Flamin' Hot Spinach: Garrick

When our first Eberron campaign came to an abrupt and disasterous end, we decided our next stop would be Baldur's Gate.

I started with a hexblade warlock, intending to be a melee fighter with a two-handed reach weapon. I was gunna take a bunch of cool spells to fly around, produce magic darkness that I could see through but my foes could not, and even had some broken spell interactions with warcaster and a cantrip to blow stuff up.

But Garrick kept getting caught out by his one major weakness: powerful magical items.

Early Life

Garrick Amur was a human commoner born in Baldur's Gate. His father was never present, and his mother was killed by a Flaming Fist during a riot when he was very young, leaving him to fend for himself on the streets. This mean sleeping rough and stealing what he could, until he amassed enough to get himself a small room.

With no real skills, Garrick would drift between jobs on the docks, robbery, and drinking. One night, he heard a baker talking about a noble customer having a very valuable Goblet of Everlasting Drink in his sitting room -- a valuable item -- without much security. Garrick grabbed his two friends-and-makeshift-heist-crew and scoped out the noble's manor over the next few days. A plan formed, the trio hid in a sewer drain until the Upper City had gone to sleep.

The plan fell apart as soon as Garrick grabbed the golden cup. What the baker hadn't known about the magical protections on the item, and an Alarm spell alerted the household to the theft.

During the escape, both of Garrick's friends were cut down. The noble gloated about his easy victories over the unskilled fighters. Cornered, Garrick was beaten bloody, and his body tossed over the wall back into the Lower City. He laid in a broken heap, bleeding out, and knew that he'd be dead in a few minutes.

He did something desparate: Garrick prayed to Bhaal for power. The power to live, and to take revenge. It was a futile last-ditch hope, and he didn't expect it to work. But, moments later, a good samaritan appeared and helped Garrick to an apothecary.

In the days after his recovery, Garrick began to notice changes: a sudden skill with weapons, and an enhanced constitution. He could easily out-drink anyone, and took advantage of this to win petty bets in taverns.

As the years went on, Garrick used his abilities to benefit himself and the Guild¹. He moved up from heists to more "wet work": extortion, body guard jobs, and the occasional hit job.

All throughout, he continued to pray to Bhaal. His patron never responded, but his powers grew stranger and more arcane.

Adventuring

The adventure hook was a bit abrupt: the Flaming Fist presses a random group of people into service. This is mandatory, and they're offering to pay us, so the party begrudgingly accepts one duty, "for the good of Baldur's Gate".

After wiping out a cult dedicated to Corn-chan², the party found evidence of the nobility sponsoring the cult in the rubble of their hide-out. This was presented to the Flaming Fist, and they paid us to kick in her door and issue sanction.

This is the first time my intended plan for Garrick and reality got into a disagreement: in this lady's basement, we found a powerful magical item: a sentient shield. It begged and pleaded to be taken up, promising great power to anyone who could help free "it". Garrick thought this would be a spectacular idea and strapped it on immediate.

The shield was inhabited by the pit fiend Garguth, who had once ruled Avernus. The shield did not lead with this information, so it took a while to figure that out. But the shield did give Garrick fire resistance, +4 AC, and three daily charges of the Fireball spell. Which was well-worth abandoning a reach weapon to have.

The shield would whisper secrets to Garrick throughout the next half of the campaign, and encourage him to do evil. Garrick did not find the latter very useful: he was already a "morally flexible" kinda guy, having been employed as a literal murderer, so he was often already preparing to smite some dumb jackass by the time Garguth whispered encouragement.

But, with Garguth's help, the party goes upstairs and confronts the noble and her household in their dining room. And by "confronts", what I mean is Garrick dropped a fireball right in the middle of the dinner table and outright deleted³ most of them.

With new-found power, the party terrorized the city for a bit. We explored, tried to sell somebody's manor to Ronald Dump, got him eaten by his attorney Rudy Ghouliani, and almost started an open war with his son's Proud Knights. Normal DnD things.

Eventually, the party moved on to Candlekeep. Garrick remained Garrick, for the most part: kill people who were jerks, steal anything that was magical and not bolted down, and try to keep Harold the Friendly Bear, the party's barbarian, from creating too much of a mess. In Candlekeep, Garrick helped steal a headband of intelligence from an ogre, leading to an absolute massacre of scholars when the ogre suddenly stopped being a polite, civilized scholar.

Just before the party teleported into Avernus, Garrick got bit by a werecrocodile⁴. This was diagnosed by the party's cleric, the Hands of God Dr. Lem Larson, and Garrick was into it, hoping he could master a were-croc form to become more powerful.

Shortly after the diagnosis, we descended. Garrick's first question to the GM: how does moon work in hell? Turns out, there's no moon in hell, so the were-beast curse was on pause, and I never got to explore this potential story arc.

In the same ruin⁵, Garrick found another treasure: a magical crystal skull with a couple code words he could speak to activate it. The skull would rip the life-force out of Alive People, and could then use it to raise undead minions. Garrick picked up a spell to summon a specter around this time too.

In one of our Candlekeep adventures, we helped a unicorn named Banrion clear some sort of evil out of his forest. Our ranger really liked the unicorn. Garrick liked the unicorn too. This caused a bit of conflict when Garrick tried to use an enchanted bridle to turn the unicorn into an enslaved hell-unicorn that he could ride into battle. He very nearly succeeded, but the ranger threw him off at the last minute and freed Banrion. Our barbarian had to break up the ensuing PvP encounter.

He didn't have a flaming unicorn, but with a pitfiend-powered shield, a magic skull, werecrocodile powers, a sword enchanted to drip poison, and an undead entourage that broke the action economy, Garrick was ready to go to hell!

It was kinda rad down there. The party become warlords in their own right, taking a whole bunch of cool max max-esque vehicles away from incompetents.

And by this point, Garrick had gotten a bio on Garguth and was generally amenable to helping him escape imprisonment in the shield. We did some work for Bel, and Bel was a real asshole to Garguth, which Garrick did not appreciate one bit. So that was on Garrick's 'todo' list.

Paladin of Lethander

Garrick had an unexpected opportunity: we found the Sword of Zariel. When we opened the tomb, the blast of light very nearly outright murdered the tiefling ranger we had in the party. This thing positively dripped magical might, and Garrick wanted some of that.

Garrick knew he had a clear shot at it too: the other martial character only liked axes. The ranger could use it, but had just been given a blast of dissuasion. He strolled into the chamber, and, ignoring all advice to the contrary, grabbed the sword and his destiny!

This was a poor decision:

Attunement. The sword allows you to attune to it immediately, without having to take a short rest. The first time you attune to the sword, you are transformed into a heavenly, idealized version of yourself, blessed with otherworldly beauty and a touch of heaven in your heart. Neither magic nor divine intervention can reverse this transformation.

But, the sword did give him a ridiculous set of abilities! I re-rolled him as a paladin with -8 charisma, since the sword sets charisma to 20. All on its own, the sword made it so he could fly, radiate light that fucked with fiends, had truesight, granted a range of damage resists, and did a bunch of bonus damage.

Just at the cost of becoming a good-aligned character with the overriding need to REDEEM ZARIEL!!!. I wrote a short story about how the spirit of the sword had possessed his body and shoved his original personality into a tiny box to be tortured for eternity as penance for his averice and general bad behaviour.

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Garrick dropped Garguth's shield on the ground after transforming, instead strapping on a normal, non-magical shield that wasn't evil. The party kept Garguth's shield around, but it looked like Garrick's old buddy would not be escaping his prison any time soon.

Despite having an INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS NEED TO SHOUT EVERYTHING IN A DEEP, BOOMING, HEROIC VOICE, Garrick was not a lawful-stupid paladin. He understood he was in Avernus and would need to collaborate with his party -- mostly evil people -- and probably some greater demons, devils, and all-around bad dudes to achieve his new goal: redeeming Zariel and returning her to Lethander's service.

So he got right into it. He tried to deal with people honestly, and fucking obliterated them using divine might when they double-crossed him. The party cowed the various minor warlords, Bel, a bunch of titans, Arkhan the Cruel, and another unicorn. It was quite a diverse coalition we brought to face down Zariel's army.

The battle was a bit anti-climactic. Our forces rode out, and Zariel herself rode in on a big flying fortess, descending on her dark wings. She demanded the sword so she could destroy it; Garrick, the unicorn, and her old sidekick Lulu the hollyphant are able to convince her -- just with charisma checks -- that what she really wants to do is take up her sword and return to Lethander's light.

So she just ... does that. It works. She's redeemed. Bam, campaign cleared.

Aftermath of Redemption

Returning the sword has some downsides for Garrick: mainly, he instantly dies, since he wasn't actually Garrick anymore. Remember: the sword's spirit had possessed his body and imprisoned his soul.

Zariel was good again, and feeling magnanimous. She did a quick True Resurrection and Garrick Amur, Warlock of Bhaal popped right back up. He was a little confused where his nice (hella evil) magicalal gear went, but the party had kept it all and he quickly sorted himself out.

Which was fortunate, because Arkhan the Cruel decided this would be a good moment to take a swing at the party and the redeemed Archangel Zariel. I guess he thought having an ancient dragon and bits of Vecna stuck to him would enable him to overcome us. Zariel picked up our barbarian, yeeted him at Arkhan on his mount⁶, and then flew over to help. Harold the Friendly Bear and Archangel Zariel ripped that dude's head off and shat down his throat⁷.

Before dying, Arkhan tried to do some weird Vecna-hand shit to Harold, probably to drain his life-force. Harold was entirely unaffected and laughed in his face. Harold the Friendly Bear was an incredible badass that deserves his own post.

Gargauth's BFF

With the dust clearing, Zariel was getting ready to head home and see what Lethander had been up to while she was an evil fallen angel ruling a layer of hell. But before she left, she wanted to hand out some boons to the heroes who redeemed her.

Garrick saw an opportunity: he was Garguth's bud. Garguth had promised him power; Garguth helped him aquire a bunch of powerful artifacts. Garrick decided it was time to hold up his end of the bargain and for his boon, he told Zariel to free the pitfiend.

She thought this was funny and did it immediately. With her departure, Avernus needed a new ruler, and she had displaced Garguth. Without him, Bel was the natural candidate to fill the power vacuum, and creating a power struggle between Bel and Garguth would keep Avernus in shambles. Which suited her just fine.

Then she went back to heaven or wherever it is archangels live. Garrick wouldn't know; he's too evil to get through the door.

The party returned to Baldur's Gate with Garguth and settled some business with Dump Jr's Proud Knights.

Garguth says he has some errands to run. When Garrick meets back up with him, he's standing in front of the burning wreckage of Counting House. Garrick asks if he can grab a Form 57B from the burning hole before they're all immolated, because the Dr. Lem Larson needs the appropriate tax form to finish taking ownership of Dump Tower.

There is also a minor adventure in a tavern, where we break the space-time continuum. Garrick strolls out of the tavern as a million timelines converge and a bunch of time-manipulating robots spill out of the 2nd floor windows. Inevitables begin appearing to clean up the mess.

With the epilogue session winding down, Garguth pulls up in a flaming hell-convertible and tells Garrick to hop in, it's time to go re-conqueror Avernus. Happy to help his best friend, he hops in. The party goes their separate ways.

Fade to black -- and for the first time in history, The Spinach Inquisition manages to close out a campaign without doing irreperable harm to the setting.

The Modules

Putting Garrick's story aside: I was kind of disappointed with the Avernus module. Our GM complained about some areas not providing enough information or support, and I know there was a lot of criticism about the book being disorganized.

As a player, I also felt bait-n-switched. It's supposed to be a Baldur's Gate adventure. We used the city early on, and then got sent off to save ... a totally unrelated city, because one of our dukes was in Elturel when it got pulled into hell. Getting the party to care about that was challenging, since none of us gave a shit about whether Duke Ravengard lived.

We certainly didn't care about Elturel, this random city that was not our home & iconic location, Baldur's Gate.

Later, in BG3, I was disappointed to find that the Descent adventure had a "cannon" ending and it had no resemblence to how our campaign went. I really hated that.

Before we went to hell, we did screw around in Candlekeep for a while. We had gotten to Candlekeep just as the Candlekeep Mysteries book came out, so we played through a couple of those. These were fantastic and gave us a life-long hatred of hags.