The Storm Wall and the Astronomically Low Odds of Survival

Battle Against the Storm

In The World Rune, the world started falling apart which led to some strange phenomena, including a persistent magical storm stretching further than the eye could see and higher than any airship could fly. The Storm Wall, it was called. It appeared right on top of another strange phenomenon—a massive crack in the ground called The Grand Fissure, which was deep enough to reach the swirling chaos deep within the earth.

Eventually, the characters had to make their way through The Storm Wall to progress with the adventure and save the world. They’d taken their airship through a smaller magical storm before, so they had an idea of what they’d be up against: strong winds constantly switching directions, magic behaving unpredictably, angry elementals, and so on. They were wise to prepare for the storm.

The party was Titus the wizard, Thorak the paladin, and Traz the cleric, whose strange luck is the reason this story is noteworthy at all. He can always count on his dice to fail him when it matters the most.

Airships in this world looked just like regular sailing ships, except they were suspended in the air by massive balloons. This airship had a central mast for whatever reason, and all the characters chose to tie themselves to it. Titus and Traz had about twenty feet of rope between them and the mast, allowing them to move freely on the ship without blowing off if the winds became too much.

Thorak, however, went for a different approach. His rope had an entire sixty feet of slack. If he were to lose his footing, he’d fly right off the ship and dangle helplessly in the wind. As it would turn out, this was a good choice.

They approached the storm and the winds picked up immediately. The harrowed screams of a psychic wind made them cover their ears to avoid being driven mad. The winds changed, sending Traz flying to the end of his rope. Due to his surprisingly bad luck, some of the strands were already breaking.

Fire and air elementals appeared through the storm’s iridescent swirls and landed on the ship. The party fought them, every spell they cast creating random magical effects, including summoning a very confused modron. Then a wave of water came crashing down on the ship, extinguishing the fire elementals. Titus avoided it by teleporting to the side of the ship where the wave had already passed, realizing too late that the rope tied around his waist didn’t teleport with him. He was now free to get swept away into the swirling, windy chaos. Just to be safe, he cast fly on himself.

Thorak was strong, but Traz was anything but. The water swept him away and his rope just couldn’t take it anymore. It snapped right in the middle and Traz was thrown against the railing. Then the winds changed and turned the ship upside down. Titus clung tight to the railing to avoid falling. Traz, without rope or anything to cling to, fell onto the balloon with a bounce, and began sliding down it. Thorak fell too, sliding after Traz and grabbing his hand just as his rope went taut.

The ship flipped again, and Traz and Thorak fell once more, slamming into the deck. Just as they got up, the direction of the wind changed to the ship’s port side. Titus and Thorak held their ground, but Traz was swept away once more. He flew past the railing and drifted away from the ship. He was a leaf in the storm now, powerless. But Thorak was there to help, flinging himself after Traz and managing to grab him again. Then the wind changed back, sending them both crashing into the side of the ship. Thorak held on, but Traz’s crappy dice rolls sent him tumbling along the ship’s hull until he was beneath it. Titus headed for the starboard railing just in time to see Traz, still drifting in the swirling winds, fire his grappling hook at the ship and miss.

In the crucial life-or-death battle against the storm, Traz’s rolls had been a series of total disasters. From his unusually weak rope to his inability to stand fast against the wind, his failure to grab hold of the ship as he slammed against it, and his terribly aimed grappling shot, nothing had gone right. The gods of probability had it out for him on that fateful day. He was being tossed about in the winds and had no way back to the ship. To make matters worse, a portal had opened before the ship and with no one to steer, they were headed right for it. Except Traz, of course.

Titus used his only remaining spell slot to cast levitate on Traz. Being miles above the ground, it would have no impact whatsoever. But Titus had another reason for casting the spell: with magic going haywire in the storm, there was a small chance that casting the spell would have some kind of beneficial side effect. Perhaps something that could even save Traz. Although he had just as big a chance of accidentally fireballing himself. Considering the circumstances, it was worth the risk.

Titus’ player rolled his giant hundred-sided die, a golden cannonball of randomness, made of metal and heavy as a brick. It rolled way too far and nearly struck down the miniatures again, finally settling on eighty-eight. I consulted the wild magic table for the result and could hardly believe it:

87-88: You cast fly on a random creature within 60 feet of you.

Out of all the random magical effects on the table, that was the only one that could help Traz. Only problem was that the target was random. Three characters there were, and a three-sided die Titus’ player produced. Because of course he had one of those. Rolling a one would make Thorak fly, a two meant Titus, and a three Traz. I rolled the die in front of the hopeful players and it came up a three.

But Traz’s troubles weren’t quite over yet. In fact, he was about to die. Because the ship was now heading into the portal and Traz was still not on it. With the strong winds he wouldn’t be able to fly to the portal before it closed. A minute later, his fly spell would wear off and he’d fall, either crashing into the ground or ending up in the swirling chaos far below for a potentially even worse fate. At least Titus would be with him, because Titus, flying, had done a stupid and jumped off the ship to help Traz. How he intended to help is still unknown. Could you guess that his characters tend to die a lot?

In this increasingly bizarre situation, there was only one more chance of survival for the flying adventurers. It was the very thing that had gotten them into this pickle in the first place: the wind. With the wind constantly changing directions, there was a slim chance that it would blow them straight into the portal ahead of them. As a new round began—the last round before the portal closed—I rolled for the wind direction. An eight would mean straight forward. Of course, I rolled an eight, and Titus and Traz were flung straight into the portal, into a strange dimension of darkness where they landed right on the ship as Thorak was fighting off oily shadow people. Not much later, the ship popped back into reality, safely on the other side of the Storm Wall.

Thus ends the tale of Traz and the Storm Wall. Though his luck was terrible, the insane luck of everyone else made up for it. His streak of bad luck would persist throughout the campaign, leading to the jello incident and eventually his demise when a skyscraper collapsed on top of him. Don’t worry, he got better.