As our party slept in the entrance of the dungeon, Xandarr wanted to ensure their safety by using Mold Earth some more, he reinforced the wall using the dirt at his feet effectively creating a moat behind the wall. The process was loud enough to make him worry about alerting the creatures inside the dungeon, as a result he kept his guard up, listening for any odd noise. After a few minutes of pure silence, Xandarr felt relieved and sat down by the fire.

It was maybe an hour later, while Xandarr was sitting by the crackling fire, that he heard it, scratching sounds coming from the wall he made. The druid stood up and walked over to the wall as silently as he could and put his ear on the wall to see if he could hear it better. He heard whispers and more scratching, he couldn't tell who or what it was, he was however certain of one thing, they weren’t here to give them a housewarming gift.

Using his druid magic, Xandarr manipulated the wind to grow louder in the cavern, hoping that the strangers would simply ignore the noise and mistake it for the storm outside.

Alas, it was all for nought, the last words Xandarr heard were, “I smell humans… Tasty humans… They’re on the other side of this wall…”.

On that note, Xandarr’s face drained of colours because a massive fist just punched through his wall, in his surprise Xandarr stumbled back into the moat and helplessly watched a massive bugbear breaking through the wall. Multiple pairs of eyes glowed in the dark behind him, a wretched hyena like cackling emanated from them as they stood back patiently waiting for the bug bear to get through.

It was at this moment that Xandarr realized that his teammates were still asleep, and he quickly jumped to his feet, turning towards them. As he was about to scream to wake them up, something him hit in the back of the head and Xandarr fell face-first into the dirt.

A Nat20 instakill, by our lovely DM.

Once the bug bear got through, a pack of goblins jumped through the crack wielding makeshift weapons, their vicious yellow smile on full display. The noise created by the fighting and the cackling of the goblins was enough to wake up Marcus and Drazdan. They however wouldn’t be able to react on time as they were shaking off their sleepiness. Marcus got up faster than Drazdan, and he received a bugbear bear hug for his effort before he got thrown across the room.

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It was Drazdan time to shine now, and he quickly took off, rushing past the paladin to intercept the bugbear who seemed keen on tasting their druid. Two quick slashes at the bugbear mangled the brute, leaving him very injured but still standing. His little goblin pack didn’t just sit around idly, either, and they got 3 swift stabs in on Drazdan as they hid behind their larger comrade.

Drazdan fiercely fought the bugbear and goblins for as long as he could, but he eventually bites the dust as well. The extreme blood loss from all the stab wounds slowing him down and allowing the bugbear to give one last good hit on him, sending him barrelling across the room. Before his eyes finally closed, he could see his paladin companion laying unconsciously on the floor where he crashed earlier.

As you could probably tell, a couple Nat20s were rolled, and it ended real bad for us.

The fight was concluded, and the goblins looted our bodies for all their valuables, Marcus was completely stripped naked as his armour was stolen while he laid unconsciously. It took him a few hours to wake up and by the time he awoke his teammates were long dead, Marcus began praying out of desperation.

He was praying for a second chance from his god, wishing for his teammates to come back to life at any cost. He kneeled there on the dungeon floor, praying for a few minutes as tears flowed down his face, no matter how much he prayed there was no answer. His god ignored his prayers, the other gods remained silent too, not even Aelstur answered his prayers. Growing hopeless, he began praying out of desperation for anyone possible, anyone that could help him.

Luckily for him, someone was listening…

Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t a god that resided in the light…

“I hear your prayers, my child…” a ghastly voice resonated in his head.

“I shall grant your wish, but you shall become my apostle for eternity…” it continued.

“It is but a small price to pay for your comrades lives, don’t you think?” the voice asked.

Tears still in Marcus’ eyes, he looked up and nodded his head.

“I shall serve from now on to eternity… Just save my friends… Please…” he begged helplessly.

“Gooooood~” the ghastly voice whispered, his voice fading away.

Marcus then felt a deep inky darkness well up in his heart, choking him and eventually killing him as he fell over and looked at his friend's bodies before all went dark.

This happened because our dear Marcus failed so hard at his prayer that the DM refused to allow us a retry. But after a few minutes of complaining and negotiating mainly by me and Xandarr, he decided to continue the game but in a different world, cursing us to a higher difficulty.

Luckily for us, Marcus’ player will finally have normal rolls in the coming campaign, no more actionless fail rounds for him.