts to formulate an idea, a risky one, but it could be big.

The mushroom has telepathic abilities and tells the ranger and halfling rogue what to expect. Mush is about to cast an area of effect spell at their area. Riclahne has the movement to get out of it’s range, but Lydia does not. Mr Mush gives her bardic inspiration to avoid the effects of the spell. He readies his attack just after Riclahne’s turn and before the Marilith.

At the top of the next round, Riclahne franticly makes three attacks, only hitting one at the Marilith, and then dexterously evades 4 opportunities of attack as he turns away from them to leave the area. In Dungeons and Dragons, any time that you are engaged in melee combat, if you attempt to leave it, you have to either focus your action on “disengaging,” or the opponents get to swing at you as you turn your back on them. The ranger has had years of practice deft movements and hand to hand combats, as a result, he imposes disadvantage on those opportunities of attack. He gets away unscathed and is now at the bottom of the lower island, 35 feet away from all foes. And now is when the mushroom’s spell takes effect: *confusion*. Miraculously, the marilith and 3 others become confused. Mr Mush rolls an 8 sided die to determine each one’s actions. They may move in a random direction, attack the nearest creature, or simply do nothing.

The Marilith loses a turn, one of the hags attacks another, and the third hag turns invisible. And Lydia passed the check, so she was not subject to confusion. Lydia makes one last attack before returning to the comrades on the bridge. The goliath still had some of those clay pots from earlier filled with the Greek fire, and he douses the necrotic floating plant thing. The Paladin moves the moonbeam that he cast earlier, and he burns 3 sahaugins, 2 hags, and the Marilith. Two of the sahaugins use their action to focus all their energy into reaching up to riclahne the ranger, trying to corner him off, and so does a hag. Everybody is taking an absolute beating at this point. The paladin has been taking so much of the damage that he is knocked unconscious, but the mushroom man uses a magical *goodberry* to bring him back to 1hp. The goliath is trying to set the floating plant on fire, but he seems to have left his flint at home… but wouldn’t you know, there is a halfling next to him with a flaming sword! He lifts her into the air, carefully aims the tiny person at the flowerfuck, and lights it on fire. It’s the small victories that make all the difference here. Did I mention that the plant raised another zombie?

Riclahne starts the top of … is this round 4? 5? It’s the blur of the battle, nobody knows anymore. Riclahne fires two arrows at the marilith, both miss. Yikes. He’s unsure if the Marilith will come to eliminate him, or if she will turn toward the others. She uses her movement and slithers toward the bridge – he’s not sure how he feels about that. She gets 7 attacks, and all of the others are hurt – badly. She dishes out swings at them, but they all manage to make it through one more round. The goliath splashes more Greek fire in the vicinity and replaces the contents of that clay pot with a zombie head. He used a special ability and managed to regain a few hitpoints after eliminating a zombie. The sauhagins jab Riclahne with another spear.

He’s down to 17hp, not standing up well. The Paladin is barely alive, the halfling and mushroom are close to 15hp, and the goliath is hardly better off, maybe around 20hp. There is a giant fiend looming over them with six weapons and a massive tail attack – they could all be dead the next time she gets to go. He knows what’s coming.

Things are bad. This could be the end of his entire party. They’ve been journeying together for nearly three years. These companions have been the closest things to friends that this elf has known in the last 50 years after being a lone ranger in the wilderness. Riclahne has been knocked unconscious fighting foes with them, to be brought back from the brink of death by these companions. Riclahne remembers fighting elementals, overcoming aberrations, fiends, a golem, mountain giants, criminal lords, a succubus, and more with his fellows. He remembers what happened just two weeks prior - when he was in freefall hundreds of feet in the air while battling flying wyversns that were attacking the airship. He accepted his fate and knew he had fought with everything in him. But it wasn’t his time yet. A wizard morphed into a giant eagle and caught him before his death. If he had made his peace with death then, he knew he could stare into the face of evil and accept that he might not return.

Do or Die.

“*Certainty of Death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Gimli, son of Gloin.*

Riclahne is a hunter at heart. The thrill of the hunt, the purity of that chase, it is the beautiful circle of life, the sanctity of the process, he hunts and he faces others attempting to hunt him. It’s not even a thought to him that he could ever be the deer running from the wolf. He only knows how to chase and pursue. Even if that means there is bear in front of him, he will attack that bear with the strength of his pack, and do everything in his power to protect them.

All the memories and thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant; it’s his time to act. There are two sahaugins and a hag immediately in front of him, and 60 feet behind them is Iselda next to the bridge, towering over the others. He expends the last use of his *ring of shielding*, he accepts that as he uses his bonus action to dash, doubling his movement, that the three in front of him will each get an opportunity of attack as he focuses his energy into velocity. Three misses. There’s another hag in the way, and she barely realizes his movement before he’s past her. He screams at Iselda. “I am the hunter. You are my prey. You will focus your attention on me or I will kill you.”

He rolls a dice check to see if he maintained his concentration on his Hunter’s Mark spell from earlier, which augments his attacks.

* Natural 20 on the 20 sided die, perfect success.

\*\*Out of character, Randal says “I wish that had been on the attack roll,” and the Dungeon Master says “do it again, you won’t.”\*\*

Riclahne makes his attack rolls – he has two swings and had better make them count.

He rolls 14 on the 20 sided die, and with his magical enhancements, that will hit. He rolls for the second attack. Natural 20 and he lands a critical hit. In those two swings, Riclahne dealt 49 damage, and reduced Iselda to 4 hp.

She wails. She’s furious. She can’t believe his brazen audacity to claim her as prey, she is a fiend of hell and not some peon. She swings and misses, but then with the second attack, get’s just lucky enough, in spite of the ring of shielding, and manages to eliminate the rest of Riclahne’s hp, and he falls unconscious. The fiend is unwilling for him to remain unconscious with a chance of recovery. Not after that insult. One attack didn’t go through his armor, but the other three did, and Riclahne died. Iselda blinded with fury, desperately swung one last attempt at the halfling, her seventh and final attack for that round, and Lydia side-stepped it.

The party, enraged by the loss of their friend, rekindled their spirits. Lydia had the next turn, and reduced the rest of Iselda’s hp to zero, bisecting her snake tail from the torso. The hags, having seen their leader be dispatched, lost confidence and the will to remain for the battle – did they even like her anyway? They teleport away.

The paladin, becoming in tune with his abject belief in vanquishing evil, unleashed his holy powers of smite upon the necrotic flying plant. He made two attacks, and one of them was a critical hit. In those two blazing swings imbued with divine energy, he slashed 96 damage into the plant fiend. (new party maximum for damage dealt in a single turn). The goliath basically juggernauted through the tiny minions, and clan banaan miraculously triumphed.

Resolution

The party has been saving a special magical item for a particular emergency. They only have one of its kind, and they tend to be rare: an orb of reincarnation. There’s a catch though. The party must make several checks in an effort to bring the soul peacefully from beyond back to the body, or the person being revived will suffer spiritually and psychologically from the shearing the soul experiences. Think about game of thrones and they guy that is brought back to life repeatedly – he says “I’m a little less *me* each time.” The other tidbit to be aware of is that the race of the person will be returned randomly.

I rolled percentage dice on a table and had a 1/15 chance give or take of being a wood elf. Go figure, I rolled the 1/15.

The others rolled very high, and through religion, arcana, and a bit of persuasion, returned Riclahne’s soul into this new body. He suffers from several degrees of exhaustion.