Out of the Abyss!

I’ve shared my D&D Drawings from when Paul (who voiced Pawl the Dorf for Season 1 and 2) ran his D&D game. Well, after two years – I just completed, as a player, Out of the Abyss run by Aaron. The game was entirely virtual (because many of the players were not local, but all knew Aaron – it just so happened, when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, it didn’t really impact the game, because it was all virtual through Discord and Roll20.

Well, similar to when Paul DM’ed, I took to drawing funny instances in the game; but this time, since it was virtual – what I did is – I drew images in Microsoft Paint and made them intentionally look bad (both because of the limits of MS Paint, but also to get it done quickly so it was relevant to what was going on currently). Figured I’d share some of them here…

I played a Mountain Dwarf (Paul would be so proud! He loved playing Dwarves in D&D, and even in EverQuest when we played!) named Thorvall Ironstone who was a fighter. Pretty much stat dumped into Strength, Constitution and Dexterity in that order, not leaving him much room for Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. Kind of wanted to play up a gruff, no nonsense kind of fighter who had the strength but not really the street smarts.

So Out of the Abyss takes place, primarily in The Underdark (a dreadful place, let me tell you!) where everything is out to kill everything else – and the hapless players end up caught in the middle of it all – as a war begins to brew and pour into the mortal plane. There’s ample opportunities for your characters to endure Madness – some of which is permanent, some temporary – and Aaron presented it to the players in private messages if they failed, and often let them pick from one to three different ones – which one they wanted. Some of the madness was caused by things (creatures, won’t spoil it) you saw; or by standing around in a mysterious stone thing that grows in the Underdark known as faerzress. What’s worse – if you’re in faerzress, it can potentially make magic behave very different. A simple Magic Missile spell might end up polymorphing you instead. As a result, as a gruff fighter, whenever the spell casters (there was – early on – a sorcerer, druid and cleric – later a wizard player would join) – were throwing spells in the faerzress areas, I’d have my character yell at them (this was all in character, and not real! I didn’t mind the spells were being cast! Just role playing!)

And that will set up the first picture I will share…

There was a time that the Sorcerer opened up a dimension to something – and Aaron asked, “I’ll let you decide.”

The group unanimously voted “Mayonnaise.” And I wrote this…

“Thorvall’s Rhapsody”

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from Underdark.

Open your eyes,
Look in the shadowy darkness,
I’m just a poor dwarf, with a talking sword,
Because I’m easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me.

Mama, just killed a hag,
Put a sword through her head,
Turned on the laser, now he’s dead.
Mama, life had just begun,
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.

Mama, ooh,
Didn’t mean to make you cry,
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow,
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters.

Too late, Eldeth’s time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine,
Body’s aching all the time.
Goodbye, everybody, I’ve got to go,
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.

Mama, ooh (Any way the wind blows),
I don’t want to die,
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Is That a Drow? Is that a Drow? Where do we go?
Hags casting lightning very, very frightening me.
(Stop Casting Spells!) Stop Casting Spells.
(Stop Casting Spells) Stop Casting Spells,
Stop Casting Spells Oh no, Mayo!
So much May-O

The wild magic was also playing havoc on our sorcerer’s appearance, since he kept casting spells…

When two magic items – both with personalities – found in the same area, have a debate…

There was also an ongoing joke that the cleric (a Tiefling female) was intentionally casting Fireball on Thorvall (when in reality it’s because Thorvall ran in to engage the target)…

And again…

And again…

She even got a shirt because it’d becoming an ongoing joke and posted this –

I photoshopped her picture to include Thorvall…

If you’re wondering about the weird sword, Thorvall got a “sun blade” (Sunsword – any Thundarr the Barbarian fans in the room?) pretty early in the game and carried that all the way to the end of the game. The Sun Sword had a personality where it hated being turned off. (Which can be a problem when you’re trying to be sneaky in the Underdark)…

I ended up finding this incredible image…

I photoshopped the lightsaber to yellow (if you know me, you know I love the color yellow)…

Fighting a hag, Thorvall got hit with lightning…

Thorvall killed a cave bear… anyone get the reference when he cut the cavebear’s head and scalped it…?

Eventually we encountered Myconoids – which are humanoid mushroom people. And one of the NPCs was named “Loobamup.” I couldn’t resist making this…

Everything we were encountering seemed to be sprouting two heads… (if you’re familiar with D&D Demon Lords, you can probably guess why)… which led to this…

As I mentioned before… In Out of the Abyss there’s ample times that your character may encounter madness… and each time I did… I rolled with it. One of my character’s permanent madness (one of many that would come his way!) was a voice whispering in his head, constant bad ideas (a fun one with this – we’d encountered a troll who guarded a bridge and demanded a toll; and the druid offered to make him quite a bit of good berries, and my character, said out loud, “Why would he take just the goodberries? Keep the druid and have goodberries forever.”)

Speaking with Aaron (the DM) – since this was Out of the Abyss – I asked if we could flavor this “bad suggestion voice” as a form of demonic possession. He was all for it – so next time I leveled, I took one level of Warlock. The catch was, I told Aaron – I want it so whenever I use the Warlock spells – my fighter doesn’t realize it or remember – he essentially “blacks out” as the demon side takes over. I hardly ever used the Warlock spells, so when I did my party kept going, “Wait. What? Did Thorvall just do Eldritch Blast?” And I’d go, “What are ye talkin’ about lads?” (The fact that he doesn’t remember the Warlock side will be very important by the time I reach the end of this write up…)

Here’s a picture of when I used the Warlock side… and hit… but rolled “1” for damage…

And then there was encountering an avatar or some such of the slime demon lord, Juiblex…

When we encountered a “friendly” Mind Flayer / Illithid, I made a call back to my childhood…

We learned that there was some demonic kind of wedding ceremony thing going on… and I made another call back to my childhood…

We then encountered three Ropers – who in D&D are freaking foul. And I made another call back to my childhood…

While entangled in the Ropers (and pretty much at Death’s Door) – our cleric cast fireball on them… and I drew this…

This was technically the first time Thorvall died – between the Roper’s damage (pretty much had me dead), managed to save against the fireball (half damage), it killed the roper (which then in turn dropped me from the ceiling, for enough damage to kill me) – but the cleric was able to do Spare the Dying then heal me up. So I drew this –

I even got fancy and did a video of Thorvall leaping at Demogorgon and it going all wrong…

The party eventually disrupted a ritual that involved a dragon egg – and decided we could hatch it and raise it (Thorvall was adamant this was a bad idea! There’s no good dragons in his book! Me as a player? I loved the idea!) But I drew this when the gnome wizard was trying to talk to the red dragon we named Eden…

We eventually encountered some really intelligent and battle ready Kobolds… this would be the second time Thorvall would go down… and this is a picture of his spirit, surprised it wasn’t a fireball that killed him (going back to the Cleric always fireballing where Thorvall was)…

Those Kobolds had traps waiting for us – even when we got in the keep…

More of the same – those Kobolds and their traps….

I wrote this in response to that Kobold encounter, clearly referencing Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while the adventurers pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volumes of kobold lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my tent door.
As a multitude of kobolds seemed to spring up from the very floor
Then duck back down into their hidden door!

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bloody encounter;
And each separate dying hero wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the end;—but I was saved by my barbarian friend
For the kobolds dropped bombs, from up high above;
As the heroes scrambled for cover, as they push and shove;
Here lie the grave of four, forevermore.

There was a group of cultists trying to raise an undead dragon (essentially trying to create a dracolich)… and we took so long coming up with a plan, I drew this…

The plan eventually led to myself (and the dwarf barbarian, with whom Thorvall always bantered with about who was hitting harder!) were turned into giant apes… and somehow, fireballs came up…

… and again…

You really start to wonder if your party has it out for you. (Granted, by this time, Thorvall was experiencing like three different forms of madness…)

Our changling/doppleganger sorcerer took on Giant Ape form along with a Belt of Dwarven Kind…

This next one is quite special. So there came a time, where Orcus (the demon lord prince of the undead) showed up – and we needed to make a run for it – we got a portal open – but the barbarian was far back, so the druid did deer/elk shape – ran over and grabbed him as Orcus was closing down on us. I drew this – and the player (the barbarian) used it as a wallpaper (for awhile? Perhaps still?) because one of his kids would laugh looking at it. I had fun with the sword writing – because I wrote Plus One because it was a +1 weapon, but scratched out One and wrote Won.

This next one shows Thorvall with a Red Dragon Scale Shield which gave him fire resistance but the image is in reference to the player who had played the Sorcerer, D’Squared had to leave the game because their life had gotten entirely too busy (Spoiler Alert – He eventually rejoins the game many months later!) but I’d drawn this during his announcement he was departing the game…

At a merchant my character picked up Boots of Flying… the subtle humor here is found at looking at the vendor’s sign… it’s Red Bull but cut off – because the commercial always says Red Bull, it gives you wings!

We had a random encounter with trolls and I wrote this. I think it’s a reference to Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire song. I think. I can’t remember now.