D&D Shenanigans

[TDK]

So lately I've been playing a character in a solo campaign, with a friend DMing whom I taught to play DnD fairly recently. This is just practice because he's been asked to DM a game and he hasn't DMed before.

I've had this idea for a character based around summoning swarms for a while, so I made Joe, a gnome warlock with the Summon Swarm invocation. He has ranks in Profession (Beekeeper) and only ever summons swarms of bees. Later he branched into Druid, getting a giant bee animal companion.

Part of the point in this campaign was to show him just how far off track games often get from what the DM has planned.

I won't go into what he had planned, but so far this is what happened:

My character's motivation was to get an investment as a starter fund so he could start a honey business (he made some awesome honey. I later realized, given that I could summon bees at will, I could have them collect pollen and make honey, basically making honey through sheer force of will). The king was offering 5 gp each for goblin scalps (goblins had been killing livestock), so I headed out to collect some. I killed an injured one I found (stung it to death with bees) when Chyme, god of petty creatures, appears. (This is a creation of the DM's, he's actually a pretty interesting NPC. He's a demigod.)

He scolds me for brutally killing the 'innocent' goblin and casts a geas on me that will turn me into a rabbit if I don't go on a quest for him. The quest is to go stop some gnomes from tunneling under the forest and collapsing it.

I go up to the gnome tunnel and murder the guards*, immediately turning into a rabbit. Chyme shows up and yells at me and says I can live out my days as a rabbit.

*"Have you ever considered beekeeping?" "How do I do that?" "Here, hold this hive..."

With a newfound craving for carrots, I wonder into the farm of an old wizard who had grown weary of adventuring and took up agriculture. He was about to throw me out of his garden when he recognized a spark of intelligence in my bunny eyes and proceeded to break the spell on me. But in regaining my former size, I stumbled and accidentally broke his crystal ball.

He got real mad and sent me on a quest to get a new one, threatening that he would be scrying on me, etc.

Up to this point, this was according to the DM's plan. It was at this point everything tht happened afterward completely departed from his plans. As I told him, it was good improv experience.

At this point I went to the nearest town and found a jewelry shop (where I sold some honey to the owner), where I bought a crystal door knob. I had the bottom part cut off and sanded down, leaving me with a small ball of crystal. I took it back to the wizard, but that just made him mad. =P

So I went back to the town and asked the local mage (sold him some honey too) where I might acquire a crystal ball. He says some local goblins stole a crystal ball from him. So I head off to the goblin village. The guards raise their spears as I approach, but I show them I'm not armed and offer them honey. They fucking LOVE it and start fighting over the jar, so I walk in and talk to the chief, who speaks common. Basically I trade them all the honey I have (ten jars or so) for the crystal ball. All of the goblins are completely addicted to the honey at this point.

This was actually one of few parts where I was actually SUPPOSED to engage in combat in this campaign, and I solved it peacefully.

So I took the crystal ball back to the wizard and squared everything with him. From there I went back to the starting town, where I went to town hall looking for a loan. The accountant I talked to didn't like honey, but I demonstrated how much everyone loved it and got my loan. I set up a shop in the town, and went and gathered some bee hives and set up a deal with the goblins I talked to before. They would handle the beekeeping and I would pay them in honey.

Given how good the honey was, this quickly became a successful business. It was at this point that I heard about hives of giant bees in some valley to the north.

I had recently gained my first druid level, and my giant bee animal companion, so I took to the skies on Mike the Bee and flew to where the giant bee hive supposedly was. There was an illusion over the valley, but I saw through it and found the place. There were hives of ridiculous size and tons of flowers. I went into one of the hives, using wild empathy to make sure the bees didn't think I was a threat.

The bees all seemed very frightened, and as I got deeper, I found some dwarves. Long story short, the dwarves were subjugating the bees to use the honey to make mead. I freed the captive soldier bees and took back the hives with my new army of giant bees (and a few swarms of summoned bees, and maybe an eldritch blast or two).

It was at the beginning of this rebellion that I made the best reference ever.

Joe, you see, was raised by bees (silly backstory for a silly campaign). So when all the bees divebombed and killed all the dwarf guards but one, Joe floated slowly down on Mike. He looked the last dwarf straight in the eye and said. "LET. MY. PEOPLE. GO!"

(Yes, in this story, Joe is Moses but for Bees.)

I integrated this hive, with its preposterous amounts of honey, into my store. I now basically had an unlimited amount of honey. I acquired a bag of holding, using that to ferry huge amounts of honey back and forth.

When I got back to the small hives in the goblin village, though, I found it in ruins. The goblins were so entranced with the honey they neglected to defend their village. And the honey attracted bears, who killed the goblins. The hives themselves had collapsed into the earth because of the unchecked digging of the gnomes. But it appeared that once the hives fell into the tunnel, they had killed all of the gnomes, to my satisfaction. At this point Chyme appeared again, blaming me for all this.

I used my gnome spell like ability to speak with burrowing animals to ask a nearby mole where he had seen gnomes digging. I used this information to track down all the other gnome groups in the area. I was GOING to murder them but Chyme wouldn't leave me alone so I settled it peacefully.

After all of that, I moved my small hives (the small hives produced finer honey, so I sold that at an elevated price as the Top Shelf honey, whereas the less refined giant bee honey I sold as the normal, bottom shelf honey. The former was 10 gp a jar, the latter 3.)

I had a few more adventures starting honey shops in other cities, and a few more encounters with gnomes (Joe is really starting to hate gnomes), but that's basically where we stopped. For now.


During all of this, I did not once enter melee combat. Or even direct combat, really. I only actually killed anyone with bees, either summoned swarms or giant ones.

My new goal for this character is to ascend to godhood.

Joe, God of BEES.

This is partly because I want to kick Chyme's ass.