Mombarian - Not So Fun House

Hey yo~! Its ya girl Nakon Dayfist Kolakavi the Mombarian up in here with an update.  So I had so much fun at our last session for alot of reasons, the biggest being that our DM had his young daughter in to co-DM with him. Also we were going through a house of her mechanization.  Now let me tell you his daughter is a whole 'nother level of maniacal DM and ours needs to step up his game. (I am sorry I don't mean it please don't try and kill us with another dragon)

I love bringing the next gen into this wonderful game and I love even more getting to encourage young girls. When we found out about our new co-DM for the session I PMed our work group and we all got together to get some small gifts to help encourage her. The first being an amazing card by BashfulBatCreations that thanks her for not killing us. Then because our secret knowledge let us know how obsessive she is with notebooks (see our DM grabbing a stack of swag notebooks) we got her a DM notebook by EstragonHelmer that has note and grid pages in it so she can create her next house of horrors. To top it off I thought it would be great to also give her a mini of her favorite D&D monster, something that her and her Dad could paint together. That ended being a Nightmare and thanks to mz4250 I printed one off on my new 3D printer (I have thoughts on this print especially considering the thin and delicate nature of ankles that would actually hold up a horse if scaled but thats another thing). With our offerings to the co-DM handled to hopefully sway her against killing us all we prepared to do battle.

Well prepared as much as our group ever does. From a previous Mombarian post you may remember we were trapped in a set of caves and tunnels under an ancient tomb and fought a Cave Dragon (see that story here, still love/hate you for this Kobold Press). We finally got out of that cave system via a waterfall that we went shooting off of and were caught by a net. By we I mean half of our group the other half had to be saved through various ridiculously lucky rolls on Nakon's part, #MombarianProblems. After some chats with a creepy pervy old guy who was definitely not human since he read Larkin's mind commenting on his meat smoking technique. The old guy also could tell Rinn got cursed or had something bad going on from the burned mummy heart smoke he inhaled. You can see why my job isn't so easy with these fellow PCs, who burns the heart of a monster that had given them mummy rot and breaths in all that smoke? Anyway to wrap up this side tangent, the creepy old perv also showed us the dragon he had started to chop up so can confirm it is finally dead. They also showed us the way to get out without dying off of a 300 foot waterfall and off into the woods we went towards a town that we were told was downhill called Farwater.

The session with our co-DMs started after we had camped in those woods (we needed the long rest) and opened with Larkin our Ranger with Forest as favored terrain, doing cartwheels of joy after being underground for what felt like weeks. His animal companion had previously died in a terrible set of circumstances that I will probably write about another time. So after some rolls our co-DMs decide he finds a cave with whimpering from inside and a dead mother outside with signs of a small band coming through. Now with a wolf pup in a makeshift baby sling made of the pelt of Larkin's last animal companion that Nakon crafted together, we continued on our way. Cause baby animals are never in danger with adventuring parties, I mean its completely safe.

Fast forward through our walk and as we reach town we see its okay sized with orchards around it and a single tall AF guard tower in the middle with a patrol walking around up there. Naturally as the totally not troublemakers we are we head right for it and see a bulletin board at the bottom, which of course if this was a video game would have a giant exclamation point over it. Since on this board was a flyer with 'HELP!' at the top of it. Apparently a family had gone missing and no one had seen or heard from them in several days, so someone that knew them was asking anyone who would to look into it and let the guards know what was found. Nakon assumes the guards posted this so she proceeds to have a shouted conversation with the guard in the tower which involved Isle using mage hand at one point to hand them the flyer when it became clear they didn't know about it.

Now you may be asking yourself if this flyer was signed by someone. It was not. You may inquire if the guard had information for us about it. He did not. There was only the address of the house that the family who disappeared had lived in, which to adventurers unfamiliar with the town and just walking in was also not helpful. While Nakon was distracted shout talking to the guard Isle had decided to just start lockpicking houses until she found the one we were looking for. The first one she did consisted of an older lady who freaked out, and as a response Isle nonchalantly closed the door and relocked it from the outside. Finally noticing this Nakon went over and knocked on the same door. You can imagine how nervous the poor woman looked especially given I was the one now at the door. To paint a picture for anyone unfamiliar with Nakon she is a 7'8" tall, 315 lb Goliath with long black silky hair that is braided down her back with bright purple eyes. So like a little intimidating especially since she has two giant great axes just casually strapped to her back as she is wearing what amounts to a massive bear hide as a cape. Needless to say the poor older woman who opened the door was a little terrified by the sight of me so I knelt to be eye level with her. Cause that makes me less scary to small people.

While talking with her and asking if she knew the family our co-DM informed us that she did in fact know the family as she was their maid. The family lived on the north side of town in the largest mansion and it was her son, who plays with the family's children, who put up the flyer. She also told them stories of strange floating things, food seeming to be eaten by invisible creatures, and monstrous creatures. In fact she had run away from the house 4 days ago as silverware began to dance around. Giving us directions to the house she slammed the door in our face as Isle had decided that the scared older lady really needed floating chalk writing messages on her windows... yup.

We get to the house and it is a massive 3 story mansion with a small pool on one side of the house and waist height fencing surrounding the property with no gate. The wolf pup and Isle run off to swim for a bit to which our DM gives Isle the 'squish squish' characteristic, pretty much she has to say 'squish squish' before she does an action or moves and she has disadvantage on stealth checks. Cause that is what happens when you jump into a pool in your leather armor and fully clothed. As I'm about to just shoulder check the door open while our rogue is splashing about I find that the door is in fact unlocked. Walking into a large foyer like entrance hall we see silverware floating through the air then through a door we assume is the kitchen or dining hall, then find that the door is flanked by sets of armor. Yarpen our dwarf cleric starts detecting magic and asks me to pick him up, I of course oblige him and we start using him like a little dwarf magic radar system in the foyer space. Turns out everything has some degree of magic baked into it but the sets of armor are way more bright about it. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool. Nothing bad ever happens in a house soaked in magic. Nope.

We check the first door off the foyer and find a storage room, nothing odd seeming. But as I search for useful things like rope we find a note from the family. It explains that monstrous creatures invaded their home and tried to steal a gem they were protecting. The gem needs to be returned to its spot in the house in 5 days or the family would be trapped for ever. Further clarification from our co-DM let us know that the note also explained that the family were incorporeal and stuck that way until the stone was returned and were what was making things float in the house. You might remember it had at least 4 days since anyone had seen the family. Soooooo~ we had like 24 hrs to find the gem, find where to return it to and handle any creatures that decided to try and stop us.

Larkin then remembers he can use the same ability he did to check if the cave dragon was still alive in order to see what kinds of creatures we might have to be dealing with. Now previously our DM had just told him 'oh yeah there aren't any X within your range' which seems reasonable. But this time he asked Larkin to clarify how this ability manifests for him, which makes me suspicious, to which the answer of auditory hallucinations is given. Cause we are extra AF. Then the DM informs him that he gets slammed with sound, all Nakon and the rest of the party sees is Larkin scream and collapse into the fetal position. To be honest though this has been Larkin's response to alot lately so none of us are worried but only as characters. Because as players the DM informs us that Larkin has sensed dragon, elemental, fiend and undead presence within 1 mile of us and of undetermined numbers. As players we are freaking out more then a little but our characters have no idea so we turn to check the other doors and are confronted by 2 displacer beats (I totally harvested their tentacles). After about 3-4 rounds of combat we dust those tentacle cats (even down Rinn who couldn't join us for this session) we move on to the next door off of the foyer and discover a larder with something invisible eating some of the food. I grab some meat for the wolf pup with apologies and we check out the next door.

This one is a library kind of den, the kind of a rich family that wants to let you know they have the extra money for fancy books and bobs but who aren't bookworms. Isle finds and takes some valuable books, I take a large displayed tooth that is about 8 inches long, and Yarpen finds grooves in the floor. Coming over I pull open the bookcase to uncover a hidden alcove where we find another note from the family. It tells us that the creatures have the gem somewhere on the 2nd floor in a room with a large trunk and that once we find it we need to return it to its pedestal on the 3rd floor behind a velvet curtain. Okay so at least we know where we need to be looking for things now. We pop into the last large door off of the foyer which ends up being a kitchen, seems pretty normal so we turn to leave. And of course see a rotten severed hand scurry up the stairs Thing style. This couldn't possibly be a good thing but we have to go up those stairs too so we give chase and reach a long hallway just in time to see the first door on our left close.

Positioning ourselves around it we slowly open it and -.... we enter into a lavish conservatory where a shadow puppet show going on. Should be normal right, and I would agree but for the fact that as our presence is known we see the shadow bunny separate into two sever hands that crawl up onto the back of the couch. Then severed hands from all the chairs climb up on the backs to "look" at us. And almost ambush ninja style severed hands rain down upon us from the ceiling. We have just entered a fight with over 50 severed hands. YAY~ just what I always wanted...rotten undead hands just all over me...fantastic....

At least I finally get some real use out of both my new extra attack (I just hit lvl 5) and my Corrosive Great Axe (does splash acid damage on a nearby enemy on a hit) so that's something. Que another 4ish rounds of combat later and we are all panting giving each other WTH looks as Nakon closes the door, jams a chair under it and plops onto the ground. Now as a tank in the group I had been doing my duty of getting inbetween enemies and the squishy and/distance fighters - so like everybody especially with Rinn gone. I'd also used 2 of my 3 rages so Nakon is pretty tired at this point from waves of adrenaline. She has had no reason not to use them during encounters since she doesn't know what I the player knows, THAT THERE ARE 4 ROOMS IN THIS HALLWAY AND WE JUST FOUGHT THE UNDEAD ROOM SO THE OTHERS PROBABLY HAVE ALL THOSE OTHER GOODIES WE LEARNED ABOUT. But that's where we ended things since it was getting late. Yeah I think we are about as boned as you do good reader, but we will see how fun the end is anyways.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.