Stories from the Dungeon (sans Dragons)

In 2008, five year years after their last edition, Wizards of the Coast release the 4th Edition rule set for Dungeons & Dragons. Having all played D&D back in the day, it was suggested by my friend Brian that our gaming group have a go at it again for nostalgia’s sake. That ‘go’ lasted two and a half years.

Now there are many entertaining stories from that campaign, but none more dear to my heart than that of time my character finally got what was coming to him in the form of an angry Owlbear.

Alabaster was my foppish Eladrin (think magically inclined Elves) Wizard of no small repute, but he suffered from a chronic case of being kind of a dick. He usually got away with it, but karma eventually caught up with him when our group stumbled into the middle of a brawl. Apparently a mother Owlbear and two of her cubs had stumbled into (and through) a Quickling village (tiny lightning-fast pixies. With knives.) and the residents were none too happy. As these things often do, it quickly descended into a free-for-all melee.

The quicklings thought we were attacking them too and Momma Owlbear was in a maternalistic frenzy and attacking anything that came within reach. The baby owlbears were having a great time chasing the colorful flying candy (and inadvertently trampling their little huts in the process), and, frankly, the PC’s had just suffered a fairly significant setback and needed to get back on the horse, so to speak. Spells were slung. Quicklings died. Mom was bloodied, which just pissed her off more. And the party was taking a huge beating. Finally, one of the cubs went down and mom snapped. She grabbed the remaining cub, flattened the largest building possible and hunkered down in the rubble. It was at this point that the party leader signaled the retreat. We were pretty messed up. Either of these groups would have been a giant fight. Both at once was too much to handle. So the party runs away into the forest, but Alabaster decided he wasn’t quite done having fun.

Turning invisible, he snuck up behind the Owlbear and her cubs and cast Thunderwave, sending the lot of them (and the rubble of the smashed hut) into another block of quickling huts. Alabaster then promptly teleported himself to the edge of the map as I giggled madly, thinking myself safe from repercussions. Unfortunately, I had completely forgotten that creatures could charge (and thereby double-move) and so the enraged mama Owlbear ran me down and tore me to pieces a square away from leaving the encounter. As the rest of the party had already escaped into the woods, nobody was around to save him.

Fortunately our DM was a generous God, and allowed my comrades to come back and recover what was left of my body in the hopes they could find a cleric and resurrect me. Unfortunately, at the time we were in the middle of vast forest with no towns or churches nearby that might offer such services. But they did find a forest witch, who for a suspiciously small fee was willing to give it a shot. It turns out her "best" involved vivisecting Alabaster and reanimating him as a giant Flesh Golem, who cheerfully spent the next few gaming sessions running around crushing everything in sight.

They eventually found a way to resurrect me into my original body (btw – casting resurrection on a creature made up of 35 other creatures….bad idea), but Alabaster will always remember those fond days as a hulking brute and the valuable lesson learned about fooling around with Owlbears.

Many thanks to Brian for filling in the blanks from my memory for this piece.

Image sources: 1, 2.