Description
The Heroes of Yearth have returned to a simple life. Facing the highs and lows of world-saving stardom, our heroes have to grapple with the simple challenges, like navigating their way to a fancy soiree.
Synopsis
Following the defeat of Celestia, the heroes have returned to their homes, and Yearth has experienced a year and a bit of peace and prosperity.
Polly Waddle has left home again, starting a new career as a singer, recording a Christmas album with her slightly incompetent accompanist Jamal. Charion Valariant has ascended to the throne of the Ironlands, but tries to swim in a tub of gold and nearly drowns himself. Dinner Munchabout has created a range of hot sauces and has been - fairly unsuccessfully - trying to sell them in the Frostopolis market. He notices a smoke signal coming from the west of Frostopolis, indicating distress, and an adult blue dragon flies far overhead.
All three receive letters from Tarbaw Nighthill, the new governor of Frostopolis, inviting them to a celebration of heroism at the governor’s mansion for the one hundred greatest heroes in the land, but forbidding them from bringing any magic weapons. Upon reading the letter a magic portal opens to the Frostopolis Museum for the heroes to store their weapons, but Dinner mistakenly climbs into the portal and gets injured when Polly throws in the Blades of Grass. Dinner climbs out into Ironguard and is reunited with Charion.
The next day the three heroes meet up outside the mansion. Also at the gates are Arphan Bortnam, an aasimar Paladin of Vengeance, and Ernie Sweetwater, a Goliath bard, who are being told by the guards they must give up their weapons. In response to Arphan’s threat of violence, one of the guards claims to be the one who killed his family, here in disguise to kill Arphan. The “guard” attacks, but Arphan easily cleaves him “from ear to nuts” before declaring the guard couldn’t have been their real killer.
The five heroes meet and introduce themselves, and tell some more guards who come to let them in that bandits killed the disguised “guard”. After Ernie plays a disappointing acrostic song for one of them about revenge they realise they’re running late for the celebration. They barely have time to look through the mansion's windows at the champagne bottle chandelier and other guests before the blue dragon Dinner saw earlier arrives and attacks. It breathes lightning on the heroes, knocking Dinner out, before attacking the mansion and setting it on fire with its breath. Polly taunts the dragon by telling it lightning isn’t real, while Arphan summons his celestial wings and flies up to talk to the dragon, asking it to consider doing something other than killing people. He seems to be getting somewhere, but the dragon says that it’s still going to kill a lot of people - just not Arphan, and it lets him choose four people to be spared. Arphan chooses the other four heroes except for Dinner, whom he assumes is already dead, plus Doris, an old woman who it turns out is racist. Dinner is further definitely killed as the dragon destroys the mansion, but is saved when Arphan lays hands on him after the dragon leaves.
An old injured man approaches the heroes - it’s the governor. He’s distraught that the assembled heroes are all dead, but thinks it’s lucky that the dragon, whose name is Lennithon, left when he did. He asks the heroes to travel to the town with the smoke signals, Greenest, to let them know things are under control. He promises them a reward of 50 gold pieces - except for Arphan, who is working for 3 gold pieces an hour, and Dinner, who instead will get the mayor’s lawsuit against his hot sauce company dropped. They also get an invitation to Heidi Klum’s “worm party”. The heroes agree.
Cast
Heroes of Yearth
NPCs
- Jamal, Polly’s accompanist
- Tarbaw Nighthill, new governor of Frostopolis.
- Doris, a racist old lady attending the celebration
- Queen Elizabeth (though she is not on the coins)
Bestiary
- Lennithon, an adult blue dragon who sounds like Scooby Doo and is married to Heidi Klum, and is definitely too powerful for the heroes of Yearth.
Places
The Winter Mountains
- Frostopolis
- The Governor’s Mansion
- The Frostopolis Museum (briefly)
- The Market
- Ironguard
- Greenest (mentioned)
Themes, tropes and running jokes
- A Monstrous Frankenstein of a Duck - Arphan initially assumes Polly Waddle is a regular duck until she reveals her arms, which Arphan describes as “weird”. Polly tells him to say they’re cool or she’ll be mad, and he agrees.
- You Fell Over Again Didn’t You? - the dragon’s initial attack does exactly enough damage (30 hit points) to Dinner to immediately knock him out. After being revived by Ernie, Dinner then takes 66 hit points, which should have killed him instantly. He spends most of the fight on the ground unconscious, but Arphan revives him by laying on hands.
- Gratuitous Lists
- Dinner’s hot sauce names; as well as “Feels Like I’m Shitting Sand, the Hot Sauce”, Demi adds “This’ll Burn Your Lunch Hole”, “Lube for Satan’s Penis” and “Garlic’s Racist Mum”. She also describes the illustration on the label of each one.
- Hing avoids doing one for the other heroes at the mansion, only mentioning Bolton Bragg, the strongest dwarf in the world, and Hera McTerra, a ghoul who wields the staff of justice.
- Sunbelt Erasure - In what seems likely to become a running gag, when Hing tells the players their characters reminisce about Sunbelt Gongbonnger, Polly claims the heroes of Yearth have always referred to themselves as “the three amigos”.
- Pelican-based technology - Polly’s letterbox is a pelican; Hing says “It’s very important that you know the pelican is alive and in great pain.” Later he mentions that the sundial at the mansion is also a pelican.
Trivia
- Hing mentions that he didn’t choose the colour of the dragon because it’s blue “in the book” - he means in the officially published adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen, part one of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign on which this season is based. In the book, Nighthill is the governor of Greenest, rather than a bigger city like Frostopolis.
Quotes
“Hello, my name is Michael, and I’m going to be DMing this, and you’re all going to have a fun time. You’re all going to have a fun time.” - Hing’s introduction to his first session.