Dungeons and Dragons Game
This is a record of my character for a DnD game I'm playing. I'm trying to take notes about our game sessions in order to stay engaged and to be able to review. I doubt I'll keep a consistent level of engagement and detail here.
Links
Monk class guide I've been following.
Shmeppy link. Shmeppy is John the Game Master's tool.
About My Character
My name is Nabel Vozz. I'm a human monk. I spent my upbringing in schools and seminaries studying and training.
When my schooling was done, I set out to make a name for myself. I thought I landed a sweet gig as an intern for a well-known business entity, but as I learned more I came to understand some fishy things were happening. When I began to question my superiors, I was abducted and brought into indentured servitude, doing basic mercenary/thug work, until the beginning of our story.
Logbook
Mon Oct 30 05:39:04 PM PST 2023
We three did not know each other before we woke up yesterday. We'd all been enslaved in one way or another through the Zhentarim, a crime ring in the area. We'd all been sold into slavery to the same highest bidder (maybe?).
We woke up together on a cart, bound and gagged (if we were spellcasters). Soon after we woke up, glowing zombies ran out of the woods and attacked our cart. Our captors seemed to know what was going on and they dispatched the zombies, who exploded into a blast of green necrotic energy.
Once our captors dispatched the zombie attackers, we immediately jumped on them.
We captured one of our captors who was trying to get away (after killing her sister). We learned through light questioning that they were cultists who were tyring to bring us to their leader. Their leader wanted to imbue us with some special energy. They selected us bcause we were medium-powerful (level 3) and the special energy.
Around the necks of all our captors were the same amulet: A dark stone carved into a disk a while stone on one side, and on the other side a crude sigil. There's blood along the fastener.
Then we cleaned up the bodies and moved to a place off the beaten path with our captor and set up camp.
While we were eating dinner over the fire, a short elf popped out of nowhere and started talking to us about a dark tower to the north. He offered us a job, to explore the tower and possibly find the source of a pulsating power (emenating possibly from the tower or nearby?). His name is Alwin. And his friend showed up (Bekta?). They were both great Seekers (mercs) from Candlekeep, a great and powerful place nearby to the south with a large magical library.
Mon Nov 6 06:04:29 PM PST 2023
As we approached the tower, we walked by a huge obelisk with a graveyard nearby. Alwin explained the obelisk was put there as a Divine guard to the necrotic energy.
Then we saw a huge pile of rubble. Around the rubble was various mining and blasting gear.
Alwin explained that he had to do all this himself, the way wasn't clear and he cleared it himself.
At Dor Nien's questioning, Alwin explained that a failed Lich ascension started this pulsating necrotic energy and rumbling of the Earth every 5 minutes, for about 15 seconds.
Rob asked Alwin about the amulets, and he said he recognized the symbol as that of Velar, which is nearby where the cult was.
Alwin gave us his potions of necrotic energy resistance. We were all suspicious of the potions, but no one could determine anything useful about their contents.
Upon drinking the potion, I felt like a cozy slug perched upon a tree branch in a forest. A wave of safe feelings.
Alwin seemed surprised and delighted that we didn't die. He explained that the potions were hard to make, unique and experimental.
We grabbed blasting/mining materials and went down. There is a green necrotic energy haze and darkness. But once we walked in the haze actually lit the place decently. We found ourselves on a staircase down into a nice big atrium. Next to us was a water feature with trickling water across a bridge into a little pond above which a large crystal was hovering. Another staircase in the distance went up.
We also saw two halflings standing at a table on the other side of the room. As Rob the rogue approached stealthily, he noticed a library over a railing, a 20 ft drop below. He overheard the halflings mumbling in somewhat worried voices about the guests in the tower.
"I've never seen so many people here in one day. Maybe something bigs going to happen. Should we go up there and help? Should we go get a smoke outside?"
As Dor Nien prepared crossbow, Kuragari approached with his weapon sheathed and bows and speaks to them, they look over quite confused to see anyone else that is not a guest. Kuragari asks, "who are you, and what year do you think this is?"
Apprentice Posco Proudmead responds with his name, and the year, about 300 years in the past. The actual year it is 1493 (a year after Baldur's Gate 3 video game according to this).
Kuragari lied and said we were guests, and asked them to "escort us," ambiguous to where we were going. He also explained ot the rest of us that the time period was around the time of the Lich's failed ascension.
We followed the apprentice up the hallway to the north and showed us to a laboratory. The lab had some people inside. More apprentices, and a group of 5 adventurers. These adventurers way out-classed us. They appeared to be demigod level powerful. All around the lab was bubbling vats and glass pipework. Clearly a wizard's laboratory. The centerpiece was a large containment vessel at the far end of the lab lit up with blue energy (starkly different from the green haze).
To our left was the scariest thing we've ever seen in our lives. A creature so massive it shouldn't possibly be able to fit in this room, sitting bent over in the corner, made out of shadows.
Posco approached the group of adventurers and prompted them to introduce themselves.
Then Kuragari pointed out the creature in the corner and Posco freaked out and almost ran out of the room. He decided to himself that it was okay because the giant creature was probably a familiar of the wizard, Zhok'vir.
As we were there for a few minutes, the argument among the high-level adventuring group was getting very heated. Kuragari noticed the shadow creature looking satisfied and sated. The wizard was talking about his daughter. The rest of the party was upset with him because of what he was doing to the commoners. Lots of synonyms of undeath.
We feared for ourselves and we sprinted out of the lab, out of the atrium and back up to Alwin. It had only been about 5 minutes (the period between the rumblings).
Rob asked Alwin about the wizard, and his daughter. Alwin didn't know anything else about it. He didn't know anything about the floating crystal. Or the creature.
When Kuragari explained the situation of the "replay" of the time of the Wizard's ascension, Alwin had never heard anything. He asked about the blue energy container as well. Alwin suggested that if there was a time manipulating arcane energy device, it might be blue.
We decided to split up and do different things on our next entrance into the time loop basement. Dor Nien went to check out the blue thing, but he didn't have much luck. Rob went to Posco to talk to him without much luck.
Nabel ran into the library and tried to find any books or notes that the wizard wrote himself. He found some with some notes about "Deep Rot". When he turned around from the bookshelf, he observed a scuffle between an ornately dressed man and the librarian that ended with the librarian's throat slit, and the ornately dressed man running with his companion out the door carrying a stolen book.
Kuragari went into the lab and used Divine Sense. He observed the shadow creature and the wizard were both Undead. He said to the shadow creature, "The Raven Queen requests you return to the shadowfel, your place is not here creature of darkness." The creature replied, "The Raven Queen doesn't command me to do anything, I go where I wish. Who is she to tell me where to go?" Kuragari attempted to divine smite and then misty step away. He missed then skipped away. Did the creature react? Kuragari flashed away into the shadows before he could find out.
The notes and books I collected evaporated as I ran out.
Mon Nov 20 05:39:10 PM PST 2023
We rewound a little bit because we hadn't resolved what Dor Nien was doing in that time. Dor Nien wracked his brain for religious or arcane understanding of the situation in the science room but couldn't find anything of note. He ran for the door before Kuragari started stabbing the dreadful monster.
I don't know what compelled him but Rob decided to try to touch the crystal floating above the water feature at the foyer's center. As his hand moved close he felt a strange, deeply negative force. Thinking better of it, he stopped moving his hand towards it and instead took out an elm stick to poke it. As soon as the stick touched the crystal, the stick disintegrated to ash in his hand.
Pasco, the apprentice, saw Rob touch the crystal. Confused, as if seeing the crystal for the first time, he asked "was it always black?" Rob asked him what it used to be. "White, casting light, like a chandelier." He was aghast at the sudden change.
Everyone moved to the exit. Rob stayed just beyond the entrance archway to watch what would happen when the time loop relapsed. The grand duke ran by and disappeared in the archway behind him. The floors above crumbled and Rob pulled his head back.
We regrouped outside before coming back in. Nabel and Rob moved towards the library to take another stab at the research and the book we saw stolen. Kuragari and Dor Nien moved towards the clinic which no one had inspected yet.
In the library, Nabel bumped into the duke to distract him and his guard while Rob swapped the book on the desk with another one
Then Nabel moved to the same notes he'd looked through previously and looked through them again. Nabel learned that the wizard had been studying Deep Rot for years and years, the dated entries go way back. Some of the notes had pages missing (removed, redacted?). Nabel was able to tell that he had made lots of headway looking for a cure but hadn't found it as of the time of the time loop. And his daughter has deep rot, which is his motivation for all the studying.
Then Rob offered to help me hold open the book he'd stolen, since it had made him sick to touch it. The book was the personal Journal of Telona, the God of Pestilence, from when she was walking the material plane a great long time ago. Impeccable handwriting. The ink was brackish but the ligatures were stunning.
Cut to Kuragari and Dor Nien exploring the clinic. They see doors to chambers off the clinic's hall. After hammering off a lock, they find a healing room. There they found a lockbox and a magic-looking mask. Kuragari donned the mask which felt like a nice gas mask.
In one of the smaller rooms, they found two Dwarven adults missing both legs, laying down on medical beds. In another room, a small Elvish child with a missing arm. Through some questioning the child revealed that the wizard took his arm after saying the Deep Rot had gotten too deep.
Dor Nien spoke to the two Hill Dwarves. Kuragari checked the other two rooms, one empty and one with a man missing both arms. He repeated that the wizard took his arms because they'd gone "too far."
On our way out, Kuragari stopped the Duke and tried to intimidate him. He responded that he was the Grand Duke Felarkin. Nabel said he knew what the book was, he just needed to know why the Duke would want it. He said he's taking it to Velar.
We all exited and the book disappeared but the gas mask remained.
We shared everything we learned with Alwin and Bekta. Alwin told us that the duke was a werewolf who started a coup in Baldur's Gate and then ran off into the woods to the old city of Velar. Alwin said there was now a cure for Deep Rot. Maybe if we brought a cure in for the wizard's daughter he'd let us help? Alwin told us that Velar's patron was the god of the Moon who would be more aligned with werewolves than the god of pestilence.
Rob asked Alwin about the crystal and he told us it was a relic from the Negative Realm, a ball of pure necrotic energy.
We went back in after planning to check out the lockbox, ask the wizard how he felt about a cure, and study the book again. Dor Nien also left a dagger inside the time loop to see what would happen. The lockbox contained notes about horrendous tests on people without the goal of curing or compassion, just anything on the way to learning about deep rot.
Nabel stealthily stole the journal of the god again. The latter half was all about the god going around talking with wizards of the land about diseases. Not much about deep rot or the plague of the land specifically, but similar sounding stuff. Nabel took out pen and paper and tried to take some useful notes about cures for similar diseases.
Rob peeked through the threshold of the laboratory. He spoke to the shadow monster for a moment to check if it was going to attack him, but apparently not. So he approached the wizard Zhok'vir and offered him the written recipe of the cure for Deep Rot. He also attempted to withhold his origins which failed, so Rob told the wizard about the time loop. Surprisingly the wizard believed him.
The wizard dropped the stasis field. The nightwalker seemed to get pissed that the stasis field was dropping and moved to attack. The wizard cast haste on Rob and the whole high level adventure party engaged the nightwalker. As we all escaped with the wizard's daughter, we felt a different ending of the time loop, more like sublimation than disintegration. When we turned around after getting out, the archway had collapsed behind us. The time loop appeared to be over.
Kuragari revived the wizard's daughter with a light healing spell and we began talking to her. She grew up in the tower, raised by her father the wizard.
Future: I stopped taking notes around here, so I back-filled with other's description of the last few minutes when we regrouped.