The Song of Saqua: Volume VIII
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure everyone that A Phuulish Fellow is not in hibernation, I thought I’d get around to posting another update about the adventures of my D&D character: Saqua the underwater Dhampir Sorcerer.
Session XVII
The misadventures of jumping off a cliff had now been sorted, and everyone was healed up and now wandering off to the next town. In fact, the afternoon was so pleasant that Millie the Human Ranger decided to do a spot of rabbit hunting, while everyone else took a nice rest.
Alas, Millie got more than she bargained for, finding herself trapped in a rabbit warren. And since Millie could talk to animals, she was on the wrong side of copious leporine abuse. Those rabbits were mean. Luckily, Saqua was along soon enough, to see what had happened… whereupon Saqua thought the logical thing was to dig down into the warren. But since he utterly failed a perception check, the entire berry* of the little bastards escaped during his dig, without him noticing.
*A collective noun for rabbits. You’re welcome.
Millie and Saqua soon discovered that Goatslayer (Goliath Monk) had gotten his uncouth hands on a pair of rabbit kittens. And because this was Goatslayer, he gleefully turned them into rabbit kebabs. Delicious.
To commemorate the occasion, Saqua used Minor Illusion to give Goatslayer a pair of illusory rabbit ears. Big and floppy. Goatslayer’s response was to intimidate Saqua, and as the latter rolled a natural 1 against it, one can conclude that Saqua was truly intimidated.
The next town was presided over by an affable bearded Jarl, notable for his thorough distaste for the King on the island, King Bloodaxe. Saqua found the fellow so affable that he suggested the party could help install the Jarl in the King’s place… which the Jarl found a tad offensive. Which says a fair amount about the Jarl. It’s easy to be loyal to someone you like. Much harder to be loyal to someone you despise.
But the Jarl mentioned a strange ship upon the beach, so the party decided to investigate.
Sure enough, we found an alien and mysterious thing. Saqua definitely wanted to hang back as the others took a look inside. Though none of the party in-game would know this, this was a spell-jamming space-ship.
Then a green-skinned Elf burst out, and tried to attack us. We made a point of trying to capture the damned thing alive, but it kept evading our efforts. It turned out the Elf was under the control of an Intellect Devourer, and it finally vanished off onto another plane, leaving the party alone with the ship.
One end of the ship was occupied by a strange brine pool. Droxl the Lizardfolk Warlock made the mistake of touching it, and then failing a Wisdom save. Droxl became absolutely convinced that the pool was the only safe place for him, to the extent that he would fight other party members to stay there.
(Saqua tried a cunning solution. Convince Droxl via Illusion Magic that he is always within the pool, even when he isn’t. Alas, Droxl has stellar intelligence, so that did not work. But I think it deserves points for creativity).
At last, we dragged Droxl away from the pool, and headed back to the Jarl to make a report.
Session XVIII
Back on the road again. The party stumbled across a mysterious old slaughterhouse. Saqua claimed it reminded him of home – not in the least bit creepy, of course, though a wee reminder that Saqua’s people do actually drink human blood in order to survive. Millie and Khan (Goliath Barbarian) wanted to knock the slaughterhouse down, which confused the hell out of Saqua.
But the dispute was put on hold by the arrival of Ghost Cows. Because of course this slaughterhouse was home to Ghost Cows. And for Saqua, this posed a real headache. They’re immune to necrotic or cold damage, you can’t hit them with ordinary weapons… so both his standard spells were out, together with his sword. He was reduced to his wand of magic missile, though forgot Hex inflicted necrotic damage, so he managed to heal the undead cow he had just destroyed. Bugger.
But Millie won the day… by talking to the Ghost Cows. Because recall that she can do that. And next thing we knew, Millie had vanished off into another Plane with them.
Saqua was genuinely worried about the safety of Millie – and though A Disembodied Voice reassured him Millie was fine, Saqua was not exactly believing it. Oh well.
From there, we were wandering up towards the mountains. Which meant snow.
And halflings.
You see, we found a pair of sturdy halflings sitting beside a campfire, getting drunk and smoking… substances. The party joined in, and got thoroughly inebriated. And stoned. Saqua deliberately failed constitution saves, to get himself more drunk – out of game, because it’s easier to roleplay someone utterly sloshed than someone mildly tipsy – and the halflings themselves ventured to try… cheese.
Apparently cheese is like heroin to halflings, though no-one else. Once the pair had passed out, Saqua stuck his fangs in for a non-lethal snack, in the hope he’d get second-hand drug-effects. It didn’t. But he was throwing up anyway.
Goatslayer – not exactly a pleasant chap – decided to get revenge for the rabbit-ears illusion via body-slamming poor Saqua into the ground. But poor Saqua was so drunk, he can’t remember any of this. It’s just another pain to start the day, along with a monster hang-over.
Further into the mountains, we stumbled across an NPC who strongly resembled a certain character from another campaign (as played by the person playing Goatslayer). They were most kind and intelligent, answered Saqua’s question about other Planes, and accepted our gift of a certain Eldritch Tome, which had been lugged around since Melchior’s Island.
Then we ran into a horde of Orcs. Not a hostile horde of Orcs, but rather the sort willing to share a campsite, if Goatslayer can avoid antagonising them. It turned out that their Chief was also half-vampire, though he regards it as a weakness, rather than a strength. Saqua, of course, regards both sides of his family – human father and vampiric mother – with fondness.
A Phuulish Fellow 