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Today's D&D: Extremely Glorious Chaos
This was so ridiculous I want to chronicle it.
The party in play:
My character, Celyn: rogue1/priest2, fairy faith + god of chaos, luck, chance, fate, dreams, divination, hope, patron of poets and madmen. Powers relevant to the chaos: standard basic rogue package (sneaky, sneak attack), fae-touched (short range teleport once a day, also extremely daffy), Trickster cleric (can spend my turning attempt to create an illusory double of myself).
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artan's character, Viepuck: warlock3, orphan street kid associated with an eldritch tentacle monster who is Very Curious about the material plane and kind of disapproves of how much stabbing there seems to be in it. Passes on information to his patron, occasionally gets given random information back (like "how to speak Orcish"). Super-grifter - acting ability, shapeshifter.
paladin_of_gaia's character, Robin: paladin3, dex build, protector personality, very much a bard of a paladin. (From the same country as Celyn, and thus understands Celyn's fairy faith.) Dedicated to the god of travel, trade, hospitality, care of outcasts, psychopompery. Intereferes with enemy attacks to make them less likely to be successful.
We usually run with four but we were down our sorceror, which means that of our three lunatics and a paladin we were down the guy who is obsessed with the literal moon.
The problem:
A few days ago, a really-in-a-bad-way person was rescued on the road south of the town we are in, saying that he had escaped from an orc warband which was - atypically for orc warbands, which tend to sweep through like locusts - organized, taking prisoners and enslaving them, and marching that way, led by an ogre. The party, being a set of do-gooders, went to deal with it, bringing with us a few small groups of NPCs (farmers with bows each with a couple of fighters to stand in front of them) to be skirmisher groups but not engage directly with the orc encampment.
Said orc encampment consisted of two factions of 30 or so orcs each, who hate each other's guts and are only working together because they think the ogre has divine favor.
Our goal: eliminate the problem, rescue as many prisoners as possible. With ... three PCs and some NPCs who aren't going into the camp because they are vastly squishier even than a 3rd level party. A paladin3 we rescued from a previous bad situation appears to be one of the prisoners, we are hoping to get her help.
Events:
Viepuck, early on, infiltrates his familiar (flying tentacle monster with substantial camouflage powers) into the orc camp so is collecting information all while we're riding down from the town about the social dynamics and so on of what's happening there. He was hoping that the familiar would find Nerissa (the paladin3), but she does not appear to be in the encampment, so we fear the orcs noticed that the actual paladin was a problem and ate her. Instead, the familiar finds an orphaned teenager, declares, "I want to give it to this one, he reminds me of you so he must be clever!", and passes on a parcel containing two daggers, a packet of goodberries, and a note saying that there will be chaos, use it wisely.
We split up our skirmisher groups a bit to be less obvious while planning a dawn attack, and the party happens to encounter one of the patrol groups (four orcs on horseback). Viepuck makes an illusory bush to hide himself and Robin; Celyn dismounts and hides behind some rocks. The orcs spot Celyn's horse and start down to investigate, enabling us to counter-ambush them. Viepuck does a lot of running around trying to draw their attention, enabling Celyn a very effective critted sneak attack (surprise! you're dead). Celyn summoned his illusory double and did a lot of running around; eventually we had one survivor, who Viepuck suggested should answer all our questions.
We got a lot of intel out of the guy, particularly when we asked him about what the flaws of the other tribe of orcs were - and he kept talking for long enough that Viepuck was confident that he could impersonate the guy with his acting skill and his disguise-self ability. We settled down to rest - Celyn keeping watch as the sneakiest and thus least likely to get in trouble sitting on top of a hill - and Celyn spotted what looked like it might be a human ducking into a nearby copse of trees, and a small group of orcs on foot possibly pursuing.
Rather than rest we went to investigate. Viepuck impersonated the orc, and discovered that the pursuers were of the other faction, and thus initiated a verbal slapfight with them while the sneaky part of the party slipped into the copse and found Nerissa (paladin3! same god as Robin!), who had managed to escape. We recruited her into the squad and took out the opposing orcs.
Then in a fit of cleverness we went back and got the scouting party we had previously wiped out and carried them back to the copse, posing the lot as if it was a mutual slaughter. At about dusk, we blew a horn, cutting the sound off as if someone had stabbed the horn-blower at an inopportune moment, and then booked it from the area to meet up with our skirmisher groups and make camp around to the side.
The orcs investigated the sound, found the carefully constructed crime scene, and came back grumbling at what was clearly betrayal on someone's part, or maybe something weird happened, they were not sure.
Party: has gone from 3 to 4
Orcs: have gone from about 60 to about 53
Chaos level: incremented
We rest. The teenager with the knives carefully works on cutting people free in his area and distributing goodberries to the prisoners on that side.
The enemy camp basically has two arcs of tents on the east and west sides, each the residence of a hostile faction, with the ogre's pavilion in the center, surrounded by the prisoners. There is rough land to the south, with cover, so the plan is to evacuate as many prisoners as we can to the south; the slightly more robust skirmisher band (it has a first-level fighter and a low-level druid in it!) is there to guard the escape route.
Viepuck - who I wish to note is a child - disguises himself as the orc again, this time with an injury, and limps in to "his" faction's side with a tale of how his squad had been trying to apprehend the escaped prisoner when those other side bastards came to steal the glory for themselves, the ogre is playing favorites, etc. He riles up the one side so hard the leader hits "this prisoners bullshit is too much work, we should kill them all now and then deal with those heretics on the other side of the camp".
There is a moment of tension.
Viepuck says, "... you'd kill the weak ones first?"
Everything halts.
Then the leader shakes her head, says, "No, you're right. KILL THE REDEYE SCUM!" and her horde charges. Viepuck, still playing lame, staggers after them shouting encouragement and clearly in the "as soon as I catch up I will stab some of them too, honest!" role.
Several of the prisoners are trampled in the resulting scrum but this was the side of the encampment that got knives and healing so most of them start rolling themselves towards the center and trying to get past the ogre's pavilion.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Prisoners: from 60ish to 55ish
Orcs: 40 or so engaged in mutual annihilation, the remaining 13 or so going WTF?!
The ogre gets up, is looking around to try to figure out what's going on. Viepuck stops limping, goes around the far side of the scrum, shouts that the ogre no longer has the favor of the orc god, and blasts him in the chest with a spell, doing knockback which is actually more psychologically important than the damage. This focuses the ogre to the north, and he shouts "Kill that guy!" The WTF guys, mostly, respond. (The scrum is all-consuming and not listening to directions.)
The rescue team (Robin, Nerissa, Celyn, the warlock's familiar) sneak in the south side and start freeing people and directing them to get away towards the skirmisher band we have guarding the retreat. Nerissa blasts out some healing to help this side get rolling, we get everyone's bonds cut, and now we're starting to get the attention of various guards.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Prisoners: 55ish and all on the move
Orcs: 30 or so engaged in mutual annihilation, the remaining 13 or so variously attacking the party
Viepuck is promptly surrounded. He survives the first round of attacks, spends his once a day teleport to pop to the edge of the scrum, changes his illusion to an orc of the other faction, and shouts, "Where did he go?"
His familiar, meanwhile, helps the pair of paladins in their fight with one of the bad guys by spitting a hallucinogen into his face.
Chaos level: incremented
Celyn tries to add to the chaos by adding spooky noises to the vicinity of the ogre, but this leads to the ogre noticing him, charging at him shouting "You're the source of all this trouble!" and missing dramatically with a giant club. But that means that some fraction of the orcs are coming at Celyn, who takes half damage, teleports away, and summons his double in a different direction. One of the orcs takes a swing at the double and misses badly enough he doesn't figure out it's an illusion.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Orcs: Probably down to 20 in the scrum, 10 outside it
Prisoners: streaming out of the camp to freedom
The paladins heal each other! Chaos happens! Nerissa sets the ogre on fire! Chaos happens! General mayhem continues! Viepuck hits one of the orcs fighting the paladins with a suggestion spell blaming the other faction of orcs for all their troubles and suggesting that they fight those instead! Celyn and the double charge back into the fight to stab things! We knock the ogre down to one hit point and he starts to run away! Viepuck screams down that the ogre has been abandoned by the orcish god and continues to blast him with spells before he can run down any of the escaping prisoners!
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Orcs: 6 in the scrum, like 5 outside it
Prisoners: still escaping
Some of the orcs can run fast enough that we cannot do the fighting retreat that would be smart to do under the circumstances, so we have to fight them. The skirmisher group turns up at the edge of the encampment trying to figure out what's going on, and starts firing volleys of arrows at bad guys they can see.
Chaos level: actually dropping now
Party: 4 plus a skirmisher party
Orcs: rapidly approaching 0
Prisoners: all out
We finish the fight. Robin hugs Viepuck. Celyn fistbumps his illusory copy of himself, which vanishes.
Viepuck says, "... that was fun but I don't want to do it again."
The party in play:
My character, Celyn: rogue1/priest2, fairy faith + god of chaos, luck, chance, fate, dreams, divination, hope, patron of poets and madmen. Powers relevant to the chaos: standard basic rogue package (sneaky, sneak attack), fae-touched (short range teleport once a day, also extremely daffy), Trickster cleric (can spend my turning attempt to create an illusory double of myself).
artan's character, Viepuck: warlock3, orphan street kid associated with an eldritch tentacle monster who is Very Curious about the material plane and kind of disapproves of how much stabbing there seems to be in it. Passes on information to his patron, occasionally gets given random information back (like "how to speak Orcish"). Super-grifter - acting ability, shapeshifter.paladin_of_gaia's character, Robin: paladin3, dex build, protector personality, very much a bard of a paladin. (From the same country as Celyn, and thus understands Celyn's fairy faith.) Dedicated to the god of travel, trade, hospitality, care of outcasts, psychopompery. Intereferes with enemy attacks to make them less likely to be successful.We usually run with four but we were down our sorceror, which means that of our three lunatics and a paladin we were down the guy who is obsessed with the literal moon.
The problem:
A few days ago, a really-in-a-bad-way person was rescued on the road south of the town we are in, saying that he had escaped from an orc warband which was - atypically for orc warbands, which tend to sweep through like locusts - organized, taking prisoners and enslaving them, and marching that way, led by an ogre. The party, being a set of do-gooders, went to deal with it, bringing with us a few small groups of NPCs (farmers with bows each with a couple of fighters to stand in front of them) to be skirmisher groups but not engage directly with the orc encampment.
Said orc encampment consisted of two factions of 30 or so orcs each, who hate each other's guts and are only working together because they think the ogre has divine favor.
Our goal: eliminate the problem, rescue as many prisoners as possible. With ... three PCs and some NPCs who aren't going into the camp because they are vastly squishier even than a 3rd level party. A paladin3 we rescued from a previous bad situation appears to be one of the prisoners, we are hoping to get her help.
Events:
Viepuck, early on, infiltrates his familiar (flying tentacle monster with substantial camouflage powers) into the orc camp so is collecting information all while we're riding down from the town about the social dynamics and so on of what's happening there. He was hoping that the familiar would find Nerissa (the paladin3), but she does not appear to be in the encampment, so we fear the orcs noticed that the actual paladin was a problem and ate her. Instead, the familiar finds an orphaned teenager, declares, "I want to give it to this one, he reminds me of you so he must be clever!", and passes on a parcel containing two daggers, a packet of goodberries, and a note saying that there will be chaos, use it wisely.
We split up our skirmisher groups a bit to be less obvious while planning a dawn attack, and the party happens to encounter one of the patrol groups (four orcs on horseback). Viepuck makes an illusory bush to hide himself and Robin; Celyn dismounts and hides behind some rocks. The orcs spot Celyn's horse and start down to investigate, enabling us to counter-ambush them. Viepuck does a lot of running around trying to draw their attention, enabling Celyn a very effective critted sneak attack (surprise! you're dead). Celyn summoned his illusory double and did a lot of running around; eventually we had one survivor, who Viepuck suggested should answer all our questions.
We got a lot of intel out of the guy, particularly when we asked him about what the flaws of the other tribe of orcs were - and he kept talking for long enough that Viepuck was confident that he could impersonate the guy with his acting skill and his disguise-self ability. We settled down to rest - Celyn keeping watch as the sneakiest and thus least likely to get in trouble sitting on top of a hill - and Celyn spotted what looked like it might be a human ducking into a nearby copse of trees, and a small group of orcs on foot possibly pursuing.
Rather than rest we went to investigate. Viepuck impersonated the orc, and discovered that the pursuers were of the other faction, and thus initiated a verbal slapfight with them while the sneaky part of the party slipped into the copse and found Nerissa (paladin3! same god as Robin!), who had managed to escape. We recruited her into the squad and took out the opposing orcs.
Then in a fit of cleverness we went back and got the scouting party we had previously wiped out and carried them back to the copse, posing the lot as if it was a mutual slaughter. At about dusk, we blew a horn, cutting the sound off as if someone had stabbed the horn-blower at an inopportune moment, and then booked it from the area to meet up with our skirmisher groups and make camp around to the side.
The orcs investigated the sound, found the carefully constructed crime scene, and came back grumbling at what was clearly betrayal on someone's part, or maybe something weird happened, they were not sure.
Party: has gone from 3 to 4
Orcs: have gone from about 60 to about 53
Chaos level: incremented
We rest. The teenager with the knives carefully works on cutting people free in his area and distributing goodberries to the prisoners on that side.
The enemy camp basically has two arcs of tents on the east and west sides, each the residence of a hostile faction, with the ogre's pavilion in the center, surrounded by the prisoners. There is rough land to the south, with cover, so the plan is to evacuate as many prisoners as we can to the south; the slightly more robust skirmisher band (it has a first-level fighter and a low-level druid in it!) is there to guard the escape route.
Viepuck - who I wish to note is a child - disguises himself as the orc again, this time with an injury, and limps in to "his" faction's side with a tale of how his squad had been trying to apprehend the escaped prisoner when those other side bastards came to steal the glory for themselves, the ogre is playing favorites, etc. He riles up the one side so hard the leader hits "this prisoners bullshit is too much work, we should kill them all now and then deal with those heretics on the other side of the camp".
There is a moment of tension.
Viepuck says, "... you'd kill the weak ones first?"
Everything halts.
Then the leader shakes her head, says, "No, you're right. KILL THE REDEYE SCUM!" and her horde charges. Viepuck, still playing lame, staggers after them shouting encouragement and clearly in the "as soon as I catch up I will stab some of them too, honest!" role.
Several of the prisoners are trampled in the resulting scrum but this was the side of the encampment that got knives and healing so most of them start rolling themselves towards the center and trying to get past the ogre's pavilion.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Prisoners: from 60ish to 55ish
Orcs: 40 or so engaged in mutual annihilation, the remaining 13 or so going WTF?!
The ogre gets up, is looking around to try to figure out what's going on. Viepuck stops limping, goes around the far side of the scrum, shouts that the ogre no longer has the favor of the orc god, and blasts him in the chest with a spell, doing knockback which is actually more psychologically important than the damage. This focuses the ogre to the north, and he shouts "Kill that guy!" The WTF guys, mostly, respond. (The scrum is all-consuming and not listening to directions.)
The rescue team (Robin, Nerissa, Celyn, the warlock's familiar) sneak in the south side and start freeing people and directing them to get away towards the skirmisher band we have guarding the retreat. Nerissa blasts out some healing to help this side get rolling, we get everyone's bonds cut, and now we're starting to get the attention of various guards.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Prisoners: 55ish and all on the move
Orcs: 30 or so engaged in mutual annihilation, the remaining 13 or so variously attacking the party
Viepuck is promptly surrounded. He survives the first round of attacks, spends his once a day teleport to pop to the edge of the scrum, changes his illusion to an orc of the other faction, and shouts, "Where did he go?"
His familiar, meanwhile, helps the pair of paladins in their fight with one of the bad guys by spitting a hallucinogen into his face.
Chaos level: incremented
Celyn tries to add to the chaos by adding spooky noises to the vicinity of the ogre, but this leads to the ogre noticing him, charging at him shouting "You're the source of all this trouble!" and missing dramatically with a giant club. But that means that some fraction of the orcs are coming at Celyn, who takes half damage, teleports away, and summons his double in a different direction. One of the orcs takes a swing at the double and misses badly enough he doesn't figure out it's an illusion.
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Orcs: Probably down to 20 in the scrum, 10 outside it
Prisoners: streaming out of the camp to freedom
The paladins heal each other! Chaos happens! Nerissa sets the ogre on fire! Chaos happens! General mayhem continues! Viepuck hits one of the orcs fighting the paladins with a suggestion spell blaming the other faction of orcs for all their troubles and suggesting that they fight those instead! Celyn and the double charge back into the fight to stab things! We knock the ogre down to one hit point and he starts to run away! Viepuck screams down that the ogre has been abandoned by the orcish god and continues to blast him with spells before he can run down any of the escaping prisoners!
Chaos level: incremented
Party: still 4
Orcs: 6 in the scrum, like 5 outside it
Prisoners: still escaping
Some of the orcs can run fast enough that we cannot do the fighting retreat that would be smart to do under the circumstances, so we have to fight them. The skirmisher group turns up at the edge of the encampment trying to figure out what's going on, and starts firing volleys of arrows at bad guys they can see.
Chaos level: actually dropping now
Party: 4 plus a skirmisher party
Orcs: rapidly approaching 0
Prisoners: all out
We finish the fight. Robin hugs Viepuck. Celyn fistbumps his illusory copy of himself, which vanishes.
Viepuck says, "... that was fun but I don't want to do it again."
no subject
I can entirely see Viepuck's point!
That was indeed glorious chaos!
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Celyn is basically at "my god looks after those who do reckless nonsense and I love everyone in this bar" about it.
no subject
SOMEONE was certainly looking after those who do reckless nonsense!
Bound to have some interesting reputational consequences, too.
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Well, I would hope, but I was more thinking collectively; that's a very Culture Hero sort of rescue, maybe not Robin Hood and Little John but Much the Miller's son and Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale deciding that it's obviously necessary to rescue these people, odds, what are those?
no subject
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