So I have to get it out while it's fresh. Having a pretty awsome run through a wildmount campaign .with a party of now 6. We each were gifted some sort of magical weapon or item. "Just for funsies" and started at lvl 3 and have been going for the last 9 or so months

I've almost been killed twice once by a vrock that killed our gnomb warlock "who actually dicided he didnt want to do the campaign anymore" and a gloomstalker who thought I was easy pickings and tried to carry me off during a fight.

One part member even got cursed by driads because he pulled a branch off a tree to make the stock for a rifle. So now he has to worry about trees randomly swatting at him. The party consists of Triton Artificer with alligator steel defender,human rouge,tiefling warlock,human bard,halforc paladin, and our newest member tiefling sorcerer.

Well we're all lvl 8 now and managed to portal from bazzoxan to tel'dore running after a former companion who tried to bury us alive in the temple. And stole some artifacts.

We ended up loosing her and having to make friends with some of the local guilds for work. While we search for her.

Which brings me our recent escapades. The last 24 or so in game hours have been hectic.

Rogue decided to pull a spur of the moment late afternoon, hiest. Wich landed us with a cloak of invisibility and a cloak of the magi. But almost got us caught as the gaurd had magical trackers. We had used disguises but had to fog cloud the gaurds to take the trackers.

Meanwhile, our paladin is tracking down leads on a black market auction. He fails to find and gets himself kidnapped.

After a few hours, we notice he's not back yet and go looking for him. Finding the black market auction and setting up the sale of the robe of the magi.

We go back to looking for our wayward paladin.who had found the entrance to the auction but couldn't get in. The artificer and me the bard walked out and since i took polymorph at lvl 8 changed into a dire wolf.

I found his trail and followed it to a locked basement in a more run down section of the city. After forcing the lock and the rest of the party catching up to us we ended up finding the paladin chained to the wall and looked like hed been beaten and even magically branded. as the rogue couldnt read his thoughts anymore. Which i thought was emediatly pretty fishy but then we spotted a red cloaked person watching us ,we tried to give chase too but lost them.

By then it was 4 am and we had a mission into some old ruins to find a the partner of a professor we had caught conspiring to steal relics. at 8 am so we short rested and began the mission. Once into the old under water ruins. We set up in what we guess is some old library being held together with magic. Our rogue wearing the face of the professor met with our contact who knew why we were there.pointed us in the direction of were one of her missing compatriots might have gone and we went on our way after a long rest.

Soon after we found our way into a predicament. The artificer rogue and sorcerer all went to check on a weird looking underwater bar. That was being circled by a large shark. Wich was ran by I can only guess was an ancient sorcerer. After they did some trading. They exited and the shark outside started chasing them.

Right as they made it through the airlock, the magical air bubble that had been the connected to the library collapsed, injuring all of us. Exept the artificers alligator steel defender.

We began fighting the giant corrupted shark and I made it a relatively quick fight. As the warlock cast hex and I pollymorphed into a giant shark and the artificer cast imbiggen on me.

But I had noticed the paladin was bleeding. Which normally was actually pretty common. But the blood was blue. Again some more shadyness from him after he declines to heal or really even engage in fighting like he usually does.

After the battle I even offered to cast dispel curse on the brand which he was saying gave him the ability to not be found by magic and gave him a better ac.

Which he declined but still hes being suspicious again. So I cast it anyway.and he reacted to try and fight which by then the rogue.notices the blue blood aswel. And calls him on that he tries to make excuses but we're not hearing it. By now the whole party is in initiative which he rolls at the very bottom.the rogue and sorcerer grapple him saying we have to see if we cant heal him. But he tries to fight us about it. Finally I use command freeze. And he suddenly changes. As a figure teleports into the room he says somthing to the figure.the rogue panics as The artificer working on his destroyed steel defender pulls out his rifle and action surges every bullet he can muster at point blank into the doppelganger that we thought was our half orc paladin. The figure teleports and we're left with more questions and possibly have a dead team mate that we have to find and a mission we can't really walk away from.