Monday, April 11, 2022

Call of the Netherdeep Session 1

Okay we just started a new campaign and are on our first session, split up over two days because there was a pending encounter. 

There is Jazco, a half-orc rogue. 

Rangu, a stout halfling warlock.

Rara, a tiefling bloodhunter. 

Yazhi, a dark elf wizard. 

and Woolf, a variant Assimar Bard.

And me, Slant a Yuan-Ti pureblood sorceror. 

We all know each other before the adventure starts. We drink in the same caverns. Rangu is an escaped slave halfling helped by enforcer and shady dealer Jazco, and me, who was spotted by Woolf, a budding playwright and established fanfic author in the act of escaping. Not much is known about Yazhi, who keeps to himself most of the time, who is a kind of a mercenary or a ronin, who travels between cities and lurks in taverns looking for jobs. Rara is a really excited person who is attracted to anything that is dark, likes to read, probably fanfic written by Woolf. None of us are healers, as we are quickly about to realise. 

There was a fest at a fest, there was a lot of competitions where we had to form teams and get medals, and gaining the medals would allow us to win more prizes. 

Time is not linear, the team gets caught in the seagrass, I tried to swim over them, and we encounter Maggie the Ogre blocking the path along with Khulbu and Ushru goblins. We enter a cavern and there is a landslide, then we find a scroll and a healing potion. We followed the path and reached another cavern. There we see a slowly undulating bright silver pillar. 

It turns out to be a school of fish. Rara goes straight towards it, saying "ooh shiney". Rangu says it is just a distraction, but we go towards it anyway. 

Discord stream stops working, so we start using Zoom.

We find out through our passive wisdom itself that we cannot go around it. Woolf tries to cast enthrall with her bagpipes... under water and it does not work. Jazco attacks the swarm and leaves a bloody spot with some of the fish floating up dead. Rara goes behind Yazhi and throws and eldritch blast at the swarm. More dead fish float up, and the horde of fish is reduced. Wolf just kills 3 more with a scimitar. Next up is Rangu, and attacks taking out more fish. There are just two fish left, and I just slap the two to death. 

An exit opens up ahead and we go through. 


A much bigger cavern opens up. The water is much warmer here. There is a shimmering light at the other end. There is a giant shark swimming around, with an amulet around its body and a silver spear protruding from its side. This is the amulet that some elder asked us to get. The shark has not seen us yet. 

The shark starts to attack. Second init roll. Jazco moves up to Rangu and holds her action. Woolf makes a harpoon out of the rapier and lobs it at the shark in an attempt to control it. Woolf does a good job of tying the knot to the rapier. Woolf then looks around for a heavy rock, but cannot find one. The idea here is to anchor the shark to the rock. Yazhi is up next, and casts a Tasha's Mind Whip at the shark. 

Rangu throws another card at it, and chips off a bit of its skin. The shark swims up to Rangu, allowing Jazco to use the held action, and does a significant amount of damage. The shark charges towards at Rangu, and impales itself on Jazco's rapier. It is back to Rara, who casts a spell on the hexblade, a halbert. None of us are paying attention, but her hands split open and a magical hexblade pops out, and she chooses to imbube the halberd with extra necrotic damage, dealing decent damage to the beast. 

Jazco tries to do an unarmed strike on the spear of the shark with the intent of driving it deeper. Jazco waits for the exact moment, and pushes it deeper. The shark is now even more damage. The shark is not looking that great. 

It's my turn. I poison damage. The shark is not liking being around us. Yazhi moves in with a fireball attack. We are all doing insane damage to it, but it is not dying. Rangu throws more cards at it, with disadvantage because of close range. The shark has singe marks and cuts all over it. The shark is looking pretty beat up. Woolf swims around a pillar and lobs the rapier at the shark. 

The shark turns to Jazco because of the stunt with the spear. Shark goes into a frenzy and attacks Jazco. Jazco looks really badly injured. Rara strikes with her halberd, but does not hit it. Jazco rises up from a cloud of blood. I switch weapons, and it is Yazhi's turn next. 

Some orcs move in. I have forgotten to add my cantrips and spells, and do that. Rangu takes a lot of damage. Ayo comes in to the frey, who is from the other team, racing against us. It is Rara's turn, Jazco attacks with his rapier again, and does some damage. The shark is barely holding on to its life. It's eyes are expressionless, and we are supposed to feel sorry for it if we have any heart. We don't. 

I slice off the fin of the shark with with just two damage, with my second attack. The shark settles down near the pillar and starts thrashing, in its deaththroes, it destroys the pillar and a passage opens up. The shark is lying dead at the base of the cavern. 

Woolf rushes to the amulet and picks it up. Ayo looks at Woolf and says "well done!". The rest of her team comes up at this point of time. Some of them are scarred, some are wounded. The little goblin who was with Ayo's team called Dormer comes up and casts cure wounds on Jazco. 

The fallen pillar has created this opening, with radiant light coming in from directly above, from like a hole in the ceiling. Ayo goes towards the light and starts investigating it. All of swim up into a pocket cavern. This is a very different place, the watery environment gives way to a cavern dotted with trees and vines on the walls. In the centre, there is a pool of water, part of the cavern is open to the sky. A pale, shimmering light is coming out of a pedestal in the centre of the pool, in which rests rests a golden pendent attached to a fine golden chain. 


We all fall unconscious. We see in our minds, where the pedestal was, a spectral form of a man arises from the pendent on the pedestal, who is dressed in leather, a tattered red cape, and holding a shield. He looks very tired, He says "I am imprisoned, please help me."

We fall through a vortex of golden light and fall into darkness, and we are floating over some inky, black liquid. Suddenly, the darkness is pierced by a streak of a million light that shines down and illuminates the stream, and we see the same man held by fleshy tendrils, just stuck there. 

Alyxian is the name of the fellow. The bifrost like light takes us back to another place. We can hear the voice of Alyxian say "save me please..." or something like that. 

That is where we call it a night. 

We have in front of us, the Jewel of the Three Prayers, one of the Vestiges of Divergence. It is in it's dormant state right now. 



Sunday, April 10, 2022

The Emperor's new clothes

Catching up on some reading, and revisited the old classic, there were some things that I had forgetting about the story

1. The Emperor spent all his time dressing up

2. The weavers said that their fabrics could not be seen by dumb people or those too good for their office

3. A whole bunch of officials vetted the fine fabric while it was 'on the looms'

4. The noblemen carrying his train were too scared to admit that they felt nothing as well

5. Even after coming to know there was nothing on, the Emperor continued to pretend that there was

Basically the public delusion was to a much greater extent than I remembered, and the kid pointing out the reality really did not make any difference at all. 


Wednesday, April 06, 2022

Took an arrow to the knee

 


Dream diary cieling snek edition

 So there is this little lizard that keeps visiting, and I have scary dreams about it turning into some extending creature and lunging at me from the ceiling when Im sleeping



Dream Diary Crazy Trucker Edition

There was this really nice augmented reality game, that a whole bunch of people were playing. It was just like the pokemon phrase. The animations had some green-tree-wold-bear man. People had to walk around a park and play the game. It was like a group of trekkers. Some two people showed me how to play the game. I was taken to the park by my parents and left there.

Anyway, there was food for everyone, people lined up, it cost 400 bucks, and some woman paid for me. But there was so much food in the plate that it all fell down. The caterer either sabotaged or try to save me, IDK which. I went outside looking for an ATM to pay the lady. I see a roadside dhabeli stall. There is this huge sand castle showing people from different places. A couple of agressive sales men try to pitch me a suitcase. I finally find an ATM, but when I cross the road, this agressive half a truck driver is on my ass. He turns around and comes at me for a second go. I just push his truck away and it freaking crumbles like cheap plastic.


Part Deux

Had this dream where someone had come in and left food and furniture in my house. This included chivda, a bag of vada pavs (I had no clue I would miss vada pavs so much), some wooden planks, a big closet, and a television. 

I ate the vada pav while wondering about all the other stuff. 

Visited Nodwin office

 Got to see the heart of the esports scene in India. Was fun. 




Friday, April 01, 2022

Dream diary ripped clothes and accidents edition

 I knew I was going to have a good one, but not quite this. I missed a few though. 

It's the pipeline to Gandhinagar at Vartak Nagar. There is a field there. I catch a share rickshaw with Dipti Panchal, who is my rakhi sister. There are six people packed in the car, three in the back, three in the front, I have to sit on the windshield, with Dipti. The maniac driver starts, the Neelkanth road is shut, so he drives around Upvan. 


I am struggling to stay on the windshield. Dipti falls off, never to be seen again. There is a handle on top of the car, that I manage to grab, but in the process I bend the antenna around. The driver sticks his head out and looks at it, but seems like he does not mind too much, and that his antenna keeps getting bent. My bag is covering his field of view, and I wonder how he is even driving. I keep slipping and the antenna keeps getting increasingly bent. 

Just as we turn Upvan, I switch to some kind of drone view. There is a second car up front, tethered to the one we are driving, and the driver is in control of that as well. He asks me to take the wheel while he fixes the antenna. As I turn the wheel, the tethered car ahead turns, instead of my own, but my car follows behind the tethered car ahead by turning at the same point. 

Seems to be some advanced semi autonomous vehicle technology. With drones. 

Anyway, I fall off the car and my clothes get ripped in several places. I fall off, and cross a stretch of road between Cottage and my Home, where we find a pair of baby's shoes. Some old woman takes the shoes. I land up near school, where Dipti's relatives are looking for her. There, Dipti's older sister, Anala Panchal is struggling to find a share rickshaw from Vasant Vihar to EDWU. All the share rickshaws are filling up, and there are buses driving recklessly. 

I land up near Pongam, where I bump into an old friend, Suhail Basher. We have a catching up talk, where I learned that Basher is just visiting for a short while, and that he has moved to "GK" in Nagpur with his family, and that he is married. He asks me to visit. I struggle to remember GK stands for Greater Kailash and its in Delhi, in the dream. 

By this time, Anala has managed to get a small car, and asks me to get in, to look for Dipti. This is a four seater, and there are two of her friends in the back. I squeeze in, but the doors do not close. Those in the back are stoically silent. I'm barely hanging to my seat as the vehicle zooms back towards Upvan. I remember thinking this is like the Amazing race. 

We do not find Dipti, so we head back to Eden Woods, to "look for her online". As we are turning from Vasant Vihar to Edwu, Anala gets distracted by some passing vehicle and turns to look at it. I can figure that Anala is just learning to drive, or one of those people who drives but never really learns to drive. A massive bus hits us, and we are sent flying all the way back to Upvan! There is a naka bandi there, and someone from the back says, "stay calm and cooperate". We weave through a bunch of school children, the police do not ask us questions, and instead of ending up back in EDWU, we go to Gulmohar. 

There is a new complex here, something very tall. There are a bunch of people playing cricket and videogames on phone below the complex. As soon as I get off the car, a bunch of things happen. 

We start walking towards Anala's apartment. Some elderly fellow from the colony remembers me, and asks me where I have been. I struggle with a response, not remembering exactly. He says "welcome back", looks at my clothes and comments "always knew you were a crazy fellow". Another guy, asks "I always knew you were the computer guy. Do you have a spare laptop?" I say no, even though I do. The cable person is welding something into the ground, like a more advanced version of splicing optical cables. He says I will have to use a WiFi hotspot as the network is down. I think 'oh great' and we walk on. 

I bump into another old friend, Sudhir Sharma, who just nods and smiles at me. Someone sitting in a ledge above him talks about "cracking open relics" but they are not playing warframe, some other game like Dragon Clan Wars or something. 

I ask Sudhir what game they are talking about, and Sharma responds with a "don't worry."

By now the agenda has somehow shifted from finding Dipti to finishing Warframe as fast as possible. The gameplan is to get a bunch of blokes together to play for a week. I say it cannot be done. I get into the lift with Anala and two young guys I do not know the names of. They are laughing at my torn clothes, which are three layers of clothings, all ripped at different points so nothing shows. 

I try to explain to them that I am against the whole point of playing Warframe just to finish, and that they will enjoy it more if they do not put so much pressure on themselves. They cannot understand it, I get indignant and worked up. 

The elevator door opens, and so do my eyes.