So Adam and Ian don’t feel like they play enough D&D. To rectify this, they started playing a text-based adventure with a couple of friends, still using the 5th edition framework. We thought it would be fun to clean up the transcripts of this adventure and start publishing it in weekly chapters here on the site. Let us know what you think, and please share around! If you missed Chapter 1, check it out here!
Disclaimer: This is the transcript of a text-based D&D game played over a period of 6 months. Bad language included. Picture based dice rolls/media omitted. Names changed to preserve anonymity. Goblin based violence frequent. You have been warned. If you missed Chapter 31, find it here!
DM: He doesn’t appear to be breathing
Constance: crap.
Constance: can I medicine check to see if I can revive him?
Constance: and also call for the cleric
DM: Yup
Constance: 18 on medicine check
DM: You don’t know what to do. He has probably drowned, or it might be the smashing from the wave and ground. The cleric comes over, and Varratim, and the two pirate crossbowmen
Constance: fuck really!? on an 18!?
DM: Yeah man he is pretty fucking deaded
Constance: balls
Faustus: Oops.
DM: Do you have any potions or healing kits? You reckon you might just be able to save him, but not without some help
Constance: yeah i have a healers kit
Constance: hold on a moment
Constance: oh never mind
Constance: but yes, i have a healers kit
Faustus: I can also lay on hands.
DM: Okay
DM: You can stabilise him with a healers kit
Constance: do i have to roll medicine again?
Faustus: And he’s manacled and disarmed yes?
Bronan: Bronan kinda want to pop his head like a melon, he stabbed Bronan with lightning
Bronan: But I won’t, can Bronan help?
DM: He is stable
DM: Varratim looks at you, confused
DM: We kill this man now?
DM: He took melody!
Constance: not yet Varratim. We need to make sure that melody is in no further danger
DM: Varratim growls, and then gets his cleric to heal his wounds
Faustus: I tip my hat to Varratim and message “Don’t worry, we will kill him later my friend. His ilk cannot be allowed to live”
DM: Passive perceptions?
Faustus: God damn you
Constance: 12
Faustus: Also 12
Bronan: 13
DM: Its getting dark
DM: Do as you like
Constance: get everyone to the farmhouse and get the wiz to teleport us back
Faustus: Let’s go my friends.
DM: (You don’t have the wizard, varratim has a teleport scroll)
Constance: (right well that then)
Faustus: Right. That.
DM: You are taking the mayor?
Constance: of course
Constance: he aint dead,
Bronan: (we need to kill that lying bugman at some point, i mean, who does he think he is, giving us stuff, sending us to commit genocide then turning on us when we don’t)
Faustus: (Yeah I’m a little worried he’s going to fucking jump us right now)
Constance: (Same)
Bronan: (it’s cool, that’s the good thing about low passive perception, you don’t see your death coming)
DM: Just for reference
DM: You are heading back straight to the farmhouse with the shackled unconscious mayor and then teleport straight back to Fort Last?
Faustus: (Also if he doesn’t attack we’ve definitely just created a power vacuum for him to fill)
Faustus: Well if we don’t need to go anywhere to be teleported do we need to? Surely everyone can just run to us and Varratim uses the scroll?
DM: That’s fine, just asking
Faustus: Think that should be a group thing rather than me deciding it, but I think we were all confused about how we were teleporting back hence the farmhouse.
Bronan: Yup, gtfo time
DM: Agreed Constance?
Constance: Yup
DM: You swiftly grab and shackle the mayor and give Varratim the nod. He pulls out the teleport scroll from his coat and spit on the ground, before breaking the seal
DM: A 10ft circle of runes and blue light surrounds him as he begins to murmur the incantation
DM: Around you, destruction and bodies and nightfall
DM: Just as the teleportation kicks in, in that final moment of calm, to the south in Al’shash you hear a scream, and as your eyes follow the noise you see flickering light and what is perhaps smoke rising over the town
DM: Flash!
Faustus: God damn it. We helped a coup from a criminal.
Constance: God damn it. Melbos must die.
DM: You are in Fort Last, in a stone courtyard
DM: Pontifico the wizard and a dozen owlbears look down at you
DM: The pirates all start high fiving each other, and from his coat Varratim brings out a bottle of rum and starts sharing it round
DM: What, so, torture and then we kill him? Torture is not really my scene… What do you need from this…man
DM: (in assuming you grabbed the Mayors sword and wand…)
Constance: (Obvs)
DM: (not obvs enough to have actually said it- if we were playing in person the sword would be lying in the sand, and you’d be feeling bad!
Bronan: (we are gonna kill Melbos, if spy glasses weren’t so fucking expensive I’d say we go all American highschooler on his ass, as it stands I vote we just turn him into jam)
Constance: (Is that a reference to the ochre jelly you just turned to jam?)
Bronan: (I thinks it’s podcast from critical role? I dunno man, to much media, much references, thank God for Tyrella, almost covered me in the jelly, but managed to kill it in a hillarious way)
Constance: We need to find out many things Varratim, many many things.
DM: The mayor is unconscious, and it is night
DM: Varratim smiles and inspects his torn and bloodied coat, and tuts
DM: You want ot do this now? Or in the morning? My men can secure this…man
Constance: i think now, but i defer to my colleagues
Bronan: Bronan happy to help constance and Faustus, now Faustus has washed the Scarf-mayor he safe to touch. Bronan not have much questions, but maybe ask what he want with birdpeople land
Bronan: (can’t remember if it it was a killing them to liberate their oil/gold or if there were hints of something special there)
DM: The mayor of a’shash lies shackled before you on the stone floor of a courtyard in the manor of the wizard Pontifico. Varratim the Pirate lounges against a nearby pillar picking his nails with a dagger. Pontifico sits on an ornate rocking chair in the corner, his wand trained on the prostrate semi-conscious captive
DM: It is almost dawn, and the mayor is finally waking up
DM: what do you do?
Bronan: Varratim have question for prisoner-mayor? Like how he take melody?
Bronan: (I slap the mayor awake) wake up prisoner-mayor, we have questions
DM: He comes to and immediately says
DM: Release me right now and I’ll let you live
Constance: You’ll let us live? How good of you. *sarcasm*
DM: You are aware that al’shash is under the protection of Cormyra? Unless you release me, the sultan will hunt you to the ends of the earth
Faustus: And how will he react when he finds out you’ve been making a power play for the whole region?
DM: The mayor laughs
DM: My tithe will increase, his coffers will swell with fresh bounty, and he will embrace me as a brother
Faustus: Of course. He definitely seems like the sort to share power with a potential rival. I’m sure he’ll be delighted.
Constance: Regardless. I don’t see him here now.
DM: So. I hired you to bring me a gem, and you instead wander off to cormyra, come back, and kill 6 of my subordinates, and waste the gem
Constance: So that was it huh? Just get more power and get more money?
DM: Why?!
DM: What else is there?!
DM: No
DM: Not just power and money
DM: I am going to spread civilisation to the desert! Bring peace and security!
DM: But no, you side with those savage aaracokra
DM: It appears I’m at your mercy. Unless one of you wants 10,000 gold pieces? Return me home and I’ll reward you handsomely
Constance: And Melody? What of her?
DM: Too dangerous to be allowed freedom
DM: Varratim, have you told them what happened to Olivecrown? I heard she killed them all, that nothing will grow there, that there is nothing but a circle of black glass
DM: You’d protect this…monster?
Constance: Well this sounds like a glorious civilisation that you are building. Murder. Imprisonment. Subterfuge.
DM: Says the person imprisoning me, after capturing me through subterfuge, and who I’m presuming is going to murder me
DM: I tire of this. Are you going to kill me or not? I have nothing left to say to you, pawns
Faustus: I’d like to silently use abjure enemy.
Bronan: (I wanna punch him too!)
DM: (makes him frightened right? Wisdom save?)
Faustus: Wisdom save
DM: He fails, had disadvantage because Bronan punched him
DM: He is afraid of you!
Constance: I’m going to interject. “Boys enough!”
Constance: Look. Everyone here wants you dead. However, I would prefer not to see that if it can be avoided.
DM: Varratim coughs politely
Faustus: I’m going to get right up in his face, fully snarling.
DM: I am going to kill this man if one of you doesn’t
DM: And he draws his rapier
Faustus: “If you’re so keen to die we have a room full of people happy to oblige”
Constance: Varratim. A moment please.
DM: Varratim backs off but keeps his rapier out
Constance: Everyone calm the fuck down!
Constance: I’m going to whisper in the mayors ear.
Faustus: (I’m still at his other ear growling)
Bronan: Prisoner-mayor, Scarf-mayor, crime-mayor, Bronan want deadmayor
Bronan: But first, info about Melbos-betrayor
Constance: “Look. Everyone here wants you dead obviously. I’d prefer that didn’t happen. I’ll do my best to keep you alive but you need to tell us everything. Were you doing all this off your own initiative? Or was it at the behest of the sultan? Are there any others involved?”
DM: a persuasion check with advantage!
Constance: Damn. 12.
DM: He shakes his head.
DM: I am the captain of my own ship, he says
DM: Pontifico stand up and approaches you all. I’ll have no torture here, he says, that is not my way. If you wish that then take him to Varratim’s ship
Faustus: I touch my hat and message to Pontifico “My friend, do you have any less… invasive methods? Any spells that can make him tell us the truth?”
DM: Pontifico smiles and puts his staff to the mayors head, and commands him- tell us the truth of this scheme
DM: And you see the mayors face go slack
DM: And he speaks
Bronan: (cliff hanger!!)
DM: My name is Alfojore. I was elevated from my position as cormyra sub city comptroller district 37 to this, the mayorship of al’shash. A dozen guards and a mage, meagre tax, and I’m expected to maintain rule of law.
DM: The town is dying- the farmers have left, the desert presses in. Each year fewer people on the census. But through the desert…such wealth! If I could open trade to the wild ports, al’shash would become a great trade town. A city even! And all thanks to me
DM: To the south, endless wyrms accosted any traveller. I found their source, the great nest, but I don’t have the power. To the north, the birdmen. Unwilling to allow passage. And within town, the parochial petty mob boss Melbos with his pitiful ambition and his scorpion fighting
DM: So I sought the power to tame the desert. I sought dominion over the wyrms, or destruction of the birds. Three years I’ve searched. Finally, a scrap of information, a footnote to a map- the gem in that cursed tomb
DM: My previous plans, kidnapping the girl, electrifying the sand to kill the wyrms, building a great airship to ferry cargo across the red grass and sand…all failed
DM: The girl escaped. The wyrms survived. The airship is crashed somewhere in the deep desert, full of the treasure I was going to offer the pirates
DM: And then you three fucked up my latest plan, killed half my guards. Melbos will have taken this opportunity to grab power for himself. So now once again al’shash has a crooked mayor, and will decline. Bah to you all.
DM: Varratim yawns and starts swinging his sword around restlessly
Bronan: Bah, mayor twist word like sir dribbles twist rope in game of tug rope
Constance: (What is sir dribbles up to during this interrogation?)
Bronan: Mayor make boat that sink, so try to genocide tribe, farmers leave so mayor wants to kill worm? Maybe farmer leave because Scarf-mayor not wash hands and make crops and livestock sick, people not civilise world, live in harmony, tell Bronan how we find Melbos, where he sleep, how to kill
Bronan: (sir dribbles face poking out of his loincloth pouch, growling at the mayor l, an effect somewhat ruined by a large snot bubble threatening to burst at any moment)
DM: He’ll be in the mayors house now. There is secret entrance, from the sewers below, that will enter you into the kitchens. If it were I, I’d poison the ‘mayor’s’ food. The entrance is marked by a red brick with a centaur carved into it
DM: Let me live, and I will leave this place. I’ll never return. I’ll head north and north again until the hot sand is nothing but a memory
Bronan: Hmm *gathers Faustus and Constance close and whispers* Bronan really, really want to smash badman
Bronan: (I spoke to Constance tonight and it looks like a Faustus Bronan decision so unless you have reservations Faustus, let’s judge and execute this guy)
Bronan: (as in constance is a pacifist)
Faustus: (I’m Oath of Vengeance. If we want to kill this guy I’m cool with it. Maybe Varratim should do it though? Seems keen. Also DM, was he still telling the truth when he said he’d leave?)
Bronan: (I’m down with letting Varratim do this, as long as we don’t condone taming the wilds, totem barbarian and all)
DM: (arcana check faustus)
Faustus: 16
DM: You think he only had to tell the truth about that plan
DM: Varratim seems happy to oblige, but also willing to let one of you finish it
Bronan: Prisoner-mayor offended varratim and melody first, varratim get first go at trial and punishment
DM: Varratim laughs, and swaps his eyepatch over to his other eye.
DM: Any last words, scum?
Constance: I look at the mayor and say “I’m sorry that it came to this”. Then walk outside.
DM: The mayor is speechless
DM: Varratim sinks his rapier through the shackled man’s heart
Come back next Monday for Chapter 33 of The Cursed Tomb!
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Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
