The Hidden Shrine of the NIGHT OF ADVENTURE

It's been a while.

One of the guys in the group went off on a trip to New York, the DM went to a Halloween party and got rufied, and the rest of us got hooked on a little game called Colossal Arena.

(Hint: Never bet on the Amazon. She's getting whacked in round one.)

So, after a month of delays, plane tickets, and one rufie hangover, we come to the campaign finale of the NIGHT of ADVENTURE!

• Yes, after almost a year of play, it's the campaign finale! First order of business... decide what game system we're going to use for the next campaign.
• Three guys want to play 4E, two guys want to play Pathfinder. I'm on the fence.
• My nerd friends on the internet (yeah, I know that's redundant) all encourage me to place my vote for Pathfinder.
• I don't want to lose nerd points by equivocating, so I cave to the pressure of the geek horde.
• Actually, it's not the pressure of the geek horde that will get you, it's the smell.
• I smell great, I washed my hair before I came to tonight's session.
• When you're the alpha nerd, you have to maintain a certain level of presentability.
• In the end the group is evenly split between 4E and Pathfinder. The DM makes the executive decision to continue using 4E.
• This will synergize nicely with my Snarky Aside encounter power.
• Meanwhile, back to THIS game! Two sessions ago we learned that five criminal masterminds had pooled their resources and hired a high-level assassin to off the mayor.
• Last session we found out that the mayor was the real mastermind who had used us as his unwitting patsies in order to kill off the other criminals in the city and consolidate his power.
• We liked the mayor, it turns out he's a dick.
• We decide to kill him.
• Note: If this were really a legitimate reason to kill someone, the BMW dealerships in Los Angeles would all go out of business overnight.
• Since it's the last game of the campaign, we decide to spend our accumulated loot in wild and gratuitous fashion.
• Unfortunately, the DMs have already anticipated this and trumped up some crap festival called the Night of Brond.
• The Night of Brond is like Halloween, except instead of candy, everyone buys healing potions and instead of dressing up as slutty nurses, they dress up in dragonhide armor, invoke evil spirits, and try to bring about the apocalypse.
• So really, it's more like Mardi Gras.
• By the end of the night, I better get a shitload of beads.
• Since the apocalypse is looming, there's been a run on magic items throughout the city.
• So much for spending our accumulated loot. We dicker with a guy for 20 minutes and scrimp up three healing potions.
• Mardi Gras sucks!
• Plus, nobody's local. You know all these troublemakers are just tourists from other planes, pretending to speak Common and urinating in the street while they get ready to open a gate to Tarterus. Dicks.
• Speaking of dicks, one of the five criminal masterminds we almost killed off informs us that the mayor has a secret pleasure den where we may be able to surprise him.
• What are the odds the mayor will spend sucky evil Mardi Gras in his secret pleasure den?
• Yes, we head there immediately.
• Upon arrival, it is plainly obvious that no one is home.
• Apparently 10am is too early for sucky evil Mardi Gras hijinks.
• Undeterred, we pick the lock and head inside.
• If you can't find any hijinks, you might as well start some of your own.
• The inside of the building is your standard secret pleasure den: canopy bed... satin sheets... lewd oil painting of the mayor posing in the nude.
• Sucky evil Mardi Gras is getting off to an especially sucky start.
• After we make our saving throws to avoid losing a point of Wisdom for seeing the mayor in the nude, we search the room for secret doors.
• We find some ladies' underwear, a bowl of wax fruit, and a switch that folds the bed up into the wall.
• Ostensibly, the switch is designed to reveal a set of stairs leading to the dungeon beneath the pleasure den. We're just happy the bed flips up to hide that oil painting.
• We head down into the dungeon. Surprisingly, no one takes the ladies' underwear.
• Like I said, sucky evil Mardi Gras is getting off to an especially sucky start.
• We walk down a darkened hallway and come to a large, intricate door with a series of levers beside it.
• This being the last game of the campaign, we don't bother to check for traps.
• Who traps their dungeon on Mardi Gras??
• Apparently the mayor does. A giant mechanical crab armed with a multitude of whirling blades leaps out from behind the door!
• You know how on Halloween someone always repeats that bullshit story about the mean old creepy dude who puts the razors in apples and hands them out to kids? This crab is that guy, times 5000, minus the apples.
• Also, you know -- he's a mechanical crab.
• The crab slices the party to ribbons. The party, in turn, complains belligerently that this is only the warm-up fight and we're already getting pantsed. The DM retorts with "Hey, you wouldn't like it either if people invaded your sex palace!"
• I spend the next ten minutes considering:
  1. What sort of bizarre turn my life has taken if I have both the free time and the resources to build a dedicated sex palace.(Answer: Obviously booked some sort of exclusive multi-year spokesman deal for a major telecommunications company.)
  2. The most personally and aesthetically pleasing architectural style of said mythical sex palace. (Answer: Frank Lloyd Wright meets Gaudi meets Rivendell.)
  3. The type of security system I'd install to prevent unwelcome brigands from invading my Fortress of Libidinous Might. (Answer: NOT a giant whirling crab thing that hands out apples and does 4d8+22 on a critical hit.)
  4. The sad truth that despite using my massive commercial earnings to commission Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi, and WETA workshop to build my own personal Fortress of Libidinous Might complete with a high-tech security system, satin sheets, a private grotto, and a huge portrait of me posing tastefully in the nude... I still wouldn't get laid.
• Some days it just doesn't pay to wash your hair.
• Several rounds and many, many hit points later, we kill the mechanical crab thing. Trick-or-treaters everywhere rejoice.
• Behind the crab is an evil priest, a giant vault door inscribed with runes, and several drugged hostages chained to the wall.
• According to the evil priest (who immediately surrenders after seeing the carnage we inflicted on the crab) the vault will open at a predetermined hour, whereupon the mayor will take the virgin sacrifices into the demi-plane beyond and offer them to an evil demi-god in return for vast amounts of sheer unbridled power.
• The party pauses. Virgin sacrifices?
• What follows is a 15 minute discussion of potential Evil Scheme Disruptions, all of which are completely unprintable.
• Why doesn't the Dungeon Master's Guide provide any guidance on the specific operational boundaries of virginity? 4E: FAIL!
• I can't discuss any specifics, but I will say that at one point the phrase "goblin Eiffel Tower" came up.
• Google it yourself if you're so curious.
• After a prolonged bout of juvenile jackassery, the DM finally manages to drag us back onto task. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that -- while some of the virgins are in fact young, comely lasses -- some of them are large, ungainly, and, one might say, almost mannish.
• That sonic boom you just heard was the sound of six guys getting hit in the face with the Clue Bat.
• I don't mean to be shallow, but, you know you're destined for a life of chastity when you can body double for a six-and-a-half foot tall, 350 lb. half-orc barbarian.
• Yeah, so, just to be clear: The plan is to disguise ourselves as virgins, sneak into the demi-plane, and disrupt the ritual where the duplicitous mayor tries to bond with the evil god.
• Sucky evil Mardi Gras just got a lot suckier and evil-er.
• ...But my odds of getting that shitload of beads just went up substantially.
• The Height of Irony: In order to save the virgins, we literally have to get in their pants.
• After a little padding, a little cinching, and a LOT of make-up, we have five somewhat large, ungainly, and, one might say, almost mannish virgin sacrifices.
• I spare my character no small amount of humiliation by dressing up as the evil priest.
• Some days it pays to wash your hair.
• The mayor arrives a few hours later, dressed in his finest sucky evil Mardi Gras robes. The vault to the extra-dimensional plane opens and the party marches forth like a team of high school football players re-enacting a scene from Some Like It Hot at the Homecoming pep rally.
• Awkward Moment of the Session, Number Eight: "So, who here is a virgin?"
• Again, the Dungeon Master's Guide is letting us down.
• It's at this point my character is really regretting spending all his money building that Frank Lloyd Wright sex palace.
• Still, the grotto is pretty nice.
• Once we all agree on our respective virginities, the rest of the night is spent fighting the mayor and a demi-god.
• Really, if you can just decide whether or not you're a virgin, you might as well take on a god, if not City Hall. We're doing BOTH!
• Next up: Repealing death and taxes.
• There is furious combat! Patches of slime fungus attack us with their poisonous tentacles! The barbarian criticals the mayor! I spend most of the fight trudging across a sludgy bridge of festering flesh! The demi-god uses mind-control to force us all to battle one another! We learn to hate the phrase "Take 5 necrotic damage."! By the time it's over, I've blinded a demi-god and the halfling with the tiny, tiny feet is dead!
• It was the DM's character, we don't really stop to mourn.
• We pick up the silver chalice lying at the slain demi-god's side, sling the mayor's spear-riddled body over a shoulder, and stumble down a blood-soaked, sucky evil Bourbon street as dawn slowly rises over another glorious... NIGHT OF ADVENTURE.

-Tom, who never did get those beads.