Castle Whiterock 18 September 2023: Red dragon? Dead dragon!

The murderhoboes

Garreth, half-orc swordsman
    Bleu, droning elf wizard
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
    Logan, wolverine
Thrognar, half-orc holy warrior

Polly, cute and deadly elf archer who is dead throughout most of this episode but gets better at the end

And our helpers:

Fthirya, aka Erica, ghaele eladrin

Galdiera, kobold who thinks she's an elven paladin

What they did

Garreth blasts from under the surface of the water and out into the ghost dragon's face. "Hey, big, dead, and ugly, how 'bout you and me go for a few rounds?"

Benthosruthsa's head shakes, boggled. "What?" A wave of evil necrosis comes away from the dragon as Garreth whacks him three times.

Erica casts Affect Spirits on Thrognar's weapon while I duck into an alcove. Logan flies towards the dragon and his claw lands once. A wraith runs after Garreth and throws knives, which do nothing. Another one lobs them at Galdiera, who knocks them away, as does Thrognar when a third wraith did the same. Yet another lobs them at Galdiera from behind, but they only bother her. Bleu blinks away when still another wraith throws knives at her.

Thrognar downs the wraith who lobbed knives at Galdiera from behind, then downs another when he throws his sword at it. Erica tries to blast a wraith with Sunlight, but it steps aside. Garreth swears in Orcish and whacks the dragon thrice while Logan does the same with both claws hitting twice each. This leaves the dragon with the thinnest wisps, though it still is in the fight. I slug a potion of Greater Healing.

Benthosruthsa flies through Garreth and hits Erica with a wave of evil. A bunch of the ceiling falls before Bleu. One wraith lobs knives at Galdiera and another at Garreth, but can do no harm. The last one is stuck and can't reach Logan, who starts to point his snout downwards at the water. Galdiera takes down a wraith as Thrognar rushes towards the dragon. He swings twice, felling the dragon, then he throws the sword at one of the wraiths, killing it as it starts to dissipate. The other two wraiths vanish.

We pick up Polly's body and put her in the Bag of Holding, while Bleu moves around the rocks. I pick up Elweiss's spear and give it to Garreth, who has slumped to the floor and is panting.

We take off after talking to Scithia, who is annoyed we're not giving her the wagon. "I'll give you charms so you can see me safely!" I remind her that we just took down an undead red dragon so she's nothing more than a skidmark to us, which ends that offer.

Elias raises Polly back in Cillamar. "Hey, I saw the Great Tree and my sister and ate lots of cookies!"

Garreth looks almost apologetic. "Should we have left you there?"

I shrug. "You'll have to go to another church if you wanna wash down those cookies with communion wine." Elias scowls at Garreth and me.

Polly smiles. "I'm sure there must still be some orks somewhere down here, right?"

Castle Whiterock game log 11 September 2023: The Beginning of the End

The murderhoboes

Garreth, half-orc swordsman
    Bleu, droning elf wizard
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
    Logan, wolverine
Thrognar, half-orc holy warrior

And our helpers:

Elweiss, ghostly guardian

Fthirya, aka Erica, ghaele eladrin

Galdiera, kobold who thinks she's an elven paladin

What they did

Thrognar shows up and summons his godly might, going full saiyan.

Then, out from the rock comes the ghostly shape of the dragon Benthosruthsa. He still has the wounds on him that killed him, with a wing pulled out of its socket and a big neck wound. "I must thank you for ending that bitch, Silhouette. In gratitude, I will allow one of you to leave, unharmed. The rest of you are now my playthings."

Garreth grins. He looks at Scalemar, and says, "Hey, Scalemar, ever kill a ghost dragon before?"

A wave of evil comes from Benthosruthsa. "Feel my presence, and know fear!" We hold out, and the fight begins.

I dash over to Logan. Elweiss mutters something, and a weak flash of magic comes from his spear, doing nothing. The wraiths we didn't kill before start to come out of the walls as well. Garreth slugs a Minor Healing Potion, then dives into the water. Galdiera heals Logan then sniffs, "Normally I would never touch a man's mustelid, but for you I shall make an exception." Thrognar attacks the wraith then steps as the wraith dissipates in a horrible howl of death.

Erica aims a finger at the dragon. "Let's see if you burn from holy light!" Benthosruthsa howls as he burns. Elweiss lobs his spear at the dragon, but it misses. I rip a potion out of Logan's potion belt and pour it down his throat. As I do this, I feel myself drying out, and see a faint magical glow coming from Benthosruthsa as he grins at me.

Elweiss feels a flurry of wraith knife stabs, sending him to his eternal reward at Koborth's side. As he dies, he says, "Sorry I’m a bit late, had a terrible time … All sort of things cropping up at the last moment. Uh, how are we for time?" Another wraith hurls three knives at Galdiera. They miss but one hits me, not piercing the skin but sapping weakening my soul. The other wraiths lob another couple volleys of knives at Thrognar and Erica, but both get out of the way. Galdiera casts Affect Spirits on Logan, who charges at a wraith, knocking it over, but feeling the loss of his lifeforce. Thrognar uses Faith Healing on Erica.

Castle Whiterock 8 May 2023: Never fight while thirsty or sober

The murderhoboes

Garreth, half-orc swordsman
    Bleu, droning elf wizard
Zaber, suave and debonaire man
    Logan, wolverine
Polly, cute and deadly elf archer

(Stonemaul, dwarven cleric of Danethar)

And our helpers:

Elweiss, ghostly guardian

Fthirya, aka Erica, ghaele eladrin

Galdiera, kobold who thinks she's an elven paladin

What they did

We go back to Castle Whiterock, and Elweiss, Erica and Galdiera link up with us. After finding out that Galdiera and Erica drink elven wine and elven brandy, respectively, I bring along some good elven booze with for the trip.

This amazes Galdiera. "You intend to drink while battling the forces of Darkness and Evil?"

Garreth shrugs. "Makes it hard for the bad guys to figure out what I'm doing."

We go into the lair of Baghanaya and Scithia. They are amazed that we bring along backup, but I give Baghanaya a bottle of good scotch and we go past and into the tunnels.

We wend through the tunnels, and it looks like it is going down. I can smell the sulfur and feel the heat, but there is no flame yet.  The tunnel makes a sharp turn, and goes into a wide room. To our left is a wrecked mural of a dragon setting fire to a village, while to the right is a toppled statue of a dragon, which would have been about twice my height when whole.

Polly glares at the mural. "So. Not. Nature."

Garreth asks Bleu about the mural, and she starts her babble: "Oh, look. There is a head. As you can see the head has a pronounced scar, and a distinguished jawline, as noted in Waffston the Crispy's posthumously published tome, Who's Who of Evil Dragons. It is none other than Benthosruthsa."

I roll my eyes. "Brevity is the soul of wit, sweetheart." Bleu goes on about looking dragons in the teeth and the bicuspids of dragons that feed on tender children or something.

Garreth grips Scalemar and thinks. "That's the same dragon in the mural in the Audience Hall of the Thane in Narborg!"

Galdiera sniffs. "Clearly the beast is possessed of a great ego and hubris. Look how vain it is with monuments to its greatness!"

Erica adds, "If I had a jawline like that I'd smash the statue too! Or I'd have children with myself. That's really rugged!"

Say wha? This puzzles me as much as anyone reading this. I swear to you that I'm not high, that I've had maybe one shot of whiskey after a beer, and that she really said that. "… children with myself?"

Erica beams. "One of every color!"

I bump into the wall, then put my hand through the wall. "Whoa." Then I step through. After some running into the illusionary wall, everyone else makes it through as well. Bleu scans the wreckage  for any hint of working magic items.

I put on my ring and scout ahead. The tunnel reaches a T-fork. To the right, I can feel a light wind, but to the left, it's still. I can make out some ghostly faces hiding among the rocks at the fork, and shiver.

I go back to warn the others. "Elweiss, do you have any friends down here?"

Elweiss shakes his head. "I don't think so. I mean, I kinda play cards with the lich every so often, but most of the restless dead here aren't friendly."

Galdiera looks warily at Elweiss. "Undead? As the wisdom of Brother Elias says, suffer not the undead to live."

I throw up my hands, though most cannot see this. "Well, there are some ghostly faces up ahead. They hang out in rocks and stuff."

Galdiera narrows her eyes. "Brother Elias spoke of this lich."

Uh-oh. Elweiss might have spoken too much, so I have to say something. "Elias has been drinking too much communion wine. He never could hold it. That's why Garreth and I always drank it for him." This isn't wholly a lie, of course—Elias isn't a strong drinker, and Garreth and I always did drink his communion wine for him. Serves him right for saving it—we had to drink something when our stronger stuff ran out. That communion wine isn't the best, but sobriety is even worse.

Galdiera goes on. "Sounds like dread wraiths. They are cowardly bound servitors or haunts that cannot pass on due to chains of loyalty. Their blows can sap vitality as well as deal wounds. Mere steel is not proof against them nor does it hurt them." She stops, then adds, "But I have a Ghost Touch sword, so, bring it!"

Garreth asks, "Is there a simple way to release them, or shall we just cut them down?"

Galdiera chuckles. "I find that the time way to reason with evil is once the evil has been cut into very small pieces. But perhaps there is a way to help them move on." She shrugs, then looks skyward for a moment. "Divine Guidance speaks that this is a DCC module, so …"