Final Part: The Experiment Was Apparently A Success!

Hoo boy. I'm honestly still trying to process what just happened with this session, and it's been a few days. Suffice it to say between all the things I sort of dropped in the party's lap for good or for ill and the various things the party themselves have done up to this point, or the things they're planning to do, things are going swimmingly. All the dominoes were set up in the best way possible. Don't worry if you don't feel prepared for the insanity to follow. I sure wasn't.

In the time it took for the party to be escorted back to the imperial palace, Bubbles spent a lot of time in his room on a secret project that his player had actually contacted me about earlier in the week. To be honest, because he was rather vague about his intentions with this secret project, this made me a little nervous, but at the same time, I'm committed to the idea of whatever ridiculous stuff happening, so...here it goes I guess.

During the flight, the party spent some time going over their plans. Bubbles' player put it best (after apologizing for breaking the plans for my campaign by shortening it), "I don't wanna fight an entire army to get into a palace where I can fight a bunch more enemies and then fight the final boss, so if we don't have to, great!" Honestly, this is something I'm okay with, as it shortened the ending by like 2 or 3 sessions depending on how long it took them to get there, and once this campaign is over I don't have to be the DM for a while.Win-win.

Anyway, here's the plan. The party would place all their weapons in Bubbles' Bag of Holding and let the admiral have it smuggled into the throne room. Once the deed was done, he'd do what he could to help the party find the emperor and empress and keep them from being imprisoned. Admittedly the monster I picked to have the party fight made me worry that they might not survive long enough for an escape plan to be necessary, but we'll get to that.

Anyway, after the party's plans were finalized, we decided to fastforward to the landing. The party was "disarmed" and led to the throne room, where Elphina Crowe sat, waiting, with the exact smirk you can imagine, completely surrounded by guards. She bade the party welcome, even saying how much she missed Yesmae.

Yesmae, clearly not wanting any of Elphina's nonsense, demanded, "Where are my parents?"

"Oh, my dear, they're ill. But not to worry, you'll get a chance to see them soon enough. But enough," she looked at the guards. "Leave us. We have much to discuss. Go on, out with you." At her word, the guards all left, but the admiral was able to get Bubbles' attention to show where he was dropping the bag of holding.

Once the soldiers all cleared out of the room, Elphina completely dropped her facade. "Okay princess. You have a captive audience. I suppose you'll be demanding to hear my evil plan so you can swear to stop me?"

"Evil plan? You have a plan for all this?" Yesmae asked.

Bubbles continued. "You've taken over the empire and you're going to awaken the God Warrior. What else are you doing?"

"Do you know anything about the Shadowfell, or the land of Barovia?"

Bubbles folded his arms. "Ummm....what? You're making up words!"

"I thought not. After all, the Shadowfell isn't on this plane of existence, neither was Barovia until recently when a group of troublemakers destroyed the lord of that domain and restored it."

Naturally, the party's eyes glazed over with this bit of exposition that had nothing to do with them but was a mild shoutout/forced connection to our previous campaign where we ran Curse of Strahd, which ended with Strahd, the lord of Barovia, being defeated by the party and banished from that plane of existence directly into the custody of the Raven Queen, patron of edgy warlocks the world over, desiring to reclaim her lost power in the Shadowfell. Once Strahd was defeated, the land of Barovia reappeared in the the Prime Material Plane (basically the normal D&D world).

Seeing that this bit of news wasn't getting through to the party, Elphina continued, "I guess a good way to put it is real estate."

If Bubbles could furrow his eyebrow, he would. "Land?"

"Exactly." She explained exactly what I just explained regarding Barovia.

"Long story short, I plan to harness the power of the God Warrior to pull this land into the Shadowfell. What happens to you doesn't matter to me. Regardless, the ritual is almost done, so there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Yesmae raised an eyebrow. "Wait, so the Shadowfell lost Barovia, and you or your master or whatever wants this land in exchange, and that's supposed to be fair? Barovia didn't belong to the Shadowfell either!"

Savin, waiting for an opportunity, found this as his chance and cast a spell on Elphina, Dissonant Whispers. Awesome. Time for action. I wasn't sure how much longer I could have Elphina monologue before the party got sick of her crap and made their attack. So I had Elphina make her saving throw, and...naturally, for my villains, it was bad.

But not quite as bad as Karin's response to the Dissonant Whispers spell. As in, she asked me if that was "the song." To which I responded, "No, that's Careless Whisper." And the Discord call broke out in laughter. So I uploaded this gif.

So anyway, Elphina, having failed her Wisdom save, was racked by an extremely painful, dissonant rendition of Careless Whisper. Naturally, when confronted with a decent song that just sounds wrong, she panicked, and set about trying to get as far from the party as possible...

By activating and stepping into a teleportation circle beneath the throne.

"Blast. I wanted to scare her, but not like that. She's probably leading us into a trap."

Bubbles, ignoring Savin, scrambled over to the Bag of Holding and started distributing everyone's equipment. "Whelp, let's not waste any more time. She said the ritual's almost done, and I've got wings I gotta get back!"

"No stop," Savin suggested. "We're not going in without a plan."

"Oh that's easy, I've got some potions we can take. It'll be no problem"

So before jumping into the portal, the party quickly downed what potions Bubbles had been saving, which included a Potion of Storm Giant's Strength that Bubbles wasted no time downing. However, since his only weapon was his pistol, he asked if anyone had a spare melee weapon he could use. Which Yesmae happened to have in the form of her old quarterstaff.

I should also mention that he took a Potion of Invincibility, but that really ceased to matter once they got into the portal, because...

Elphina had already managed to put herself on the opposite side of the hallway the portal led to, with a group of twelve cloaked figures between her and the party. "Stall them! I only need a little more time!"

Well...about that...

Wasting no time, Bubbles grabbed the cloaked figure in front of the group and used him as a human shield to force his way in, slowly bowling over the other cloaked figures. So, Bubbles isn't even 5 feet, and I think his player said he weighs less than 50 pounds, so you can imagine this one of two ways. A hulked out crow person pushing them like a rather jacked peewee wide receiver somehow blasting open the defensive line of the New England Patriots (size comparison, I played enough football to know that no coach in his right mind would use a WR as a lineman), or the way I imagined it where he didn't hulk out, a Smart car shoving a bunch of pickups aside. Either works really. Both absurd. Both hilarious. Neither making me regret giving him that potion.

Yesmae took advantage of the sudden embarrassment of Elphina's last line of defense and dashed forward, leaping from cloaked man to cloaked man, until she finally caught up with Elphina and clocked her in the back of the head.

"I know those fools were useless in the long run. Very well, looks like I'll have to deal with you myself!" At these words, dark energy began billowing out from Elphina, blowing out all the torches in the hallway. As the light faded, the party saw Elphina take her true shape, that of a Shadow Dragon.

Her cultists had no idea that this was her true form, nor did they really understand just what her plan was, so at this revelation, they sprinted out of the hallway, leaving the party alone with their new nemesis.

For a short while she gave them a decent match until it occurred to Yesmae that Elphina specifically darkened the room because light was her weakness, so she used her shadow monk abilities (for the second time in this campaign) to stealth towards the curtains and open the windows, flooding the room with light.

All the while Savin, Grula, and Bubbles were laying the smackdown on the dragon. Once she started recoiling in pain from the sunlight, Bubbles saw his chance and decided he was going to try to grapple the dragon, wrestling her to the ground.

Considering how many pro wrestling jokes I've made in our group chat so far this was a long time coming.

Out of desperation, Elphina let out a roar of rage and ignited her breath weapon. Savin, taking the brunt of the blast to keep his friends in danger, was engulfed in shadowy flames. Well, okay, he actually made the Dex Save so he technically took half damage. Except due to a secret he'd been keeping from the party, he took half of that since it was necrotic damage, a damage type his race has resistance to. What race? It's still a secret to everyone but me. He'll probably let it out eventually.

Eventually, Elphina's HP were brought to zero, as she shouted in despair that her loss was impossible and blah blah blah standard villain stuff. Just then, the altar of the ritual began to glow as a huge white hand reached through a portal that appeared, grabbing Elphina and starting to drag her in.

Bubbles immediately realized that this was a problem, for he had pinned Elphina to the ground in the last bit of the battle, and was now being dragged to the portal with her.

I had no idea how I expected them to solve this problem, but thankfully Bubbles' player is an extremely creative person.

Filled with newfound strength, Bubbles tried to wrest Elphina from the giant arm's grasp, somehow succeeding. Armed with an extremely wounded, severely confused dragon, Bubbles mustered up all his strength, swung Elphina around, and threw her as hard as he could at the altar, smashing it completely. The portal closed, severing the arm at the elbow, as screams of pain and confusion racked Yesmae's mind.

For a brief moment, Yesmae was certain that she could hear the God Warrior's thoughts, begging for some release from the pain. Not destruction. Not awakening. Yesmae apologized, saying that someday, somehow, they'd figure out how to save it.

Elphina, collecting herself, muttered. "It doesn't matter. It's over. It'll go back to sleep soon enough. Who knows if it'll ever wake up aga-blargible."

Bubbles, who had already set about harvesting blood from the giant arm and had grown tired of Elphina's incessant talking, also realizing that he wasn't going to get the wish he convinced himself he was getting, threw a bottle straight into the dragon's maw. It exploded within her, and shortly enough, she went down, foaming at the mouth, dead. From what?

Drug overdose.

Because Bubbles' secret weapon? Opium grenades. That he intended to use to gas anyone getting in the way of his wish. However, since it was now officially out of his hands, out of spite, he used them on the dying dragon.

Shortly after this, a squad of soldiers dashed into the room, accompanied by Tylhana, who explained that they were in the dungeons searching for the emperor and empress when they heard a commotion and made their way in (but not without apprehending Elphina's cronies). Tylhana explained that they had narrowed down the location of the emperor and empress to this particular area of the castle, and one of the cultists spilled the beans on everything. After feeling around the room a bit, she found a switch, which moved the altar back, revealing the emperor and empress in glass coffin-like structures, hooked up to a strange machine, looking nearly dead and having what little life force remained sucked from them for the ritual.

The party healed the emperor and empress enough that they could extract them from the machine and turn it off, and they were rushed to a healer.

Over the next few weeks, Yesmae was retrained to take the position of regent over the land until her parents could make their recovery, though once they did they decided that the empire was better in her hands than theirs, willfully abdicating the throne and placing Yesmae in charge officially as the new empress.

Grula, saddened to see the state of the military after the last few years, enlisted to work her way through the ranks to help rebuild it from within, serving the rest of her (admittedly short) life in an important advisor role to the new empress.

Savin and Bubbles went back to the ship and their crew to continue Savin's privateer business as well as hunting down the crew that had betrayed Savin in his backstory that I totally forgot about. Bubbles' fate is a little more ambiguous. As a Kenku his lifespan is already pretty short, made worse by drug abuse and experiments, so we came to the conclusion that he probably didn't really get a happy ending. Either he would upset someone and die in a bar fight, or he would dope himself too much with his experiments and poison himself, or he would try one too many times to steal a sample of Savin's blood, which would result in him briefly learning what it feels like to fly for the precious few seconds he had before he smashed into the ground below the ship after being thrown overboard.

And thus the book closes on another one of my campaigns. I've been nervous about this one, because I often find myself making things up as we go along (hey, it's worked for Akira Toriyama for decades with Dragon Ball), and I never feel like I do endings particularly well. And here wasn't much of an exception, since most of my rolls for Elphina were pretty bad, and I don't feel like I do villains well when I'm trying to do everything else, but my party seemed to enjoy their adventure enough to stick with it, well, most of them.

I like putting up these recaps, though, so I'm going to do it with our next campaign. Stay tuned for the prologue, as we begin our next adventure in Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus.

Part 14: Finally Some Airship Combat!

 We rejoin our heroes, still in the same meeting they were in last time. Now that a basic end goal had been established, the party then conversed with possible avenues of getting into the imperial palace. While the empire's sea coverage was relatively weak, obviously their air support was unmatched, which could pose a problem, as Bubbles pointed out.

"Doesn't matter how strong your navy is. Shooting at something in the sky is impossible!"

The Western Navy's admiral furrowed his brow. "Do you have a suggestion?"

"Nope! I've got nothing!"

The admiral rolled his eyes. "Excellent. Thank you." He paused for a few seconds. "There is one avenue, though I am loathe to even entertain the thought, let alone suggest it."

In unison, both Savin and Bubbles finished the line of thought; "The Fury of the Small."

"Yes," the admiral said. "I do not wish to reward piracy, but-"

Bubbles piped up, "Just call it privateering. That's what Savin does, and he says its legal!" Savin shot a glare back at Bubbles.

"Right," the admiral continued, annoyed at the interruption. "They've caused an awful lot of trouble for us over the years but unfortunately they may be our best bet for quickly bolstering our air support." He groaned in irritation. "If only we had time to analyze the airship you lot are flying and make some adjustments, possibly adding to our own fleet."

Yesmae thought for a moment. "At the very least, do we even know where we'll be able to find the Fury of the Small?"

The admiral frowned. "That's a good question. We don't know where they hole up to stay out of trouble. Our best option would be scouring the Southern Isles in the hopes that we run into another pirate crew that is affiliated with the Fury, but even then that is a great deal of wishful thinking. Though I suppose it's better than-"

The door flew open as a messenger dashed into the meeting. "Excuse me sirs, but we've just received urgent word that pirates have engaged the empire's forces at the city of Doncaster!"

"Doncaster again? That city can't catch a break," Savin muttered to himself.

"The admiral's mouth hung open for a few seconds. "Well, I suppose that is our answer. We set off for Doncaster, aid the pirates, enlist them to our cause, and hope that bolsters our forces enough to make an invasion of imperial space possible."

Once the meeting concluded, the party made ready to ship out with the strength of the Western Navy at their backs for Doncaster. After a few days' travel they arrived at the scene of the major standoff. Two large forces lined up against one-another, just waiting for the other to blink, or move, or something. However, once the two armies caught sight of the Western Fleet sailing in, someone fired the first shot. Nobody's sure which side shot first, but what followed was a hail of cannon and ballista fire.

Bubbles looked over the battlefield and made a suggestion to the group before they joined the fray. "It looks like most of the other ships are already engaged with the pirates. If we rush down the flagship we'll probably win!" And truly, with the battle map I drew up, that was the case. One unengaged ship held the line between the party and the flagship, and the party's ship had some backup. After a few rounds of cannon fire and Grula flying ahead of the ship to snipe cannoneers off the enemy's ship, Savin got an idea.

His player asked me how far they were from the flagship and if he could see the captain of the flagship. I quickly measured out the distance on the map and, though he couldn't see it through cyberspace, I shrugged, saying, "Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. Why, what's your idea?"

"I'm gonna cast Dimension Door. If I teleport myself and one other person to the flagship we can quickly take out the enemy's commander and force a surrender." Bear in mind, Savin, like other characters from this player, thinks in an extremely strategic manner.

This is the kind of guy who revels in early checkmates if the opportunity comes up (I've been Fool's Mate'd a few times by him in the past 😒 What? I'm not a chess player), and he and Bubbles had decided that, if possible, they wanted to secure a victory with as few casualties as possible (well, more accurately Savin wanted to minimize casualties, while Bubbles was keen to gas everyone on the ships and commandeer them with little resistance).

What was Yesmae doing during all this? Unfortunately, nobody asked her. Savin put Ray in control of the ship, and Yesmae was left on cannon duty, and away Savin and Bubbles went on their crazy scheme.

So...from the perspective of the commanding officer of the enemy's flagship, an admiral, this is what happened. A human dressed up in fancy merchant's gear and a humanoid crow whose race is not super common just pop into existence in front of him, demanding immediate surrender. Which is already startling enough on its own, but one thing that sealed the deal? Bubbles had downed two potions before teleporting over: one of his Potions of Fire Giant's Strength and a Potion of Alter Self. So not only was this crow person sporting massive, Olympic weightlifter-esque muscles, but he used the Alter Self Potion to transform one of his hands into a massive claw.

So I had them roll for Intimidation. And I really wish I hadn't. Because Savin rolled a nat 20, and I've mentioned before the debate of whether a nat 20 means automatic success and my feelings towards it, from the admiral's perspective he had just gone from a comfortable stalemate that could have held a siege for months to being hopelessly outnumbered by not only pirates but a navy of another nation who was already upset with the empire. He decided his luck would be better spent with the new guys' mercy than fighting to the last in a losing battle.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a magical stone called a Stone of Farspeech (an item I totally didn't steal from either The Adventure Zone or Final Fantasy XIV), basically a magical, fantasy walkie talkie that one could use to deliver messages over a distance (see, totally exists in D&D).

"It's me. Put up the colors. We're done here." He paused, waiting for a response. "Yes, I know we're basically dead if we return home like this. We're also basically dead if we keep fighting. Put up the colors. That's an order." He returned the Stone into his coat pocket.

One by one, the imperial airships put up flags indicating surrender, until one was left: the heavily damaged vanguard ship, which instead opted to try to ram the party's airship. A move which was met by being violently blasted out of the sky by a hail of cannonfire from three nearby airships.

The opposing admiral grimaced, expecting the worst, while Savin quickly surveyed the rest of the battlefield. Seeing that the pirates were beginning to plunder their captured ships, he scoped out the most important person on the largest pirate ship, told Bubbles to keep things under control for a bit, and teleported over the larger ship to try to bring the pirates around.

No, you're right. This was probably a bad decision.

A couple of soldiers near the admiral glanced about, and the admiral shook his head. "What is it that you and your comrades are up to?" the admiral asked. "Wait, that's the airship we're after! Who are you and what are you doing?"

"We're taking your ships and throwing you guys into the ocean. Once we're done here we're going to make our way to the imperial palace, murder the empress, and save the world!"

The captain flew into a rage. "I will not let you do that!" He quickly shoved a free hand into his coat, grasping for a pistol.

Bubbles, wasting no time, grabbed the admiral's wrist. Unfortunately since he wasn't used to the strength boost from the potion (his strength is at a 7 when average is 10, the potion boosted him to 25), he felt the admiral's wrist crumble.

Naturally, with a freshly broken wrist, the admiral screamed, and the other two soldiers nearby raised their guns, one firing a shot at Bubbles. Unfortunately, the shot went wide, hitting the admiral instead. The other took aim to take a shot at Bubbles but was stopped.

By what, you ask? Why, Grula, of course! Grula, seeing things were starting to get iffy and hearing the first gunshot, made the snap decision to dropkick the other soldier, knocking his weapon out of his hand. Naturally, the admiral shouted for a stop to the fighting, to which Bubbles got defensive. After all, he wouldn't have broken the admiral's wrist if the admiral hadn't tried to defend himself. The admiral wouldn't have gotten shot if the other soldier hadn't tried to interfere.

This is the sort of insane logic that Bubbles' mind runs on, folks.

Anyway, rejoining Savin. Savin popped into existence right in front of the captain of the larger pirate ship, directly interrupting his speech about "Stealin'everythin' that wasn't nailed down" and "killin' all them imperial yobs".

Savin quickly started explaining the situation, right until the gunshots rang out from the imperial flagship. Immediately regretting his decision to leave Bubbles alone, he tried to hide his sudden onset of panic since he had no spell slots left to cast Dimension Door again. However, his panic subsided when Grula crashed into the situation on the flagship, and he was able to continue.

"Basically, have your pirates wait on the whole raid and plunder thing, get us in touch with your friends on The Fury of the Small, and hear what we have to say."

The captain, a small, somewhat well-dressed goblin, thought for a moment. "We get the stuff?"

Savin rubbed his forehead in frustration. "Yes, very well. After this, you can have what you want, but don't kill anyone else."

Not long afterward, everyone gathered on the bridge of the flagship to discuss the terms of their surrender and just what their plans were. Yesmae outed herself as the princess to the admiral and clarified that they weren't out to kill the empress, as the woman claiming to be the empress was an impostor working with Elphina Crowe, and that the real emperor and empress were hopefully still alive, hidden away as captives somewhere.

The admiral considered the new information he was provided with. "That being the case, what is your plan? Fight your way to the palace?"

Bubbles spoke up. "Wait! You could take us like Chewbacca!"

My group has a habit of referencing outside materials like movies and tv shows as legends, plays, and literature in universe. The admiral, naturally, no idea what this sudden outburst was about, and Bubbles had to clarify that it was a really old story where a big yeti creature was used as a fake captive to sneak into an enemy fortress.

After hashing out the specifics, the admiral agreed that that might work. He would escort them back to the palace as "captives". They'd get pulled into whatever nefarious scheme Crowe had for the party. They'd fight and defeat Crowe, stop the ritual, and save the world. The admiral agreed to this for three reasons: if the party was lying, they'd be taken into a no-win scenario and the admiral would be viewed as a hero rather than a coward; if the party was honest and they failed, oh well, the world ends; if the party is right and they succeed, the end of the world as we know it is stopped.

Let's see how this goes.

So a bit of a peek behind the curtain here. I 100% intended to have the ritual completed off-screen.. The party would have gotten stopped outside the imperial capital by some super powerful monsters meant as a distraction. The God Warrior would have awakened and begun a rampage, slowly absorbing everything into a sort of distorted dimension inside itself, which would have simultaneously become the final dungeon and in some fashion the final boss.

Instead, the party's own mixed feelings on the God Warrior ritual have inspired something better. Bubbles wants to hijack the ritual to possibly restore wings to his people. Yesmae just wants to stop Crowe but thinks there's a possibility that the God Warrior could be used to stop Crowe somehow. Savin wants to stop the ritual at all cost. So...I'm gonna let this happen. It's more fun this way.

Part 13: We're Almost There

We rejoin the party as they enter into the inner sanctum of the temple. There, seated atop a large mountain of treasure was a full grown Bronze Dragon that resembled the statue in the entrance hall, speaking with a Tortle that Yesmae immediately recognized as her master, Don Chen, who turned to greet the party.

"Ah yes, come in, Princess and Her Royal Retinue. We've been waiting for you," Chen said.

"I trust my roommate didn't give you too much trouble?" the dragon boomed. "Well, I suppose since the people you were waiting for have arrived, we can start this discussion, right? The reason you wished to see me?"

At this point, Chen began explaining his side of the story, why he left the empire three years before, and what he was doing here. He noticed things were going in a strange direction with the appearance of Elphina Crowe, as many others had, but the thing that clinched it was one evening when he had overheard a group of people, including Crowe, discussing something in a hushed tone. Sneaking closer to the room they were in, he heard one of the group mention that the Emperor and Empress had successfully been "replaced" and that it was a matter of time before anyone else who could prove to be troublesome would be out of the picture, presumably including the princess and her guardians. Chen, realizing that the entire country could be endangered by Crowe's work, attempted to assassinate her, however, as you the viewer could probably guess, he failed, was identified, and was forced to flee in order to avoid arrest and execution, and has been on the run for three years since.

Yesmae had been able to track him down long enough to train under him before eventually being sent off on her own to work with Halinard Townsend. After which, Chen traveled the lands warning of possible invasion from Valmutia, as well as seeking any information on Crowe's possible goals with Valmutia. This journey also involved meeting with mystical creatures that lived in the various lands, trying to form an alliance against possible invasion, which brought him to this very temple.

Once Chen was finished explaining his side of the story, the conversation took a brief pause for everyone to process the information that was just dropped on them. Yesmae's parents might actually not be evil after all, though where they were was another question. They were likely replaced with Changelings which could prove troublesome if anyone else important was replaced. The question then became what Crowe's goal in all of this was.

"I believe I can venture a guess," the dragon offered. "How familiar are you with the history of the land? Before your kind came along?"

The party exchanged confused looks, and the dragon continued.

Millennia ago, before this dragon's time, before his father's time, all the major continents were one land, and the islands of the sea were not quite as plentiful. Magical creatures such as dragons, aboleths, and others ruled the lands, while the progenitors of the various kingdoms lived in small tribes, or, as the dragon put it, "Lived in caves and beat eachother with wooden clubs."

This all changed when a meteor struck the center of the continent, splitting it. Through a combination of continental drift and the large formation of a crater, the land flooded, forming what would eventually be considered the sea beneath the floating kingdom of Valmutia. As in, floating in the air. How, you ask? Magic. Specifically residual magical energy coming from the meteor that struck the land. It is this same meteor whose magical energy made the magical royal line of Valmutia possible, and it is also this magical energy that led to the development of civilization as the world knew it.

However, this energy was not just a spontaneous event. Rather, within the meteor slept a being of immense, almost godlike power. Because of this immense power, the dragons began to call it the God Warrior. Not much was known about this being besides this: if it ever were to awaken, its power could spell disaster.

"That, my friends, must be what she is after," the dragon concluded.

Bubbles perked up a bit. "Oh, that's an easy fix! Let's just wake it up before her! That way it'll do what we want, right?"

The party all voiced agreement, but the dragon shook his head. "Unfortunately, that course of action would probably end poorly. Even one with completely pure intentions could be seduced by the power and lose control over it. It's incredibly likely that, whatever Crowe's end goal is won't matter because she won't be able to control it."

Throughout the rest of the conversation Bubbles continued to stew on the idea of forcing a godlike being onto his side and the possibilities for reasons relevant to his backstory, which I'll touch on a little later.

After the dragon finished his explanation, Chen said, "Which brings us to here and now. What next?"

Yesmae spoke up first. "Go back to the palace, kill Crowe, find my parents, and stop the end of the world?"

"Yes, but we need a plan. That's a goal."

At some point I shared the video clip from Guardians of the Galaxy with the quote, "That is not a plan," and the party went silent for a bit, unsure of what to do next.

The dragon then suggested, "Well, as you can see I have a collection of treasure. I would allow you to search through it and borrow some of it to better equip yourselves for the upcoming fight." Basically I as the DM was permitting them some better equipment since we're almost at the end.

Properly outfitted, the party decided the next thing to do would be to meet with the leadership of the Western Confederation on the way back to Valmutia to let them know what the plan is and that this is the end.

I'm glossing over that because I want to take some time to focus on Bubbles specifically and why he might want to attempt to use the God Warrior's power for himself. I can't remember if I mentioned it earlier (and I'm not about to scrub through previous posts to find it), but an important note about his race, the Kenku is the fact that, while they are bird creatures (specifically humanoid crows/ravens), they do not have wings. Bubbles' flock worked with a group of alchemists to find a way for the Kenku race to get their wings back, which, like any good (read: terrifying) sci-fi/fantasy story would contain, eventually led to experimentation on the race itself, which Bubbles was a product of.

One side-effect of these experiments was the increase in creative thought, something that Kenku are not exactly known for. To make a long story short, he eventually left his flock and the group of alchemists behind, setting off to find his own way of restoring flight to his people. This is why everywhere he goes, he desires to collect blood samples, and wherever he ends up, his chemistry set goes with him (well, that and feeding his drug addiction but that's not important). One evening, Bubbles confided all of this in Grula, whom I'll remind you is another avian, being an Aarakocra, a race that unlike the Kenku has both wings and arms. In a conversation that somehow managed to split the difference between heartwarming and creepy (seriously everyone in the Discord call had some really complicated feelings), Bubbles begged Grula for her help and guidance, which she obliged.

That same evening, Savin started making his way through the city nightlife districts (okay, it was a few taverns, nothing that looks like how you imagine nighttime in Tokyo or anything like that) sowing rumors about an upcoming battle, and Yesmae and Chen went to a small field outside of town for a final friendly spar. Chen wanted to see how far along Yesmae was, and Yesmae was eager to show her master how far she'd come. With nothing left to teach Yesmae, Chen eventually conceded defeat, greeting her as his equal.

While in the capital city of the Western Confederation, the party split up to do some last-minute shopping, and Bubbles was able to brew up some potions for the upcoming battle. And this is where we stand now. Almost all party secrets are out in the open. The party has an endgame goal, and some new allies. Things are about to come to a head. And...we're finally caught up on everything that's been happening so far.

What? I realize it took forever for me to write two updates, especially with two sessions without any real combat, but it's been hard getting the group together. That being said, this is it. Here we go.

Part 12: Yu-Gi-Oh Intensifies!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I guess we've been having trouble getting together. Jangle's player has been busy but told us to just go on without him, and, finally, Somen's player has shipped off for Navy boot camp. Regardless, the show must go on, and we're close enough to the end of the story that I'd hate to just drop the story without a conclusion. Jangle wandered off following the other cat, and Somen disappeared searching for them. Hopefully they manage to have a happy ending here.

In the meantime, our remaining heroes set out for the door, but upon seeing how dark it was on the other side, they stopped to consider a light source. Bubbles picked up a stick and two stones, proceeding to tie them together and, using his abilities, light them up. Savin, ever the more practical, just cast Light on his rapier turning it into a makeshift torch. continued deeper into the temple, as a door on the opposite side of the room opened once the undead monks were defeated. The doorway led into a long corridor leading down, lower and lower, until the manmade halls of the temple basement eventually gave way into what seemed to be a more naturally occurring series of damp, weirdly slimy tunnels. Already Bubbles' player was starting to sweat here being someone who knows a lot about D&D creatures, but nobody else was picking up on the environmental clues here.

Anyway, the tunnel they were in eventually opened up into a large cavern with an underground lake to the right, with a wall and door on the left that seemed to be cut from the same stone as the rest of the temple, meaning that the tunnels somehow led outside of the temple under the ground. Again, Bubbles' player was becoming more uncomfortable with each passing second.

The others, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in, set about examining the door. A large, heavy stone door with no method of opening from the outside, it seemed like the door was put there to keep something out. Savin's player pondered this for a bit, saying, "I'm debating having Savin do something really stupid."

"Stupid like how? This sounds interesting."

"I'm not going to do it because I know it'll end badly, but the thought occurred to me to use Dimension Door to try to teleport on the other side of the door, but because I don't know what's in there I run the risk of hurting myself by teleporting into a wall or something." Which, he wouldn't teleport into it thankfully, but he certainly would take damage from it.

Anyway, the party split up within the chamber to attempt to find any sort of hints that could help open the door. While Yesmae examined some old carvings on the wall of the cavern, a voice suddenly came into her head.

"Hmm, interesting. It's been a while since I've had any visitors down here. Very interesting."

Yesmae's player didn't immediately see the message that I sent her over Discord to hide info from the other players, but once she did she gasped, not because she knew what was happening, but because she was getting information the other players were not privy to. Bubbles' player is probably sweating bullets at this point.

Anyway, Yesmae responded to the voice in the most rational way possible. "Who are you?"

"I have no name, for I, that is, we, are many."

D&D fans probably see where this is going, and therefore why Bubbles' player is starting to panic.

Anyway, at this point Yesmae's player told the others what was happening, but in-universe she's still talking to the voice.

"Can you open the door and let us through?"

"Of course, of course, I do not wish to keep you for too long, for I know you have grand desires, and your work is an unhappy one. You want what's best for your country. You wish for peace. I would not want to get in the way of that."

Yesmae let on a little that she was talking to something, at which point Savin began to play some music on his musical accordion, casting a Countercharm spell in case Yesmae's unseen guest tried anything funny.

Yesmae continued to press. "Where are you from?"

"I....nowhere....friend....music...ing.....interference."

Yesmae asked Savin to stop so she could continue questioning the voice.

"What do you want us to do to open the door?"

"Oh, that's easy. Just play with me for a bit."

Here it comes. Boss fight. That I might have planned for the full group.

Aren't I the idiot for assuming my party would take the murderhobo route instead of trying something else. And something else they did. For Yesmae's player opened up her character sheet and asked the others to do the same, trying to find if the party had a game they could play with the voice.

Cue silence as everyone in the Discord call, myself included, tried to process what it was that Yesmae's player was suggesting. For while this was going on, Bubbles thought it would be a good idea to cast the Light cantrip on one of his pistol bullets and fire it into the darkened part of the cavern.

What? Apparently flintlock pistol shots only fly at 1000 feet per second. That's...wait...

*quickly checks*

681.818 miles per hour?! (smart people feel free to check my math, I just googled the conversion and am not about to put in further effort)

So...whatever, it was a clever idea. Of course I was going to let him have it without examining the physics behind it, as it provided me a chance to add some atmosphere to the encounter. In the light put off by the shot, for an instant, outside of the party's dark vision, a tentacle could be seen darting into the water. By this point Bubbles' player had totally figured out what was happening, and everyone else was starting to fear that they were about to have a situation like in Fellowship of the Ring where they were stuck trying to figure out a way into a door while also contending with a monster. Which was the plan.

Instead, Yesmae suggested literally playing a game with the creature, and she began scouring her items for literally anything. Unfortunately, though she had proficiency in the game Three Dragon Ante, she did not have a playing card set, so she had to use a quill and some paper to make one, and thus offered to play with the creature.

The voice, taken aback, responded, ""Oh, that's....a surprise. Very well, show me how to play this...'Three Dragon Ante.' My appearance might be a little...shocking. Try not to be too afraid."

Out of the lake and into view of the party swam (slithered? Slunk? I dunno, whatever) an Aboleth.

Naturally upon seeing this terrifying creature, the rest of the party readied their weapons, to which Yesmae requested they not, and even the creature itself reached out to the rest of the party's minds through telepathy, saying (or thinking), "I have zero intention of breaking my oath. Nobody has actually suggested playing with me before, so you might say I am intrigued. However if this proves disappointing I am going to kill and devour you. Oh, to keep things fair, I promise to not read your minds while we play."

After some dice rolls, it was determined that the card game actually went well. As they played, the Aboleth confided that, though it was the incarnation of many, many generations of its own kind, and though it had a "roommate" in the guardian dragon of the temple, the truth is it led a rather boring, lonely existence, its only interaction with the outside world being fighting and devouring thieves that made their way into the temple and found themselves going down the wrong path. The party showing compassion and more pure motives for going into the temple impressed the Aboleth, and, as promised, it released the psionic lock on the door and opened it.

Before the group proceeded into the doorway, Yesmae asked the Aboleth what its name was. I don't remember the name I gave (I used www.fantasynamegenerators.com as I do basically any time I have trouble coming up with a name, and I forgot to write it down). Needless to say, Bubbles' character wasted no time turning the name into an off-color joke. Naturally I got him back when we discovered that Grula could speak and understand Deep Speech, which is the Aboleth's primary language. She spoke with the Aboleth briefly, and Bubbles demanded Grula teach him how to say some words, including apologizing for shooting at him. I'll spare you the details of my joke. It wasn't very funny in hindsight, well, unless you speak another language and know how annoying the specifics about word use can get.

Anyway, the party proceeded inward, and as they continued deeper into the basement of the temple they could hear voices, one at a rather normal volume, and one extremely loud, booming voice. This is the place, they agreed.

For the sake of brevity I am going to cut the session recap here. What follows is a bit of an exposition dump that's going to bleed into the next session as well, and I'm already waaaaaaaaaaaay behind on getting this posted.

Part 11: Everyone Likes The Water Temple, Right?

A few days after the absolute mess that was the last session, word had gotten around about the party's exploits as well as their current goals in the Shenzhou region. While the arrests of the local crime syndicate upset some people (namely the hopeless gambling addicts of the region), their positive reputation allowed them to have a greater glimpse into local rumors, chief among them being that an old Tortle had been making his way to a place known locally as The Temple By The Sea. About a half day's journey south from the city they had landed at, the Temple By The Sea was a shrine to a dragon known as the Qingtong Long, supposedly a coastal guardian.

Deciding that that lead was as good as any, and warned that, because of rough terrain, they'd have to make the journey on foot, they left the ship under the watch of Bubbles' goblin entourage and set out. The cliffside road that they took wound between the coast and, when adequate land was available, farm plots.

After a brief interlude of hiking through the nice, coastal summer weather, the temple came into view. A stone staircase cut into the cliffside descended to the temple's compound which was comprised of a number of buildings, presumably living quarters for the monks, educational facilities, and such, with a large building in the center as the primary place of worship.

As the group got closer to the main building, they heard shouting coming from within.

"You're Chen's pet, you must know how to get into the inner sanctum!"

A string of insults from a female voice followed.

At the sound of possible danger, the party quickly, but quietly made their way into the building, trying to assess the situation and get the drop on those who might be out to hurt Yesmae's master Don Chen. Which turned out to be two bandits, and Master Chen's pet? A talking cat, like Jangle.

Upon seeing another talking cat, something snapped in Bubbles, and...well...

Nah I'm just kidding. Not that Bubbles didn't want to, but Savin, knowing exactly what Bubbles was going to do before he asked, in all seriousness, "Can I shoot it?" gave Bubbles the look.

The look, of course, that needs no introduction or clarification. The look that parent and child alike recognize that can be a message as simple as, "No," yet as complex as, "I know what you're thinking, and if you do, I am going to make the rest of your now very short life still seem everlastingly too long because of how painful it's about to get."

While this exchange was going on, Jangle ambled out of cover to attempt to flirt with the cat/distract the bandits? I'll be honest none of us know what he was doing here. Anyway, while he continued meowing (not even speaking common, meowing) to the new cat, the rest of the party discussed the best approach. Savin decided to cast Hold Person on the bandits, paralyzing them long enough to figure out what they were doing there.

The bandits, seeing that they were hopelessly outnumbered once their paralysis ended, stammered about how they were chasing after Chen because of a bounty placed on his head, how their leader had followed him into the inner sanctum of the temple before the door closed, and how the cat supposedly knew how to open the gate.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" the cat shouted. "I'm watching the doors, yes, but I don't know how to open it any more than you do!"

Savin smirked. "Well, it happens that we're here for the same thing."

One of the bandits blinked. "Y'mean you guys are after the bounty too?"

"No, not the bounty, just Chen. In fact, we can take this from here. You two better leave. Now."

I had Savin roll for Intimidation, but I may as well not have because really, the bandits had no reason to think that they stood anything remotely resembling a chance. Anyway, they quickly made themselves scarce, and Savin started talking to the cat while Bubbles wandered around the inside of the building to figure out a) where the door even was, and b) how to open it.

While Bubbles examined the room, Savin addressed the cat. "Why is Chen here?"

"He came to commune with the Qingtong Long, to ask its protection against the empire."

"And what is the Qingtong Long?"

She nodded at the statue in the center of the room.

The room was large and round, with a large statue of a bronze serpentine dragon in the center surrounded by benches, with a dais in front and a large tapestry of a koi beneath a waterfall behind the statue. Anyone familiar with the Japanese folk tale can figure out where this is going, but the hint was:

"Once the dragon is born, the way shall appear."

Once the hint on the dais was read, the cat spoke up, "Oh, that's what those idiots couldn't figure out? That's easy! It's in reference to an old story of a koi fish that swam up a waterfall to become a dragon!" And indeed, upon closer investigation, the koi on the tapestry could be moved. As the koi slid to the top of the waterfall, a click was heard as something snapped into place, activating a series of mechanisms that moved the wall the tapestry hung on to the side, revealing the entrance to a spiral staircase descending into the darkness.

The party agreed that, with little time to lose, they should make their way in. While descending the staircase, Savin asked the cat her name.

"My name? Oh, it's Mei-mei. It's a pun. It means 'little sister', but mei is also the pronunciation for the word for beautiful. I don't remember which one Master Chen used for my name."

Suddenly, memories flooded back to Yesmae. "Oh! I remember when you were a kitten! I didn't realize you could talk!"

"At the time, I couldn't. Just, at one point, something happened, and suddenly I was able to communicate."

For whatever reason, Jangle decided to try to keep up the facade, meowing at Mei-mei, "Wow, the fact that you can talk to the people is really nice. You must be really smart!"

Mei-mei, confused, responded, "I mean, it's not that special. Also you seem to communicate with them just fine."

"Oh that? They're just my people. They take care of my bed and my litterbox. They feed me. It's pretty great."

Naturally, this was the first I, as the Dungeon Master, had heard of this, so I asked the players if that was at all accurate. And was greeted with a chorus of, "No," topped off with Bubbles' player adding in, "He's an intelligent creature. He can do it himself!"

Jangle's player then retorted, "But she doesn't know that!"

Once the party reached the bottom of the staircase, they found a doorway leading into a tunnel. After solving the problem of vision in the dark, the party proceeded in. A little ways in, the tunnel turned to the left at 90 degrees, with a corpse stapled to the wall with arrows.

Naturally, this put the party on edge, especially after the party examined the corpse, realizing that it was dressed in a similar manner to the bandits on the surface.

Mei-mei shuddered. "I was afraid of this. You know how dragons are rumored to keep treasure? Well, as a means of protecting the inner sanctum from thieves, certain measures needed to be put in place. We must proceed carefully."

Jangle, wasting no time, began feeling the floor for pressure plates, quickly mapping out a path for Mei-mei (or as he kept calling her, Moo-moo). Of course, she wasted no time explaining to the rest of the party, who was able to slip by the trap unscathed.

Further into the tunnel, the party came to a T-intersection. To the right was an opening into a large square chamber with a single treasure chest in the center. To the left, a staircase going further down.

Naturally, upon hearing of a treasure chest, Savin and his player both responded. "Yep, we're going downstairs." Clearly, both Savin and his player are familiar with the concept of Schmuck Bait. Basically, in a dangerous place, do not trust the lone chest.

The players immediately assumed mimic. But on the of chance it was legit, Jangle wandered into the room and started tapping at the chest to see what it felt like. Naturally, I explained that it felt normal. Like wood. Nothing nefarious.

This got Bubbles' attention, and he pulled out some tools to try to open the chest. I had Bubbles make a roll to unlock the chest, and it sprung open, revealing...nothing.

Bubbles muttered a curse under his breath, thinking that someone got to the treasure before him. This was before he and Jangle heard a ticking noise that, after ten seconds, stopped, after which the floor opened beneath them into an empty pit that quickly started filling with water. Jangle quickly scampered along the wall to safety in the hallway outside, while Bubbles quickly downed a potion of flying that he had brewed that morning, allowing him to levitate in place as the floor replaced itself.

It was then that, out of spite, Bubbles pulled out a pen and a piece of paper, scribbling out a lewd doodle and, while floating off the floor to avoid the trap again, opened the chest and dropped the doodle in. I'm not going to say what the doodle was. You can probably guess it in three tries.

Anyway, the party continued down the other hallway to the stairway, which led into another room with a puzzle. I screwed this up so I'm just going to say the party figured it out, which opened the the door as well as the wall on the opposite side of the room, letting out any water in the trap (I had to make a plan in case someone got caught in the trap, so that someone might be able to save them).

The door led into a large, surprisingly bright chamber with a tree in the center. Basically, like the Dark Link room in the Ocarina of Time Water Temple.

And fight it was. For in the center of the room, sitting against the tree, was an old, emaciated monk. As the party entered the room, the door behind them slid shut, and the monk awoke from his meditation. He greeted the party, stating that he was to serve as the interim test, extending his hands out to indicate the walls at the side of the room, where multiple more undead monks walked out and took fighting stances.

The fight went by relatively quickly (I consider this the miniboss room), creating a place for the party to rest before continuing on into the temple, but not before Yesmae picked up a nice new quarterstaff stamped with the Shenzhou word for "master", and this is where we called the session, with the rest of the dungeon to be completed next time.

Part 10: Yikes. Just Yikes.

It feels like in every campaign there's at least one session where, in spite of the party's generally great planning and out-of-the-box thinking, the dice just aren't having it, and this last session is definitely one of those times. People could argue that I'm far too lenient of a DM, but the truth is I like to see my party succeed, and when they don't, I really feel for them. But alas, sometimes the dice just aren't interested in the wants of mere mortals such as ourselves, and again, this is one of those times.

So it turns out Somen's player's ship-out date was postponed, so he's still with us for the time-being, and the party spent some time considering how to go through with their plan of finding and recruiting Yesmae's old teacher Don Chen to their cause, after giving Tylhana instructions to try to recruit as many people as she could from the palace staff and noble families throughout the city.

Eventually it was determined that, since the party had recently come into ownership of a fancy new company, they were going to, essentially, use their rights as "merchants" to pass into the Western Confederation territory as a way of reestablishing contact with and introducing themselves to possible trade avenues. Yesmae remembered that Don Chen was originally from the Shenzhou region of the Western Confederation, so it would have to be through there that they would center their search.

So, after raiding the company's petty cash fund as a way of ensuring they had enough cash to make things work as well as possible, the party set off through relatively quiet, calm skies, sailing for a few days before coming upon a large fleet of Western Confederation ships (the water variety) off the coast of Wakoku (basically the not-Japan in my not-Asia). The party stopped to discuss what the fleet could possibly be doing and if there was a proper way to deal with it. For once, Somen did not just cast Clairvoyance to spy on the fleet. Instead, the party decided the best course of action would be to just change course, try to find a gap or an end to the fleet, and just go around.

I'll confess as the DM this provided an unintentional world-building moment, as I was pretty sure that, since they carried official documents and could even claim to be seeking asylum from a hostile government as political refugees, they'd allow themselves to be taken in by the fleet and once everything cleared up, they could proceed on their merry way.

Instead, yeah, they found a gap in the fleet and just proceeded west like nothing was wrong, landing in the first major port they came across on the Shenzhou mainland to resupply and gather information from the townsfolk as best they could. Well, that's what Yesmae and Savin decided, anyway. Bubbles was going to wander into the seedy part of town to score some...shall we say...spice.

We'll start with Savin. During his brief run to secure provisions, he was able to suss out the local hangout spots for sailors and listen for some gossip. One particular merchant was able to explain that the heavy fleet presence is something that happens every few months as a show of force against possible hostilities from the Empire. "So, they're posturing?" Which, yeah. Kind of. I'm basing it off real military drills that are conducted regularly as a sort of flex against would-be hostiles. You can probably guess what contemporary event I'm using as inspiration. Basically every few months, the regional capital city of Wakoku is impossible to enter for merchants and travelers via the port due to these drills.

Is this something the party is likely to make use of in the future? Eh, probably not, but as much as I can I want the world to feel like it exists independently from the party, something I've struggled with in previous campaigns I've DMed. While it's true that the party's actions should make a difference in the way the world functions in a high fantasy, broad scope campaign, too often through a combination of dice rolls and lack of prep on my part, the party is the only group of people in the entire setting with an ounce of competence to their names.

Anyway, while Savin was learning about the recent political and militaristic issues the land had been dealing with, Yesmae opted to hit the local pubs and see what rumors she could eavesdrop on. Because if there's a group of people you want to learn about politics from, it's drunk people, right?

As expected, she was met with a glut of information to sift through and determine what was meaningful versus what was just the ramblings of drunken sailors and other townsfolk. The Empire's coming. No it's not. They're already here. No, you're crazy. Lizardfolk run the government. Maybe we should cut you off. Maybe we should cut YOU off.

Okay I'm exaggerating a bit, but the bottom line is the fact that people aren't exactly fond of the Empire at the moment, and, as would be expected, this is a recent problem. As in, the smallfolk of other nations feel betrayed by the sudden change in political climate and their allies' sudden heel-turn.

Bubbles, as it turns out, played his search for illicit materials extremely cool, saying nothing unnecessary to anyone and, despite being a Kenku, a rare find in these parts, managed to avoid attracting too much attention as he found a very literal spice trader. Plopping 50 gold pieces on the table, he requested as much as he would be able to buy with that amount, which was a lot (look, I don't know anything about drug dealing, okay? I mean I've watched Breaking Bad but that's it.) Pleased with his score, he quickly slid his stash into his Bag of Holding, along with the remainder of his money.

And in an alternate timeline, a young girl of about 14 attempts to lift some cash off of Bubbles, which Bubbles answers by gunning the poor girl down in the street, and the rest of the session plays out in a relatively boring manner (that or Bubbles spends the next hour in real time on the run from the law). But because the cash was in a Bag of Holding, I had to call an audible.

Though considering how things played out, this timeline might have been better for the party in the long run.

Anyway, back in the real version of this made-up fantasy land, elsewhere in town, Yesmae feels a small bump and sees out of the corner of her eye, a young girl sprinting away from her. Quickly putting two and two together, Yesmae sprinted after the would-be thief, chopping her in the back of the neck to disable her so she could get her stolen goods back and figure out what was happening.

Anyway, the freshly face-planted thief shouted, "Why'd you try to fracture my skull?! It's just a little cash!"

"Why did you try to steal from me?" Yesmae demanded, picking the girl up and looking her in the eyes, expecting to see a look of defiance matching the shouting, rather than the face of a desperate, young girl on the verge of tears. Taken aback by this reaction, Yesmae continued, "Wait, what's wrong? You can tell me."

"My parents owe this gang of bandits a debt and they're sick and can't pay up and the bandits demanded settlement now and if we can't they're gonna kill Minho and-" she stammered.

Author's note, yes I know Minho is a Korean name. My idea is that the alliance among the three large nations allowed for greater cultural movement within the alliance rather than the more homogeneous cultures we currently have in the real world, and while I'm well aware of the fairly stark language differences between the Korean and Japanese languages and the varies Chinese dialects (believe me, I've put in my study time between my mission, college, and just as a personal hobby) it's a fantasy world, don't think about it too much.

Yesmae took the girl in her arms, calmly saying, "It's all right, it's gonna be fine. Who is Minho? He's important to you, yes?"

"Yes," she continued to sob. "My best friend."

"Lover," the players muttered.

Gathering everyone on the airship, Yesmae quickly summarized all the information she'd been able to glean from the girl. In the real world, the other players were laughing about how pure and sincere Yesmae's player is considering how she trusted the poor girl without really digging deeper, but I allowed them to make insight checks to see if their characters could detect anything off. They couldn't, she was being sincere.

That being said, Somen wasn't convinced, opting in addition to cast a Detect Thoughts spell to read her mind and see if she was hiding anything significant. Which she was. Specifically that Minho was not this girl's lover, or even a person at all, but a small dog. This is something I revealed to Somen's player through a personal message since we've been playing over Discord, and his reaction was priceless.

I'll give him credit, though. Despite his rather large reaction, he kept quiet about this detail until the twist was guessed correctly by Savin's player via a snide quip, "I'll bet money we're saving this poor girl's pet dog or something."

Not like I didn't have to reveal that info shortly afterward anyway, as the party's plan would not have worked if they didn't know what they were about to be rescuing. And I gotta give credit. This is the fastest I've seen this group organize a heist in tabletop RPGs. Trust me. I've experienced Shadowrun sessions that lasted for hours before a single bullet was fired, as it took us that long to figure out how to pull off the mission in the most efficient way possible. Though considering my well-documented memory problems, maybe this doesn't reflect that well on me.

Yesmae and Jangle opted to try to sneak into the bandits' compound and scout out as much information as they could. Failing that, Savin would attempt to talk with them and try to negotiate with them. Failing that, Bubbles, Grula, and Somen would destroy the place.

And this is where the bad rolling really got out of hand. And when I say that, I mean what follows is a Rube Goldberg machine of misery.

Yesmae rolled a natural 1 on her Stealth check, providing a decent distraction for Jangle to wander into the compound to get up to his usual mischief, but unable to get by undetected herself. Upon being spotted, Savin revealed himself and attempted to clear up the situation by offering payment to settle up the girl's debts. The bandit leader pondered this, and stated that he'd go grab the dog.

He came back instead with three Bulettes, and the battle began. In short order, Savin winked at the rest of the party, casting Dimension Door to warp himself into the largest building in the compound, assuming that that would be where any captured beasts would be kept. Somen cast a Fireball, incinerating the bandit leader and damaging the three beasts, though one managed to dodge out of the way, mauling Yesmae in the process.

The other two Bulettes separated, one focusing attacks on Somen, the other chasing the girl. Bubbles, in an attempt to save the girl, started casting spells at the Bulette.

As the party continued to battle with the monsters, Savin quickly took stock of where he ended up, a large barn-like structure filled with caged animals and various creatures (that I totally didn't just make up on the fly to justify this gambling ring that gets away with stealing animals for ransom). Quickly formulating a plan, he quickly set about trying to find a way to open the cages, quickly finding a mechanism that would open all the doors (the session was running a little long and I had to be up early for work the next day so I didn't want to spend a turn on each cage once I saw where this was going).

I'll give credit to the party for not metagaming, because while Savin was trying to open the cages to create more havoc, Yesmae was trying to goad the Bulettes back into the cages to stop the mayhem by throwing a path of food rations in that direction. Which, to her credit, worked, as one of the Bulettes happily started eating the ration and found its way out of the fight. The other two were eventually wounded badly enough to want to get out of combat as well.

As this was going on, Jangle let himself into what appeared to be the quarters of the head bandit and set about to stealing everything, leading with the excuse that he was looking for a manifest of which animals belonged to whom (which he did find).

Finally, with the barn door open, Savin used the mechanism to open all the cages. Considering the immediate source of food, however, I suggested that they'd be eager enough to escape captivity that Savin would need to make an Acrobatics or Athletics check (player preference) to climb to safety in the equivalent to the hay loft.

He rolled a 1. I'm sure you can figure out what happens next.

Oh don't worry, he survived. Barely. Actually because of how the party split and the high Challenge Rating of the monsters, everybody got pretty beat up in this session. A fact that was about to get a lot worse as the animals were stampeding in the direction of the rest of the party.

Thinking quickly, Somen used one last spell slot to cast another Fireball spell. We all thought he was nuts at the suggestion, but he clarified that he wasn't aiming the spell at the animals, but to the side to redirect their energy elsewhere. If they had to destroy anything, let it be the camp itself.

The party quickly reconvened and escaped, Minho in tow, resolving that they were done picking up odd jobs for the time-being as this one was too dangerous with very little payoff besides what Jangle had to steal. Savin left an anonymous tip with the local militia, and Yesmae tried to find a nearby ASPCA representative, and that particular adventure came to an end.

Hopefully with their reputation built a bit in the area, the party would have less trouble looking for Don Chen.

Part 9: Business Sim 1995: Good Luck To Somen Hing

We rejoin our heroes readying themselves to interrogate the alleged assassin Tylhana and her only surviving lackey. Once the Hold Person spell wore off, Yesmae, still disguised as not-Merida-from-Pixar's-Brave, stepped forward and asked, "Now lass, d'ye know who I am?"

This kicked off a few minutes of us scrambling through the rules trying to figure out if the specific spell she was using would mask her voice or not. As it turns out, if she was using Disguise Self, the answer would be no, but as I tend to do, I missed a specific detail in my last summary. That being the fact that the spell potion that was given to her by Bubbles was a Potion of Alter Self. Under the effect of that spell, one's voice was also masked.

Bottom line...no, Tylhana had no idea who this redhead human lady was.

Disclaimer, a lot is about to happen in a really short amount of time so forgive me if I don't remember the full sequence of events perfectly. I could very well get some things out of order. I suppose you're wondering why I don't write these up right after the session or record my sessions so I can refer back to them, or even better, post them online so that anyone who randomly gets interested can watch them.

So anyway, Tylhana responded, "Considering the crew you're with, I'm assuming you have some relationship with the princess."

"And why are you lookin' for the princess, lass? D'ye expect t' take her back in shackles?"

"Of course not!" Tylhana fired back. "I had hoped she'd go back voluntarily, as her disappearing is the reason all of this is happening in the first place!"

"Well she's not goin' back, because the Empress was already lost before the princess even left!" Yesmae shouted back, fighting back tears.

"I suppose that means that this mission is a bust." Tylhana looked across at the soldier who was tied up across from her. "Do it."

After a few seconds, the soldier doubled over, foaming at the mouth from poison he'd ingested through a fake tooth. As it appeared that Tylhana would do the same, Savin quickly cast Hold Person again on her to stop her from killing herself before she could give more information."

As they waited for the spell to run out, Savin stepped forward, laying his hand lightly on Yesmae's shoulder. "Perhaps it is time for you to go get the princess," emphasizing the last words for Yesmae to clue her in. Yesmae stiffened and quietly dashed off towards the ship to wait for the potion to wear off.

While she was gone, Savin leaned in and asked. "Any more stunts like that?"

"Relax, I don't really have one. I just pretended so he would," Tylhana flatly responded. "He knew nothing but what I told him, that we were on a secret mission from the Empress to bring the princess back, and that there was no excuse for failure. Only part of that was true."

"And you thought the princess would willingly return?"

"Why wouldn't she? This is all because of her isn't it?"

Savin quietly looked back at her, as if to say, "Are you sure about that?"

"Isn't it? Tell me it is!"

Savin shook his head and simply said, "Well, at least now you understand that your naivete got a few innocent people killed. Think on that for a while. Also..." he continued. "We're going to have to come to an understanding. You have two options. Either you join us and do what you can to help the princess, making yourself into an asset, or you don't, making yourself into an obstacle."

While this was going on, Somen and Bubbles wandered into Halinard's office to try to find some paperwork to finalize the transfer ownership to the company assets. What he discovered was an absolute mess. Trying his best to keep his composure, Somen turned to Bubbles and said, "Please go back to the ship and try to find Mr. Townsend's will. I'm going to attempt to clean and organize this wretched chamber."

Bubbles quickly scampered back to the ship and grabbed the letter, quickly memorizing its writing down to the word choice and started back towards the office before being stopped by Savin.

"And just what are you doing?" Savin requested.

"Paperwork! Have to make sure everything is in order!" He then noticed the dead soldier. "OOH! Is that poison? Fake tooth? I'm taking it!" He quickly reached inside the soldier's mouth and felt around, finding the split fake tooth. "Does she have one too?"

Savin and Tylhana quickly responded, "No! Of course not!"

"Regardless," Savin continued, "I believe you're needed in the office to ensure that Lord Hing doesn't try to steal from us what is rightfully ours?"

With a start, Bubbles scrambled back into the office.

As Bubbles and Somen sorted through the documents strewn about Halinard's office, they started to notice a pattern among the mess. Among other things they found a copy of Halinard's letter of resignation from the Imperial Corps of Engineers citing irreconcilable difference of opinion with superiors, as well as a lot of writings implying a correlation between the Empress' more violent tendencies with the arrival of Elphina Crowe, her new advisor.

Bubbles returned to the warehouse floor to inform Savin of the discovery just as Yesmae entered, now sans disguise.

"Tylhana," Yesmae began, "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Princess," Tylhana breathed. "I..."

"You want me to return with you, right?"

"Of course. I mean, that will stop all this madness, right? Your mother has only been doing this to find you and bring you home, right? No," she looked down. "Of course not. I wanted to believe that your leaving was what started all this, but I just...don't think I can anymore."

"Do you remember anything about Elphina Crowe?" Yesmae asked.

"I...have never met her personally, but it seems like public opinion on her is mixed."

Bubbles' voice echoed throughout the warehouse, "Halinard doesn't seem to have been her biggest fan." He explained his findings to the rest of the group.

Savin furrowed his brow. "Seems like we may have found a possible starting point. Do we know anything about possible allies?"

At this point I had to do some quick improvising by referring to my "important characters list" to produce a list of possible names as well as how Halinard likely felt about them, which I'll add below.

• Don Chen--Tortle Monk residing in the Western Federation
• Admiral Dicken--Mayor of Doncaster
• Lordithas--Relative of the royal family, former captain of the guard, has gone missing
• Tylhana--Possible friend of princess?
• Fury of the Small--Honestly I don't want to enlist them but pirates might help

Bubbles (and his player) immediately liked the idea of appealing to the Fury of the Small, but as a privateer, Savin immediately opposed that notion. Admiral Dicken was out for obvious reasons (as in, dead, for those who don't remember). Tylhana was a maybe. That left Don Chen and Lordithas as possibilities, and the party agreed to start their search with Don Chen since they at least had his location narrowed down to a nation (which was fine by me because I've had some ideas for a possible excursion to the Western Federation anyway).

Their next course of action set, Yesmae turned back to Tylhana. "I have to know. Are you with us or not?"

"I...am. Of course. If yours is the path to peace, I'll follow you to the end."

Yesmae loosed Tylhana's bonds, and then Savin's player started making jokes about certain...unintentional undertones. Made even worse when Yesmae awkwardly stood there expecting a hug.

This is also where Somen opted to take his leave for the time being. In-universe, he felt like his talents would be better suited building up the business (as well as restoring honor to his house). Out of universe, his player is going to be starting basic training for the Navy, and is going to be gone for what will likely be the remainder of the campaign.

So long, Lord Somen Hing of Uter. Your endless fireball spam shall be missed. And good luck on your real-life endeavors.

Part 8: Fallout

I thought for sure that the problems between Jangle and Bubbles would have worked themselves out with some forced confinement after other party members attempted to break up their disagreement, but between Jangle's general greed and (completely justified) defensiveness of his stuff and Bubbles' lack of communication skills and previous shady behavior, there was no way that words were going to settle the dispute. So Savin, being the totally-not-pirate that he is, suggested the only possible solution at solving a dispute at sea.

They were going to land the airship on a random, deserted island, and let the two duel to first blood. Winner takes the potion, loser gets to just live with it.

Specifically, Savin's player clarified that, in this case as well as historically, the terms of a duel were meant to encourage duelists to deeply consider whether the prize they pursued was worth the very real possibility of death, and even though the duel would be called at first blood, in-universe one good hit could mean the difference between life or death.

Of course, these are 7th level characters so one good hit means nothing but an injury to the victim's ego, but, hey, I try not to worry as much about mechanics where I don't have to. These two characters in particular could use some ego-bruising anyway.

Anyway, stage was set, weapon of choice was daggers, the characters rolled for initiative, and, naturally, since he had the advantage in terms of dexterity, Jangle won. The potion was returned to Jangle, and the two continued arguing over which deserved his place in the crew, since neither felt safe while the other was on the ship.

By this point, Savin had had enough of their nonsense and made his way back to the ship. The rest of the party slowly began to follow, including both Jangle and Bubbles, not wanting to be marooned on a deserted island. They decided to put a pin in the discussion until they arrived at the next town for resupply.

However, this decision would have to wait, as once the airship got closer to the mainland and the port city of Doncaster, well...let's just say things have gone from bad to worse there.

Since the city was destabilized economically and politically by the goblin invasion, the empire saw a perfect opportunity to reannex the previously independent city-state.

I suppose I'll take a brief moment to describe my idea for the city of Doncaster in a bit more detail. My idea is based off the Dominion of Fezzan from Legend of the Galactic Heroes (I promise I'm trying to keep things as understandable for those in my audience who haven't watched or read the series, which I'm assuming is all of you). Basically, Fezzan is a group of planets that served as a buffer zone between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance, basically setting itself up as a politically and economically-independent region by providing the sole avenue of trade between the two warring factions, able to maintain its independence by sole virtue of the fact that neither side wanted to further incense the other into war by annexing it. Technically it was Imperial soil, but when you have an opportunity to make all the money while providing a decent kickback to your "owners", a smart empire leaves you alone. Kinda like Macau and what Hong Kong used to be.

Anyway, being the largest functioning port between the land of the empire and the Southern Isles allowed Doncaster to keep itself afloat by virtue of money without much of a strategic defense force in place, but all that got screwed up by a bunch of goblins looking for an easy payout.

Couple that with the Empress's increasingly despotic decisions, and...yeah, things haven't been so good for Doncaster.

So the party, upon seeing the port blockaded by imperial sea vessels and the airspace largely controlled by imperial airships, convened to decide how best to approach the situation. Do they land and try to hide Yesmae from the inevitable airship search? Do they try to use her as leverage to get free passage? Do they just course-correct and fly past Doncaster in hopes that they have enough supplies to make it?

Rex, the warforged who almost never does anything onscreen, quickly took inventory of their supplies (food, fuel for the ship that I still need to figure out, etc) and determined that they'd have just enough provided they could get past without causing much suspicion.

So the plan went something like this. They were far enough offshore that a minor (by mere degrees) course correction wouldn't look super unnatural, so all they had to do was (metaphorically speaking) keep eyes forward and just sail through. If flagged down, they would figure out what to do when it happened.

So, they set the plan into motion, slowly, but not too slowly, making their way to the shore on a heading that would take them past the blockade. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as they moved closer, eventually crossing onto the mainland. They could feel an entire armada's eyes upon them.

Anxiously, Bubbles reached for the throttle, his hand slapped away by Savin, and after what seemed like an eternity, the ship had passed through without anyone following them.

The party breathed a sigh of relief, and then continued on. The journey to Halinard's compound was a little longer than they'd hoped to make with the supplies they had, but they would manage just fine.

So a little more description for Halinard's compound. I mentioned before that it's on a manmade island on the outskirts of the imperial capital city. Think Sealand if you want a real life example of what I mean, or, as another fictional example, the Mother Base from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V. The rationale being, if Halinard had his own land, even if it's a small platform in the lake that the capital city was built over, he could more easily do what he wanted without interference.

Anyway, the airship docked in a secret hangar on the underside of the platform, and the party made their way into the main compound. However, upon entering the main hangar from the secret entrance, a voice rang out from the rafters.

"Lay down your weapons and keep your hands where I can see them!"

After that, a group of soldiers revealed themselves, specifically three gunmen (I swear I didn't do that just for a Three Musketeers pun) and a magic user.

Savin slowly reached for his rapier, saying, "And to whom are we surrendering?"

"Oh, an old friend of the one you know as Yesmae. You can call me Tylhana." She then melted into a shadow, reappearing on a catwalk closer to the ground floor, about twelve feet up. "Give the princess back so we can stop this madness and bring everything back to normal."

I explained that Tylhana was an NPC from Yesmae's backstory, being a close friend and handmaiden of hers, who had trained under the same master as Yesmae with the same martial arts ability. The idea I have is that she didn't follow Yesmae when she left the palace, torn between her loyalty to her friend and her loyalty to her nation, mistakenly believing that things only got bad after the princess left, rather than the princess leaving after things started to go bad.

I thought I was being super clever by introducing a rival for Yesmae, but because I have like 4 megabytes of RAM in my brain and can't remember things to save my life, I had completely forgotten that Yesmae had previously drunk a potion that altered her physical appearance into that of a human woman, specifically she wanted to look like Merida from the movie Brave.

So basically, I unintentionally created a cutscene where one of the party members was wearing a ridiculous, unfitting outfit.

Anyway, the party played it off as not knowing who she was, to which their unknown assailant suggested, "Well, if the princess isn't here with you, perhaps I'll have to beat her location out of you!" (I'm embellishing things slightly to make myself look less incompetent. DMing is hard.)

As they were talking, a couple attempts at spells were thrown back and forth, to the point where I think I'm just going to not have counterspell be a thing in future campaigns because it makes combat encounters less fun for both the DM and the players.

During this back and forth, Jangle was slowly putting himself into position to attempt to attack Tylhana. At the same time, Savin quickly said the verbal incantation to cast Dimension Door, teleporting himself and Grula to the catwalk to engage Tylhana in combat, who proved to be a decent match for the two of them, but the extra help from Jangle pushed her fight over the edge.

Meanwhile, Somen and Bubbles engaged the rest of the mooks on the ground floor. Despite the difference in numbers, Somen and Bubbles' spells were more than enough to handle the lesser guys.

Eventually, Tylhana realized that things were out of hand and gave the order to retreat to fight another day, melting into a shadow again, warping herself closer to a window to escape while the mage and surviving musketeer (one was thrown into a wall by a psychic blast from Grula, breaking his neck, and one was very roasted by fire magic from Somen and Bubbles) made a break for the exit.

Bubbles fired an Acid Arrow at the mage, hitting him in the back and knocking him over the safety railing at the edge of the platform, and Savin cast Hold Person at a high enough level to, well...hold the two survivors, and we called the session with Tylhana and a random musketeer now in the players' custody, leaving me to try to figure a way where the rival character I created for Yesmae doesn't immediately die in the next session.

Eh, good news is even I have no idea where this is going so I can't spoil myself.

Part 7: HMS Her Majesty's Mimic Takes Flight

We rejoin our heroes continuing their meeting, discussing the name of the airship. The party wanted the name to reflect independence, freedom, and possibly rebellion. And then Bubbles suggested Mimic.

Out of character, try as they might, the party couldn't come up with anything better, as they (and myself) were too busy laughing at the absurdity of the name, and, eventually, it stuck.

With the name assigned to the ship, and the goal of making a beeline back to Halinard's office to get the ball rolling on the safe transfer of assets, the rest of this session will now be a comedy.

The wacky shenanigans began with Bubbles attempting to steal Savin's accordion for a surprise upgrade a few nights previously. I had him roll stealth, but he completely blew the roll and woke Savin up. Savin demanded to know what Bubbles was doing, to which Bubbles responded, "It's a surprise!" He was then chased out of the room. A few days later, he tried again, successfully sneaking in, stealing the accordion, doing something to it, and placing it back in the room with a note.

While this was going on, Jangle managed to find an opportunity to speak with one of the warforged, Ray, by himself. That's right, finally, after six sessions, Jangle finally outed himself as a speaking cat to someone, even if that someone is an NPC. Out of character, his player explained that he was going to try to take advantage of the situation with Halinard being gone to take ownership of the warforged. In another campaign in another game (Traveller, basically a sci-fi space exploration game for those who wonder), this same player had abused programming principles to create a robot army.

I let him know that might not quite work in this setting as it would be dependent upon the skills of the warforged themselves, and they'd have varying levels of sentience, and he said he wanted to try it, so I asked him to explain what his plan was.

Basically, Jangle told Ray that, for safety reasons, Halinard knew that Jangle was awakened, and that he had left the warforged specifically in Jangle's care. This was, of course, a lie, and I asked Jangle to roll for deception, which he did. He rolled a ten. Which is right in the middle.

So, Ray didn't quite believe him, but decided to hear him out anyway, and he explained that Halinard didn't trust that the others wouldn't experiment on the warforged, specifically namedropping Bubbles to make his claim that much more believable. More believable, yes, but still a lie, so again, I asked him to roll for deception. This one was a little better, and I also had it at a lower DC, as it was a more believable. Bubbles had already asked the entire party for blood samples so he could study them, to varying levels of acquiescence.

Anyway, he said that he had paperwork back at the main office office that made it all official, and Ray left the room, unsure of how to process what just happened.

And thus she exited Halinard's airship office into a madhouse.

It started with Savin accosting Bubbles after finding the note on his accordion and not reading it. He demanded to know what Bubbles did, to which Bubbles continued to insist, "It's a surprise! Read the note and do what it says!"

Savin stepped forward, saying, "Again. Explain to me...using words...what you did...to me accordion."

Fearing that he was in danger, Bubbles, instead of doing the logical thing and explaining that he had made the accordion into a magical item, used a potion to make himself invisible and tried to bolt to another area of the ship, narrowly avoiding running smack into a confused Ray. Savin, able to see through the invisibility potion, quickly dodged around Ray, chasing after Bubbles, before giving up and drawing his backup weapon, a whip, to incapacitate him.

He lashed the whip forth, missing Bubbles completely, instead hitting Yesmae, currently walking out into the main hallway. While Yesmae demanded an explanation, Bubbles escaped to the deck of the ship, injecting himself with a potion of flight to hide himself above the balloon that carried the airship until things cooled down.

They decided to set a trap for Bubbles on the deck with some rope and food, and after the party grew bored of waiting, Jangle, wanting to be included, brought a potion that Bubbles had been trying to steal to use as bait for the trap.

Bubbles, seeing an opportunity as he descended the balloon, decided to swing over to that area of the deck on a rope and grab the potion. However, as he was swinging, Jangle, out of sheer curiosity, took a sip of the potion, causing me to groan behind my keyboard.

You see, the potion was a Potion of Fire Giant's Strength, basically a way to add some chonk to whoever used the potion. Jangle had stolen it from someone earlier in the campaign, not knowing what it was, and while I could have decided that the potion was literally anything, I committed to the idea of it being a Potion of Fire Giant's Strength. My rationale was that, so long as Jangle kept his paws on the potion, nobody could identify it, and because nobody knew what it was, it could literally be anything from a deadly potion to something that would make someone invincible.

Basically, it was both too scary to use and too awesome to use at the same time.

Anyway, shortly after Jangle lapped up a little of the potion, Bubbles swiped it from him, gloating that he finally got the potion. His gloating was repaid in Jangle jumping up and swatting him in the face, doing quite a bit of damage because of his super strength, and again taking the potion and running, with Bubbles in hot pursuit.

Hot literally, as in Bubbles drew his pistol and shot at Jangle as he ran.

Before that standoff occurred, Yesmae was cornered by Ray in the hall. Ray, unsure of who else to talk to about what happened with Jangle, explained what everything to Jangle, but mentioned she might be malfunctioning because the idea of the talking cat seemed too far fetched. Yesmae agreed, and suggested that once they came to the next port they could find someone who could run some tests on Ray.

Their conversation was interrupted by the gunshot, as well as Jangle running past with Bubbles close behind. The two of them stopped Bubbles, who started Babbling about wanting to kill that evil little cat.

Yesmae didn't want to allow that, but she offered to try to help catch Jangle to see what he was doing, as well as to attempt to find the truth about his ability to talk, something that Somen agreed to upon exiting his cabin.

It took some work, but Yesmae was able to catch Jangle and hold him steady, especially since the small sip of potion was wearing off, while the group discussed what to do next. Somen suggested casting Detect Magic to see if anything seemed off, when, finally, Jangle said, "I'd prefer if you just asked me."

The room went dead silent.

A few moments passed, and then...

"So you can talk."

"Yeah. And you're not doing a very good job at proving my fears wrong there."

The party went back and forth on how to dissolve the latest dispute. Bubbles wanted the potion and to get rid of the cat. Jangle wanted the potion and safety. Neither one was going to feel safe with the other.

While there was no obvious answer to the latter, at the very least, Savin suggested the possibility of confining the two of them separately until they could prove that they could behave.

Unsure of what's going to happen now, Somen and Savin, seemingly for the first time since this adventure began, agreed: "I need a drink."