I am Whale, from the goblin outlaws. My pals go by the name of Salmon, Cod, Tuna, Blue Marlin, etc. You should get a sense by now. Anyway, we were ready to rob a wagon in the feywild when baaang this big spell hit me. I felt dozy, and the world around me was spinning. Next thing I knew was that I was in Icewind Dale with a bunch of Goliath from the Thuunlakalaga clan. Being plane shifted from nice and warm desert land to a freezing tundra is… not nice. (ಠ_ಠ)

The Goliath spoke about terrors and curses that diminished their numbers and of some ancient city full of madness. Honestly, I am just a gunslinger, but they gave me soup, so by the fey rules of hospitality, I had yo help them!

It’s not like I had to devise a plan on the fly; this hippopotamus guy—Lt. Prook—had explosives (now we are talking) and he planned to lead a party into the heart of the madness. The mission was simple: go to some ancient wizard ruined city, set explosives and get the hell away from there. Awesome!

Of course that others were there to help; you cannot rob, attack or destroy something if you don’t have a good crew. They were not my goblin pals, but hey, you play with the cards you have; there were:

• Koral Grimes a dragonborn paladin;
• Nib, a birdman with some mysterious entropic powers;
• Sandy Wishbone an artificer;
• Zora Fang a tiefling druid with skin as white as the winter.

So yeah, we got to the underground city entrance and Lt. Prook was checking where to out the 3 bombs we had. There was a bunch of spooky stuff going on like grotesque bodies on the floor, wails fading in the distance, you name it. So the sooner we were done, the better. We found some sort of map engraved on the ground and that gave us a good location of where to put the bombs. Actually, putting one here in this sort of plaza was not a bad idea. So yes, I volunteered for the task. No, I don’t know how explosives work, but what could go wrong?

I flew to the ceiling and Prook instructed me to set it for 8h. We don’t have time in the feywild, it’s only wake-up time, robbery time and sleep time. I am not sure how much 8 hours is. I have three fingers in each hand, so that might do it; 8 hours might be like all your fingers? Bomb set for 6-finger 8-human hours.

T minus 8 human-hours to the explosion

As soon as we set the bombs, some evil creatures appeared. They had like 6 arms or tendrils and shadows danced around them. Not good. Before we could react, one darted towards me and yes, I was like a cucumber in a blender (I am not sure if there are blenders outside of the feywild) and the creatures’ hit-and-run tactics would have overwhelmed us if not by Zora’s quick thinking: she became an earth elemental, a Zora-mental some would say and her tremor sense kicked in. She could locate the creatures and their tactics did not work anymore. Oh boy, imagine a huge brick wall walking around and punching stuff. That was great. Nib and Koral also helped. Nib did some cool parkour stuff and kicked the creatures mid-air while Koral used his holy spells to pin down one of the creatures. It was over as quickly as it had started, but never before in my life, I’ve taken such a beating.

side-note: I need to go on a side track here: when I say I am an outlaw and I rob people, that’s just make-belief. This was the first time I was really scared. I really wanted to go back home. It was cold, and dreadful and there were things ready to kill you around every building in this forsaken place. (ಥ﹏ಥ)

Ok, back to the tale. The two other bombs had to be set at a library and at a university. No surprises here; the first institutions to be destroyed in any democratic government are educational. I think that the same logic applies to destroying evil arcane underground cities. For good tactical thinking I tagged the library as VPL and the university as UBC. Not sure why but they make for a good cacophony: like UBC reminds me of the University of Bryn Chander (some say it’s written with a S; I disagree).

Of to VPL we go. The whispers intensified and we would have had nightmares by days if not by Koral. Standing near him was heartwarming. But yeah, at VPL we found that this was a city from another plane and that mad mages tried to reach for the stars and that in doing so, they opened a gateway for some eldritch interstellar monstrosity that destroyed their city. I remember hearing about this in a bard song. Perhaps it was Led Zeppelin and their famous starway to heavens, but anyway. Second bomb set for 5-finger 7-human hours

T minus 7 human-hours to the explosion

Of to UBC we go. This is where there were… complications. We found a Goliath who was scouting the place for intel to share with us, but he got lost and the horrors of the place twisted his mind. He would survive, but now we had a VIP situation having to escort him out of the place. We were ready to set the last bomb and the Goliath kept talking about quotes they end quotes ⊙﹏⊙

I have no idea who “they” were, but this was like some premium stalker PTSD kind of thing. Poor man. He would spend all his insurance in therapy talking about these imaginary creatures, only if they stayed in his mind because the next thing I remember was the space around us warping and twisting as more 6-arm aberrations appeared; this time, they had reinforcements. Some spellcaster was the one warping time and space around us.

It was a gruesome battle Zora-mental wreck havoc, throwing punches left and right, but seeing how many we had to fight, Zora went back to her humanoid shape and conjured a pillar of sunlight to keep the creatures at bay. Koral engaged the spellcaster and I was guns blazing, shooting the critters. (ง’̀-‘́)ง

side-note: Lt. Prook has this huge blunderbuss but he had very little trigger discipline. At some point, he got blinded by the sun bean and he was STILL shooting… BLIND. (-_-) Now that I recall, he mentioned that he was the only survivor from his old regiment. No doubt, I can only imagine the amount of friendly fire his poor mates had to deal with.

Back to the story of battling for our lives. This is were things got bad for me. Another of these multi-arm critters remembered that I was green and that I looked like a nice cucumber to be blended. It was slice and diced time. That’s the least I can remember before everything faded to black (×_×) (off-game: I fell asleep, I am so sorry).

T minus 5 human-hours to the explosion

I remember hearing screams and footsteps and the shadow of some towering creature cornering us.

T minus 4 human-hours to the explosion

Were there more footsteps? Was it Nib dashing to retrieve my unconscious or hallucinating self

T minus 3 human-hours to the explosion

By now, we are close to 0-fingers 2-human hours… so….

Kaboom!

Unconscious, I lost all the fireworks, explosions and the cool stuff I was looking forward to. I remember I woke up to the Goliath celebrating with my temporary crew. All had hopes that the evil city was forever buried underneath the ice, but I swear there was something wrong with the VIP guy we rescued (or perhaps it was someone else, recovering from my injuries; everything seemed blurry), but that is a tale for another day… ~(˘▾˘~)

Details were omitted and/or modified, so I don’t spoil much of an official Adventures League game. I am not a native speaker and this is a small exercise to improve my writing. Please be kind.