We were back after a couple of weeks off into the Tower of the Gods campaign.

A quick recap, Bokken, Barrai, and Thrain took the test of the Tower and ended up with new powers, and got into Strawgoh, a school of assassination and dark arts. There they were told that there were a couple of spies in their class that they could find and get extra credit if they properly identified them. After messing around with that, they came at odds with the fourth person in their group, Dorin, a halfling and fought to get him out of the group and another person in. That fight just went okay but they ended up with Dorin leaving the group.

That took us to the first half of the first semester, before midterms. They studied well with Barrai spending too much time with watching Dorin and struggling in classes but Bokken and Thrain focused pretty well and Domon was the top of the class. Barrai does find out that Dorin is really concerned about getting kicked out of school.

Thrain and Barrai worked together to scam over a few bars and their patrons taking money in staged fights as Thrain wants to save up to get plate armor and Barrai wants to get studded leather armor, they made some progress but it was slow. They also got kicked out of three bars and made an enemy, Zaphir. Barrai also goes to some fights, which are the entertainment in the area, and notices two of the top competitors, Esmelda Dean and Sanphire, whom he starts to think that he might right ballads about.

Bokken spends some of his time breaking into teachers offices and trying to track down who might be a spy, but doesn’t find out much information on them. Instead of finding out who the spies might be, he does find some information, that while the people who were spies did go through the tower just like and at the same time as everyone else, they were recruited ahead of time.

Then comes the first part of midterms. So midterms takes place in the Tower but not in kind of the training section, where they were before, but on the first floor, which doesn’t change, and where the monsters respawn every night. So after going through a couple of empty rooms with their class, they are brought to a larger circular center room. The three barracks are brought to spots around the center, equally as far away from each other and are given instructions. They are to race to an island at the center of the room, whichever team gets there first gets the best grade, but grades can go down, depending on how much the party is damaged.

At the sound of the horn all of the groups take off, and Thrain, Barrai, Bokken, and Parrag, the fourth in their group, take off into a dense forest that surrounds the lake. They decide to stealth their way through, but Parrag does horrible on his stealth and stumbles across a couple of giant rats and three smaller rats. They manage to just about take him down, but Barrai is able to cast a spell to heal him. Meanwhile, Bokken and Thrain are chopping the rats with an odachi and blasting them with Eldritch Blast. Thrain keeps backing up and stumbles across a swarm of rats. Just as Bokken finishes off the last of them by Parrag, Thrain gets swarmed over and goes down. Bokken and Barrai go to help with Parrag following behind. Then they get close, Bokken starts hacking away and Parrag fires off a healing spell bringing Thrain back to his feet and then helps finish off the swarm of rats.

To make up for lost time, the group starts booking it through the forest as fast as possible, and they are making good time, when a group of three flying snakes drops out of the trees and takes down Bokken. Parrag casts another spell getting Bokken back to his feet. Barrai casts a spell making the sound of a predatory bird and scares off one of the snakes. Thrain and Bokken then make quick work of the other two and they are off running again. This time stumbling across some elk who don’t want to tangle with them and take off running towards the lake as well. Bokken angles the barrack group slightly to avoid the elk and they make it to the shore without further incident.

When the hit the shore, they see an island about 40 feet out into the water with two teachers on it. Busting through the edge of the tree line as well is Castillia’s group with Narius in it as well. Thrain immediately takes a potshot with an Eldritch blast, but on the run, the blast goes wide, and Castillia notches an arrow on her bow and pulls it back aiming at Thrain.

That’s where we ended do to internet troubles. And that’s one of the downsides of playing on Zoom instead of in person, but it worked well for the most part and we got a lot in.

Behind the DM’s screen a little bit, I was actually using a website to just generate random encounters for me in the tower. I had one picked out ahead of time, but the rat swarm, flying snake, and elk were all randomly picked out. It worked well for the most part, and the party while having a couple of members go down, actually was in pretty decent health by the time they reached the shoreline.

Some of the stuff that we did at the beginning was just narrated. I had asked the players to send me things they wanted to do, so stuff like the money making venture that Thrain and Barrai did with staging fights for people to bet on was part of that.

Finally, the first floor of the Tower is the test basically for the midterm. So next session the players will be leveling up, so we’ve basically had one session at level 0, and now three plus part of one coming up, at level 1.

What do you think of the game thus far?

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