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Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

I could smell the stink of the ogre as he roughly lifted me up like a child and carried me deeper into the cave.

The little bit of light at the mouth of the large cave gradually receded. The ogre stopped in front of a ledge and dumped me over. I braced for impact, careful to keep my telepathic disguise in place.

My ruse had worked – I’d disguised as an escaped prisoner, and the dumb brute had brought me right to them.

Some 30 bedraggled people, the refugees from Nightstone, stared at me curiously. I reached out with my mind to the dwarf near me, Morack the innkeeper if my memory served.

Do Not Be Alarmed; We Are Here To Rescue You, I thought, and he nodded vigorously. I turned to the ogre, who remained blinking at me at for several moments.

Before his feeble mind could process an escapee, I reached out and invaded his thoughts, sorting through the passageways of his mind. They lit up before me easily. This was by no means a clever creature.

My Friends And These Townsfolk Are Extremely Important. You Must Protect Them With Your Life, I intoned. The ogre’s confused expressions slackened for a moment, then he let out a wide, terrifying grin. “Yes,” he growled excitedly, “You all peoples good food. Me save you!”

I finally felt myself relax a bit as I smiled back at him. “Now, all these people need to be let outside to use the bathroom. Lead the way!”

This week we reached level 3, which is a a nice power spike in Fifth Edition D&D. The sorcerers got Metamagic, the Ranger his hunter conclave, and I my Pact of the Blade, which I flavored as a psi-blade. Bring on the bad guys!

d&dWe approached our first real dungeon and already ran into a big problem – only two of our five person party has darkvision. Went we up to the gaping mouth of the Dripping Caves, and just inside was an ogre taking a mud bath, flanked by goblin archers up on ledges surrounding a large cavern. It was a deathtrap waiting to happen.

We deliberated quite awhile on how best to tackle the situation. In a callback to our first session, Bryseis fired up her Dancing Lights and to distract the guards, leading the ogre as far away as he could.

Unfortunately that also alerted everyone to something happening, including awakening a second ogre. We had to act fast.

We decided to quickly light up the entrance to the cave and try to kill the two closest goblins before anyone realized what was going on. We rolled amazingly well and Halfred and Korinn were able to quietly dispatch them at range.

Our clever plan didn’t last long, as the other goblins soon began calling out for the dead friends. We didn’t have much of a plan and definitely did not want to face a pair of ogres.

I used my at-will Disguise Self to look like an escaped Nightstone resident. During the distraction we’d overheard that the townsfolk had indeed been captured by this goblin horde. I stumbled into the cave and purposefully got myself captured so they could lead me to the prisoners.

I had no plan and the rest of the party simply shrugged to see how all this would play out. Hopefully we’re still working out some early game jitters – we really need to start coordinating some tactics that don’t involve all-out assaults.

It ended up working in our favor, at least a little. The ogre dropped me off in a nearby alcove stocked full of 30 bedraggled refugees, and a hole full of sleeping bats. Morack, the dwarven innkeeper was there. I told them we’d come to rescue them, then used Suggestion on the ogre. Success!

I told the ogre that these people were under his protection, and that they all needed to use the bathroom outside. Off we go! Of course we didn’t make it but 10 feet before the other ogre and goblins stopped us. At that point the ogres were shoving each other and the rest of the party unleashed attacks.

I got a nice crit with my repelling Eldrtich Blast to knock a goblin off his perch, while the rest of the party tore apart the second ogre. A pair of goblins plinked at us from the darkness but we shrugged them off. T.I.M. got a little too defensive and placed himself in front of my charmed ogre, which the ogre took to be a threat and began attacking. Thankfully we were able to take him down quickly.

For once we had a big combat sequence where no one went down! In fact we barely got injured at all thanks to some stellar dice rolls on our side and bad ones from the bad guys.

Morack was eternally grateful, and mentioned they’d been stuck in those caves for days as prisoners. They were free to return to the poor destroyed town (“Oh by the way, a dragon destroyed your drawbridge…”). We needed to press on further into the caves to take down the goblin boss, and perhaps find more survivors – and loot!

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!