kiya

We had D&D today.

All of the party (except arguably Celyn, whose impressive deeds were subtler, but hey, rogue) spent some effort on building their legend. It was absolutely ridiculous.

Izgil's player on Celyn: "He's not reality-denying, just reality-alternative."

Refresher on the party:

Celyn: my rogue / priest of the god of chaos / fairy faith adherent. His god, the Wyrdling, is also the patron god of one of the towns we are fussing over.
Robin: shy paladin of the Wanderer, the god of protection of travellers (including psychopomp stuff); currently equipped with gear that includes a ring of jumping. Rides a wingless, purple gryphon named Grimalkin. Grimalkin is the extrovert of the pair, because he is very clear that he is fabulous.
Viepuck: junior high school aged warlock/bard of Curious Chthulhu Looks At The Material Plane; borrowing Robin's ring of water walking.
Izgil: the dwarf so autistically obsessed with the moon it gave him magical powers.

We began the session resolving a situation that we hadn't managed to clear up in email due to a combination of me being afk and ill and the GM having a work trip: Viepuck and Celyn have gone off in pursuit of the former lord of one of the local towns, who has abdicated his position because a) he never wanted to be here in the first place, b) being here is dangerous, what with the rampaging undead, the marauding fey, the swamp monster up the road, and that sort of thing, c) Celyn and the local acolyte of the Wyrdling managed to priest-shame him for being useless at doing his One Job (organizing local defense), and d) Viepuck managed to convince him that fairies were coming for him because the place was cursed (assisted by the mysterious disappearance of the previous governing family). Dude left, which was fine, he was a Problem; dude took all the money and decent horses, which was Not Fine.

We did not want him to come back and do the One Job, because he was worse than useless at it. But we did want the funds to hire people to do the One Job and, y'know, the horses to equip those of those people who were trainable as cavalry. He got stuck at the town furthest east before one gets to the swamp monster and had trouble hiring people to take him past the, you know, swamp monster, which meant we caught up to him and proposed that he give us back all but two horses (for himself and his retainer) and the money that should be spent on the One Job and we wouldn't prosecute him for all the shit he pulled.

(This was enhanced hilariously by the twelve-year-old spouting off extensive information about relevant caselaw because, I think, Curious Chthulhu thought he would find it useful to get a download of lawyer. As he wound up I just sort of leaned in and said "And the Wyrdling still doesn't approve." Then we had to talk the local acting lord of the largest town down from punching the guy in the face. Local acting lord has terrible impulse control though in this case we do not deny that the man he was aimed at was in fact extremely punchable.)

Eminently Punchable Ex-Lord wants to get across the river and basically make a run for it. We think this is probably Not A Great Idea but Viepuck says he will get them across the river in return for the cash and horses. The deal is struck, they say "How do you intend to do this", Viepuck answers, "Oh, I was just going to walk." There is some general bafflement, but we make a procession down to the riverbank, the Ex-Lord asks for Celyn's blessing on his journey and genuinely seems pleased to get it, and then Viepuck perpetrates shenanigans involving horses, water walking, and riding double, generally conveying that he thinks this is a bad idea but it's their funeral.

The whole town watches this crazy kid walking on water. There is a lot of surprise and sooooo much gossip. We say we will be back with more people to deal with the swamp monster in a few days but right now we're clearing the road between there and the places we've actually been working. After collecting a bunch of mutually contradictory gossip, we head back to regroup, with pauses for things like "let Celyn cast purify food on the herd of sheep that were zombie-slaughtered so that they can be safely butchered to feed the village rather than left in the fields to rot because they're tainted".

We regroup, providing the horses and cash to the person organizing local defense, and plan to head back east in a day or so after we've rested up, tidied loose ends, and confirmed that the non-heroes are up to snuff.

The party has split - Viepuck and Izgil back to our main base, the one to have a legal conversation with a lady who bought some stuff technically illegally from Eminently Punchable Ex-Lord (a situation resolved by trading her some of the prestige furnishings he wasted his money on in return for her dropping claims to the land that is entailed to the manor and not saleable) and Izgil to research swamp monsters. Robin and Celyn remin in the central town, Robin to do organization and morale work, and Celyn to coordinate with the local temple and talk shop with the acolyte (in the hope that consulting with a More Expert will help said acolyte actually bootstrap to a functional priest level; they were very impressed that I could do miracles reasonably reliably and on purpose).

We were awakened in the middle of the night by one of the local lizardfolk reporting that their river scouts had spotted a Problem shambling in our vague direction, likely to reach Cleenseau (our base, also the only one of thse towns with an actual wall) around dawn. Specifically: a giant skeleton thing, some sort of animated tower of bones, accompanied by about sixty zombies. We rally the troops, send for help from the various places that have levies available, and book it back to base.

The giant skeleton thing is basically a notably more grisly and less cheerful this, made out of miscellaneous bones and capable of being some twenty feet tall, and clearly the sort of Problem that is for the party to solve. Thus we construct a plan.

Specifically: we put most of our forces on the town wall with bows and slings. This turns out to be mostly important because we had a hell of an audience for the nonsense. Then, with the help of the local light cavalry, we would sally forth, catch the enemy while they were divided by the river (they were meandering back and forth with the bone column occasionally slinky-conveying half the zombies at a time from one side to the other), harry in an attempt to do as much defeat in detail as feasable, and then retreat to the walled town. (The death slinky is clearly capable of getting over the wall, once we see it, so 'not letting it reach the wall' winds up becoming a secondary goal.)

Viepuck goes a bit ahead of the main party to get his familiar's eyes on the thing and get some light over there as the predawn light doesn't help us much. When he reaches where the problem is, it's on the far side of the river, so he spends a while blindly launching cantrip-class damaging spells at extreme range until he manages to hit one, then scurries back to the group when this successfully pulls aggro.

Half the zombies are deposited on the bank by the bone slinky, which heads back for the other half. This is the situation we prepared for, so parts of the cavalry charge with spears while the rest pull archery duty. Celyn, who has learned some new tricks, plonks a faerie fire in the middle of the group (giving advantage on attacks; worth noting that Celyn does much more damage when he has advantage on attacks, because rogue, so this is the part of this combat where I do impressive things that nobody much cares about because 'whoa he's blowing away a zombie with almost every shot' is not actually all that dramatic). We manage to wipe out about two-thirds of the thirty zombies, and the rest bail into the river.

We had been hoping to catch the skeleton slinky carrying the other half with an AOE spell but it decided that crossing the river at us was not the better part of valor and resumed shambling towards the town we were guarding but on the other side of the river. Viepuck pulled the water walking trick again and wanderd out into the river to snipe at them which mostly made them loop around harder.

The skeleton outpaced the zombies, and we matched it on the far side so we could prepare for the coming doom.

The coming doom took the form of the bones of the skeleton flattening out just past the giant bridge, and rolling into the river so we couldn't see where the thing was. We spread the cavalry along the bank to catch it when it came out but with the warning that it was fast and probably more of a Hero Problem than a Normal Guys On Horses problem.

Izgil had Plans for how to disrupt the zombie horde and, on horseback, the fun thing is that he could easily just not go near the zombies to do it, so he started across the bridge (partly in the hope of doing some exploratory poking at the water to find the bone column). At about 2/3 of the way across, the bone column manifested arms to take a swipe at him and missed; column found! For now. He zoomed off the bridge, stunned 2/3 of the first of the three groups of zombies, and proceeded to, effectively, spend most of the rest of the combat playing keepaway with magical hand grenades. This, effectively, took out the entire zombie horde solo, an act that was watched and appreciated by the cavalry and the people on the walls of the town.

The rest of the party basically venture out onto the bridge, led by Robin. The bone slinky emerges! Everyone takes their held actions! Viepuck tries to faerie-fire it and fails. Celyn shoots it, and it appears to be immune to normal arrows. Robin, on the other hand, hits it with a hammer. Critically hits it with a hammer. Using his smite ability. Using his variant smite ability that basically makes the thing light up with a faerie-fire clone.

The column retreats to the underwater, but we can still see it, because it is glowing with the Wanderer's holy light and stuff. It rapidly becomes clear that the Wanderer takes the existence of this thing very personally.

Because Robin, on his regular action, leaps off Grimalkin into the water, swinging his hammer at the target. Rolls another critical hit. Smites again. Hits so hard that basically we got an anime-effect parting of the waters. And then uses the jump ring to spring back up onto the bridge.

The onlookers on the walls start calling to random townsfolk to come watch this shit.

Celyn does a small zap with a small cantrip, there being nothing else in my arsenal that's particularly plausible.

The bone column surges out of the water, landing between Celyn and Viepuck, and blasting them both; both fail their reflex saves and take substantial damage, falling over.

Robin ...

... if I said "Robin rolls another critical hit" would you be surprised? Because he totally does.

Also he smites again.

The skeleton column shatters, most of its bones dropping inert, but eight actual skeletons emerge from the wreckage, three of them clearly even nastier than normal undead things.

Celyn's horse sensibly departs the scene. Viepuck scrambles for his horse and retreats a bit. Celyn gets up, tries to faerie-fire, gets two of them to glow.

The skeletons rearrange. One of them gets within range of Celyn but does not hit him. Robin pulls back to defend Celyn, a sentiment that Celyn appreciates but considers in this moment moderately unwarranted because Celyn is made of Options and Maneuverability, Actually.

The zombie horde has begun to make it to the far side of the bridge, reducing the options somewhat, but we can work with that. Izgil is still playing keep-away with grenades.

After a quick consultation as to plans, Celyn short-hop teleports to the far side of the combat, leaving the skeleton engaged with him Bewitched, Bewildered, and Bemused, and goes to join Viepuck, who had cast a more successful faerie fire. The skellies surround Robin, who casts a divine protection on himself, but a couple of the nasty ones manage to hit him with inflict wounds, doing a Large Number of damage. (Nonetheless he feels the Wanderer's hand smacking skellies with a rolled-up newspaper for hassling his paladin who is busy.) Robin smacks one of the caster skellies to take it out, short-hop teleports to join the other two, and Grimalkin hits the river for his own escape, apparently complaining the whole time because ew, there were zombies in here, it is mucking up his very fine feathers.

Izgil drops a moon-themed fireball on the skellies while there are no friendlies adjacent to them, destroying all the normal skeletons and giving the two remaining caster skellies a significant headache.

Celyn, when Robin joins them, gives him a pat on the shoulder and says, "Go be dashing some more!", in that moment healing nearly half of the damage he took.

The trio on this side of the bridge try to figure out what to do with the skellies. Viepuck advances into the water to try to do something I have in the moment forgotten (

artan what were you trying to pull off?), gets hit with two spells from them, and falls over into the river. Grimalkin proceeds to fish him out and get out of the river, feeling affronted by all things.

Robin decides that he will advance enough to mess with those two casting ranged spells even if he can't get close enough to actually hit them, so he does that. Celyn, who has more short-ranged teleports because shenanigans, is not going to let Robin do that alone, and thus walks a bit, teleport-pops, and demolishes one of the skeletons (they were, to be fair, pretty battered after the fireball), greeting Robin with a ludicrously perky, "Hi!"

Izgil blasts the remaining skelly before it gets a chance to act, thereby clearing the bridge for the cavalry to charge across and do mop-up actions.

The sun is up. The town gate opens and - while the temple in this town is to the Warlord, there is a Wanderer shrine down by the river, and basically everyone in town wants to turn up there, leave offerings, and dance party.

Celyn, observing this, turns to Robin: "You're a miracle now. They're going to be telling this story for generations."
Robin, hopelessly embarrassed: "Oh."
Robin, a few minutes later, to Viepuck: "... I could use that invisibility now."
Viepuck turns him invisible and we all retreat up to the keep to get some damn breakfast.

After we'd had a chance to rest and recover we headed back to the town where Viepuck walked the Punchable Ex-Lord across the river and discovered a rather similar party mood. Apparently another adventuring party had turned up, led by the elf that had been named in Izgil's research as a killer of swamp monsters, and killed the swamp monsters.

Viepuck cast an illusion on himself to look like a middle-aged dwarf, because being the kid who walks on water was probably a problem. We meet up with the other adventuring party, he apologizes for being in disguise but he didn't want to cause a scene, and that is fine. "Good disguise" someone says, not getting the joke.

The elf and Izgil wind up talking about the big war seventy years ago at which point one of the rangers in the other party turns to Viepuck and says, "Okay, that's a rally good disguise, because you're obviously not a dwarf." Due to, y'know, being obviously in the conversation not old enough to have done the thing. Viepuck had hit it off with their party cleric, who happened to know the paladin who rescued him in his backstory. General amiability and discussion of what all the local crises look like ensued.

There was a lot of nonsense! But it is true, morale improved.