• 2018.07.24
• Present: Alex, Carlos, Chris, Corey, Ryan
• Party:
  • 🎸 Pankas, Wood Half-Elf Bard of Whispers
  • 😈 Fisty, Tiefling Fiend Pact Warlock
  • 🛠 Dug, Dwarf Forge Cleric
  • 🛡 Tumutch, Human Vengence Paladin of the Silver Flame
  • 🦆 Ducky, Gnome Wizard

tl;dr: The gang decides to go back to Cragmaw Castle! Along the way, Ducky opens the Bloodshadow Tome and releases a few Shadows. They finally infiltrate the castle, kill Dave Grohl and a few henchgoblins, steal a map to Rave Echo Cave and feed a false copy to Spiderman's toady.

1. Steak and eggs
2. Bloodshadow Tome
3. Necromancy?
4. Siege!
5. Froot and Doot
6. Dave Grohl

The gang is finishing up their fantastic breakfast of steak and eggs at the Stone Hill Inn, all together like one big happy family.

Dug: Hey guys, what do you feel like doing today?

Fisty: I feel like we've left something unfinished. Isn't there something we're supposed to be doing right now?

Tumuch: Hey, do you think we should go rescue the dwarf? Go to Cragmaw Castle and go rescue that guy?

Dug (pragmatically): Well. We already delivered his cart and got paid for doing that. I feel like we've already fulfilled all of our obligations to him at this point.

DM: Yeah, even I have to admint there's really no reason to go recuse him actually. But it advances the story, so, you know. I suggest you go rescue the dwarf!

All: Let's go rescue the dwarf!

The gang starts walking to Cragmaw Castle!

Again!

Droop is happily stomping away, leading the group to the castle.

Fisty is chilling on a Spooky Floating Disc, trailing along behind Ducky, resting and taking it easy. Just sitting back and watching all the trees roll by.

Eventually, Droop does a droop and kind of falls over from fatigue. The group takes a little break. Ducky decides to investigate her terrible tome of dark deeds, which has recently been revealed to be properly called the Bloodshadow Tome.

Remembering that Yarno said that one must sacrifice a small amount of life force energy to the book to open it, she pulls a small dagger out from her pack, draws it across the palm of her hand, and bleeds into the lock on the front of the book.

Magic courses around, shadowy mist rises up out of the book and surrounds Ducky. Suddenly, there is a shriek and she grows two extra shadows like a dark Peter Pan. One of the shadows remains simply a normal shadow. Two of them however balloon in size, gain their own agency and their own bad attitudes, and start to attack the Reserve.

Big mistake.

Ducky wields her new Spooky Staff and lands perfect hits on the shadows, smacking them firmly and soundly, but even so manages to do zero damage whatsoever.

Pankas twerks at the shadows delivering a thunderous booty clap of considerable damage.

Fisty fires an Eldrich Blast directly at Ducky. Her arms drop to her sides and she exclaims, "I knew it!" and she resigns herself to the fact that Fisty has finally turned on her and is going to kill her. At the last minute, the blast of energy forks, and it arcs around her to either side and then plunges into the two shadows flanking her. She exclaims, "I knew it!" and with renewed trust in and admiration for Fisty, she returns to the fight. "I believed in him all along."

Dug and Tumutch do some radiant smashing and some hard smiting, and the shadows are done for.

Ducky is like, "Hey guys, did you see those shadows come out of this book? Crazy!"

The palm of her hand is still bleeding pretty freely. Fisty gives her a small vial and she collects some of the blood for later use before bandaging her hand.

This closes #27

Tumutch (concerned): Umm. Guys, what was that?

Pankas: That was necromancy.

Tumutch: N-n-necromancy?

Ducky: Hey, Tumutch, you know how I'm a little bit of a necromancer right?

Fisty: Ducky, is this really the time and place you want to open this particular can of worms?

Tumutch: Nooooo, you're not a necromancer. You're just a person with necromantic tendencies.

Ducky: Yes. Yeah, let's go with that. Totally not a necromancer.

Tumutch casts Protection From Evil on Ducky to save her from herself, hoping it works from the inside out. Ducky is like, omg, you're trying to save me from myself aren't you? That is so typical.

The gang resumes their trek to the castle. Instead of Ducky pulling Fisty along on her spooky disc, she jumps up on his back, and he flies her along for the rest of the way. He's only flying five feed off the ground, but she's barely three feet tall anyway, so this is like riding on a brontosaurus.

The gang arrives at the castle. Pankas conjures up a tiny hut and everybody crawls inside and deliberates on how to proceed. (Dug makes some stylish shoulder pads!)

Droop is all about that vengeance. The rest of the Reserve is all about rescuing that dwarf, and then also vengeance.

Many plans are hatched and discussed. And then the team just walks up to the crumbling castle, clambers over the wall, and enters.

If there's one thing the Steel Reserve does well and does consistently, it's way over planning, and then saying, Forget it, and then taking a direct approach and just knocking on the front door.

Fisty, disguised at Froot the bugbear, and Ducky, disguised as Doot the goblin, lead the group through the ruins.

The castle is a crumbling ruin of some kind of a wizard's construct with seven twining, entangled towers. One of which is still standing tall. Climbing up the one remaining tower, the group discovers Grohl's chambers.

Froot the bugbear knocks on the door. Grohl answers. Froot tries to magically compel him to open the door and come out, and Grohl resists. Dug steps up and magically compels Grohl to open the door and come out, and Grohl obliges.

Froot and Doot walk right on in to the room and see a large wolf and a drow who introduces herself as Thagorith. She explains that Grohl is about to sell her a map to the Rave Echo Cave. She is to take the map, and the dwarf, and is to return to the Black Spider.

Froot and Doot are like, We'll get you that map! Stay here with this wolf! Your job is to keep this wolf nice and calm!

And then they shut the door and head back out to the hallway, where the rest of the gang has already started wailing on Grohl.

The gang basically goes apeshit on Dave Grohl.

Dug and Tumutch are like, Smash! Blam! Boom! Crash!

Fisty is like, Blast! Blast!

Pankas has wandered off somewhere..

Ducky does precious little. She lights a small fire so Tumutch can see what he's doing, and casts mending at the door behind her (I am called Doorfriend, the anti-doorbane and I am here to calm and soothe and repair. That which is broken shall be mended and the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for doors and for all!) and the wolf behind the door is crawling and scratching and destroying furniture and eating remotes and couch cushions and stuff and jesus christ why can this dog not calm the heck down and be cool?

So Grohl basically dies.

Dug channels some door magic and kills the wolf through the door.

Ducky loots the corpse of Grohl and finds a map case (containing a map which includes the location of Rave Echo Cave) and some electrum, which she dutifully hands right over to the Treasurer.

She makes a quick copy of the map which shows a false location of the cave. The false location is that of Venom Thang's tower in Thunder Tree.

Froot and Doot go back into Grohl's chambers and conduct business with Thagorith. They sell her the fake map for 20 gold and take possession of the dwarf.

the end?

Oh boy, a whole heck of a lot has happened since I last wrote. Let's see.

So the biggest news is that I uncovered a secret plot of Fisty's a while back where his book "told him" he has to kill Yarno 🤢🤮 (and NOBODY has ever heard his stupid book actually TALK to him and even DROOP is making fun of him for insisting that it's true, so. whatever 😡) so I launched a counter secret plot to save Yarno and we faked his death, which was totally awesome 💪💯 but the spell didn't last long enough so I had to wake him up early and everybody found out, so that was pretty lame 😭 but then Fisty didn't kill him after all, so I guess it all worked out after all! 🙌

Note to self: get better at secret plots. Dug always seems to have secret plots of his own going on and he saw through mine almost right away. Maybe he can help me get smarter at that...🤔

I think me and Fisty are back to being friends again now 👯‍♀️ Not BFFs. And maybe not even FFs. But definitely Fs. Which is important. He's the only other one on the team who knows about and uses the same kind of magicks that I do. So it's good that we can work together and trust each other again 👍

Note to self: remember that Dug is also pretty smart at necromancy life magic 🤔

That whole thing with Fisty was kind of weird now that I think about it. I think I can understand where he was coming from though. I have a pretty weird, dark, evil book now too. 📓🧙‍♀️ Although mine hasn't told me to murder any mentors or personal heroes of ours and I don't pretend like it talks to me. On the other hand, his hasn't grown shadow creatures that tried to kill us all so, whatever.

😈❤️🦆

🦆❤️😈

Speaking of dark magic... so Dug found me this super cool bloodmagic staff. And I also figured out how to work this bloodshadow tome. (Thanks to a clever suggestion from Yarno ❤️😍) Which, I know, both looks and sounds pretty bad. But bloodmagic = life magic and they both could be huge helps to me getting closer to achieving The Goal.

Reminder: The Goal is to conquer death and help everybody live forever! 🚫👻

I just wish that people didn't always immediately equate life magic with evil stuff. I don't UNDERSTAND where that weird association comes from! It is really frustrating! 😖

One thing that I know about Yarno (ugh, he is so COOL) is that on top of being a super excellent wizard ⚡️, he is also a pretty strong fighter too 💪. I'd like to be stronger and be able to take care of myself in a fight too, and I think my bloodmagic staff and my bloodshadow book can both help me with that a little bit, but so far it is not enough. I hit those shadows today as hard as I could and they didn't even BLINK! Maybe I just need to train harder. I should ask Tumutch if he can help me get stronger.. 🤔