Hey!

I could use some advice on how to show my players the threat posed by a self-proclaimed dragon god. We’ve been in this campaign for a while now, and so far they haven’t actually seen him — they’ve only heard stories about what he’s done. I know they wouldn’t survive a direct confrontation at this stage, so I’d like to show him to them “from a distance.” I want the players to feel genuine fear. I want them to be afraid of him.

For context:

My setting is completely homebrew. In my world, dragons didn’t exist at all. We ended the previous campaign with the players accidentally becoming the villains and releasing Firax, an ancient dragon. I won’t go into all the details because they’re not important here. Firax unleashed a wave of dragons upon the world.

The current campaign takes place in the 30th year of the Era of Firax. The players created a faction dedicated to fighting dragons, and their ultimate goal — and the main goal of the campaign — is to kill Firax.

So far, they’ve only seen the destruction left behind after his attacks and heard stories about him. But now I’d like to give them some kind of display of power. The party is planning to travel to a dwarven mountain city while following the trail of a certain artifact. I’ve been thinking about doing something there to make Firax terrify them and show that stopping him will require far more than just a good plan.

Any ideas?
I thought about to show them how he cruelty kill adult dragon. At last session they fought one and it was intense experience for them. Seeing Firax easily kill him would give them the idea of how strong he is.

This is part 2 to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CritCrab/comments/1t77st6/my_players_thought_i_planned_this_twist_for/

I’m really happy so many people enjoyed my previous post, so here’s another part of his character arc.

The Voices

After everything that happened with the demon Uridezu during the trial, the possession storyline didn’t simply disappear. It became an important part of Bolt’s character.

One evening, Bolt was alone in his room inside the party’s base when he started hearing voices. Not inside his head. Inside the room. The door was locked, and nobody else should have been there.

Bolt lit a lantern.

Nobody.

Bolt:
“Come out! Whoever you are!”

The voices stopped.

A few minutes later, just as Bolt was about to lie down in bed, a rat casually walked into the middle of the room.

“Got anything to eat?” the rat asked.

Bolt:
“…What? What are you doing in my room?!”

Rat:
“This is OUR room. You’re the one who moved in while we were already living here.”

Another rat:
“Yeah. We live in the walls.”

Third rat:
“We smelled food.”

Bolt started arguing with the rats while trying to process what was even happening. Meanwhile, Flik happened to be walking down the hallway outside Bolt’s room.

Flik’s player:
“Do I hear any of this?”

Me:
“Roll Perception.”

High roll.

Me:
“Yes. Very clearly. You hear Bolt making bizarre squeaking noises that make absolutely no sense to you.”

Flik:
“…what?”

The party knocked on Bolt’s door. Bolt opened it. They saw him apparently talking to rats… and the rats squeaking back at him.

Me:
“This is all you hear.”
Then I played actual mouse squeaking sounds through Discord.

Bolt:
“So apparently I can talk to rats now.”

The party tested his new ability with other animals, but only rats responded to him.
Bolt eventually named the three rats living in the base:
Poul, Mike, and George.
He regularly fed them whenever he returned to the base.

Base in Flames

Some time later, the campaign’s BBEG attacked the players’ headquarters while the party was away on an expedition. It became one of the most dramatic scenes in the campaign.

As the players returned to the city, they noticed a massive column of smoke rising in the distance. People were running through the streets.

I told them:

“You see smoke coming from the district where your base is located. Citizens are running toward it. Something is wrong.”

The party sprinted through the city and arrived just in time to see their headquarters completely engulfed in flames. Several friendly NPCs had already died. Bodies covered with cloth lay outside the building.

The fire was far too large to extinguish.

An allied mage from a guild the players occasionally worked for was using powerful telekinesis to prevent the collapsing structure from falling apart.

I described him struggling to maintain the spell.

“He can’t hold it much longer.”

A Race Against Time

I started a timer. The players rushed inside searching for survivors, including one player’s adopted daughter. They managed to rescue two people and recover the body of the housekeeper who used to cook for them.

The timer was almost over.

The group prepared to escape.

Then Bolt heard a voice coming from his half-collapsed burning bedroom.

Mike.

The rat was screaming for help and told him that George and Poul weren’t moving.

Bolt:
“I jump through the flames into my room.”

He roll good. Bolt made it inside safely.

He quickly found the rats and shoved them into his bag.

Smoke filled the room.

Me:
“Roll Constitution.”

Bad roll.

Bolt became disoriented from the smoke and couldn’t figure out where the door was anymore.

Flames spread everywhere.

CRACK.

The floor collapsed beneath him.

Bolt crashed into the lower floor, taking heavy fire and fall damage.

The rest of the party realized what had happened.

Using a Decanter of Endless Water, they temporarily extinguished enough fire to pull him out.

The timer expired. Outside, the exhausted mage finally lost concentration. The entire building collapsed. The players barely escaped in time.

Once Bolt recovered, the first thing he did was pull the rats out of the bag. Mike was coughing but alive. George slowly woke up, struggling to breathe.

Poul wasn’t moving.

Bolt:
“I perform CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

Medicine check.

Animal Handling check.

The rest of the party watched Bolt desperately trying to save his tiny friend’s life.

George started crying.

Then suddenly…

Poul’s tail twitched.

His eyes opened.

He began violently coughing.

Success.

Mike and George immediately started running around Poul in excitement.

Bolt collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion.

Bolt to the rats:
“You need to be more careful next time.”

Mike looked back at the burning ruins of the base.

“We don’t have a home anymore.”

Bolt replied:
“You can travel with me. You’ll have food and you’ll be safe.”

The rats agreed this was a good plan.

From that point on, Bolt carried them around somewhere underneath his armor.

I never asked where exactly.

The players never asked either.

We all agreed it was better not to know.

Sometimes one of the rats would sit on Bolt’s shoulder squeaking something to him while Bolt casually answered in squeaks.

New Companions

During the following session, after the destruction of the base, the players were sitting in a tavern and overheard rumors about the woman responsible for the attack.

Bolt suddenly said:

“I’ll use the rats to spy on conversations for us.”

So he sent the rats one by one to gather information. The problem was that the rats weren’t exactly geniuses. The players had to repeatedly send them back because each rat returned with completely different information.

One got distracted by food smells.

Another focused on random unrelated details.

At one point a cat entered the tavern and all three rats immediately panicked and sprinted back under Bolt’s armor.

The entire situation became hilariously chaotic.

Everyone at the table knew the party could have simply walked over and questioned the witnesses normally…

…but after the emotional destruction of the party base during the previous session, the players really needed a lighter moment.

TL;DR

After getting rid of the rat demon, Bolt permanently gained the ability to talk to rats, adopted three of them as companions, rescued them from a burning building during an emotional timed escape sequence, and later started using them as terrible little fantasy spies.

Hello! Huge fan, you're making great work. I really enjoy listening you reading other people's D&D stories, so I decided to share one of my own. This is my story how i defused murder hobo with "Remember Session 1?" twist and court with boss fight at the end 😃

Introduction

This was my debut as a Dungeon Master… which later evolved into becoming a forever DM.

Three of my friends convinced me to run a D&D game for them because they said I was good at storytelling. I was flattered and agreed to make something for them. We were all beginners, playing online through Owlbear Rodeo and Discord.

I made a very simple campaign: a mysterious curator hires adventurers to recover ancient artifacts for him. Nothing super ambitious, but it gave me freedom to design dungeons and adventures while everyone learned the game. We were all having fun. …mostly.

During this campaign, I learned what a murder hobo is.

The Party

There was Flik, a paladin who wasn’t heavily involved in this particular story.
Aela, a ranger who constantly tried to keep the group together.
And Bolt, the main character of this story, a fighter.

Bolt described his character as physically disgusting. According to his backstory, his parents threw him away as a baby and he was raised by a leatherworker who rise him and took him in as an apprentice. He always carried an official recommendation letter from the craftsmen’s guild proving his identity and profession. This will become important later.

Overall, we were all learning the rules together and having fun. No pressure, no stress. Every now and then Bolt would do something weird, stupid, or disturbing, like eating a raw rat during the first session, attacking another player for no reason, or constantly provoking NPCs into fights. As long as it wasn’t ruining the fun for the others, I tolerated it. Aela usually smoothed things over if can. But there was sessions when NPC and other players wanted to talk something out and Bolt was "I take out my crossbow and shot at his head." ending negotiations and starting fight with irritation from other players.

During Session Zero, I told them I wanted to create a world that reacted to their actions. They could do whatever they wanted, but there would be consequences. I also sometimes ran solo voice chat sessions with individual players if they wanted to handle personal side activities without slowing down the main group session.

Saving the Carpenter

After several sessions, the party completed a few jobs for the curator and started taking side quests while waiting for the next artifact lead. One day, while shopping in the city square, a crying woman approached Flik. She explained that her husband, a carpenter, had gone to a nearby village the day before to sell chairs and was supposed to return home that evening. He never came back. Flik promised to help despite Bolt complaining about it, and the party traveled to the village. There they found a local merchant named Tom. The players questioned him about the carpenter. Tom explained that the carpenter is his close friend and they had done business together for years.

Bolt showed Tom his craftsmen guild recommendation letter and asked if Tom might be interested in leather goods in the future. Tom happily read the letter and was excited about a possible new trade partner. As a DM, I was honestly happy because it felt like Bolt’s player was finally engaging with the world in a meaningful way.

Then Aela asked Tom more questions about the carpenter’s visit. Tom said, that the carpenter had visited him as usual and afterward he left for the main city using the same road the players had traveled on. Bolt rolled Insight. High roll, i said that "in your opinion he said the truth." Bolt still refused to trust Tom. The party searched around the shop. No signs of violence. No blood. Nothing suspicious.

As then an inexperienced DM, I honestly had no idea what else I could do to convince Bolt that Tom was innocent.

Eventually a little girl approached the party and confirmed she had personally seen the carpenter leave the village yesterday. Flik and Aela started heading toward the road outside town. Bolt stayed behind alone with Tom.

Then came the interrogation.

“I know you’re hiding something. Talk, or things will get ugly.”

High Intimidation roll. Tom cowered behind the counter.

“Please… no… I already told you everything I know. The carpenter came yesterday and left yesterday, just like always. He’s my friend and business partner. Why would I hurt him?”

Bolt punched him in the face.

“Talk, you filthy dog!”

Tom begged him to stop, saying maybe something happened on the road instead. At that moment Aela returned and pulled Bolt away. Before leaving, Bolt openly stole gold directly from Tom’s cash register while Tom’s little daughter watched her crying father.

The rest of the quest actually went normally. The players eventually found the carpenter’s wagon crashed off the road. Goblins had attacked him. They rescued him, cleared the goblin cave, returned him safely to his wife, and received their reward.

End of session.

Consequences

The next session focused on a dungeon expedition for the curator. Everyone had a great time. At the very end of the session, the group’s butler handed Bolt a letter addressed to him. Bolt read it aloud. It was from the craftsmen’s guild.

“Dear Bolt,

We regret to inform you that your name has been removed from the registry of our guild. We do not tolerate violence and refuse to associate ourselves with such behavior.

If you wish to respond to these accusations or discuss possible reinstatement, please visit our headquarters.

Sincerely,
Guildmaster”

As a DM, I thought this would become a cool character development arc.

Flik immediately pointed out that of course Tom reported him — Bolt had literally shown him his official guild recommendation letter before threatening him.

Bolt replied in a cold, serious voice:

“I’m going to give Tom a visit.”

Aela privately messaged me:

“I'll follow him without him noticing.”

The session ended there and I scheduled a private Discord session with Bolt while secretly running Aela’s actions through private messages on the side. Bolt’s player had absolutely no idea she was following him.

Bolt confronting Tom

Bolt arrived at Tom’s shop and found Tom there with his young son. This time Tom had hired a guard. Bolt tried intimidation again. Failed.

Meanwhile, Aela messaged me privately that she climbed the outside wall, entered through the upper floor, and waited hidden ready to engage if needed.

After arguing with Tom, Bolt grabbed the merchant’s son by the arm and yanked him aggressively toward himself. He rolled badly. The boy hit the ground, smashed his head, and lost consciousness.

Fight started. The guard attacked Bolt. Bolt immediately killed him with a counterattack.

Then Tom’s daughter walked into the room and started screaming after seeing a bloody swordsman standing over a dead guard and her unconscious brother.

I messaged Aela:

“You hear combat downstairs and a little girl screaming.”

Aela replied:

“I go downstairs with my bow drawn, ready to fight Bolt.”

Then came the beautiful moment.

POP. The sound of person joining the Discord voice channel.

Without even greeting Aela's player, I simply said:

“Roll initiative.”

Her token appeared on the battle map. Bolt’s player was completely shocked.

Aela shouted:

“Drop the sword and we can leave peacefully!”

Bolt answered:

“You’ll have to make me.”

Combat started. Aela cast Fog Cloud and yelled for Tom to run. Tom grabbed his unconscious son and escaped with his daughter.

Bolt retreated upstairs, trying to lure Aela after him. The fight was intense.

Then I described voices downstairs:

“Where is he?!”

A crowd of villagers with pitchforks and axes stormed the building. Together with Aela, they overwhelmed Bolt and knocked him unconscious. Tom thanked Aela for saving his family. She tied Bolt to her horse and personally delivered him to the city jail.

End of private session.

The Talk

Afterward, I privately asked Bolt’s player if he even wanted to continue playing with us because his behavior had stopped being funny and was starting to seriously annoy the rest of the group. He apologized and asked for one last chance.

Me: "You know that Bolt is in bad spot right now. He is in jail with many charges and it will be difficult to pull him from this situation." I asked him if he want to make new character but he wanted to play Bolt. I needed time to think.

Two days later, inspiration hit me. I called him and said:
“You’re getting a trial. Keep roleplaying Bolt exactly as usual. Trust me and follow my lead. And afterwards you will play nice with the rest of players.”

Bolt: "Ok."

The Trial

For Bolt specifically, I learned how court procedures worked and built an entire courtroom session around it. Several in-game days later, the trial began. Flik, Aela, Tom, the guildmaster, a court physician, and many familiar NPCs filled the courtroom. Bolt sat inside a cage in the middle of the room. The physician confirmed Bolt was physically fit enough to stand trial.

Then came the charges. Eighteen separate charges. The prosecutor demanded 25 years in prison. The defense attorney gave his speech. Bolt continued acting insane, threatening everyone and saying he’d kill them all if he escaped the cage. Other players were annoyed with that, but that was the plan.

Then suddenly… Bolt collapsed. Convulsions. Black sludge started pouring from his mouth. Judge asked guard to open the cage for physician to help him.

The courtroom panicked.

Bolt’s jaw stretched unnaturally wide. A thin arm crawled out of his throat. Then another. The black sludge flooded onto the courtroom floor as a horrifying humanoid rat demon emerged from inside Bolt’s body. Its name was Uridezu.

Bolt slowly regained consciousness as the demon stood before the court.

I said:

“Roll initiative.”

The courtroom trial instantly transformed into a boss fight. The demon summoned giant rats and swarms of rats.

Flik threw Bolt his sword so he could fight too. Eventually, when Uridezu was heavily wounded, it teleported to the judge hiding behind his desk.

Bolt leaped over the railing and decapitated the demon, covering both himself and the judge in black blood. This was NOT scripted.

Everyone in courtroom [players included] just stared at Bolt standing over the terrified judge with a bloody sword in hand.

Then Bolt slowly dropped the sword on the ground and helped the judge stand up. After a short break, the physician examined Bolt again and confirmed the demon was gone.

Then he asked the obvious question:

“How exactly did this demon infect you?”

Bolt answered:

“I don’t know.”

The physician listed possibilities.

“Did you stay somewhere infested with rats?”

“No.”

“Did you come into contact with rat droppings?”

“No.”

“…Did you perhaps consume raw rat meat?”

Silence.

Then all the players suddenly remembered the very first session where Bolt said he want to eat a rat that he just killed.

Me then:

“So… you want to cook the rat first?”

Bolt then:

“No. I eat it raw. Right now.”

Me:

“…okay. Roll Constitution.”

After the session, the players asked if I had planned that reveal from the very beginning.

The judge ultimately ruled that according to the kingdom’s laws, a person influenced or possessed by demons could not be held legally responsible for their actions.

However, because Bolt’s own irresponsible behavior led to the possession, he was still fined heavily and ordered to stay away from Tom and his family. Tom was NOT happy about this outcome.

After that session, Bolt changed how he played the character. He was still weird but stopped sabotaging the party and started cooperating with the group. Over the years more players joined us, and today — several campaigns later — we’re still playing together.

TL;DR

One player slowly turned into a murder hobo, assaulted an innocent merchant and his family, got arrested by another player during a side session. I asked if he want to play with us. On his trial everyone discovered that he had been possessed by a rat demon ever since he ate a raw rat during Session 1 and asked me if me and Bolt planned this from the beginning. 😄