Dungeons and Dragons ("DnD"): The Rise of Tiamat: Season 2 Episode 14 Adventure #45
Date of Session: May 28, 2020 (5:00 PM to 9:20 PM)
Number of Players: 3
1. Kai-Ku Midoriya (FIGHTER Human, Kai-tick’s Vessel) Level 5
2. Gundam, Model K (SOLDIER War Forged) Level 5
3. Killion Gilgamesh (WIZARD Avariel) Level 5
Series Regulars NPCs:
1. Roshi Nighthill (Male Human, K-Krew’s Friend, Power: BULK UP)
2. Toguro (Male Human-Demon, Undercover PRO Hero, Power: Muscles)
Recurring Guest Star NPCs:
1. Vlad (Ancient Male Vampire, Trapped in a Bottle)
New NPCs Introduced:
1. PRO Hero Minus (Male Dragon-born, Hero Paladin, Menos Fanboy)
2. Shopkeeper Wizard (Male Half-Elf, Owner of the Magic Box Store)
3. The Almighty (Formless Voice of the Trials and Keeper of Kryptonite)
4. XerX Clone #253
5. XerX Clone #925
6. XerX Clone # Unknown
Welcome back to my D&D adventure reviews! This session was officially my 50th session overall as a Dungeon Master since I was introduced to the game back in March, 2019. What a grand time it has been so far. Also, the perfect time to get back into The Rise of Tiamat—the homebrew Hero Edition—campaign.
It had been a long two months—March and April 2020—of quarantine and not playing, but the boys and I were ready to hit the imaginative world again. After what happened in the previous session—fighting vampire Vlad possessing Roshi, winning the final round of the Baldur Tournament’s Preliminaries to enter the main rounds, and taking down two out of three members of the Champion team—D-Crew decided to travel to Eltruel, a religious city dedicated to Hathor and drugs in order to retrieve kryptonite.
While traveling to Eltruel from Baldur’s Gate via submarine, D-Crew debated what they wanted to do with their friend and classmate Roshi Nighthill, who was finally freed from Vlad’s mind-control and body possession. Roshi was becoming violent in the panic room, wanting revenge against Vlad for what he did to Greenest, his village. Eventually, Kai-Ku stunned Roshi—remembering he had a Spark Gauntlet—and threw him back into the panic room while Gundam and Killion took Vlad’s bottle to safety. Toguro stood behind Kai-Ku in case he needed backup.
After Roshi woke up, D-Crew tried a different approach. They told him the truth about their undercover hero internship with Toguro, and how they’ve been roped into a dark tournament to fight against Huevos Black’s cloned son—and Lord Eggza’s nephew—Lord Wit. Roshi realized Huevos Black was the one who had sent Vlad and the other vampires to attack Greenest, seeing the “bigger picture” D-Crew kept mentioning.
The players went along with this revelation and officially added Roshi to the team because Roshi wanted revenge. Toguro also agreed to take Roshi in as another intern and held onto Vlad’s bottle. Roshi Nighthill had been through quite the ordeal since season two started. Toguro also discussed his past with D-Crew, explaining how he killed countless evil heroes and revealing Gilgamesh—Killion’s dad—was the King of them all.
With confirmation that Gilgamesh was indeed purely evil and pretending to play hero the whole time, Kai-Ku and Killion vow to defeat him someday. Gundam had no real interest in fighting a God-level opponent, but he was willing to help them out as long as he got to kill more villains. Going off this, Toguro briefly mentioned they should discuss how Gundam executed Bran Whitey in the previous session.
Gundam revealed he erased his memories of killing villains to keep his consciousness clear. Everyone was shocked by this truth, but it explained why Gundam killed clearly.
With their team affairs in order, the submarine docked into Eltruel. D-Crew wanted to find some clothes for Roshi—who was wearing ripped clothes from all his mind-controlled fights against D-Crew. They decided to search for an Anime Store—or in this fictional world, a “History” Store to dress Roshi as Captain Ginyu.
After Kai-Ku bought a genuine Aarakocra head from the History Store, they found a café bakery and bought some food for Roshi since he hadn’t eaten anything in the previous three sessions. Unfortunately, I rolled him a NAT 1. Roshi started choking for eating too fast. Luckily the team was able to save him in time, but he had to puke it out. The blind Half-Elf barista didn’t see anything, which made D-Crew feel bad whenever they told her to look at something obvious like Roshi lying on the ground in his puke.
After cleaning up Roshi and his puke, D-Crew ended up at a place called The Magic Box. They needed to buy potions of healing and other supplies, but then a Half-Elf Wizard Shopkeeper was being racist to Gundam.
Of course, this offended Gundam, who decided to RIOT and destroy the magic store with his guns a blazing. Killion stayed back—LOOTING—and watched Gundam blast everything in the store, but Kai-Ku started praying to Hathor when the players realized they weren’t the only people in the store. The other NPC customers—including a mother and her little boy—were terrified… And racist too. This didn’t help Gundam calm down. What calmed him down was someone knocking down the front door.
A Pro Hero—a Male Dragon-born named Minus—entered the scene. He was a fanboy of the Great Menos and modelled his heroism after him. After hearing the situation and how Gundam sometimes forgot his memories due to being a War Forged, Minus decided to personally escort D-Crew to the Almighty Temple of Eltruel, where they will take the Trials of the Almighty to win the kryptonite. Minus and D-Crew didn’t talk about much other than being fanboys of the Enforcers. Minus also warned D-Crew about the Trials of the Almighty, and how they were almost impossible to pass. Not many participants survived or remembered what happened.
When they arrived at the Almighty Temple, D-Crew found Toguro already there talking with an unnamed Priest. The Priest was granting D-Crew and Toguro permission to partake in the trials, but he warned them about the potential consequences. Killion didn’t want to die again, but he agreed to take the risk with Kai-Ku and Gundam. Toguro and Roshi were also in agreement. It was time to start The Trials of the Almighty.
Once they passed through the Door of the White Dragon and walked down stairs, Toguro vanished. D-Crew panicked and they stuck together closely. Roshi panicked further when he realized where they were: Greenest in the middle of destruction with a Blue Eyes White Dragon flying around the village. Vampires and Goblins were roaming the area, killing many innocents including Roshi’s already dead aunt. Everyone quickly figured out this wasn’t real, and they needed Roshi to snap out of it.
D-Crew fought vampires on the way to Keep Greenest, where the Blue Eyes White Dragon had landed. When they reached the rooftop, they noticed Kai-tick—a fake version—was choosing to travel with God Killer, one of Mas O’s female bodies from the previous campaign. Kai-Ku put together what this trial was. It was a merger of two different memories—Kai-tick and Roshi’s. After the Blue Eyes White Dragon flew away with Kai-tick and God Killer, Kai-Ku grabbed the tail and followed to figure out how to pass the trial.
At some point, Kai-Ku fell off the Dragon and fell back to Keep Greenest’s rooftop. He wanted to go back up there though, but none of the players had any abilities to do it. NPC Roshi—basically a DBZ character—unleashed two Destructo Discs for Kai-Ku to fly on, returning him back on the Blue Eyes to fight God Killer in the sky. Fake Kai-tick disappeared because Bubby—a former player—wished him away. I was following continuity.
God Killer summoned two giant birds after Gundam and Killion while she dealt with Kai-Ku personally. This fight didn’t last too long because God Killer—Kai-tick’s memory version—was being meshed with Roshi’s memories of PROFESSOR MAS O. This allowed Kai-Ku to finish her off with ease. Killion and Gundam were able to kill the birds too. However, the fight wasn’t over yet.
Vlad returned for his revenge against D-Crew, possessing a memory version of the Great Menos. Vlad was freed from the bottle when they all entered the trials. The Almighty considered him a “participant” indirectly. Taking advantage, Vlad vowed to make them fail the trials and proceeded to feed on Killion. Every time the players faced off against Vlad, he always went for Killion’s “golden” blood. After an intense couple rounds of shooting and slashing the vampire, he reverted to mist and tried to escape.
Roshi wasn’t going to let Vlad escape this time. He prepared his Kamehameha Wave and killed Vlad’s mist for good with his attack, getting a taste of justice for the real Greenest. For the last time, Vlad was killed and defeated. He will not be making a comeback. Then D-Crew were given a key card and a “Toguro” card. This whole time, Toguro was trapped inside a card needed to open the door out of the memory world. Kai-Ku tossed both cards into the Door of the White Dragon, and the door unlocked.
D-Crew entered a small white room, where they encountered XerX Clone #253 blocking their path. They asked him to move, but XerX #253 didn’t want to move. He was assigned to stop them like the participants before them. Since nobody was ready to fight, Gundam distracted XerX #253 with endless small talk about the real XerX while Kai-Ku and Killion drank potions of healing in the background, having not recovered from their fight against Vlad. Gundam did an effective job distracting XerX #253, but once he ran out of things to say, the clone transformed into the Black Bull Defender and used Energy Barrage.
Luckily, everyone was healed up enough to survive the attack. Then using teamwork and sneak attacks, D-Crew managed to defeat the clone and pass through to the next door. It was a tough match, but the clone wasn’t nearly as strong as the original XerX.
The next trial took the team to a rainy forest leading into a cave. They discovered a wagon and another fake Kai-tick trying to rob it. Kai-Ku revealed the history book from his bag of holding and figured out they were in another memory world. He proceeded to stun fake Kai-tick immediately when he tried to rob the players. Fake Menos and Kenji showed up afterward and questioned the players on what was going on. This caused a glitch in the memory world, when it was shown that Menos and Kenji had killed Drip-tin without Kai-tick’s influence.
D-Crew and Roshi ran into the cave to escape the glitch. They brainstormed on what the next trial could be when they approached the Door of the White Dragon hidden inside the cave. Gundam suggested there was a fake person among them, making Roshi super defensive about being accused. Roshi outed himself quickly—having switched with the real Roshi when they passed through the Door—and was killed, revealing he was indeed a fake. The real Roshi was revealed to be stuck inside a card like Toguro was.
Without hesitation, D-Crew threw the Roshi card and the new key card into the Door to unlock it. They head to the next room, learning one by one they have been forced to turn one of their own into key cards. They had a debate about who to sacrifice next if this situation would come up again. Gundam volunteered to become a key card next if they needed to sacrifice one of them. Kai-Ku beat Gundam—seven punches—until he was knocked out. Sadly, they did this too soon as the door to the final trial hadn’t even appeared yet. They healed Gundam awkwardly and proceeded onward.
They were also back at the small white room with a new XerX clone. XerX Clone #925 claimed to be the original and summoned a Kenji Clone to prove his originality. Kai-Ku and Kenji Clone faced off while Killion and Gundam fought the XerX Clone. In the end, they convinced XerX Clone #925 to give up, saying that was what the original XerX would do.
The final memory world returned the players to Bubby Island and HERO Academy, making them realize they had been gone from school for the longest time. Another XerX Clone was waiting for them and skipping stones across the ocean. Kai-Ku convinced the clone to play stones instead of fighting for the key cards. XerX Clone agreed to the terms of the skipping stone competition.
This was an easy way to win the key card, but the real challenge was in the memory world of Ninth Hell where the players had fought the Great Demon, Lian Yu. They still couldn’t believe how many times they had saved the world as students. Anyway, they ventured down to Ninth Hell and found Fake Gilgamesh defending the Door of the White Dragon. Despite knowing he was a fake, Fake Gilgamesh still considered the players beneath him.
Fake Gilgamesh landed a solid hit—NAT 20—on Killion, but Gundam used that distraction to shoot fire bullets into the Fake while Kai-Ku chopped the Fake’s arm off. The Fake was furious at their low opinion of him, blaming their low-opinion memories of the Real Gilgamesh for how weak he was. As a result, Fake Gilgamesh launched a suicidal attack against himself and the players. Only Killion survived his Fake Father’s suicidal sword onslaught. Kai-Ku and Gundam were knocked out with 0 HP.
Killion decided to make Gundam into a card and threw it and Fake Gilgamesh’s key card into the Final Door of White Dragon. Kai-Ku and Killion passed through, surviving the Trials of the Almighty. Everyone else—Gundam, Toguro, and Roshi—were waiting for them in the Hall of Fame Throne Room. The Almighty—the voice of the Trials—congratulated D-Crew for their victory and offered to make them kryptonite weapons for their eventual fight against Lord Wit, Huevos Black’s cloned son of Lord Eggza.
1. Kai-Ku wanted a Kryptonite Shield.
2. Killion wanted a Kryptonite Sword.
3. Gundam wanted a Kryptonite Gun that could make his bullets kryptonite-laced.
4. NPC Roshi wanted Kryptonite Brass Knuckles.
5. NPC Toguro, on behalf of everyone since he didn’t help during the Trials, asked for a Kryptonite Robotic Dog that could transform into a Krypto Canine Cannon. The Almighty used this opportunity to put his consciousness into the Robotic Dog, deciding he wanted to travel with the players since there was no more need for the Trials.
The session ended on a high note. What a wonderful one-shot adventure—it was originally supposed to be a multi-session arc—with an unexpected payoff. The players and I were having so much fun. I was proud of the story we managed to craft together. I loved the pacing of the session too. Now, the players were ready to return to Baldur’s Gate for the main plot—the dark tournament. Yes! PLUS ULTRA!