If you like The Neverending Story, the film, not this blog, then keep reading. If you like pink hippos or a game of Fishing for Padre, keep reading. Most importantly, if a weapon named “Ultimate Fire-Lightning Hammer of Badassitude” sounds like something you can get behind, well sit your ass down, and keep reading. My name is Kent, and I am your terrible host who posts YouTube videos, while Eric is the man who actually does the writing. One of us is slightly more important to the cause than the other. You make the decision. This week, I chose a song that I am not incredibly fond of. Take away my street nerd cred, I don’t care! I can only imagine the rage that a few people just felt, or at least extreme disappointment. I also think that Top Gun is a completely awful film. I never saw it in the 80’s and if you watch it now, it is not a good film without your nostalgia glasses on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geVYIHOat5o
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Tomb of Annihilation
Chapter 14 – Fishing for Padre
While Hertz and Xilix’s performance had tamed the crowd, it did not result in Mersveas’ men defecting to their side. As such, when the dust settled they were left with a rebel army of 16.
Gathering around the thinking table to strategize, El Revolutionidad explained that retaking the city would be tough because they had a lightning-spewing, half-dragon, half-centipede beast-thing guarding the city. To defeat it, he suggested the party sneak into what was known as the “inverted tower” within the city of Sithmorkane. Within the tower was a bronze dragon that had been trapped by a drow mage. Perhaps they could bargain with the dragon, agreeing to free him in exchange for defeating the Centi-Dragon.
Knowing that in order to enter the city and reach the tower they would have to distract the Centi-Dragon, they party called over Greck. They asked Greck to have the giants come to the city and pelt the inverted tower with boulders to lure the Centi-Dragon out of the city. Once Greck headed out, the party began their journey to Sithmorkane.
During the journey, they ran into a group of Azers (fire-dwarfs). While they tried to avoid hostilities, it soon became obvious that they were Azer slavers, likely working for the fire giants. What gave it away was the pack of drow children, in chains, yelling, “help, they are slavers and we are being taken as slaves, please rescue us!” While party spent a lot of time being on fire, the slavers were no match for the party’s might, especially when backed up by the rebel army. Upon victory, one of the rebel drow escorted the children back to the rebel base, reducing them to an army of 15.
After a few more hours of travel the party reached the gates of Sithmorkane, which turned out to be a sizable city suspended over a cavern by giant spider webs. The only way into the city was to traverse a rope bridge made entirely of spider silk. As the stone giants had not yet arrived, the party decided to set up camp and rest for the night.
The next morning the party awoke to the sound of boulders striking various structures in the city. Realizing that the assault had begun, they equipped their weapons and armor and headed for the bridge. As the point of this mission was to infiltrate the tower, they left everyone but El Revolutionidad behind.
Despite being unaccustomed to traversing spider silk, everyone was able to move across it quite easily. Everyone, that is, except for Padre, who fell off the bridge into the pit below. Luckily for Padre, he landed on a giant spider web below the bridge. Unluckily for Padre, the giant spiders that called the web home were on their way to eat him.
To rescue the good father, the party members on the bridge each cut strands of spider silk from the bridge and began playing “Fishing for Padre.” The first party member to attach the sticky web to Padre and pull him up would be declared the winner. Unless the spiders ate Padre, then they would be declared the winners (until the holy heartburn kicked in). After Probie successfully hooked Padre, and then deliberately dropped him out of spite, Tempest eventually got ahold of Padre just before one of the spiders could bite into him.
As they finished crossing the bridge, the party chastised Padre for being so careless. Because they were so focused on their chastisement, they failed to notice the Fire Giant, Azers, and Hell Hounds that were guarding the Inverted Tower. While they thought about retreating, they knew that this might be their only chance to free the brass dragon, and they readied themselves for the fight of their lives.
Thinking quickly, Compassion used his innate demon powers to cast Darkness around the enemies, causing the Azers and Hell Hounds to stumble around the magical darkness trying to find the group. Unfortunately, due to the fire giant being a giant, the zone of darkness only reached the giant’s waste, allowing him full view of the party.
Hertz prayed to Talos and summoned a storm cloud in the underground city. He then began striking the giant in the face with multiple lightning bolts. By the time the giant reached the group, he was already burnt and bloody. Unfortunately, a burnt and bloody giant is still a force to be reckoned with, and he began pounding away at Compassion and Padre with his humongous sword.
As Padre, Hertz, and Compassion dueled with the giant, Hertz and Xilix used their spells to freeze and radiate the Azers and Hell Hounds that made their way out of the magical darkness. While the giant came close to killing Compassion and Padre on multiple occasions, in each instance Hertz would use his healing magic to get them back in the fight. After a long and brutal battle, the fire giant was felled by his wounds, and the party booked it over to the inverted tower. As they left, they told El Revolutionidad to retreat outside the city with the other members of the resistance.
Once they reached the tower, Xilix and Tempest cast Levitate and brought the rest of the party down to the entrance, which overhung a deep and moaning ore chasm. As they entered the tower they found themselves in a throne room, with a rather disinterested drow sitting on the throne. After explaining that they were there to recruit the drow’s dragon to help liberate the city, the surly wizard drow revealed that the dragon was none other than P-dawg himself.
Intent on rescuing P-dawg as the dream ghost had ordered, Compassion asked to be let into the pocket dimension where P-dawg was being held. The drow explained that while P-dawg was free to go if they convinced him to join their mission, it was much more likely they would be tortured and then eaten by P-dawg. As the pocket dimension was part of the shadowfell, a dimension of shadows and darkness and evil, the once good brass dragon P-dawg had been morphed and corrupted into a shadow dragon. Believing in his mission, Compassion was undeterred by the danger.
The drow wizard opened a portal and party went through, at which point they were immediately burned by the dragon’s dark-fire breath weapon. Retreating behind a nearby outcropping of rocks, the party decided that they better discuss strategy as Hertz healed their wounds. Referring to Xilix’s notes on the ecology of dragons, the learned that brass dragons inherently love practical jokes and other forms of comedy. After debating for 20 minutes, the party decided the best way to get the dragon on their side was to put on a comedic play to draw out his brass dragon nature and beat back the corruption of the shadowfell.
Still having his notebook and pen from taking Padre’s notes, Probie offered to draft the one-act play entitled, “Xilix gets really high and does stupid and embarrassing shit.” Because his mentee was the scrip writer, Padre insisted on being the director. As Xilix and Hertz had to use their magic to construct the stage and props, the part of Xilix was played by Compassion, who had spent enough time with Xilix to know what he was really like when high.
After Compassion was able to convince P-dawg to take a break from trying to eat them until the play was completed, the show went on. The show mostly consisted of Compassion (as Xilix) acting dizzy and falling over after ingesting large amounts of drugs, Compassion falling over after being tripped by Tempest, Compassion getting hit in the face with magically conjured pies by Tempest, and Compassion, while covered in pie, pretending to ride a giant pink hippopotamus.
While a B- performance at best, Compassion sold the physical comedy well enough that P-dawg decided the party would make better friends than appetizers. Having successfully befriended P-dawg, the party asked if he would like to get out of his prison and eat all of their enemies that had invaded Sithmorkane. Excited at the prospect of getting to spend more time with Compassion, and also getting to eat a large number of intelligent humanoids, P-dawg readily agreed.
After exiting through a portal back into the throne room, Compassion thanked the drow mage for his help. The party then mounted P-dawg and took off flying over Sithmorkane while singing the theme song from “Never Ending Story.” While flying, Compassion directed P-dawg to smite the enemies below. This went fine until P-dawg used his breath weapon and disintegrated one of the drow resistance fighters. Compassion then went into a detailed explanation as to whom the enemies actually were.
Once Compassion was sure that P-dawg wouldn’t be killing any more of their allies, he directed P-dawg to land near the palace that appeared to be the fire giant’s base of operations. Entering the palace, they were soon set upon by a number of Azers who were also clerics of the fire giant god Surter. Declaring that, “your god’s fire is no match of my god’s thunder,” Hertz strode forward and cast a maximized Shatter spell on the fire-dwarves. Unfortunately, their god’s magic was strong, and they were able to shrug off the worst of the thunder damage. As the Azers laughed at Hertz and blasphemed Talos, Padre strode forward and said, “this is why my god uses a sword,” and he proceeds to chop their heads off.
The threat contained, the party continued deeper into the castle, eventually finding a regally dressed fire giant in what appeared to be a study. Assuming this to be the leader of the fire giants, the party attempted to negotiate the withdrawal of the fire giants from Sithmorkane.
As they spoke, it soon became apparent that the fire giant did not speak any of the languages that the party spoke, making negotiation difficult. During the attempted negotiations, Hertz noticed that sitting in the middle of the room was a war hammer submerged in molten lava. Pulling it out of the lava, Hertz discovered that it was a magical fire-hammer. Wanting to impress the giant leader, Hertz cast Spiritual Weapon and summoned his trusty lightning hammer. He then merged the lightning hammer with the fire hammer and created the Ultimate Fire-Lightning Hammer of Badassitude.
After the “ohhh”s and “ahhh”s, subsided, Hertz knelt before the giant king and presented the UF-LHoB to the king as a sign of respect. The giant lord took a minute to admire the hammer, clearly impressed with its power, and then proceeded to smack Hertz in the head with it, knocking him out cold.
Realizing that the giant wasn’t going to give up Sithmorkane without a fight, the rest of the party engaged. After a tiring battle that left the entire party on the brink of death, Xilix cast an ice spell and froze the giant’s head solid. Before the giant king could unthaw, Tempest jump kicked the giant’s head, shattering it into a thousand bloody icicles. Hertz was later informed upon waking from his coma that it was all very impressive.
The fire giant threat has been neutralized but the death curse remans. What will be the party’s next course of action, and how will they even make it back to the surface world? Find out next time on Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium!
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This is my preferred Never Ending Story Video which from Cartoon Network/Adult Swim/Turner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNxHe25RATE
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You can find us at the actual 9 Deuce website where we have the archives as well as other content such as horror movie reviews, wrestling blogs, podcasts, and some other material. We’re on Facebook, on Twitter @official9deuce, or Tumblr @ superkent92 or Instagram at Official9Deuce . Share this, like this, write us an email with a question or a comment at kent@9deuce.com. Hell, you can subscribe via RSS. Facebook and the website are probably the best bets. Thank you. Also, I don’t own the rights to any of these music videos, obviously. You know who the owners are and they deserve all the credit.