So, tonight I had the absolute treasure of being able to play in a fantastic d&d 5e homebrew world. I share with you, the story of Vaey, our party's ranger and drunk. The story of how he died not once... but twice in a single session.
So, this story begins with a small encounter last week where we found an "angelic being" guarding a pool of glowing water. Our sorcerer casts dispel magic and it turns out the thing was using disguise self and was actually the ghost of a warlock that was supposed to trick people to drink the water. We killed it in two rounds. Easy.
Now... THIS week... Our party is made up of a half elf sorcerer, a human rogue, a halfling bard, a fallen aasimar fighter, myself a protector aasimar paladin, and finally.... a feral tiefling ranger. Now, this feral tiefling ranger is named Vaey. Normally he is drunk off his ass. This session though he was completely sober.
So, first thing he does at the start of the session? he rushes over to the pool of water and starts to fill various bottles with the stuff. Afterwards it occurs to him that he should test the water on something. So he goes to catch a rabbit. He catches it and essentially waterboards it in the water. I've cast detect poison and disease.... and this thing is showing up as very, very poisoned. I tell him this. But the rabbit is fine. He dips an arrow in and stabs one of our horses with it. Then he puts his whole arm in the pool of what is definitely poison and everyone is very concerned that it isn't taking effect immediately. Im working on purifying the pool using various spells and such, the rest of the party is setting up a camp... and Vaey goes off on his own. he goes to check out some kind of weird abandoned camp that looks like it was attacked. He goes straight to the middle of the camp. And that's when three hulking ogre skeletons, each with four arms (two were dual wielding greatswords and one was dual wielding longbows), and as a feral tielfing he has wings and flies up forty feet into the air. Screaming bloody murder and yelling at us to come save him.
The bard casts hypnotic pattern which stuns all three skeletons, then the fighter and I rush in and starts just wrecking their shit. Between my divine smite and the fighter's action surge... it only took one round to kill them all. Now, Vaey being Vaey, decides it's a good idea to fly off and check out some ruins about 60 feet away. the fighter follows. The rest of the party is not. Surprise! Another ogre skeleton, this time not stunned. Almost kills both Vaey and the fighter. I heal up the fighter and Vaey uses all of his spell slots to heal himself to full.
Now... there was one more ruined tower in the area.... you'll never guess what Vaey did. This time he played it slightly smarter and flew the bard over with him. They look around and see a solid oak door. The bard goes to grab the rest of the party while Vaey walks right in to said mysterious room filled with books and a single gold chest. He goes to open the chest before the party arrives and it is locked. He can't open it. We have the rogue pick the lock, pretty good lock on it. We have the sorcerer melt said lock. Lock isn't strong enough to resist dragon fire. We open it up and inside is one item. A single, black orb that seems to suck in all light. Vaey immediately announces that he grabs it.
He has to make a wisdom save, he fails. He is transported to the location of his family's tragic death. Monster tries to attack him. Turns out it is all an illusion and Vaey goes to stab at the rogue. Hits and does pretty good damage. Fighter grapples him. Sorcerer grabs orb and Vaey is back to reality. Sorcerer fails wisdom save and thinks he's fighting an ancient red dragon. I just straight up knock the orb out of his hand and someone (I think the fighter) uses a box to hold the orb. We nail it shut. Cover it in protection runes, I do a whole divine blessing to turn the box into a safe to keep the dark magic of the orb contained. All the books in the room start to glow. Sorcerer looks at some of the books.... they're all filled with evocation runes. Stuff like fireball, call lightning, chain lightning, burning hands.... he says we need to leave. We all book it, but the rogue manages to grab a gold necklace and a hidden diamond on the way out.
We're all outside, the tower just explodes as thousands of protection runes all go off at once. The ground around us shakes and darkness envelops the area around us... and suddenly we're teleported into the middle of a black forest. No sunlight piercing through because the trees are so close together and the canopy is so thick. But actually, this is where we wanted to go anyway to check out some strange obelisk that belonged to the BBEG of the campaign. Turns out Vaey used to live in these woods and becomes terrified and starts running toward where he thinks his old house is. The rest of the party stays put since we've heard the place is crawling with shadow beasts that want to eat us. Also, the forest is completely silent except for us. I should mention that Vaey is a beast master ranger and has a pseudodragon as his beast. This'll be important in a moment.
Now, we were given this mission from the big man Pelor, god of light. To assist us he allowed our sorcerer to call upon an arch-angel to answer 3 questions we may have at any time. Sorcerer summons angel, he asks where his grandfather is living. Angel points in the opposite direction of where Vaey is fleeing (apparently the sorcerer's grandfather also lived in these woods). We have a brief debate on whether to follow Vaey (long gone by now, hundreds of feet away) OR to go check out grandpa's house. Now.... we pan back to see how Vaey is doing. he's just flying through the woods as fast as he can. And then he comes across a clearing and in that clearing is a large obsidian obelisk covered in glowing runes that screams I AM THE EVIL OBELISK YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. Vaey... rushes up to the thing and hugs it. He has to make a con save. Fails. Takes 10d10 necrotic damage. Has three hit points left. BUT he goes unconscious, falls prone, and his body goes cold. Pseudodragon pal goes bonkers and starts flying back toward the party.
Pseudodragon flies over to the party, specifically myself the paladin since he's the only one that will be absolutely guaranteed to go save Vaey. Telepathically gives me a play by play of what happened. Being a LG paladin I am obligated to go try to save Vaey. The party reluctantly follows. We get there... BBEG is also there looking at who disturbed his obelisk. Sees it's Vaey. Kills Vaey. Instant death. Raises Vaey as a giant skeleton that is ten feet tall. BBEG says for him to kill as many of us as possible and teleports away. We all get higher initiative then Vaey. Sorcerer takes out a homebrew Deck of Many Things. Pulls a card. Gets a free resurrection of someone he cherishes who died within the last 20 years. Resurrects Vaey with full HP. We summon the arch-angel who obliterates the obelisk. Job well done.
We dont feel like getting attacked by who knows how many shadow beasts lurk in the woods... especially since we have used up all of our healing and spell slots cleaning up after Vaey. We head to grandpa's house. It's a big ol cave. Weird. Sorcerer uses the message cantrip and sends his grandpa a message saying he's outside... he says this in DRACONIC. Oh no. Huge thuds begin to get heard. Party is panicking a little. Head of a I-shit-you-not Ancient ******* red gods be damned dragon looms out and looks at us. Sorcerer without skipping a beat says, "Hey grandpa! it's me! Ragnar! Your grandson." The dragon sniffs him... turns out.... the sorcerer actually IS his grandson and the draconic lineage is where he gets his sorcery powers from. I cast divine sense. The ancient red dragon... is GOOD. NEUTRAL GOOD. We introduce ourselves. Vaey starts low key insulting the dragon. I grab Vaey and drag him away from the group and tell him that if he keeps insulting the dragon, I will personally hand him over on a silver platter for the dragon to eat. Vaey stops insulting the dragon. We are lead inside the lair of the red dragon. Turns out he's a cool dude. he also happens to be able to identify objects and such as well as appraise their value. Because ancient dragon. We decide to show him the orb. Orb is an abomination and very very evil. No surprise. He breathes fire on it (I think he dealt 97 damage) orb is fine. He puts it in a chest and puts it at the bottom of his hoard so he can guard it. We figure this is about as good idea as any since it's indestructible.
We have him identify a couple other things we have. The necklace I think gives the wearer advantage on saving throws, the diamond has the soul of a level 20 paladin inside and is trapped. Vaey shows the dragon the water that he's been keeping in various empty booze bottles. Dragon immediately asks if any of us drank the water. vaey says that he gave some to a rabbit and a horse, and that he stuck his arm in the water. Dragon asks if any of us know greater restoration. None of us do.
Turns out that the "water" is actually a very very very very deadly poison called Midnight Tears. called this because the poison is magical and doesn't take effect until the stroke of midnight. Vaey asks if being killed and then brought back to life stops the poison. Dragon says nope. We decide to go ahead and try to get the paladin out of the jewel. Hoping she may have a greater restoration spell. We free the paladin. Apparently they've been trapped for 30000 years. They just want to go ahead and move on to the afterlife. Arch-angel shows up to assist in this. paladin gives us her stuff (which is how I got +2 full plate and a +3 shield). She does not have greater restoration. Vaey asks the arch-angel for help. They look at him and say, "I will not save you from your own folly."
Vaey takes the deck of many things from the sorcerer.
Now, the DM created this deck "of blessings". One such card being: "Dispassionate. You instantly lose all emotions but because of this you gain advantage in wisdom throws and you can’t be charmed." Vaey's character no longer cares he's about to die in like, five minutes. Vaey proceeds to rank the various party members from "dick" to "alright I guess". I got "meh". Con save time at midnight! Nat 1. takes 80 points of poison and necrotic damage. Upon hitting 0 from this he died instantly. No death saves. Dead.
So, tonight I had the absolute treasure of being able to play in a fantastic d&d 5e homebrew world. I share with you, the story of Vaey, our party's ranger and drunk. The story of how he died not once... but twice in a single session.
So, this story begins with a small encounter last week where we found an "angelic being" guarding a pool of glowing water. Our sorcerer casts dispel magic and it turns out the thing was using disguise self and was actually the ghost of a warlock that was supposed to trick people to drink the water. We killed it in two rounds. Easy.
Now... THIS week... Our party is made up of a half elf sorcerer, a human rogue, a halfling bard, a fallen aasimar fighter, myself a protector aasimar paladin, and finally.... a feral tiefling ranger. Now, this feral tiefling ranger is named Vaey. Normally he is drunk off his ass. This session though he was completely sober.
So, first thing he does at the start of the session? he rushes over to the pool of water and starts to fill various bottles with the stuff. Afterwards it occurs to him that he should test the water on something. So he goes to catch a rabbit. He catches it and essentially waterboards it in the water. I've cast detect poison and disease.... and this thing is showing up as very, very poisoned. I tell him this. But the rabbit is fine. He dips an arrow in and stabs one of our horses with it. Then he puts his whole arm in the pool of what is definitely poison and everyone is very concerned that it isn't taking effect immediately. Im working on purifying the pool using various spells and such, the rest of the party is setting up a camp... and Vaey goes off on his own. he goes to check out some kind of weird abandoned camp that looks like it was attacked. He goes straight to the middle of the camp. And that's when three hulking ogre skeletons, each with four arms (two were dual wielding greatswords and one was dual wielding longbows), and as a feral tielfing he has wings and flies up forty feet into the air. Screaming bloody murder and yelling at us to come save him.
The bard casts hypnotic pattern which stuns all three skeletons, then the fighter and I rush in and starts just wrecking their shit. Between my divine smite and the fighter's action surge... it only took one round to kill them all. Now, Vaey being Vaey, decides it's a good idea to fly off and check out some ruins about 60 feet away. the fighter follows. The rest of the party is not. Surprise! Another ogre skeleton, this time not stunned. Almost kills both Vaey and the fighter. I heal up the fighter and Vaey uses all of his spell slots to heal himself to full.
Now... there was one more ruined tower in the area.... you'll never guess what Vaey did.
This time he played it slightly smarter and flew the bard over with him. They look around and see a solid oak door. The bard goes to grab the rest of the party while Vaey walks right in to said mysterious room filled with books and a single gold chest. He goes to open the chest before the party arrives and it is locked. He can't open it. We have the rogue pick the lock, pretty good lock on it. We have the sorcerer melt said lock. Lock isn't strong enough to resist dragon fire. We open it up and inside is one item. A single, black orb that seems to suck in all light. Vaey immediately announces that he grabs it.
He has to make a wisdom save, he fails. He is transported to the location of his family's tragic death. Monster tries to attack him. Turns out it is all an illusion and Vaey goes to stab at the rogue. Hits and does pretty good damage. Fighter grapples him. Sorcerer grabs orb and Vaey is back to reality. Sorcerer fails wisdom save and thinks he's fighting an ancient red dragon. I just straight up knock the orb out of his hand and someone (I think the fighter) uses a box to hold the orb. We nail it shut. Cover it in protection runes, I do a whole divine blessing to turn the box into a safe to keep the dark magic of the orb contained. All the books in the room start to glow. Sorcerer looks at some of the books.... they're all filled with evocation runes. Stuff like fireball, call lightning, chain lightning, burning hands.... he says we need to leave. We all book it, but the rogue manages to grab a gold necklace and a hidden diamond on the way out.
We're all outside, the tower just explodes as thousands of protection runes all go off at once. The ground around us shakes and darkness envelops the area around us... and suddenly we're teleported into the middle of a black forest. No sunlight piercing through because the trees are so close together and the canopy is so thick. But actually, this is where we wanted to go anyway to check out some strange obelisk that belonged to the BBEG of the campaign. Turns out Vaey used to live in these woods and becomes terrified and starts running toward where he thinks his old house is. The rest of the party stays put since we've heard the place is crawling with shadow beasts that want to eat us. Also, the forest is completely silent except for us. I should mention that Vaey is a beast master ranger and has a pseudodragon as his beast. This'll be important in a moment.
Now, we were given this mission from the big man Pelor, god of light. To assist us he allowed our sorcerer to call upon an arch-angel to answer 3 questions we may have at any time. Sorcerer summons angel, he asks where his grandfather is living. Angel points in the opposite direction of where Vaey is fleeing (apparently the sorcerer's grandfather also lived in these woods). We have a brief debate on whether to follow Vaey (long gone by now, hundreds of feet away) OR to go check out grandpa's house.
Now.... we pan back to see how Vaey is doing. he's just flying through the woods as fast as he can. And then he comes across a clearing and in that clearing is a large obsidian obelisk covered in glowing runes that screams I AM THE EVIL OBELISK YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. Vaey... rushes up to the thing and hugs it. He has to make a con save. Fails. Takes 10d10 necrotic damage. Has three hit points left. BUT he goes unconscious, falls prone, and his body goes cold. Pseudodragon pal goes bonkers and starts flying back toward the party.
Pseudodragon flies over to the party, specifically myself the paladin since he's the only one that will be absolutely guaranteed to go save Vaey. Telepathically gives me a play by play of what happened. Being a LG paladin I am obligated to go try to save Vaey. The party reluctantly follows. We get there... BBEG is also there looking at who disturbed his obelisk. Sees it's Vaey. Kills Vaey. Instant death. Raises Vaey as a giant skeleton that is ten feet tall. BBEG says for him to kill as many of us as possible and teleports away. We all get higher initiative then Vaey. Sorcerer takes out a homebrew Deck of Many Things. Pulls a card. Gets a free resurrection of someone he cherishes who died within the last 20 years. Resurrects Vaey with full HP. We summon the arch-angel who obliterates the obelisk. Job well done.
We dont feel like getting attacked by who knows how many shadow beasts lurk in the woods... especially since we have used up all of our healing and spell slots cleaning up after Vaey. We head to grandpa's house. It's a big ol cave. Weird. Sorcerer uses the message cantrip and sends his grandpa a message saying he's outside... he says this in DRACONIC. Oh no. Huge thuds begin to get heard. Party is panicking a little. Head of a I-shit-you-not Ancient ******* red gods be damned dragon looms out and looks at us. Sorcerer without skipping a beat says, "Hey grandpa! it's me! Ragnar! Your grandson." The dragon sniffs him... turns out.... the sorcerer actually IS his grandson and the draconic lineage is where he gets his sorcery powers from. I cast divine sense. The ancient red dragon... is GOOD. NEUTRAL GOOD. We introduce ourselves. Vaey starts low key insulting the dragon. I grab Vaey and drag him away from the group and tell him that if he keeps insulting the dragon, I will personally hand him over on a silver platter for the dragon to eat. Vaey stops insulting the dragon. We are lead inside the lair of the red dragon. Turns out he's a cool dude. he also happens to be able to identify objects and such as well as appraise their value. Because ancient dragon. We decide to show him the orb. Orb is an abomination and very very evil. No surprise. He breathes fire on it (I think he dealt 97 damage) orb is fine. He puts it in a chest and puts it at the bottom of his hoard so he can guard it. We figure this is about as good idea as any since it's indestructible.
We have him identify a couple other things we have. The necklace I think gives the wearer advantage on saving throws, the diamond has the soul of a level 20 paladin inside and is trapped. Vaey shows the dragon the water that he's been keeping in various empty booze bottles. Dragon immediately asks if any of us drank the water. vaey says that he gave some to a rabbit and a horse, and that he stuck his arm in the water. Dragon asks if any of us know greater restoration. None of us do.
Turns out that the "water" is actually a very very very very deadly poison called Midnight Tears. called this because the poison is magical and doesn't take effect until the stroke of midnight. Vaey asks if being killed and then brought back to life stops the poison. Dragon says nope. We decide to go ahead and try to get the paladin out of the jewel. Hoping she may have a greater restoration spell. We free the paladin. Apparently they've been trapped for 30000 years. They just want to go ahead and move on to the afterlife. Arch-angel shows up to assist in this. paladin gives us her stuff (which is how I got +2 full plate and a +3 shield). She does not have greater restoration. Vaey asks the arch-angel for help. They look at him and say, "I will not save you from your own folly."
Vaey takes the deck of many things from the sorcerer.
Now, the DM created this deck "of blessings". One such card being: "Dispassionate. You instantly lose all emotions but because of this you gain advantage in wisdom throws and you can’t be charmed." Vaey's character no longer cares he's about to die in like, five minutes. Vaey proceeds to rank the various party members from "dick" to "alright I guess". I got "meh". Con save time at midnight! Nat 1. takes 80 points of poison and necrotic damage. Upon hitting 0 from this he died instantly. No death saves. Dead.
Thus is the story of Vaey's last session.
Sounds like you might not be sorry to see him go?
Interesting campaign to hear about, I'd read further write ups.
Usually he's pretty good. For some reason this session though he chose to act insane.
Loved this, please share more
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Well he was sober.
This is true. Might have had something to do with it. xD