Web Video / Tales From My D&D Campaign

Tales From My D&D Campaign is an internet-based campaign log featuring a set of four D&D PCs in a semi-original campaign world. Narrated by the GM, Demonac (also the creator of Another Gaming Comic), its simple art style disguises an intriguing world and epic storyline.

Meet the skilled artificer Draven Rowe, the heavily armored priest of Sirus Reginald Black, the lethal gnome Rogue and assassin Angel Bloodright and the half-dragon Warblade Little One. They are later joined by the cleric of Ankou Zaheer, his mysterious protector Mahar, and the elven marksman Krillidan. As they battle extra-dimensional dark elves, body-stealing golem spirits, absurdly badass orcs, evil Fish People, invincible trolls, and more, they leave a trail of heroism and adventure behind them.

Available here.

After the conclusion of the first series, the first episode of the sequel series, Sea of Secrets, premiered in April 2023, following a new cast of characters in the same setting - the raging shifter Uhamicho, the changeling bard Jinx, the psionic goblin Blue, the eladrin beguiler Adria and the stylish polearm user Pelor (no, not the god of the same name).

The first episode for Sea of Secrets is available here.

Tales From My D&D Campaign provides examples of the following tropes:

• Absolute Xenophobe: Deluvian courts hold that contracts or treaties with non-Kua-Toa are non-binding and may be revoked whenever it is convenient. The fact that the Illud have officially declared contracts with land-dwellers binding is one of the major causes of the Enemy Civil War.
  • See also, Master Race below
• Alien Space Bats: The goddess Blibaal invested the Kua-Toa with a sliver of her own divine essence, granting them everything from scales harder than chain mail to ridiculous strength to massive immunity to electricity to an innate ability to see invisible things. They returned the favor by conquering the entire ocean and a good part of the land and sacrificing billions of slaves to Bibaal.
• All Trolls Are Different: These ones can regenerate from nothing more than their indestructible jawbone.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Deluvians, as you may have picked up from the rest of this page. Significantly less so for the Illud, but they'e still not exactly 'nice'.
  • Surprisingly averted for the orcs. They have a lot of marauding bandit-types among them, but once (if) you manage to start talking to them, they're actually fairly reasonable. Notably, when the party is trapped in a fortified town in Episode 4 by a besieging army of three orcs, their demands are only for three kegs of water, three healthy horses (it's ambiguous if they're for riding or eating), and an artifact spoon of effectively infinite food. If it wasn't for the fact that they needed the spoon, the party would've gladly just given them what they wanted and parted ways amicably.
• And the Adventure Continues: When the first season ends (mirroring the DM and players putting the original campaign on hiatus to start a new one) the original cast splits up, no longer having the threat of the Astral Plague to force them together, going off to do their own things:
  • Draven leaves the Hand of Sirius in order to look after his ancestral land of Rowan in Verandi, or rather to leave that task to his son while Draven himself hides in Polaron and aids them in repairing the facility while carrying out his own research.
  • Black, released from his bodyguard duties, is given a new task by the Hand: to deliver a message to the head of the Gauntlet of Sirius personally, not through their spy network or other subordinates, as well as investigating the status of the prince that's supposedly supporting the anti-monarchy faction, though in reality seems to be held captive. He's accompanied in this by his father, now recovered from his ordeal in the Shadowfel and wanting to spend time with his son.
  • Angel and her cohort Mora go back to their jobs with the Organization specifically targeting a high-ranking Deluvian general that's hanging around near the demilitarized zone near the former Peacebond.
  • Little One, accompanied by Dwarf!Daggerface, is recruited by Chrysanthemum to fight some orcs, which he is more than happy to do.
  • Krillidan gets a lift back to the Feywild (via a friendly gnome named Tula) to handle a potential crisis there involving an impact in Formian territory.
• Anti-Magical Faction: There's a collection of druids in this setting called "The Cleansers", who oppose Arcane magic, viewing it as an abomination (as opposed to their own nature based magic) that needs to be purged. This view is not universal, and the group is outlawed in nations like Tarq. They're obliquely referenced in the first season (though not by name), but only become prominent in Sea of Secrets when the party is ambushed by a group of them because Jinx used arcane magic to fix a broken wheel, though it's really because their leader saw Blue use their psionic magic to try to murder someone.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While the main antagonist is the Deluvian Empire, there's also the Dark Ancients, Vampire Kings, and The Mind Hunters.
• Blob Monster: The heroes fight one at one point.
• Body Surf: There are a handful of Warforged known as "Dark Ancients" who use this method to stay alive, jumping from Warforged body to Warforged body. They can also take over normal Constructs, but the body will last only a few years at most (rather than decades or centuries they can sustain a Warforged body).
• Boss Subtitles: Most of the major boss encounters get one, including the Dark Ancients. Though it doesn't appear right at the start of the encounter if their name is mentioned during the fight itself.
• Both Sides Have a Point: During episode 45, the party discusses their two primary plans for dealing with the Astral Plague infecting them. Plan A is to essentially channel a massive amount of planar energy into the White Spirit Seed, dramatically speeding up its growth into a more powerful form, but the nature of that form would be unpredictable. Plan B is to use a device that Draven has been building, using samples taken from the various planes, to filter the dangerous energies out of their bodies, but it will require capturing an undead spirit to complete it. Little One has some issues with Plan B, primarily because it feels a lot like enslaving an innocent creature for their own purposes, potentially harming or even destroying it in the process. Draven argues that not only would the spirit would not necessarily be innocent, or even sentient, but that Plan A is effectively random, and could easily screw over the party in multiple ways (e.g. the Spirit Seed might not be able to move, or even be able to protect them from the Plague anymore). They ultimately choose to shelve the issue in favor of rescuing Zaheer, who as a priest of Ankou would both be an expert on how to capture ghosts and on the ethics of the situation as well.
• Breath Weapon: Little One has two of these: An extremely powerful 1/day lightning bolt from his half-dragon bloodline, and a very weak but repeatable cone of fire from his Dragonfire Adept splash. He's rarely seen using them in the videos.
• The Caper: The Sea of Secrets crew pull an Inverse example, where they need to sneak their employer onto a ship past the eyes of the Illuds, using Jinx's shapeshifting combined with some misdirection to pull it off.
• Chainsaw Good: Angel's spiked chains tend to resemble this.
• Chest Insignia: Black's Ytarran Powered Armor manifests the symbol of the wearer's god on the pauldrons.
• Cold Iron: Little One's greatsword is made from this, allowing it to cut though the defenses of Fey creatures. This comes in handy a few times.
• Cool Sword: Little One's +2 Cold Iron shock greatsword is about ten times more valuable than the weapons the party was supposed to have at the level he got it.
• Disturbing Statistic: In episode 15, the party encounters the "Tiger Lord," a rakshasa called Lord Kintemazu. Spying on the rakshasa, they overhear a conversation they have with their fellow rakshasa, discussing the coming conflict with they party. They bluntly state that, according to their predictions, Kintemazu will almost certainly die in a fight with the party while inflicting a mere "1.5" casualties to the party in return. This figure (which notably bothers Black, who repeats it several times), along with the almost casual manner in which the Rajs (as they would later be known as) were discussing the high probability of Kintemazu's demise, actually throws the party off a bit before they decide to confront him.
• The Empire: The Deluvian Empire is obviously all over this trope
• Enemy Civil War: Pretty much the only reason the Kua-Toa haven't yet conquered the land nations and sacrificed all the humans to Blibaal is that around 300 years ago, they split into two factions: the Deluvians (the original and utterly evil KT civilization, worship Chaotic Evil Blibaal), and the Illud (mildly less evil, worship the True Neutral storm god Lakmaal). Since the Illud control about half the ocean and two of the five Monitor monasteries, the two factions are pretty closely matched.
• Epic Flail: Black's signature weapon for the early levels.
• Exact Words: Narrowly averted by the party while in the Albtraum's nightmare realm, as noting the spacing in "any one still alive" in their rules sounds too suspicious, and the Albtraum relents and adds a clause that makes it clear that everyone still alive can leave.
• Eye of Newt: In this setting, one must have an "eldritch eye" (the eye of a sufficiently powerful abomination), to cast long-range teleportation spells.
• Fantastic Racism: The Kua-Toa (particularly the Deluvians) both give and receive this in spades. Note the frequent use of the word 'trout' in reference to them on this very page.
• Final-Exam Boss: Polaron's Strategic Withdrawal Unit combines functionality from all of the facility's unique constructs to create a Gargantuan juggernaut of pain. Even the non-combat units get in on the action, with its sword being made of four flatbed constructs welded together. Its final desperation attack (or at least how the Dark Ancient possessing it rigged it) even emulates the electrical cannon from the first room.
• Fish People: The Kua-Toa, as well as their various aquatic slave races. It should be noted that Kua-Toa are one of only two true amphibious races in this setting, and they hunted the other almost to extinction to maximize the strategic advantage this gives them over everybody else. All other aquatic races can't survive for long, if at all, out of the water.
• Flat "What": The KT sniper in episode 43 when the party kills Diamondfin Hazov, a Monitor.
• Foreshadowing: As the portal is being held open by Seven in Episode 9, Seven notices that every once in a while there are flashes of other locations. The one that we keep seeing is a lava surrounded room, with a tall cylinder in the middle. This is the portal room of Polaron, where Seven ended up after going through the portal.
• From a Single Cell: As a result of some meddling by a dark god, trolls in this world can eventually regrow their bodies from nothing more than their jawbone. Since the jawbone itself is indestructible by any known force, this makes the trolls true immortals.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Draven. As an artificer, his whole function is to craft cool magic items for a fraction of their purchase cost. On top of that, he can create one-shot items that cast any low-level arcane spell in existence and can easily identify the powers and properties of magic gear.
  • The Ytarran race were legendary artificers and crafters.
• God Is Dead: The true gods are very nearly immortal, and will eventually recover from almost any force, even the power of their fellow gods. However, there exists a technique or spell known as "The Death Equation" which can truly and permanently destroy a god. This technique has been used only three times in the histories of eternity (and only by other Gods). Luckily, each use raises the amount of power the Death Equation requires exponentially, rendering its use risky.
• Golem: The Warforged, a race of sentient (and truly living) Golems created by an ancient civilization of artificers known as the Ytarrans.
  • In addition, Vistria apparently relies heavily on golems to hold the trouts at bay.
• Good Cop/Heavy-Armored Cop
  • As described in the relevant Extras video, one of they Fey the party meets in the Feywild has something of a Split Personality and actually plays both parts while trying to strike a deal with them.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: The Illud would like the surface-dwellers to see them this way. While they certainly aren't as "Bad/Evil" as the Deluvians, they certainly aren't "Good" either (what with the mass slavery for both labor and warfare)
• Greater-Scope Villain: The KT Empire is the obvious Big Bad, but there are hints of this trope in play even early on. It seems like the Mind Hunters of the Shadowfel, who rule that plane's oceans, may be filling this role. Even the KT seem to consider them BAD NEWS.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Little One is half-dragon, though he doesn't manifest any visible signs of it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: GE-7 tries to pull one of these fairly early on, but is replaced by Draven's flying cat-like familiar, Seven. For a while it was unclear if Seven actually died or not, but during their time at Polaron they discovered that Seven had actually made it through the portal from Gineron, albeit damaged - so it's Averted over all.
• Home Field Advantage: The KTs get one so big it's practically a Game-Breaker. Their amphibious nature means that they can attack us at will, but we can never attack them back because we can't breathe underwater.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Mentioned in one episode when Little One reveals that his mother was a dragon. Explained by the fact that dragons can assume human form if they so desire.
• Impoverished Patrician: Draven. He is the rightful Marquis of Rowan, a fairly wealthy region in northern Verandi. Unfortunately, the fact that Rowan, like all the rest of Verandi, has been occupied by KT troops for the past couple of generations means that Draven lacks most of the resources or servants a noble of his rank is actually entitled to.
  • His marriage to a minor noble family of significant wealth helps alleviate that, see Nobility Marries Money below
• In Love with Your Carnage: This seems to be why Little One is considering courting Lady Chrysanthemum Von Christoff (who despite the flowery name is every bit as badass as her father).
• Instant Costume Change: When Little One gets a ring of armor storing, it lets him do this with his fancy new Dragonscale heavy armor.
  • There's also shades of this with the Powered Armor GE-7 gives Black earlier in the series: it can be donned in a single round (instead of the normal minutes it takes to put on full plate armor), and compacts down to backpack size for easy transport if he wants to take it off.
• Invisible Aliens: The extremely powerful Adar used to be a major power in this world, but a couple of millennia back they sent out messages to the other races saying, in these exact words: "We are tired of the gods interfering. We are leaving now." And then...they left. As far as anyone's been able to tell, every last Adar and most of their cities simply disappeared into thin air, and nobody has the slightest clue where they went or what they are up to now.
• Invisible Monster: One of the Kua-Toa's biggest assets are the Colos cloaks, an alchemical cloak powered by KT skin secretions which can make the wearer invisible but at a fraction of the cost of a regular invisibility item.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: When the party gains a bounty on their heads and all sorts of bounty hunters start to come after them, including one particularly skilled one known as Daggerface and his band of lackeys. This encounter was suppose to be cinematic with very little chance that the players end up in a TPK. However, due to a combination of bad luck, one of the players being absent, and the players approaching the situation in a way that Demonac did not expect, all the player characters end up unconscious. This eventually leads them to stopping a massive underground experiment to turn humans into living weapons to be used against the Kua-Toa, and becoming acquaintances with the Rajs (a group of rakshashas) and receiving several quests from them. Demonac himself says that this event had a huge impact on the entire campaign
• It Can Think: Since they live forever, trolls in this world have been alive long enough to get a lot smarter than the usual and tend to use magic gear.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: The only explanation a Hand Of Sirius messenger gives for why he's delivering a package from a random fair maiden he met on the side of the road. The party's pretty sure that he was magically charmed.
• I Shall Taunt You: Little One seems to have put skill points into Knowledge(Insulting KTs). From getting Angel to write insults in Kuar on his shield to decorating that same shield with teeth taken from dead KTs to dropping a fishing line in the water he suspects to be occupied by KT warriors, he goes to great lengths to make sure the KTs are as pissed off with him as possible. Perhaps the best is when, after slaughtering a KT patrol, he cuts the heads off, stakes the bodies upside-down, then sticks the head back on top of the whole affair (i.e., the KTs have their heads up their behinds.)
• Last of His Kind: GE-7 is one of the Ancients, a small group of Warforged who learned enough artificing to maintain themselves after their masters all died to the Astral Plague.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: In Sea of Secrets, some of the names of certain races are changed due to then recent concerns regarding controversial actions Wizards of the Coast had taken regarding D&D's OGL in 2023. Warforged were now 'Mechanicals,' while Kua-Toa were referred to instead by their factions (Deluvians and Illuds). The Standard Fantasy Races like elves and dwarves were left as they were. For similar reasons, the main title of the series was changed to "Tales From My RPG Campaign".
• Lesser of Two Evils: How most nations view dealing with the Illud vs the Deluvians. While they see both sides as being evil due to both using slaves extensively in labor and warfare, the Illuds at least seem somewhat more reasonable (or at least don't actually care enough about the land dwellers to harass them) in comparison to the Deluvians, who would happily wipe out any opposition if given the chance. It helps that the Illuds have at least stopped worshiping the goddess of slaughter, who the Deluvians still make mass sacrifices to. Maintaining the civil war (to the extent of making sure neither side gains a notable advantage) is still seen as the better alternative to either side winning though.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Illud compared to the Deluvians.
• Magic Pants: Morduval's Lovecraftian Superpower transformation destroys his clothing, leaving him naked (except for a Censor Box ) when he changes back, making him an aversion of this trope, even though it turns out that he had literal Magic Pants!
• Magitek: Fairly frequent. Most of it is leftover from the ancient Ytarran civilization, but Draven also makes a lot of magic stuff.
• Master Race: The Kua-Toa, they keep slaves of several aquatic races rather than exterminating them all. Then again, their Religion of Evil is the Goddess of Slaughter.
  • The name "Kua-Toa" in their language literally means "Masters of All"
• Master Swordsman: As a Warblade, Little One knows a lot of exotic martial techniques that let him do things like ignoring damage reduction, bypassing armor, or just doing a boatload of extra damage.
• Mighty Glacier: Black is very hard to hit in his full armor, and hits pretty hard himself with his flail or mace, but his movement speed is about half the normal.
  • He eventually starts using a spell that lets him teleport into melee range if an ally is already there, leading to a few moments of Faster Than They Look
• Mind over Manners: Semi-averted with the ancient Adar. They incorporated their massive racial talent for psionics into their everyday life to such a degree that bargaining, courtship, and even simple communication became Mind Rape when they interacted with other races.
• Murder, Inc.: The Organization. Originally founded to harass the Kua-Toa and prevent their inevitable conquest of the land nations. After the KT nearly wiped them out in retaliation, the group was forced to branch out into assassination and bounty-hunting missions to help with funds and recruitment. Angel is a member.
• Mystical Plague: The Astral Plague, a confusing and mysterious ailment that wiped out the entire Ytarran civilization. It is believed to have originated from Ytarran research into teleportation portals. As a result of being near such a portal when it malfunctioned, the heroes are currently infected with this, and though they are shielded from the effects by a friendly spirit, the protection is beginning to fail, and they will need to find a cure soon, or die.
• Nobility Marries Money: Draven again. His father married him to the heir of the wealthy but low-ranked Silverlode Barony, to help him make something of himself and keep their family's noble title relevant.
• Non-Indicative Name: Little One is about six and a half feet tall, and built to match. Justified in that he was named by his mother, who was a dragon.
  • Angel, by far the most sinister member of the main party (though definitely not evil)
• One-Man Army: A single orc will frequently rout a regiment of 100+ human or elven soldiers.
  • And Kua-Toa Monitors can Curb Stomp orcs. Luckily, there's only about 50 - 250 of them, or all humanity would already have been wiped out. In game-terms, the GM designed them as a prestige class that can challenge an entire high level party solo (ie. 4+ to 1).
• One-Steve Limit: Early on the party recruits Daggerface, a dwarf driven (mostly?) insane by Drow torture and a magical fear cave. Later, they hear that a famed bounty hunter named Daggerface is after them. Turns out, there's a warforged Daggerface - his face is literally a sextet of protruding blades, thanks to some cosmetic artificing.
  • In Sea of Secrets, one of the party members is named Pelor. This party member (a human fighter) has no relation to the dead god, and may have picked it himself out of ego.
• Our Orcs Are Different: As a result of a divine curse turning their homeland into a Death World, there are only a few thousand orcs left. But those few thousand display Badassery rivaling that of the Fremen. It is not uncommon for two or three orcs to burn a small city to the ground or butcher a hundred-man infantry patrol.
• Place of Power: Black's Ytarran Power Armor has a few special abilities that only work when in an Ytarran facility.
• Powered Armor: Black gets a suit of this around Episode 6. It comes with an absolute load of little cool features.
• Precursors: Two notable examples in this setting. The first are the Adar, a psionically gifted people (arguably too gifted; most psionic interactions with them apparently bordered unintentionally on Mind Rape) who built large crystal structures, before suddenly vanishing, with the only reason given is the Adar did not want the gods' interference, with no other context given. The second were the Ytarrans, who were supremely talented artificers and engineers, creating many mechanical marvels. Their most notable creations were the Warforged/Mechanicals, who are still found to this day. Their race died out due to a mysterious illness called the Astral Plague that possibly stemmed from some dangerous research into planar travel, which spread rapidly amongst them and led to their extinction.
• Properly Paranoid: As a precaution against slave uprisings, the KTs built their capital and other major cities on islands. Kua-Toa can breathe both air and water freely, but all other aquatic races can't survive for more than a few hours out of water. To this end, they also either wiped out every other amphibious race or very strictly control their populations (e.g. the sea elves), as they would be the biggest known threat to their island cities.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Little One fits the bill despite being the only example (so far) of his race. He fights against any oppression and generally revels in combat, but honors duels, such as the one against the Orc Marp.
• Psychic Powers: The ancient Adar race were the first to invent psionics, but both humans and halflings picked the ability up after all the Adar mysteriously vanished a couple of millennia ago.
• Reality Warper: The Albtraum, within his Realm in the Shadowfel. He's not completely omnipotent, as he doesn't recreate a Monitor's Multiform ability completely right, but when you can casually rewind time to get a better Bond One-Liner, no one's going to split hairs about it.
• Red Baron:
  • Little One picks up the title of "Orcslayer" after defeating an orc in single combat.
  • His mother, Lady Vasarus of the Bronze, was known as the "Bronze Death" for her raids against the Kua occupation forces.
  • Duke Newland has acquired the sobriquet of "The Bloody Shield".
• Renegade Splinter Faction: In the fallout of the monarchy accepting the Deluvian's deal to restore the Peacebond to the human kingdom's in exchange for limited military presence, the Hand of Sirius is split into two factions regarding this decision; the original Hand (who publicly support the decision) and the new Gauntlet, with the latter more opposed to it. They both still serve the same broad cause (protecting humanity from outside threats) and are even willing to cooperate to a degree, but they differ in who they should be ultimately loyal to (either to the monarchy or to the country as a whole).
• Rule of Cool: While the campaign usually sticks to the rules of 3.5 edition as written, there are a few times where said rules have been waived to allow a player to do something cool, with Demonac even naming this trope at least once when doing so, so long as the action makes at least some sense. Examples include letting Little One pick Rainbow Dash, the gigantic horse-like creature as his cohort, and Black being able to use Knight's Move as a reaction to protect a defenseless NPC from the Albtraum during the battle in episode 66 ^note normally that spell can only be done on the caster's turn, but Demonac allowed it to be used on another character's turn in this case since the intention fit in with the theme of Protection of Black's deity, and the battle was taking place in a citadel that was named after said deity.
• Running Gag:
  • The achievements, which always pop up at times with funny "unlocks".
  • Draven's kill stealing.
  • "Feywild!"
• See the Invisible: Kua-Toa can see through invisibility spells automatically, which makes their trademark Invisibility Cloaks useless for internecine war.
  • Also, around Episode 6 Little One dips into Dragonfire Adept, (a major change in his build), almost entirely to learn a spell that grants him this ability whenever he wants it.
• Skewed Priorities: Episode 4 of Sea of Secrets reveals that the main reason that some elven Cleansers survived their war with the rest of the elves (led by their king and queen) was because the nature goddess Dialiah took them under her protection, since they were technically fighting for nature (which is naturally of great importance to her). She seems to have largely ignored that the group had committed numerous acts of murder and terrorism against both the elves and their allies (including burning down several forest cities), though she did offer some concessions to the elven royals, such as allowing the leaders of those Cleansers to be tried and punished for their crimes and extending her protection only to certain jungles.
• Slave Liberation: Y'Solas Turi, last Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, Minister of Treasury, Minister of Science, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ytarra pronounced all Warforged free on his deathbed. At first glance this seems quite redundant (since he was effectively the last Ytarran alive, his death would leave the Warforged automatically free), but there was a point behind this. Y'Solas was worried that should he not free the Warforged, all too many of them would simply keep carrying out their old duties: building houses, gathering food, and generally serving a race that no longer existed. As even with the edict, some Warforged did in fact go on gathering food, building warehouses, and then building new warehouses as the food stored in the old ones rotted away uneaten, his concern was at least somewhat justified.
• Slave Race: Fairly common in TDDC, possession of slaves is an easy way to pick out an Always Chaotic Evil race in this world
  • The Deluvian Kua-Toa enslaved all of the ocean prior to the Civil War. They still dominate the Skum, Mermaids, Tritons and Aventi.
  • The Illud KTs who broke off the The Empire still practice this, and brought with them the Sahaguin, Naga and others.
    • Tritons are prized for their ability to summon Elementals, while Naga have a variety of magical powers, making them an example of Superhuman Trafficking.
  • The Drow in the Shadowfel have enslaved several Underdark races, as well as the Ibixians (Goat Men)
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Kua-Toa civilization is fundamentally dependent on slave labor and slave armies to function, and this is widely regarded as the single biggest proof that the Illud are not that different from their Deluvian kin.
• Servant Race: The Ytarrans created the Warforged to be this, and to fight the Dead Wars against the horrific Vampire Kings. Many continued to serve even after their creators died out.
  • The Dragonborn were created by (you guessed it) the Dragons to serve them. Originally they were happy to serve, but eventually most of them inevitably Turned Against Their Masters. They enjoyed several generations of freedom (though not peace) before the Dragons successfully retaliated by nearly wiping them out.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Draven's magitek crossbow has a rotating set of wands in the stock, allowing Draven to simply rotate out whichever one he wants to use. No mechanical advantage, but awesome fluff.
• The Bus Came Back: After performing a Heroic Sacrifice early on, a later episode has revealed that Draven's familiar Seven actually survived the portal collapse albeit very damaged. After a period of time of repair and recovery, Seven left Polaron before the party made it there and it is currently in the Faewild for some unknown reason.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: Humanity is the Good, The Illud are the Bad, and the Deluvians are the Evil.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Rajs, a small number of rakshashas with utterly inexplicable powers and knowledge. In addition to powerful psionic abilities and the ability to predict someone's future with enough accuracy to calculate the casualties of a battle down to a tenth of a person by reading their "Fate Matrix", they appear to be able to use their "karma" to fuel Reality Warper effects. Among other things, they can cleanse someone of the Astral Plague, a feat beyond even the Ytarrans at the height of their civilization. They appear to be accumulating karma by investing in supernatural bargains, and have a vast communal reserve of karma known as the Great Pool. What they intend to do with that karma is anyone's guess.
• The Stinger: Each episode has one after the credits, ranging from images/sequences from the episode, outtakes, a teaser of the next episode or even extra bits of the story in places away from the main cast.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Back in the Gineron arc, the party hoped to turn the ancient facility into a base of operations. They don't get the chance, and are infected with an ancient disease instead but at the end of the Polaron arc, not only do they kill the one responsible for infecting them, but gain control of another ancient facility, even find a way to save themselves from the plague.
• Values Dissonance: In-Universe example: Little One finds Warforged!Daggerface disgusting because it fights for pay, against people who are not his enemies. In Little One's mind, you should only fight to protect or for vengeance or at least to conquer and test your skills. In addition, Little One finds Daggerface's decision to spare his life after Little One refused to surrender deeply humiliating. As a result, Little One has sworn to get vengeance on Daggerface if he ever encounters him again.
• We Have Reserves: Averted in the case of the Kua-Toa invasion of Verandi. Since the Kua-Toa are basically the only race that can freely breathe both air and water, they could not use the legions of expendable soldier-slaves they normally relied upon and instead lost a large number of their own lives trying to maintain their foothold. This is a large part of why they considered the whole thing such a fiasco.
• The World Is Always Doomed: The fate of all civilized races rests on the precarious balance of the Enemy Civil War between the Deluvians and the Illud. If either side ever wins, they will wipe out humanity with ease.
  • Similarly, deep within the Astral Sea, the Big Good Ioun fights an unending battle with Big Bad Vecna for control of the Source of all magic. Should Vecna ever win, all magic and all gods will be blotted out, and Vecna will reign unchallenged and unchallengeable for all eternity.