Epic Epic Moments

We recently had our first official AL Epic in Singapore doing Peril at the Port and had a great experience DMing one of the two Tier 2 tables at the event. The table carried hard, completing 5 quests (the max), and did so hilariously and ingeniously, with only one true actual combat encounter, versus Smoke no less!

Warning! Spoilers follow!

For the first quest, they chose to extract Jake’s previous associate from the dino pits. This might have seemed like a challenging thing to do with all the chaos on the ground, but our resident wizard had just bought the Carpet of Flying from Fai Chen… Another twinned-Fly spell and the air-evac was complete.

For their second quest, they chose to bargain with one of the beggar princes. Even though they were afflicted by zone-wide exhaustion, they were still so convincing that they easily got all their demands (especially since one of them had raced dinosaurs for him previously). They then headed to the ancient tomb and totally ambushed the thieves, freezing them with Hypnotic Pattern and totally scaring the remaining members. Things almost came to ruin when the flying monkey dropped a bottle he “released” from one of the thieves, but a quick mage-hand was enough to keep things intact.

On their way back after the quest, they were ambushed by Smoke while on their magic carpet (don’t ask me how she is able to fly as well =p) and proceeded to hit her very hard, causing her to scurry away as quickly as she arrived.

For their third quest, I prodded them towards entertaining a noble with a play, and the group dually obliged with a rousing and touching performance about love, friendship and food! This was aided by the fact that we had actually replaced the lines originally given with more pop-culture and anime references as well.

Here are my two favourites:

• A few characters get into a disagreement, leading one to curse the other, with another adding on, “Here’s another curse for you—may all your bacon burn!” Mother Siboseni was touched as she clearly loves her bacon.
• The ultimate one came at the end, when a character acting as a donkey decided to kick one of the other characters into the pool, but as he did so, the one on the receiving end read, “Sometimes I get the feeling that we’re all just a bunch of clowns standing on our tiptoes at the edge of a great abyss.” *SPLOSH* (Cue an Orson Welles style standing ovation from Siboseni/me!)

To add to this, someone was playing a character with a pirate background and happened to be the one who went to look for the special chest and actually lost an eye! He now proudly sports an eye patch and flying monkey on his shoulder!

The ridiculousness continued for the fourth quest, when they chose to summon an army to take over the Banshee and drive it into the fleet. They were given 3 bandit summoning boons from other tables, and they chose to use all of them, plus the pre-requisite 8 zombies our wizard is obsessed with, giving them an army of 26 minions. Along with the special effects of Thaumaturgy and other illusions, scared and swarmed over the defenders on the docks and ship, and sent the zombies to drive the ship into the fleet, all the while the party floated above on their Magic Carpet! Encounter over…

The final quest involved them looking for Jake’s cursed treasure, which they ultimately un-cursed easily with remove curse…

All in all, the group contributed a very large portion of the overall success criteria, even guessing Jake’s correct location. Sadly, the other tables failed to find Jake, so it was a bust overall, which was a bit deflating, but I really think the group showed how creativity, and a Carpet of Flying, can solve all your challenges in life 😉

– DM Jon K.