First time using Reddit, have some mercy with my soul, anyways here is my story, my friend playing as Azari will put his other version up sometime soon
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Today was your standard typical session with some friends, we were gonna gather on discord same time as usual but half past the accorded time, there were only 2 of us and the DM, and because we didn't wanted to waste a perfectly empty and available day to play, the DM proposed us to play a one-shot.
Since it was gonna be difficult to make new characters from scratch in half an hour or more, he told us we could use our actual characters from our big current campaign on the one-shot, with the same items and stats as the campaign.
Take into consideration that on our almost 3 month long campaign we were 5 or 6 people which all had their own characters raised through levels 1 to 3 with care, its not a lot by a landslide but we were mostly new and few of us were regulars on the campaign so we thought that using characters we were very familiar with would result in a fun time and an easy win against this seemingly friendly one-shot.
That was far from the truth by a long shot.
The one-shot started very very unusual, it was just me, your friendly Draconid Ranger “Sheddin Nemmonis” and a cat-woman Rouge “Azari Feerie”, the rest of our usual campaign was a Tifling Druid, our Warlock Draconid and a humble human warrior girl, which during the one-shot were nowhere to be found. Our task which we didn't even remember where we got it from, was to explore a cave and some ruins found in some distant place, entering said site, we found ourselves entering a giant room with 4 walls all sealed and a big giant door on the opposite side of which we entered from, when Azari tried to open it by brute force, the entire ground started collapsing on us, making way for an entire cave system below us, but neither of them fell down, we later found out it was some sort of static crystal or glass floor behind an illusion, after seeing ourselves being in a place with no door anymore, Sheddin notices a crack in one of the walls which looks to lead to a waterfall on the other side, after following it for a while, both of them found themselves on a giant thick forest on god knows where. Azari decides to climb the closest tree she could found but after climbing it the entire tree turned into a giant Basilisk, the Basilisk starts asking in a gravely slow voice what the hell was she doing, Azari just replies with a “climbing” and continues to do it, the Basilisk being weirded out just shrugs it off and turns into a 200 feet tall tree, of which Azari starts hanging from the highest point, Shedding watching this unfold pulls out a notepad out of nowhere literally and scribbles on it a message asking Azari what she can see from up there, then flings it with his bow all the way to the top, landing on Azari’s shoulder and inflicting 7 damage, even at disadvantage that was a nice shot.
Azari reading the message, manages to critically fail the perception check, and from all above she could only focus on a fox running wild in the distance and nothing else, to get down the big tree without dying from impact Azari had to let the Basilisk bite her hand, something weird but we didn't gave much deep thought to it, once she landed safely on the ground, she started perceiving Sheddin as a pirate, a blackbeard rip off responsible of killing her parents, her sister and Sheddin himself in front of her eyes, while Sheddin found Azari and saw it as a despicable killing creature with scissors for hands that was responsible somehow for the banishing of Sheddin of his own city and birthplace, as well as cutting the blood connections with his relatives, this is when we engaged in a pvp fight with the Basilisk healing us every turn and being your typical Cheerleader.
After much turns and effort, Azari finally manages to lower Sheddin’s health points to 0, and then lets the Basilisk heal him as usual, as if nothing happened, when they suddenly found themselves in a beach, an enormous beach with no end in which the Basilisk suddenly turns towards us and tells us to follow it to an oasis after such a hard fought battle, both couldn't see anything wrong with this argument, so they followed the Basilisk as if it was a long time friend.
Managing to get to the oasis, Sheddin tries to get near the oasis lake to drink some water, in which a halfling stops him, and tells him that you can't drink from it, that that water kills people, Azari ignoring the advice, leaps straight to the lake, but as she is about to get near it, she falls asleep by an enchantment, and the Basilisk carries her to a Tavern close by, as Sheddin keeps arguing and ranting with the halfling. After a while of noticing both its companions are gone, Sheddin tracks them down to the Tavern in which, after burning other fellow Draconids with his breath, he manages to find the Basilisk sitting on the pub drinking, and after it pukes Azari unscathed, Azari suddenly decides to work in the place as a cook, while Sheddin just asks for the strongest beer they have for the day, after drinking a viscous mess with snake and scorpion parts on it, Sheddin decides to head to a room and call it a day, while Azari decides to work her shift until midnight on the Tavern.
During the night, Sheddin spends most of his time the usual, currently fighting off a devilish time with said drink, managing to bring him down to 0 points and almost killing him, he manages to roll only 1 negative death save, and the rest manage to stabilize him, as he lays on his floor and falls unconscious for a couple hours. When Azari manages to finish her working time, she goes to a random room in the place and falls asleep, but during that time, haunting visions and a cursed voice paralyze and disable her, causing slowly psychic damage and wearing her down to 1 health point, as she manages to somehow fail 4 or 5 Wisdom Save Throws, after finally succeeding one, she manages to free herself from the curse of dubious origins and calls out for help, at which time, Sheddin finally recovering from his near death experience, manages to hear the faint screams and rushes to see what's the deal, as Azari finds herself paralyzed on her knees on top of her bed. Azari tells Sheddin they both need to get out of there as soon as possible and both rush outside the place towards the lake, having seen visions during her curse paralysis time, Azari leaps head first into the oasis lake, almost drowning her, until she realizes the water goes up to her waist at most, and then she walks out of it having realized something, her memories that were stolen and replaced were returning to her, she with all her party members of the original campaign, the quests they were set out to do and the force of an unknown source keeping them somehow locked in this place, after the realization, she tried to explain everything to Sheddin as he fails to understand what she is saying, as none of it makes even a bit of sense to him, when the halfling suddenly turns into a mannequin, after swiftly disposing of it, 4 more of them came out of the Tavern all locking eyes with us, Sheddin with 6 points left and Azari with 5.
Both of them decide to run around the lake, taking pot shots with their arrows at all the enemies getting close, but Sheddin gets surrounded by all 4, and decides to use his last Cure Wounds on himself to tank all the damage with 11 hit points and let Azari deal with them safely, one fails its hit, the second one fails, the third one fails, and the fourth lands a hit, Sheddin is left with 3 points, Azari lands a killing blow in one and Sheddin puts down a second mannequin shouting “Azari, this is the last of my Hamon TAKE IT”, while being put down by one of them, getting his life down to 0. Azari gets closer and personal, takes one more down with a hit, and Sheddin passes his first Death Save the last mannequin decides to hit Sheddin while being down and lands him on the 2 negative Death Saves against one positive, Azari, not knowing what to do and thinking irrationally, goes for the last killing blow on the mannequin and manages to kill it, ending the fight, it was all over, the turn left was for Sheddin and all he needed to do to survive the encounter was to make it past this Death Save and Azari would pick him up, it was 5 seconds left until Azari was able to stabilize him.