This week, the group checks out an airship, go through a battle montage, end up in Fire Newt City which leads to a dragon, and one member of the group is forced to do The Hustle. Who will it be? Guess you have to read on to find out. My name is Kent, and I am your awful host who posts YouTube videos and Eric writes the blog. My job is way more difficult, obviously. The big question is, do I avoid The Hustle and simply opt for countless montages? No! That would be insulting to The Hustle. Also, after you read this, you will find multiple montage videos. You’re welcome.
____________________________________________
Tomb of Annihilation
Chapter 12 – Jungles and Dragons
Upon waking from a restful night’s sleep, the party discovered that they had set up camp underneath what appeared to be ship wreckage stuck up in the trees. After examining the bits and pieces that had fallen into their camp, Xilix was able to determine that it was the wreckage of an airship, despite not having seen or read about airships since becoming an amnesiac.
Assuming that the actual ship must have crash landed in the jungle, the party began tracking the pieces of wreckage that were still caught up in the trees. Using monk vision, Tempest was easily able to follow the path of wreckage to what appeared to be the main hull of the airship stuck up in the trees.
As Tempest was looking up at the ship, an old lady peeked her head over the side, made a “shushing” noise and gesture, and proceeded to point down. Confused, Tempest lowered her head and look forward . . . straight into the eyes of one of the ghouls that had been stalking the airship, waiting for the crew to come down from the trees. The ghoul smiled and slashed Tempest across the chest. Becoming infused with ghoul poison, Tempest fell over paralyzed as the ghoul pack got ready to eat her for breakfast. Eager to dig into their breakfast, the ghoul pack failed to notice that the rest of the party was right behind Tempest, and they were defeated quite easily.
After purging the poison from her body using her natural monk healing abilities, Tempest and Xilix cast Levitate on the party and they all floated up to the stuck airship. As they landed on the deck of the ship, they noticed that it was manned by about a dozen crewmembers. The highest ranking surviving crewmember, who introduced herself as Old Lady May, explained that they were a cartography party that had been flying over Chult in an attempt to map out the land. Unfortunately, they flew directly into a pack of Pterodactyl-men, who killed half the crew and sent the ship barreling into the jungle below. They had been stuck on the ship for the last 2-3 weeks because of the ghoul pack below, and they were dangerously low on supplies.
As the party began discussing the next steps, a familiar rumbling sound headed through the trees towards them. From the leaves and branches emerged the 4-armed gorillas the party had fought weeks earlier. It appeared that the evil permeating Chult had turned them into zombie 4-armed gorillas.
Wanting to protect her master, Ducky, who was obviously still on the ground, rammed a nearby tree and knocked the undead gorilla hanging from it to the ground. Ducky soon learned the flaw in this plan when the gorilla began beating the living hell out of her. Not wanting to lose his precious pet/best friend, Compassion responded in the most logical way possible by throwing himself off the ship and divebombing the gorilla with lance in hand. In doing so, Compassion was able to kill the gorilla in a most impressive way, while also breaking half the bones in his body and requiring divine magical healing. Hertz let Padre handle that healing as he didn’t want to use Talos’s divine gifts to reward such idiocy.
As for the rest of the undead gorillas, they soon learned that their new undead nature was still no match for the party, and they too were dispatched, albeit not in as flashy of a way as Compassion. After the threat was dealt with, the group spent the next few hours lowering the crew to the ground with ropes. They then asked Arty to escort them back to civilization. The party agreed to contact Arty via Sending spell if they found Omu.
Having rescued the air-shipwreck-ees, the party continued in the direction that they believed would lead them to Omu. Realizing that rolling three rather easy random encounters a day was getting to be really boring, the DM decided that the two-week journey would be done via montage. As the 80s music played, the DM described how over the next two weeks the party easily killed a number of animals and undead that tried to eat them, Xilix spent a lot of time reading and taking new drugs concocted from the Chult plant life, Padre continued to educate Probie on the fine art of smiting heathens and properly washing his undergarments, Hertz continued to compose sonnets for Valindra, Tempest continued her monk training while using Ducky as a sparring partner, and Compassion dug at least 15 graves for adventurers who had been partly eaten by the dangers of the jungle.
After a bit more than two weeks of travel, the party saw a coastal city off in the distance. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be Omu, but was rather Fire Newt City, so named because its entire populace was made up of half-human, half-lizard, fire newt people. Hoping to get some useful information or directions to Omu, the party headed to the city entrance, however, they were quickly stopped by the guards.
As the fire newts only spoke draconic, the party was unable to communicate with them verbally. Their non-verbal communication, however, made it abundantly clear that the party was not welcome in Fire Newt City. Undeterred, Compassion called upon the power of his undergraduate art degree and drew his best rendition of what an ancient cursed city would look like. Impressed with Compassion’s use of shading, the guards indicated that Omu resided directly east of Fire Newt City. Compassion tipped his hat to the guards as a show of thanks as they left.
As they turned to head east, Tempest used her monk vision to quickly scan Fire Newt City. Interestingly, she saw a number of horribly burnt/roasted fire newt bodies that were waiting to be buried (or eaten?). What made this scene particularly stick out to Tempest was the fact that, as fire newts, they should have been resistant to fire damage. It would take a particularly high level of heat to be able to immolate a fire newt the way these had. She shared her findings with the party as they continued their journey.
After a few days of travel, the party came upon a group of Emerald Enclave members setting up camp. Their leader explained that they were setting up a forward camp to aid in their expeditions around Chult. While they did not have anything new on the Death Curse, and no clue where Omu was located, they did share with the party that a dragon was currently residing in an abandoned dwarven mine. Further, they shared that the dragon had been raiding Fire Newt City and terrorizing its populace (hence the charred bodies that Tempest saw). Realizing that bringing the head of the dragon to the fire newts might get them access to Fire Newt City, the party abandoned their plans to head east looking for Omu, and instead they headed northwest towards the dragon’s den.
After another travel montage the party soon found itself at the mouth of the abandoned dwarven mine. As they entered, scorch marks lined the mine walls as the path descended down. Traveling through the mine, the party soon discovered 1) that the dragon had a number of kobald (tiny dragon-men) servants, and 2) that the kobald’s had set up a number of traps.
Not wanting to waste time slaughtering a bunch of kobald’s in their home when their only crime was wanting to hang out with a dragon, Compassion, using his classic evil demon impression, proceeded to go room to room intimidating the kobalds. Unfortunately, while great at being intimidating, Compassion was not so good at finding kobald traps. As such, the journey through the mine went as follows:
Compassion enters room and intimidates the kobalds in said room into submission -> Compassion leaves room -> Compassion sets off tripwire -> Compassion gets caught in trap. During the trip through the mine Compassion was smacked in the face with a giant wooden claw, pelted with large stones falling from the ceiling, and forced to do the hustle by the dreaded “disco-ball trap of illusions and getting funky.”
In addition to the above, on their way down the mineshaft the party came across a room full of dwarven ghosts. After burning off a significant chunk of resources fighting the ghosts, the party was rewarded with a beautiful and magical suit of armor that no one in the party could wear. While dejected, they were at least able to tell themselves that a dragon hoard awaited.
Upon reaching the outside of what they believed to be the dragon’s lair, the party broke up into two teams. Team A – the heroes that would get to fight a dragon toe-to-toe and be heroic like in the stories and stuff was comprised of Compassion, Tempest, and Padre. Team B – they party members who would hide behind a wall and take cowardly pot-shots at the dragon consisted of Hertz, Xilix, and Probie.
With their rolls assigned, Compassion pulled a large chain off the wall, shouted, “let’s do this bros . . . and Tempest,” and Team A charged into the room. Once the dragon saw Team A, he puffed out his chest and began to say, “pitiful fools, you dare enter the lair of Infernus the terri . . . oh my god why are you wrapping a chain around my neck!!!!”
As Compassion proceeded to choke the dragon and pull his head up to prevent him from using his fire breath, Padre and Tempest pulled out their railroad spikes and began nailing the dragon’s wings to the ground. Enraged, the dragon began clawing at its back, doing significant damage to Compassion, who ignored the pain and continued to choke out the dragon.
While the dragon was distracted Team B sprung into action. First, Probie popped out from around the corner and used his bow to shoot the dragon in the left eye. As the dragon roared in pain, Xilix came from around the corner and hurled and giant ball of ice at the dragon, which, being a red (fire-based) dragon, caused excruciating pain. Then Hertz, thinking of all the awesome things he could do to the dragon (striking it with divine thunder and lighting, summoning a holy hammer to smite it, freezing its wings off with a magical sleet storm), proceeded to . . . cast a healing spell on Compassion. Hertz, dejectedly, was forced to play heal-bot for Compassion, who continued to be clawed by the uber-pissed dragon.
As Compassion continued to use his chain to protect Tempest and Padre from the dragon’s deadly fire-breath, Padre raised his greatsword to the heavens, declared the dragon to be a heathen, and called upon the power of Sigmar (a lesser god who is nowhere near as powerful and awesome as Talos) to smite the red dragon. Crying in pain and rage as Padre slid the holy sword into its chest, the dragon was finally able to throw Compassion from his back. Free of the chain, Infernus prepared to immolate Team A. As Infernus opened his mouth to use his mighty breath weapon, Tempest jump into the dragon’s mouth, grabbed the dragon’s nose, flipped over the nose and onto the dragon’s head, and then she kicked Probie’s arrow through the eye socket and directly into the Infunus’s brain, killing the dragon outright.
Reveling in their victory, the party immediately began filling their packs with the thousands of gold in the dragon’s hoard. Within the pile, they found an obviously magical battle-axe covered in dwarven runes. Being the frontline fighter that he is, Compassion took the axe. Upon Xilix translating the magical runes, the party learned the axe was named, “Bob”. In addition to making it easier to hit and damage monsters, Bob also had the truly magical ability of being able to be used as a flotation device in water!
After looting the hoard, the party proceed to use Bob to cut off the dragon’s head, which they intended to bring back to Fire Newt City in the hopes that it would gain them entrance as the heroes of the city.
What will happen when the party brings the dragon head to Fire Newt City? Will the group ever find the lost city of Omu? Will this campaign have more montages than Rocky IV? Find out next week in Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium!
____________________________________________
You wanted it, you now have it. Lots of montages that I do not own the rights to. Please enjoy! There is not a single film here that I wouldn’t recommend. I own all of them, some on multiple formats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHbQr6Xsy8U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMyuv3wkTJs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwBbrngafl0
This one is brilliant for all of the right reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwmQCvRZfVM
And last, the one that shouldn’t make you cry, but it does.
____________________________________________
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.