A Tale of Dungeons and Dragons: Part Two: A New Kingdom

Cordelia Cross Jan 20, 2019 02:12 0

Hey, all you out there in Cyberspace!

It's Cordelia again.

How is everyone tonight?

After our last post about Dungeons and Dragons, tons of you reached out to me asking for more Dungeons and Dragons stories through Twitter. I hadn't realized all of you loved the game so much, otherwise, I would have shared some of these stories sooner.

Currently, I have been spending a decent amount of time playing Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition, but 3.5 was my starting point and will always have a special place in my heart. In one of my old 3.5 campaigns I had played in, one of our friends played a Chaotic Evil Warlock Rogue. (That's a mouthful, isn't it?) Now this character's name was Levin Nightshade and he was a Dark Elf. Levin was a curious character, when others were looting and gathering their gold, he always looked for the odd objects, the ones that seemed mundane or boring. When he wasn't doing that, he would find the objects that seemed the easiest to pass off as rare or high value to dumb and rich collectors in town.

As someone who typically collects the same mundane items so that I can fashion tools or make contraptions, I was quickly drawn to the character and we became close allies. At the time I was playing as a Ranger-Rogue Wood Elf (by the name of Lorelai Moonshadow) who was a truly neutral character. She had a conscious and morals, she wouldn't go around killing innocents, but she mainly looked out for herself and her best interests. Sometimes that just sort of meant pickpocketing a soldier for keys to the dungeon to break allies free. Other times, it meant evacuating a run-down shelter and having it destroyed by a fire happy sorcerer so then the local authorities would be forced to hire you to rebuild a much better and safer version of the shelter.

During this campaign, Levin and Lorelai were thick as thieves, building a secret criminal empire that surprisingly the rest of the party was unaware of. We met in secret, and texted our DM about things that we were doing behind the scenes, to keep the mystery alive. Then, one week between sessions, we met at the DM's house without the other party members. Levin and Lorelai had stacked up tons of gold getting things going with their enterprise they had even become allies with groups of sentient creatures that typically were enemies to anything but their own species.

During this clandestine meeting, we decided that it was time for us to reveal to the rest of the group exactly what we had been doing behind the scenes during the last few 8-12 hour gaming sessions. Through our work, we had managed to purchase an old castle for our group to live in just outside of the main town. Within the stone walls of the castle courtyard, we had a large cobbled area with a fountain and all around it were merchant booths and stalls for fences to sell our stolen gear. We even had a stable of our own just inside the walls. We had built an empire in our fictional world. It was extremely special because we knew guards would not bother us here, and we could do all the things we needed to so that we could keep our underground empire running. We even had plans to have fences open stalls in other cities we visited so that we could collect a portion of their profits as tax. Honestly, I think the only reason our DM went along with it was because he could tell that our group was going to stay established for awhile and he came up with so many ideas for quests and missions that branched off of this new direction.

Seven hours after we had gotten to the DM's house that day, we had our plan set in stone to reveal things to the rest of our group. When the next full-group session came around and Levin and I were bursting with anticipation. It seemed like time was standing absolutely still for us because it knew we were waiting. All through the session we were waiting for just the right time to show our party that we had a nice new safe home for us all to go back to. It was needed now more than ever since we weren't allowed back into the main town because of the whole kobold battle in the streets thing... (that's a story I will have to share with you guys another time).

Even our DM was on the edge of his seat, knowing what was coming, but with Dungeons and Dragons, almost all of the choices depend on the players. OUR players, just so happened to be spending an EXTRA long amount of time searching these boring old ruins for something that wasn't there. Eventually our DM took pity on them, knowing that they were desperate for experience points and spawned in a giant for us to fight. By this point, Levin had had enough and he was extremely impatient. There is a spell that a caster can use to create a floating disk that allows you to carry objects. This spell allows you to carry 100lbs worth of things for every player level that you have. At this point we were level 8.

To remedy our current situation, Levin had the disk carry a 700lb boulder and drop it on the giants head before the rest of us could roll initiative to see who would get to attack the giant first. Everyone looted the giant, the DM gave Levin 700 points of experience for his cleverness and made it appoint to note that it was one point for every pound of the boulder. After a few laughs, everyone decided it was time to take a long rest to restore our abilities and they were all getting ready to divide up responsibilities in terms of setting up camp. Then Levin stepped forward.

"Wouldn't you all like to sleep in your own beds tonight?" Levin asked.

"Yeah," Orianna Incubore, our Tiefling Bard responded. "But after the whole Kobold thing, I don't think we are allowed back in town. Well, at least not without disguises."

"He never said we would be returning to the same town," Loralie, my character stepped forward smiling.

"If we aren't returning home to town, where area we going?" Tyrion Stormblade, our Orc Fighter asked.

"About that, we have a new home for us all to head back to," Levin smiled.

"Did you kill someone for it?" Trixie Stormblade, an elf druid and Tyrion's wife asked. "The last time you found us shelter, it took me forever to get the blood out of my hair Levin..."she said in an annoyed tone.

"Not this time Trixie, especially since this is more than just a temporary shelter," Levin smiled. He grabbed onto his necklace with his left hand and motioned outward with his right. A purple swirling portal appeared. "And Loralie did her fair share of the work," he added with a smile.

"Let's go home guys!" I called out motioning for them to follow me.

If you guys would like to find out more, and everyone's reaction to their new home, let me know in the comments, our Facebook page, or on our Twitter and I will be more than happy to share more of our adventures with all of you. After we finish up with this story, I might even tell you all about the Kobold story.

Have a nice night everyone!

~Cordelia Cross.