Session 2 (March 2nd , 2019)

I arrived about an hour late because of reasons. I walk in, and meet Noah, who's new, has a character named Varus, a Golgari Elf Rogue. I’ve done my best to ret con him into the story of the first session to the best of my ability.

When I arrive, Sticker makes it in the front door of the basilica in time to see Varus go down from a critical hit from a gargoyle. There are two of them. Apparently when anyone who isn't allowed crosses their line of sight, they animate and investigate, and our rogue missed his passive spot check and got got.

Bucklechops, our fearless sadistic bard, has decided to play some music to distract all the people in the room, probably while the rogue tried to sneak in. Our Izzet Vedalken Wizard, Vaa, as Sticker calls him, has decided to never fight unless he thinks he has to and is currently standing stoically off to the side, also somewhat alarmed that Varus has gone down.

So Sticker does exactly what a fearless Gruul Goblin Barbarian would do. He draws his Trident and Dagger and gets to work, charging the closest Gargoyle. As he does this, the gargoyle turns and starts walking toward him to engage, and Bucklechops starts taunting the second gargoyle to draw him out too. While they approach us, Vaa sneaks behind them to go to Varus to heal him with a potion.

Sticker is trying to summon up all the rage he can, but he just can't seem to find his anger. He just can't. Instead he does the next best thing and pretends to go into a rage and gets two really good hits in with his trident and his dagger. Then the Gargoyle swipes at him but Sticker ducks, and when the gargoyle attempts to take a huge bite of Sticker's Flesh, he brings his shoulder up and shoves his boar skull decoration into the Gargoyle's mouth, jamming it open. While this intense combat is happening, Bucklechops is just messing with the other Gargoyle verbally, who is very confused, because he thought Chops was threatening him but now Chops is acting like a court jester. Chops clearly knows how to work the streets. He’s super savvy.

Vaa gets to Varus, who survived two death save throws, and heals him for 5hp with a potion. Then, instead of helping, they sneak down the stairs to the door to check to see if they can pick it. That's right. They abandon us to fight two gargoyles ALONE, who are normally like lvl 3 creatures, to pick a door. In the middle of a fight. Brilliant. I mean clearly Varus needs some breathing room, but he acts too loose around Vaa, who clearly doesn’t know how streets work, the chump.

So Sticker realizes if this is going to happen, he’s going to have to make it happen, and this is where Sticker becomes LEGENDARY. He fights the gargoyle, who has resistance to basically all physical attacks, which is all he can deal, for like, 6 rounds. Sticker dodges and parries every attempt at a blow as he slowly chinks off chucks of stone through his sheer force of will, finishing the gargoyle off by punching up with his dagger into its gut so hard that he actually lifts the gargoyle off the floor for a second, then driving his trident into its skull, using it to split it open all while screaming "I AM THE STICKER YOU MISERABLE ROCK."

The Sticker is legendary counter is now at 1.

So meanwhile, Bucklechops starts to leave and the Gargoyle he was distracting disengages to investigate the staircase where the rogue and wizard went. Vaa and Varus manage to remove a gas canister from inside the lock but haven’t actually picked it yet. They are now trapped at the bottom of a staircase with a gargoyle bearing down on them. Vaa uses chaos bolt to deal 18 damage to it and Varus shoots at it point blank and misses. Vaa then follows up with some sort of ice bolt spell and explodes it’s head just in time for Sticker to land on its back stabbing his Trident into its dead rock corpse.

Bucklechops was trying to disengage from the Gargoyle to get some distance to shoot it with a bow, but he had a bad initiative roll and the gargoyle disappeared before he could get a shot off.

With the Gargoyles disposed of, the party took a short rest at the suggestion of our DM, got our gear back from the front gate, barred the door, and Sticker shaped the gargoyle remains into the shape of his clan’s mark and planted his boar's skull into its remains as a sort of crown so everyone would know who destroyed it and (eventually) this entire building.

Varus picks the lock, and the party sneaks into the basement together (for once). According to the map Vaa acquired, to the north is a hallway that lead’s the Guardroom and to the south is a hallway that leads to the crypts where Izolda reportedly hides her secret ledger.

Vaa spreads ball bearings across the hallway to the north, as they can hear people talking and laughing in that direction and Sticker sneaks with Varus into the other hallway to investigate it. Right around the corner is another large room with an open doorway. Sticker slowly sneaks up and peak his head in, finding Izolda working on some paperwork with a Thrull on her desk helping her. Carefully, Sticker sneaks back and tell the group what he saw so we could come up with a plan to get past her. We devise the following:

1. Vaa is going to presdigitate black robes onto everyone.
2. We are going to just walk past the door calmly like we belong.

This is a terrible plan. I know this is going to fail. Absolutely 100%.

Orzhov don't hire or work with Goblins, Elves, or Vedalken. Literally no one in our party is the correct race. Especially not the correct race to be wandering into the sacred crypts below the basilica; Buuuuut Sticker isn't smart, and he thinks these other people are smarter than he is, so he just says "Yeah Sticker is stealthy. Sticker will sneak sneak instead of kill kill this time."

So real talk for a minute. This is where everything just goes... south. Real fast. Sticker probably should have died fighting that Gargoyle, but he didn't, because he got super lucky, and now we’re about to use a guaranteed to fail plan to try to sneak past the leader of the basilica without assessing the number of Guards behind us. Get your pants on y’all this about to get real.

Sticker goes first, because he’s a walking ballista of stubborn grit. As he walks in front of the door, Izolda immediately, immediately, says "Halt! Who are you?"

Sticker just keeps on walking. And Vaa, who is second, stops and starts to try to come up with an explanation for why we are here and mid sentence Bucklechops, who was third, takes out his bow and tries to shoot her in the face and everyone stops talking and everything they’re doing.

It’s one of those moments, where everything goes from a good time to dead silent serious in a second or two. The energy of the party completely shifts as what just happened sinks in. Then the panic hits.

Our DM says, "are you sure?" and everyone says "NO!" as Chops says "Yeah" and our DM says "uhhh... ok... um roll for hit?" and we just stare, dumb founded, as Chops rolls his die.

I’ll be the first to admit we haven’t had the smoothest sailing up to this point as a group. This though, this was like a next level bold move. Or at least it felt like it. Pretty much everyone had decided that we just lost the campaign. I mean Izolda must be at least, at least, level 5 to be running a basilica.

And we can't even kill her, because we're here to collect evidence so the Azorius can put her in jail; and Bucklechops, that insane little goblin lad, just lobbed an arrow at her with no explanation.

So Varus, that desperate charismatic panicking rogue of an elf, goes into overdrive. He screams "You owe the Obzedat! and we're here to collect. Surrender now or pay with your life!" he goes full on bluff and intimidate at the same time. She laughs at us while another Thrull comes out from under the desk and charges Bucklechops and deals like 8 damage to him in one hit.

While the elf is arguing, Sticker leap over and bury his dagger and trident into its back dealing 15 damage (it doesn't even blink) and looks at the elf saying, "Find our payment, we'll handle this" While Vaa casts sleep and rolls 29 and only puts the one I hit to sleep. The other one had taken 5 points of damage from the arrow that it took while diving in front of Izolda. This means they have over 35 hp each.

At this point Sticker is in "We need one character to survive and escape with the documents" mode. I figure if one person gets out, then the story can continue and the rest of us can just roll new characters.

Our DM is kind, so Izolda gets cocky and says "on the off chance you are telling the truth I'm going to just kill you myself so I don't implicate my guards.” Bucklechops follows up by burning his last spell slot to cast sleep again, actually putting the other Thrull to sleep.

Vaa only has one spell slot left. So our team quickly decides the only way to get out is to deal enough damage to Izolda so we can put her to sleep too.

So Sticker does what Sticker does. He charges in the room and does a leaping attack with his Dagger and Trident, slashing across her chest with the dagger but missing on his spinning stab with the Trident (this is Sticker's first miss of the campaign), and standing in front of her on her desk. She had just said something cheeky and Sticker bellowed in her face "Then prepare your defense for the Obzedat, for your fate is sealed!" Izolda sneers at him and casts a spell, making a bajillion ghosts start swirling all over the room. She then runs into a smaller room in the back and slams the door shut while screaming "GUARDS"

We all roll for initiative for the next round. We all roll bad.

Vaa runs around the corner back to face the corridor the Guards would come from and sees two Guards on their backs and one standing up still running through the ball bearings. So he throws two viles of oil as a bonus action then casts a firebolt spell and lights everyone on fire. Bucklechops comes up to the corner and shoots the standing guard with his bow for 5 damage, but almost immediately gets taken down by a guard with a crossbow who critical hit him. Varus heads for the crypt to start looking through doors to try to find what we came for. We are all in "everyone in the party is probably going to die" mode.

While everyone is engaging the guards, Sticker decides to leave the room full of ominous swirling ghosts. The DM Looks at me with a big, evil grin and says "ok, take a will save."

I look at my sheet. My will modifier is -1. Everyone starts going "You can do this man!" The DM's wife blows on my dice for good luck. I'm like "See ya later guys, this is the end." The last time I tried to take a will save I rolled a 3 and spent 4 rounds crawling around laughing uncontrollably.

I roll.

I roll a 4. Our DM goes "oh man!" and takes out a d8, and he rolls it. Then he rolls it again. Then he rolls it again.

and he stares. "Are you kidding me," are the words that eek out of his mouth in flustered disbelief, as he explains that as Sticker starts to move out of the room, a bunch of the ghosts pour into his body, and he gets a stomache ache, and he takes 3 damage. Out of 24 possible damage from a level 3 spell, Sticker takes 3 damage.

Sticker is Legendary counter is now at 2.

I reiterate how as the ghosts pour into Stickers body, he screams from on top of the desk "I AM THE STICKER", and stumbles off the desk while like, doing that thing where you're falling in slow motion while running forward, and crashes into the wall next to the door. Then, sliding out of the room and slamming the door behind him, while wretching up a little bit of bile and blood, takes a deep breath, then while looking at Vaa casually says "You probably shouldn't go in there."

Vaa decides that that moment, in the middle of the fight against the guards, as Sticker is scrambling out of the room, that moment is a good time to try to slit one of the sleeping thrulls throats to kill it.

They don't work like that, and he takes a bunch of damage. Sticker pushes him out of the grip of the now awake Thrull, and decapitates it, sending the head flying across the room. While looking at Vaa he growls "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS" And proceeds to race around the corner, jumping on the back of one Guard, killing him with his dagger to the back of the throat, then slicing at the other guard with his trident but missing.

It is past time for all of us to pack up and go home, so we speed run the next round, where the guard gets a lucky initiative, hits Sticker for 6 damage, then Sticker finishes him off by gutting the guy.

Bucklechops manages to come back to his senses with 1 hp. Sticker is at like 9 health out of 25. He’s not feeling great. Izolda has been trapped in a room doing who knows what. We killed some guards. We’re all out of spells. Varus tried to find an alternate way out but rolled a critical fail and picked a door with nothing behind it. but nothing bad happened besides him being REALLY excited and now he's sad. We're all probably going to die.

And so ends our second session