3.03 - Blades in the Dark

General Summary

The Bad Ideas are ambushed by the ShadowKi who, near as they can determine, are a professional assassins guild. First warning that they were in danger was the shadowmist that covered their vision completely. The second was the sound of four darts being shot at the party. Zizkek, Aalan, and Tol fell under a dart delivered drug.   Meanwhile, Faezyre, Liam, and Elrick (new party member) battled with the ShadowKi themselves, the fallen battled within their own mind with their personal fears.   Zizkek fought a titanic smoke formed horse with six legs, called a Nightmare. While he was able to tactically use the horses tendency to Shadowstep to his advantage, blasting hugely effective fireballs with his sorcery points, he was left vulnerable to trample from the horse, which almost killed him   AAlan fought a winged blackbird of towering size called a Bleak, which walked on thin legs instead of flying. At one point he stared up at the creature, trembling with fear, holding his wounded arm out before him in protection. But his connection to a source of divine power meant the turning point in the conflict as the Radiant damage proved overwhelmingly effective against the creature.   Tol also fought a creature from his past, or maybe a nameless fear of his childhood. A mastiff of enormous size called a Shadow Hound. The Hound's sharp teeth and terrorizing howl were proven no match to the clever mage, using his invisibility magics to his advantage to avoid the deadly creature.   The battles, for there were many fronts at once, were tipping in the hero's direction for the most part, save for zizkek, when something terrible happened to Tol. Why tol always seems to be the benefactor of all the worst misery is a question for the fates (I rolled a 1d4 to pick out of the three of you and jimmy lost) but once the die was cast, his future fell to hang in the balance. The ShadowKi followed through with their strategy of dropping their victims with the drug only to cut their throats as they slept. Tol gurgled out a cry of desperation as the assassin moved back into the shadows, having slit the throat of the Elmari.   Tol is dying quickly and his friends seem unaware or unable to aid him, fighting their own battles against the cloth wrapped figures of death. This is where we left the game.

Missions/Quests Completed

Who are the ShadowKi and why have they targeted you to die?

Notes

Post Note - This was a dark episode. We do these from time to time to add gravity to the story. For Jackie's benefit, I want to add two things. First, death is never the end of a characters story, just the beginning of a new chapter in my games. Second, most of our game is very very silly, so tonally this episode was a bit of a one-off that I add in to up the tension of the story I am telling.