Back to Undermountain

Hello nerds! I am pretty darn excited right about now. I’m prepping to play D&D! Total Party Kill, the D&D podcast I participate in, is about to switch campaigns. We’re now cycling back to the Undermountain adventure I played in previously. I’m always excited when prepping to play D&D. I’m extra excited now because Flessa is one of my favorite characters to play. She’s dumb. I love playing dumb characters. I spend all day being smart. It’s nice to have a break.

In preparation for our first session, I have just finished listening to the entirety of our previous Undermountain adventure–most of it in the last 48 hours. (Yes. I really need to get a job.) I rarely re-listen to podcasts. I’m so glad I made an exception for this. What a delight! Minute-for-minute there are more laugh-out-loud moments in TPK than in any other podcast I listen to, with the possible exception of some of the other Incomparable Game Shows.

If you haven’t listened to our previous TPK adventure, I highly recommend it! I admit it takes a couple eps to really find our groove, but once we’re rolling, we go from one ridiculous hijink to another.

If you have listened and you’d like a few reminders of how our party operated and what we accomplished (to get you ready for the next chapter without having to re-listen to the whole thing*), I’ve pulled together a few highlights. (If you haven’t listened, perhaps this will tempt you to do so.)

We started our adventure in The Yawning Portal, a tavern built around a huge pit that descends into Undermountain. We were sent to find a nobleman named Rutherford Urmbrusk, who went down with a small party of adventurers, including a fellow named Zar.

Characters:

• Pieter Dragonforge – A human paladin with a different way of pronouncing Bahamut. (Have you heard the good news about Bahamut?) Slightly racist against…well, so far, pretty much everyone we’ve met (bugbears, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins…). His dad’s basement is our sweet clubhouse…err…headquarters.
• Melech – A tiefling wizard who whispers *really* creepy things at enemies. Can make things glow. Big fan of orbs. Kills many goblins from far away. Always studying (and in search of info about) magic.
• Olestran Quiverbottom – An elven ranger who hates nature. Good with a bow, but bad at remembering to mark his quarry. Makes excellent s’mores (according to Flessa). Is never done with his turn.
• Kat – A half-elven druid who thinks little of the ranger’s views on nature. Occasionally turns into something that looks suspiciously like a plush sky-bison. Keeps shortening her name. We now call her “K” (or maybe “Kay”).
• Riswynn – A dwarven cleric who likes books. A LOT. Even blank ones. Heals, shoots holy flame, and can’t pronounce either of the names of her hammer.
• Flessa – A human rogue. Very small (and dumb) for a human. Acrobatic and stabby. Easily distracted by shiny things. Calls both Melech and Riswynn “Boss”. (Though they’re often too absorbed in study to keep a proper eye on her.)
• Sindrina (temporary companion who won’t be joining us again) – A drow bearing raw fish, accompanied by a spirit-slug named Slimy (or Sluggy?). (Slimy was briefly near-invincible, then became a punching bag.)

“People” we met (spellings are approximate):

• Old Stanik – A Halfling taking bets on who makes it out of Undermountain alive. Melech bet 5 gold on himself and lived, so he won 50 gold. Good job Melech.
• Yordar – A half-orc who went down into Undermountain shortly before we did. His party was mostly slaughtered. We rescued him (and the corpses of most of his companions).
• Smergol – A bugbear we set free. (He’d been locked up for stealing food.) He ran off into the Undermountain with dreams of opening a sandwich shop. Later we found out he headed for the surface and got a job at The Yawning Portal, with dreams of opening a sandwich shop.
• Argus Coppernight – A blinded Dwarf and ex-cartographer of Undermountain. Yordar helped him back to the basket and up to the Yawning Portal.
• Hapdash – A kobold “scientist” who attended 6 years of “school” to become almost mediocre at creating potions and explody pots. We may have convinced him to head to the surface. Or he may have just run off deeper into Undermountain.
• Meffin – A kobold we found hiding in a store room. Had strong feelings about drakes vs dragons. Kay brought him up to the surface to make sure the tavern folk didn’t kill him immediately. Like Smergol, he got a job at The Yawning Portal and expressed an interest in sandwiches.
• Zar – A heavily tattooed human who sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. Ego-maniacal and megalomaniacal. Tried to unite kobolds and goblins to take over Undermountain, then Waterdeep, then THE WORLD. We defeated him and turned him over to the proper authorities. Or, at least, some authorities.

Items of note:

• Statues are really freakin’ scary.
• Flessa is really freakin’ deadly.
• Patting Flessa on the head is a minor action.
• Bone thrones are almost as scary as statues and are best left alone. Except maybe by rangers with itchy trigger fingers.
• Kobold scientists can’t write very well. They draw pictures instead, mostly.
  
• Never step on a pile of rats.
• Sometimes a floor is not a floor. Sometimes it’s a pit filled with “pointy kitties”. #ratfacts
• It turns out you really can do neat things with rope sometimes. If you have a bow and arrow, you can retrieve gems from dangerous rooms. Though a mage hand is much less work.
• Rage drakes are not dragons, but they’re still scary. When you kill one, it’s best not to scamper up into its lair. There might be goblin guards hanging out up there. (Note: Olestran DOES have a shiny medallion.)
• Megalomaniacal assholes don’t trap their treasure chests, but they do trap their doors and their beds. With poison and explody fire, respectively.
• The best way to fight a would-be dictator with a magic ballista is to plug the doorway with a spirit slug. If you try to fix the ballista afterward, don’t stand in front of it while doing so. (Poor kobold.) Also, magic-missle ballistas nicely tear the hell out of secret doors so you can just waltz through without having to check for traps.
• Nobody wants to hang out in a room with bloody walls. Except Olestran.
• Goblins locking themselves in cages might sound nice, but when they’ve locked electrical scorpions (and one poor goblin) out with you, it’s less nice. If you leave one goblin alive in a cage, he’ll probably pee himself.
• D&D is extra-fun when when making puns about musicians. How many terrible puns about Sting, Scorpions, Poison, and Guns’N’Roses can we squeeze into one gaming session? More than you’d think. Even if you think a lot.
• Even after you knock him out, kill all his goblin and hobgoblin henchmen (not to mention his Drake and his kobold scientists), and wake him up with a pail of icky goblin-water, a villain dressed like Colonel Sanders will still talk too much and be quite obnoxious.

In the end, we didn’t find Rutherford Urmbrusk, but we did discover he was last seen heading for “The Tombs”, a dangerous, undead-filled part of Undermountain. With that info, we took our captive, Zar, and headed back to The Yawning Portal, hoping to return to Undermountain to fight another day.

And that day is TODAY!**

So yeah. I’m pretty stoked. This upcoming adventure will be on the Total Party Kill feed (or on The Incomparable Superfeed if you want all the other fab stuff we do on the network) starting in several weeks. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it! Sometimes we even broadcast our sessions live on Google Hangouts. (Keep an eye on @TPKill on Twitter to see if that might be happening this evening.***)

I cannot wait!

.

.

.

.

*If you do want to listen to the whole thing, there’s a massive omnibus edition you can listen to like an audiobook. It’s about 16 and a half hours!

**I’m posting this after midnight, so yeah. Technically, it’s today.

***And by “this evening”, I mean the evening of Sunday, March 13th, 2016.