Untamed Wilds Session 8!

August 8^th 2018 beat the all-time number of players record I had run for before. Our session started with three brand new faces, two kids and a parent playing for the first time. We had many of our usual crowd as well as a few returning faces we had not seen for a bit bringing our party to fourteen players. the party had returned from their oceanic journey about a week before hand and were in full gear festival mode celebrating their victory over Jazina and her gnoll minions. Our group consisted of the new harpy warlock, minotaur bard, satyr barbarian, and the returning catfolk, the warlock, drunken master monk, ranger hunter, blood hunter, human wizard, satyr bard and paladin, lizard folk swashbuckler and druid, centaur barbarian, and crow ranger. Their party was ruined when screams and smoke filled the area and a hydra burst forth to fight the group. Many of the party had attacks that did fire damage naturally so it never had a chance to regenerate, the centaur was able to take many of the heads as the blood hunter’s burning arrows sealed the wounds. As the crow fired arrows straight into its heart the ground shook and the crowds parted to reveal two gorgon metallic bulls. The group had some difficulty getting through their armor but the satyr barbarian was able to lasso one of them and hold it still to grant his allies advantage on their attacks. One was able to use its blast of petrifying gas against a small wedge of characters but they were too hardy to fall prey to its miasma. The druid was able to smack one of the gorgons, granting the neck to the barbarian centaur allowing her to cleave the head right off. Once the gorgons were vanquished four cyclops pulled off their one-use invisibility cloaks and laid into the less armored members of the party. The wizard was offended such base creatures dare attack him and magic flowed freely. Two of the cyclops were charmed by the bard’s hypnotic pattern, one of the others was charmed by the paladin’s fey step which was then ruined when the swashbuckler shot it in the face. The druid knocked the largest over with a tidal wave and the cat folk warlock started him on fire with a flaming sphere. The paladin had asked the cyclops when it was under the charm effect to toss him at the other cyclops but since the charm broke he just fast ball threw him at the druid, getting knocked prone. The monk killed the paladin tosser cyclops and jumped from his paralyzed head to another about thirty feet away using both cat folk grace and monk shenanigans. On his next turn he continued to bash the head in on the cyclops. The harpy warlock used his eldritch blast a few times and decided to go into melee with one of the cyclops after using true strike on himself and also beating up on the same cyclops. the cat folk ranger made great strides in damage with her hunter ability to do additional damage to wounded foes the entire fight. The wizard did cause a bird to get sick in the distance after missing with his ray of sickness and used his rays of frost to deal out more consistent hits, relying on magic missile when the need was dire. ­The swashbuckler was eventually able to hit and it was critically damaging for his foes, the cat folk warlock was able to slowly pepper away at the foes, driving them away from her with each hit. The blood hunters fire arrows helped whittle away at the monsters hit points the entire combat, the satyr bard got to move everyone around the battle field with his inspirations and the minotaur bard got to use his charge attack to drastically wound one of the cyclops. Our rangers, mages, and blood hunter were able to dominate the long-distance game even with a smaller map than the giant pirate ship we had used last time. Our druid was able to use some great poison sprays and close-range spells while the wizard and warlocks definitely wore down the monsters with their arcane arsenal. The centaur barbarian used her great sword to amazing effect, most of the monsters failed to resist her additional lightning damage while the satyr barbarian was able to use one of his additional equipment to change up the battle dynamics. The bards did as bards do and supported everyone the best they could. Healing was hard to come by but luckily the satyr bard was able to give people temporary hit points around the battlefield. Dissonant whispers helped the party as well, with monsters fleeing from them they were granted free attacks each time. The monsters died and eventually the jovial atmosphere returned. Now the question is why did the monsters attack, and possibly who sent them?