Awesome / The Unexpectables

• Solly telling the United Clergy of Orun where they can stick it by escaping from her branding by stabbing the brander in the eye with a hot poker, then stealing a suit of armor out of a reliquary.
• Although they don't really "win," per se, their initial victory against Stillhavity, a demigod, forcing him to flee and lick his wounds is definitely a Crowning Moment. Doubly awesome is Panic flipping off Stillhavity right as they cross into his domain, and living to tell the tale.
• In a crossover with Heartwarming Moment, Panic, a Tiefling, convincing Helena, a cleric of the United Clergy Of Orun who was raised to see his race as utterly evil, that he and other dark-dwelling races are just as capable of good as sun-dwelling races are. He really can persuade just about anyone of just about anything, and bonus points for not having to raise his voice or trick her in any way; he just had an honest heart-to-heart with a person of differing beliefs and it worked.
• After dreading it for two weeks, the drinking contest against Adric sees Panic pull off his greatest stunt possibly ever; Not only does he keep the mushroom down (allowing him to immediately succeed on a Crit 1) but Panic passes every single Constitution save against about twelve dwarves, plus Scarbles and Borky, winning him the drinking contest and a free stage! But that's not all, because as he's recovering from all the alcohol Panic finally meets Hammergnar (the aasimar of the dwarven god of alcohol), and successfully makes a pass at him and they both go to the Romansion for a drink and a talk!
• The Big Damn Heroes moment by Log after the Unexpectables get trapped by Fleur de Mort was amazing, particularly because, since Log is a non-living construct, the villain literally couldn't see it coming. Log summons a Celestial that is literally made of chainsaws, which then tears into the forest with abandon. Fleur du Mort gets a counter-awesome by eventually tearing said Celestial to shreds.
• Through a combination of Hunter's Mark, Colossus Slayer, and a Dragon Arrow, Task kills a dragon.
• The Silver king showing up out of nowhere to stop the white dragon attacking the city.
• Most people like to spike the punch bowl at a party. Greckles instead elects to steal one.
• The final battle against the Monster's Culling in Humbrak village. The Unexpectables had ended the previous session low on health, spells, and supplies, and all but cornered in Anje's cave. Many people spent the next two weeks dreading the battle, predicting deaths or even a wipe. Instead, the Unexpectables demolish the twenty-odd men and wolves that went up against them, through a combination of good rolls, smart tactics, liberal use of traps, and the fact that they had Anje on side. The rangers go down like bowling pins, and while the Chimera they send in is a much more serious threat, the Unexpectables are able to rally and start hitting it hard enough that Tiengo's Big Damn Heroes moment feels more like a kill-steal than a rescue.
• Credit where it's due; For such a seemingly meek, sweet, and perennial Damsel in Distress that Willow is, the reveal of her backstory turns her into a Couching Moron Hidden Badass on an international scale, since she's the one the orchestrated the finding of the Silver King by Eltmur soldiers. This caused a domino chain of events that led to the death of the entire Eltmur royal family save herself (oh, she's also the Crown Princess of Eltmur) and the Silver King ascending to its throne. One meek girl who wanted to learn magic managed to topple a regime that had held power for centuries and manipulated a goddamn Ancient Silver Dragon like it was nothing and got away with it essentially scot-free. Hell hath no fury, indeed.
• Operation Dino Drop in it's entirety: Panic suggested that he and Kiwi drop from 60 feet in the air and Zenrio twin polymorphs Kiwi and Task into brontosauruses, taking the leadership by surprise. While initially things don't look like they're going great when Panic twists his ankle, but the crew rallies and blazes through the guards/paladins they accidentally tripped off, and when the crew finally manages to get the spell off; Kiwi instantly kills the enemy sorcerer on impact.
  • Borky finishing Athtar in such a brutal way while being at 1 hp, and that was only because Taka realized he had a trait that kept him up.
  Monty: I'm going to take a page from Matt Mercer's book: How do you want to do this?
  • Borky proceeds to chop off both of Athtar's arms before cleaving off his head in a single swing.
• Just by not triggering a trap and destroying all the evidence, the group manages to convince the Alivast Council to stand up against the Orun Clergy with little to no difficulty. Monty even says that if they had lost the evidence in the chest, the tribunal would have gone very differently.
• The guys are stuck on a ship and outnumbered by pirates, who have Meryl, Skinny, Arlo, and Zoltira held hostage. Hope seems lost, until they hear a sound in the distance. Cue all of the Sweet Dragon employees riding to the rescue on a steamboat built by Iggy, and absolutely curb-stomping the pirates.
  Panic: Unexpectables, members of the Sweet Dragon, let's show these guys something they never expected.
  • Every Sweet Dragon employee gets a moment of awesome (except for Meryl who is a hostage throughout the fight), but the highest shock value probably comes from Log, who casts Guiding Bolt at 9th level.
• Task manages to make it through the Omnimaw fight without taking any damage, as well as killing more discord devils than the rest of the party combined.
• The party's investigation of the Romansion yields some pretty awesome moments, namely Panic rolling a nat 20 on an Investigation check to find a hidden scrying spell inside one of the rooms that had been attached to an individual thorn on a rose held in an inconspicuous shrine in the corner of the room and Kay using Tenser's Floating Disk to great effect by using it to stop up a natural spring in the baths allowing the party to follow the trail of an escort's apparent murderer. Though the latter was Monty invoking Rule of Cool.
• Neragen manages to figure out the Tenebrus demon's weakness and get the killing blow on it with a massive Moonbeam. Panic and Task also deserve some credit for using Fairy Fire and Ensnaring Strike to subdue the creature for Neragen to hit it.
• Willow reminds us that she's royalty, as well as a master strategist by taking charge of the yugoloth situation. She commands the party to calm down when they're panicking, and manages to figure out most of the yugoloth's plan/motivations.
• Remy earns the respect of the entire Underbelly by lasting a round against Tiengo.
• Borky nat20s on a Glabrezu, activating Ranfault's Banishment ability. However, because the demons can no longer return to their plane of existence, it ends up getting ripped between dimensions and exploding from the sheer force of it all.
• Several from the fight with the Nycaloth
  • The party manages to do a ton of damage to it during a surprise round. Borky shoves it's head into the soup it was making while everyone else goes to town on it.
  • Even though Kay is taken hostage by the Nycaloth, she manages to fight back with Shocking Grasp and by biting it's hand when it goes for a claw attack.
  • The Nycaloth is flying just out of reach, so Remy uses his shield to launch Greckles into the air. Greckles uses his holy water-coated Sunblade to slash it in the face and deal the killing blow, saving Kay from it as well.
• Despite being severely underleveled for the fight, Kay manages to hold her own against the arcanoloth far better than anyone expected, including managing to counterspell a Finger of Death.
  • To put this in perspective, if it had hit her she would have taken 7d8+30 necrotic damage, and if it killed her she would immediately be brought back as a zombie. She came SO close to dying, but she deflected it like a champ!
• Remy's gets the killing blow on the Arcanaloth. As he raises his sword to finish it, the spectral form of Stendin appears behind him like he was Remy's Stand, and they both thrust their swords down into the Arcanaloth's chest. It lets out a dying howl as it turns into a shriveled corpse, finally avenging Stendin's death.
• When the sons of the Silver King try to interrupt the Doros and Willow's wedding with the majority of the group having a moment to shine/
  • Borky flat out suplexes a dragon after it ends up rolling two nat ones in a row.
  • Greckles is able to get two critical sneak attacks doing over a hundred damage during the fight.
  • Remy holds his own against the Silver Kings eldest son for the majority of the fight until....
  • Panic noticing that the dragons yield when they take enough damage uses his mantle of devilry to command the eldest son to yield, which makes the rest of the Silver King's kids surrender as well.
• The Dragon cult's attack on the city provides moments of heroism for plenty of characters.
  • Panic taunts and evades a blue dragon, and gets killed by a collapsing building for his efforts. Luckily, Lady Aila manages to revivify him in time, and then proceeds to wipe the floor with the dragon in question.
  • Borky, Hellina, and two dwarves fight a dragon, and the dragon runs away crying.
  • Greckles runs into a cult leader, and kills it in a swordfight on top of a dragon, complete with a Bond One-Liner.
    Greckles: You missed.
  • Task, Remy, and Remy's griffon brigade dogfight an ancient white dragon, and send it crashing into a building, ripping off its wing.
• When dealing with the Blood Axes get violent and the group is forced to fight over 30 warriors Obby gets to show what he's made of by using a variety of spells to annihilate over half of the Orcs. Even Monty is taken aback at how much damage Obby is capable of doing.

  Taka: This is like watching a Dynasty Warriors character spam the Y attack.

• In the final battle against Darkus, while the narrative is focused on Task, Obby continues to dominate combat by being awesome, starting with successfully geasing a dragon. He then goes on to outperform said dragon in fighting so completely that it converts to worshiping Oreyara instead of Insdroc.
• A villainous example when it comes to Icarus's plans to find the holders of the god fragments. which involves pulling out a weapon during a peace meeting counting on the fact that this would cause everyone in the council to pull out their weapons..... including Task and Panic's porcelain weapons. This lets the UCO immediately identify their true targets and, if it wasn't for Tiengo, take them down by the end of the day.
• During one of the festivals Borky ends up in a tournament fight against Quarion who's probably the worst opponent he could ever fight thanks to Monty's interpretation of sneak attack allowing him to bypass Borky's rage resistances and his status as an inquisitive rouge giving him constant access to advantage rolls (and by extension sneak attack) what proceeds to happen is the most technical fight Borky's ever fought in as he utilizes almost all of his abilities to counter Quarion's own in a back and forth fight that ends with Borky winning by the skin of his teeth. It was so good that Borky got an inflated prize thanks to how cool the fight was.
• Seika manages to get a moment of awesome against the myrmidon captain in the Elemental Plane of Air. The group is already fighting on the back of a roc, which is a giant predatory bird, and they need to periodically adjust their position as the roc dodges around obstacles. However, it's how Seika decides to end the battle that clinches him a Moment of Awesome: he kicks the last remaining enemy off of the roc's neck into an adjacent space, just in time for the enemy to slam into a tower of glass. It's particularly cathartic since Seika got two natural 1's in a row earlier in the same combat.