Illustration by: Katie Cowles
A blog by: John Alvarez-Reyes
Journeyed Lands D&D
This story takes place after a previous campaign so will give a gist of what happened.
In a distant kingdom the annual Flower Festival had been happening, during which a legion of mages had attacked the royals during their entrance.
From there the party was cut into two parties. The party I was in and the other party dubbed, Team Chaos. From here I will be telling my team’s side of the summary. This team I was a part of consisted of Sage the cleric, Wilt the blind archer bounty hunter [ranger], Katsou the [bard rouge], Webcap the mushroom witch [druid], Atlas the cat [druid], Sinozi the rake lover [rouge], a paladin and another druid.
After the attack we went into the forest finding security in the safehouse hidden from sight. Sage, our cleric, was skeptical of the prince because of his odd behavior. Then the butcher and farmer of the royals had arrived. He told us to investigate his cows that had been dying seemingly out of nowhere.
The party was skeptical of this farmer, but he offered payment and one of our players had asked for his wife's payment, which they took in the form of his rake he’s had since he was a little boy.
At the farm, the team came across the cows, who had two marks on their necks.
Now don’t get too excited and think you know what attacked them
We looked closer, and like magic, a Parasitic larva erupted from the corpse of the cows.
This surprised us. We had fully believed it was vampires.
After defeating these things, the farmer paid us and we followed a path these parasites were trying to follow. I led the way dodging all sorts of branches and roots along the way; my teammates on the other hand were slower. I remarked how they were slower than me despite being able to see better than I could. Afterwards we reached the end of the trail and saw a ruined castle and a small island with a shipwreck.
At this point we debated on where to go, but we came to the decision that we would explore the castle first, then the island.
Entering the castle there were three walkways. The left and the right led to towers; unfortunately, they were not climbable. Unable to climb the towers we continued and were faced with two large parasites, so we readied for combat.
But out of nowhere our paladin walked up to one of them and placed his hand on the parasite’s head.
Yes, he did the “How to Train Your Dragon” thing! .
As he made contact with it, it spoke but not with verbal speech; instead, it was telepathic. Thinking the conflict had been resolved, we lowered our guard. But we were foolish to do so. As we let our guards down, the monster attempted to bite off our paladin’s hand, but thanks to his reflexes, he was safe. Our rogue Sinozi was struck by the other one and was implanted with parasitic eggs.
We were in the middle of our first boss fight. We were all collectively sharting our pants, because these guys hit very hard and their claws implanted parasite eggs in the wounds they created. We weren’t sure we would all survive.
With the narrow battle ground we were at a disadvantage when facing these two. As we continued the barrage of attacks, our numbers grew weak but eventually we won. We lost two good men in this battle; their sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.
After this battle we took a long rest which is basically when our characters would take a break for a long duration like around 8 hours. We had lost two NPCs (Non Playing Characters) that joined our party. It was hard and devastating, but we had to continue.
Now that we had recovered our strength, we investigated the corridor, and it was blocked off by a GIANT door that was locked.
Like sensible people, we decided to think about it. And when I say think, I mean we attacked it until it opened. Unfortunately it did not open, but we decided to check out the island in the meantime for any answers we might find.
The island was pretty close to the cliff but none of us dared to try and jump it. Our feline rogue decided to grapple and tie a rope to the singular tree there on top of the island. The two smallest of our group were tied to the arrow and taken to the island.
Now this is where we had a lot of suspense since these rolls of the dice were what determined if they made it or not since the height off the ground was 50 ft. One roll and then the next and then the DM (Dungeon master) had them roll a dexterity saving throw. And well, let's just say it didn’t go well.
The cat and the small druid were launched. But the druid fell off.
By some miracle, he lived although he was very low on health.
The feline as well as another character who did end up making it over there failed to tie the rope to the tree… like several times. But eventually they got it and everyone made it across, some faster than others.
Crossing the rope was very amusing for some because they didn’t have good dexterity scores, so we had to roll for acrobatics.
We climbed down to the top of the island and reached the shipwreck. And there we met a ghost. So we decided to….. Ignore him and start looting. There were many soggy papers but nothing of value. Some wanted to go back to the castle but the majority of us decided to talk to the ghost.
So, we had a small argument as to what to do here, but we eventually talked to the ghost despite the disdain from some.
The ghost gave us a riddle to answer to find the legendary treasure. We eventually got the answer, but he did warn us “If yee take more than one, thee would be judged by the sea.” So taking his advice we all took one item (except the two who didn’t, but thankfully they did it sneakily). As we all stepped back on the shore the ghost had put the water back to where it was awaiting the next who sought the treasure of the sea.
After this encounter, the DM showed what we would have fought if we had been caught. And they were four large sea guardians. This made us give that one “look” to the two who decided to test the waters.
We then had to decide If we would go to the farm or the safehouse. The party argued a lot but we let two go to the farm and join back with us afterwards.
Farm vs. Safe House was a long and loud argument. It took like twenty minutes, because almost everyone was too stubborn.
On the way back, I sensed danger so I hid behind a tree and saw (despite being blind) three men ready to ambush us. I readied my arrow and *THWACK* shot him right in the arm.
We were now in initiative. I should probably explain the initiative. Everyone rolls a d20 (a 20-sided dice) and the player action order goes by highest roll to lowest roll. The enemies also roll for initiative.
This encounter was pretty average, so I’ll just give the summary: we defeated two and captured one for interrogation.
While in the process of interrogation, we heard familiar voices. And it turned out to be our other comrades.
Yea, we were nearing the end so we joined our groups one last time to gather information. It was very loud and chaotic. Everyone was taking over each other and just being loud. I, being done with this, did something to get everyone quiet.
I drew my dagger and slit the throat of our captive and with that everyone stopped and focused on the moment at hand.
Yea, everyone didn’t like that, but it did cause them to be quiet.
The clerics healed the man and the interrogating happened now. The man now had fear in his eyes so I was the one to interrogate him. The cleric did also put up a spell called “zone of truth.” The captive told us that a man resembling the prince hired them and if they didn’t as they were told they would miss out on riches beyond their wildest imaginings. I attempted to assassinate the captive again, but I was kept away from him by the others.
We all collectively went to the safe house and it was surprisingly not destroyed.
We entered and ambushed the prince and then and only then did he transform into the largest parasitic beast we’ve seen yet. He was very intelligent, and he could have attacked us, but he just teleported outside and left in the direction of the ruined castle.
Yea, he ran. None of us expected this.
The king and queen were questioned under the zone of truth and told they didn’t know a thing. They did however have an amulet that was recurring in one of our mage’s dreams. I took it and under oath promised to return it.
Here is where the party split again. We lost our paladin and his pet cow he was hiding. Yea, we didn’t question it.
We split off, my team reached the castle, and there we saw the door that was blessed. I took the pendent and pressed it up to the door. On the other side was the monster, more grunts, and the captured prince.
This was the final battle, and it was rough.
The battle was hectic and heated. Thankfully the throne room was large and had windows. I took an angle from the window waiting for an opportunity to attack with my bow. Everyone took positions, and many got knocked down and attacked, some almost lost their lives. But with the help of Webcap and Sage the druids, we were fighting fit. And when the final blow came to pass, Webcap took out her trusty stick and smacked the monster with it. And that was the end. We saved the royals and were awarded land and titles. I was dubbed Wilt, Fury of the forest.
Yea, that fight was very hard, and we had so many of the players go down to the giant monster (The Big Bad).
Webcap and I departed from the party to protect endangered plants in the forest. But I feel like one day we will be summoned again to assist our friends, and we are ready for that fight.
This concludes the first campaign and the backstory to the 2023-2024 campaign. I hope to have you back for my next installment of “Tales of Team Bagged Milk.”
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