Episode 13: Did that really just happen?

Last session left us mid fight with two large wolf like creatures we're calling nightmare beasts for now. They had just breathed a frosty chill over a lot of the party, doing quite a bit of damage.

So, being the heroes we are, we doubled down on doing damage and just laid into these creatures. Vohn's shooting well, Thonk is hitting well, Malek is a little hindered because his cold damage doesn't do as much damage to these creatures, Fizzledorp is chainsawing like mad. Meghan decides that one round of stalking* is sufficient and romps up on one of the nightmare beasts and bites it mightly. And the beast in front of Meghan goes down.

Before Meghan can act again, Shinara puts up a dome of some sort, just in time for the other beast to do its breath weapon again. And the dome stopped the breath weapon. The rest of the party took out the second beast.

And that's when Malek realized that these were creatures from another plane, so therefore aren't actually dead yet. They're dead on our plane for now, but they've returned to their plane and could return to ours. So Shinara does ... something, not entirely sure what ... to send us to the nightmare beast's plane of existence.

This is where things get kinda interesting. We all arrive, except Paul, on the nightmare beasts' plane not quite as ourselves. OK, not really as our real selves. It was more like ... our dream selves. Let's see if I can describe this.

Fizzledorp, our 3' tall gnomish paladin in full plate, arrives atop a gleaming platinum dragon, but physically unchanged himself. Well, except for the monster grin on his face, his deity is an obscure dragon deity.

Thonk, our Orcish "muscle wizard", is now for reals a mage. Full splendor glorious robes, and his spell darts now actually do the spells.

Malek, our Tiefling sorcerer, is now a legit champion of his deity. I've not seen his full transformation's powers yet.

Lutor, our Asterion cleric, is now a 9' tall Asterion that has a holy glow about him, a tremendous roar, and a very large grin.

Vohn, our 3' tall pink pseudo-winged Kobold gunslinger, is now a 9' tall fully winged humanoid. His gun has gotten more impressive as well.

Meghan, the half drow elf druid, is now fully human. She took the form she uses when using her magical glamour ... 6' tall tanned blonde human with green eyes. Once they entered combat though, she became a fire elemental with the ability to heal or harm with her fire.

Vohn can't help it but grins down at Meghan and says "Hello little one". She responds with "Well your size fits your spirit for once".

Then it was game on, battle wise.

The two nightmare-beasts merged into one massive being that was quite intimidating, but our new found selves was up to the task.

Unfortunately it has been too long since this fight for my memory to remember the details, but we did have some epic skills and a great deal of fun battling this nightmare-beast. I'm going to summarize a bit to get us up to present day for the next episode.

When the nightmare-beast died this time, it stayed dead. And after it died, we were wrenched back to the material plane to find Shinara sees us, grins, and passes out cold. Everyone is back to their normal forms, and Meghan is still in mountain lion form. Vohn starts silently mourning his dream-self, so Meghan walks up to him and head-bonks him before going to the perimeter of the party to patrol while we sort out what to do next.

After some discussion, it is decided to continue on to the druid's grove. Thonk picks up Shinara as she's still passed out, and Meghan leads the way. See, Meghan had been to the grove before, in the dream sequence when Feria gave Meghan a spell to use on the entire party. And, she's good at woods. So we're able to get to the grove easily and in one piece.

There we find the grove occupied with several were-wolves. Not the ones from the town, but ones dedicated to Neria. And these were-wolves have a lot of information for us.

The line between the dream realm and the nightmare realm has been breached by a powerful former avatar of Neria. Right now the were-wolves dedicated to Neria are actively trying to keep the breach from doing too much damage. Basically they're holding a flood of nightmares back. They take us to the battle going on in the dream-scape and it really is a holding back the dam situation.

When we return to our reality we set up camp at a respectful spot - this is a holy druid's grove after all - and set up to discuss what to do next. See, this is a big issue the dream-scapes merging, and the followers of this former avatar are opening rifts to the north of the grove to bring in more nightmares. However, there's still the issue of the were-wolves in the town of Warwick. Which is who we are contracted to work for.

That night Meghan asks "So, which is the higher priority, protect this grove that's defending the world from a greater disaster, or try to sort out the town of Warwick's issues. They both need to be dealt with, absolutely."

Fizzledorp, being the Lawful Paladin sort, responds with "So far only little enemies have been breaking through these rifts, not causing much harm. The people of Warwick have outright refused to leave and could be in imminent danger of whatever is going on there not to mention its proximity to this grove as well."

"I want to be honest... we have to protect the people of Warwick. But with the amount of information we have now, I'm not sure how we could go back there and do that without people getting killed." responded Malek, he then continued "I don't want to walk into a situation where we have to kill people because we haven't done our diligence to find out what else is going on around the situation. North holds more context. We could possibly get information from those who are opening the rifts."

After a bit more back and forth, Fizzledorp requests that we at least warn the refugees of Warwick so they can better prepare themselves. So Meghan agreed to send Paul off with a note explaining what was going on.

During the debate about which task to tackle next, Malek brings up "Knowledge is power. Those who fight for good must have more of it than those who fight for evil." Meghan felt it was important to clarify that she's not a good aligned person "Knowledge is power, indeed. I do wish to clarify that I do not necessarily fight for good, I fight for restoration of the balance in nature."

This turned into a little bit of posturing and a fairly lengthy debate between Meghan, Malek and Fizzledorp, about the nature of good vs evil, Fizzledorp left Meghan with a warning of "As long as you understand I will not be able to sit by while you commit an act of evil." And at some point Vohn sits in to listen to what the three are talking about.

* Stalking gives her +1d6 damage on her next attack per round of stalking.