The entrance to the Slums. Surely nothing terrible awaits them on the other side.
Previously...
Aldren, Mara, Lucian, and Merrick have survived their first days in New Phlan, somehow making it through a tavern brawl, a near-death stay at the hostel, and their first encounter with the newly created Decision Die. With the city mapped, their equipment purchased, and absolutely nothing learned from their previous mistakes, the party is finally ready to leave civilization behind and venture into the Slums.
With New Phlan to their posteriors and the prospect of loot ahead of them, the party ventured forward into the area lovingly referred to as the Slums of Phlan. Giggity.
Merrick, being impressively ignorant this day, immediately set about trying to discover a secret door in every single fucking wall.
Every wall. Every hallway. Every brick that looked even remotely capable of hiding a secret.
Whether the game was actually punishing us for this or the local denizens were simply getting tired of watching Merrick fondle their masonry, the result was the same. Within minutes, the party found themselves entangled in their first real battle:
Orcs!
For a man with four hit points, Lucian was suddenly feeling pretty fucking important.
Lucian immediately demonstrated just how ridiculously powerful the Sleep spell is against low-level enemies by knocking most of the bastards unconscious. Merrick and Mara took care of what remained.
And just like that, their first battle in the Slums was over. Each party member received eight experience points and a few coins for their trouble.
Woot-muthafuckin-woot. Only, oh, a few thousand XP to go, right?
The party took approximately one more step before being set upon by a group of seedy-looking kobolds.
They went down about as easily as the orcs.
“Hey, thief,” Mara said to Merrick while cleaning flecks of monster scalp and gore from her mace, “maybe you should wait for the right opportunity to search around instead of stopping at every damned wall. We're spending ten times as long out here because of you.”
Merrick frowned.
“You only make the shots you take, Mara.”
Mara stared at him. “What the hell's that even mean?”
Merrick smiled and mimed taking a shot at an imaginary basket.
“Swish!”
Nobody got it. Not even Merrick. Mara looked half tempted to punch him square in the face.
The party argued for a while longer over Merrick's obsessive need to search everywhere and everything at all times. As for me, I had a decision to make.
Did I leave the SEARCH toggle on and allow Merrick to continue inspecting every fucking inch of the Slums?
I grabbed a 1d4. Since Merrick was essentially the only asshole arguing for this particular idea, SEARCH would stay on only if I rolled a 4.
Naturally, I rolled a 4.
So, at least for the foreseeable future, barring some great catastrophe, we'd be searching EVERY FUCKING INCH of this place.
Said catastrophe occurred about two battles later.
What should have been another routine encounter with kobolds ended with Mara and Lucian lying in bloody heaps on the ground.
Merrick keeps searching. The party keeps dying.
Aldren turned toward Merrick.
“We need to get them out of here and head back to town!”
“What? We just got here!”
“Mara's bleeding from her ears and Lucian's legs aren't meant to bend like that!”
This seemed like another situation where a roll, not me, would decide my party's fate. Given the severity of the situation, Aldren was also pretty much speaking for Mara and Lucian, who were a bit indisposed. That gave getting the hell out of there three votes, meaning only a 1 would convince me that these four assholes were stupid enough to continue exploring with half the party actively dying.
I rolled a 3.
Thank. Fucking. God.
The party retreated to New Phlan and hit up the first temple they could find. The cleric there, a rather solemn-looking woman named Joy, informed Aldren and Merrick that healing would cost 100 gold.
Even if everyone violated the newly established No Sharing the Loot rule and combined everything they had, they still couldn't afford it.
Aldren rubbed his chin and sighed. “Looks like we'll need to head back to the hostel.”
A few moments later, with Mara and Lucian still barely clinging to life, they made it back to the same small hostel that had saved their asses before. The desk clerk greeted them.
“1 platinum, please.”
One platinum later, everyone is breathing again. Financially, this adventure is going extremely well.
“You know, this IS all your fault. You should have to pay for the room,” Aldren said with a complete lack of joy in his tone.
“What? We would've had to kill the bastards eventually!”
Aldren sighed.
Aldren paid.
After a day or so of resting, memorizing spells, and once again relying heavily upon Mara's Cure Light Wounds, everybody was eventually patched back together.
Success!
Back to the Slums.
It wasn't long before the party came across a locked door.
Merrick promptly made it his bitch.
Inside, they discovered a healthy-looking goblin leader training a collection of younger goblin warriors.
This guy looks like he’s been waiting all week for leg day. Unfortunately, we’re leg day.
This wasn't another handful of kobolds wandering around an alley. This was a real fight.
Things went badly almost immediately. Lucian took a grievous wound from one of the lower-ranked goblin warriors and very nearly joined all those people we lovingly bury and then never think to visit.
Fortunately, Mara managed to reach him in time and slapped him with a well-placed Cure Light Wounds. Lucian staggered back to his feet.
From there, things actually started going our way.
Merrick and Mara tore into the younger warriors while Aldren fought his way toward their leader. Eventually, Aldren landed the killing blow.
The goblin leader fell, and somehow, against all odds, the entire party was still standing.
Better yet, there was shit everywhere.
The party briefly considered leaving some of it behind, then remembered who they were.
Armor. Weapons. Coins.
Enough loot that continuing deeper into the Slums suddenly seemed considerably less important than hauling all this crap back to town and finding somebody dumb enough to buy it.
So that's exactly what they did.
After a good night's sleep at the local hostel, the next morning was spent doing the important work of adventuring: selling others' shit.
Everybody was in pretty damn good spirits.
Then Merrick tried to sell a suit of leather armor.
The merchant offered him 1,000 gold for it.
Merrick just stared at him.
One thousand?
For leather armor?
There was absolutely no fucking way this was normal armor.
Unfortunately, nobody in the party had the 200 gold necessary to have it properly identified.
Merrick suddenly had several follow-up questions.
Merrick considered this problem for approximately three seconds.
Then he put it on.
If somebody was willing to pay a thousand gold for the thing, it had to be magical.
Probably.
Maybe probably.
Definitely not cursed.
Probably.
Merrick admired himself in his newly acquired armor. “See that, Aldren? Our first big score!”
“You mean YOUR first big score,” Mara interjected.
Lucian leaned closer and examined the strange material.
“Hmm. I've seen this sort of thing before.”
Everyone looked at him.
Lucian ignored them.
“It's definitely been magically altered.”
Merrick's grin widened. “I say we go back there before some other party of adventurers grabs all the good stuff that's left!”
This time, everybody agreed.
Probably for completely different reasons.
The party made their way back into the Slums and continued exploring until they eventually came upon yet another locked door.
Aldren looked toward Merrick.
“Merrick?”
“On it.”
A few moments later, the door swung open to reveal a wood-paneled room and an old man with a pencil.
The old man looked up.
“Well?”
“Um... hello!” Aldren said considerably louder than necessary.
Merrick chuckled. “Nice one.”
The old man blinked. Then he blinked again. Then he sighed.
Aldren had successfully established that they were, in fact, there.
“You know, I may have some use for you. Some time ago, I ordered a special potion. The potion is ready, but I cannot leave to fetch it. Bring it here. I pay well.”
There was a pause as Aldren glanced around at his three companions.
“Um, yes! We accept your great quest, wonderful old... man!”
The old man stared at him.
“It waits in a booth in the old Rope Guild, but a short distance southeast from where you now stand. Speak my name. Ohlo.”
“Ohlo,” Aldren repeated.
Everyone in the room turned and looked at him.
Ohlo sighed.
“Not now, you moron. When you get to the Rope Guild.”
The Rope Guild was only a few minutes' walk from Ohlo's house, and the party reached it without much resistance from the local denizens of the Slums. After some additional exploration and, surprisingly, no combat encounters, they stumbled upon a small shop sitting all by itself within the old guild.
Inside, a man wearing a very keen blue apron greeted them.
“I am sorry, noble ones, but I have nothing to sell.”
Aldren leaned forward. This time, considerably more confident in his understanding of how secret passwords worked, he whispered:
“Ohlo.”
Against all odds, Aldren had remembered both the password and when to use it.
The shopkeeper's eyes lit up. He nodded.
“Wait a moment.”
He hurried into the back of the shop and returned shortly afterward carrying a package.
“Here.”
Aldren accepted it and turned triumphantly toward the others.
“Success! We should return this to Ohlo at once!”
Merrick put a hand to his chin. “Wait. What's the hurry? We're already here. There could be some good shit hiding in this old guild!”
Mara and Lucian appeared to agree, their eyes already drifting toward the abandoned hallways outside the shop.
Decision Die time.
Merrick, Mara, and Lucian wanted to continue exploring. Aldren wanted to deliver the potion.
Three against one.
Which meant only a 1 would allow Aldren to somehow convince everybody to leave.
I rolled.
And it was a 1.
Again.
What the fuck?
“Fine,” Merrick grumbled. “But we're coming right back here when we're done!”
The walk back to Ohlo's house was brief and remarkably boring. Once inside, Aldren approached the old man with the package in hand.
There was an obvious way to handle this. So obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.
“You have done well,” Ohlo said. “Give me the potion and you will be rewarded.”
And that's when the game presented me with three choices:
- Give the potion to the old man.
- Ask for more money.
- Or flat-out tell him to go fuck himself.
Oh, good. Another opportunity to completely ruin my game with a 1d4.
Since this wasn't a simple yes-or-no decision, I weighted the die based on what everybody wanted.
Aldren obviously wanted to hand over the package and collect the promised reward. Merrick and Mara both wanted more money. Lucian kept staring at the potion like a starving man looking through the window of a bakery.
So a 1 meant Aldren got his way, 2 or 3 meant asking for more money, and a 4 meant letting Lucian do whatever questionable thing he was currently imagining.
I rolled a 2.
We were asking for more money.
Mara stepped forward.
“I do believe something like this might be worth a bit more than you were originally offering, no?”
Yup. That pissed the old man off.
Suddenly, we were in a battle with Ohlo and approximately...
Oh...
A fuckton of enemies.
Things deteriorated rapidly.
Lucian panicked and somehow managed to cast Sleep on himself. Then he caught a wayward arrow.
Lucian died.
A round later, everybody else joined him.
Well. Shit.
My entire party was dead.
Game Over.
Fuck.
I sat there staring at the screen.
I had never actually decided what I would do if the entire party got wiped out. Apparently, that was something I probably should have considered before beginning a four-game saga starring four first-level morons.
I mean, I'd be loading a previous save, sure. But what happened IN the game? How the hell was the story supposed to justify the fact that all four of them were suddenly alive again?
Well, as far as I'm concerned, the characters remember it.
All of it.
Their deaths happened.
Somehow.
Somewhere.
They just didn't stay happened.
And with that...
Aldren blinked.
Their bodies were no longer bloody and broken. Lucian was alive. Mara was alive. Merrick was alive. All four of them were standing in front of the same old man.
Ohlo was still waiting for his package.
For several seconds, nobody spoke. They had all seen what happened. They had felt it. It had been real.
And yet apparently it hadn't happened at all.
Aldren swallowed.
“Crom.”
Mara looked at him. “Who the hell is Crom?”
Aldren stared blankly ahead. “I don't know.”
Ohlo cleared his throat.
“Well? Do you have it or don't you!?”
This time there would be no vote.
They gave Ohlo the package.
Nobody asked for more money.
Next Time On...
The Slums remain only partially mapped, Merrick is wandering around in unidentified magical leather armor, and the party has now discovered that apparently even death isn't enough to get them out of this fucking adventure.
Oh, and then there's that reward thing.