Tag: Misha Polonsky

Thank you  Jonathan Henry Crystal Taylor Lloyd Gyan and Aaron Redican for playing in tonight’s impromptu Dungeon World one-shot!

Gralnar the Giant, halfling Barbarian with Herculean Appetites for Riches & Property and Fame & Glory, Aeris, halfling Druid with constant fur, Boromin the dwarf Artificer with a mechanical, steam-powered mobile suit and assortment of gadgets, and Gregor the Pious, human Cleric of the Azula, God of Suffering all began on the summit of a mountain where a set of steps led up to the Temple of Azula, where a magical artifact of healing was buried underneath the tomb of twelve monks.

Aeris led the way – the towering mountains being her homeland – and the party discovered a bloody trail leading up past six, lion statues made of a partially metallic-like stone. Two of the six were missing.

The other four sprang to life and attacked the PCs. Aeris summoned a pack of mountain lions that chased the last of the lion gargoyles into the round temple, devouring it.

Boromin used the steam-powered jetpack from his mobile suit to quickly fly into the temple and up through an oculus, abandoning the party.

(At this point, Lloyd Gyan needed to go to bed, so Boromin simply abandoned the adventure.)

From that point on, the PCs were left facing eight Draugr – two of which bit the Barbarian and Druid (their wounds freezing over like a sickness).

Several stories down a spiraling staircase, in a crypt lined with twelve sarcophagi, the PCs encountered a vampire devouring the last monk.

With the Cleric’s god repeatedly failing him, the Druid accidentally transforming into a huge, furry, purple worm at one point, the Barbarian having a good portion of his blood drained by the vampire, and the Artificer who simply flew away and vanished, this has turned into one of the best one-shot sessions I’ve ran yet!

Underneath the crypt, the PCs discovered a prison cell that housed the vampire. The twelve monks buried in the crypt were actually twelve warriors meant to protect the monk (adding this part in now so it makes more sense) who was there to watch over the vampire prisoner and draw samples of its blood.

The monk learned the vampire was quite abnormal in that its bite turned humans and halflings into Draugr; however, it’s blood reversed the effect and had extraordinary healing properties on top of that.

A shattered, glass bottle with dried blood featuring a blue tint reacted with the Barbarian: coagulating and entering his body, reversing his sickness and healing him entirely. The same happened to the Druid and Cleric when they encountered drops of blood, and the PCs drew a portion of the vampire’s blood (in addition to looting its stash of gold and magic items), and called it a successful adventure – with everyone leveling up!

So for everyone who played, what was your favorite moment (or moments)?

Tuesday we played the third and final session of an epic one-shot adventure via Hangouts. 

It’s another comprehensive summary, and it’s quite LONG, so I decided to create a GoogleDoc this time and just provide the link for anyone  who’s interested in reading:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IwyAVY3A5xzs_eCjVT9O52iDvs7we5V_TzOgK4gT0hg/edit?usp=sharing

It’s been really awesome getting to run three Hangout sessions week after week with the same characters. I say this at the end of the summary, but I’ll repeat it here as well:

Another big thanks to Eadwin Tomlinson  Isa Wills  Penda Tomlinson  Simon Burdett  for helping to make this a really fun, third session ending to a pretty wild adventure. And another thanks to Matt Smith  as well – who, sadly, couldn’t join us for the third session, but who rejoiced with the rest of the party and, better yet, was right all along: the magic staff is evil!

Perhaps there’ll be more adventures ahead – I hope so.

Yesterday, we played the second session of what’s turning into a three-part adventure currently entitled The Giant Magi and the Stag. Two more PCs are joining the party, and we figured out a pretty neat way of bringing them into the adventure, despite it being the second session.

Knowing they had to go down into the abandoned, sunken tower at Jagged Rock, our heroes brace themselves for an underwater journey that will lead them closer to the magic stag of time and seasons and the giant magi guarding it.

Fair warning: Another LONG summary coming up. Also, the fights definitely do get graphic toward the end. Enjoy!

Having recovered a portion of their health with the help of some healing potions and a few hours of sleep, Scarr the Fighter, Harren the Druid, and Avon the Wizard carefully lifted the top of the giant treasure chest and peeked out at the huge chimera that had nearly singed them hours ago. There were no sign of imps, and the chimera seemed strangely calm and non-threatening. Across the way, peeking out from the other giant treasure chest, they saw the familiar faces of three others they’ve adventured with in the past: Florian the Human Bard and Stretch Wolfchild, the Halfling Ranger with his companion hawk, Wisdom.

Stretch carefully studied the chimera, noticing its disinterest posed no threat, and he jumped down next to its paws as Florian followed. It looked down at them, sniffed, and looked away disinterested. Convinced that Stretch was magically manipulating the chimera by keeping it at bay, Avon, Herran, and Scarr stalled inside their chest when, suddenly, the chimera vanished, leaving a ripple in the air that quickly dissipated. 

After helping Herran down and joining Stretch, the Ranger told them he and Florian had been traveling with Bort the Nimble to recover the magic stag that controlled time and seasons, for it defied all laws of nature and the Stretch yearned to destroy it. As he spoke, Avon sensed a spike of magical energy emanating from within the sac containing Bort the Nimble’s lifeless body. 

When he stepped away to inspect the body, it turned out to be someone completely different, and much younger, with a distinctive brooch featuring a round, polished piece of zinc embedded in the middle.

Since Avon was vain and sought only the clues to obtaining immortality and everlasting beauty, he knew about two, twin brothers, both mages and alchemists: the Iron Mage and the Zinc Mage. The Iron Mage was black of heart and only sought power for himself at the expense of others; while the Zinc Mage was white of heart and sought to do only good – including trying to help his twin brother change his ways. Both mages were known to have focused their spell craft around the nature of change in different ways, although both brothers had perfected the polymorph spell.

The brooch and the fact that the dead lad had assumed a perfect form of Bort the Nimble prior to his death suggested that he was probably the Zinc Mage’s apprentice or maybe a servant transformed by the mage.

Looking at the map the dead lad left behind, Avon saw a long, spiraling staircase leading all the way down a giant tower. It seemed the whole, sunken tower was flooded with water. Avon decided to perform a ritual to grant the rest of the party the ability to breathe underwater. He asked the party members to hold hands and form a circle. Even Wisdom joined in with his little hawk talons next to Stretch and Florian. Drawing the essences of the fish int he surrounding sea, Avon was forced to perform the ritual in sheer darkness, but it left everyone covered in a slimy substance that would enable them to breathe underwater and ease swimming and maneuvering due to the weight armor and weapons impose.

Herran stayed back. He transformed into a frog instead.

The rise in temperature inside the chamber was subtle at first; but, by the end of the ritual, each one of the heroes (minus Herran) was sweating profusely, and they all felt as though the sun was directly above them, beating down on them in the heat of summer.

Suspecting it had something to do with the magic stag, the heroes quickly plunged down into the depths of the giant, sunken, tower, and began their descent through the murky, passageway, guided only by the light from Avon’s staff.

First, a group of maggot squid that Stretch tried to swim past suddenly became spooked and swam past the rest of the party from where they came. Up ahead, with Wisdom’s help, Stretch pointed out a faint, orange glow that drew closer and closer until Avon recognized them for what they were: fire eels – burning ablaze underwater. He gesticulated a fire eel with his arms and hands to the rest of the party, and Stretch decided to grab some rope from his adventuring gear and tie it around one of the huge, chunks of stone debris from the tower in order to toss it through the middle of the spiraling staircase and simply sink toward the bottom where they needed to go. It was a solid plan, but the fire eels managed to get close and attack. Avon shot off magic missiles, but it was Scarr’s fighting skills – even underwater – that cut one eel in half and send a wave through the water, forcing the other eel backwards and giving Stretch and Florian just enough time to finish tying the ropes.

The plan was to tether everyone to the rock and sink to the bottom. Scarr helped push the rock off with his mighty strength and the heroes sunk to the bottom quickly as a plethora of spears suddenly whizzed by them in all directions. One of the spears cut through Florian’s tether and he remained floating in the water as the rest of the party sunk a far distance down, until the rock suddenly hit a hard, rocky surface that shook for a moment.

Meanwhile, Avon’s light barely reached Florian, but the Bard saw flashes of eyes all around him as several, lizardmen suddenly came at him. Two launched their spears and missed Florian, but hit a sahuagin lurking in the shadows instead. It went after Florian, but he swam toward the lizardmen, narrowly dodging their spears and losing a healing potion in the process, and swimming down toward the rest of the party, leaving the lizardmen to be feasted on by the sahuagin.

While all that was going on, Scarr, Avon, Herran, and Stretch cut their ropes once they realized what the rock had landed on and why the ground appeared to be moving. It was the giant claw of an enormous chuul that seemed oblivious to the party as Stretch swam up around the back of its head, looking for weak spots. Avon cast an illusion of himself via his prestidigitation cantrip and distracted the chuul just long enough for Scarr, Avon, Stretch, and Wisdom to swim down past it.

Herran quickly transformed into a human and then into a large pike fish that swam up to retrieve Florian. Upon grabbing hold of Herran’s fin and looking up at an angry sahuagin swimming down toward them, Florian and Herran also noticed that the water above them started to freeze and was getting closer and closer to them. 

They quickly swam away, past the chuul, to join the others. Looking back, the sahuagin high above was frozen solid within the ice; and, though the chuul shifted and resisted, it too eventually froze over completely. For a split second, Avon saw three blink dogs floating in the water out of the corner of his eye. Herran was an incredibly fast swimmer, and Stretch and Florian took advantage by hanging on. They escaped through a large, open doorway into a large, rectangular, stone cavernous chamber with a short hallway leading into an enormous, open chamber with pillars of stone rising high with giant faces carved into the stone – some cyclopean in nature – just like on the surface, outside the ruins.

Scarr used all his strength to swim as hard as he could to escape the oncoming ice; but, as he swam past the open doorway, dozens of crisscrossing spears suddenly shot forward, forming a grate and cutting his arm in the process. Avon swam at his normal speed, enduring the ice as it crept up on him, but he found himself trapped behind the grate of spears. He cast a magic missile which shattered a hole through the wooden shafts of the spears and broke through with Scarr’s help.

The water emptied out into a stream which continued down the chamber, through the small hallway, and into the next, enormous chamber, but froze over as the temperature grew cold like winter.

Far ahead, in the distance, a spiraling vortex suddenly appeared from the gaping mouth of the closet stone head carved into a pillar. A pair of hell hounds emerged along with four quasit. The hell hounds seemed fixated on only a single quarry at a time, and one chose Stretch right off the top after he fired an arrow under its fiery throat.  Pinning Stretch on the ground and taking a bite out of his shoulder, Scarr thrust Tormentor into the hell hound and pinned him again the wall, shattering bones and shredding the demonic flesh apart in an exploding inferno that quickly died down in the freezing chamber. As the other hell hound charged at Scarr, he took his best swing yet and decapitated the hell hound right as it lunged at him. Stretch fired off an arrow which went through the hell hound’s flaming, red eyeball and into the stone wall – the eyeball and arrow exploding and burning away in flame.

Meanwhile, two quasit went after Florian, who took too long performing intricate and wholly unnecessary pirouette moves with his rapier before lunging at the demons, and they ended up stabbing him with their fiery weapons instead. With two other quasit on Herran and Avon, respectively, Herran quickly transformed into a human, dodging one of the quasit’s blows, and transformed into a bear where he immediately unleashed a terrifying roar that spooked all the quasit – including the one that just stabbed Avon before retreating with the rest.

The chamber felt less cold all of a sudden, but the heroes all heard howling resonating in the distance. The hair on the giant’s head suddenly swayed violently, and as when the quasit reached the edge of the pit containing the giant, an incredible gust of wind blew them off, sending them to their depths. Herran’s eyes changed to matched the color of autumn as the winds continued to howl and circulate in the next chamber.

Approaching the small hallway between the two chambers, the heroes found a black cloak stuck under a large rock and blowing in the wind. They realized the black cloak belonged to Bort the Nimble, and Stretch found another brooch with a round, polished piece of zinc embedded in it. On top of that, Avon also found an archaic, but ordinary, iron key to some sort of locked box or treasure chest and emanating with incredible, magical energy – the likes of which he would never expect.

Looking ahead into the next chamber, the heroes saw a circular path that went all around a pit large enough to house twelve, full grown giants that all looked defeated as they stood bound with heavy chains at the wrists, legs, and throat. They smelled foul and disgusting. Far up toward the ceiling, the heroes saw stalactites with enormous, silk webs and shadows of giant spiders crawling about menacingly. Past the stone pillars, on the opposite side of the pit, was an insurmountable wall – through which the map described as the location of the magic stag.

Just when our heroes thought they could take a break, make camp, and heal their wounds, two more vortices suddenly appeared in the next chamber as the winds slowly died down.

To be continued (and hopefully concluded) in Session 3. 🙂

Thus, the second session came to an end. I’m surprised the characters are still alive. Who knows if they’ll make it or not? 😀 It has been such a thrill running this adventure so far. Thanks again to Eadwin Tomlinson Isa Wills Penda Tomlinson Matt Smith Simon Burdett for playing. It was another, fun, enjoyable session and it wouldn’t have been as awesome if it weren’t for you all.

I can not wait for Session 3 and the epic conclusion of The Giant Magi and the Stag (I might a better title, though, hmm :/)

I keep slacking on posting summaries for the Hangout games I run, so I decided to go for a long, proper summary for this latest one. 

Last week, I ran a Hangout session for some players new to DW, and we had an absolute blast! I’ve decided coming in with 0 prep (or as little prep as possible) for a one shot / potential for more proved excellent: bonds and questions gave us a setting, a story, and boom we were off!

What happens when a ragtag group of adventuring heroes goes after a powerful, magical artifact, guarded by a giant, in an abandoned fortress that was once home to an ancient race of giants?

Fair warning: LONG summary coming up and the fights get a bit graphic. For anyone who’s interested, enjoy! 🙂

In our first session, our three main heroes: Scarr the Human Fighter, Avon the Human Wizard, and Herran the Human Druid were approached by the Thieves Guild of Cragport, where one of the thieves told Avon that if he and his mates journeyed across the sea to Jagged Rock and found and brought back Bort the Nimble, dead or alive, the Thieve’s Guild would forget the whole fiasco with the fairy gold Avon tried to fool them with and the whole ordeal with the Nine Serpents gang retaliating; furthermore, the Thieve’s Guild would owe the heroes a favor. That’s always nice, right?

Bort the Nimble, a halfling, was a high-ranking member of the Thieves Guild and a famous ‘Robin Hood’ type amongst the poor, starving citizens of Cragport. The nobles despised him, and had been quite content with his disappearance at Jagged Rock – the rocky island in the middle of the sea filled with the abandoned ruins of a great, stone fortress that was once home to an ancient race of giants. Bort the Nimble was allegedly seeking an ancient and powerful, magical artifact: a statue of a stag carved out of an ancient, mystical wood with the power to control time and the seasons themselves.

Avon, Scarr, and Herran accepted the job, and sought out a ship that would take them across to Jagged Rock. With hardly any gold amongst the three of them, the heroes sought out a desperate-looking crew and met Captain Burma who agreed to sail them across in exchange for a portion of the treasure the heroes promised him and his men.

Upon reaching Jagged Rock, Herran took the form of a hawk and scouted on ahead. He spotted the giant tentacle of a kraken and flew back to alert the others. The captain immediately turned the ship to circumnavigate it. As the ship approached the right side of the island, Herran continued to soar in the air above, scouting for danger, and danger found him first when an eagle lord came swooping in from out of the fog and snatched Herran’s whole body in its talons. Scarr threw random barrels at it that he found on the ship, and Avon cast magic missiles at it, singing its wings and forcing it to let go of Herran, which caused it to fall straight down onto the deck of the helm. Herran swooped over it, quickly transformed back into a human, and immediately morphed into a bear, executing what druidic scholars would, in later years, refer to as ‘The Bearbomb’ technique. 

With the eagle lord’s body crushed and its skull cracked open, Avon took the skull and several talons for keepsake, and the heroes left Captain Burma and his crew as they stepped ashore onto Jagged Rock. 

Avon immediately sensed a strange, unnerving magical presence permeating throughout the island that even forced Scarr and Herran to feel uneasy. Up a pathway straight ahead and through the mountain, toward the left, was the mouth of a dark cave fit for giants. There were stone pillars of various sizes scattered around the entrance and along the path to the bottom of the mountain. Giant faces were carved into the stone – some cyclopean in nature. 

Heading up the path, the heroes reached the cave only to find themselves flanked on either side by fiery imps that suddenly emerged from behind the stone sculptures and rocks. A fierce battle ensued as the heroes pushed forward, picking off the imps ahead of them one by one: Avon slinging off magic missiles like a cowboy, Herran scaring off imps with his intimidating bear shout and rendering them to bits with his sharp claws, and Scarr cutting them down with his sheer strength and signature weapon, Tormentor – a huge, jagged sword he took after finally killing the orc leader that kept him prisoner for most of his life. 

Inside the dark cave, the white light from Avon’s staff revealed a crater with the crumbled, stone ruins of the fortress at the bottom of the steep, rocky sides of the crater. As the heroes made their way down, the hordes of imps still left behind began magically disappearing and reappearing in front of them as Mrs. Eagle Lord made her grand appearance and swooped down from the top of the cave – where a hole large enough for her to fly through opened up to the sky above.

Scarr leapt at the eagle lord as she swooped down to attack him and caught her by the neck, snapping it and tumbling down the steep hill to the bottom of the crater. Herran and Avon followed as they fought off more imps in the process; and, upon reaching the bottom, they saw a gigantic, mausoleum-like structure with a dark, open doorway large enough for a giant to pass through at the opposite side of the crater.

The heroes began making their way over to the entrance when they suddenly heard a loud, bellowing groan emanating from within. At the same time, the last third of the army of imps appeared and charged down the rocky hill – their tiny little bodies ablaze with magical flames. A gigantic creature emerged from the darkness of the mausoleum entrance; and, as it got a little closer, Avon’s light revealed it to be a chimera getting ready to release a powerful, fiery breath. 

Chaos ensued; and, in all the chaos of fighting imps and avoiding the chimera’s fiery blasts, the heroes eventually discovered that the chimera was actually targeting the imps – and it quickly lost interest in them when a group of imps entered the mausoleum, and the chimera chased after them. It eventually turned back and sent blasts of fiery breath in all directions in order to incinerate the imps. The heroes, of course, were caught in the crossfire, and Herran, stunned, broke his leg after one of the blasts caused a chunk of fallen building to collapse on him. Scarr helped him out by lifting it and freeing Herran, who turned into a bat and flew on ahead. Avon, meanwhile, found himself trapped in a tight corner as he fought off a small group of imps with his glowing staff. Scarr came to assist him, slaying the remaining imps but becoming separated from Avon in the process and forced to run right into the fray of the chimera’s spitfire. Avon reached the mausoleum entrance without any further scrapes, while Scarr endured the flames, taking minimal direct damage but burning underneath his armor; nevertheless, he joined up with Avon and Herran, who utilized his supersonic capabilities to detect what lay past the giant entrance.

Inside, the heroes saw a chamber that was at least four times as big as the mausoleum was from the outside. Two, giant-sized treasure chests stood at opposite ends on the left and the right, respectively, surrounded by mounds of shimmering gold. Up ahead, the heroes spotted the dead, battered, and broken body of Bort the Nimble lying next to a giant, rectangular pool of water with wide and enormous, stone steps leading down into a hallway large enough for two giants to walk through side by side.

Upon examining Bort the Nimble’s lifeless body, Avon discovered a scroll with a crudely drawn map/blueprint of the giant’s fortress. The heroes learned that their adventure would continue downward, to the depths below Jagged Rock and the sea – that was where Bort the Nimble was headed and where they would find the magic stag.

Avon stuffed Bort the Nimble’s body into a sac, and the heroes worked together to climb into one of the giant’s treasure chests before making camp for the night – knowing the chimera was still out there as well as, perhaps, the imps.

Thus ended the first session. I want to thank Eadwin Tomlinson Isa Wills and Penda Tomlinson  for playing and bringing so much awesomeness to the Hangout table.

The summary for the second session is coming up next!

Played an awesome Hangout game tonight with Michael Pearce Peter Johansen and Aaron Mehlhaff as GM. Despite the fact that it was actually the first time I’ve played a Cleric and that he was probably the most embarrassing one at that, it was still a lot of fun! Oh, and by embarrassing, I mean he ended up with 14 XP from just misses alone. His god, Aezos, simply refused to heal the Thief every single time and he wasn’t fast, nimble, or dextrous in the slightest.

I’m actually surprised he didn’t die!