What ROLE-PLAYING have you been doing?

We began captured by Drow in the Underdark, stripped of our items and chained up in a cell with a bunch of NPCs. The other PCs were a Halfling Monk, a Human Cleric, and a Goliath Barbarian. We all had a few little trinkets we had managed to pilfer over our first few days, like a poisoned crossbow bolt, stuff like that. After a couple of stops and starts we planned an escape where we would use our crossbow bolts to attack the guards after they came to get us for work duty. We tried this and rolled terribly, all of us knocked unconscious in the ensuing pandemonium.

Thankfully, one of the Drow guard, for reasons he kept to himself, offered to help us escape. He left our cell unlocked and caused a giant battle between monsters that drew off all the guards. We were able to make a run for the armory above the guard tower and get ourselves armed. We then went looking for our gear, poking around in the quarters of a priestess who was kind of our main captor. After getting our gear back, we leaped down the ravine, landing in a pool that cushioned our fall. Unfortunately, we were met down there by a grey ooze that ate into my rapier a little bit. I'm going to have to take a -1 to its damage, or else start using the shortsword I stole from the armory.

The party is looking for a lost city, and they found a way to essentially be able to fly there. That required finding a black orchid, bringing it to a city of aarakocra, and having a spell performed. Said orchid is in an ancient ruin, guarded by a medusa who is attended by a lot of birds, basically giant-sized cranes. Now the players are able to sweet-talk the medusa into giving them the orchid, but they get in their minds that this won't be possible. So our rogue resolves to use his mage hand to very subtly grab the orchid from next to this medusa while the other players are talking to them. He rolls a natural 20 for his check on this, and is able to sneak the orchid out of its pot, and into the shadowy corners of the room.

Now the book is pretty clear that if they players try to take the orchid, combat will start. But since he rolled the natural 20 I let them at least leave the chamber before she noticed the missing orchid. She then called her giant crane slaves to attack them, all of eight of them attacking the party of four and their NPC guide. The cranes swooped down on the party until they hid in a tunnel that had some very weak masonry. Basically, the cranes attacked from both sides, and also had the ability to hypnotize the characters and make themselves blurry and insubstantial to force the players to have disadvantage on attack rolls. After the first round of combat, with the party still jammed in the tunnel, I made it clear that the Medusa had left her chamber and was on her way to them to deal with them herself.

One of the players, our warlock, cast a reflective block at the entrance to the tunnel. The idea was for the Medusa to see her own reflection. Now this is dependent on a constitution saving throw, and if the victim fails by more than 5 they are instantly petrified. That's exactly what happened, and the medusa was petrified by her own gaze. The players couldn't see this, however, and did not know until the end of the fight.

With eight of these giant cranes attacking a small tunnel, I had to figure out interesting things for them to do. So I figured that one of the cranes (who are like ostrich-sized) was pecking at the masonry above the players. Eventually its beak broke through, just as the players killed the second-to-last crane. Our goliath fighter, who is the tank of the group, grabbed the beak, and won a strength contest that yanked the giant bird on top of the rickety masonry, collapsing the tunnel and raining wreckage on the players. They took quite a bit of damage, but no deaths, and now that they were able to see the medusa-shaped statue they had created. High-fives all around.