Tarrasque one-shot (session 24, my count was off)

The party had rested, recuperated their spells and abilities, and somehow were 20^th level. Jewell had eschewed the warlock training and took on a few barbarian levels, Yucatrill trained up some rogue skills, Ace the forge cleric/wizard/fighter made his appearance, Kadence became very strong in the down time, Stone became terrifying, and Drixel found a bit of faith worked into  paladin/rogue/barbarian. The group was celebrating their previous adventures at a festival in their honor and watched as the great stone pillars started shaking. The ground quaked and horrible form ripped itself from the soil, rending apart the stone pillars… the dreaded Tarrasque entered Godmoot. 

Over fifty-foot-tall and almost a hundred feet long, the tarrasque loomed dangerously over the party. The group quickly leapt into action, Drixel charging ahead and chucking a javelin at the beast. The party sought to trap the beast and keep it away from their ranged fighters, three of the party had taken the sentinel feat, causing chaos with the large monster tactics. The beast lashed out with its bite, grabbing Drixel between its teeth, followed by more slashes against the front line and lobbing tail spines at the ranged foes. The group also noticed strange magical energies moving across the battle field but were not sure what to make of it at first. The Tarrasque waited till the group had piled up near each other and inhaled deeply, and blasted super charged electricity out in a ten-foot line from itself, catching three characters. Jewell used her eldritch blast and watched as the rays bounced off its shell and flew off into the distance. She switched out her wand for a greataxe and charged the beast. The war mage Stone spent the first two rounds drinking potions and casting Bigby’s hand. He became as strong as a giant and one size bigger as well. Drixel found himself swallowed by the beast and ended up in the stomach, it was terrible. He was able to fight back against the crushing and the acid to carve into the meat of the wall and got regurgitated, leading me to act out a hairball situation in the store. Drixel for the moment was almost safe, or at least not inside a monster. 

Once the party started focusing damage on the tarrasque Yucatrill felt himself suddenly far away, surrounded by nothing as far as he could see, just faint outlines across the horizon. There had been a flash of green a few of the party noticed, and the next round Yucatrill came back, having solved his extra-dimensional maze he had ended up in. The next round the party was hit by a chain lightning spell from an unseen source. Getting sick of the spells Yucatrill cast see invisibility and could see a very angry and familiar lich in hand me down robes launching spells at the party, Mordel had come to slay. The Tarrasque let out more blasts of dark lightning and things were starting to look rough for most of the party, the barbarians getting pummeled by magical energy they could not resist, but also giving back more damage than they were taking. Ace, Drixel, and Kadence all gained bonus attacks if the tarrasque attacked anyone other then them, making themselves targets. Ace also gave any creature attacking him disadvantage on the attacks, leading the tarrasque to think both he and Stone were somehow illusions because it could not hit them. Ace was able to heal up the party a bit with a mass healing word, only missing Drixel, who had ended up inside the tarrasque again, and Yucatrill, who was on the other side of the map. Mordel moved in close to the wounded Ace, still invisible to most of the group, and whispered a terrible word into Ace's ear. Ace died on the spot. Power word kill is brutal.

Kiva joined the brawl at this point. Drixel was hoping to find a way out of the tarrasque again but fell victim to the horrible acid that is within the tarrasque with no hope of rescue. Bearfist joined the fray! Kadence was getting two attacks a round, Jewell had been hasted early on and had four attacks a round with her frenzied rage, Stone had put up a ninth level Bibgy’s hand dealing constant punching damage, Yucatrill had done massive damage with his gun, Drixel was able to score some great hits with his divine smites and grant everyone advantage on attacks against the Tarrasque, Bearfist flurried with all his shadow monk power and trying to stun the beast, before his death Ace was able to get off a few cones of cold against the beast, and the tarrasque looked mostly unfazed. At a point it grew very sleepy, not finding an easy meal and it decided to climb back down the hole it had come out of. The party was shocked, the monster just up and got bored with them. As it was retreating Stone hit it with flesh to stone spell, making it a permanent resident of Godmoot, or at least the tip of its tail coming out of the hole in the ground. 

During the routing of the Tarrasque, Yucatrill had become a bit distracted, Mordel did not like being shot by Yucatrill so he tried to disintegrate the artificer, just barely missing him. Yucatrill summoned a cube of force and protected himself from damn near everything. At this point Mordel’s only ally was a garden statue and became target number one for the party. His globe of invulnerability made him all but immune to most spells, having cast it at 9^th level, but did not protect him from ridiculously buff skull crushers curb stomping his face. As his power faded, he imploded, knocking Kadence unconscious. The party picked themselves out of the rubble and claimed their victory.

This campaign was fun to run but did get complicated by massive turnouts for players at the game store. We started strong with ten or eleven players, with five players being the least and fourteen players being the most showing up for a session. It made doing any sort of role playing difficult and caused me to run more of a combat-based game. There were technically twenty-four sessions of this campaign. We started with a sea voyage and pirate fighting, fought against odd flesh warped creatures, investigated a forgotten city full of frog people, negotiated with giants, killed other giants, fought a massive dragon, and brushed the tip of what was originally planned for this game. At some point I plan to put out a campaign guide for other Dungeon Masters to run adventures in this land and a few others I have worked on. 

I would like to take this chance to thank the many players we had at the game store. Some nights were tough with effectively a small military strike force or three adventuring parties worth of characters at one table. you were all troopers and deserve a pat on the back. 

I am looking forward to the next adventure, Out of the Abyss. I will continue the writeups as much as possible, meaning there might be some spoilers to the plot of the adventure, but I will be mixing more of the older Underdark adventures and some homebrew elements into it as well. 

Thank you for reading the writeups!