Rare Siletrea post??
So, I'll contribute my 5E story. This was my first time ever playing DND, and my group was comprised of a monk, sorceress and rogue.
What this meant was we had no healer, so ya girl had to pick cleric, my naive fool ass being completely unaware of the absolute horrors I would both endure and inflict.
I decided to roll a high elf cleric since I like knife ears and I wanted an excuse to be a pretty character. I was more or less making a meme character to have killed off in the first battle so I may reroll into a not-healer, showing my party that even as a healer, i could do better as anything else. I picked Acid Splash and decided I would be as close to chaotic evil as was allowed, which was chaotic neutral.
Being the artiste that I am, I drew a quick 320x320 pixel sketch of my little suicide ant and prepared to put about as much effort into the character as I did the art. (more than nothing, but still not much.)
Yizmala: The Terror Yet To Be Foretold
![[Image: 3Kxcjjb.png]](https://i.imgur.com/3Kxcjjb.png)
The campaign starts out similar to an elder scrolls, with us and some madcap we didn't know trapped in a prison cell, for crimes yet known. Though i was a chaotic neutral high elf with a disposition with authority so my crimes while hard to guess, wouldn't be too surprising to have landed my dopey ass in jail.
The problem is presented, we need to escape so the plot may happen, stuck in a medieval world where casters and magic is not standard, and our group had some of the very rare magic wielders.
But fuck magic, that's salem shit! No, who needs magic to escape prison!? So, our fine-tuned naruto shippuden ass monk punches the door very hard.
It is however, a prison door, and on top of King's punch doing absolutely nothing to the steely resolve of the cell door, it had the added bonus of hurting his hand and alerting the guards that these inmates were throwing hands.
I innocently asked the DM if I could use acid-splash to melt the bars. She said 'roll dex'.
I roll a six on a d6, the door mc-fucking-melts.
The DM would go on to regret giving a level 0 cantrip so much environmental power, and would later develop mechanics to avoid the exploitation of said acid splash.
As if given a new toy, my character than killed two of the guards via dissolving them in a bath of acid. While the monk missed his dex checks, the rogue looted bodies and the sorcerer turned herself into a potted plant (useless!).
Thankfully, we all had our chance to shine, and escaped the prison. We resolved to hide in the woods, the DM had intended we go on the path, but given we were known criminals, we figured ducking into the forests might be more safe, and as an elf with natural nightvision, it just seemed the smarter option.
Our gracious DM let this happen, but our swindling off the beaten path would be something they'd see fit to punish.
A squad of level one idiots, half of which completely unknowing of how DND worked, were then confronted with the trauma-beast of the run.
An Owlbear.
This was the DM rewarding our explorative curiosity. I myself, was quite relieved, my meme character could mc-die in an instant and I could choose a better class, haha.
Now, I won't lie, the owlbear flattened my character in a fucking swipe. Resolved, I let the death counter stack up, but got revived on the second turn because lucky.
But the Owlbear... well, it wasn't focused on us, because our rogue had devised the funny archer strat of running and hitting. (some may know this as kiting)
Somehow, this was the most effective way to deal with a charging savage beast who could knock down a tree by lightly groping it. Suffice it to say, this was DND's way of g-checking us.
Yet somehow, we managed to pull through, we slew the owlbear, a level 6 being, and I barely even had the chance to heal, and I wasn't dead somehow... Yizmemer had lived through an encounter that should have killed her.
Well, darn. Now I guess I gotta give her something of a personality or some gay horseshit? COMPLAIN! I make her Abrasive (liek the acid she'd become a meme for) and rough, but willing to respect people for helping her when she didn't deserve it. A cagey, insecure and volatile elf. Yes, this would do. I didn't have to worry about it, she was a doomed idiot I had marked for death, and knowing our DM was a deep-sadist, made it even more likely this was just a lucky fluke.
Little did I know this character would be saving her team mates from peril and relaying a team of minions and performing miraculous feats of profaned strength as time went on. Defeating the owlbear was supposed to not happen, so the DM rewarded us with a level up from it. I am now a level 2 Cleric.
Another of the traits I gave Yizmala was that she didn't care at all for gold or material wealth, with the exception of silk for reasons I'd discover later.
Our next encounter was with some bandits hassling a noble's escort. The noble in question becoming infamous for shitting himself when scared.
After dealing with the bandits, the party was offered some compensation, 200 gold coins and a bundle of silk, Yizmala in a swift action snatched the silk and said she'll pass on the gold, rubbing her face merrily with it. This was in my effort to give Yizmala a flaw and something of a personality quirk to make her somewhat likeable.
The poor treatment of his peasantry by the noble infuriated our rogue, and he tried to talk some sense into Pantshitter (which is what we will call him.)
His persuasion check failed, and then Yizmala decided to show him what must be done in the case of diplomacy not prevailing. The DM asked I roll intimidation.
I nat-fuckin-20'd.
Pantshitter shit himself so hard it shot out of him like a jet of volatile napalm, projectile-firing straight through his pants onto the ground beneath him where he fell back in fear of the one they called 'The Acid Witch'.
We let him live. But the man was basically already dead on the inside. His servants assisted him to his carriage, but very clearly didn't feel sorry for him.
The party looked at Yizmala not in reverence or awe, but terror. That's the kind of thing a nat-20 intimidation roll does, especially when my intimidation was already one of my higher skills and that my comrades were already at the very least weary of me. I had killed two prisom guards with acid baths, which is always a pretty gruesome thing to watch!
You um, might have noticed...
I haven't yet used a single SPELL in this game?
Why? Because I fucking forgot how and acid splash has very high viability early game for some reason!
Anyway... we end up at a border town far from the capital we escaped from, we are approached by a guard named Duncan while at the Tavern lying low. Yizmala makes a point of not boozing, and just cuddles up to her silk.
We end up in a cut throat encounter with law enforcement. The corruption of the local militia is a problem Duncan was hoping we'd address, I don't remember how this fight went beyond the enemy died and we lived, tee hee!
Like FFS, we survived an encounter with an owlbear, what were these regular human schlubs gonna do? Duncan states that there's something bigger going on, and urges us to visit the tower of one of the very few high level wizards in this universe, Erik the Diviner.
He is also an exile due to his art of necromancy not being too well approved of. So he lives in a tower guarded by skeletons and well-honed arcane traps, but we'll get to that later. While on our journey through the mountains with Duncan, as he knows de way, we encounter yet another beast well above our paygrade.
Nah, it's not an owlbear this time, it's
worse!
A griffin the size of a house approaches us, talons reared, my heart gives out a sigh, maybe now- I will be able to end the meme and stop being such a gremlin character??
Unfortunately, this was when I decided to start looking into what I had access too. Let's just say that even at level 2, 5e clerics are already getting busted abilities, such as Spiritual weapon!
Spiritual weapon is one of the most broken abilities in the game. I ofcourse, went with an unholy scythe as I am trickster domain and I serve the god of darkness, Noros. Noros is a chaotic evil god with iconography relating to insects, spiders and snakes.
But that spiritual weapon was only the beginning, for I learned i had the ability to do 4d6 damage. That's anywhere from 6-32 damage, which is utterly INSANE at level 2. I did over half of the griffin's HP in one well executed attack and did more with the free action of 'swing' the spiritual weapon gets. The group finished it off. It was not Yizmala who was going to be diying now, the meme had become that she was what other things died around.
And now, with the lore drop on Noros, the silk- the alignment and other elements... I had cobbled together a backstory, one that I decided to share with the party later that evening at camp.
Oh goodie! It's time for the epic crybaby backstory!
Raised by an Arachne who had left the underdark to reside in the forests on the surface, Yizmala never knew her real parents, she knew only a spider, and the spider raised her as if one of her own. She remembers that she was happy then, at peace.
She remembers too the day the disciples of Uldir came. In righteous predjudice they slaughtered her mother and all of her siblings, and took her captive. The fools hoping to 'cleanse' the child of corruption.
But she would not yield. She sought vengeance, and vengeance she would claim. Slender is the strand that guides ones destiny. Easily cut by a practiced slender hand. And of their threads of fate, she would cut it all down.
Desperate for the cure to her non-existent corruption, they brought in the big gun. The Cardinal Erik Vantomoy. The head of the lion. The pertinent imbecile believed a child could not harm him. But acid... it dissolves whatever it may touch, good, bad, solid or brittle. A cantrip often underestimated, so often overlooked, a level 0 ability so easy to use even a kid could do it.
And this kid did. Merely a teenager, she concocted the most lethal acid she could manage, and the cardinal had become the first victim of what the entire order of Uldir would call 'The Acid Witch'.
![[Image: reC0W57.png]](https://i.imgur.com/reC0W57.png)
Yizmala had taken their holy father, like they had taken her loving mother. The path of the righteous is walked only by fools with their head in the clouds, dreaming of a paradise they would never receive, and were never owed.
Yizmala was no mere victim, she had become a heretical existence, out of spite and revenge she sought to bring the Uldir order low, and thus she sided with the enemy of her enemy, the Dark Lord Noros. Every part of her was happy to die for his cause, her service to him not a question, for if he could ever strike down Uldir, that would be her ultimate wish.
Defeating merely the human vessel of Uldir's prestige was not enough, Yizmala saught to not merely defy a god.
She meant to slay one, be that directly or indirectly, this was now her motive. Her own hidden secret, she never told her party of this desire, it was beyond their ability to consider. They lived lives bent on momentary mundane trivialities, unable to grasp the bigger picture.
Kill the Gods, disrupt their influence and overshadow their achievements. A goal so ambitious even the Gods would not entertain it. But Yizmala was not a God, nor was she an elf, or a human, or a citizen of this land.
She was a spider, an outcast. Right now, she needed to gain power, and so she would help her newfound friends through their trials, much as they may grate on her with their befuddling stupidity, preachy morality or obnoxious principles. In pursuit of her goal, it wasn't a price to pay at all.
A high elf with a drow backstory, as the DM coined it, I had no idea-- I was just spitting lore and hoped it would stick, but at that point, Yizmala's death was no longer something I sought. I had discovered the truth...
Yeah, um, 5e Cleric is the most broken, overpowered and versatile class and calling it a support/healer is grossly underscoring just how fucking insane this class is.
Spiritual Weapons were only the beginning, now I had a motive to get in there, now I had a reason to fight, not just for the fun of DND, but for Yizmala as well.
Sometime later, I reach level 3.
Enter Invoke Duplicity, one of Yizmala's most broken abilities. Allowing a phantasmal clone of herself to distract enemies, and even attack through it, but this was far from the zenith. But it had changed the game. Yizmala had begun to rise, from a frail reluctant to heal healer, she had become something worthy of fear.
But the story of Yizmala will not go further, the context has been given, we will never discover how she died to skeleton trash in a tower that somehow got the entire party closer to death than massive beasts five times our level! We will not be covering her emotional episode about her weakness. We will not be covering the second owlbear encounter where she gets knocked out again but otherwise survives! It's filler at this point. You already know that despite everything, Yizmala would see it to the end. We'll be here all day as it is!
The major turning point was when she decided to retake a temple of Noros back from some worshippers of a death cult and some orcs who had invaded the place. This was Noros' temple now, regardless of who came before. This is where the group started to see Yizmala for the threat to existence she had become. Between a scythe of a spiritual autonomy that used the power of unholy, and a cataclysmic attack some may know as Guiding Bolt, Spirit Guardians and various other abilities. She would toll the dead and make the orcs who had befouled her dark master's domain regret.
In thanks, she was given the item which gave her the final power she would need. Noros took the bundle of silk she had carried with her since level 2, and spun from it a Robe of Serpents... if you know your DND, you already know this is where the GM done fucked up. If you haven't played DND, let's just say summoning up to five mid level snakes per day/rest is in all respects, a tad broken. Pair that with a Cleric's defensive capabilities, a host of minions to take attacks away from her, and the spell mirror image for even more dupes to take attacks, and you've entered the Trickster Cleric meta-game.
![[Image: NureGDY.png]](https://i.imgur.com/NureGDY.png)
At this point, Yizmala was no longer the one being carried, she was the carrier. The vast array of utility backed up by my willingness to learn how best to utilize her power was one of the highlights of the game. She was destined to be a healer, but yet she rarely healed. She was an unholy wrecking ball of deliverance. Why heal when you can ensure no enemy even gets to target you? Why go into the front lines when you have several autonomous minions who will die for you and one of which can even attack in your stead?
Five snakes, a spiritual weapon, a duplicitous invokation, three mirror images and her team mates.... Yizmala was the dark director in the backstage, weaving the battlefield like it was all a game on her board, all those who opposed her were caught in her web, and like the spider, she would devour her prey.
The DM tried to G-check her, surely throwing monsters above our paygrade could stop us...? But we had learned of the trick, and were always prepared. A night hag at level five, a master thief, a bulette, a medusa.
All slaughtered, although the medusa stone-formed both the rogue and the sorceress, it didn't matter. Yizmala's duplicity approached and cast spirit guardians. There was no escape, Yizmala's snakes had otherwise cornered the medusa, and in under a three turns, the medusa would fall while Yizmala watched from afar wearing a cruel grin. Parting with the gold she didn't want anyway, she paid alongside the monk to see their friends returned from their stone prisons.
The only encounter left after that medusa was Xhyrax, the big bad evil guy... a mindflayer, for most, this would be a very potential game-ending opponent.
But we were not most, we were DA HEADS.
All our heads were on posters, hence we wore our notoriety on our sleeve. We would save the world, and only after felling squid daddy would the world revere us.
Predictably, Xhyrax fell, no casualities, no losses. The preparation we had was ungodly, we all had come to be accustomed to fighting beings well above our paygrade.
It was inevitable our victory would be claimed, we had stolen the dark fire of the gods and used it with abaddon. This was where the campaign ended, the order of Uldir was expunged, Noros' order became highly affluent, the people saw us as the Dark Guardians of... whatever the world was called, I forget honestly!
The campaign could have continued, but it didn't. The group somewhat fell apart, but personally, that only means the campaign ended. Yizmala's story is far from over. She would not forget why she was here... She had already achieved martydom, exaltation and removed the Uldir-worshipping dogs from the board, cut was their strand- by a dilligent hand that sought to remove them from the web. But it was not enough to disestablish the cult who followed Uldir. Noros still desired Uldir's demise, and so did Yizmala. She had defeated an extraterrestrial threat, a feat only the dedicated few are allowed to entertain. She had shown that despite having all she loved cut down to nothing, she could still become everything. Nothing could bring her mother back, but she could take away their father in response.
Uldir will die, such was her conviction... marked in the sand. The pious followers of his brand were mere appetizers, for the spider would not be complacent until she had devoured any trace of evidence that Uldir ever existed.
Robbed of light, the world would belong to Noros. Her vow, unfaltering. her ideals, inviolate. Her splash, acid. Her web, inescapable. The world danced in response to a twist of her fingers, she was becoming something of a God, an icon of resilience and a motif of masterminding.
The All-devouring Arachne
![[Image: ts9URaA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ts9URaA.png)
Whew, that sure was something! Sorry I forgot how much happened in that campaign, I didn't even get to go into the deep-city subterfuge, or the bit where Pantshitter shit his pants again, only this time at a royal banquet our party was in while disguised as nobles! Or when in the tower how King (the monk) after being goaded by Yizmala- punched a door she had a feeling would be trapped, leading to her having a laughing fit when it was super unsurprisingly, quite very trapped! Or how Yizmala named her five serpents after various alcoholic beverages: Ginseng, Whiskey, Scotch, Gin and Vodka.
This was the first of only two DND campaigns I've ever been a part of.
DISTRACTION
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