Heavy Metal: Quest Of The Animal

MARCH 30, 2018 / DREADPIRATESITE / EDIT

And so last year, off I went to sea, serving on board CG-55 Leyte Gulf, a guided missile cruiser. And along that voyage and time at sea, I met fellow nerds and on the weekends we would get together for video games, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons And Dragons. There was a couple different games we ran which I will cover as well. But the big game we all played was QM2 Orlando's 5e Dungeons And Dragons game. He's an older Dungeons And Dragons fan like me and he ran one hell of a game. And for this game, I continued the adventures of the Animal, my player character/self insert NPC and shameless Wolverine rip off. I decided for continuity, it was several weeks after the Heavy Metal crew wiped out the zombie menace, Animal and Larala Dumian started a romantic relationship but she's a revenant now and she only has 6 months until she disintegrates. And unfortunately Flutterbudgets, Jonni, Ghree, Gandalf, and any other friend of theirs who can cast wish has wandered off. The Animal opts to take a risk and board a ship full of adventurers and sail across the ocean in an effort to find powerful magic that can either resurrect her to life or transmute her undead state so she won't die in 6 months.

After a month of travel, we come upon a terrible storm and the ship is sucked into a massive whirlpool that slams the ship into the ocean floor shattering it and killing most of the crew. The Animal and the survivors wake up to discover that time has apparently stopped and the water is no longer moving. As such we are standing on a nearly dry ocean floor surround by walls of water created by the whirlpool. The captain and the first mate, a female half giant cleric, are no where to be seen. The Animal joins forces with the survivors, a female tiefling knight that the Animal didn't realize was a chick, a dragonborn monk named Eragon, a stoner elf sorcerer, and a tiefling cleric who worships some non-specific god he refers to as "Random Number Jesus". There was also another tiefling who was accompanying us who mercy killed some of the badly wounded survivors while nobody was looking. In the distance we saw a bizarre twisted spire made of coral that was the source of the magical disturbance. The adventures set off towards it running into a dangerous (and delicious) giant enemy crab. Upon entering the spire the heroes were assailed by lizardmen and flying kobolds. After some combat we discovered the Captain and the half-giant cleric battling the lizardmen's chieftain. The cheiftain kills the Captain, so the adventurers quickly swarm and avenge him. Suddenly the spire begins to shake. The alarmed half-giant says, "It's to late." She looks to us and casts a powerful spell. The world burns bright white as we all hear a voice in our heads that says, "Find Kevin" and then darkness.

We awaken in the woods, back on land dazed in confused. A quick journey into a nearby town reveals that a massive war with the Tiefling Empire has not occurred yet: we have gone back in time approximately 30 years. In search of this "Kevin" we find a displaced noble whose castle has been taken over by "Kevin". Kevin was a dear friend of his who was a mage and his research into the dark arts made him very powerful but also drove him insane. In his madness and deals with other worldly powers the noble was forced to leave his castle and now is desperately seeking adventures to get his castle back for him. That's where we come in.

In addition to doing a good deed, perhaps this Kevin can help us with whatever was happening back in the present. And perhaps a powerful mage knows how to cure someone of revenancy. The castle is all kinds of haunted. We run a foul of bound chain devil, discover the lower levels are overrun with duergar and hobgoblins that have an uneasy alliance, and there is a gateway to the Underdark complete with hooked horrors. After beating down numerous monsters we discover an old captured monk who is our dragonborn, Eragon's, mentor, or at least will be in the future. We learn that Kevin made an alliance with these monstrous creatures to capture the monk and steal a powerful and dangerous scroll. After rescuing the monk and killing the Hobgoblin King and Queen we find Kevin's laboratory. There is a magical seal that opens up when blood is placed on it. After a hilarious and awkward seen where we picked up the dead bodies of hobgoblins and rubbed them against the seal so they would bleed on it, it opens up and takes us to another location. We wind up teleported onto a small island with a teleportation symbol in the darkness. We find out we are in the lair of a powerful and terrible aboleth who is not happy to see us. The Animal however is desperate to rescue Larala and if it means he has to ask the aid of malevolent dark powers, he's willing to do it. The Animal asks the aboleth for help in returning to the future and curing revenancy and perhaps releasing Kevin, if he is his prisoner, if he may be able to help. Suddenly a naked human rises out of the aboleth's slimey lake. Apparently it's Kevin who has no memory of how he got here. Animal thanks the aboleth and they leave. We return to town and speak to the noble and tell him the castle is free of monsters. He asks for a moment with his friend. That moment turns into a strangly long 10 minutes. We check on the two of them to find the noble dead and the window open. We race out the window and manage to track Kevin down to see him bolting for the docks with tentacles slithering in and out of his back. We chase him down but he leaps into the ocean and swims off. Kevin was the aboleth the entire time. The aboleth had killed and eaten Kevin when Kevin had traveled to it's real which was really a magical prison. The only way the creature could leave was if someone invited him to leave. The aboleth polymorphed itself, played me for a fool, and got what it wanted. But we also learn from Eragon's mentor that that creature has the scroll and it's incredibly dangerous in it's hands. We resolve to escort Eragon's mentor to his home monastary to learn more about the scroll and what this monster can do with it.

We travel north to a city near the mountains that is going through a festival where we notice unusually hot weather. We head a little further north and arrive at the monastary. There we are joined by a grumpy but competent ranger, a hyperactive gnome girl ranger with a pet panther, and a hot drow warlock woman with an attitude. The monks introduce us to a pseudodragon who is in charge of their library that explains the scroll is capable of summoning an ancient giant snake god of destruction known as Leviathon. With his help we figure out that the spire in the present we saw was the result of evil forces successfully waking up Leviathon. Leviathon is so big that if he wakes up, bye bye planet. So the cleric sent us back in time because she realized the world was about to be destroyed and we were the only ones who could prevent it from happening by getting the scroll away from Kevin the sorcerer. However, by releasing the aboleth who has the scroll in it's possession we may have made it worse as the destruction of the world was meant to happen 30 years from now in the present. By releasing the aboleth we moved the time table up, so now Leviathon can be summoned several decades early. The increased temperature we are experiencing is a by product of the aboleth attempting to awaken Leviathon. We have to act fast and the clock is ticking. The pseudodragon advises we speaking to the dwarven diplomat, a woman who is also a powerful seer. With her help we may get a clue as to how to track down "Kevin" the aboleth. But not before some wacky comedy from two of our newest members. The monks have several captured monster that are detained in the temple. One is a powerful fire giant warlord who is magically trapped on a throne conscious but unable to move or speak. The gnome and the drow proceeded to climb up on top of his lap, the gnome running around like a spaze and the drow lady yelling at the giant demanding that he talk when he clearly can not. We attempted to talk them down but upon learning the creature she's standing on is a giant, the gnome draws a bow and readies to shoot the giant since apparently giants killed her parents. The drow then gets up in his grill and starts telepathically harassing him and demanding that he talk when he clearly can't. We learn the giant is indeed a terrible villain and he is detained here as it is a fate worse than death, death being too good for a monster like him. The giant looks down at the monk pleading for help do to him being unrelently annoyed. It takes some doing but we manage to talk the two dummies down explaining that we don't what magic is holding him here and screwing with it might release him. But mostly the rest of the party was just embarassed by our new members. It got to the point where I rolled a grapple check on the gnome and I was going to physically remove them from the giant but upon asking the gnome her AC she got down. We went back to town and tracked down the seer to find she appeared to be out of it and was being lead away by three strange armed human men that claimed to be aids of her. The Animal figured out there was something wrong here. He noticed they had strange cultish tattoos on their body. Animal called out the trio and wasted no time drawing his claws. And that was a good call as they were assassins working for "Kevin!" With the Animal's fury leading the charge the party lays the smack down on the assassins killing two of them. One of them makes a break for it, only to be chased down throughout the city by Eragon who goes Point Break on his ass. Eragon knocks out the assassin and drags him back. The Seer collapses and we take her and the assassin to a hotel to get her some water and medical attention from our cleric. The assassin recovers and attempts to make a break for it and we chase him through the hotel. The Animal rages and slams him against a wall and drags him back to the room. With the fate of the world on the line, including his lover in a future that may never come to pass, the Animal goes to a dark place, takes the assassin into the bathroom, and proceeds to torture him for information. We learn that the assassin is a part of a doomsday cult that reveres Leviathon but he doesn't know exactly where the aboleth is. The seer awakens revealing that we she sees the future she often goes into a trance. She tells us of a vision she had where we traveled to a ship made of bones in the ocean that then traveled through space. We know now we need to get on a ship and find that bone ship in order to track down the aboleth. The assassin attempts to kill himself mutliple times be we refuse to let him kill himself. We get the seer to safety and turn the assassin into the town guard. We go back to the hotel and rest only to discover someone has set fire to the hotel in the middle of the night and we are forced to jump out the window. Waiting for us outside is the cult with more warriors and mages ready to give us grief. It's a hard fight but we cut the cult down and found more incriminating papers and clues on their person. The party decides to immediately got to a neighboring in and stay there for the night while the original hotel burns down. The Animal instead temporarily leaves the party and sleeps in the woods to avoid being spotted by the cult or an overly questioning town guard. He stays in view of the party so he can help if they need him. The next day, our tiefling warrior woman who has been learning and mastering magic as well during our journey manages to bluff our way into booking passage on board a tiefling military vessel…..right in time for a massive and strangely timed earthquake to destroy the town, killing hundreds of people! The monastary also falls and out of the rubble rises the fire giant warlord we saw earlier menacing the world again. While our ship tries to escape another ship slams into the front of own! Downing a potion of giant strength he pulled off the assassins, the Animal rages, grabs the bow of the other ship lifts it off our own ship with superhuman strength and tosses it aside enabling us to sail to safety! But clearly the enemies plans are in motion! We're running out of time!

With our tiefling battle mage taking charge we are able to convince the tiefling captain to keep scouring the ocean for the mysterious bone ship. Unfortunately the tiefling captain is a massive asshole who regularly beats his crew in front of us for kicks. We confront him about it, but there's nothing we can do about it without getting violent and we need the fucker so we let it alone and turn a blind eye for now. We don't have to wait long as a few weeks out the bone ship arrives and chases us down. It pops out of a portal! It's a spell-jammer ship! Full of githyanki pirates! The alien marauders from the Astral Plane are gunning right for us and with them are Spectators, terrible Beholderkin contracted to guard their ship. While the rest of the party promptly starts launching spells and firing cannons and ballistas at the enemy ship, I come to terms with the fact that as a fucking barbarian, there's not a god damn thing I can do at range that would be at all helpful. But after having lifted a ship off another shit like a boss a couple weeks ago, I decide to do something badass! Stupid, but badass! I leap off the back of our ship and dive into the ocean and swim towards the bone ship that's bearing right down on us! I nearly die as the githyanki and spectators start launching ballistas and eye lasers at me. (My buddy David was playing one of the spectators and was delighting in the chance to kill much to my frustration.) Meanwhile the boneship is about to ram me dead on and kill me! But the power of badass was with me as I was able to ready myself, carefully catch the ship with my strength so it doesn't drag me under, and then use my claws to climb up the side of the ship! I get to the top and start slicing up githyanki pirates and fighting spectators and dodging their laser blasts! Meanwhile, the badass Githyanki Captain orders his men to ram our ship. They do and begin boarding. The party start brawling with them in melee and we start attacking the Captain! But then our stoner sorcerer figures something out! He teleports over to the Githyanki Captain and attempts to reason with him! Surprisingly the Captain is reasonable! He explains the tiefling captain robbed THEM and stole his heirloom soul sword that contains the soul of his grandfather in it and they are attacking to get their property back. Our party already hates the tiefling captain for being an asshole that beats and tortures his own crew! We promptly shake hads with the Githyanki Captain and join his side! We turn on Tiefling Captain douchebag, kill his ass, get the Githyanki Captain his sword back! We ask for the Githyanki Captain's help in saving the world from Leviathon and he agrees to help us, so long as there's money in it. The Githyanki Captain has joined our party! And now we have a spell-jammer ship!

We take to the Astral Plane in order to travel space and time and find and stop the aboleth faster. Unfortunately we are caught in an Astral Storm that severely damages the spell-jammer engine and leaves us adrift in the Abyss, one of Dungeons and Dragons many version of Hell. With a broken engine and trapped in Hell it's only a matter of time before we are overwhelmed and horribly murdered by demons. The Animal was knocked unconscious during the storm. If he were awake he would have protested what the party did next. A mysterious entity, mind you one they encountered in HELL, offers them a chance to escape, if they except it's help which clearly comes with a catch. The rest of the party agrees to this without Animals input and sure enough it's a bad idea as the Animal wakes up to find himself with the rest of the part in an extra dimensional area forced to participate in gladiatorial games for the amusement of Ixxyl, a powerful genie with his own private dimension. (To play devil's advocate that's probably a better place to be than adrift in Hell.) We fight a squad of goblins in the area and kick some ass. Ixxyl's realm exists outside of time and space so the good news is the ticking clock of the world ending appears to be on hold in this realm. We get some down time where we see Ixxyl's operation is run by a mind flayer overseer and a deep gnome liason. We learn from the deep gnome that Ixxyl has many servants and gladiators here and gladiators can win their freedom by winning battles and pleasing Ixxyl possibly gaining an audience from him. So we need to win matches to get out. The Animal remember his lost friend Dittlefinks talks with the deep gnome some more and learns that the deep gnome is slave to and has not seen his wife in a long time. Animal confides in him that they will continue to play a long but are going to try and find away out of here and they'll take him out of here too. He asks the gnome to help if he can but understands if he can't. The deep gnome seemed to appreciate this. The party goes into the next battle and squares off against a basilisk and two medusas. The party gangs up on the basilisk with the stoner sorcerer blasting it into a oblivion. The Animal and the Githyanki Captain tag team one of the medusas and successfully kill it but not before looking a little to deeply into it's eyes. They charge at the last medusa as their bodies harden, it's too late. The Animal whispers his love for Larala before hardening into a statue and falling with a thud to the ground. The Animal has died for a third time. Fortunately the rest of the party kills the last medusa and are given magic coins as rewards, they use to of their coins to restore the Captain and Animal to life. In particular, the priest of RN Jesus gives up his coin for Animal, to which Animal is eternally grateful (and possibly a convert). Realizing the only way to escape this place, save the world, and save Larala is to keep fighting in the games, the Animal resolves to go off into the next match by himself. He cannot wait for the party. He approaches his friend, the tiefling battle mage, and tells her he has to go on ahead. He has to get out of here and save his lover. He tells her to get the rest of them out of here and save the world from Leviathon and she promises to do so. He shakes hands with the rest of the party, Eragon, the stoner, the githyanki, and the high priest of RN Jesus, bids them farewell and charges into the next match!

And here endeth the Animals adventures while I was at sea. Basically at this point I left the ship and couldn't continue on with the group. They were a great group and playing and hanging out with them made the rough times at sea pretty happy. I haven't had a chance to check up with them yet, but I like to think that they saved the day and stopped Leviathon. As for the Animal he would go on to fight in more and more gladiatorial battles until he wins his freedom. Next time we're going to talk about roleplaying but we're going to do something a little different. But don't worry…..

The Animal will return…..

Edward "Dreadpirate" Peeler