The Blizzard Watch D&D group returns to a creepy volcano lair with fresh characters in our latest one-shot adventure

That’s right, the Blizzard Watch team once again we braved the virtual tabletop — complete with a 20 minute delay as the DM tried to figure out Roll20 — to play D&D and explore an ancient volcano lair. It was actually our second trip to this particular volcano, which the party escaped from in the very first episode of the show.

However, the players weren’t playing their usual characters this time — instead, they stepped into the roles of a powerful group of high-level adventurers who were tracking down the secrets of that forgotten bastion of antiquity. These were our players for the week:

• Andrew Powers, our guest player, took on the role of Mae h’in gawr, a Goliath Fighter.
• Liz Harper, taking a break from a Water Genasi Sorcerer, played Auric, an Aasimar Sorcerer.
• Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell traded in his squaking Kenku Bard for Aelthys, an Eladrin Wizard
• Deb Montague let herself retire from healing for a session as Star, the Goliath Barbarian
• Cory Taylor chose a different path as Bearson, the Halfling Druid
• Joe “Lodur” Perez took up the pugilistic ways of Violet Lance, the Halfling Monk and Punch Wizard

You can listen to the episode above, but if you just want the highlights of our adventure, keep reading.

The party entered the supposedly abandoned volcano lair to discover it wasn’t so abandoned, with a fiendish Red Abishai bossing around two lesser fiends and a bunch of enslaved Kobolds, forcing them to excavate the mysterious gemstone crowns used in episode one to render the players unconscious. After listening to the Abishai go on about how impatient someone in the lair was, a scuffle broke out, wherein the Abishai nearly escaped if not for a handy Counterspell and did some pretty sincere damage to Violet. Some quick thinking by Aelthys meant a Disintegrate spell dealt that damage right back to the Abishai, and soon that diabolic fiend and another devil were dead, but a third had escaped and headed deeper into the volcano. Star chased after it, but to no avail.

While the party tried to heal up and debate what to do next, a series of rumblings heralded the arrival of a much greater threat — the huge molten rock and flame belching Dragon from the first episode, the terrifying Mnarth nor Verth. After it killed Violet and knocked much of the rest of the party down into the single-digits, Aelthys cast the Plane Shift spell, evacuating the party out of the dungeon before it could breathe fire on them again.

This leaves a whole host of future questions — why are they excavating the dungeon? What does the Mnarth nor Verth want with the crowns used to subdue the party in the first episode? If these seasoned adventurers couldn’t stand up to it, what chance does our usual group have? And what’s up with Mischief’s possible mother, who was mentioned but not seen in this episode? You can listen to the encounter here at our Soundcloud, and if you want to listen to the full run of the show up to this point, we have an archive where we have a bunch of episodes for you to listen in on.

1. The original, and completely inaccurately titled, One-Shot Spectacular
2. We’re On A Boat
3. Life’s a Beach
4. Try not to kill the Kenku, K?
5. Curse of the Dice Bot
6. A Moo-Ving Conversation
7. The Kenku of Chaos
8. Here Be Dragons (and Gith and Portals, oh my!)
9. The twist you didn’t see coming
10. The Curious Case of the Counterspell Conundrum
11. A very dramatic doppleganger dilemma
12. There and Back Again — Volcano Lair

And if you want to see more stuff like this — I really enjoy running it — consider tossing us some love at our Patreon, so we can do more of it. Hopefully I’ll have Roll20 more figured out by our June game.