Disclaimer
This review is my own personal opinion from what I have experienced so this is from a purely subjective view and does not entail anything against the organizers, DM's, and anyone else who helped with the event. Also, this review will contain excerpts from official published adventures made by Wizards of the Coast which are "A Dish Best Served Cold" and "Last Orders at the Yawning Portal". I'm not certain whether the organizers had placed their own spin on the stories but if you don't want to be spoiled, then it would be best to not continue reading.
First off, I'd like to mention that this was the first Epic that I had ever gone to. I had heard of them before and was filled with thoughts that it would be extremely deadly and dangerous to have your character attend one. The chances of death were extremely likely so naturally, I was hesitant at first when my brother invited me. But after much consideration, I decided what the heck and just went along.
The event happened last May 05. To attend the event, you would first to need to register and make payment thru bank deposit. Considering that the payment was only Php 300.00, you really get your money's worth for the amount of fun you'll have in one day. There were two days for the Epic but me and my bro only attended the second one. Thinking back now though, I regret not signing up for the first one which I should have done even if my brother couldn't go.
The venue for the event was held in the iACADEMY Nexus Campus in Makati. Getting to that area in Makati might prove a little difficult if you're commuting so I'd suggest to take your car or a taxi. The building itself had a parking area so I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem although I've never tried since we just took a cab.
When entering the room, you'll be given a leaflet which is a quick reference guide to the things that you can do in D&D such as conditions, exhaustion, combat options, etc. I thought it was really nice and the quality was good as well. You can tell that someone took the time to make it look really professional which I liked. It was a nice little small surprise cause they didn't do that before in the last event I went to which was last Halloween (that event was amazing too btw) There were around 18 tables I think. Each table with their own DM and party. The tables were spaced well enough I think that you wouldn't be bothered by any nearby table. So it was great to just laugh with your comrades and just have a good time. There was no food allowed. I think. Which made sense cause it was technically a school campus still. You were allowed a container for your drinks though if I'm not mistaken. It didn't matter much though to me and my bro cause we were properly nourished.
There were two sessions. The first was the morning session which composed of a regular adventure while the second session was the Epic proper. Since these events were held by Adventurer's Anonymous Manila, the rules of play would fall under Adventurer's League rules. I'll probably go into detail for what those rules entail in another post. The sections of tables were divided to the tier levels from tier 1 to tier 4. Due to me registering late, I couldn't be on the same table with my brother for the Epic but we would all be working towards the same goal so it didn't matter too much.
The event kicked off with a dance performance. The girl at the front danced pretty well and she moved just like a K-pop dancer would. The backup dancers behind her were a different story however. It was funny to watch them try and copy her moves. At many points they would even stop dancing and just catch their breath. Well, mostly it was the head DM, who was doing a cosplay of Percy from Critical Role, who had a hard time keeping up. It was funny for us in the crowd though so we all were having a laugh and enjoyed the performance.
A Dish Best Served Cold
The first adventure session I went through was with my bro using my character Gorbin and my bro using Forbin. They're both dwarves who are brothers too. The DM we had for the session was Ian Viernes. He had come maybe an hour late while the other tables were already starting. We didn't complain though cause it wasn't necessarily an easy venue to get to plus he could have had some life things to deal with. When he arrived on the scene, he told us about this thing that he always does with people that he'd DM for the first time which was to make a quick drawing of our characters. We'd describe to him as best we can on how our characters look like and he'd make a quick simple sketch with a pen based on that. He'd go through each of us one by one and when it was my turn, I just showed him a card with art of how Gorbin looked like. He didn't like that though because he wanted to just have me describe him which was fine with me.
In terms of what happened with the story, our adventuring party was mostly hired by King Hartwick (I say mostly because we each had different end goals so to speak) of the region of Hartsvale to settle some kind of dispute that was threatening the safety of the village of Stagwick. We were told to meet up with our contact whose name was Wumbarden who was the captain of the guard of Stagwick I believe. Oh and he was also a firbolg? Which is a race that was quite hairy I guess. Not much else in descriptions were given.
So we met up with Wumbarden who led us into the snowy mountains going to a camp of giants. That's right, giants. And not just any giants; frost giants. These giants were huge and we felt like little mice in their presence. We had an audience with Skova who was the leader of the giants. She was big of course and had blue eyes. She told us her story of how she had gone camping with her son or something like that and that she had left the camp to go hunting. When she returned, the camp was attacked and her son had been kidnapped. Her son was a mere child but still big of course since he was a giant. Needless to say, she was furious. She said that they were attacked by frontier scouts called the Blood Riders who were a little infamous for attacking giants. She mentioned to us that if her son is not returned within 6 days, she will break the peace and attack the humans. Being Gorbin, he was brave enough to try and negotiate a little with Skova to extend the deadline to an additional day. She refused but instead, she would help carry us to the camp where the kidnapping happened which would indeed help us in terms of time.
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| Not really Skova but just a regular frost giant |
Off we went with our party all atop this giantess. We were either on her hands, shoulders, or head. Our party consisted of Gorbin, who was an arcane trickster, his brother, who was a dwarven barbarian, two elven women, one was a 14 year old druid and the other a ranger, another barbarian but who was a Goliath, a bard named Maestro, and a sorceress? named Reyna. I'm sorry that I don't remember all the names or details. Honestly I'm not good with names. I probably should have written them down but I forgot to. Oh and this is also a tier 2 quest.
Once we reached the camp, Skova left us there since she didn't want to stay around the site. It discomforted her to see the place where her son was kidnapped. What we saw was a huge tent, the size that would fit a giant, and a whole bloody mess of blood and cut up bodies of humans and horses all around. Our elven ranger had a broomstick that could help her fly so she got on it and decided to scout around and fly ahead following the huge drag mark that was left on the ground by the kidnappers. Gorbin, the elven druid, and Maestro decided to search inside the tent while the others searched around outside and stood guard. We had found different objects such as a map with some instructions and a signet ring of a noble house which still had the bloody finger on it. Gorbin kept the ring and for some reason, the elven druid girl decided to keep the bloody finger.
After that we decided to follow the trail which led us to a river. There seemed to be a woman washing her clothes on the river. Maestro, with his invisibility and winged boots, decided to scout ahead. He didn't think of her as a threat and decided to go out of his invisibility and reveal himself to the woman while we watched a distance away hiding in the bushes. The woman got scared and called her two sisters who came running to her. Reyna, seeing that they were all female, ran up to them and tried to talk with them to see if they had any clues or anything to help with. I don't remember so well what exactly happened but I think the women wanted to run away so Reyna had cast a charm spell on them I believe. It didn't last long though and when it was over, the women were not happy about it. Their beautiful appearances then turned ugly and they revealed themselves to be hags which were like ugly looking witches.
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| This is what a hag looks like |
So it was battle time. The hags were quite formidable with strong magic. Although we had magic of our own, they countered us with either counter spell or shield. It was pretty cool actually since at one point Maestro used a counter spell on one of the hag's counter spell which I thought was pretty awesome. At one point Reyna fell into the river and magically turned into a chicken. Turns out that the river had some magical properties. Luckily Gorbin was able to pull out Reyna from the river with his mage hand while she was a chicken to stop her from potentially drowning. Gorbin got seriously damaged and nearly died from the encounter after receiving a deadly spell from one of the hags but luckily our two barbarians were able to get close enough to dispatch two of them and leaving the last hag unable to fight back. The hag was tied up and was threatened to tell us where the camp of the blood riders was since the huge drag mark had disappeared. She showed us the way and for good measure, Forbin had chopped off her head. He doesn't like hags. Oh and we also found a dead body of one of the blood riders in the river. There was an amulet so we took that.
We continued on our way and it was nearing night fall. We could see the camp some ways away but there were patrols strolling around. During this part, it was hard to remember what exactly happened since it got so crazy and funny but eventually, we were able to tie up some of the individuals but not before one of them was able to shout for help. A group of three soldiers, with the leader being a woman with short hair and a mean look, were heading our way. Oh by the way, Ian was also doing voices as the hags and the woman soldier so we had a ball of a time just laughing it out. So back to the story, Gorbin acted fast and used his disguise spell to make him appear as one of the blood riders and went up to stop the approaching soldiers. He noticed that the female leader had a finger missing from her hand which meant that the ring that Gorbin had belonged to her. Gorbin, wanting to have the soldiers move away from the party, mentioned that there were enemies that were spotted and pointed in a different direction away from the party. The leader however wanted the disguised Gorbin to go as well and so Gorbin led the two soldiers away from the adventuring group.
Meanwhile, this gave an opening for the others to move ahead to the blood riders' camp. Maestro went ahead to scout with his stealth and invisibility. He found Skova's son trapped inside a giant cage. The big giant baby was sobbing inside. Gorbin having distracted the two guards far enough away, used a sleep spell on both of them which successfully worked and headed his way back to the rest of the group who then made their way to the camp as well. Maestro used a massive illusion spell of a giant Skova appearing behind the camp which got the attention of all the soldiers in the camp who now had their spears up. The rest of the group moved in closer and we got into a kind of stalemate negotiation with the leader of the blood riders who was a human male with battle scars. Turns out that the female who lost her finger was named Berle and she had defied the orders of her leader since no one was to attack the giants. She had lied saying that the giants attacked them. But we showed the leader the map with instructions from one of his other lieutenants specifically stating to not attack the giants and Gorbin showed the ring which proved that she was at the scene of the crime. The amulet that we found from the dead body actually belonged to the lieutenant who went against Berle. So she tried to cover up any evidence of her wrong doing cause she wanted this war with the giants to happen. But this bitch kept lying through her teeth. Eventually we had to recover the other lieutenant's body to prove that she was indeed lying. The leader of the blood riders then cut her head off and released Skova's son to be free. We returned the child to her mother and peace was restored. It felt like three hours but it was actually two since we only got two adventure points but it was fun nonetheless.
Break Time
We finished later than the others so we didn't have much free time compared to the other tables. I had found out from one of my friends on another table which was a tier 4 table, that they had a TPK which stands for Total Party Killed. To hear that such high level characters could be killed off like that was kinda frightening. But aside from that there were a lot of other cool places to check out during the event. We didn't have much time to go through all of them since we spent our time having lunch. I did take pictures though of the small exhibits that were around.
There was a section where you could take a picture of the structure that they had made for the first day's event. Look at it! Such an amazing effort that these guys had put for this stuff. I seriously regret not going to day 1. What I heard though for the first day was that there was some kind of alien tentacle attack on the city of Waterdeep. Waterdeep is like the city of New York for Faerun. At least that's what I'm told. Many had died defending the city. Such brave souls.
Next was a little corner where you could paint your minis. They even had a promotion going on where you can get a free mini of a high elf knight as long as you paint it yourself. I wanted to join this so bad but we didn't have enough time.
There was also an area where people can buy miniatures, books, and other things that would interest any D&D player. I had the cash to splurge but I resisted the temptation. It's a nice offer that they had though so I appreciated it.
There was also an art area where artists can work on making your character's drawing through commissions. I always love that they do this stuff cause you get to meet some amazing artists who are so talented at their craft. There were a lot of interesting things that they made as well so there was no lack of talent.
And then there's this guy. i didn't get his name but he did have some amazing colored artworks. Like wow. But this guy had an important role to play in the Epic so I'm glad that I was able to take a picture of him. Keep note of him cause he'll be important later on.
Last Orders at the Yawning Portal
For the Epic, I was separated from my brother on another table so I used a different character instead of Gorbin. I used Gerard Targos, my human wizard since it was a tier 1 table. We were supposed to be five players but one person didn't even show up so we ended up just being four. I like to think of it as the people who were late in registering so that was us. There were two people who were new to D&D. One of them had only played one game before that day while the other just started her first game today. She was taking on an Epic at level 1. Kudos to her. Well her friend was also level 1 and they came together. Honestly it's really nice to play with newbies. They have such an enthusiasm for the game that you can't help but want to teach them and do your best. The other player was a level 4 bard named Unyoy or something. His character was funny. Gerard was level 3 so that made Unyoy the highest level character of our group. The newbies were a tiefling rogue and an elven ranger.
So before the Epic would start, we needed to come up with a name for our group and assign someone as a leader. Nobody wanted to be the leader but I said that I would be if no one wanted the role. So I became the leader and I made the suggestion of naming the group the Fearless Four since it was just the four of us and we were brave to take on the Epic together. They liked the name so we went with it. The leader apparently acted as a representative for the group when it came to submitting things to the head DM which was monitoring everything. Our DM was Wilson Tortosa who was extremely patient and helped the newbies with explanations and such. He was quite funny too being very descriptive and animated when playing the NPC's.
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| I believe that this is Durnan |
The Epic started with the Head DM narrating the events. Everyone was quiet on their tables as we all listened in on what he had to say. So the setting was set in a tavern called the Yawning Portal in the city of Waterdeep. Apparently, this was right after the events of the first day so it was after the alien attack. The Yawning Portal got it's name because of a huge well inside which acted as a gateway to the Undermountain which was underneath Waterdeep. The portal was closed and someone stepped onto the stage dressed in cosplay. They had costumes and were in cosplay so it was a nice performance to go along with the story. The man who stepped in introduced himself as Merth the money lender and he announced that the well was closed and can only be opened up again once we found Durnan. Durnan and Merth were humans but they had lived for centuries and were retired adventurers. Durnan however had gone missing and it was our job to try and look for him. We were given a piece of paper with a list of choices for what personal goals we could have for our characters to go searching for Durnan. I hadn't thought of an intricate backstory for Gerard but I did have come from a small village. One of the choices for a personal reason to search for Durnan was because your town was cursed and everyone would start spitting out curse words loudly at random moments (Like Tourette Syndrome I guess) and you would need Durnan to lift that curse. That's what I chose for my backstory and we began our quest.
So since the portal was closed, people had to take the long way down which was through a pulley system. The four of us would be standing on this wooden platform and this old man would have us lowered down slowly as he pulled down on a rope that was attached to a winch that cranked the platform down ever so slowly. The lower we went, the darker it got. Even though I was a wizard, most of my spells were damage type spells and I didn't have any utility spells such as light or anything like that. And nobody brought torches so yay! So we were covered in pitch black darkness hearing god knows what from every which way. Wilson made a roll and we didn't even know it but a monster had come out from one of the caverns on the wall and made a swipe at us as we were being lowered but it missed us but just barely. I guess the dice was in our favor at that time. Next, from another cavern somewhere appeared a mummy who seemed smitten with our elven ranger and graced her with wings that would last for the rest of the quest. Seemed like things were going our way. But being a somewhat experienced player, I knew that if the DM was getting you perked up at the start, they're setting you up to give you a chance to survive something later on. So while the others were all happy and smiles, I was not.
From what Merth the money lender told us, Durnan is trapped in some other dimension of some kind but maybe we can free him if we sing their old drinking song. I guess it works like some kind of incantation? The problem is, Merth had forgotten the lyrics to the song and we should try and look for clues to the lyrics of their drinking song inside the Growling Groghouse which is located deep in the undermountain. It's an establishment that was built by Durnan I believe and it houses all kinds of monsters and other weird species. The thing is though that we aren't the only ones who are trying to look for the lyrics. A well known assassin (If you're an assassin who is well known, then you're probably not doing your job right XD) who goes by the name of Black Viper is also looking for them. He has some kind of vendetta against Durnan so we have to figure out the lyrics to the song before he does. You remember that guy who I told you to keep note of earlier? Yes well he played as the Black Viper. He was in costume and he would go around the tables trying to listen in on us or peek at our table to try and figure out the lyrics to the song. It was our job to not let him see what clues we had. He also does very good voice acting. When he was given the microphone, he would go into a monologue and he really sounded like when Mark Hamil does his voice of the Joker. It was so good.
For our group, we developed a way to not let the Black Viper figure out what we've got. It was a pretty simple system really. Whenever we figured out something important, we would write it down and show it to each person inconspicuously to not attract attention. On the front of the stage, there was a projector screen which showed each table with their group names and the number of clues each table had collected. There was also a mechanic where you could request for help from a different table to have one person go to your table to help you where they can cast one spell and then leave. The person of that table would have to be willing to help of course so it most likely won't happen if that table was in a fight. We never used this mechanic however for our group and we're not certain whether other tables had used this option either.
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| This is the Yawning Portal tavern but the Growling Groghouse is down in the well located deep within the Under Mountain |
Once we reached the bottom, we walked through this narrow passageway and see a humanoid with the head of a dog blocking a door. We see someone with a black hood walking past us. It's the Black Viper and the dog bouncer lets him through. We try to just walk through but the bouncer stops us and says that we aren't on the list. I, as Gerard, look at the bouncer angrily and go for a lie. I tell him that our tiefling rogue is a well known entertainer up in Waterdeep and that he should let us through. The bouncer is not completely convinced but we just had to keep him talking while Unyoy carefully snuck around and took a peek at his list of names. Once he got the names, he introduced all of us giving us names from the list. The names were funny so we all had a laugh OOC. The doggo bouncer saw that our names were on the list and we walked on through.
Inside, there were a bunch of places that we could explore to try and find a clue. I won't go through all of them because there were around maybe 18 or 20 places you could check out. But inside there were all manner of monsters, skeletons, vampires, even beholders were seen gambling. We needed to try and hurry to beat the Black Viper so we split into groups. The first group, which was Unyoy the bard and the tiefling, went to go talk to this undead catlike bard. If anyone would know anything about lyrics, it might be a bard right? The second group was Gerard and the ranger which went to talk with the bartender. When it came to information, who better than to speak to the bartender who could possibly speak to almost everyone? For the first group, they needed to sing to get the clue while the second group needed to make a poem. We accomplished the tasks but we were suddenly interrupted by the Head DM. Everyone in their tables turned their attention to the stage. At the front was the Black Viper and he claimed that he had gotten all the lyrics to the song. People were a bit skeptical until one of the high tier mages casted some kind of insight spell to see if he was telling the truth. He revealed to all of us that although the Black Viper was a cunning liar and murderer, he was not lying in this particular moment. So we failed. My brother told me later that he didn't realize that Black Viper was peeking at the lyrics that they had gotten until it was too late.
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| I'm not sure how the Black Viper looks like but I'm imagining he would look like this |
The Black Viper, now aware of his position, offers a deal to us adventurers. I didn't understand it fully but it was something like if one of us submits to him, to a lifetime of servitude, he will not use the song to free Durnan and kill him. I guess. It would be an official act and you would basically retire your character to never be used again. One of the people in the high tier groups had offered herself as a sacrifice. We were all surprised and even the DM's were surprised as well. She was walking up to the stage until one of the high tier wizards used a hold spell to stop her because he wanted to be the one to sacrifice himself. The whole place was in an uproar. Even the DM's of each table were now off their seats and moving closer to get a good look. It ended up being like End Game where the two were now semi-fighting to stop the other from sacrificing them self. In the end, the level 20 wizard ended up being the one to be sacrificed. Level 20 is the highest level you can get in the game. That's almost a god-like level. To sacrifice your character that you would have possibly spent a year or more to develop, wow.
After that, the Black Viper was pleased and gave us the lyrics to the song. We had to sing the whole song with all of us singing as loud as we can. The melody of the song was the same as Pop goes the weasel so it was easy to sing. Once the words were sung, Durnan comes out in costume and has a reunion with Merth. But Durnan has news for us. I'm sorry that I didn't listen well to this part but it was something about a drink that they had been drinking before. And in that drink was a black worm. Turns out that worm is actually a black dragon in disguise. It breaks free and we now have to battle an ancient black dragon. Just great. And now, a timer is now counting down so we had around 15 minutes to try and destroy the black dragon. No pressure. Each table was fighting their own version of the black dragon which kind of represented a section of the dragon. Unfortunately I felt so useless through the whole thing as I was worried about my teammates as the tiefling and the elven ranger had got knocked down with one wing blast from the dragon. I was playing medic the whole time and Unyoy was surrounded by lizard men who showed up and sided with the dragon. So our group was pretty useless in the fight. It was really up to the other tables to win the fight for us. If your team had beaten the dragon, you would all need to raise your hands high up in the air to signal that you won your fight. There needed to be a certain number of tables to win to consider the dragon completely defeated. It was down to us just needing one table to finish while there was one minute left on the clock. The timer ran down to ten seconds counting down fast, AND I SHIT YOU NOT, the last table raised their hands when it was just two seconds on the clock.
We won. The day was saved. Cheers went all around. It was truly an epic moment. I am not making this stuff up. You can go ask anyone who was there. Although the Fearless Four didn't do much, I think we stuck together well despite freaking Armageddon raining down on all of us. Overall, my D&D Epic was great and I can't wait for the next one.
