Yesterday we had an awesome game of World of Dungeons.

Yesterday we had an awesome game of World of Dungeons. I brought all my GM talents to bear in order to give the players an entire campaign in a single session!

We started with 15 characters (each player had 3). Each character was a member of the far-flung Waystone clan. The nearly 100 members of the Waystone clan had gathered for a family reunion that was held every ten years. On the third night of feasting and celebration, they were attacked by the forces of the drow noble house Grazzdira. The whole of the Waystone clan was enslaved and endured three months of harsh labor and torture at the hands of the dark elves. 

One day, while the remnants of the clan were laboring in an Underdark mine, Grandma Waystone collapsed from exhaustion. The drider task masters threw her into a pen of dog-sized spiders, where she was devoured. This was the final straw which caused our 15 characters to rise-up against their drow masters. And so the first half of the session was our level 0 Waystones trying to break free from the dark elves and escape to the surface. In the end, most of the characters were slaughtered by dark elves and various other horrors of the Underdark (including tentacled lake creatures, umber hulks, a purple worm, and giant spiders). But five of the Waystones survived. They became adventurers and went their separate ways. 

Ten years after that, the five survivors gathered at the location where the Waystones would have had their family reunion if they had not been decimated ten years prior. They were more powerful now (level 5) and loaded with magical items. They went back into the Underdark to take their revenge on Lady Grazzdira and her clan.

And so the second half of the session was the five survivors making their way back to House Grazzdira to take their revenge (one of them had a minstrel named Tarantino in tow). The fight to get back to the dark elf compound involved a run-in with some piercers (a classic DnD monster) and a giant spider golem made of quicksilver, which Lady Grazzdira had patrolling the caverns around her manse. Having dispatched the golem, the gang snuck onto the manse grounds.

By some strange coincidence, the party managed to arrive on the very day Lady Grazzdira had summoned a Council of Darkness, which included a treacherous human lord; a beholder gangster; a trio of illithids; an orc chieftain; and the great black dragon, Ebon Doom. Having managed to spy on the council and learn of their plan to launch an attack on the surface world, the party endeavored to put an end to the whole lot of them. 

What took place thereafter was the party using various sneaky tricks to turn the  council against each other. Ultimately, there was a showdown with Lady Grazzdira and her forces. One of the characters managed to summon the very purple worm that had killed his mother during the original escape ten years ago, which he used to dispatch the drow matron and her clan. 

The entire Council of Darkness was destroyed except for the black dragon, Ebon Doom. As a sort of epilogue to the story, while the party was gathering the bones of fallen Waystones from the slave mines, Ebon Doom appeared. Some tensions that had been building between the party spilled out into the open when Ebon Doom offered that he would let one of them live. The party began to fight each other, which Ebon Doom watched with some delight. When the great black dragon grew bored, he summoned a storm of acid to dispatch them. The party tried to fight back, but were no match for the dragon. 

In the end, only two Waystones survived the dragon’s attack, but the family’s revenge against Lady Grazzdira was complete.