Hi! I think this plush might be a Douglas which I know are favored in this community, so I thought I’d ask here, but I’m not otherwise sure. I only have this single photo of this plush but I’d love to be able to find it. If anyone here might know what plush this is, or the brand, please let me know. Thanks!
Hi all,
This may be a bit long but I could really use some advice at the moment for my forgotten realms campaign that I am a player in! I we’ve been playing for about 12 years and this is by far my favorite story we’ve told together, and we’re about 2 years in. However, I have recently been at odds with figuring out how to defeat the narrative’s BBEG (or at least who we believe to be the BBEG)
I could really use some advice on ideas/methods to successfully thwart this character within the forgotten realms. We stick as closely as we can to canon, but there of course may be additional ways to stop him the DM has hidden that we just haven’t uncovered yet. Here is what we know about the BBEG so far:
In our canon, in 1500 DR, a huge Faerûn wide event occurred where portals opened all across the continent and both demons and devils took the blood war to the material plane. It was chaos and bloodshed, until suddenly, a group of extremely powerful heroes showed up and managed to stop it. After the world was recovered, a celebration was held in their honor in Waterdeep, and this was the first time that most people in the world were seeing them all together publicly under their party title. The heroes arrived and our player characters were there to celebrate too and/or happened to live there and we were all quickly shocked to realize we were each involved with/related to a member of their party—except for their leader, a human mage, who no one could seem to figure out any information on (the BBEG).
Events ensued during the party in their honor that evening at Castle Waterdeep where we tried to investigate the heroes with the help of Vajra, the Blackstaff (my character’s wife), and during the party the castle was attacked by Modrons and creatures from Mechanus who were looking for a “criminal against fate”. The BBEG tried to frame another person at the party who could fit that bill, and did so successfully to everyone except our party and Vajra. during this plan, Laeral Silverhand, my character’s mentor, was turned into an object by the Mechanus creatures. In her stead, the masked lords elected the BBEG as Open Lord, since they agreed he was the best fit. Our characters however knew information that meant we knew the BBEG was responsible for the whole ordeal and had planned this in order to supplant Laeral.
Then, he had us exiled on a technicality. Since then we’ve been adventuring trying to find a way to fix Laeral while trying to learn more about the BBEG and his adventuring party, and he has continued to take advantage of us, thwart us, or downright gaslight and drive my PC insane. We keep inadvertently helping him/getting screwed over by him by our own choices. My character in particular has a very personal and obsessive rivalry against the BBEG, and has even designed himself as an antimagic specifically to help him beat the BBEG for this reason, but we keep losing to him anyway. We could really use some external advice for stopping him, considering all the impacts of doing so.
Here’s our party and relevant abilities, what we know so far on our enemies, and what potential resources/allies/complications we have at our disposal:
we have five players, myself, an abjuration wizard with the cartomancer feat, mage slayer feat, and metamagic adept feat. My wizard also has a crystalline chronicle, so he can cast spells subtly and avoid counterspells fairly easily.
We have a Hunter Ranger, he also has a published magic item I don’t remember the name of that allows him to expend all his hit dice and add it to his damage once per day.
We have two fighters, one that is a battle master and the UA cavalier, both very tough tanks, outfitted with magic weapons, but not min maxed. The Cavalier also rides a time dragon wyrmling, so we have that at our disposal.
We also have a mercy monk, who also has mage slayer, a dragon hide belt, and magic resistance via a magic item.
> He is usually in castle Waterdeep, and has had around a year to fortify any kind of defenses there that we wants.
> He has a level 20+ barbarian/monk kind of character that is his defender, and is likely nearby at most times. This character is an “ally” of one of the party members, but likely can’t be reasoned with to not defend the BBEG.
> He has a mind blank cast on him at all times. My divinations and other adjacent attempts to ask information on him directly via spell always fail.
> He knows metamagic, we have seen him use both subtle spell and heightened spell.
> He can grant bardic inspiration, so he is at least partially a bard.
> spells we have seen him cast include counterspell, mass suggestion, plane shift, and modify memory
> he has the Demonomicon (I unfortunately gave it to him 😅 not my best move)
> he has an insanely high Charisma score.
> he is the current Open Lord of Waterdeep, and most people in the world other than us and a few select allies believe him to be the savior of Faerûn and generally adore him or see him at the least as a hero. He is charismatic and likable to most other leaders, but they at the least agree he is deeply arrogant and self serving.
> we know he wants to become a God, and it also seems like he wants to be the only God.
> gods have slowly been disappearing and being wiped from memory, but we don’t know how. He has kidnapped the highest ranking cleric of one god, for what purpose, we aren’t sure.
3. We have the following at our disposal:
We have the allyship of Taern Hornblade and Silverymoon. We helped them stop a major Zhentarim operation recently and they may be willing to listen to us if we bring the BBEG issue to their attention.
We have Vajra, an inside ear within Waterdeep. The BBEG knows she is loyal to us, however, and knows we’re in contact with her and has been running her ragged with responsibilities to try to keep her from being effective at planning against him.
We’re a level 10 party with about 10,000 gold between us that isn’t already earmarked for something else.
Any kind of help anyone could provide would mean the world to me. Because I genuinely feel outclassed by this villain and I could use some help brainstorming a way to stop him before it’s too late. 🙏
I’m a first year teacher who started in September and my bank is teacher’s federal credit union. I don’t see any bonus listed in the payroll portal and nothing extra is in my bank account. Is there a chance they forgot about me?