One of the best campaigns I ever played in

Robank’s Avengers, Or the Knights of the Radish

Back in 2006-2007 my roommate Sean invited me to make four level 20 characters, fully equipped and ready to go. We were playing 3rd edition with a bit of 3.5 mixed in for good measure. He had constructed a grand campaign with numerous twists and turns prepared to thwart and test my characters, and wanted to try out Dungeon Mastering for the first time. Many parts of the world borrowed from other stories and melded them in a way I could not tell their original sources anymore.  He invited me to break his world, or at least break him into running the games and start out epic. I made my characters, Barthog, Kira, Caber, and Althezon. I had a pretty easy to use character maker back then but it had a few tiny bugs that became apparent later. I named the group the Robank’s Avengers, not sure then why they were avenging him but they would talk about how each of them was mentored by him. They would also mention his disappearance. Many of the events detailed might not be in the right order.

Barthog Tam became my champion warrior, a human barbarian with his highest abilities in strength and constitution with the strongest weapon he could find, a greatsword. I had and still have a weakness for greatswords. Any chance to deal 2d6 + strength and a half damage was fantastic. He had left his tribe and found adventure in the big city, being an okay fighter in one of the arenas for a bit before mercenary work befell him.

Kira Letheon was the voice of wisdom, my elven cleric of Corellon Larethian, the Greyhawk deity of the elves. She focused on war and healing. She had also left her homelands to find adventure and spread the word of Corellon Larethian. Her guidance made her the team leader, but her party members usually acted like children she had to reprimand.

Caber Thorn was the trickster thief, my dwarven rogue who spent most of his time waiting to be brought back to life, had been lost to his people and now found a new family in the party. He was a master lock picker, could disappear without a trace, and had some smooth dance moves.

Althezon, my mage, he was a halfling sorcerer that liked dragons and spells that went boom. He was from a desert dwelling tribe of halflings and found his way into the big city probably by accident and teamed up with the previously mentioned knuckle heads. His magics were primarily offensive spells meant to remove threats from the field of battle with zero subtlety.

When our game started the party had just arrived back in the giant metropolis of Sean’s world. They burst into a restaurant, got a table, and set to talking about past exploits. Barthog and Althezon both ordered entire boars while Caber apologized to their neighboring tables for their manners. They were contacted by a higher up, a power psion named Yarmid, within the city and given a job, to investigate a golem factory in the west. The group grabbed their gear, met with a new ally, Rushuna, that had an intelligent blade, and traveled off to find this mountain-based factory.

On their way they found what apparently was a battlefield, thousands of dead laying unburied. Althezon magically detected something within the piles, a staff of passage. Huge booming steps came towards them. They watched as huge golem creatures affixed with spiked started picking up the slain and impaling them for collections. The party intervened, attacking the golems but realized most of their weapons were made to destroy the living, not constructs. They pulled a few tricks out of the ether and defeated the golems. They went back to town to trade in their weapons to the local high-end magic merchant. That merchant became very wealthy throughout the exploits of the party.

They returned to the battlefield and followed the foot prints of the golems back to their lair, the factory they were seeking. The main gate was affixed to the side of the mountain and on top of it a slew of gargoyles, and further up the mountain a smoke stack could be seen. Caber approached the gate and the gargoyles surrounded him, seeking to rip him apart. He swung around himself with his enchanted axe and decapitated all of them clearing the path to the door, vorpal blades are nice. Althezon investigated the smoke stack and dropped an oversized fireball down it. He joined the rest of the group seeing no immediate result of his mischief. They also saw an oversized hatch the larger golems were using, but were unable to open.

Once the party opened the main door with excessive force and magic, they were greeted with lesser golems known as warforged, which they did battle with. Each chamber had different types of golems, clay, flesh, stone, and iron. The stone golem chamber had a large kiln with bowed out sides, which Althezon realized was from his fireball and was happy. The warforged engineer hammering away at the broken kiln let the fire elemental out of the kiln to fight the party, so the group defeated the warforged and summoned a water elemental to fight the fire elemental, leaving the room and closing the door.

They came to strange hallway with non-supportive columns that turned out to be monsters. There was a trap wall that we ended up disintegrating, triggering the stone statues. Their ally Rushuna with the magic sword broke her blade against one in combat and had to be taken back to town. She and the blade were connected and soul of the blade had become damaged as well. They retreated from the dungeon returning to town to make sure our friend got their safely and to look for additional help where they could.

It led them to the arena. They watched a warrior fight a few bouts in the area and found this Gorbak, a two headed minotaur. He was helpful in destroying many of foes. The group went back to the dungeon and found a chamber with a large skeletal dragon golem and a great battle was had. They found a repository of terrible explosive liquids in a store room. They locked the door and carried on with our explorations. They found another chamber with advanced golems and Caber found a way of deactivating the containment fields to destroy the golems in each. There was a golem sewn together with demon and devil parts, a brain golem, and other strange things.

They found an elevator down and located a chamber with an impossible large golem half buried in rubble. Barthog used his enchanted axe and was able to use its construct dread ability to disincorporate the construct while the rest of the group dealt with the lesser golems. The minotaur had helped as much as he could and headed back to town, things were getting riskier the further down we went. Althezon turned into a mosquito to spy any further problems but being a mosquito was terrible. There was another chamber that led us to the treasury and another foe, a vampiric red dragon. Rob metagamed a little bit and had Althezon use sunbeam to cause the dragon to suffer greatly.

We eventually found the bottom floor, which lead us past a strange impossible automaton held in stasis and into a large decorated chamber with a mage resting on a couch. When we approached, covered in blood and the remains of her creations, the mage split into two, creating a magical duplicate of herself. She told this double, an eidolon, the destroy us. The duplicate created an image of itself and then incased itself within a sphere of force. Things went downhill rather quickly as Barthog was first sent away with a maze spell, Althezon was wounded close to death with a single spell so he played dead, Kira was battered and knocked unconscious, and Caber was dead. When Barthog climbed himself out of the maze spell the mage dominated his mind. Althezon heard a horrible sound of ripping metal and breaking gears. From behind them strode a man in ornate armor with the broken head of the impossible automaton dragging behind him. He suddenly rushed the sphere of force and crushed it. Althezon tossed a healing potion into Kira, she freed Barthog’s mind, and they defeated the duplicate mage with the help of the strange man in armor. Without a word the man disappeared and the party looted the lair of the mage, making sure to resurrect Caber to check that there were not any traps. They found a slew of magic items they kept, some tomes to boost their abilities (which they donated to the museum and later they bought back when I realized we would be playing more than a few sessions), some rare stolen items from the museum, a staff with a dragon trapped inside of it. They also found mechanical motorcycle horses that traveled so fast their drained vitality from the riders. There was also a magical rod that could be drained instead of using experience points to cast certain spells, we gave that to Yarmid.

The party rigged the whole place to explode and returned to town, overladen with spoils. They reported to their boss, returned a few stolen artifacts back to the museum, and rested for a spell, having had a rough time of things. They each had to study a bit before the next adventure. Althezon took classes on the draconic language and learned how to become an archmagi, Barthog started to learn to read, Kira gave lectures at the temples, and Caber learned to dance. Barthog also entered into a fighting tournament at the arena, and was soundly defeated by a group of men with clubs. Althezon also had a drunken graduation ceremony with the other students in his classes which ended with them launching fireballs into the sky rather recklessly.

They also each undertook a solo mission. Kira went to deal with issues at a lumber camp, finding the lumberjacks have been attacked by packs of barghest. Caber had to thwart a thieves guild by joining it and tearing the place apart. He did so swiftly and violently. Athezon went to a small town that was dealing with bandits and met two dragons that he instantly befriended he also dealt with a gang of raiders by disintegrating the leader and casting wall of force, which the second in command had charged and ended up unconscious. Althezon convinced the raiders to all go to the nearest large city and turn themselves in or his magic would get them. Barthog took on a hive of beholders by himself, they all just blasted him with slay living spells but his saves were strong and even without the magic in his sword he still could rage and bash stupid eye monsters. He did have to make a strategic retreat and return after buying and using some potions.

When they got back, they were invited to look into a strange cult in town. Kira interrogated some drunk goons rather terrifyingly and they found there was a meeting soon at the butchers. They arrived at nightfall and the shop was locked. Caber suggested coming back at dawn, cause the door was locked, and Kira, Althezon, and Barthog gave him a look. Caber opened the door easily and they talked to the butcher, he was in on the cult so they knocked him out and shoved him in his cooler, telling him to chill. They crept down the stairs and looked though the peep hole on the door to see an audience of mind flayers watching a man, flanked by demons, lecture. Not being one to waste an opportunity, Barthog kicked in the door screaming “ADVENTURE” and Althezon cast time stop to drop maximized delayed blast fireball, five of them, onto the collected flayers. The room was a ghastly mess of brains and goo and the man with his demons stared on in horror as Barthog continued his charge to bash away at the demons. Caber and Kira entered the room, clerical might and roguish talents help lay low the cultist and his remaining minions.

At some point Barthog commissioned a sword from the local blacksmiths, a huge sized great sword. It cost quite a bit but was worth it in the long run. The party also paid to have him permanently enlarged to maximize his potential range. The party toured the museum and found they had dedicated a remodeled wing to the party, in thanks for returning the lost and stolen relics and artifacts to the curator. They found out about an extra planar painter, an ancient armored dragon, another dragon with a demon in its chest, and all kinds of cool things. Afterwards they heard about a giant fighting tournament at the arena. They went to sign up and found out someone had signed up as the Robank’s Avengers already, someone had stolen their name.

They signed up as the Party of Four and geared up for war. There were enchantments placed on items to make them non-lethal, and lots were drawn to see who would fight who. It turned out there was a son of Kord, the god of strength in the mix with his team of heroes, a team of worshipers of Erythnul, an evil god of battle, some psionic warriors from various backgrounds, a group of bards that preformed as a band, the fake Robank’s Avengers, a group of city guards, a bunch of other teams, and us, the real Robank’s Avengers. Our first bout ended up being against our imposters, it was quick. We took out their mage first, then their healer, and it went downhill for them from there. They told us that they had been hired to take our place and had no real idea who we were, but they had been paid a great sum of money to enter the tournament.

We watched many of the other bouts while pondering why this all was happening. We watched the bards almost wipe the floor with the city guard, until hubris got the better of them. We had a few other fights but, in the end, we had to fight an endless swarm of machines to see who could defeat more foes, us, or the Kord kid’s party. We barely came out ahead, winning the entire tournament, (something Sean thought was very unlikely).  Before we could claim our reward the section under the stands that held the heroes burst open and the Avatar of Erythnul busted out and charged us. With the help of the Avatar of Kord we defeated it as the other members of the Erythnul worshipers also turned into more Avatars and charged us. We won the day and were granted three wishes by Kord, the god of strength. We spent two wished getting a permanent demi plane to store all of our loot and the third we used to free a dragon from a magical staff we had found. The dragon was thankful and we gave it some magic items to build its hoard.

The party made good use of the demi plane, plane shifting from the material world, to the demi plane, and back to the material world to cut down on travel time back and forth from adventures. This tactic only worked if they knew the site where we were traveling to on the material plane. This was defiantly a broken way to use the spell but did make travel faster. Otherwise they were using a flying soar whale named Gertie, but she only could fly a few days a week and at only thirty miles per hour. She had been an elephant the party rode through town but we changed her to a soar whale when we found out about them.

There was a separate fighting tournament that happened at some point as well with Barthog taking on competitors in a melee one on one contest. There were many different foes to face and an odd fighter that seemed to be impervious to damage. During the battles I got to play as one of the other competitors and fight against the impervious fighter as a Leshey from the Epic Level Handbook, it was a cool fight but nothing the Leshey did seemed to damage the other fighter, and eventually it was defeated. It finally became time for Barthog to fight against the unharmed fighter. Barthog was able to actually wound the figure, which seemed to make the fighter proud of Barthog. Then Barthog got knocked out. he took second place in the tournament, the strange figure turned out to be the armored man from the golem factory that had saved the group.

The party looked into a suspicious temple to an old god and found an underground keep with a terrible brain in a jar as well as fossil golems. They had to intimidate an old lady to find the location, but it turned out she was a cultist. The party also received a note to meet with a contact in Union, a town on another plane of existence. They met a young ranger whose brother had gone missing. They were told he had found something on the plane of fire and had not been heard from since. They started their journey and found a strange half demon/devil and his minions that offered them a magic item, a frosty egg thing, to make a future fight easier. He was evasive on his goals and was attempting to be threatening but Althezon used his favorite trick, time stop and various elemental delayed blast fireballs, wounding the infernal and liquefying his minions. He vowed revenge and teleported away. They made their way down the thousands of steps and found a portal to the plane of fire. They precast fire resistance spells and made their way across the burning landscape, eventually seeing a black tower and a cliff across a stream of lava. As they approached the party watched in horror as the largest dragon they had ever seen came out of the lava and almost wiped the party out of existence. Kira grabbed the rest of the party and plane shifted back to Union and recovered. Now knowing what lay ahead they searched for any ally they could find to help slay this dragon. They found a monk named Thelonius and with his help went back to fight the dragon. He stopped its heart with a punch and returned home. The group used magic to steal the dragons hoard and entered the tower. Kira made eye contact with a pit fiend within the front hallway and it used implosion on her. Barthog charged the pit fiend, the entire hallway lined with runes of death but Barthog could not and would not be troubled by them. He pummeled the beast almost to death and used the runes to remove its presence from the tower. Althezon used wish to bring back Kira and she reset the parties focus, finding their way to the top of the tower. Caber removed the runes and other traps, Barthog destroyed the monsters, Alth picked off any magical threats, and Kira made sure to keep the group alive. They eventually found the missing sibling and the powerful artifact in his possession and got him back to Union safely.

Somewhere else in the adventure Kira had become separated from the rest of the group, possibly during her solo adventure, the order of events escapes me after all these years. They found a clearing in a forest and found the Infernal from Union and its minions slaughtered by the mysterious armored figure from the construct factory. He told her to be careful, and left.

At this point the party had made a name for themselves and were asked by the king’s advisor to go look into some trouble in the north. The advisor seemed super suspicious and we were going to look into him when we got back. To the north was a continent full of undead creatures that the armies of good were holding back. But just barely. The crew geared up, said farewell to a few of their companions in town and headed north. A few clicks out of town they were attacked by a group of colossal dragons, one of which got away and headed towards town while the group killed to the other two. The party had dropped their magic tower in the center of the field and fought from there, which was not what my Dm had expected. At the time they did not think much of it but later found out the escaping dragon broke into the museum and stole a suit of dragon armor and may have other goals in mind.

After a few weeks of slow traveling, they decided to use their motor horses to fast travel to the next area, which was great until elder treants took umbrage to their fast speeds and clobbered them. The party plane shifted to their demi plane after realizing their attacks had little effect against the nature guardians. They used their magics to figure out where the camp of the good army was and teleported the rest of the way. The group met with a man named Shale, he was the leader of the war groups holding back the undead and asked us to go murder a few of the generals to weaken the undead’s command structure. It sounded like a good plan and the group made their way onto the cursed undead landscape. They helped liberate a few small towns on the outskirts.

The first keep they found had some sort of undead mummy super lord general. Alth and Kira had a new spell they had been working on, a super mass heal that could affect everything in five hundred feet, healing allies of all bad things and hurting undead within the same area. The general saw us coming and gave away his position on the top of the tower, so Alth and Kira used the healing nuke spell and reduced the army of undead to a small pile of rubble and the general stopped raining fire on us. The base floor of the keep was mostly empty of resistance, Barthog found the second floor had mummies and an anti-magic gemstone. He beat up the mummies with his huge sized greatsword, which even without magic was a force to be reckoned with. Alth had a disjunction scroll and broke the anti-magic gem. They cornered the general and tore him apart.

The second target was within some underground caves, they fought a giant head that tried to decapitate Barthog and Caber but found them hard to swallow. There was also a headless undead monster that proved very resistant to being killed, so it took most of our spells and luck to kill him again. There was also a gross flesh and bone pudding. We were getting confident and reckless, our style was more important than safety.

Our third target had a colossal sized flesh golem outside a keep, which caused all of us to become ill just by looking at it. We struggled and had to flee a few times, the stench alone was maddening. Alth used greater teleport to return to town to purchase a large gem we needed for a spell and never came back. After a few hours Kira went back to town and found he had never made it there. They found this odd and she went and recruited Shale to help with the next leg of the journey. Shale was awesome at killing undead, hence why he was in charge of the army. With their new gem Kira summoned a massive elemental fire monolith to fight with the colossal flesh golem. The strategy for the most part worked and the group made it inside the keep, where they now had to fight numerous death knights. The fight went well and they won the day.

Missing a party member, they returned to base camp and started scrying on Althezon but could only see a strange location in the mountains. They asked Shale about it and were told that area was dangerous and many of his troops had died trying to take the towns near there. The party prepared for the worst and tried the front gate after teleporting in. They were pushed back by what appeared to be vampires, Kira’s divine magic was pushed back and reduced by the proximity of evil. They retreated only to come back after resting and recasting a few spells and made it past the first chamber. There was a hallway that led into a lounge and Barthog made eye contact with a vampire on the ceiling. He failed his will save and became dominated by the vampire. He turned and cut down both Caber and Kira. The vampire had him carry his dying friends into two cells where they were stabilized and all their gear was taken. Barthog was directed to take off all his gear and go into his own cell as well. In the long run they were tortured and killed, eventually turned into undead generals to replace the ones they killed. I like to think they are still in Sean’s world to vex future players.

We did run a one shot where I played as a legendary thief hired to go and steal their bodies back and get them resurrected. he had been hired by an outside force that wanted the team for some other purpose and the thief made his way into the vampire’s lair. As opposed to an all-out assault on the fortress he snuck past all the guards and almost fell victim to an illusionary wall with a sphere of annihilation behind it. The thief eventually found the group after sewing some discord and confusion among the vampires and got the bodies out the fort. The stranger’s resurrection worked but the group felt broken, like they had cheated death the wrong way. Kira also accidentally magically fused with a pit fiend and things got drastically weird.

I have kept these characters alive in my world, they serve as heroes the party starts lower level than and eventually pass by on their road to glory. They also will feature in some of the stories I am working on.

Character models designed in Heroforge