A few sessions prior to the death of our wood elf ranger, the DM had let him take the orb that was basically the physical form of the entire magic weave and infuse it into his body at a cost. That cost being: anytime his character would feel a strong emotion, a wild magic surge would happen. Fast forward to about three 7 hour long sessions later, we were going to the Dwarven capital in the north. On our way we found a large mountain like formation in the snow that didn't appear on the map, and being the genius that he is, the goblin bounty hunter (homebrew class) shot the mound with a Nat 20. The mound then began to rise as a very angry white dragon that the DM had homebrewed to be somewhere between an adult and an ancient dragon, rose out of the snow. Cut to the next session. With some planning before the session, we had decided that the ranger would use his animal companion to attempt to escape the dragon while drawing its attention away from the party, this would have been a great plan… if the dragon wasn't faster and didn't deal as much damage. As the rest of the party snuck away, my tiefling druid and the tabaxi rogue decided to go back and help our ranger. The dragon had already reduced him to less than half of his health as my druid came in as a giant constrictor snake, hissing and creating as much noise as possible while the rogue was sneaking over to give the ranger a healing potion. Little did we know that we were just delaying the inevitable. After several rounds of combat, the ranger's dire wolf companion was outright killed, the dragon had dealt damage that exceeded the HP max of the dire wolf, instantly killing it. This of course set off one of those powerful wild magic surges, resulting in a chasm opening up under the dragon that stretched for miles, the dragon failed its dex save resulting in it falling into the lava. But this did not kill it… cut to several more turns later, the dragon had worn our three party members down to less than half health, and I was running out of spell slots. The dragon then turned to my druid and the ranger, who was right behind me, and released its icy breath on the two of us, this was not a problem for me because I had passed the save and had the infernal constitution feat, giving me cold resistance. But the ranger on the other hand, despite succeeding the save, already had his health in the single digits and was killed the same way as his companion. Death, being a very emotional feeling triggered the final surge as the DM rolled the severity, he looked up and asked the ranger if he would like to use some of the magic in the weave to teleport us to the rest of the party. The ranger's player nodded as the DM began to describe a powerful rush of heat coming over the ranger's body, the heat would later become an orb of fire that engulfed the ranger and the dragon. As this was happening the ranger uttered his final words, "I GOT YOU A ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL, BABY!" Cut to the rest of the party, seeing the rogue and the druid appear before them. The party began to question the survivors as to if the ranger escaped, but before the first word escaped their mouths, they saw a bright light on the horizon that outshined the sun itself. As they watched this second sun glow they all bowed their heads as they already knew what had happened. Out of game, the 4 of the 6 party members who were at the table at the time, including myself, were all in tears, as the character everyone expected to survive the longest out of all of us had died. In game my druid, who had grown to become one of the ranger's closest friends began bargaining with Hades for his friend's soul. They had finally reached the agreement that the only thing that could have the equivalent value of a soul is another soul. The druid had no other choice, he asked Hades how one could perform this ritual. Hades began giving the druid instructions for completing the ritual, but it was all in vain, for the ranger's soul did not want to return, resulting in the ritual completely failing. At this point we all realized what had to be done. The druid and our dragonborn paladin went back to the first city we had saved, the city our ranger had created an order in, New Haven. The ranger's Order of the Silver Dawn had amassed the entire population of the town, and the members held him very dearly seeing that he was their leader, the one who had helped them form and rebuild their city. Our 2 party members came here to inform them of this terrible tragedy, the tragedy at what is now known as "Rowan's Crater".
Names:
Druid (Me) – Aldraviir "Al"
Ranger – Rowan
Rogue – Honey
Paladin – Grayshire
Bounty Hunter – Zinrex "Zin"
Dire Wolf Companion – Sif
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