What do you do when the whole party shows up to play and everybody picked Warlock? This video follows my Warlock party as they make their way through the entire game using whatever strategies necessary to succeed. Each Warlock has their own mini backstory and motivations and their builds are designed with character roleplay in mind to add a little flavor to them.
But before we can meet them, I'll need to get to Withers all by myself so I can recruit hirelings. I looted the prologue ship pretty thoroughly so I would have a lot of tools to work with. But I'm just one warlock and a very weak and fragile warlock at that.
So wherever possible I'm going to try to talk my way out of the situation and I thought I'd give it a go on this first group of enemies here. 1v4 doesn't seem like good odds. That's our ship.
Since this is a warlock run I decided to go with the warlock dialogue option. Poisonous what? We're uh we're leaving.
Come on move it! Well looks like that did the trick. Everything alright out there?
This time I actually have to make a deception check, but I have pretty good charisma as a warlock, so the odds were in my favor. I told him it wasn't safe out there. Get inside.
I headed inside and he was not happy about it. You the hells? You're dead!
I fired off a massive hit of damage on him, actually the most that I could possibly do in one hit. But he's more used to me alive than dead, so I actually went back out the door. After waiting for a little bit, I hopped into sneak mode and went back inside.
Luckily for me, he was still alive. He went and told all his friends and grouped them all up at the doorway now I just need to find a way to kill all six of them. So, of course, I'm going to use explosives I took those nautiloid tanks from the prologue ship out and started setting up my trap I threw a lit torch onto the ground before putting one more nautiloid tank down and heading off to a safe distance I used minor illusion to lure all of them over to my massive Explosive trap and five of the six of them came to check it out Once everybody was in position, I put the game into turn-based mode so they'd stop moving. Then I threw a caustic bulb at the lit torch which exploded the first tank, which chained and exploded the rest of the tanks, killing everybody instantly.
Except that last guy. Now 1v1's a lot better odds than 1v6, but I decided to go outside and level up to 2 just to make sure that I had the best possible chance of not getting slaughtered. I took Dissonant Whispers as my spell.
I took Mask of Many Faces for one invocation and Beast Speech for the other, so I'll be the perfect face of my party. Then I headed back inside and got into the fight. I pretty much just unloaded my spell slots as much as I could, using Dissonant Whisper twice and then firing off Eldritch Blasts until I had won the fight. My next challenge was to get through an army of skeletons that are guarding Wither's sarcophagus. But these skeletons have been here for a long time, just rotting away, and I guess for that reason, they can't jump.
Since they can't jump, I went ahead and made a wall made of chests, and now I can just hide inside the room where they don't have line of sight on me, and I can just poke my head out, take a shot, and go back in where it's safe. I just did this over and over again until I had finished all of them off. No problem. And now that I've met withers, I should be able to recruit hirelings to fill out the rest of my party.
Except apparently he didn't want to offer me any hirelings, so I thought maybe I need to progress a little bit further before I can actually get them. I decided to go get into the druid grove. I figured it shouldn't be too hard since there's so many allies fighting on my side.
Well, me and my allies got kind of insanely bad RNG, and I did win the fight, but I was the only one standing by the end of it. Literally everybody else was dead. I went and looted a bunch of corpses and it turns out that was my first mistake because when I came over and revived Will he instantly decided there was a thief on the loose and accused me of stealing. I tried to talk my way out of the situation and I missed the ability check by one. So I guess I'm fighting Will.
I tried to do as much damage as I could but I was out of spell slots and he did a little cheater heal right before this fight started so he was good to go again. I got him down to 2 HP before he blasted me and gave me the game over screen. He was literally dead on the ground when I was looting those corpses but I hadn't saved the game any time recently so I had to do the fight over. After the fight was over... Aradin punched out Zevlord, knocking him unconscious, which made it the perfect time for me to pick his pocket because even if I fail, he doesn't know, so I just did it over and over again until I had everything I wanted.
The game still wasn't offering me hirelings, so I went ahead and made three new custom characters for myself. I followed this YouTube video tutorial, but there's a whole bunch of them. I just like this one because it was super short and to the point.
My first party member is Bonk. Bonk is a tanky warlock who's going to be my frontliner, and he's got... devil sight and fiendish vigor so he can see in darkness and he can give himself temporary health on command. Speaking of on command, he's going to have the command spell because his patron is the fiend. He also has some fire spells.
Wherever my main character is, Bonk won't be far away and whether this is because he's in love with her or because he has some kind of obligation to her is unclear, but he's pretty much always by her side and anytime he's not, he gets anxious and tends to get himself into trouble. Next up we've got Jack Oat. but he just goes by Jack.
Jack has a kind heart that was made a little darker when he was bullied as a child, and that's why he sought out his Archfey patron. He wanted to have the power to stand up for himself, and he'd like to believe that he can use this power to stand up for others as well. In combat, he tends to be extremely supportive to his allies and extremely disruptive to his enemies.
Jack hates the fact that his patron is his source of his power and wishes that it could have been literally anything else, but he didn't know what else to do at the time. My final party member is Reginald Ravenshadow, probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium at your service. Ah, so everybody just calls him Lefty for short, and he hates it. He hates it so much. Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, hates having to do work himself.
He wants to manage others, so he's always seeking ways to bend others to his will, and he also- desperately wants to figure out what it is that he lacks so he can stop being the probationary manager of the Archfey's Left-Handed Wand Emporium and be the actual manager of the Archfey's Left-Handed Wand Emporium. Now that you're familiar with the party, let's get back to the adventure and take care of this bugbear assassin. Lefty is usually looking for the easy way out, so you'll find him trying to take care of combat in whatever is the easiest way possible.
You'll also find that a lot of times his party members have to finish the job for him. After all, he's trying to get away from this low-class hands-on work and get more into the managing aspect of his job. You know, I didn't actually give my main character a real name, so I'm gonna just go with Pinky, because pink hair.
Pinky likes to try to talk her way out of situations, but that doesn't always work out, and in this instance, she wasn't given the chance, and she's very fragile. She got slaughtered instantly. But anytime Pinky's in danger, Bonk comes rushing into the scene as quickly and recklessly as possible.
With Jack running interference on enemies, putting them to sleep, and Reginald just absolutely wiping people out with his powerful magic, the party actually works pretty well together. Although Pinkie isn't really a fan of getting wiped out over and over again, so she's probably going to play things a little bit safer moving forward. We finished off the rest of the goblins with Eldritch Blasts and headed back to the Druid's Grove. At the Druid's Grove, Jack had an experience that changed the entire higher trajectory of his life.
He met Alphira. She was struggling to come up with a song, so he offered to help. He picked up a spare lute and started playing.
The performance check was pretty steep, but I managed to get it exactly at 15. The next performance check was much easier, and I even rolled a nat 20. Jack barely knew her, but he could already feel himself falling in love with Alfeira. This experience is what gave Jack his musical instrument proficiency. It's also what led Jack to go investigate the music that he heard on the outskirts of town. He was hoping it was Alfeira and he could go down there and have another great experience with her. But Jack could tell almost instantly that the music was not Alfeara's and it was actually from a harpy.
And the pull of the music was extremely powerful. A tiefling child was walking into the water straight to his death. Jack knew that he had to do something or the child would die. And he knew that he had to do it alone because if his party members got too close, they might become enslaved by the music. But really, what could a level 2 warlock do against the power of 4 level 3 harpies?
Jack barely managed to survive the Harpies initial attack, and he has just one chance to take them down before they finish him off. Jack isn't completely alone though, his party members are close enough to be able to throw potions at him, so I had Pinky throw a potion of speed at him to give him an extra action point and more movement speed. I tried to use a scroll of grease to knock down the Harpy that was singing the song, but unfortunately it only knocked down the other Harpy that wasn't the one that was singing.
Lefty decided to be a good manager and gave his party members some room to work with by knocking the siren away from him So that Jack would be able to move without getting hit by an attack of opportunity Jack threw a lit candle out of his inventory onto the grease and broke the concentration of the singing harpy Then he used his action point to throw a void bulb to try and pull them all together But the one up top saved against the pole So I took a second void bulb and threw it on the ground and then just moved it into the fire which exploded it manually Pulling everybody into position while Bonk back in camp was sending some supplies over to Jack. I threw a chest down on the ground and then stacked two oil barrels on top of it so they wouldn't get exploded by the fire. Then I moved down to a safe position Not really, and I threw the last oil barrel out of my inventory Blowing up all three Harpies in one hit.
Of course Jack is in a bit of a dangerous situation at this point because he's basically underwater dying. It's not looking good for him. But those kills brought our party members up to level three and Bonk wasn't in combat. So I was actually able to level him up to three.
I gave him the mirror image spell so he could increase his armor when necessary. And he took the pact of the blade. So now he can bind a pact weapon, allowing him to use his charisma to deal damage with it.
And I bound the ever burn blade that I got from Commander Zalk. Then I had Bonk chuck a health potion all the way down to Jack to get him back on his feet. So the four of us could take down this last harpy. The Harpy's song failed against three of my four party members.
Lefty fired off the first Eldritch Blast before getting behind Jack and shoving him so that I could actually get Line of Sight on the Harpy because I just barely wasn't getting it, and the shove was pretty lucky because it was not a high chance to hit. Jack was able to hit a second Eldritch Blast on it and then a third Eldritch Blast because his Potion of Speed was still giving him an extra action point, and Bonk moved in for the final blow. Because of all these experiences seeing the power of music, Jack decided to multi-class as a bard.
Pinkie went to level 3 and took Pact of the Chain so that hopefully she can summon an imp to take hits for her, and Reginald Ravenshadow also took Pact of the Chain because he just likes giving things orders. And the party laid down for our first long rest. The next day we headed into a village and it turns out we had walked right into a goblin ambush.
This time the goblins were actually willing to speak to us for a little while though, and Pinkie is pretty persuasive, so I decided to see if I could talk my way out of the situation, and I noticed I can customize my dice so I made it blue. Unfortunately I rolled a 2, so I used a point of inspiration to let me roll again, and on my second roll I got a nat 20. They probably shouldn't have let me talk them out of it because I just got in position and thunder waved two of them off the rooftop, ambushed them with my familiars from behind, fired eldritch blasts down at them, Oh wow, that only did one damage. For some reason Bonk wasn't even in combat with these guys. I swung an attack, it missed, and it let me just swing again.
So I hit for 14 before shoving the goblin off the roof to finish it. I got hit by a pretty big damage ray of sickness, but the fight was pretty much over at this point. My fine familiars took out one of the goblins and we finished the last one off.
Then I headed further into the village and I used minor illusion to stack up four enemies all right on top of each other and put the game into turn-based mode so they wouldn't move. Then I blast all four of them with burning hands and immediately blast them all with burning hands again, killing three of the four. I went for a pommel strike, but only did one damage with it.
So I had Lefty finish the job. On the other side of town, I found a sleeping bugbear and I decided to open with a Dissonant Whispers and misclicked on my imp, killing it. I forgot to unbind my imp, so it was trying to path back to me and went right in front of my cursor right when I clicked.
Okay, let's give it another go. I hit with another Dissonant Whispers, but it didn't put me into combat. So I fired off an Eldritch Blast, which didn't put me into combat.
So I fired off an Eldritch Blast, and then I fired off an Eldritch Blast, and then I fired off an Eldritch Blast. Just Warlock things. Fired off an Eldritch. Last.
Succeeding on stealth checks is pretty overpowered. I had Jack give my entire party Feather Fall so that we could jump into the back of the Goblin Camp. And once we were near the Goblin Camp, I used my Mask of Many Faces to disguise myself as a drow. I sent Pinky and Lefty into the Goblin Camp by themselves since they were the two drows, and it allowed me to talk my way into the camp without any ability checks necessary.
I found Minthara and we had a conversation. that resulted in her getting ready to ambush the druid grove. Now, we don't actually want to kill the druid grove because Jack would freak out. That's definitely not acceptable, but it's going to be easier to take them out when they're on our turf instead of theirs. While Pinky and Lefty were in the goblin camp, Bonk started to get a little bit anxious, and he was feeling nervous and he needed to go take it out somewhere.
And he saw all these goblins at a windmill and decided to just run into the fight. These aren't really good odds for a fight, and we missed our first attack. It's two against nine, so it's probably not going to go very well. I tried to position Bonk where he would be in line of sight of Jack, who's hiding in the windmill, but he got surrounded pretty quick and took an absolute beating. From both the war...
and all of the ranged attacks that the goblins were firing at him. I had Jack use healing word on him to give him a little bit of healing, temporary health, and it gives him blade ward because of the gear that Jack is wearing. Blade ward reduces Deuce's damage dealt to him by half if it's bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing. And Jack got involved in the fight, started firing off Eldritch Blasts, as warlocks do.
The two of them did manage to finish off one of the wargs, and Bonk just started chugging health potions every turn because he was taking an absolute beating. I used him. both of his spell slots on Hellish Rebuke, but the second one didn't really do enough damage to be that worthwhile. And the goblin boss was able to make two attacks every turn, so I was getting absolutely pounded.
Plus they were even firing shots up at Jack, so we were getting absolutely destroyed. And that's when Pinky and Lefty made their way over to us. They both summoned imps so that they would have some extra help in the fight, and they moved silently towards the fight so they could get some sneak attacks in.
The first imps attack was massive. he one-shot the enemy who's going forward doing 11 damage. The second imp unfortunately got a critical miss.
Regilil knew the team wouldn't be able to survive without his leadership, so he gave himself some temporary health before getting into the fight, and Pinky fired off an Eldritch Blast to get in the fight as well. Now the fight is looking a little bit better, but Bonk is still pretty hurt at this point, and the goblin boss came in with two attacks and finished Bonk off, except Bonk is a half-orc and resists death on the first hit unless it's a critical strike. I had Pinky Misty step into a better position and go for a Dissonant Whispers, but the goblin boss saved against it so it didn't do too much damage. Bonk got an absolutely massive hit on the warg to finish it off and chugged another health potion, and since his patron is the Fiend, he gets temporary health when he kills something. That combined with a Blade Ward and a health potion and he is back in good shape.
The rest of the fight we just mopped up with Eldritch Blasts until it was just the Goblin boss left and Bonk slammed him causing him to surrender and beg for mercy. But we're trying to deceive the Goblins into attacking the Druid Grove so we can't really leave any witnesses. My party took a short rest and since they're all Warlocks we have all our Spellsots back and we are good to go.
As far as the NPC that was tied to the Windmill goes, we couldn't really have any witnesses. The last enemies to take care of in town are these three ogres. I sent my cat familiar in to prep the area for me so that I wouldn't have to talk to them until I was good and ready.
I cleared the barrels out of the corner and put some chests making a semi-cage that I was hoping to trap the ogres in. They wouldn't follow my meows so I got angry and went up and attacked one of them which quickly got my familiar destroyed. But it's no problem because I have a second familiar, this imp, and I made it go invisible and moved it close to the ogres.
Then from the rooftop, I cast Minor Illusion up in the corner and I got the ogres to move up there, two of the three of them at least. And I had my invisible imp move the last chest just a little closer, trapping them both. The ogre that wasn't trapped ran over to try to fight us.
But we had it heavily outnumbered and Bonk was able to just spam temporary health anytime he needed it so we took that ogre down without much trouble at all. Once it was dead we all hopped up on the roof and took turns firing shots at the two trapped ogres until we killed the both of them. It took quite a while because they have a lot of health but it's going to be well worth it because the ogre is wearing something that Reginald desperately wants. If only Reginald were more intelligent he could move up the ranks and become the official manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium.
But Pinkie picked up the headband of intellect first and told Lefty that he'd get it when he earned it. Lefty was pretty pissed about this so when we got into our next encounter and we found a bugbear making love to an ogre, Lefty didn't hesitate to slap a crown of madness on the bugbear and make him attack his love. You know the rest of us thought this was pretty messed up. you But he's upset and you know, who among us hasn't done something we regret when we're upset? Not to mention the bugbear actually shook off the crown of madness almost immediately.
Something about the power of love goes here. We finished off the ogre which understandably made the bugbear pretty upset. And we had the bugbear down to 1 HP and all took turns missing attacks against it.
Three in a row and the bugbear just turned around and slapped a jack across the face taking him down. But we did finally manage to land that extra point of damage, winning the fight and earning us another long rest. During the long rest I used my first Illithid Worm to give the Concentrated Blast ability to Pinkie, because she pretty much is using Detect Thoughts, a concentration spell, all the time, and this ability Concentrated Blast lets you break a concentration spell to do guaranteed damage. We headed back out and made the final push to level 4 so that we would be ready for the Goblin Raid on the Druid camp.
Before leveling up I threw a massive amount of crap down on the ground so that I would be able to use it during the Goblin raid to give us the best pop ...possible chance of winning. I definitely put more items down than I needed, and I wanted to try throwing all sorts of different stuff, so a lot of them didn't make any sense, but I was just giving it a try anyways to see what would happen. When Pinkie leveled up, I gave her the Witch Bolt spell, so she'd be able to connect a lightning bolt to her enemies and then deal consistent damage. I also gave her the Alert feat, so that she wouldn't ever be surprised again, because she definitely doesn't like it when she gets slaughtered. and that does happen as the face of the party.
Bonk grabbed the Misty Step ability and he got Savage Attacker so he can do much much more damage when he lands his sword attacks. Jack went to level 2 as a bard and grabbed the Longstrider spell, and Reginald Ravenshadow grabbed the Darkness spell and just moved his stats for Dexterity and Charisma up one point each. With the level ups complete, we were ready to blow the horn... or not quite ready.
First, we need to summon some Mage Hands to help us throw all these objects off. So I put the game into turn-based mode and had Bonk, Jack, and Lefty all summon a Mage Hand. Then I exited turn-based mode and did a quick short rest, summon the familiar that should have been out already, and put the game back into turn-based mode and had everybody summon another Mage Hand.
I used my second short rest to summon more Mage Hands and then I even used Song of Rest, which Jack got as a level 2 Bard, to do a third short rest so we could summon four Mage Hands each. Now that we've got enough helping hands for the raid, it's time to blow the horn and get this battle started. The warhorn gives all of us the rallied status effect, which gives us 8 temporary health, and that applies to every single mage hand. That means we've got an extra 96 temporary health across all of our mage hands, and they're not even just useful because of the health. They can pick up all the objects that I've dropped and throw them down at the enemies.
I started by throwing a void bulb which grouped up a bunch of enemies and also pulled all of those barrels together with them. Which is really important because inside each barrel there's a little surprise. The next mage hand threw a grease bottle and greased up the area under their feet. And the mage hand after that threw an alchemist's fire and lit them all up.
Doing a bunch of fire damage and inflicting the burning status effect. This spider jumped up here, went straight to the back line and butchered Lefty. Immediately down. But it's okay because the Mage Hands can just throw the healing potions that I placed on the ground to get Lefty back on his feet. I meant to throw this bottle of toxin, but I actually accidentally smacked it instead.
So now there's just some poison up here. I threw a lit torch at the barrel to see if it would explode it, but it actually just broke the barrel and then the fire blew up the oil that was on the ground, which is a lot less damage. I threw some boots off the hedge and they missed the attack but did 8 bludgeoning damage from falling.
And then I started flying my Mage Hands down to be a meat shield. for the gate. I tried throwing a bone, a teddy bear, some rings, none of those did any damage.
They're probably just too light, but I wanted to give it a try anyways. And then I shoved an oil barrel off, which I actually thought was going to break and it didn't. So what I did is I had one of my mage hands fly down and then it just moved it over into the fire and blew it up on a goblin warlock. I tossed this war horn which actually did great damage and killed one of the explosive goblins. And once all that was done the giant ogre finally made his way into the battle.
I flew pretty much all of the rest of my mage hands down so that they would just soak up damage and just generally be a nuisance. And they can take a lot of hits before they actually die. Like a surprising amount of damage because they're resistant to physical damage types.
I attached a witch bolt. to the ogre with Pinkie and then just moved her back to a safe distance so she can just activate that every turn for damage. And then I blew the horn again, giving everybody more temporary health.
There are only three Mage Hands left at this point, but it's still a lot of extra health to get at this point in the battle. I shocked the ogre with my Witch Bolt again, and Bonk was itching for combat, so he Misty Stepped Down and blasted a group of Goblins with Burning Hands. Then I had Pinkie cast Darkness on Bonk because Bonk Bonk has the Devil's Sight ability from his Eldritch Invocation, so he can see in magical darkness. So he has advantage against all of these blinded enemies, and they have disadvantage when attacking him. So it made it really easy for him to land hits on them and finish them off.
Minthara finally made her way down with her entire army absolutely butchered. Completely outnumbered, there was really nothing that Minthara could do to win this fight, and we did miss a kind of outrageous amount of attacks on her as well, but Zevlor finished her off, and with that, the goblin raid was over. Or was it?
I looted Minthara's corpse, and then I looted a bunch of other corpses in the area, and made the same mistake as at the beginning of the video. because it counts as stealing and they got mad at me and literally interrupted a cut scene to try and chase me down and kill me and i tried to run away and they were literally just chasing me down trying to slaughter me after i'd basically Basically saved all of their lives and it just really made me upset I was so annoyed that I was having to get away from all of these people that I just saved So I stopped and thought about it for a second and that's when I decided I'm going to kill them I'm not running away from them after saving all of their lives I'm going to kill all of them and this is their own fault for not letting me loot the corpses that are quite frankly mine to loot I had my imp fly up and set up some oil barrels and then shot a fire arrow at it to Slaughter an enemy and that really sealed the deal on me needing to fight them. So I just started I full-on combat I just was absolutely trying to murder them I had lefty throw a smoke powder bomb from up top and then had a very Anticlimactic throw the candle in the oil moment because nobody was actually standing in it Will was on their side and he came and went up the ladder and he wanted to fight me but I was having none of that because he has already killed me once in this video and I'm just, I'm over it.
So I blasted him back off the side and killed him in one hit. I finished off all of Xevlor's reinforcements and finally I finished him off as well. But something happened when I killed Xevlor that I could not have expected because it seems weird that this is how it worked.
But apparently when I killed Xevlor, Something in the game's code decided that that meant the goblin raid had succeeded, and it killed pretty much all the children in the camp, and it also killed Alfeera. And I don't know what to do about this, because Alfeera is kind of a big deal to Jack as a character. And I don't feel like my actions got her killed. I really feel like it's a weird code thing that isn't my fault.
I couldn't decide if I should live with the unfair consequences of my actions, or if I should go back, not fight and kill Xavlor, to make sure that Alphira stayed alive. The video you're watching right now is a compilation of the four videos I made to complete this series. And it was at this point that I actually asked for input from you about what I should do. The comments I received were very heavily leaning towards doing the fight over so Alfeira could live and Jack's story could continue down its intended path. So that's what I did.
That said, I was a lot lazier with the fight this time around because I did not really feel like doing it again, and I was too lazy in fact because by the end of the fight every single character had died except for Pinkie and Xevlor who was at 1 HP. I had Withers revive my party and headed over to listen to Xevlor's post combat speech and then I was able to do the fight over. and the same thing happened. They attacked me again. It had literally nothing to do with looting the corpses, and my only theory is that when I misclicked to attack this poison bottle, the NPC walked back onto the poison, got mad at me, and attacked.
When I redid the combat, I somehow managed to get the poison bottle to break again, so it's a constant between the two combats is that there is poison sitting right here on this spot. But it's fine, whatever. I let them get into combat with Pinkie. Misty stepped away as quick as I could and fled from combat, so I could come back and continue my adventure without slaughtering every tiefling in camp. I'm going to have to write a song about you now, aren't I?
Jack took some time to bard out with Alfeera before the adventure continued. The goblins took the fight to us and lost, but the threat won't be gone until we finish them. off. Bonk said he saw something in a movie that he wanted to recreate and he stood in the middle of the bridge and shouted, you shall not pass to get the fight started.
Because of the darkness spell the goblins are going to have to approach all the way up to Bonk in order to fight us and with my party members across the ravine casting spells it's not going to be too hard to fight them. They did try to summon a warg on my side but Jack just yeeted it off the cliff into the ravine. and made quick work of it.
Because of all the temporary health that Bonk gets and the fact that he has advantage on attacks against them and they have disadvantage against him because they are blinded, the bridge worked as a perfect choke point to allow Bonk to take pretty much all of the attention of the enemies and fully protect his party, especially Pinky. Bonk is an absolute powerhouse on this team. He cranks out a lot more damage than Pinky, which makes sense because Pinky is designed to have more utility than damage. The darkness spell eventually wore off and they finally got a hit in on Bonk, but all it did was take away his temporary health and do a little bit of damage, and then he got a killing blow and got a bunch of health right back, and we mopped up the rest of the fight. No trouble at all.
But this was just the warm-up fight. There's a lot more goblins waiting for us in the heart of their camp, but they really like these bridges and they decided to just run at us single file so we could just start Eldritch blasting them away. we only have two people with repelling blast but that was enough for the beginning of the fight and we can bring in another darkness spell to make us safe from ranged attacks and force the goblins to approach bonk is the only warlock that has devil's sight right now so everybody Nobody else is blinded when they're in the darkness, but it's really easy to just take a step out to the side, fire off an Eldritch Blast, and hop back into safety. We were even able to knock some of them off the bridge if they strayed too much to the right side. And they really designed their defenses poorly, because their giant ogre guard can't fit past the barricade, so he was trapped and couldn't even approach at all.
After hitting him a few times, he did actually swing and take down one of the barricades, and I decided to do him a solid and take down the other one so he could have a fair shot with his last tiny amount of remaining health. I tried to see if I could get the angle to knock him off the bridge, but I wasn't able to get it just right, so I had Bonk go in and finish him off. Inside the camp, Pinky tried to make friends with an owlbear cub, so we'll see if that turns into anything later.
There's a lot of sleeping goblins that are just drunk off their asses that I just had Bonk go and execute in one hit, but he didn't have enough damage to kill the bugbear in one hit, so we had another fight on our hands. The fight bled into another area of the goblin camp, and they actually took down Bonk, which is not great because he is the only tanky person, but Pinky rushed in to get him back on his feet before retreating to a safe distance. But it was pretty hard to keep him on his feet because the goblins were very determined to try and take him out. Crusher here showed how he earned his name by absolutely pounding on Bonk.
Look at Bonk's pose there. And then he shoves Jack right off the top of the tower. Great plays, honestly.
But Pinky and Bonk stick together, so she tossed a health potion at him to get him back on his feet before he died. Lefty tried to send the goblin down to Jack so that he could get a little more productivity in the fight. But unfortunately, Reginald is just too strong for his own good and ended up doing the whole job himself. I Eldritch Blasted my way into the upper floor of the Goblin Camp, and we are ready to take on the interior now.
I used Minor Illusion to get as many Goblins as I could over by one of the big statues that can get knocked down. And I had Reginald fire a shot off, which didn't do quite enough damage, but it's okay. We have more people to take their turns. So Jack fired a shot off and...
didn't do enough damage. So I had Pinkie Fire a shot off and finally managed to get it to fall, but I didn't have anybody left to actually attack the goblins. So I wasn't in combat with them and one of them insta-died, but the rest of them are just like, oh, nothing happened.
It's fine. So I gave it another go. And this time I left the game in turn-based mode and thankfully Lefty did enough damage to take it down by himself. So I had Bonk use Bone Chill to make sure that we were actually in combat. Then I had him misty step down and get in the perfect position for a burning hands on five of them, which was a huge hit.
And that's basically the fight is over just in that one play. We had to fire off a couple of extra attacks, but the first room went down real easy and we are off to a good start and had Jack give us all a short rest. Now in hindsight.
I might have let this first fight go to my head a little because instead of having a good fight opener next time, I decided to have my fight opener destroy Draugr Ragslin's throne just for the emotional damage. He didn't let it get to him. He didn't let it get to him at all because this fight went very poorly very fast. If anything Draugr Ragslin just let his throne destruction make him angry and turned that into Damage.
Initially the fight didn't look too bad. I had my imps take out one of the goblins and I had darkness up But the blinded Drawer Ragslin was able to land hits Despite his disadvantage on attacks. Bonk only had four health left after Drawer Ragslin's first attack Which really doesn't bode well for the rest of my team because Bonk has way more health than they do Bonk got dropped by a javelin throw which caused Pinky to rush into the fight but he was just barely outside of range to be able to help him back to his feet.
But Jack, always the team player, ran over and got Bonk back on his feet. But enemies love to target Pinkie, and as soon as she was in range, Draugr Raxxlin ran over and absolutely yeeted her into the spider den and took Bonk down in the same turn. So my darkness spell was gone.
Not that it felt like it had helped very much in the first place anyways. But once again, Jack came to the rescue, he used his last spell slot to get Pinkie back on her feet, and he used his action to get Bonk back on his feet. Only for Bonk to get yeeted off into the spider pit by Drawer Ragslin, but at least he's back with Pinkie now. Drawer Ragslin landed a hit on Jack and it looked like he was leaving until he used repulsor and yeeted Jack into the spider pit.
And this is where Jack learned that all of his helpfulness was not going to be returned. because Pinky focused on getting Bonk back up and Bonk focused on making sure Pinky was safe. The imps were still giving it their best shot up at the top against Draugr Ragsland, but they were heavily outmatched and one of them got just absolutely insta-killed. But they were still getting a little bit of hits in here and there. Bonk got hit by another They're pretty big hit of damage and without very many resources or many ways that they could see to turn this fight around, they decided to flee the area together because their turns were back to back, which, of course, is leaving Jack to die in the spider pit.
But who knows? Maybe he'll make it. You know, maybe he'll be OK. Reginald is still in there.
You know, Lefty likes to help people out when they're in a bind. Oh, no, I don't have a clear line of sight to throw a potion at Jack. You know, I'll lure Draugr Ragslin away.
That'll help Jack. Hang in there buddy. Bong and Pinkie chugged a bunch of health potions to get themselves back ready to fight before heading back out into the spider pit.
Pinkie entered the spider pit in sneak mode but it looked to her like it was going to be too risky to try and do anything to help Jack so she decided to leave the spider pit and get to a safer location. She tried to finish off Drawer Ragslin because he was really hurt, but she wasn't able to get enough damage in and Jack expired. Followed almost immediately by Pinkie getting absolutely wailed on and killed by Draugr Ragslin. Maybe she should have saved Jack instead of being selfish.
Reginald was finally able to finish off Gror Ragslin and Bonk rushed as quickly as he could to use a Revivify scroll on Pinkie. Then we just fired spells off from safety to kill the spiders and everybody continued on with the adventure leaving Jack dead in the spider pit. We'll get him later.
You know better better to use withers to get him up than to use another scroll. We already had to use one this fight on Pinkie. Jack is slowly starting to realize that the party is not looking out for him as much as he's looking out for himself. out for them.
Bonk insisted on making a very strange decision, which is letting Volo gouge his eye out and give him a new eye which allows him to see invisibility, which seemed like a plus to everybody, but it was odd that he was so willing to let it happen. Then we yeeted a couple of goblins off some cliffs to finish off everything in the goblin camp before getting ready to go and party with the tieflings. We're ready to head to your camp. Excellent.
Lead the way. At the party, Bonk and Pinkie paired off to chat while Jack was spending some time sulking over at the river, but then he saw Alfeira in the distance and decided to head over to chat. This might be the wine talking, but I'm feeling inspired.
Thinking of writing my next song about you. So Jack showed off his bard skills for Alfeira once again and played for the crowd. While this was happening, Reginald had a plan of his own, which is that he really wanted to get that band of intellect. so that he could be more intelligent and hopefully become the manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium. But there were too many eyes watching Bonk and Pinky, so he wasn't able to go up and try to pickpocket them.
So he slipped away and decided to wait for his next chance. By the end of the party, Pinky had gotten pretty drunk and said something that left Bonk a little curious what she meant. She said, I can't believe you found me before I found you. We've been nearly inseparable ever since.
And Bonk was wondering what she meant by before I found you, but he didn't have a chance to ask. The next day, the party headed into the Underdark to see what lay in store for them, but they immediately came across a Minotaur that was trying to break its way into the structure that they had climbed into. And there were traps that were firing at it constantly, so leaving through the front door was not an option.
And they decided to head out the broken window. I had a little oops moment with one of the torch stalks standing a little too close and took a point of damage, but that's not too much. So we headed forward and found a bunch of petrified bodies.
And on the other side of them, a spectator was waiting to surprise us and attack. Fortunately for Pinky, she has the alert feat, which makes it so that she has faster initiative and can't get surprised. Because if she didn't have it, she'd probably be dead because she was walking up in the front.
She put down a layer of darkness on her party so that they could be safe because the spectator is going to bring some allies into the fight with him as well. And they have the spectator charm on them which makes it so any damage will break them free of the illusion and that is what the imps are for. I had the imps fly up and be the front line of my attack and they managed to get the first charmed drow to be free and he joined us in fighting against the spectator. Bonk headed out after casting Mirror Image so that he could get up close and personal with the spectator.
And I made a mistake with Pinky because I stepped out of the darkness and was not able to get far enough back in to actually be safe. We got some good opportunity attacks on the spectator as it was moving, but it went over and... bit Pinkie and broke her concentration on the darkness spell.
So that's done. Reginald seized the moment to make sure that he was in the safest position possible because, you know, you got to look out for number one and he is definitely number one. And freeing the drow from the charm ended up being a really good decision because it cranked a lot of damage out throughout the fight. The spectator flew over and just insta-killed Pinkie and then also paralyzed Jack and Reginald just kept on blasting and then going and hiding back down below at the bottom of the rock climb, which left the task of reviving and helping party members up to bonk.
The spectator unpetrified a drow over by Reginald, which maybe could have been an issue, But I'm playing Warlock, so Reginald just went ahead and yeeted it straight off the cliff so he wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. And honestly Bonk just spent the majority of the fight from this point on just reviving Pinky over and over again. It took a while but we were finally able to bring down the spectator. But hardly a moment later we came across another monstrosity that needed to be dealt with.
This thing is pretty mean, but I got really lucky and Pinky managed to land a critical strike. and she is a great old one warlock so she has mortal reminder which frightens enemies when they get hit by a crit so it's not able to come up here and that bought us a lot of time to deal damage while it was just biting at the imps unfortunately we weren't able to finish it off because it burrowed underground and fled huge coward my party headed into a myconid village and that is where lefty got a pretty devious idea for lefty's intelligence level He found a headband that looked very similar to the Warped Headband of Intellect, so he decided to buy it and start wearing it, and he made a real big deal about it. He's very showboaty, let everybody know that he had this new headband. We came across the big burrowing baby again, and this time he wasn't so lucky, because Jack was able to yeet him straight off the cliff, ending the fight instantly. Pinkie talked her way out of an ambush, and so naturally, now that they're not expecting it, we start Eldritch Blastin'.
We blasted the boss off the second floor and one of his guards off the third before having Bonk cut the rope netting so it would be harder for them to get up to us. I also blasted a reanimated corpse off into the chasm and the fight got pretty messy from that point on, but for the most part we had dealt with enough of them that we were able to just keep reviving our teammates over and over again, even if they got downed by a hit, so nobody was ever getting finished off. I tried to have Lefty blast this guy off of the walkway when he was approaching us, but he missed, which was unfortunate. But then that guy missed against Lefty, giving Lefty a second chance to fire that 42% blast off and get him back down onto a lower ground.
I honestly missed an absolutely insane number of attacks while I was doing this fight, and it just really, it was so, so messy. But everybody made it through the fight. We didn't have any casualties, and we just had... We just spammed Eldritch.
It was just warlock things. We just kept casting Eldritch Blast over and over and over again until we had won. Party went down for a long rest and the Owlcub Bear came back and it wanted some food. So I tried to offer it some food, but it did get scared away. So hopefully it'll come back again.
I also had Pinkie throw the ball with the doggo that we have hanging out in camp before we got back to the adventure. The party is almost level five. So we yeeted a couple creatures into chasms.
Then I came across this guy that was trapped in the middle of a poisonous mushroom field. And I just thought this was a funny moment because I had a strength check to try and throw a misty step scroll to him and I got an 8 on it. The scroll misses the dwarf by a fair margin.
I just thought it was so funny but I got to solve it in a somewhat warlock way. My uh familiar my imp doesn't trigger the bibber bangs so i just had it move the scroll over and i thought it was kind of cool because once the scroll was close enough he actually did pick it up and then teleport himself to safety this is the last fight in the video that my full party works together on because after this fight something is going to permanently change the group dynamic going forward and it doesn't have anything to do with this fight Specifically, but rather because after this fight my party hits level 5. Level 5 is a significant power spike, and this sudden increase in power is going to trigger a unique event between two of my warlocks. You see, warlocks are granted power by their patron, and in exchange carry out specific agreed upon acts of service. But these two warlocks were given only one requirement. They agreed that upon request of their patron, they would compete in a contest to prove where the essence of power lies.
If they win the contest, their patron would allow them one wish that would be granted if the request was within the patron's power to accomplish. If they lose, their contract would be severed and their powers revoked. Now obviously Reginald Ravenshadow, probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, is not one of the warlocks I'm talking about because he has a lot of responsibilities.
as the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium. At level 5, Lefty got access to the plant growth spell, the darkness spell, and he swapped out crown of madness in favor of counterspell. He also took devil sight so he can see clearly even when he's standing inside of his magical darkness. It also can't be Jack because Jack hasn't reached level 5 as a warlock yet due to his multi-class as a bard.
Jack's patron is the same as Reginald, the archfey, but as of right now we don't know what service Jack promised the archfey in exchange for his powers. Jack went to level 3 as a warlock and took the Hold Person spell and went Pact of the Tome. Bonk's patron is the Fiend, and Bonk himself tends to face his problems with brute force and fire.
Bonk took the Fireball spell and the Sign of Ill Omen, so he can weaken enemies that can match him in terms of raw power. He also took Vampiric Touch so he can restore himself while damaging his enemies. Pinkie's patron is the Great Old One, and Pinkie tries to use Cunning to solve her problems.
She wants to outmaneuver her enemy rather than face them head on. She took the spell Hunger of Hadar so she can force enemies out of advantageous positions, and One with Shadows so she can slip into invisibility if things don't go her way. She also swapped out Dissonant Whispers to get Counterspell. At level 5, a Warlock's Eldritch Blast Cantrip is upgraded, allowing a second projectile to be fired with each cast.
This can be great for sheer damage or for knocking back multiple enemies at the same time. Lefty and Jack headed out to look for magical items in a nearby wizard tower, Eldritch blasting their way past the arcane defenses. With them out of the way, it was finally time. The Fiend and the Great Old One made a wager long ago to prove the essence of power. The Fiend said that brute force is all that matters and his champion would wield a sword of flame.
The Great Old One said that a cunning champion would always find a way to steal victory. Pinky and Bonk had been instructed by their patrons to travel with each other without revealing why. But suddenly it was obvious. They were the chosen champions that would fight to prove which patron was right. Okay, real quick, I just want you to know that this is a real fight between Pinky and Bonk.
I didn't choose the winner. That said, I did make a decision during the fight that is outside the scope of normal Baldur's Gate combat, and I rolled d20s to determine whether it was successful or not. Now, roll for initiative. Pinkie won the initiative roll by one, so she's going to act first. Pinkie wants to get as far away from that sword as possible, so she takes off and gets to the high ground before firing off a pair of Eldritch Blasts at Bonk.
She lands both hits, but it really just does average damage and gets through his temporary health. Since Pinkie is packed of the chain, her familiar gets an extra attack, so Bonk wanted to take it out immediately and targets it first before moving on to Pinkie. With Bonk threatening an attack of opportunity, Pinkie Misty steps away.
Then... Pinkie uses Shapeshift to disguise herself like the corpses nearby so she can hopefully hide and let Bonk pass by, giving her a chance to better prepare for this encounter. Bonk couldn't see her when she did this, so he doesn't know that she's shifted her appearance.
If he wants to find her, he'll need to make a perception check that beats her stealth check. Bonk's patron instructed him not to use spell slots during this fight, so he's going to need to run to catch up to Pinkie, and use his false life on the way to give himself some more temporary health. As Bonk rounds the corner, Pinkie makes a stealth check and gets an 18 on it, so that's what Bonk will need to beat with his perception check, but he only rolls a 15 and has a minus one, so he gets a 14 and has no idea where she's hiding. He ran right past past her pretending to be a corpse on the ground and continued on to try and see where she went. Pinkie takes this opportunity to backtrack, hoping she can come up with a way to win this fight.
While this is happening, Jack and Reginald are about to get themselves into a bit of a situation as well because Reginald decided to split off looking for treasure while Jack's back was turned, but he found enemies instead. Seeing that he would be completely outmatched, he decided to do what any logical person would do in his situation and run away. While he was fleeing he tossed a bench into the path so that hopefully it would give him a little bit more time. After somebody wasted Jack's movement with a misclick he ended up surrounded by animated armor. And Reginald thought about what his next move would be.
Pretty surrounded Jack decided to go up to the top floor and fired off some eldritch blasts on the way. Hoping to get some distance between himself and all of these animated armor suits that came out of nowhere. And that's when the animated armor started landing some hits onto Jack. Distracted, Reginald missed his attacks, while Bernard made its way up to the top floor to go after Jack. Jack was able to heal himself a little bit, but as he was trying to get away from Bernard's shock field, he took an attack of opportunity that was pretty massive, but thankfully he was able to get away.
to land a single point of damage with his two Eldritch Blasts, and that knocked Bernard down to Reginald's floor. Unfortunately, Jack just didn't have enough health left to survive the attacks from the remaining animated armor, and he got downed. This left Reginald with a choice. Should he run away and leave Jack for dead, or should he make his way up to the roof and try to get Jack back on his feet? After landing a double knockback on animated armor, Reginald was feeling a little better about the fight, and thought All he needed was an extra hand and they could pull this one out.
Or perhaps more likely, he just was worried he wouldn't be able to escape. Reginald went to the top floor and prepared to revive Jack, while Bernard busted the bench that was blocking his path. And the remaining animated armor started working their way back up to the roof. Reginald's pretty tough to hit though, so he manages to dodge one of the two attacks.
And he gets Jack back on his feet, giving himself an ally in this fight, before running away to high ground. Jack doesn't have enough movement to get to where Reginald ran to, so he tries to go find a corner where he can hide. The animated armor tried to hit Reginald, but they just couldn't. And Reginald used plant growth to make the entire elevator area extremely hard for them to move around on. Reginald's hiding spot was a lot less accessible than Jack's was, so the animated armor turned their attention towards him.
Jack fought hard. and finished off one of the armors, but it wasn't going to be enough. Maybe if Reginald had landed both hits for the knockback, Jack wouldn't have been in as much danger, but not even Reginald Ravenshadow, probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, can land every spell.
With Jack down, Reginald knew he was next, and that gave him hyper focus to land a double crit knockback to finish Bernard off in a single blow. The crits weren't actually necessary, the fall damage would have done it, but it was still kind of cool. The two enemies remaining had an extremely hard time moving on the plant growth, and that gave Reginald a lot of time to miss several attacks while they tried to figure out how they were going to best approach the plant. approach and attack him. Eventually he was able to land some hits to finish one of them off.
I don't know why it took fall damage there, but it did and that's just what happened. So I'm accepting it. And Reginald landed two more massive hits on the armor and knocked it way down to the bottom and thought about running towards Jack to try and save him, but the danger wasn't gone yet. So he decided to protect himself.
Meanwhile, Bonk realized that he had been fooled and he doubled back to look for Pinkie. Pinkie had bought herself just enough time to rush a spell cast on Find Familiar so she could get her imp back. She left her imp standing right in the middle of the room so she could hide in the corner. and prepare for an ambush. Bonk charged into the room and didn't see Pinkie hiding in the corner at all and went straight up to the imp so that he could try and take it down as quickly as possible.
But he didn't have any actions left so the imp had a chance to attack and was was able to deal some pretty decent damage down onto Bonk. Pinkie started to creep out of the room, but knowing that she would need to fight if she was going to win, decided to fire off an Eldritch Blast with advantage and did some good damage to Bonk. Bonk needed to use both of his attack actions in order to take down the Imp, because he didn't do enough damage on the first one. But he had enough movement to get right up to Pinkie so that she would be threatened once again. With no spell slots left, she was forced to fire off an Eldritch Blast at disadvantage, and she did eight damage getting Bonk very hurt and she still hasn't taken a hit yet but it was finally Bonk's turn to land some attacks and he swung twice and finished Pinkie off in a single turn.
Pinkie succeeded on her death saving throws and was unconscious on the ground. Bonk had officially won the contest of power and earned the right to request a wish from his fiend patron. Pinkie might have succeeded on her death saving throws but but Jack wasn't so lucky, and he died. Reginald tried to finish off the animated armor and eventually landed some hits, and went over to check on Jack.
Seeing that Jack was dead on the ground, Reginald wondered if this was the moment that he'd been waiting for. So he walked away, leaving Jack's body behind. Fate smiled on Reginald more than he could have imagined, because Pinky was also lying unconscious on the ground, and this was the perfect moment.
Reginald decided to reach into her pack. He scattered a bunch of her belongings all over the ground and stole some of them so it would look like she was robbed. And he finally put the headband of intellect onto his head.
more than doubling his intelligence. Since it looked similar to the headband he'd been wearing, he expected that he would get away with this, and crept away from Pinky as she laid unconscious. Reginald used a scroll of Revivify on Jack and got him back on his feet and told him how bravely he fought and how they managed to take down this fight together and he revived him as soon as he could, and they went to go find Bonk and Pinky and tell them of their glorious fight. But they found only Bonk talking to his patron down by the lake. They went to find Pinkie and Reginald was careful to make sure he was always within line of sight of Jack so that nobody would suspect that he had come down and robbed Pinkie, taking the warped headband of intellect.
But that wasn't the only thing Pinkie lost, because she could feel the power of her patron withdrawing from her. As the loser of the contest, the conduit of power between her and the Great Old One was being closed. It wouldn't be long before Pinkie was no longer a warlock. The only thing left now is for Bonk to make his wish. And his wish was that from now on, Pinkie would be the source of her own power.
She wouldn't be able to progress her warlock powers, but the ones that she already had would be maintained, and she would be able to continue to grow in strength as a sorcerer. Now that Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archway's left-handed wand emporium, has the headband of intellect in his possession, he's smart enough to know that his abilities could be better utilized if he made just a couple of adjustments, and his patron liked seeing his initiative. and allowed him to make just a small tweak to his abilities, also known as a minor respec.
Instead of Devil's Sight, Lefty now has Armor of Shadow so that he can cast Mage Armor without expending a spell slot. Lefty's also going to realize the power that magical items can have on his abilities, and as a result he decided to equip the Club of Hill Giant Strength to boost his physical capabilities anytime it suits him. He picked up the Boots of Stormy Clamor as well, which can cause enemies to fall prone and take thunder damage from his spells.
While Lefty was reveling in his newfound power, Pinkie was experiencing the opposite. She had never felt weaker and more vulnerable after her defeat at the hands of Bonk. And it's going to take some time for her new powers as a sorceress to develop, so Pinkie decided to take a little shortcut.
After drinking a potion that Omolum had brewed, Pinkie gained a new illithid power, Survival Instinct, which can prevent death. She's also going to stop holding back and she slurped up all the rest of the Mind Flayer parasites that they'd collected so far, adding psionic backlash, favorable beginnings, and shield of thralls to her capabilities. She's going to be on the lookout for more parasites to enhance herself even further.
The party headed towards their next adventure, sailing towards the Grimforge, and Lefty took control of the ship. When a Dwargar ship pulled up next to them and started asking questions, Lefty did something he normally wouldn't consider. See, normally Lefty wouldn't use his physical strength to solve his problems, but with the club of hill giant strength, an elixir of the Colossus, and an encouraging tune played by Jack, he shoved the Dwargar into the water and started a fight. He immediately blasted another one into the water, gaining a huge advantage for the party. Pinky and Lefty's imps swarmed the Dwargar's backline.
Hunger of Hadar from Pinky was dealing massive damage to everybody, a big damage fireball from Bonk, and a lucky knockback from Jack, the encounter came to an end pretty quickly and we were free to finish sailing to the Grimforge. I assassinated a couple more Dwargar and looted a ring that can cast invisibility which I gave to Pinkie so that she has more defensive options. Hopefully she'll be able to find some good ways to utilize it.
Lefty came across a gnome that had some pretty impressive explosives, so naturally Reginald Ravenshadow, probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, saw an opportunity to acquired a powerful weapon and stole the rune powder barrel. When the gnome tried to run off, he actually managed to nick a rune powder vial out of her pocket as well. And he's going to wait patiently for the perfect moment to use these devastating explosives. Pinkie talked to the locals and found out that they were willing to turn on True Soul Nier. Help Thren free Nier, then you and my chums grind him up.
So Pinkie used her charming personality to negotiate half the spoils from battle, but we do need to kill a scrying eye first. Knife it and don't get caught. While the party was trying to figure out how to covertly take this thing down, Lefty Misty stepped up to it, grabbed it, chucked it off a cliff, followed up with another Misty step, and Eldridge blasted this thing down before returning to the party. This guy has gained a lot of confidence recently and seems to be taking the initiative a lot more than he used to.
Maybe he does have a shot at becoming the manager someday. We needed to get rid of a pile of rubble between us and Truesilnir, so the party suggested Lefty use his rune powder barrel to clear the path, but Lefty knows better than to waste such powerful explosives when he could use a couple of simpler smoke powder barrels instead, so he put some down and blasted it all to bits. As planned, a fight broke out and Bonk had positioned himself perfectly to protect Pinkie from any approaching attackers, while Reginald teleported to a more advantageous position to fight from.
The fight was going well, but when an enemy ranger fired past Bonk to pin down Pinky with an entangling arrow, he rushed the attacker in hopes of freeing Pinky as quickly as possible. He wasn't able to break the caster's concussion, concentration, but he did deal enough damage to allow for one of the members of the coup to finish the job. Lefty finished up the combat with one last Eldritch Blast and Pinkie quickly looted the corpse to grab the Mind Flayer Parasite and a pair of boots that's going to allow her an extra Misty Step each short rest.
She saved the Parasite for later and the party headed towards the Forge. The battle against the Forge's guardian Grimm went poorly in a hurry. We dropped the hammer onto Grimm twice, but he retaliated by downing Jack. In a surprising move, Lefty heroically got the Behemoth's attention and lured it into position for a third hammer smash and he was downed for his efforts.
But he succeeded, and Pinky dropped the hammer a third time, leaving the Protector of the Forge at just 13 health remaining. Pinky has become friends with the dog Scratch and summoned him to get Lefty back on his feet, and then cast Survival Instinct onto him so if he took lethal damage again, he'd be able to stay in the fight. He didn't end up getting hit, but but he did appreciate the recognition of his heroism and magical ability, and he finished off the Forge Guardian with one last Eldritch Blast. This is kind of a big moment for Lefty, because he realized that maybe he didn't have to be selfish. Maybe, just maybe, he could be a hero instead.
I used the Forge to craft an Adamantine Heavy Armor and an Adamantine Shield, both of which will go completely unused for a while, since none of my party is proficient in the use of armor or shield. Now, Lefty wanted to give this whole hero thing a try, so when he heard screams and smelled something burning, he actually rushed into action. But he was immediately stopped by an aggressive guard who was ready to attack him just because of his race.
He did manage to intimidate her into backing down, and although his enthusiasm had taken a hit, he still rushed forward to help. All the guards here seemed completely incompetent, so Lefty blasted the door open with a single cast and made his way inside. Counselor Florek was trapped behind a broken door, so Lefty let loose another blast to secure her freedom when something tragic happened. One of the idiot guards moved between him and the door, eating the damage of one of his eldritch blasts in the process. The other blast freed the counselor, but the very racist and otherwise completely incompetent guards...
turned on Lefty in a heartbeat. He tried his best to escape their wrath. He jumped down to the first floor, even taking a little damage, and he tried to find cover deeper inside the burning building, but these guards didn't care that there was still a man to save on the second floor. They let loose multiple arrows of fire to light this building up even more in an attempt to flush Lefty out of his hiding spot.
And he ran from the fire, but it was too late. He had taken too much damage, and he collapsed, begging for mercy. But there's no mercy coming his way, just another fire arrow that was let loose and covered the entire room in flames.
Nobody came to Lefty's aid, and the soldiers never let up in their assault. Lefty was burned to a crisp and left dead on the ground. His party wasn't even aware of what was happening, and they even spoke with Counselor Floric outside and accepted a reward for saving her. When Lefty didn't come out of the building though, with the rest of the guards, the party went in to find him roasted, and Bonk pulled out a scroll of Revivify and used it on Lefty.
Jack played a quick song of rest to get Lefty away from Death's Door, and they presented him with his new lightning staff, a reward for saving Counselor Floric. And then they all left the burning building. Everybody except for Lefty. Because he still had some unfinished business. There's still a man calling for help on the second floor.
Before addressing the man, Lefty assured his own safety by blasting open the door and positioning a water barrel to slow the spread of the fire. Then he stood calmly and watched as the fire approached. He spoke to the man who was begging for help, but instead Lefty attacked, blasting Benren in the face to put him out of his misery. He didn't have any loot on him, so Lefty just jumped to safety, getting kissed by the flames on his way out.
But this didn't do anything to calm the rage inside him, he was still furious over what had happened to him. So when he detected an ambush lying in wait for him in a nearby building, he set up an ambush of his own. The club of hill giant strength lets him jump great heights straight onto the roof and he was able to sneak behind his would-be assailant. There's no point in talking to this man and giving him an advantage. Lefty knows that much now.
He dropped Hunger of Hadar right onto this guy, blinding and surprising him. Then he blasted him from behind once, while Hunger of Hadar ripped more life away with acid and cold damage. At literally one health, Lefty put this guy down with a combination of force acid, cold, and lightning damage. Upon rejoining the party, Lefty found a woman who appeared to be up to no good, so he opened fire immediately, blasting her off the cliffside, and his party was not used to this degree of instant hostility and violence, and it was clear the woman was dead before they even had a chance to stop him.
They all insisted that he take- a walk to clear his head and they said they'll handle the githyanki patrol on their own. Pinkie knows that the githyanki aren't too fond of outsiders so she disguised herself as a githyanki for the conversation but they still seem skeptical so she tried to lie that she was from the Githyanki creche. Despite giving it her best effort, she failed to convince them and a fight broke out.
Pinkie started with hunger of Hadar to blind all of her attackers and Bonk rushed into the battlefield to aid her. Pinkie used Nier's boots to misty step to high ground, then commanded her imp to destroy the ladders leading her way. And with Pinkie inaccessible, the Githyanki attacked Bonk with a massive 23 damage ranged attack that knocked him to the ground, followed by 9 more damage.
He's in danger, but Jack provided a heal from a distance and did so completely unnoticed, so he was able to take the high ground with Pinkie and put a hex onto the patrol's commander. Bonk took cover in hopes of avoiding more ranged attacks, but the Githyanki teleported right next to him and paralyzed his entire body with magic. Things are not looking good for the party.
Jack did blast one of the Githyanki back into Hunger of Hadar, ensuring their death, but he's not in a position to help Bonk at all. Now Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand Emporium, was returning from his walk and he was really not shocked to see that the diplomatic option had failed. Now he had no intention of playing the hero anymore, but his party members had revived him in his time of need, so he saw this as an opportunity to return the favor so he wouldn't be in their debt.
He added his own hunger of Hadar to the battlefield to make it even harder. harder for the githyanki to approach bonk and deliver the final blow but unfortunately it made no difference as the leader teleported past the obstruction and sliced bonk to pieces with the soldiers having made their way out of her first hunger of hadar pinky repositioned it onto bonk's killer putting the githyanki into a horrible situation pinned between two walls slowed and blinded by pinky's spell the party took turns blasting the remaining githyanki to death, and after the fight Pinkie ended her spell and rushed in to revive Bonk as quickly as possible. For once the party was entirely on the same page and the only words on that page were fuck the Githyanki. They headed into the mountain pass to find the Githyanki crush and a helpful merchant along the way sold some powerful gear to the party and also requested that they steal a Githyanki egg to sell to her.
Pinky, of course, tried to negotiate better terms and was able to convince Lady Esther to pay her for the job up front. Lefty doesn't want to get slaughtered so easily again, so he put on some clothing that increased his dexterity and bracers that increase his armor class. With mage armor, his AC is now up to 19, leaving him in a much safer position than before.
He might be using the Spellsparkler staff to enhance his magic during combat, but he's smart enough to know when to equip his Club of Hill Giant strength and use its power to unstick the Gondola Wheel. He's also smart enough to know that you don't put your entire party on a moving platform in Baldur's Gate 3, so he proceeded to the creche alone and let his party catch up by traveling to the waypoint. Now I guess I didn't record this next part, but we snuck into the Githyanki creche, the party didn't want to launch a full assault without gaining information first, and Lefty begrudgingly agreed as long as they all promised to start blasting as soon as things turned hostile. We purchased some more powerful items from the quartermistress, and then explored the creche.
Nobody seemed to mind us since we had managed to get past the guards in the front without being noticed. Pinkie noticed there were several Mind Flayer parasites and started stealing them. But she was accused of committing a criminal act. No problem.
The check to talk my way out of this is 10, and I have a plus 9 on the roll, with advantage courtesy of the friend's cantrip. While this was happening, Lefty scooped up the parasite, which was far too obvious, so I shut the door so we could get some privacy and work this whole thing out. Pinky and Lefty's imps basically did all the work, landing six sting attacks in a row and leaving our enemy with one health, and we let Bonk do the honors of securing our first kill in the Githyanki crash. Getting into this fight ended up being a blessing in disguise as Pinkie was eager to increase the power of her Illithid powers even more. The Aberration Hunter's amulet we looted gives a Githyanki advantage on intelligence saving throws, so Pinkie disguised herself as a Githyanki, fooling the amulet into lending her its power.
She then took a seat and needs to succeed on saving throws to give her Illithid potential even more strength. With advantage on the first roll, it was simple. The second roll was failed, but Pinkie is willing to do anything to succeed here, so I used Inspiration to try again and passed the check.
The final roll had a Charisma option, but it requires the help of Pinkie's patron, who has cut her off from any future power or aid. So Pinkie once again relied on her Intelligence saving throws, and thanks to having advantage on the roll, she succeeded. As a result of this process, All of Pinkie's illithid powers now cost a bonus action instead of an action, and to celebrate, Pinkie stuck four more of those wrigglers into her brain, including Coal the Weak, Luck of the Far Realms, Charm, and Perilous Stakes.
Coal the Weak specifically- is of great importance because it's going to help Pinkie to execute enemies that she attacks. Any enemy that's left with less health than she has Tadpoles is going to be executed, and it'll deal psychic damage to other nearby enemies. With nine Tadpoles already used, this is going to really help Pinkie to finish off low health opponents, especially since her battle magic is not that strong.
We headed to the hatchery to steal ourselves a Githyanki egg, but Lefty was baited by this perfect looking rock. It's the perfect rock to land on. but it has a teleportation trap inscribed on it. He was teleported into a jail cell and the Githyanki attacked.
As promised though, his party immediately took action to defend him. Lefty Misty stepped out of the cage and tried to knock the hatchery's custodian off the ledge but was counterspelled and left completely vulnerable. So he commanded his imp to attack in hopes that it draws the enemy's fire. Bonk charged and attacked the nearest enemy and opened a bloody wound in them, and Pinkie attacked as well but only dealt 3 damage due to her general lack of skill in battle magic.
Despite all his armor class, Lefty was dropped in just one turn to a shatter spell followed by a 20 damage arrow to the face, but his imp likely saved his life by drawing the fire of the follow up attack. The enemy tried to disarm Bonk, but you can't disarm a packed weapon, and Bonk retaliated with hellish rebuke, only for it to get counterspelled. At least we know there won't be any more counterspells coming out to stop our next round of attacks.
Jack used Healing Word to get Lefty back on his feet and Pinky Misty stepped to his side and tried to slow the Gith attackers but only managed to effect one of them with her spell. Still though, it gave Bonk the opportunity to cut this slowed opponent down with two swift strikes. On his next turn, he cut down the next Gith Yankee and actually pulled out his shortbow of all things and used an arrow of Roaring Thunder to knock the final enemy into the acid. right onto a trap that teleported them into a cage.
Pinkie covered the cage in hunger of Hadar, and Lefty blasted them through the bars to finish the fight, with all four warlocks having sustained substantial injuries, but all still alive. Jack played a healing song of rest to get us all battle ready, and we pocketed the Githyanki egg to later give to Lady Esther. At this point, Lefty said enough is enough. It's time to purge this place of all Githyanki lifeforms.
All this combat gave my party the experience to go to level 6, which is a significant level for Pinkie and Lefty. Pinkie can no longer level up as a Warlock, so she put her first point into Sorcerer as a Storm Sorcerer. This will allow her to fly as a bonus action after casting a spell.
which should really help a lot to get her out of harm's way a bit more easily. Lefty was able to put his first point into Wizard, massively increasing his versatility as he can now learn spells off of spell scrolls, which he barely knew how to read before he got the Headband of Intellect. He always held them upside down by accident without realizing it, but not anymore! Check this guy out, learning how to cast Feather Fall right off a scroll. Very impressive, buddy.
But he's most interested in casting Magic Missile as it literally can't miss and that's just the kind of consistency the Archfey is looking for from candidates for the manager position at his left-handed Wand Emporium. Jack finally tuned his inspirational speeches at the College of Valor's two-minute online course and he can now increase his allies'attack damage from weapons or attack rolls with Bardic Inspiration. He also picked up Cloud of Daggers because he was starting to feel a little left out in the area of effect spam style combat. Bonk was also feeling a little left out so he grabbed Hunger of Hadar so we can black out entire battlefields.
And just in time too because it's time to fight the Githyanki Inquisitor who decided to kill Pinkie when she admitted that she's been hearing the voice of the absolute. If you hear that voice at all then you are infected and it is my people who need protecting from you. Pinkie threw down the first Hunger of Hadar before closing the doors and running away.
Bonk covered her retreat with his own Hunger of Hadar and once she was clear, Lefty added yet more Hunger of Hadar to the bridge. Then we just watched and waited patiently as our enemies tried to approach. They basically all died just trying to get to us, and we knocked the Inquisitor back into our spells as he tried to approach.
I guess there's a bug though where the blind from Hunger of Hadar goes away if you walk through multiple of them, and the blind was the only thing keeping the Inquisitor from keeping him from doing this. Bonk rushed to Pinkie's aid, drinking an elixir of Hill Giant strength during the run and using it to throw the Inquisitor back towards the spell before slashing him for 20 damage. Jack could see what Bonk was going for and Eldritch blasts him fully back into Hunger of Hadar, allowing the spell's cold damage to finish the job.
We're all done here in the creche, so I had Lefty wave goodbye to Vlachith on our way out because it's honestly one of my favorite cutscenes. The wave. The wave is too perfect. It's amazing. Now, I don't know why, but this save file seems like it's maybe just a little bit corrupted somehow.
It's a very old save file. I obviously haven't gotten back to the series in a while. And the issue I'm having is the game is not recognizing when I have an item necessary to complete a quest.
It also happened with Nir's head when I tried to give it to the Mykonid Sovereign. So I guess it's a good thing I got paid up front for this job because I was not able to turn in the Githyanki egg over to Lady Esther. My party was having a lot of fun butchering enemies with Hunger of Hidar, so we backtracked a little and slaughtered some gnolls in a chokepoint. The NPCs even got on board, shoving the gnolls back into the spell with us. After the fight, I convinced them to give me all the loot and then headed to the Zentrum hideout to say hello.
Well, I guess the Zentrum didn't appreciate how I ended up with all the loot because the guys we saved aren't doing so hot. One of them is dead and the other nearly there. The Zenterim were ready to kill me too, but a passive history check got me in their good graces.
I had to finish Rugen off, which honestly seemed like a mercy at this point, although he didn't see it that way. Everyone profits. I persuaded Brem to free his pet artist with no cost incurred on my end, and I also purchased the titan string bow because it's really good and you never know when somebody might need it.
Next I headed to the swamp to talk to the hag, but she made the mistake of insulting Lefty's ability to read. A wizard thinks he's smart because he can read. Look, Lefty's still a little sensitive about his newfound ability to read, so that type of comment is completely unacceptable. He didn't want any interruptions, so he sent his imp to distract the hag's reinforcements that were on the way.
We blasted this hag pretty aggressively and got her down to 41 health, but she slipped through our fingers back into her lair, leaving us with no choice but to follow her in. First though, we drowned the hag's red cap reinforcements in a sea of hunger of Hadar. On the way to the hag, we found some of her slaves and got the jump on them with an attack from an invisible imp. We made short work of them during the surprise round of combat, and after we finished up, we jumped down to the heart of the hag's lair.
Since Bonk has Volo's magic eye and can see invisibility, Pinkie used her ring to cast invisibility onto him and let him go scout and reveal the hag. During the fight, Bonk used the guaranteed damage from Hunger of Hadar to clear out three of the hag's illusions, and we otherwise just blasted the hag with as much damage as possible until she stopped the combat to try to make a deal. If Lefty was talking, we almost certainly would have finished the job, but she chose to speak with Bonk and he wants as much power as possible so he can better protect Pinky, so he makes a deal with the hag to gain plus 1 to his charisma.
I don't know why I didn't use this right away, but I eventually end up using it halfway through Act 2 to bring his charisma up to 18, so at some point he'll have slightly higher charisma later in the video. My last stop in Act 1 was the Fae's Spider Matriarch, which honestly didn't amount to much. I killed her off and tried to access the Necromancy of Fae book with the Dark Amethyst, but it doesn't seem to recognize that I have both, so it's bugged and not working.
That's fine, I didn't really need it, but hopefully these bugs don't cause issues as I go through the rest of the game. With that, the party headed into the Shadowcurse lands, also known as Act 2. Our first encounter was with some Harpers that were having a little trouble staying out of the shadows. When the man came back infected by the Shadowcurse, Lefty was honestly more intrigued than anything else, but couldn't really think on it for long because the shadows attacked.
Once this battle was done, we were invited to last light in by the Harpers we saved, and made our way over. But not before Lefty learned how to summon Shovel. Shovel might not benefit from the Pact of the Chain's extra attack, but he's got enough personality to make up for it, so this will be Lefty's new primary choice of familiar. After a bit of a struggle, one of the tieflings Jack saved by not exterminating the entire Druid Grove vouched for us and we were let in. I purchased a staff from the Quartermaster that allows one cast of Fireball and I gave it to Jack.
Then I picked up the Cloak of Protection and Amulet of the Harpers for Bonk. For some reason... Damon is dead and I don't know why, so if you know why, tell me in a comment because I'm stumped. I did loot his corpse though and at least I got the dark fire shortbow, so I gave that over to Pinkie so she has resistance to fire and cold damage and she can cast haste once per long rest. Then the party headed into the inn and saw Raphael sitting with Mole, and Bonk mumbled something about needing to check something out and he ran back outside, but the rest of the party went forward and talked to him.
with Raphael. The conversation wasn't particularly noteworthy so we moved on and Jack saw Alfeira and chatted with her and learned of the other tiefling's situation. If they're not dead, they're in Moonrise. And he promises to find them. Thank you.
If anyone can manage it, you can. We need protection from the shadow curse before we can leave, so we headed upstairs to talk to Isabelle, but this gets out of control in a hurry. We did receive the blessing of Saluna, but at the end of the conversation, Flaming Fist Marcus arrives with an army and intends on capturing Isabelle alive.
As for the others... Not so much. Pinkie tried to do a pro gamer play and throw a potion of invisibility at Isabelle and herself to keep them both safe, but Bong's magic eye stripped Isabelle of her invisibility just moments after she got it. I did not anticipate that happening, so I guess it's on to plan B.
Pinkie used her bonus action to cast the Illithid Power, Shield of Thralls onto herself and then intentionally provokes an opportunity attack from Marcus. The shield bursts and stuns Marcus as I had hoped it would. giving my party a better chance of surviving this encounter. One winged horde lands a hit on Isabelle, but after that Bonk was able to cast Hunger of Hadar on the entryway in hopes that it would slow the other's approach.
Now Bonk's gonna be the captain of unforeseen consequences in this combat because Hunger of Hadar started butchering some of the flaming fists that were in the room directly below us. They weren't even in combat, which made it even worse because they're taking damage constantly every few seconds. I'll be sure to check in on them later to make sure they're okay.
But for now, Lefty used Magic Missile and he forgot to have his spell sparkler staff equipped because he was carrying a torch out in the shadows. A less intelligent man might not have been quite so bothered by this failure, but Lefty is too smart now to make such mistakes, so he shamefully walked to the corner to sulk about it. Shovel took some initiative and burst outside the doorway so aggressively that it frightened the winged whore on the balcony, leaving it frozen in fear for two turns. The rest of the winged horror were able to make it through Hunger of Hadar and surround Isabelle, so Pinky used Slow but only landed it on Marcus and one of the winged horrors.
Lefty, intent on fixing his mistake and quite frankly showing off his power, used a potion of speed to gain a second action and equip the correct staff before firing off a magic missile at Marcus. Bonk finished off Marcus, then decides the people downstairs have had enough and disables Hunger of Hadar. He landed a great cleave, but unfortunately hit Isabelle with it too, and she said that's our last warning, so I'd better avoid hitting her with any more attacks.
Pinkie uses her Illithid Power to land a Critical Strike on one of the Winged Horror while also killing another thanks to Cull the Weak. As a great old one Warlock, Critical Strikes have a chance to frighten my enemies, so the Winged Horror won't even be able to move on its next turn. With the fight now essentially under control, I fired off spells at all the remaining enemies until we had won.
And as promised, I headed downstairs to check on the victims of Bonk's unfortunate hunger of Hadar. Oh wow, that's crazy. They got in here too?
Thank goodness you survived, Counselor Florek. You know, we got the worst of it. Okay, bye.
I joined up with some Harpers to ambush Karnas and once we were done slaughtering him and all of his goblin allies, we took the Moon Lantern in his possession and freed the Pixie inside. She granted us full protection from the Shadow Curse, even in the darkest areas that the Light of Seluna couldn't protect us from. After ambushing Karnas, I found myself as the one getting ambushed, but thankfully Pinkie has the alert feet and can't be surprised.
My party gathered on the rooftop and started blasting the mazels with everything we had, but that didn't stop them from wrapping a rope around Pinkie's neck and basically kidnapping her with teleportation magic. Too bad for them, we were in the perfect position to blast them away and free Pinkie, winning the encounter. Almost level 7, I went out in search of a fight and gained that last bit of experience I needed. Pinkie got her second level as a sorcerer, taking the metamagic to twin cast spells or increase the range of her magic. Lefty specialized as an abjuration wizard, and Jack took the feat dual wielder so he can use a staff in each hand, but for some reason Bonk opted not to level up at this time and wandered off into the shadows, clearly on a personal mission.
Bonk's first stop was the House of Healing, but he wasn't allowed in by the sister at the front desk. Naturally, he tried to convince her that he'd picked up some sort of diabolical disease, and he even used the Dark One's luck to add 1d10 to the roll. Against all odds, we landed a 13 against this 14 difficulty class check. So here's what it looks like when you're bad at pretending to be sick. Oof, guess we are doing this the usual way and slashing our way in.
With the sister dead, I looted a ring from a nearby skeleton, then grabbed another ring from the cemetery nearby and rejoined the party and asked Pinky Pinkie for a moment alone with her. Well Bonk's a classy guy, this dude gets down on one knee and everything, and pledged an oath of devotion to Pinkie so strong that it infused him with the power to better protect her from harm. Bonk has officially become an Oath of Devotion Paladin, and the strength of his promise to her was so strong that it unraveled the past by just a little bit, removing one level of Warlock and adding it to Paladin.
Bonk now has five levels as a warlock and two levels as a paladin Oath of Devotion. He took the fighting style protection so he can defend Pinkie while he's by her side and the ring he gave her lets him cast Warding Bond so that he can share in the damage she takes, cutting it in half. Bonk put on the Adamantine Heavy Armor and took the Heavy Armor Master Feat, which reduces damage from non-magical attacks. He also shifted one of his Eldritch Invocations over to Repelling Blast so he can knock enemies away from Pinkie, even from a distance.
I equipped a very suboptimal sword in Bonk's main hand for now, and I'll be looking for a replacement soon. Moonrise Towers might not be the premier location for brand new couples to vacation, but it does have some pretty good shopping. Lefty picked up the risky ring here, giving him advantage on all attacks, and I picked up some other gear that I might use later, I don't know. But I didn't find a good sword for Bonk. I tossed the Titan String Bow onto him in case I ever need a good ranged attack, but we're going to pop back over to Act 1 to pick up some weapons for Bonk.
I didn't record it, but I grabbed Fowler of Luvay for Bonk and I also went to the Githyanki Cresh to get the Blood of Lathander. I didn't go through the quest or anything, I just ripped it out of its housing and blasted all the traps to disarm them. Pretty easy for a squad of warlocks to accomplish. Now the Lefty is an Abjuration Wizard, he has Arcane Ward. Whenever he takes damage, Arcane Ward will reduce the damage he takes by the number of stacks it has, and then lose one stack.
This protection is charged by casting abjuration spells such as Armor of Agathys or Mage Armor. And lucky for me, I can cast Mage Armor without using a spell slot. And Lefty is going to take it one step further because if you put on some regular armor, it cancels out your Mage spell. So then you can just put your clothing back on and cast Mage Armor again to gain another stack of Arcane Ward, basically allowing me to fully stack my Arcane Ward anytime I'm out of combat. We took all of our fancy new builds over to the Shambling Mound, but it couldn't even get through all of the hunger of Hadar spam that we put down, and even Jack joined in with the fun with his own Cloud of Daggers.
Over at the Toll House, Pinkie used her charisma to convince Garen'Goth Thorm to just give up on life, and I'd hoped to be able to apply this same strategy to the rest of the Thorms, but Pinkie isn't strong with Constitution saving throws or Sleight of Hand, and even with advantage on the roll, I failed to trick this bald Thorm. We've got to fight our way out of this one. We took down all the zombies first, and when Thizzabald tried to approach, we knocked him back with Eldritch Blasts.
But standing a little too close to the edge got Pinkie downed and Jack hurt. Plus, Pinkie was concentrating on haste for Lefty, so he was disabled next turn as well. Jack of course healed Pinkie and blasted Thizzabald away before he and Pinkie took a step back for safety, but the timing couldn't be worse because Thizzabald had just blacked out and was vulnerable to attack.
Bonk to the rescue, he more than made up for it by landing two massive divine smites onto Thizibald Thorm before he recovered and Lefty finished the job with an Eldritch Blast. Up next was gonna be Malice Thorm, but with a difficulty class of 21 on the check, Pinky missed the roll by a fair bit. I could have used Inspiration, but I honestly just wasn't that intimidated by Malice, so I just let the fight take place.
And here's how it went. After killing Malice, we headed for Shar's Temple and found Raphael standing outside it. For some reason Bonk mumbled something about us forgetting to loot a chest back in the House of Healing so he took off to do that, but the rest of the party spoke with Raphael. He wants us to kill a creature inside Shar's Temple, but he didn't offer any reward or anything so Pinkie basically just said not interested and Raphael vanished.
Shortly afterwards Bonk caught up with the party and we all headed into Shar's Temple together. We had to fight our way through this temple killing off Bonk. Dark Justice years and the Umbral Tremors that were spawning them. It wasn't particularly difficult though and once we finished we met an ugly undead named Balthazar.
But he's not the real treasure in this area. The real treasure is of course behind this door and it's the Calus Glow Ring. This ring causes every hit to deal two radiant damage as well and Lefty slipped this ring on his finger eager to give it a try. He asked Jack to cast light onto Bonk's weapon which seemed bit redundant since it's the blood of Lathander Mace, but Jack agreed so Lefty could test his new ring out on a Cloaker. And the damage was fantastic.
Magic Missile is now dealing a massive amount of radiant damage on every cast. We found Raphael's enemy, Yurgir, and after some convincing, Pinkie managed to talk her way out of a fight as she promised to find a way to break Yurgir free of his contract with Raphael. Yergear has agreed to kill all of the Dark Justiciars in Shar's Temple, but one such Justicier has had its mind split out into a horde of rats, so we're going rat hunting.
Bonk suggested that it'll be faster if we split up and surprises everybody by suggesting he pair off with Lefty and Pinky go with Jack. Everybody agrees though, and Pinky and Jack find themselves facing off against a massive horde of rats that really aren't any danger because they can't get up to where we're standing. Pinkie and Jack just threw some caustic bulbs on the ground and are letting the rats run into the acid and die in mass.
Meanwhile, Bonk asks Lefty to help him with a different task. Bonk wants to kill Yurgir and Lefty says he'll do it, but Bonk is gonna owe him a favor. Additionally, he requested that Bonk equip Fowler Aluvae and have Jack cast Light on it.
Bonk managed to find Jack just before he and Pinkie ran off to start exterminating rats, and Jack did cast Light onto the sword. The battle strategy Lefty recommended to best Yurgir is simple. Bonk is to simply wait near Yurgir and activate his sword's shriek ability at the start of combat.
Lefty will take care of the rest. Lefty commanded his invisible familiar Shovel to make the first attack. This doesn't surprise the ever-alert Yurgir, but his army of maragons sure didn't see it coming.
Yurgir fired off some grenades at Bonk and turned invisible. Well, that's just great because Bonk's gonna pick these grenades up because you never know when you're gonna need four orthotic hand bombs. Then he activated Falor Aluvae's shriek and walked over to Yergear.
Thankfully, his magic eye reveals Yergear, so he's done his job. Lefty then used a 3rd level Warlock spell slot to fire off 5 magic missiles plus 1 more because of the amulet he's wearing. Lefty has also started wearing the Gloves of Belligerent Skies, which inflicts reverberation whenever an enemy takes thunder, lightning, or radiant damage. And Yergear is about to take a lot of all three of these. Lefty's first six magic missiles deal 79 damage, spread out across Force, Thunder, Lightning, and Radiant.
After chugging a potion of speed, Lefty fired off another six missiles and your gear fell to a lethal blow. Jack and Pinky had just finished their fight with the Dark Justice here, dealing most of the damage by simply knocking it off the cliffside. So imagine their surprise when they found Bonk standing by Yergir's dead body and surrounded by a horde of angry Maragon. Now of course they helped finish the battle and made quick work of it, but Pinkie has some questions for Bonk. Bonk finally comes clean to Pinkie.
When he had wished for her to become the source of her own power, his fiend patron was very disappointed and disapproved of his decision and decided to invoke a sneaky clause in Bonk's contract that allowed his contract to be sold. to another fiend and the terms renegotiated. And of course, the fiend who purchased said contract was none other than Raphael. Bonk couldn't afford to give up any power because he needs all of it to keep Pinky safe, so he agreed to slay one of Raphael's enemies no matter the cost, as well as to never raise a hand in opposition of Raphael. He had avoided Raphael earlier because he just didn't want the party to know that that's his new patron.
Pinky said that they'll find some way to deal with it together, and the party... was about to enter Shadowfell when Jack objected. Jack said they need to go to Moonrise Towers and save the Tieflings. He'd received word that they're alive and being held in the dungeon, but he needs the party's help to break them out.
Although, let's be honest, he mostly just wanted Lefty's help, because Reginald Ravenshadow, probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, has become a force to be reckoned with. He headed into Moonrise Towers and absolutely eviscerated anyone who stood in his way. Every short rest, he could nearly one-shot any two guards in the prison with the help of Bonk's streaking sword. Lefty wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart, of course.
He now has Jack owing him a favor. The party cleared out the entire prison, and the Tieflings and Ironhand Gnomes were both set free and taken to Last Light Inn. Jack rushed up to the inn to give Alfear the good news, when he noticed that she seemed awfully close with the Tiefling named Lucrissa. You're here! You're alright!
How? Alfeira's heart belongs to another and Jack can't help but feel a little let on. So he's left with a choice.
He can be a petty, jealous, disgusting little man, or he can be a total Chad. He can be a hero. Of course he chose to be a hero, and for saving Alfeira, Jack received the Potent Robe, which adds your Charisma modifier to the damage of any cantrips you cast. Now Lefty couldn't have known that he was going to need to call this favor in so soon, but he told Jack to hand over those Potent Robes. And this stung a little, but it's honestly for the best.
It's better to move on than become obsessive and toxic. Jack gave the potent robe over to Jack. to Lefty, which has now increased the power of his Eldritch Blast even more. After leaving Last Light Inn, the party stumbled their way into an ambush.
It wasn't a difficult fight, and afterwards they had all reached level 8. Pinkie enhanced her metamagic to cause the target of her spells to have disadvantage on saving throws. Lefty picked up Arcane Lock and Knock to achieve full mastery over any and all doors. Jack grabbed the Glyph of Warding as a level 5 Bard and Bonk can now make his weapon into a sacred weapon, giving it an even higher chance to hit. With that, the party finally headed down into Shadowfell.
Balthazar was standing with the Night Song, and Lefty said that he's going to be taking this fight on alone. He needs to prove to the Archfey patron that he deserves a promotion, and the rest of the party agreed not to interfere no matter what. Lefty is determined to win this battle, and not just with sheer power.
He intends to display full mastery over the battlefield. At first he thought about ambushing his opponent, but decided that wouldn't be an impressive enough of a victory, so he engaged his enemy in a fair one-on-one fight. Or so he thought. Balthazar summoned an army to battle by his side, and drank a potion of speed before blasting Lefty with Ray of Sickness twice. And even though Lefty dodged the first Ray of Sickness, the second hit and poisoned him, giving him disadvantage on attack rolls.
He truly will need to think creatively if he's going to win this fight, and that's when he realized what he needed to do. Lefty had used his rune powder barrel at the perfect moment, using exactly the right tool for the job. Balthazar's army was almost entirely decimated in one glorious explosion. But Balthazar himself was still quite healthy. No matter, Lefty knew his time to strike would be fast approaching.
Balthazar dropped Cloud Kill on the Lefty which inflicted a ton of damage, but nothing that a Supreme Healing Potion can't fix. Lefty killed a Skeleton and just needs to survive one more turn. Balthazar tried a Ray of Sickness, but Lefty activated Shield to negate the attack and it was finally his time to strike.
After Misty stepping towards Balthazar, Lefty Eldritch Blasts two Skeletons but only one attack connects. Still though, he's got some breathing room, so he walked right over to Balthazar and ended his turn. Unfortunately, a Skeleton Librarian blinded Lefty and his Constitution saving throws are bad.
He needs to put a stop to this fight right now, and Balthazar has just lost his turn due to becoming lethargic after his Potion of Speed wore off. Lefty drank a Potion of Speed of his own and used both of his level 3 spell slots to absolutely end Balthazar's existence once and for all. Despite his blindness, he was able to kill both skeletons next turn with Eldritch Blasts, and the victory was his. He couldn't truly appreciate his victory for another six turns because that's how long it took for him to shake off the blindness, but while Reginald Ravenshadow could see nothing, he heard the whisper of his patron say three words. I see you.
The rest of the party joined Lefty and congratulated him, then they freed the Night Song and headed for Moonrise Towers. The first battle at Moonrise Towers can be difficult, even more so when your most powerful party member is off at a meeting with his patron. But Lefty might be finally getting his promotion, so it's not like he'd listen if the party told him no. Besides, no matter how difficult a fight is, it gets a lot easier when the enemies all have to advance through one choke point, and that choke point has double hunger of Hadar plus a cloud of daggers. The fight was pretty much handled by the time Lefty showed up and joined back in, and he helped the group clean up the rest of the enemies.
The party's next battle was made simple by surprising their opponents with an invisible imp attack, causing all of our enemies to lose their first turn of combat. It's time to face off against Ketheric Thorm, but first, Lefty used Armor of Agathys to get 15 temporary health, Pinky gave a Shield of Thralls to Jack so he had 10 temporary health, and Jack gave everybody combat inspiration. since he gets all of his charges back on short rest anyways. The party short rested and headed through the door together. Thanks to Jack's combat inspiration, Bonk was able to get that extra 4 damage he needed to finish off our first enemy, and thanks to haste from Pinkie, he took down Ketherick's dog in the same turn.
Lefty knocked Ketherick Thorim off his feet with reverberation from an Eldritch Blast, and eventually dealt the last bit of damage required to force Ketherick to retreat to the Mind Flayer colony. As much as I wanted to chase him immediately, I had to make a quick stop first. I don't feel like fighting the Githyanki patrol after the Apostle of Merkle, so I lured them all together and butchered them.
Alright, into the Mind Flayer colony we go. We started off by just attacking everything running around and pretty much cleared the place out. While down here, I also grabbed the Resonance Stone because it might come in handy in Act 3. Then Jack insisted that we save Xevlor, so we released him and bunch of Mind Flayers at the same time.
Pinkie used her Meta Magic to twin cast Haste onto Bonk and Lefty, leaving the Mind Flayers on the receiving end of a ridiculous number of Magic Missiles and Bonk's Sword Strikes. We won the fight and asked Zevalor to join us in the final battle, but he refused. We fully healed at the Restoration Tanks before heading into the boss fight. We started this fight by having Lefty blast the Mind Flayer off its high ground so we could take it down first. Bonk landed a critical hit so I added a level 1 spell slot smite to it and the mind flayer was gone.
The intellect devourers were caught in Jack's cloud of daggers and took damage from Pinkie's illithid power, Cull the Weak. We freed the Nightsong only for her to heroically charge to Ketherick and just get slaughtered in record time. But Pinkie had summoned Scratch so we let our doggo revive Aelin every round until Ketherick Thorm had been defeated.
At this point, Thorm becomes the Apostle of Merkle, and this fight was fairly difficult, but it was made a lot easier by blinding the Apostle of Merkle with Hunger of Hadar. This behemoth raked in three big heals during the battle and cast Finger of Death a couple times, but with Lefty raining down Eldritch Blasts every round, we finally managed to take the beast down, leveling all my characters to 9. Lefty picked up the alert feat at level 9, Pinky boosted her charisma up to 18 and learned the shatter spell, Bong boosted his charisma up to 20 if you include the hag's hair plus one bonus, and Jack learned lesser restoration so he can be more of a hero, saving people in their time of need. Back at Moonrise Towers, Jack played music with Alfeira one last time to cheer the kids up, because that's just the kind of guy he is. He's a hero. On the road to Baldur's Gate, my party has to save the Emperor from a bunch of Githyanki attackers, so we just blasted them to death as quick as possible, and the Emperor gave us the means to become partial illithid.
Both Pinkie and Lefty opted to become partial illithid and increase their power. Pinkie consumed 5 more illithid parasites, gaining the Displace Power, Black Hole, Mind Blast, Mind Sanctuary, and Freecast. And with that, my party of warlocks stepped into Rivington, where each character's final destiny will be realized.
Almost immediately upon entering Rivington, Jack found refugees in need of a hero. They were squatting in the home of a wealthy man, and Jack tried to intimidate the man into letting them stay, but he failed and a fight broke out. This was a perfect chance for Pinkie to try out her new powers, and she used Black Hole to yank her enemies together and slow them down before pounding them with her shatter spell.
These simple street thugs didn't stand a chance and the refugees were allowed to stay in the home. Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, didn't want to get roped into any more hero work, so he headed off on his own and found himself at the circus. His Archfey patron giggled with glee at the thought of visiting the circus, and when Lefty was prevented entry, his patron recommended some words sure to get Lefty through the door. It took some time and a little inspiration, but eventually Lefty was permitted entry to the circus. He found a merchant that offered to build a statue in his likeness, and he paid 5,000 gold for it, knowing that once he was the manager of his own magic shop, it would be the perfect centerpiece.
While Lefty enjoyed a day at the circus, Jack visited the temple to see what aid he could offer, and he learned of an unsolved murder that had taken place. He took it upon himself to solve this case himself and searched for clues, but his investigative skills were struggling to uncover anything substantial. The crime took place in the cellar, so Jack searched it and found a back entrance and a roof.
followed it out to where it led. He heard some men talking in the distance and drank an elixir of vigilance to keep him on his toes while he approached. The second he made himself known, the three men attacked without hesitation.
Jack isn't the most impressive fighter around, and he knew that he had to act fast if he wanted a chance of survival. He drank a potion of speed and summoned thick vines to slow his attacker's approach. Then he placed a cloud of daggers in the choke point leading towards him before taking cover behind some rubble. With the vine slowing his attackers substantially, he used Eldritch Blast to knock them back and a Glyph of Warding to burst them down.
Every approach they attempted was met with another knockback, at least until one of his attackers tried to flank his position, and right at the moment his Potion of Speed wore off too. But it was do or die, so he summoned a new cloud of daggers to put a stop to the flank attempt, and a final cloud of daggers, to finish the combat encounter. He also found a worthwhile clue, a key with the address of Fragos Flophouse inscribed.
Pinkie and Bonk were on their own adventure, in a manner of speaking. Pinkie has indulged in so many Mind Flayer parasites at this point that she can sense where to find more. Their first stop was to defeat a Mind Flayer sleeping in a cellar under a windmill. Bonk nearly wiped the creature out himself, with Pinkie blasting in the final blow, and then slurping up the parasite to gain the ability psionic dominance which lets her counter enemy spell casting attempts more parasites called to her from a smuggler's cove and pinky and bonk started a fight with the smugglers present pinky wanted to drink a potion of speed but she needs her bonus action to cast Illithid Ability, so instead she placed the Potion of Speed on the ground and her invisible Imp Familiar attacked it to give her its benefits. Then she used Black Hole to suck everybody together, Shatter to deal Thunder Damage and gain stacks of Arcane Acuity thanks to her hat, and Hunger of Hadar to blind all of her enemies so they would have little hope of fighting back.
One lady tried to make her way out of the spell, only to come face to face with Bonk, who smited her a few times before shoving her back into the spell. At this point, it was time for Pinkie to demonstrate how much her power had grown. She cast Shatter twice more to gain even more stacks of Arcane Acuity, which makes her spells almost impossible to resist. Since she's at such close range to her attackers, the Resonance Stone she carried made it so they were all vulnerable to Psychic damage, and she blasted the remaining 7 enemies with Mind Blast, completely wiping the battlefield of life.
These illithid powers are making Pinkie a force to be reckoned with, and she found three more in the area and promptly absorbed their power. The most notable ability she gained was the ability to transform into a displacer beast. Back at the circus, Lefty decided to check on the main event, Dribbles the Clown.
Buddy the Dog is my very best friend. Do you know why? Why? Because with him, anything is pauseable. Wahey!
i need a volunteer with nerves of steel and the heart of a lion but before the act could get underway his archfey patron warned him not to trust dribbles the clown and lefty managed to discern that this clown's eyes are radiating with evil intent lefty found himself completely outnumbered in a fight but with his new power as a partial illithid he flew to a more advantageous position on the roof and rained spells down onto his enemies relentlessly his strategy wasn't flawless though as he ate a corrosive spit that broke his concentration on Hunger of Hadar. Despite this, he was able to win the battle and purge the circus of those who would ruin the fun. He spoke to the head of the circus, and she promised to reward him with a powerful magical item if he could find the real Dribbles the Clown. And this grabbed Lefty's attention, so he agreed to have a look around. Lefty met up with Pinky and Bonk, and they all tried to head towards Wormrock Fortress.
only to be stopped at the guard checkpoint. A steel watcher determined that we are a threat to the city, and we were just moments away from a fight when an ironhand gnome suddenly appeared and tossed a bomb at the watcher, stunning it. In the commotion, we charged forward and blended in with the crowd.
Bonk had a chat with his patron, Raphael, and was given the task of delivering the crown of Karsus to him. Pinky really wants to break Bonk free of his contract, but Bonk himself can't take any actions against Raphael. so for now she has no choice but to simply wait and look for an opportunity.
Jack had located both the murder weapon used to kill Father Lorgan, as well as a corpse belonging to a clown. He gathered both as evidence to present to Valeria, and as he made his way back towards the temple he saw some iron hand gnomes scurrying into a crevice and followed them in. The iron hand gnomes inform him that the Gondians are crafting the steel watchers that oppress the city, and they sell him a few grenades he can use to disable them, as well as give him a bomb he can use to blow up the Steelwatch Foundry. They want Jack to kill the Gondians as well, but Jack says he plans to investigate the situation first to see if the Gondians are truly at fault.
The party all group together to plan their next move, and when Jack learned that Lefty is searching for a clown, he showed the corpse he found and handed it over to Lefty. Now despite Jack having the murder weapon, Valeria won't take him seriously, so he took the key he found over to Frego's Flophouse and found definitive proof of a ball murder plot that Valeria will have to deal with. have to acknowledge.
Valeria told him to proceed into the lower city to investigate further because she's a terrible detective and can't do anything right herself. Meanwhile Lefty talked to Lacretius and showed her Dribble's corpse only to find out that she wanted all of his body parts. This simply isn't worth the trouble so Lefty devised a new plan. Lefty asked Jack to steal the magical artifact for him but because of the transactional relationship they've come to have Jack has no interest in helping. So Lefty instead convinced him to steal the item and hold onto it so that Jack will have something to offer should he ever have need of Lefty's help later on.
This seemed like a reasonable arrangement, so Jack stole the Spellmite gloves and pocketed them until such time that he needs Lefty's help. Pinkie tried to talk her way into Worms Rock Fortress, but failed by just one. Irritating, but not much of a hangup. She simply takes flight and enters the fortress without permission and pays a visit to Gortash himself. He makes us a genuine offer to join forces, and we tell him, we'll think about it before we head over to the lower city.
Jack's first stop was the barracks to discuss the murders with the guards, and that's where he met Laura. She's looking for her daughter, Vanra, and there's just no shortage of people in this city that need a hero, so Jack agrees to help find Vanra. Since the party's best bet of tracking Oren down seems to be to investigate the murders on- On the street, the party works together to stop Delore from slaughtering his next target. Unfortunately, he teleports to safety and we were left to deal with his small doppelganger army. Pinky blasted them, stunning every enemy.
There's a couple of citizen casualties, but this one's really on them for not running to safety. We wiped out all the doppelgangers and headed to the next murder victim on the list. Sure enough, Delore was there, about to kill his next victim.
Pinky can disable mass groups of enemies with Black Hole and Hunger of Hadar, and Jack can follow up with his own area of effect magic, making it a pretty easy fight. By the end of the battle, we had a location and a password to get us through the door to the murder tribunal, but with the murderer stopped, Jack insisted that we look for Vonra first. While Jack was off investigating the only lead he had over at the Blushing Mermaid, Pinky set off in search of more parasites, with Bonk trailing close behind. Pinkie could feel the parasites calling to her from a nearby boat, and she snuck past the steel watchers and found six parasites in a single cargo shipment. She used three of them and was maxed out on her illithid potential, so Lefty was allowed to indulge in the remaining parasites.
Now that she'd maxed out her illithid potential, Pinkie turned her attention towards acquiring magical items that would make her even stronger. She purchased a cloak and a staff from Helsic, a new hood from Mystic Carrion, and she looted an amulet from Stormshore Tabernacle. all of which are making her spells way harder to resist.
However, her looting at Stormshore Tabernacle got her into trouble and she received a curse that she has no means to remove. A small price to pay for her huge increase in power though. Jack was investigating the Blushing Mermaid to look for clues leading to Vanra and he pretty much cracked the case wide open by talking to Captain Grizzly.
Oh well, guess I'll just decorate the route with your insides. So yeah, clearly the hag is behind this, and she only revealed herself because of how completely screwed Jack is. The hag vanishes, and Jack found himself in a 1v6 fight with some pretty powerful red caps.
He tried to take control of the situation with plant growth, but a candle lit the vines and burned them away in an instant. Jack still threw down a high-level cloud of daggers in the choke point, but it's not going to be enough. Jack's going to die.
Or at least he would be about to die, if not for the fact that he has something that Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed wand emporium, desperately wants. Lefty had sent his familiar Shovel to tail Jack and keep Lefty informed as to his progress. Once Lefty saw how utterly outnumbered Jack was, he knew it was his chance to get those gloves. But he'd have to be quick.
Lefty'd been shopping over at Sorcerer's Sundry's a short distance away, and as soon as Shovel informed him of the situation, he misty-stepped out the store, flew to the top of a wall, misty-stepped into the park, flew towards the blushing mermaid, misty-stepped one more time to the entrance before drinking a potion of invisibility and making his way inside. With the extra tadpoles Pinky had given over to Lefty, he now was able to learn Black Hole, and he made a grand entrance, sucking the enemies towards Jack's cloud of daggers. With Lefty here, victory was assured.
After all, unlike Jack, he's powerful enough to have managed this fight by himself. When the fight ended, Lefty made it clear that his help wasn't free. He'll be taking those Spellmite gloves now. Jack agreed, but under the condition that Lefty helps him finish the job and save Vonra.
This might have been a tough sell, but- Jack tells him that the hag who insulted his intelligence is their end target, and that's really all Lefty needed to hear. He's on board to butcher the hag. It had been a long day though, so rather than charge into the hag's lair immediately, they went to camp to rest.
The curse Pinky had received ended up resolving itself, summoning a hostile Daeva in the morning to attack her. It, of course, stood no chance against the full party, though it did almost manage to take Pinky out during the battle. After such an eventful morning, Pinky and Bonk decided they were going to take the rest of the day off.
while Lefty and Jack went hag hunting. In classic hag fashion, the first challenge was getting past her mask slaves. Lefty flew up to high ground and opened the fight by casting Hex and then using his new Spellmite gloves to eliminate the 75 health enemy with one single attack.
Jack threw down a cloud of daggers and Lefty spammed Black Hole until the rest of the mask people were weakened to the brink of death. and Lefty directed an Eldritch Blast at each of them to wipe the board all at once. A Warlock's Lockpick blasted the path open to the hag's inner lair.
Shovel was sent in first to scout and managed to get the hag to reveal herself. She immediately scattered illusions of herself throughout the room and Lefty was ready to just walk in and obliterate her when Jack reminded him that the deal was to save the child. They'd need to knock the hag unconscious and retrieve Vonra before he could deal the final blow.
Since they'll be getting hands-on for this fight, Jack drank an elixir of Hill Giant Strength, and Lefty immediately one-upped him with an elixir of Cloud Giant Strength, and then surprisingly volunteered to go into the fight. room first and draw the hag's attacks. It might seem like a show of selflessness, but in truth, he's just overly confident in his arcane ward's ability to absorb whatever pitiful magic the hag could send his way. He was right though, the hag barely left a scratch on him and he couldn't help but blast her with a magic missile just for fun to start things off. Jack on the other hand took big damage from the hag's illusions and Lefty could tell that he'd need to wrap this thing up quickly so he blasted all of the mushrooms sustaining the hag's life before turning his attention to her.
Jack played it safe by attacking with his staffs, but Lefty knew a better way. He calculated the right number of magic missiles needed to weaken the hag, then moved in to bonker on the head with his staff to finish the fight. They cut the child free, and Jack spoke to Vahnera's mother afterwards and received a reward.
After it was all done, Jack pointed out to Lefty that they'd made a pretty good team and that there's more people to be saved in the city, and to Jack's surprise, Lefty offered to help him investigate the Steelwatch Foundry. Jack didn't really know why Lefty was offering to help, but it didn't matter, he was just thrilled to have somebody so powerful on his side. Jack insisted they investigate the Steelwatch Foundry quietly, so he cast Longstrider and Enhance Ability Cat's Grace on Lefty to make him a better spy. Lefty flew through an opening in the roof to enter the foundry and discovered that the Gandhians have been enslaved and forced to work or their loved ones will die.
Furthermore, he found a Gandhian willing to help bring the factory down if their loved ones were set free. After investigating more, Lefty found a note detailing a warehouse with a submersible that can be used to reach the Iron Throne, an underwater prison where the Gandhians were being held. So he told Jack and they headed off for this warehouse.
The warehouse had a metal door completely immune to the Warlock's lockpick, but Jack's handy with thieves'tools and opened it right up to reveal a pack of monstrous dogs blocking the path. The dynamic duo was at it again, grouping them up with Black Hole, shredding them with clouded daggers, and a few Eldritch Blasts later and the path was clear. Lefty persuaded the Submersible's crew to take him and his party down to the Iron Throne.
Since this is a pretty big moment for Jack, he insisted that they go and get Pinky and Bonk, interrupting their day off. The whole party headed down in the submersible into the Iron Throne together, and for the purposes of this video, if any character fails to escape the Iron Throne, they'll be dead permanently and removed from the party. It's going to be the equivalent of dying in a cutscene.
Lefty was the first one down the hatch, and he obliterated the first fish monster he saw. Bonk and Pinky decided to stick together, heading east to save the prisoners, and Lefty yelled at Jack to go south while he goes west. But Lefty didn't go west.
Jack and Lefty have the same patron, a powerful archfey. But Jack has been a very poor servant, and the archfey told Lefty to eliminate him and the promotion he desired would be granted. Lefty blasted Jack through the threshold of the doorway, directing his third eldritch blast at the lever in hopes that it closed the door. But the lever jammed and needed to be pulled manually, so Lefty flew over and shut the door, locking eyes with Jack just before the doorway was sealed.
Then he hurried off to save his Gondians as he needed to keep up appearances or risk having Pinkie and Bonk turn against him. Jack didn't have much time to process Lefty's betrayal, he'd jumped into action to release the prisoners in the room with him, and now he'll need to break down this door. Under normal circumstances, Jack would have had no hope of breaking this door down.
The door is weak to bludgeoning damage, but not force damage, so Eldritch Blast wouldn't help. But Lefty had failed to take into account the strength potions they'd consumed to defeat the hag earlier that day, and Jack has more than enough strength to bash this door open with his quarterstaffs. Lefty tried as hard as he could to clear the west corridor quickly, but he didn't have enough movement speed to free the Gondians with three turns remaining because of the time he used to betray Jack. And with only two turns remaining, their safety is far from guaranteed. Jack managed to smash the blast door open and told the hostages to run, but instead of proceeding through the door himself, he drank a potion of flying and headed towards the last hostage that needed to be saved.
Omeloum. In the last round before the Iron Throne collapses, Jack freed Omeluam and threw a potion of speed at him, then rushed down the hallway to open a door so Omeluam would have two routes he could take to escape. Jack knew that this was the end of his story, so he pulled out his loot and played one last song. As Jack played what he thought would be his final song, Omeluam flew to his aid.
Jack couldn't have known the Mind Flayer had the ability to teleport him to safety. They both arrived in one piece to the submersible, and Lefty was not happy to see Jack. Jack glanced around frantically to see who made it, and he was dismayed to see that so few had it.
Both of the hostages that Jack had set free died, and nearly all the hostages Lefty was responsible for saving died as well. Once the submersible reached the surface and was cleared, Jack confronted Lefty. Lefty, looking kinda defeated, chose to just tell the truth.
Killing Jack was his final task. The Archfey was going to promote him to manager if he could demonstrate his ability to fire an underperforming employee, but he'd failed, and no promotion was given. As much as Jack wanted revenge, he was exhausted and quite frankly stood little chance of defeating Lefty in the duel even if he were at full strength. But one thing was certain, Jack would never join Lefty in battle again. He told the rest of the party what happened and Lefty didn't even try to deny it.
He doesn't need his party members anymore, you know? All he needs is Jack to be dead. But despite his immense power, he didn't dare to fight in a 3 vs 1. So he came up with a new plot.
He's going to become an unholy assassin for Baal and enlist their help to do the killing. While Pinky, Bonk, and Jack headed to the Steel Watch Foundry to save as many Gandhians as possible, Lefty made his way towards the murder tribunal, determined to let nothing stand in his way. The guards at the door wouldn't let him in, so he slaughtered them all without even taking a hit.
His strategic prowess and raw magical talent just couldn't be stopped. Lefty presented himself to the murder tribunal but was told this But you do not belong. You have brought no-you are not fit to be judged. Furious, Lefty said that he'd make an offering right now by killing the tribunal. Combat commenced and Lefty retreated, firing off Eldritch Blast and taking down one opponent on his way out.
Saravac followed and landed a hit- inflicting bleed onto Lefty. More devastating, the echo of Sendai casts slow onto Lefty and he can now only use one singular action per turn, which is a death sentence. Or it would be, if not for the fact that Lefty doesn't need need his actions to inflict harm.
Lefty placed a grease bottle on the ground and moved it to the feet of the Echo before having Shovel run up and attack it. With grease on the floor, Lefty placed a candle on the ground, lit it, and moved it onto the grease. It ignited and the damage broke concentration on the spell that was slowing Lefty.
He then used Arcane Lock to seal the door, giving him 10 turns to defeat these ghosts before Saravac could come after him. Frustratingly, the ghosts could counterspell Lefty, so he didn't deal any damage and his Potion of Speed had just run out, leaving him lethargic. But Shovel did a perfect job of playing Hide and Seek to distract one of the ghosts, and Lefty was still forced to counterspell Command Grovel from the other, because nobody's going to make him grovel.
Consuming another Potion of Speed, Lefty eviscerated his first attacker one turn, and the next right after that. It was just him against Sauravok now. Now, Saravok has Lefty pretty outmatched in this situation, but Lefty found a narrow pathway and had Shovel stand invisibly to block it.
With Saravok having no ranged attacks and no ability to reveal Shovel, Lefty was in an untouchable defensive position, and blasted Saravok turn after turn until the battle was won. Now, he might have won, but his efforts had done little to move him towards the promotion he so desperately desired. At the very least, he had the amulet of Baal.
The rest of the party would need it to reach Oren, so maybe it would come in handy as a bargaining chip. At this time, the rest of the party was fighting their way into the Iron Throne. Jack leveled up before entering the building, and I gave him the lucky feat because he was quite lucky to survive the Iron Throne.
when I literally wrote the story with every intention of leaving him to die in there. Inside the Foundry, Pinkie mindblasted the Gandian's captors, stunning every single one of them, and you'd think that from here the fight goes well, but good lord does it get out of control in a hurry. All it took was a dominate person spell to land onto Pinkie. Her spells are near impossible to resist, and she used confusion on pretty much the entire battlefield.
I now have zero characters under my control in this fight. The fight finally came to an end when this happened. Oh great, every Gandian but one is dead. Jack is gonna cry himself to sleep tonight. Further in the factory, the remaining Gandians had already been slaughtered.
We got to AoE blasting the enemies and took them all down, but Jack couldn't be more devastated by the result. He had failed to save them. He just wasn't strong enough.
The party defeated the Steel Watcher Titan and detonated the foundry. Wolbrin Bongel showed up and wanted to finish the job. Wolbrin.
Enough. The Gondians are no more. I am all that is left. Indeed, he was the only survivor of the Foundry, and Jack was too dismayed to speak or act. Pinky convinced Wolbrin to walk away and spare Jack the horror of possibly watching one more Gondian fall should the fight against Wolbrin go poorly.
The hero Jack was broken, beaten, and he did in fact cry himself to sleep that night. The next day, the party was discussing what their next move should be when Lefty walked up on them. Jack was ready to open fire, but Lefty spoke directly to Bonk and said, I'm calling in that favor you owe me.
Help me defeat my enemies today and you'll owe me no longer. Plus I'll throw in the amulet of Baal, which you'll need to reach Oryn. Now Bonk does in fact owe Lefty a favor, so he cast Warding Bond onto Pinkie to keep her safe in his absence, and then he went with Lefty. This was the moment Pinkie had been waiting for though.
a moment when Bonk wasn't with her because he's bound by his contract to never raise a hand against Raphael. This is Pinky's only chance to free him from his contract. Lefty took Bonk to Sorcerer's Sundries because he is not going to wait around any longer.
He is going to take over this entire magic shop and promote himself to manager. And he won't just sell left-handed wands. He's going to sell right-handed wands, middle-handed wands, backhanded wands, all the wands.
Bonk and Lefty approached Loroakin and attacked. Not sure why the Moonlight Slivers are here other than that this save file is bugged as hell but they didn't do anything during the fight so it's fine. Reginald Ravenshadow, the probationary manager of the Archfey's left-handed Wand Emporium, used Black Hole to group his enemies and Hunger of Hadar to blind them.
He counterspelled Loroakin's Elemental Retort before flying to high ground. Throughout the battle Bonk took a remarkable amount of damage but stayed standing. Little by little, the two of them tore through Leroakin's elemental allies until it was just the wizard left standing.
The old Reginald would have insisted on dealing the final blow himself, but he now knows the power of being a good manager. He instructed Bonk to finish off his enemy, watching over the battle from above. Today, Reginald Ravenshadow became the manager of Sorceress Sundries.
He took a seat at his throne, and in that moment he knew that everything he'd done to get here was worth it. He handed the Amulet of Baal to Bonk, as well as a few odds and ends he knew would come in handy, and he told Bonk he wanted the Absolute defeated no later than closing time this Thursday. He won't be joining the party in their assault on the Absolute. As a manager, it's simply not his place. It's beneath him.
Reginald Ravenshadow, the manager of Sorcerer's Sundries, can't be removed from my party without an amount of work that I don't feel like doing, so let's just say that he's dead to the party and leave it at that. Also I have some bad news, the rest of this playthrough is incredibly scuffed because my save file is really corrupted, so I did the best that I could to wrap up everybody's story. I used some mods to fix as much as I could, but my save file can't recognize when a quest item is in my character's inventories, or if it's in the inventory of an NPC, as you can see here when Helsic gets mad that her portal summoning supplies have been stolen.
The shop is closed! You and everyone go to hell! But as you can see, she still had all of the supplies right here in her inventory. I had to pickpocket them to move forward. Then, inside the House of Hope, the archivist didn't recognize the invitation in his pocket.
Sadly, and to my shame, my key has slipped. I had to steal the invitation and I took it to the door, which unfortunately didn't recognize that I had the invitation in my possession. And this is like a hard roadblock as far as I know. I can't do anything to get past this without mods. So I used a mod to learn the secret password to the impervious sphere where Bonk's contract was housed.
And then I stole Bonk's contract and ripped it up, freeing him from the service of Raphael once and for all. Of course, Raphael showed up to battle and Pinkie convinced Yurgir to join our side. Then she just spammed fear on Raphael over and over again until she was out of spell slots.
She used her sorcery points to conjure another spell slot so that I could keep the fear going as long as possible because Jack and Pinkie do not have impressive damage. This fight took a really long time. But after a while, we had finally defeated Raphael and were free to continue our adventure as three misfit warlocks that have all failed to please their patrons.
With the Steelwatch Foundry down, Pinkie rushed ahead to take on Gortash. She used her Sorcerer metamagic to increase the range of her spells, and then used a spell scroll of Chain Lightning that Lefty had given to the party. This surprised the lot of them, giving Pinkie an opportunity to group most of them up with Black Hole.
The odd man out was stricken with Otto's irresistible dance and forced to watch as Pinkie blasted the others with Mind Blast and Chain Lightning. She took out the final guard, leaving just her and Gortash remaining. Gortash is strong though, possibly too strong for this party to manage, especially without Lefty, so Pinkie turned into a Displacer Beast for the extra durability of the team. and lured Gortash to the edge of the fortress.
Bonk had finally caught up to Pinkie and joined the fight just in time to save her when she was cornered by Gortash. Bonk blasted Gortash off the side of the fortress, splattering him on the rocks below. Now, because my save file is bugged as hell, I actually could not get through the door to Oren.
It just would not recognize that the Amulet of Baal was in my inventory. So I'm just going to make up what happened. Let's just say that Reginald Ravenshadow, the manager of Sorcerer's Sundries, wiped out Oren and the entire Temple of Baal by himself because he's definitely strong enough to do it. So that's what I'm going with. With all three Netherstones, all that's left is to defeat the Netherbrain.
Jack decided to turn into a Mind Flayer to save the world. The guilt of failing to save so many weighed on him too heavily, and he saw this as his only chance to make it right. Of course, as an Illithid, the guilt all but vanished, and he was perfectly ready to take on the Nether Brain. Using Jack's concentrated mind blasts, Pinkie's disintegrate scrolls that she'd received from Lefty, and Bonk throwing down a nice bonk onto the Brain, the final fight was won.
Jack commanded the brain to destroy the tadpoles then end itself. In true corrupted save file fashion, my game crashed during the final cutscenes. So how did our adventures fare moving forward now that the world has been saved? Bonk and Pinkie opened up a shop in Baldur's Gate where they sell the loot from their adventures.
Sometimes they close the shop for months at a time only to come back after a glorious adventure. loaded up with tons of rare loot to sell. Sometimes while they're gone, some fool tries to break into their shop, and it never goes well because Reginald Ravenshadow, the manager of Sorcerer's Sundries, had come to view Pinky as his little sister. He usually had Shovel on patrol to inform him of any disturbances at Pinky's shop.
He never admitted he was doing it for Pinky, always justifying it as simply an opportunity to experiment with new spells and magical techniques. As a mind flayer, Jack had moved past the resentment he once felt towards Lefty, and he went out on the road. He's the only mind flayer with a loot on his back, and as a bard, he didn't have to rely on others to tell the story of how he saved Baldur's Gate.
He could sing that tale himself. While this might sound a little vain, it's actually quite practical. What better way to ensure Jack can travel the land as a mind flayer in peace?
Aside from a song request every now and then of course. It's of no turn to act when you cast lights down