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Odysseus has found a new group of friends to play the sequel to his last campaign, which ended in somewhat of a disaster. He did a oneshot for some buddies from college so he finally got to use his wooden horse mini, but none of them had time for a long term campaign. (And maybe that’s a good thing. He thought Achilles was a terrible murderhobo, but by the gods. A baby?).
Tonight Penelope is out with her cousins though, which means Telemachus is sitting behind the screen with him. He’ll let him pick a monster or something for the first island they come across. If they get on the ship in the first place.
“I just don’t know why my character would go with you,” Perimedes says again. “He’s like, more of a loner type. Doesn’t do the whole friendship thing.”
Off to a great start.
He’s about to tell Perimedes to make a new character that does actually want to go on an adventure, when Elpenor clasps his hand and improvs the most heartfelt speech he’s heard in his life. Perimedes swallows, averts his eyes and puts his mini on the ship. “I uh. I guess I’ll come.”
“You’ve been at sea for days, with not an island in sight,” Odysseus says. “Your rations are starting to run out. What are you going to do?”
“I tell the men to row faster,” Eurylochus says, while Polites pipes up with: “I wanna look for an island.”
Perimedes rolls his eyes. “He just said there’s no island in sight.”
“I got a natural 20 on perception!” Polites looks at him expectantly.
He hadn’t called for the roll, but he’ll allow it, just this once. Because it’s Polites. “You see a faint light in the distance.”
He moves the map to show the island. The group cheers. “Full speed ahead!”
“Let’s raid the place,” Eurylochus says when they’re on the shore.
Polites looks horrified. “Or… we ask nicely? I’ll go ahead.”
Odysseus has them roll a few survival checks until he puts the lotus eaters on the map. Polites leans so far over the table, he fears he’s going to lose his footing and drop onto it.
“Oh my god, Ody, they’re adorable. Can we adopt them?”
“No."
Polites pouts.
"They offer you some strange kind of fruit.”
“I’m gonna eat it,” Perimedes says.
“You- you’re not going to inspect it first?”
His friend shrugs. Odysseus lets out a sigh.
“Okay, you’re tripping balls. The others see that this fruit has glowing seeds. And the effect it has on Perimedes.”
Telemachus pulls on his sleeve. “Daddy, what does tripping balls mean?” Oh shit, Penelope is going to kill him.
“It means uh.. Perimedes is trying to kick a ball but he’s tripping over it. Yeah.” He glares at his friends at the table. If they dare to laugh, they’re dead. And their characters too.
“Okay! Can I play with the horse now?” Telemachus points at the shelf that holds his prized mini. He’s terrible at refusing his son anything (as Penelope often reminds him), but he spent two whole weekends working on it and it’s quite fragile. He takes Telemachus on his lap and points at the ones displayed behind his DM screen.
“Why don’t you pick one of these? You can play a character too.”
“That one.” Of course he’d pick the largest. This is fine, he can just tweak the encounter a bit for his level 1 party. He has the lotus eaters point them to the cyclops cave and lets them roll initiative as soon as they start trying to take the sheep.
“That’s me!” Telemachus grins when he puts the cyclops miniature on the map. “I’m gonna eat all of you because you tried to take my friends!”
They’re holding up pretty well against the cyclops, their teamwork is great and they made good use of the inspiration Polites hands out. That is, until his son says: “I’m gonna grab my club so I can hit them better.”
“Pumpkin, you don’t have a club.”
Telemachus looks up to frown at him and then points at the printed cyclops picture in front of them. "Yes, I do." And well, he’s already refused him once. That’s about his max for a day.
“Okay, who do you want to attack with your club?”
Telemachus looks at his friends in deep concentration. Clearly, this is an important choice for him to make. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, you!” He’s pointing at Polites. Odysseus thinks he only has like 2 HP left.
“Nineteen…” Telemachus counts on his fingers. “Twenty-three, that hits, right?”
Polites goes down, and the others are too busy trying to evade the tiny terror in his lap that they don’t make it to him in time to stabilize him. And also, Polites rolls a 1 on his second death save.
“Well. You make it back to the ship, just the three of you. Let’s end the session there for today.”
Polites texts him after that he had a lot of fun (truly! I’m not just saying that !!), but his work has started getting really busy and he doesn’t think he can make it again in the future. So in a way, it’s not so bad his character died. Odysseus thinks Polites feels bad for him for killing off his character more so than he does for actually killing Polites.
The next session has them sailing into a storm after a roll on a random encounter table. They get the bright idea to try and get help from the gods (after some heavy hinting), and he has Aeolus hand them a bag with the storm trapped inside.
“All you gotta do is not open this bag,” they tell the party. And then, because he loves to sow doubt among his friends, he has one of their minions add: “There’s treasure inside.”
Eurylochus, Perimedes and Elpenor share a look.
“I open the bag,” says Eurylochus.
“What.”
“We haven’t found any treasure yet and had to flee the cyclops island, we should have something to bring home after all of this is over.”
Perimedes and Elpenor nod in agreement. He’s surrounded by idiots. (Telemachus is in the living room with Penelope today).
“You open the bag and you’re back in the storm. You almost shipwreck and are washed up on an island. In the distance, you can hear a woman singing. Let’s end the session there today.”
“A woman?” all three ask.
“Next week.”
“We wanna check out the singing woman,” Elpenor says when they get together again.
Perimedes nods. “Is she pretty?”
Odysseus lets out a sigh and reveals Circe’s character art on the screen. He should have taken his audience into account when he wrote this adventure.
“Would smash.”
He ignores it. “She’s inviting you inside, do you follow?”
Elpenor and Perimedes nod immediately, but Eurylochus looks conflicted. “I’ll stay behind.”
He describes the feast Circe has laid out for them, and of course the fools gobble it up. “Both of you, make a Wisdom save.”
“What.”
“You see Circe’s eyes turn yellow as she summons a wand out of thin air. DC is 15.” They both fail. “You’re polymorphed into pigs, and her nymphs carry you outside, to the pen.”
“She fed us pork,” Elpenor whispers in horror.
Odysseus turns back to Eurylochus, who has been sitting back as the scene played out. “Eurylochus, you’ve seen all of this happen. What do you do?”
“I’m running the fuck out of there, back to the boat.”
“Aren’t you gonna save us?” Perimedes asks.
Eurylochus shakes his head. “No way, she’s crazy. I’m gonna start fixing the boat.”
“It’s going to take a few days.” Okay, what now? He’s written himself into a corner.
Eurylochus starts describing how he’s gathering wood and repairing the holes in the boat when he gets an idea.
“Eurylochus, the next time you’re in the forest, you hear laughing from up in the trees.”
“I’m going to look up.”
“You don’t see anyone.”
“Reveal yourself. I hold up my torch.”
Odysseus digs through his box of minis to find the one he was looking to put on the map. An old one from a campaign he played in college. “He laughs again and then flies out of the trees, landing in front of you. Hermes.”
Eurylochus crosses his arms. “Okay, what do you want, Hermes?”
“Don’t you want to beat Circe?”
“Who?”
“The witch. Don’t you want to rescue your friends?”
“Not really,” he mutters under his breath. “Okay, sure. What do I do?”
He lays out the elaborate plan he makes up on the fly and has Hermes assist them. Heavily. They need it. Somehow, they convince Circe to let them stay there until their ship is fixed.
“Cool,” Elpenor grins. “I’m gonna chill on the roof and have some wine.”
“You’re gonna- Why?”
Elpenor shrugs and moves his token.
“You know you have like, two HP as a sorcerer, right?” Perimedes asks him.
“I’ll be fine, what’s the worst that can happen?”
The worst is this: Elpenor fails both his Con save to see if he’s drunk and then also fails his athletics check to get off the roof safely. And then he dies. And Eurylochus and Perimedes have no idea because they acted like normal people and decided to sleep inside.
Eurylochus and Perimedes eye him suspiciously when they see Polites already sitting at the table. Polites, bless his heart, doesn’t say a word.
“Last time, Circe told you the only way home is through the Underworld. Your ship has been repaired so you’re ready to sail. The only thing is, you don’t see Elpenor when you wake up.”
“Yeah, where is he?” Perimedes asks, referring to the empty chair on their table.
“He’s actually sick today so he couldn’t make it with a new character.”
“Ah sucks. Well um. I’m gonna go outside and say: Man, I really hope Elpenor didn’t climb the roof while he was pissdrunk.”
They share a chuckle and then Odysseus has him find Elpenor’s body. “Do you want to say anything? You were cabin mates.”
“Idiot,” he mutters. “I’ll go pick some flowers. Y’know, those yellow ones he likes.”
Odysseus hums and lets him have his moment. Then it’s time to go to the Underworld, the part he’s been waiting for. He dims the lighting in the room and puts Polites’ mini back on the map. “When you arrive in the Underworld, you see an old friend.”
“This is so messed up,” Eurylochus mutters.
Polites plays his part perfectly. It’s a bittersweet reunion, for his character can’t leave the Underworld. As their ship reaches the end of the river, both reach out for their fallen friend. And then, once again, he’s gone. Odysseus slowly makes the room brighter and Polites gets up. “Well guys, have fun with the rest of the session. I gotta get back to work.”
He throws a siren encounter at them and they’re absolutely ruthless without Polites or Elpenor to balance them out. He considers having them go past Scylla, but they’re not really attached to the NPCs on the ship anyway so he doubts they’d care about sacrificing them.
“After you.. throw the sirens back into the water, the next island is one filled with cows-”
“Finally we can eat something again, let’s go.”
“Eurylochus wait, there’s also a statue on the island. It looks like it depicts some kind of god.”
Perimedes puts his token on the island. “I’m gonna sneak up to one of the cows and take out my rapier.
“Yeah, me too.”
Odysseus sighs. “It looks like the statues’ eyes are following you.”
“Do I need to roll perception for that?” Eurylochus asks.
“Not rea-”
“It’s a four, I don’t see it and stab the cow.”
Odysseus wants to tear his hair out. “It bleeds golden,” he informs them.
“Oh shit, that means it’s a god right?” Perimedes asks, flipping through the pages of scribbles he calls notes.
“Indeed.”
Elpenor
How was the session today??? So sorry I couldn’t be there :((
Perimedes
We all died bc Eury wanted some burgers lol
Elpenor
What.