The weekly D&D campaign came to a dramatic milestone this week. I don't normally post about it, but this was a significant event in the campaign and the action surprised everyone (DM and players alike), so it seems worth a mention.
Back in April of 2020 Darrell, our forever DM since we were students, offered to start a new campaign to help take our minds off COVID and lockdown. This started by email, but soon moved to a weekly Zoom session. In four years our party of uninspiring new recruits has been chased around a continent by every kind of opponent that was always too much for us to deal with. We have become experts in running away from danger, whether it be armies of elves or lizardmen, invisible doppelgangers, vampires, wild baboon-elf-things that live in the forests or just being wanted for treason in all the human kingdoms. You name it, we've run away from it. When cornered, we fought fiercely and as a result have now reached 8th level (or 6/6 for the crazy hobbit twins).
Although hardly a force to be reckoned with in global politics, we have become capable of carrying out side missions for any faction that isn't actively trying to kill us.
So we come to this week. When the elves invaded, one of their priestesses captured the heir of the human kingdoms and has kept him brainwashed by spells, thus creating a civil war within the humans. As a result of some errands we ran for the temple of the Wild, we have the antidote to free him. We have also recently discovered where they both are. Now we just need a cunning plan to get in and rescue the rightful king. We spent a couple of sessions planning this raid like Ocean's 11, except with more improvisation and a few problems we'll have to work out later.
It's late evening. We arrive at the back door to the elven temple, having studied the plans of the place. We expect the priestess to be off duty and in her quarters. We knock on the door and demand entrance in the name of the Empress, showing off some orders that we carefully faked in advance. The temple guards are convinced and escort us to her private rooms. She comes out of her room, human heir in tow, to hear what the Empress wants of her. Given the classified information, the guards are sent away to the next room. Everything up to this point went perfectly to plan. Then our spokesman Joshua decides to pick a fight with her over some point of etiquette, and a tense silence falls over the room. Next thing, she calls out for the guards to get back in there.
As if he'd been expecting this, which of course was exactly what he expected, Francis steps forward and punches her on the jaw. Garaf throws a Hold Person spell and to everyone's surprise the priestess fails her save. Thirson uses a monk open-hand attack at the human heir, which leaves him stunned. In two rounds of action, the opposition is out of the fight and the guards have not yet arrived. We couldn't believe it, but we grabbed the heir and ran down the back stairs as fast as we could go.
Darrell had expected maybe three sessions of action in the temple. Some sneaking, some fast talk and persuasion, some fights. Instead, within half a session, we'd left the temple, magically locking the doors behind us, and were away to safety, all thanks to a ridiculous run of lucky dice. The rightful king claimed his throne, dropped the charges of treason against us and by royal charter made us agents of the crown.
The arrival of the new king is the start of a new chapter in the campaign. The political balance across the whole continent has changed. We can now get to cities where we used to have a price on our heads. We're still not capable of standing up to the real powerful characters, unless like this week we manage to get them alone and we are astoundingly lucky. Now we just have to round up a legendary set of lost artifacts and use them to defeat the vampire lord, and then maybe we'll have to choose our own agenda for a change.
I know this stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea, but this week's session was a fitting conclusion to several plot threads, some of which started three years ago.
Until next time, health & happiness to you all.
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